Sprinklered office fire tests

This paper presents data relating to the performance of sprinklers and detectors in real office fire situations. For sprinklers, these data are additional to that associated with the standardized testing used to determine the design delivery density and pressure requirements for various occupancy situations, and provide a useful insight into the effect of sprinklers on developing fires with various office situations. The data given in this paper include the times for activation of various types of sprinkler heads (normal and fast response), the efficacy of the systems as far as extinguishment is concerned, estimates of the maximum size of the fires prior to commencement of extinguishment and associated air temperatures at various locations within the office enclosures. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

NMR spectroscopy of human post mortem cerebrospinal fluid: distinction of Alzheimer''s disease from control using pattern recognition and statistics

Mutations of ras oncogenes in 37 human stomach cancers and 13 adenomas were investigated with regard to the histological phenotypes using polymerase chain reaction (PCR), allele-specific oligonucleotide hybridization and/or direct sequencing of the PCR products. The ras mutation was found only in one case (2.7%), the histology of which was poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma. We found no mutation in stomach adenomas. The mutation consisted of a guanine-to-adenine transition in the first base of codon 13 of c-Ki-ras which replaced wild-type glycine with serine, indicating that a putative glycine-to-aspartic acid change is not necessarily the critical event for c-Ki-ras gene activation in codon 13. These results further confirm the infrequency of ras mutation in stomach tumors and also suggest that ras mutations are not specific to the differentiated type of stomach cancer.     

Barium aluminate hydrates. IV. α-BaO.Al2O3.4H2O

α-BaO.Al₂O₃.4H₂O has been synthesised and studied by infrared, X-ray and thermal analytical techniques. The compound of approximate formula BaO.Al₂O₃.0.5H₂O, described in Part III, forms as a dehydration product, and appears to be identical with the compound β-BAH₂ described by other workers. A possible explanation for the discrepancy in water content is discussed.     

Optimized unequal error protection of embedded video bitstream using adaptive-hierarchical QAM

In this paper, a reliable video communication system using adaptive Hierarchical QAM (HQAM) is designed to provide optimized unequal error protection (UEP) to embedded video bitstreams. Based on the relative importance of bits, video bitstream is partitioned into two priorities, namely High Priority (HP) and Low Priority (LP) substreams. Then, the optimal value of modulation (or hierarchical) parameter (α) of HQAM, which controls the relative error protection of these substreams, is selected from a pre-designed look-up table. The proposed system adapts itself by adapting the optimal α according to the varying channel condition, without changing the modulation level. This is in contrast to conventional WiMAX and LTE systems, in which dynamic switching among multiple modulations is used to adapt the varying channel conditions. This paper proposes HQAM with adaptive α as an alternative to the multiple modulation schemes. Moreover, for fixed average transmission power, receiver demodulates symbols without the knowledge of α. In order to further improve the video quality and to reduce the effects of erroneously received LP bits, the proposed system uses another level of adaptation, in which received LP bits are adaptively considered or discarded, before decoding the video, depending on the channel conditions (or optimized α). Simulation results show that proposed system can achieve significant improvement in the video quality compared to QAM based EEP scheme and non-adaptive HQAM.     

Internationalisation for Survival: The Case of New Ventures

The aim is to deepen our understanding about the internationalisation–survival relationship in the case of new ventures in traditional manufacturing sectors. Hypotheses were tested through Cox’s proportional hazard regressions on a sample of 3,350 firms aged 10 years or less, from the textile-clothing and footwear industry in Spain. A vast majority of new ventures that were both established and closed down over that time are purely domestic firms. That means, a firm increases its likelihood of survival when it becomes international. The highest failure risk relates to those new ventures which are territorially agglomerated and are domestically oriented. Internationalisation is an unconditional strategy for surviving in the case of new manufacturing ventures. In addition, location and efficiency in the activity both matter when operating in international markets. Statistical tests show that an interactive effect of agglomeration and internationalisation exists, while no support for the interaction between age and internationalisation is found. Future research should investigate the trade-off between growth and survival forces to determine the optimum moment to go international and to characterise the strategic choices followed by those new ventures that survive longest.     

Capacity of the linear decorrelating detector for QS-CDMA

We study the performance and capacity of a quasi-synchronous code-division multiple-access (QS-CDMA) cellular system employing the decorrelating detector. It is assumed that each of N users has a GPS generated local clock, and attempts to transmit in synchrony with the other users in its cell. The detector makes use of the small timing uncertainties to build the interference signal space and perfectly cancel the interference. Results are compared with those of an adaptive MSE receiver. It is shown that when the LMS adaptive algorithm is employed, the mean-squared-error misadjustment significantly affects the receiver performance. Finally, system capacities in terms of users/cell are evaluated     

Quality of life after transthoracic endoscopic sympathectomy for upper limb hyperhidrosis

OBJECTIVE: To assess the outcome after transthoracic endoscopic sympathectomy (TES) for upper limb hyperhidrosis. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTING: District general hospital. SUBJECTS: Consecutive patients undergoing TES for upper limb hyperhidrosis over a fifteen month period. INTERVENTIONS: One-stage bilateral TES. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Change in quality of life as shown by the Short Form-36 health assessment questionnaire. RESULTS: Sixteen patients (11 women and 5 men, median age 26 years) underwent operation without complications. At median follow-up of 6.2 months, symptomatic improvement was found in 26 of 32 limbs treated (82%). Truncal compensatory hyperhidrosis was reported by 13 patients but was severe in only three. There were significant improvements in social function (p = 0.01) and mental health (p = 0.025) as assessed by the SF-36. CONCLUSION: Despite a high incidence of compensatory hyperhidrosis, TES improved both the symptoms and overall quality of life in patients with upper limb hyperhidrosis.