Accurate and Scalable Simulation of Network of Heterogeneous Sensor Devices

Simulation is an important tool to study and analyze sensor networks. Prior work in sensor network simulation focuses on homogeneous devices. In this paper, we present a system that performs scalable and accurate simulation of a network of heterogeneous sensor devices, including both Stargate intermediate level devices and mote devices. We study accuracy, performance, and scalability of our system. The results show that we can achieve accurate functional behavior for both standalone Stargate simulation and ensemble simulation of a Stargate and motes. For motes, we have less than 4.06% cycle count error for all benchmarks and for Stargate, we have less than 10% error for most benchmarks, and less than 12.5% error for all benchmarks. We also achieve less than 3.6% error for all benchmarks when simulating an ensemble of Stargate and motes. Our system is also more scalable than prior work. We can simulate 160 sensor nodes in real time speed and 2,048 sensor nodes with ten times slowdown on a 16-node cluster.

Risk factors for adverse drug reactions during thiacetazone treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis in human immunodeficiency virus infected adults

It is well established that many continuously distributed traits have a heritable component. However, it is often difficult to communicate to the general public the meaning of quantitative estimates of heritability. To address this problem, the present paper introduces a heuristic for communicating heritability to nonscientific audiences. This heuristic involves adopting an extremely simplified model of inheritance and artificially (and somewhat arbitrarily) defining a cutoffs of "low environmental risk" and "affectation status." Using body weight and obesity as an example, we present a table which gives estimates of the proportion of obese persons who are "genetically obese" assuming varying levels of "environmental risk" for obesity and relative body weight scores for defining obesity. The resulting statistic may prove useful for lay audiences in understanding a heritability estimate.     

Selective Oxidation of Chromium by O2 Impurities in CO2 During Initial Stages of Oxidation

This study shows that the corrosion behaviour of 12 wt% Cr steel in CO₂ at 550 °C is determined in the first stage of oxidation by reaction with O₂ impurities. Depending on the amount of theses impurities and the thermal ramp rate, selective oxidation of chromium could lead to the formation of a protective chromium-rich oxide. An oxidation model describing qualitatively the nature of the oxide layer formed in the initial period of oxidation is presented. From these observations, surface engineering processes for protecting 9–12 wt% chromium steels from fast corrosion rate have emerged.     

Tissue type plasminogen activator antigen in urine of patients with bladder cancer

In urine of 25 patients with bladder carcinoma the antigen of tissue type plasminogen activator (t-PA) was assessed. The level of t-PA was much higher in patients with bladder carcinoma in comparison with a control group. We also analyzed the level of t-PA between patients with superficial and invasive bladder carcinoma the level of t-PA was higher. In conclusion, there is t-PA in urine of patients with bladder carcinoma and its level is correlated with staging of neoplasm.     

Zur Untersuchung der jungen künstlichen Roste

On the study of young artificial rusts Corrosion products formed on steel plates in the presence of HCl and NaOH solutions have been analysed by X-ray diffraction, infrared absorption and magnetochemical methods. γ-FeOOH is found to be the only well crystallised phase. The largest quantities of β-FeOOH are formed on steel previously affected by rusting. Poorly crystallised magnetite, unsuitable for X-ray analysis may be estimated, under certain conditions, by measurements of specific magnetization. It was demonstrated that attempts by infrared analysis to estimate potentially present δ-FeOOH in roentgenographically amorphous parts of multiphase rust systems is beyond the power of this methods.     

Bone structure of the temporo-mandibular joint in the individuals aged 18-25

Nuclear pre-mRNA splicing necessitates specific recognition of the pre-mRNA splice sites. It is known that 5' splice site selection requires base pairing of U6 snRNA with intron positions 4-6. However, no factor recognizing the highly conserved 5' splice site GU has yet been identified. We have tested if the known U6 snRNA-pre-mRNA interaction could be extended to include the first intron nucleotides and the conserved 50GAG52 sequence of U6 snRNA. We observe that some combinations of 5' splice site and U6 snRNA mutations produce a specific synthetic block to the first splicing step. In addition, the U6-G52U allele can switch between two competing 5' splice sites harboring different nucleotides following the cleavage site. These results indicate that U6 snRNA position 52 interacts with the first nucleotide of the intron before 5' splice site cleavage. Some combinations of U6 snRNA and pre-mRNA mutations also blocked the second splicing step, suggesting a role for the corresponding nucleotides in a proofreading step before exon ligation. From studies in diverse organisms, various functions have been ascribed to the conserved U6 snRNA 47ACAGAG52 sequence. Our results suggest that these discrepancies might reflect variations between different experimental systems and point to an important conserved role of this sequence in the splicing reaction.     

A Neutron Spectrometer for Experiments with Radioactive Beams on the ACCULINNA-2 Fragment Separator

A neutron spectrometer based on stilbene crystals has been developed by the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Dubna, Russia). The timing resolution is determined as a function of the signal amplitude (σT = 0.18 ns at an amplitude of 1 MeV in the electron equivalent). The measured energy resolution of the detecting modules for γ rays is σE/E = 4.5% at E = 1 MeV. The quality of the n–γ discrimination is investigated. It is shown that reliable discrimination is possible, beginning with a deposited energy of 100 keV in the electron equivalent, which corresponds to the kinetic energy of recoil protons of ～700 keV. The neutron spectrometer helps to significantly expand the experimental capabilities and to carry out correlation experiments with radioactive beams on the ACCULINNA-2 fragment separator at a new level of quality.     

Adaptive computing on the Grid using AppLeS

Ensembles of distributed, heterogeneous resources, also known as computational grids, have emerged as critical platforms for high-performance and resource-intensive applications. Such platforms provide the potential for applications to aggregate enormous bandwidth, computational power, memory, secondary storage, and other resources during a single execution. However, achieving this performance potential in dynamic, heterogeneous environments is challenging. Recent experience with distributed applications indicates that adaptivity is fundamental to achieving application performance in dynamic grid environments. The AppLeS (Application Level Scheduling) project provides a methodology, application software, and software environments for adaptively scheduling and deploying applications in heterogeneous, multiuser grid environments. We discuss the AppLeS project and outline our findings.