The TD-CDMA based UTRA TDD mode

The third-generation mobile radio system UTRA that has been specified in the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) consists of an FDD and a TDD mode. This paper presents the UTRA TDD mode, which is based on TD-CDMA. Important system features are explained in detail. Moreover, an overview of the system architecture and the radio interface protocols is given. Furthermore, the physical layer of UTRA TDD is explained, and the protocol operation is described     

A section is born: Studies in Automated Reasoning

A section is born: Studies in Automated Reasoning     

Costs and Benefits of MBE Rules in Construction

The findings of a study designed to investigate the costs and benefits of Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) regulations in the construction industry are presented. The data indicate that large contractors have less difficulty than smaller organizations in meeting MBE requirements. In addition, it is shown that the regulations both benefit and enlarge the number of minority contractors. According to the study, however, MBE procedures have not increased the number of qualified minority contractors. The data also indicate that MBE regulations have increased the cost of construction projects. The amount allocated, although significant when compared to percentage profit, is not substantial. For example, the unweighted values, in terms of construction dollar volume, range from 3.41% for the Engineering News‐Record (ENR) 400 organizations to 3.33% for the Associated General Contractors of Indiana, AGC (Indiana). The weighted values range from 2.04% for the ENR 400 contractors, to 3.74% for the AGC (Indiana). The great majority of firms surveyed indicate that MBE rules and regulations should be modified. Better agency procurement efforts and comprehensive programs to train minority contractors are mentioned as a necessity.     

Experimental evaluation of a modular approach to mobilizing antitobacco influences of peers and parents

The experimental evaluation of two components of a community intervention to prevent adolescent tobacco use are described. Youth antitobacco activities (e.g., peer quizzes, sidewalk art, poster and T-shirt giveaways, etc.) and family communications activities (pamphlets to parents and student quizzes of parents) were evaluated in two time-series experiments, each of which was conducted in two experimental and one control community. Students in Grades 6 and 8 and their parents were assessed in a series of four phone surveys in the first experiment and six phone surveys in the second. Implementation of the youth antitobacco and family communications activities led to significantly greater exposure of young people to antitobacco information. They led to increases in parent and youth knowledge about tobacco use and more negative attitudes toward tobacco. In Experiment 2, youths in intervention communities had significantly lower rated intentions to smoke. The findings suggest the value of a modular approach to community interventions for influencing the social context relevant to the onset of adolescent tobacco use.     

Giant Magnetoelectric Effect in Thin‐Film Composites

Highly sensitive AC magnetic field sensors are presented using magnetoelectric composites consisting of magnetostrictive and piezoelectric phases. They are offering passive nature, high sensitivity, large effect enhancement at mechanical resonance, and large linear dynamic range. Thin‐film magnetoelectric 2‐2 composites benefit from perfect coupling between the piezoelectric and magnetostrictive phases and from the reduction in size which is essential for high spatial resolution. Their design uses AlN and a plate capacitor or PZT with interdigital electrodes and magnetostrictive amorphous FeCoSiB single layers or exchanged biased multilayers. At mechanical resonance and depending on the geometry, extremely high ME coefficients of up to 9.7 kV/cm Oe in air and up to 19 kV/cm Oe under vacuum were obtained. To avoid external DC magnetic bias fields, composites consisting of exchanged biased multilayers serving as the magnetostrictive component with a maximum magnetoelectric coefficient at zero magnetic bias field are employed. Furthermore, the anisotropic response of these exchanged biased composites can be utilized for three‐dimensional vector field sensing. Sensitivity and noise of the sensors revealed limits of detection as good as to 2.3 pT/Hz^1/2 at mechanical resonance. Sensitivity between 0.1 and 1000 Hz outside resonance can be enhanced through frequency conversion using AC magnetic bias fields.     

Professional Program Criteria for Civil Engineering Curriculums

The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) has adopted a revised set of accreditation criteria that is designed to ensure that graduates of accredited programs are prepared to enter the practice of engineering. The proposal also specifies that engineering programs must demonstrate that their graduates have an understanding of professional practice issues in addition to proficiency in specific subject areas that are tabulated in the civil engineering program criteria. The findings of this study indicate that engineering undergraduate and graduate students as well as practitioners perceive that four subject areas are of great importance for civil engineers. They include structural engineering, hydraulics∕hydrology∕water resources, engineering design, and mathematics through calculus and differential equations. In contrast, one area, chemistry, received lower ratings. The data suggest that the majority of subjects included in the civil engineering program criteria are considered by students and practitioners to have generally the same level of importance and should be included in the curriculum at an above average level. In particular, 81% of the subject areas included in the ABET civil engineering program criteria are rated by both students and practitioners with a composite score ≥3.1. This may be interpreted as strong support for the Engineering Criteria 2000 program requirements.     

Novel Neuroprotective Agents to Treat Neonatal Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy: Inter-Alpha Inhibitor Proteins

Perinatal hypoxia-ischemia (HI) is a major cause of brain injury and mortality in neonates. Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) predisposes infants to long-term cognitive deficits that influence their quality of life and place a large burden on society. The only approved treatment to protect the brain after HI is therapeutic hypothermia, which has limited effectiveness, a narrow therapeutic time window, and is not considered safe for treatment of premature infants. Alternative or adjunctive therapies are needed to improve outcomes of full-term and premature infants after exposure to HI. Inter-alpha inhibitor proteins (IAIPs) are immunomodulatory molecules that are proposed to limit the progression of neonatal inflammatory conditions, such as sepsis. Inflammation exacerbates neonatal HIE and suggests that IAIPs could attenuate HI-related brain injury and improve cognitive outcomes associated with HIE. Recent studies have shown that intraperitoneal treatment with IAIPs can decrease neuronal and non-neuronal cell death, attenuate glial responses and leukocyte invasion, and provide long-term behavioral benefits in neonatal rat models of HI-related brain injury. The present review summarizes these findings and outlines the remaining experimental analyses necessary to determine the clinical applicability of this promising neuroprotective treatment for neonatal HI-related brain injury.     

Clinical and ethical issues in the treatment of a Jehovah's Witness with acute myeloblastic leukemia

We report the first documented case of the use of peripheral blood stem cell autografting in the treatment of a Jehovah's Witness with acute myeloblastic leukemia. This case illustrates the complex ethical and clinical issues that arise in the treatment of such patients.     

Translation with Scarce Bilingual Resources

Machine translation of human languages is a field almost as old as computers themselves. Recent approaches to this challenging problem aim at learning translation knowledge automatically (or semi-automatically) from online text corpora, especially human-translated documents. For some language pairs, substantial translation resources exist, and these corpus-based systems can perform well. But for most language pairs, data is scarce, andcurrent techniques do not work well. To examine the gap betweenhuman and machine translators, we created an experiment in which humanbeings were asked to translate an unknown language into English on thesole basis of a very small bilingual text. Participants performed quite well,and debriefings revealed a number of valuable strategies. We discuss thesestrategies and apply some of them to a statistical translation system.