Robust pole clustering in a good ride quality region of aircraft for matrices with structured uncertainties

This paper presents a general analysis of robust pole clustering in a good ride quality region (GRQR) of aircraft for matrices with structured uncertainties. This region is an intersection of a ring and a horizontal strip, located in the left half-plane, which is a specific non-Ω-transformable region providing good ride quality of aircraft. The paper applies the Rayleigh principle along the norm theory to analyze robust pole clustering within this region since the generalized Lyapunov theory is not valid for non-Ω-transformable regions. Concerned uncertainties are structured/parametric uncertainties, including interval matrices. The results are useful for robust control analysis and design, especially, of robust good ride quality of aircraft, shuttles, vehicles and space station, as well as some industrial systems. An example of the F-16 dynamics for which GRQR is suitable is included to illustrate the results.     

Limb salvage surgery for widely infiltrating bony sarcomas

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether neoadjuvant chemotherapy and radiotherapy for bony sarcomas extending into soft tissues would allow limb salvage yet maintain local disease control. DESIGN: A prospective cohort study. SETTING: A university-affiliated cancer centre in Alberta. PATIENTS: All patients with potentially curable, widely infiltrating bony sarcomas of the extremity without neurologic deficit, referred to the centre in the 6 years from January 1984 to December 1990. There were 11 patients; 1 did not complete the protocol. The mean follow-up was 24 months. INTERVENTIONS: Adriamycin (doxorubicin) was infused for 3 days at a rate of 30 mg/d. A few days later radiotherapy was given 5 days a week for 10 doses at a rate of 3.0 Gy per dose. Four to 5 weeks later the tumour was excised surgically, with placement of a bone allograft or prosthesis, allowing a 1-cm margin of healthy soft tissue and a 5-cm margin of healthy bone and marrow cavity whenever possible. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Need for limb amputation, infectious complications, recurrence of local or regional disease. RESULTS: One patient underwent amputation after fracture through the tumour site. There were two postoperative infections, one acute and one chronic. All patients had full neurologic function of the distal limb. There was no local or regional recurrence of disease. CONCLUSION: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by radiotherapy and tumour excision provides control of aggressive local bone sarcomas while maintaining limb integrity.     

Psychrotrophic violacein-producing bacteria isolated from Lake Winnipeg,Canada

Violet and purple bacterial pigmentations are uncommon when considering strict aerobes. Here we report discovery of two novel isolates, P102 and P117 from the freshwater Lake Winnipeg, each with violet to deep purple colony colouration. The relationship between pigment production and growth was investigated under different conditions, including a variety of carbon sources, pH, and temperatures. The violet compounds were purified using polar organic solvents, and then structurally characterized via mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance to be violacein and deoxyviolacein. Strain P117 produced higher concentrations of the darker pigment deoxyviolacein, which resulted in a deeper hue of violet than in cultures of P102. Strain P102, synthesized violacein maximally in liquid rich organic medium at pH 8 and 20 °C, and had 99.3% sequence similarity to the 16S rDNA from Janthinobacterium lividum. Strain P117, related to Massilia violaceinigra sharing 99.2% 16S rDNA sequence similarity, also produced violacein at similar optimal conditions, but developed higher concentrations of pigment at 15 °C. Culture-based methods found that violacein producers composed 0.001% or 0.023% CFU of environmental heterotrophic populations using BG-11 and potato-based media, respectively. Culture-independent high-throughput ribosomal 16S V4 sequencing of environmental DNA was used to detect Gram-negative species known for their production of violacein. Of all bacterial and archaeal sequences present during the fall in littoral waters and sediment of Lake Winnipeg, 5.5% and 6.3%, respectively, belonged to species that have similar pigment, demonstrating the scarcity of violacein producers in this aquatic freshwater system.     

Evidence of successful river spawning by lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) in the Lower Niagara River,Lake Ontario

Restoration of a wild-produced lake trout Salvelinus namaycush population in Lake Ontario has not been successful despite the adult population often meeting or exceeding restoration targets. Lack of high-quality spawning habitat in Lake Ontario is suggested as one impediment to recruitment of wild lake trout, although the quantity and location of spawning habitat is poorly understood. If high-quality spawning habitat is limited in Lake Ontario, lake trout may be using uncommon spawning locations such as rivers. Anecdotal angler accounts point to the Niagara River as a lake trout spawning location. To better understand the potential of the Niagara River as a spawning location, egg and juvenile fish collections were conducted 12–14 river kilometers from the mouth of the Niagara River from 2010 to 2012; and mature female lake trout with surgically implanted acoustic tags were monitored from 2015 to 2019. Genetic analyses confirmed 60% of collected eggs and 93% of collected post-hatch juvenile fish in the Niagara River were lake trout. Tagged female lake trout returned to the Niagara River over consecutive years during the spawning season. The short duration of lake trout presence in the river (mean = 56 days/year) suggests female lake trout use the Niagara River primarily for spawning. Diversity in spawning locations may provide lake trout population’s resilience against environmental variability through a portfolio effect. Improved identification of riverine spawning locations, including their overall contribution to wild recruitment, may be a useful tool for managers to restore a wild-produced population of lake trout in Lake Ontario.     

Monte Carlo despeckling of transrectal ultrasound images of the prostate

In this paper, a novel stochastic method is developed for despeckling transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) images of the prostate. By incorporating the circular probe acquisition particularities and speckle noise statistics of TRUS images of the prostate into a likelihood-weighted Monte Carlo estimation scheme, the proposed method can better remove speckle noise while preserving image structures and details that are relevant for image screening, allowing for a better delineation of the lesion contour. Our in silico and in vivo experimental results are promising, which was confirmed by a clinical evaluation of the in vivo test cases by experienced clinicians, and indicate that our method potentially can perform better than other previously proposed methods.     

Blind estimation of the PN sequence in lower SNR DS-SS signals with residual carrier

This paper presents a method of singular value decomposition (SVD) plus digital phase lock loop (DPLL) to solve the difficult problem of blind pseudo-noise (PN) sequence estimation in low signal to noise ratios (SNR) direct sequence spread spectrum (DS-SS, DS) signals with residual carrier. Of course, the method needs to know the parameters of DS signal, such as the period and code rate of PN sequence. Firstly, the received signal is sampled and divided into non-overlapping signal vectors according to a temporal window, whose duration is two periods of PN sequence. Then, an autocorrelation matrix is computed and accumulated by the signal vectors one by one. The PN sequence with residual carrier can be estimated by the principal eigenvector of this autocorrelation matrix. Furthermore, a DPLL is used to deal with the estimated PN sequence with residual carrier, it estimates and tracks the residual carrier, removes the residual carrier in the end. Theory analysis and computer simulation results show that this method can effectively realize the PN sequence estimation from the input DS signals with residual carrier in lower SNR.     

Register allocation for write activity minimization on non-volatile main memory for embedded systems

Non-volatile memories are good candidates for DRAM replacement as main memory in embedded systems and they have many desirable characteristics. Nevertheless, the disadvantages of non-volatile memory co-exist with its advantages. First, the lifetime of some of the non-volatile memories is limited by the number of erase operations. Second, read and write operations have asymmetric speed or power consumption in non-volatile memory. This paper focuses on the embedded systems using non-volatile memory as main memory. We propose register allocation technique with re-computation to reduce the number of store instructions. When non-volatile memory is applied as the main memory, reducing store instructions will reduce write activities on non-volatile memory. To re-compute the spills effectively during register allocation, a novel potential spill selection strategy is proposed. During this process, live range splitting is utilized to split certain long live ranges such that they are more likely to be assigned into registers. In addition, techniques for re-computation overhead reduction is proposed on systems with multiple functional units. With the proposed approach, the lifetime of non-volatile memory is extended accordingly. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed technique can efficiently reduce the number of store instructions on systems with non-volatile memory by 33% on average.     

Integer linear programming optimization of joint RRM policies for heterogeneous wireless systems

Wireless systems will be characterized by the coexistence of heterogeneous Radio Access Technologies (RATs) with different, but also complementary, performance and technical characteristics. These heterogeneous wireless networks will provide network operators the possibility to efficiently and coordinately use the heterogeneous radio resources, for which novel Joint Radio Resource Management (JRRM) policies need to be designed. In this context, this work proposes and evaluates a JRRM policy that simultaneously determines for each user an adequate combination of RAT and number of radio resources within such RAT to guarantee the user/service QoS requirements, and efficiently distribute the radio resources considering a user fairness approach aimed at maximizing the system capacity. To this aim, the JRRM algorithm, which takes into account the discrete nature of radio resources, is based on integer linear programming optimization mechanisms.     

Usable optimistic fair exchange

Fairly exchanging digital content is an everyday problem. It has been shown that fair exchange cannot be achieved without a trusted third party (called the Arbiter). Yet, even with a trusted party, it is still non-trivial to come up with an efficient solution, especially one that can be used in a p2p file sharing system with a high volume of data exchanged.We provide an efficient optimistic fair exchange mechanism for bartering digital files, where receiving a payment in return for a file (buying) is also considered fair. The exchange is optimistic, removing the need for the Arbiter’s involvement unless a dispute occurs. While the previous solutions employ costly cryptographic primitives for every file or block exchanged, our protocol employs them only once per peer, therefore achieving an O(n) efficiency improvement when n blocks are exchanged between two peers. Our protocol uses very efficient cryptography, making it perfectly suitable for a p-2-p file sharing system where tens of peers exchange thousands of blocks and they do not know beforehand which ones they will end up exchanging. Therefore, our system yields up to one-to-two orders of magnitude improvement in terms of both computation and communication (40 s vs. 42 min, 1.6 MB vs. 200 MB). Thus, for the first time, a provably secure (and privacy-respecting when payments are made using e-cash) fair exchange protocol can be used in real bartering applications (e.g., BitTorrent) [14] without sacrificing performance.