Sexual functioning among breast cancer, gynecologic cancer, and healthy women.

Determined the specific type of sexual functioning deficits and the relationship between global sexual satisfaction and adjustment in 2 related life areas (marital relationship and body image) for 2 groups of cancer patients at high risk for sexual difficulties. The 2 groups included 16 27–67 yr old females with Stage 2 breast cancer and 16 31–65 yr old females with gynecologic cancer. These Ss were compared to 16 healthy female outpatients (controls). Measures included the Sexual Activities scale from the Derogatis Sexual Functioning Inventory, a modified version of the Dyadic Assessment Scale (marital adjustment), a global sexual evaluation, and a body-image scale. Analyses revealed that the aspects of sexual functioning for breast-cancer and gynecologic-cancer Ss that differed from those of controls were the frequency of sexual behaviors and the level of sexual arousal. Whereas Ss' evaluations of their current sexual life had no relationship to their marital-adjustment ratings, analyses suggested that body-image disruption may be a prevalent problem for gynecologic cancer patients. Data suggest that cancer diagnosis and treatment are instrumental in producing reductions in sexual activity and arousability. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Critical Speed Control of a Solar Car

The World Solar Challenge is a 3000 km race for solar powered cars across the Australian continent from Darwin to Adelaide. Each car is powered by a panel of photovoltaic cells which convert sunlight into electrical power. The power can be used directly to drive the car or stored in a battery for later use. Previous papers (P. Howlett, P. Pudney, T. Tarnopolskaya, and D. Gates, IMA Journal of Mathematics Applied in Business and Industry vol. 8, pp. 59–81, 1997; P.G. Howlett and P.J. Pudney, Dynamics of Continuous, Discrete and Impulsive Systems vol. 4, pp. 553–567, 1998) using a simplified model of the battery, have shown that the optimal strategy is essentially a speedholding strategy. In this paper, with a more realistic model of the battery, we show that the optimal driving strategy is a critical speed strategy. For an optimal journey with no beginning and no ending the solar car must always travel at the critical speed. For an optimal journey of finite length the speed must be close to the critical speed for most of the journey. The critical speed depends on the solar power and will normally vary slowly with time.     

混合信号芯片设计处理关键的转折阶段

通过简单地剪切和粘贴知识产权(IP)内核可以加快无工厂半导体公司的系统级芯片(SOC)设计。 过去十年中,涌现出大量的为系统制造商提供专用芯片(ASIC)的小型IC设计公司。这些被称为无工厂企业(因为他们将IC制造过程转交给商业芯片制造工厂),需要的启动资金较少,而且如果市场接受他们的产品的话,能够获得丰厚的回报。在大量设计工具的支持下,这些无工厂设计企业在历史悠久的大型芯片制造商,如IBM、Intel、Motorola和德州仪器公司所主导的市场中赢得了一席之地。     

Automatic conversion from lexical words to prosodic words for mandarin text-to-speech system

In real speech, not like lexical words (LWs), prosodic words (PWs) are basic rhythmic units. The naturalness of a Text-to-Speech (TTS) system is directly influenced by the segmentation of the PWs. Most of the PWs are the combination of several LWs. In this paper, three Lexical Combination Models are proposed to combine LWs into PWs, including a Directed Acyclic Graph Model, a Segmentation Model and a Markov Model (MM). To cope with the situation where some long LWs should be segmented into two or more PWs, a Lexical Split Model (LSM) is applied to the long LWs. Experimental results prove that relatively constant results with various training data can be obtained from a MM. The Transformation-Based Error Driven Learning (TBED) algorithm, for its high performance of individual property, is applied in combination with the MM to improve the precision of PW segmentation. Experiments show that among the three proposed models, the MM combined with TBED and LSM, leads to the best performance, in which a precision of 93.00% and a recall of 93.23% are achieved. The perception test indicates that by using PWs as the lowest prosodic units a speech sounds more natural and acceptable than by using LWs. This paper is supported by NSFC Project (60503071); 973 Natural Basic Research Program of China (2004CB318102); Postdoctor Science Foundation of P. R. China (20070420275).     

A Constraint-based Approach for Annotating Music Scores with Gestural Information

The physical gestures that operate music instruments are responsible for the qualities of the sound being produced in a performance. Gestural information is thereby crucial for a model of music performance, paired with a model of sound synthesis where this information is applied. The highly constrained nature of performers gestures makes this task suitable to be modeled via a constraint-based approach, coupled with a strategy aimed at maximizing the gestural comfort of performers. We illustrate the problem representation, the search strategy and a validation of the model against human performance.     

Multibody simulation tool for the calculation of lashing loads on RoRo ships

Approximately 80% of the international transport of goods is carried on by means of ships. A large portion of the transport capacity is represented by Roll-on-Roll-off (RoRo) ships. Especially in Europe this is a relevant potential for the RoRo segment. Consequently, the design and construction of RoRo ships plays an increasing role for German shipyards and their suppliers. In order to make the loading and unloading procedure of trailer economically more competitive, ship owners would like to improve the lashing of trailers on the ship. On the basis of a multibody system formalism, a software tool has been developed which allows for an optimization of the loading of trailers on RoRo ships. Commemorative Contribution.     

Formulation for Reliable Analysis of Structural Frames

Structural engineers use design codes formulated to consider uncertainty for both reinforced concrete and structural steel design. For a simple one-bay structural steel frame, we survey typical uncertainties and compute an interval solution for displacements and forces. The naive solutions have large over-estimations, so we explore the Mullen-Muhanna assembly strategy, scaling, and constraint propagation to achieve tight enclosures of the true ranges for displacements and forces in a fraction of the CPU time typically used for simulations. That we compute tight enclosures, even for large parameter uncertainties used in practice, suggests the promise of interval methods for much larger structures.