Subsoil <Superscript>15</Superscript>N-N<Subscript>2</Subscript>O Concentrations in a Sandy Soil Profile After Application of <Superscript>15</Superscript>N-fertilizer

Studies on emissions of nitrous oxide (N₂O) from agricultural soils mostly focus on fluxes between the soil and the atmosphere or are limited to the atmosphere in the topsoil. However, in soils with shallow water tables, significant N₂O formation may occur closer to the groundwater. The aims of this study were (i) to determine the importance of subsoil N₂O formation in a sandy soil; and (ii) to obtain a quantitative insight in the contribution of subsoil N₂O to the overall losses of N₂O to the environment. We applied ¹⁵N labeled fertilizer at a rate of 5.22 kg ¹⁵N ha⁻¹; 50% as Ca(NO₃)₂ and 50% as NH₄Cl, on a mesic typic Haplaquod seeded with potatoes (Solanum tuberosum L.), and traced soil N₂O concentrations and fluxes over a one-year period. Throughout the year, total N₂O and the amount of ¹⁵N recovered in soil N₂O were highest in the subsoil, with a maximum concentration at 48 cm depth in mid-February of 19900 μl m⁻³ and 24 μg ¹⁵N m⁻³, respectively. The maximum concentration coincided with the highest water-filled pore space of 71%. The cumulative flux of N₂O was 446 g N₂O-N ha⁻¹, the recovery of ¹⁵N in this flux was 0.06%. During the summer, maximum fluxes followed high soil N₂O concentrations. During winter, no such relation was found. We concluded that the formation of N₂O was the highest in the subsoil, largely controlled by water-filled pore space rather than NO₃⁻ concentration or temperature. Although high subsoil N₂O concentrations did not lead to high surface fluxes of N₂O in the winter, artificial draining may lead to high indirect N₂O emissions through supersaturated drainage water.     

Tight Bounds for Distributed Minimum-Weight Spanning Tree Verification

This paper introduces the notion of distributed verification without preprocessing. It focuses on the Minimum-weight Spanning Tree (MST) verification problem and establishes tight upper and lower bounds for the time and message complexities of this problem. Specifically, we provide an MST verification algorithm that achieves simultaneously $\tilde{O}(m)$ messages and $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{n} + D)$ time, where m is the number of edges in the given graph G, n is the number of nodes, and D is G’s diameter. On the other hand, we show that any MST verification algorithm must send $\tilde{\varOmega}(m)$ messages and incur $\tilde{\varOmega}(\sqrt{n} + D)$ time in worst case. Our upper bound result appears to indicate that the verification of an MST may be easier than its construction, since for MST construction, both lower bounds of $\tilde{\varOmega}(m)$ messages and $\tilde{\varOmega}(\sqrt{n} + D)$ time hold, but at the moment there is no known distributed algorithm that constructs an MST and achieves simultaneously $\tilde{O}(m)$ messages and $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{n} + D)$ time. Specifically, the best known time-optimal algorithm (using ${\tilde{O}}(\sqrt {n} + D)$ time) requires O(m+n ^3/2) messages, and the best known message-optimal algorithm (using ${\tilde{O}}(m)$ messages) requires O(n) time. On the other hand, our lower bound results indicate that the verification of an MST is not significantly easier than its construction.     

Medical image segmentation with transform and moment based features and incremental supervised neural network

In this study, a novel incremental supervised neural network (ISNN) is proposed for the segmentation of medical images. Performance of the ISNN is investigated for tissue segmentation in medical images obtained from various imaging modalities. Two feature extraction methods based on transform and moments are comparatively investigated to segment the tissues in medical images. Two-dimensional (2D) continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and the moments of the gray-level histogram (MGH) are computed in order to form the feature vectors of ultrasound (US) bladder and phantom images, X-ray computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) head images. In the 2D-CWT method, feature vectors are formed by the intensity of one pixel of each wavelet-plane of different energy bands. The MGH represents the tissues within the sub-windows by using the spatial variation of image intensities. In this study, the ISNN and Grow and Learn (GAL) network are employed for the segmentation task. It is observed that the ISNN has significantly eliminated the disadvantages of the GAL network in the segmentation of the medical images.     

Clustering MIT–BIH arrhythmias with Ant Colony Optimization using time domain and PCA compressed wavelet coefficients

In this paper, Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) based clustering analysis of ECG arrhythmias taken from the MIT–BIH Arrhythmia Database is proposed. Both time domain and discrete wavelet transform (DWT) based frequency domain features are used in the analysis. Since the number of wavelet coefficients are huge amount as compared to the time domain parameters, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) based compression is applied on them in order to decrease their number to the number of time domain features. Then, the reduced numbers of frequency parameters are combined with the time domain features, in order to get the total feature sets. Different types of feature sets are tried and the classification results are compared. These are: time domain feature set, frequency domain feature set and the mixture of them. A neural network algorithm is developed in parallel to verify and measure the ACO classifier's success. Moreover, linear discriminant analysis (LDA) is used to show the effect of clustering on the system's results. The method is tested with MIT–BIH database to classify normal beats and five different critical and having vital importance arrhythmia types. Chosen six classes are normal sinus rhythm, premature ventricular contraction (PVC), atrial premature contraction (APC), right bundle branch block (RBBB), ventricular fusion (F) and fusion (f). Comparison results indicate that the mixture feature set gave a better success for the classification.     

Prediction of the asphaltene deposition profile along a wellbore during natural production from a reservoir

The potential problem of asphaltene deposition during oil production has motivated both academics and industries to predict the asphaltene deposit profile in wellbores and pipelines. In this work, asphaltene deposition profile along an oil field well with the severe problem of asphaltene deposition was predicted. To do this, a comprehensive simulator for modeling of flow parameters such as pressure, temperature, and composition for a multiphase flow of oil, gas, and asphaltene from the reservoir to the surface was developed and coupled with the deposition model. By applying the simulator to an oil field well, it has been found that 60–70% of the total asphaltene thickness formed after 1 month of production, indicating that the problem of asphaltene deposition is bound to the initial stage of wellbore life. Moreover, the simulator was able to predict the accumulated asphaltene thickness and the time of wellbore plugging properly. This prediction is highly crucial if it is aimed to control the well performance and to optimize the productivity.     

Mixed-resolution HEVC based multiview video codec for low bitrate transmission

Multimedia Tools and Applications - There has been increasing demand for multiview video transmission over band limited channel over past years and various techniques have been proposed to fulfil...     

The role of dopaminergic and serotonergic mechanisms in the development of swimming ability of young rats

Neonatal swimming behavior was studied after a single subcutaneous injection of L-dopa methyl ester (50 mg/kg; 200 mg/kg) apomorphine (0.1 mg/kg; 1.0 mg/kg), DL-amphetamine (0.5 mg/kg; 10 mg/kg), haloperidol (0.5 mg/kg; 1.0 mg/kg), L-tryptophan (50 mg/kg; 100 mg/kg), methysergide (1.0 mg/kg; 5.0 mg/kg) as well as intraventricular injection of 100 microgram 6-OHDA. 1-, 3-, 5- and 7-day-old rats were placed into a temperature-controlled aquarium (37 degrees C) and the pattern of motor coordination, latency time to swimming (LTS) and the number of foreleg strokes for 10 s (FS) were measured. When compared to the physiological saline-injected controls, rats that received L-dopa showed a striking increase of FS at all ages but the most striking improvement of motor coordination was found in newborn rats. On day 1 both doses of DL-amphetamine induced increases in FS and improvement of motor coordination, whereas apomorphine failed to show any effect at this age. On days 3, 5 and 7 low doses of DL-amphetamine and apomorphine increased the FS. However, high doses resulted in a decrement in swimming performance. Haloperidol impaired swimming on day 1 but produced a significant increase of FS on days 5 and 7. Neonatal injection of 6-OHDA delayed development of motor coordination, reduced FS and increased LTS. On days 3, 5 and 7 high doses of L-tryptophan elicited an increase of FS, while high doses of methysergide caused significant impairment of performance. It is suggested that the brain rapidly converts the administered L-dopa to dopamine during the first week of life and there appears to be a strong dependent relationship between the pattern of motor coordination and the amount of available dopamine in the developing brain.     

Current role of immunotherapy in multiple myeloma

Myeloablative chemotherapy improved the results of multiple myeloma treatment but the disease remains incurable. Residual disease eradication is one of the main clues for further improvement of the prognosis of myeloma patients. Interferon alpha maintenance therapy has controversial results. New methods, such as consolidation therapy, antibodies, gene therapy, interleukins, immunotoxins, dendritic cells, vaccines and induction of graft-versus-tumor effect, are tested in the phase I/II clinical trials. This article briefly reviews the new treatment modalities of immunotherapy. Progress in adoptive cellular immunotherapy and progress in induction of graft versus myeloma effect are very promising. We are still not able to transfer very good preclinical results of immunotherapy into clinical results in vivo measured by event free and long-term survivals. Combination of myeloablative therapy followed a new type of immunotherapy focusing on residual disease eradication evaluated in the setting of sensitive disease may be optimal. Such approach could improve the current controversial status of immunotherapy in MM.     

The diffusivity of sulfur in wüstite and its solubility in wüstite and γ iron in equilibrium with each other and a liquid oxysulfide

The solubility of sulfur in wüstite in equilibrium with γ iron and liquid oxysulfide was found to be 0.011 wt pct at 1050°C. The sulfur solubility in γ iron in equilibrium with wüstite and liquid oxysulfide was also determined at 1050°, 1150°, and 1250°C and found to be 135, 165, and 160 ppm respectively. These values are considerably lower than the sulfur-solubility in y iron in the binary Fe-S system saturated with pyrrhotite. The diffusivity of sulfur in wüstite was determined by oxidizing Fe-S alloys in mixtures of CO and CO₂, and analyzing the entire sample for sulfur afterwards. From the amount of sulfur diffused through the growing wüstite layer into the gas phase, the diffusivity of sulfur in wüstite was evaluated, and found to be 4.1 × 10⁻⁸ and 9.6 × 10⁻⁷ cm²/s at 1050° and 1250°C respectively. These values are of the same order as the self-diffusivity of iron in wüstite in equilibrium with iron at the same temperatures.