Within the Pillars of Hercules

The Kiona’s hull sliced neatly through the batting waves, her sails pulling forward with the ceaseless breath of the northwestern winds. The boards of the ship hummed beneath Carrice Leon’s feet, interlaced with the rhythmic beating of 170 oars against serene waters. In the distance, white spires were beginning to peak just above the starboard horizon, a shimmering beacon in the endless blue. They were making good time, despite the previous day’s storm. Carrice looked up to find the sun high in the sky. “Starboard side, in-oars!” Her voice boomed across the length of the deck, ringing clear over the wind and waves below. The crew manning the right side of the deck clattered their oars into oarlocks as the port side continued to row in perfect synchrony. Carrice nodded to herself as the soft wood of the helm’s wheel glided smoothly against her hands, nudging the Kiona further starboard. “Oars in,” she commanded; more clattering of oars onto the deck ensued. The ship was running with the wind. Why not show off a little and sail in. [excerpt

\u3cem\u3eLaunching through the Surf\u3c/em\u3e Traveling Exhibit Panel 11: Turning Oars for a Dory

Exhibit panel 11 describes the procedure for turning oars for a dory. Partners Paul Hanneman and Terry Learned have crafted the Cape Kiwanda Wood Products dory oars since the early 1960s. During the spring of 2012, project collaborator Tyrone Marshall photographed the process.https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/dory_exhibit/1010/thumbnail.jp

Direct Step & Shoot: a New Module for Prostate Cancer IMRT

Aims & Objectives The aim of this treatment planning study is to compare the techniques of 3D conformal radiotherapy (3DCRT) and IMRT to determine the feasible advantages for prostate cancer patientsof using a new direct step & shoot (DSS) IMRT module. For the optimisation of the IMRT, Nucletron offers as a part of the optimising process their IM-optimisation software or their new module DSS. The earlier IM-optimisation software searches first for the ideal fluence for each beam, and this is then followed by the segmentation. The new DSS module integrates the segmentation into the optimisation process. Materials & Methods Between March 2006 and November 2006, four patients with a mean age of 71 years were enrolled for primary EBRT for localised prostate cancer. Three of these patients received antiandrogen therapy either before or during radiotherapy. All four patients had 3D CT treatment planning with a slice thickness of 5 mm and with immobilisation in a vacuum mattress (BlueBAG BodyFIX, Medical Intelligence). As an initial step, it was planned (using Oncentra MasterPlan) to deliver 60 Gy to the planning target volume (PTV), calculated using data for a Siemens Primus linear accelerator (15 MV photons, with multileaf collimator leaf width of 1cm at the isocentre). The preselected gantry angles were 25, 90, 120, 240, 270 and 335 degrees. The rectal volume and urinary bladder were delineated as organs at risk (OARs). Additional structures were also contoured in order to help (we term them ‘Help Contours’) avoid hot spots in normal tissues surrounding the PTV to a distance of 1cm. The dose-volume objectives were defined by two schemes. After optimisation the plans were re-normalised to the average of PTV, giving 30 fractions with a fractional dose of 2 Gy. The 3DCRT plan used identical gantry angles with the beams weighted by experience. Results Both IMRT optimisation schemes reduced the doses received by the OARs when compared to the 3DCRT plan. Using the Nucletron IM-optimisation software the first weighting scheme of the objectives resulted in satisfactory dose-volume histograms (DVHs) for the OARs, and an obviously 'softened' DVH for the PTV (when compared to the 3DCRT plan). The DSS optimisation produced a steeper DVH for the PTV, but worse results for the OARs when compared to the IM-optimisation. Scheme 2 improved the DVHs for the OARs using the DSS process, to about the same level as the IM-optimisation with scheme 1, the PTV DVH staying nearly unchanged. The IM-optimisation produced the worst DVH for the PTV of the five different plans we considered. In Figure 1 the DVHs are shown of a characteristic 3DCRT plan, the IM plan (Scheme 1) and the DSS plan (Scheme 2). Table 1 presents the mean values, averaged over the four patients, for the PTV and for the two OARs. Conclusions In every case the DSS optimisation resulted in a steeper DVH for the PTV than found using the IM process. The DVHs for the OARs are worse with scheme 1 but improve to about the same level with scheme 2. The patients benefit from IMRT by reduced doses to the OARs, keeping a very steep DVH for the PTV with the DSS optimisation. The user should note that weighting schemes based on the experience with IM-optimisation are not retained for the new DSS optimiation without control

Dealing with uncertain entities in ontology alignment using rough sets

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2012 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.Ontology alignment facilitates exchange of knowledge among heterogeneous data sources. Many approaches to ontology alignment use multiple similarity measures to map entities between ontologies. However, it remains a key challenge in dealing with uncertain entities for which the employed ontology alignment measures produce conflicting results on similarity of the mapped entities. This paper presents OARS, a rough-set based approach to ontology alignment which achieves a high degree of accuracy in situations where uncertainty arises because of the conflicting results generated by different similarity measures. OARS employs a combinational approach and considers both lexical and structural similarity measures. OARS is extensively evaluated with the benchmark ontologies of the ontology alignment evaluation initiative (OAEI) 2010, and performs best in the aspect of recall in comparison with a number of alignment systems while generating a comparable performance in precision

Validation of the Ottawa Ankle Rules in Iran: A prospective survey

BACKGROUND: Acute ankle injuries are one of the most common reasons for presenting to emergency departments, but only a small percentage of patients – approximately 15% – have clinically significant fractures. However, these patients are almost always referred for radiography. The Ottawa Ankle Rules (OARs) have been designed to reduce the number of unnecessary radiographs ordered for these patients. The objective of this study was to validate the OARs in the Iranian population. METHODS: This prospective survey was done among 200 patients with acute ankle injury from January 2004 to April 2004 in the Akhtar Orthopedics Hospital Emergency Department. Main outcome measures of this survey were: sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and likelihood ratios (positive and negative) of the OARs. RESULTS: Sensitivity of the OARs for detecting 37 ankle fractures (23 in the malleolar zone and 14 in the midfoot zone) was 100% for each of the two zones, and 100% for both zones. Specificity of the OARs for detecting fractures was 40.50% for both zones, 40.50% for the malleolar zone, and 56.00% for the midfoot zone. Implementation of the OARs had the potential for reducing radiographs by 33%. CONCLUSION: OARs are very accurate and highly sensitive tools for detecting ankle fractures. Implementation of these rules would lead to significant reduction in the number of radiographs, costs, radiation exposure and waiting times in emergency departments