Dyspnea resulting from phrenic nerve paralysis after interscalene brachial plexus block in an obese male--a case report

While current psychiatric taxonomies recognise a classification of amphetamine dependence, derived from the notion of an alcohol dependence syndrome, little research has validated that such a condition exists for this drug. Current amphetamine users (N = 331), were interviewed using the World Health Organization operationalisation of DSM-III-R substance dependence criteria, and a measure of the psychological components of dependence. Structural analyses indicated that a unidimensional dependence syndrome as assessed by DSM-III-R and DSM-IV criteria exists for amphetamine, and that physiological, psychological and behavioural indicators were all important in accounting for the variance in responses. It was demonstrated that the concept of a dependence syndrome is applicable to amphetamine, and that the inclusion of the amphetamine dependence syndrome in DSM-III-R and DSM-IV is valid.     

Performance limitations of TDD wireless personal communications with asynchronous radio ports

A wireless personal communications system, based on a TDMA architecture, using asynchronous ports (radio base stations) and the TDD (time division duplexing) method is evaluated using computer simulations. It is shown that, without port synchronisation TDD methods cannot achieve the uplink quality obtainable by the FDD (frequency division duplexing) method.<>     

A novel integration approach for combining the components to minimize a micro-fuel cell

This work employs porous silicon as a gas diffusion layer (GDL) in a micro-fuel cell. Pt catalyst is deposited on the surface of, and inside, the porous silicon by the physical vapor deposition (PVD) method, to improve the porous silicon conductivity. Porous silicon with Pt catalyst replaces traditional GDL, and the Pt metal that remains on the rib is used to form a micro-thermal sensor in a single lithographic process.     

Adherence clustering: an efficient method for mining market-basket clusters

We explore in this paper the efficient clustering of market-basket data. Different from those of the traditional data, the features of market-basket data are known to be of high dimensionality and sparsity. Without explicitly considering the presence of the taxonomy, most prior efforts on clustering market-basket data can be viewed as dealing with items in the leaf level of the taxonomy tree. Clustering transactions across different levels of the taxonomy is of great importance for marketing strategies as well as for the result representation of the clustering techniques for market-basket data. In view of the features of market-basket data, we devise in this paper a novel measurement, called the category-based adherence, and utilize this measurement to perform the clustering. With this category-based adherence measurement, we develop an efficient clustering algorithm, called algorithm k-todes, for market-basket data with the objective to minimize the category-based adherence. The distance of an item to a given cluster is defined as the number of links between this item and its nearest tode. The category-based adherence of a transaction to a cluster is then defined as the average distance of the items in this transaction to that cluster. A validation model based on information gain is also devised to assess the quality of clustering for market-basket data. As validated by both real and synthetic datasets, it is shown by our experimental results, with the taxonomy information, algorithm k-todes devised in this paper significantly outperforms the prior works in both the execution efficiency and the clustering quality as measured by information gain, indicating the usefulness of category-based adherence in market-basket data clustering.     

A D&T roundtable: challenges for low-power and high-performancechips

Microprocessor and other lC performance continues to improve at historic rates, with no visible end in sight for the next 10 years. However, we are starting to encounter a power wall. This is true for high-performance components as well as for low-power chips with a very limited energy budget offered by batteries. We need to find ways to manage power and energy consumption on all fronts-technology, design, and architecture-without compromising performance. Otherwise, we may face discontinuation of Moore's law for the semiconductor industry in the near future. This would be triggered not by any difficulty in the scaling of process technology but by formidable barriers posed by packaging and cooling, inefficacy of power delivery, and energy constraints dictated by battery technology, which is advancing at a very lukewarm pace     

浅谈纳米胶在密云水库输水工程中的应用

密云水库第九水厂输水隧洞为一圆形压力隧洞,安全鉴定发现洞身混凝土表面有较多裂缝,裂缝以环形或半环形为主,裂缝宽度一般在0.5mm以下,存在剥蚀、慢渗等情况.为保证隧洞输水安全和水厂正常供水,采用水利先进实用技术"纳米胶",对隧洞混凝土衬砌表层进行了防护和修复,达到很好的微细裂缝修补、抗渗和防护效果.     

A new spatial IP assignment method for IP-based wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs), one of the commercial wireless mesh networks (WMNs), are envisioned to provide an effective solution for sensor-based AmI (Ambient Intelligence) systems and applications. To enable the communications between AmI sensor networks and the most popular TCP/IP networks seamlessly, the best solution model is to run TCP/IP directly on WSNs (Mulligan et al. 2009; Hui and Culler 2008; Han and Mam 2007; Kim et al. 2007; Xiaohua et al. 2004; Dunkels et al. 2004; Dunkels et al. 2004; Dunkels 2001; Dunkels et al. 2004). In this case, an IP assignment method is required to assign each sensor node a unique IP address. SIPA (Dunkels et al. 2004) is the best known IP assignment method that uses spatial relations and locations of sensor nodes to assign their IP addresses. It has been applied in Contiki (Dunkels et al. 2004), a famous WSN operating system, to support the 6LowPAN protocol. In Chang et al. (2009), we proposed the SLIPA (Scan-Line IP Assignment) algorithm to improve the assignment success rate (ASR) obtained by SIPA. SLIPA can achieve a good ASR when sensor nodes are uniformly distributed. However, if sensor nodes are deployed by other distributions, the improvements would be limited. This paper proposes a new spatial IP assignment method, called SLIPA-Q (SLIPA with equal-quantity partition), to improve SLIPA. Experiments show that, by testing the proposed method 1,000 times with 1,000 randomly deployed sensor nodes, the average ASR obtained by SLIPA-Q is over two times of that obtained by SLIPA. Under the same 88% ASR, the average numbers of sensor nodes those can be successfully assigned by SLIPA-Q, SLIPA, and SIPA are 950, 850, and 135, respectively. Comparing to previous spatial IP assignment methods, SLIPA-Q can achieve dramatic improvements in ASR for assigning IP addresses to a large set of sensor nodes.     

Effect of incipient removal of hydrogen through palladium membrane on the conversion of methane steam reforming: Experimental and modeling

This paper presents a mathematical model based on the reaction rate expressions to describe the displacement of methane conversion in the steam reforming. The effect of several parameters including weight hourly space velocity (WHSV), load-to-surface ratio, reaction pressure, hydrogen partial pressure in permeate side and reaction temperature were investigated. Simulation and experimental results showed that a conversion higher than 80% could be achieved in a palladium membrane reactor at reaction temperature of 500 °C relative to 850 °C in a conventional fixed bed reactor (FBR). Besides, the yield of CO (<2%) in membrane reactor was much lower than that (>50%) in the FBR, which indicated the significant depression of CO production in use of membrane reactor.     

Mass transfer modelling for GS heavy water plants: Part 1: Point efficiency on GS sieve trays

A model that takes into account the gas-phase and liquid-phase resistance to mass transfer has been developed, where the overall mass transfer coefficient (K_OGa) is expressed as a function of the equivalent Sauter-mean bubble diameter. This parameter was back calculated from mass transfer measurements made at a pilot plant on single pass sieve trays of 0.311 m diameter. Hydraulic parameters were measured for these trays as well. Mean bubble diameters were then correlated as a function of active area F-factor and dispersion height for various tray geometries, and these correlations are used to predict point efficiencies on production plant trays up to 8.5 m in diameter.     

Long-term oxidation behaviour of Ni3Al alloys with and without chromium additions

The oxidation behaviour of Ni₃Al alloys with and without chromium additions was studied after long-term exposure in an air furnace over a wide temperature range from 560–1300C. The chromium-containing alloy exhibited a better oxidation resistance below 1150C. Above this temperature the penetration depth of oxides into and along the grain boundaries in the chromium-containing alloy became larger than that in the alloy without chromium. Also the penetration depth increased drastically at 1150C for both alloys. Through energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analyses, the compositions and structures of the oxide scales for both alloys were also identified.