Preparation of concentrated platelet suspensions by dehydration against polyethyleneglycol 20,000

Thirty-two patients, 28 women and 4 men aged from 17 to 57 years were treated surgically for obesity. Their body weight ranged from 90 to 184 kg, with an excess weight from 42% to 180%. In 6 cases the Salmon operation and in 26 the Payne-de Wind operation were performed. Two patients died. In the remaining cases the postoperative course was uneventful and relatively mild. The longest follow-up period was 22 months. Weight loss rate was highest in the first period after the operation and the monthly rate of the weight loss in the first year after the operation was 3.5 to 6 kg. Diarrhea disappeared usually after 4 months. In some patients a transient fall in serum potassium and calcium level was observed. Other favorable results included a significant fall in the serum levels of cholesterol and beta-lipoproteins and improved value of BSP retention test. The condition of the patients is good and they have returned to work.     

GISELA – GIS-based evaluation of land use and agriculture market analysis under global warming

One of the important future issues is how agriculture production can meet the future demand increase due to the population and the income growth. Global warming would give both positive and negative impacts on them. Agriculture is often expected to supply biofuels to meet the growing transportation energy demand and the warming control policy. GISELA – GIS-based evaluation for land use and agriculture production model – is developed to evaluate the current and the potential cropland for rice, wheat, maize and soy-beans production under climate changes. We also assess the food and the feed demand based on the historical regional statistics for world into 18 regions. Finally, we assess the future food market integrating the above supply and demand conditions developing a dynamic optimization model, GISELA. Current GISELA findings are as follows: (1) potential cropland in south America will be extensively cultivated, (2) market price of wheat and soy will gradually go up while that of maize is almost stable in medium yield case, and (3) in the low-yield case, all crop prices hike rapidly in the mid of this century.     

A Methodology Based on Pulse-Velocity Measurements to Quantify the Chemical Degradation Levels in Thin Mortar Specimens

In this research, ultrasonic pulse echo measurements are used to quantify through thickness chemical degradation in thin mortar specimens. The degradation level is predicted using the time of travel of the acoustic wave through the thickness of the structure. The front and back wall interaction reflections are used to obtain additional information from very early stage degradation. The pulse-velocity of sound waves as a function of the thickness of the layers within the structure is described. With knowledge of the pulse-velocity in pristine and fully degraded conditions, it is possible to determine the complete range of degradation length over the layer thickness. The method is applicable for leaching of calcium and acidic attack. The acoustic measurements were verified with destructive testing. The correlation between the acoustic and non-acoustic experiments agree with the described pulse-velocity and degraded depth function. The method based on ultrasonic measurements can be implemented in other thin-layered structures.     

Diurnal population cycle and metropolitan commuter exchange: a formal investigation of an urban pattern

"Diurnal population change in subareas of metropolitan regions is of increasing importance to urban geographers...and planners.... The urban context of daytime populations is that of commuting. Commuting, in turn, has been investigated almost exclusively within the setting of empirical economic research.... The purpose of the present study is to continue some recent attempts to find an alternative to the empirical economic approach to commuting, in advancing a formal demographic and spatial concept of diurnal population cycle." Data from the 1991 census of Canada are used. (EXCERPT)     

Potential measurements with heavy ion beam probe system on LHD

The heavy ion beam probe system in the Large Helical Device (LHD) was improved as follows. At first, the additional new sweeper was installed into the diagnostic port to extend the observable region. By using this sweeper, the potential profile was measured in a wider minor radius range than in previous experiments, in the case of outward shifted magnetic configuration of LHD. Next, the real time control system was installed to control the probe beam orbit for measuring the potential in plasma with large plasma current. In this system, a digital signal processor was used to control the probe beam in real time. The system worked well in the fixed position observation mode. In the sweeping mode for profile measurement, this control system became unstable. The details of this system and the experimental results are reported in this article.     

Tracking by Affine Kernel Transformations Using Color and Boundary Cues

Kernel-based trackers aggregate image features within the support of a kernel (a mask) regardless of their spatial structure. These trackers spatially fit the kernel (usually in location and in scale) such that a function of the aggregate is optimized. We propose a kernel-based visual tracker that exploits the constancy of color and the presence of color edges along the target boundary. The tracker estimates the best affinity of a spatially aligned pair of kernels, one of which is color-related and the other of which is object boundary-related. In a sense, this work extends previous kernel-based trackers by incorporating the object boundary cue into the tracking process and by allowing the kernels to be affinely transformed instead of only translated and isotropically scaled. These two extensions make for more precise target localization. A more accurately localized target also facilitates safer updating of its reference color model, further enhancing the tracker's robustness. The improved tracking is demonstrated for several challenging image sequences.     

Cluster ranking with an application to mining mailbox networks

We initiate the study of a new clustering framework, called cluster ranking. Rather than simply partitioning a network into clusters, a cluster ranking algorithm also orders the clusters by their strength. To this end, we introduce a novel strength measure for clusters—the integrated cohesion—which is applicable to arbitrary weighted networks. We then present a new cluster ranking algorithm, called C-Rank. We provide extensive theoretical and empirical analysis of C-Rank and show that it is likely to have high precision and recall. A main component of C-Rank is a heuristic algorithm for finding sparse vertex separators. At the core of this algorithm is a new connection between vertex betweenness and multicommodity flow. Our experiments focus on mining mailbox networks. A mailbox network is an egocentric social network, consisting of contacts with whom an individual exchanges email. Edges between contacts represent the frequency of their co–occurrence on message headers. C-Rank is well suited to mine such networks, since they are abundant with overlapping communities of highly variable strengths. We demonstrate the effectiveness of C-Rank on the Enron data set, consisting of 130 mailbox networks.     

Graph extension with constant connectivity

In the field of the scaling-up of communication networks, numbers of communication stations (nodes) and the corresponding communication links (edges) are increasing rapidly. The reliability of the networks then becomes important. To keep the reliability of the networks, the connectivity (invulnerability) of the networks should not decrease. In this article, a method of increasing the nodes of a graph with a constant connectivity is proposed, and some examples of graph extension are shown to realize the extended networks. This work was presented in part at the 11th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 23–25, 2006