Usefulness and limitations of thyrotropin measurements as a first-line test for follow-up of Graves'' patients

Although the good appearance and biocompatibility of dental porcelains, failures are still of considerable concern because of the limited properties to all ceramic system. Physical properties that might be considered ideal include high strength, resistance to abrasion, and resistance to the hostile oral environment. Porcelain has been considered by many of its physical characteristic are similar to those of enamel. In 1983 a new modality of treatment, the etched porcelain restoration was introduced by Simonsen and Calamia. Numerous investigations have shown the strength of the etched porcelain bonded to composite resin and also the clinical success of this porcelain to be used as laminated veneers and etched inlays and onlays.     

Input-parallel output-parallel configuration of boost half bridge DC-DC converter with control strategy

The concept of connecting two boost half bridge DC-DC converter modules in input-paral- lel output-parallel configuration is presented. The input-parallel-output-parallel （IPOP） converter consists of multiple boost half bridge （BHB） DC-DC converter modules which are connected in par- allel at the input and output side. This kind of converter is an attractive solution for high power ap- plications. The correlation between input current sharing （ICS） and output current sharing （OCS） of the IPOP converter basic modules is described. Two loop control strategies, consisting of input cur- rent loop and output voltage loop, have been developed to achieve equal ICS and OCS in this present work. The control strategy for the IPOP configuration of boost haft bridge DC-DC converter has been verified for different load conditions （half load and full load）, The IPOP system proposed here is comprising of two modules but it can be extended to three or more. The performance of the pro- posed system along with the control strategy is verified by simulation in MATLAB using Simpower tool. Finally the satisfactory simulation results are obtained.     

大规模MIMO系统下的低复杂度迫零预编码技术

针对大规模天线技术导致传统迫零(zero-forcing, ZF)预编码复杂度上升的问题,提出了一种低复杂度预编码技术。首先利用对称超松弛迭代(semi-iteration symmetric successive overrelaxation method, SSOR)技术优化信道矩阵求逆复杂度的问题;然后利用切比雪夫半迭代法(semi-iteration, SI)加速SSOR迭代(semi-iteration symmetric successive overrelaxation method, SI-SSOR)的收敛速度,使得ZF预编码可以快速的收敛。实验结果表明,SI-SSOR预编码在误码率和传输速率上都有非常好的性能。切比雪夫半迭代法加速的SSOR预编码技术通过2次迭代就可以近似达到传统ZF预编码性能的95%以上,同时利用相对于迫零预编码更少的计算资源,因此,SI-SSOR预编码技术可以作为无线通信抑制干扰的重要手段。     

Siting park-and-ride facilities using a multi-objective spatial optimization model

Park-and-ride services are an important component of many public transportation systems in the United States. Locating park-and-ride facilities is an essential step when planning for these services. In this research we focus on three major siting/modeling concerns that need to be addressed when siting park-and-ride facilities: covering as much potential demand as possible, locating park-and-ride facilities as close as possible to major roadways, and siting such facilities in the context of an existing system. Unfortunately, existing models do not enable each of these concerns to be simultaneously addressed. This paper presents a multi-objective spatial optimization model for integrating these considerations. This model is applied for siting park-and-ride facilities in Columbus, Ohio. Application results show the usefulness of the developed model in supporting transit planning in an urban region.     

Giant Anomalous Hall and Nernst Conductivities in Magnetic All-d Metal Heusler Alloys

All-d Heuslers are a category of novel compounds combining versatile functionalities such as caloric responses and spintronics with enhanced mechanical properties. Despite the promising transport properties (anomalous Hall (AHC) and anomalous Nernst (ANC) conductivities) shown in the conventional Co₂XY Heuslers with p-d hybridization, the all-d Heuslers with only d-d hybridization open a new horizon to search for new candidates with outstanding transport properties. In this work, the AHC and ANC are evaluated for thermodynamically stable ferro/ferri-magnetic all-d-metal regular Heusler compounds based on high-throughput first-principles calculations. It is observed that quite a few materials exhibit giant AHCs and ANCs, such as cubic Re₂TaMn with an AHC of 2011 S cm^-1, and tetragonal Pt₂CrRh with an AHC of 1966 S cm^-1 and an ANC of 7.50 A m^-1K^-1. Comprehensive analysis on the electronic structure reveals that the high AHC can be attributed to the occurrence of the Weyl nodes or gapped nodal lines in the neighborhood of the Fermi level. The correlations between such transport properties and the number of valence electrons are also thoroughly investigated, which provides a practical guidance to tailor AHC and ANC via chemical doping for transverse thermoelectric applications.     

Eco‐friendly synthesis of silver nanoparticles and its larvicidal property against fourth instar larvae of Aedes aegypti

In this study, larvicidal activity of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) synthesised using apple extract against fourth instar larvae of Aedes aegypti was determined. As a result, the AgNPs showed moderate larvicidal effects against Ae. aegypti larvae (LC₅₀  = 15.76 ppm and LC₉₀  = 27.7 ppm). In addition, comparison of larvicidal activity performance of AgNPs at high concentration prepared using two different methods showed that Ae. aegypti larvae was fully eliminated within the duration of 2.5 h. From X‐ray diffraction, the AgNP crystallites were found to exhibit face centred cubic structure. The average size of these AgNPs as estimated by particle size distribution was in the range of 50–120 nm. The absorption maxima of the synthesised Ag showed characteristic Ag surface plasmon resonance peak. This green synthesis provides an economic, eco‐friendly and clean synthesis route to Ag.Inspec keywords: silver, nanofabrication, X‐ray diffraction, zoology, particle size, nanoparticles, biomedical materials, nanomedicineOther keywords: time 2.5 h, size 50 nm to 120 nm, silver nanoparticle, larvicidal property, instar larvae, Aedes aegypti, larvicidal effect, larvicidal activity performance, X‐ray diffraction, nanoparticle particle size distribution, absorption maxima, silver surface plasmon resonance peak     

Senti‐CS: Building a lexical resource for sentiment analysis using subjective feature selection and normalized Chi‐Square‐based feature weight generation

Sentiment analysis involves the detection of sentiment content of text using natural language processing. Natural language processing is a very challenging task due to syntactic ambiguities, named entity recognition, use of slangs, jargons, sarcasm, abbreviations and contextual sensitivity. Sentiment analysis can be performed using supervised as well as unsupervised approaches. As the amount of data grows, unsupervised approaches become vital as they cut down on the learning time and the requirements for availability of a labelled dataset. Sentiment lexicons provide an easy application of unsupervised algorithms for text classification. SentiWordNet is a lexical resource widely employed by many researchers for sentiment analysis and polarity classification. However, the reported performance levels need improvement. The proposed research is focused on raising the performance of SentiWordNet3.0 by using it as a labelled corpus to build another sentiment lexicon, named Senti‐CS. The part of speech information, usage based ranks and sentiment scores are used to calculate Chi‐Square‐based feature weight for each unique subjective term/part‐of‐speech pair extracted from SentiWordNet3.0. This weight is then normalized in a range of ?1 to +1 using min–max normalization. Senti‐CS based sentiment analysis framework is presented and applied on a large dataset of 50000 movie reviews. These results are then compared with baseline SentiWordNet, Mutual Information and Information Gain techniques. State of the art comparison is performed for the Cornell movie review dataset. The analyses of results indicate that the proposed approach outperforms state‐of‐the‐art classifiers.     

A review of the effects of catalyst and additive on biodiesel production, performance, combustion and emission characteristics

This article is a literature review of the effect of different catalysts and additives on biodiesel production, performance, combustion and emission characteristics. This study is based on the reports of about 60 scientists who published their findings between 1998 and 2010. It was reported that base catalyst produced more biodiesel compared to acid type catalysts. There was not much variation in engine performance with the use of catalyst. Combustion characteristics were improved with the use of additives. It was found that ignition delay was reduced and premixed combustion duration was increased with the addition of catalyst. HC emission and PM emission were reduced with the use of catalysts.