Lake Urmia restoration success story: A natural trend or a planned remedy?

Lake Urmia is the second-largest hypersaline lake in the world. There has been a drastic water level drop of 7.2 m from 1995 to 2016. Beginning in October 2013, the Lake Urmia Restoration Plan (LURP) launched a 10-year program. An increase in water level and a relative improvement in Lake Urmia condition has been observed since 2017. It is an undecided and controversial issue whether the recent positive trend of Lake Urmia has been due to the LURP activities or it is a natural contribution of climate factors variations. To shed some light on this issue, we examine three other lakes, adjacent to the Lake Urmia basin, with similar rainfall variability to investigate their status during the same period. Van (Turkey), Mosul, and Tharthar (both in Iraq), are evaluated as well as Lake Urmia. Three decades of remotely sensed data including precipitation ($P$), water level ($\mathit{WL}$), and lake extent ($A$) were considered for the mentioned lakes. A significant correlation was observed between standardized $\mathit{WL}-P$, and $A-P$ over the long-term period, especially for the recent three years ($R$² = 0.63–0.87). We show that the cumulative precipitation in the antecedent months played a major role in the improvement of these lakes' situation but with different time lags (up to 6 months for Van and Mosul lakes and up to 36 months for Lake Urmia and Tharthar lake). These findings could inform the planners of LURP to adopt strategies for achieving a sustainable state of Lake Urmia based on a more realistic outlook.     

Evaluation of search algorithms and clustering efficiency measures for machine-part matrix clustering

Clustering a machine-part matrix is the first step in the design of a cellular manufacturing system. It provides a basis for matching the machine groups to the part families that they must produce. The problem of clustering a machine-part matrix can be decomposed into two problems: designing a measure for clustering efficiency (CE) and searching for a permutation of rows and columns of the matrix to maximize this measure. Clustering is done by permuting the rows and columns of the initial machine-part matrix to produce a block diagonal form (BDF). The clustering efficiency of a machine-part matrix measures the desirability of its BDF as a solution to cell design. This paper evaluates six measures of CE and six search methods. Extensive experiments were carried out to find the combination of CE measure and search method that produces the best solution in reasonable CPU time. We used several benchmark machine-part matrices from the literature and several problems obtained from a local manufacturer. We performed a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to compare the search algorithms and the CE measures.     

Breast conservation and prolonged chemotherapy for locally advanced breast cancer: the University of Michigan experience

PURPOSE: To determine whether breast conservation and prolonged neoadjuvant chemotherapy have efficacy in locally advanced breast cancer (LABC), as measured by survival and rate of breast conservation. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Eighty-nine patients with stage III disease were enrolled at the University of Michigan (UM) onto a prospective nonrandomized trial. Patients received nine 21-day cycles of neoadjuvant chemohormonal therapy that consisted of doxorubicin 30 mg/m2 and cyclophosphamide 750 mg/m2 intravenously on day 1, conjugated estrogens 0.625 mg orally twice daily on days 6 to 8, methotrexate 40 mg/m2 and fluorouracil 500 mg/m2 intravenously on day 8, and tamoxifen 10 mg orally twice daily on days 9 to 14. Patients with a negative biopsy received radiation only, while those with residual disease underwent mastectomy and postoperative radiotherapy. Eight more cycles of chemohormonal therapy were administered after local-regional therapy. RESULTS: The clinical response rate to neoadjuvant therapy was 97%, 28% of patients had a complete pathologic response evaluated at biopsy. Five-year overall and disease-free survival probabilities were 54% and 44%, respectively. The median disease-free survival time was 2.4 years. The 5-year actuarial rates of local-regional control with local failure as only first failure were 82% and 78% following radiotherapy, and mastectomy and radiotherapy, respectively (P = .99). CONCLUSION: Prolonged neoadjuvant chemohormonal therapy and biopsy-driven local therapy have efficacy in LABC, with 28% of patients being candidates for breast conservation and a 5-year overall survival rate of 54%.     

Modification of the structural and electrical properties of graphene layers by Pt adsorbates

The properties of graphene are strongly affected by metal adsorbates and clusters on graphene. Here, we study the effect of a thin layer of platinum (Pt) metal on exfoliated single, bi- and trilayer graphene and on chemical vapor deposition-grown single-layer graphene by using Raman spectroscopy and transport measurements. The Raman spectra and transport measurements show that Pt affects the structure as well as the electronic properties of graphene. The shift of peak frequencies, intensities and widths of the Raman bands were analyzed after the deposition of Pt with different thicknesses (1, 3, 5 nm) on the graphene. The shifts in the G and 2D peak positions of the Raman spectra indicate the n-type doping effect by the Pt metal. The doping effect was also confirmed by gate-voltage dependent resistivity measurements. The doping effect by the Pt metal is stable under ambient conditions, and the doping intensity increases with the increasing Pt deposition without inducing a severe degradation of the charge carrier mobility.     

Influences of heat treatment and DeNOx performance of cordierite honeycombs washcoated with spinel catalysts

Spinel powders MAl₂O₄ (M = Ga and Zn) have been prepared by the co-precipitation of aqueous solutions containing corresponding metal, aluminum nitrate and ammonium carbonate. The NO reduction activities of composite spinel type powders in the Ga₂O₃–Al₂O₃–ZnO (GAZ) system were studied, in regard to their high-temperature application as an automotive lean-burn exhaust catalyst. A correlation between the NH₃-TPD results and the activity of GAZ reveals that a high population of surface acid sites is important to achieve high activity. The cordierite honeycombs with cell sizes 100, 200, 400 and 900 cpsi (cells per square inch) were washcoated with the GAZ slurries and their NO reduction activity was evaluated. The durability of GAZ/cordierites was studied in the presence of H₂O vapor, SO₂ and O₂.     

Mitogenic signaling mediated by oxidants in Ras-transformed fibroblasts

NIH 3T3 fibroblasts stably transformed with a constitutively active isoform of p21(Ras), H-RasV12 (v-H-Ras or EJ-Ras), produced large amounts of the reactive oxygen species superoxide (.O2-). .O2- production was suppressed by the expression of dominant negative isoforms of Ras or Rac1, as well as by treatment with a farnesyltransferase inhibitor or with diphenylene iodonium, a flavoprotein inhibitor. The mitogenic activity of cells expressing H-RasV12 was inhibited by treatment with the chemical antioxidant N-acetyl-L-cysteine. Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) activity was decreased and c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) was not activated in H-RasV12-transformed cells. Thus, H-RasV12-induced transformation can lead to the production of .O2- through one or more pathways involving a flavoprotein and Rac1. The implication of a reactive oxygen species, probably .O2-, as a mediator of Ras-induced cell cycle progression independent of MAPK and JNK suggests a possible mechanism for the effects of antioxidants against Ras-induced cellular transformation.     

Assessing the value and cost implications of manufacturing information and data systems: an empirical study

Although manufacturing information and data systems (MIDS) form an integral part of a manufacturing organization's infrastructure, the growth of corporate IT expenditure has left many companies questioning the value of their MIDS deployment. The use of traditional appraisal techniques to justify investments in MIDS typically relies on measures based on direct cost savings and incremental future cash flows. These techniques are considered no longer appropriate because of the largely intangible cost and benefit dimensions of many IT projects. This paper presents the results of a research study based on interviews in eighteen manufacturing companies, which investigated the methods used to assess the value and cost of MIDS investments. After showing that the concepts used to justify value vary significantly between respondents, the research indicates that intuition plays an important role in value prediction and assessment. A comparison between small and large companies indicates that the systems implementations are perceived in a better light in smaller companies. The results obtained are then compared with recent research.     

TIGUKAT: A uniform behavioral objectbase management system

We describe the TIGUKAT objectbase management system, which is under development at the Laboratory for Database Systems Research at the University of Alberta. TIGUKAT has a novel object model, whose identifying characteristics include a purely behavioral semantics and a uniform approach to objects. Everything in the system, including types, classes, collections, behaviors, and functions, as well as meta-information, is a first-class object with well-defined behavior. In this way, the model abstracts everything, including traditional structural notions such as instance variables, method implementation, and schema definition, into a uniform semantics of behaviors on objects. Our emphasis in this article is on the object model, its implementation, the persistence model, and the query language. We also (briefly) present other database management functions that are under development such as the query optimizer, the version control system, and the transaction manager.Bell Northem Research     

On-Line Algorithms for the Dynamic Traveling Repair Problem

We consider the dynamic traveling repair problem in which requests with deadlines arrive through time on points in a metric space. Servers move from point to point at constant speed. The goal is to plan the motion of servers so that the maximum number of requests are met by their deadline. We consider a restricted version of the problem in which there is a single server and the length of time between the arrival of a request and its deadline is constant. We give upper bounds for the competitive ratio of two very natural algorithms as well as several lower bounds for any deterministic algorithm. Most of the results in this paper are expressed as a function of β, the diameter of the metric space. In particular, we prove that the upper bound given for one of the two algorithms is within a constant factor of the best possible competitive ratio.