Recent Advances in the Application of the Shell Model Monte Carlo Approach to Nuclei

The shell model Monte Carlo (SMMC) method is a powerful technique for calculating the statistical and collective properties of nuclei in the presence of correlations in model spaces that are many orders of magnitude larger than those that can be treated by conventional diagonalization methods. We review recent advances in the development and application of SMMC to mid-mass and heavy nuclei.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, Proceedings of the Eleventh International Spring Seminar on Nuclear Physic

Stability of black carrot anthocyanins in the turkish delight (LOKUM) during storage

In this research, traditional Turkish delight (lokum) was colored with black carrot juice concentrate, and the variations in anthocyanin content, during storage at different temperatures (12, 20 and 30C) for 5-month periods, were observed by spectrophotometer and high-performance liquid chromatography. Analysis of kinetic data suggested a first-order reaction for the degradation of black carrot anthocyanins in Turkish delight. Degradation rates of anthocyanins of black carrot increased with increasing temperature. It was determined that the degradation rate of black carrot anthocyanins during the storage period at 12C increased faster than that of the other temperatures (20 and 30C). The k values for 12, 20 and 30C were found to be 6.91 × 10 -3, 4.21 × 10 -3and 9.21 × 10 -3/day, respectively. Effects of pH on the thermal stability of black carrot anthocyanins were also determined. Results showed that the stability of anthocyanins decreased as the pH value increased. Increase in pH values correlated well with the decrease in anthocyanin content of the samples during storage. In all of the samples, redness (a*) decreased during the storage at all temperatures; however, lightness (L*) increased. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS Most of commercial anthocyanins used as a colorant in foods are obtained from fruits or vegetables such as: red grape, elderberry, blackcurrant, blackberry, raspberry, black chokeberry, red cabbage, black carrot, purple corn, red radish and purple sweet potato. Turkish delight (lokum), one of the most popular traditional food products in Turkey, is a famous Turkish desert known all over the world. Lokum is produced by using sugar, water, starch, citric acid, aromatic compounds, dried fruits and natural colorant. The color of foods, which is one of the initial properties noticed in foods, is one of the most important quality parameters affecting consumers. Because of consumer anxiety over the safety of synthetic food colorants, the demand for natural food colorants has increased. Particularly, there is an increasing request for natural red food colorants as alternatives to the most commonly used synthetic red colorant. Therefore, the availability and the suitability of black carrot juice concentrate as a natural colorant instead of synthetic colorants which are considered to have some negative properties for human health was investigated by this work. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Profit division in newsvendor situations with delivery restrictions

This study considers a supply chain that consists of n retailers, each of them facing a newsvendor problem, and a supplier. Groups of retailers might increase their expected joint profit by joint ordering and inventory centralization, which means that they give a joint order and allocate this quantity among themselves to maximize the total profit after the demands are realized. Furthermore, we assume that the retailers pose some restrictions on the number of items that should be delivered to them. In this situation, we show that the associated cooperative game has a non-empty core. Afterwards, we concentrate on a dynamic situation, where the retailers change their delivery restrictions. We investigate how the profit division might be affected by these changes. We define four new monotonicity properties, which we think are interesting in general, and we derive necessary and sufficient conditions for pairs of totally balanced TU-games to satisfy these properties. We also show that pairs of cooperative games associated with newsvendor situations do not necessarily satisfy these properties in general. Finally, we define a class of games with retailers having a normally distributed demand where one of the monotonicity properties holds

Pediyatrik yaş grubunda trafik kazası sonucu oluşan yaralanmalar ve özellikleri

BACKGROUND In this study, the pediatric age group exposed to road traffic accidents was investigated, and patients with risk factors were studied to obtain relevant data. METHODS Trauma patients under the age of 15 who were admitted to the emergency department of this university over five years were analyzed retrospectively. Age, gender, accident time and type, personal injury area, type of injury, and clinical outcome were examined. RESULTS When the cases were analyzed with respect to the causes that led to the accidents, in-vehicle accidents formed the largest group (n=479, 59%). More than a quarter of all applications (34%) took place in summer months. Most of the applications were between 17:00 and 17:59 (n=94, 11.6%), followed by between 18:00 and 18:59 (n=88, 10.8%). The most commonly affected body parts were the head and neck region (n=226, 27.8%) and extremities (lower extremity: n=144, 17.7%; upper extremity: n=99, 12.2%). The most frequently seen injuries were contusions, abrasions, hematomas, and crush (n=443, 54.6%). The majority of patients who died were pedestrians who were hit by a motor vehicle (n=19, 59.4%). CONCLUSION In this study, it was observed that in the pediatric age group, traffic accidents involving a pedestrian and vehicle collision have greater fatality

Active decoupling of RF coils using a transmit array system

Objective: Implementation of a decoupling method for isolation of transmit and receive radio frequency (RF) coils for concurrent excitation and acquisition (CEA) MRI in samples with ultra-short T2*. Materials and methods: The new phase and amplitude (PA) decoupling method is implemented in a clinical 3T-MRI system equipped with a parallel transmit array system. For RF excitation, two transmit coils are used in combination with a single receive coil. The transmit coil is geometrically decoupled from the receive coil, and the remaining B1-induced voltages in the receive coil during CEA are minimized by the second transmit coil using a careful adjustment of the phase and amplitude settings in this coil. Isolation of the decoupling scheme and transmit noise behavior are analyzed for different loading conditions, and a CEA MRI experiment is performed in a rubber phantom with sub-millisecond T2* and in an ex vivo animal. Results: Geometrical (20 dB) and PA decoupling (50 dB) provided a total isolation of 70 dB between the transmit and receive coils. Integration of a low-noise RF amplifier was necessary to minimize RF transmit noise. CEA MR images could be reconstructed from a rubber phantom and an ex vivo animal. Conclusion: CEA MRI can be implemented in clinical MRI systems using active decoupling with parallel transmit array capabilities with minor hardware modifications. © 2015, ESMRMB

A cadaveric histological investigation of the prostate with three-dimensional reconstruction for better results in continence and erectile function after radical prostatectomy

In this study our aim is to increase the understanding of the prostate and related organs anatomy for better continence and erectile function results after urological surgery. Prostate and related organs were dissected from seven cadavers. After dissection, 165 serial sections with 300 μm thickness were derived at a 100 μm interval. The histological images were examined and imported to the computer. Three-dimensional (3D) remodeling had been performed. The findings were evaluated into three categories: macroscopic, microscopic and 3D reconstruction. Striated muscle fibers had been detected at the anterior fibromuscular stroma in histological sections. In 3D remodeling, urethra seemed to be a complete functional unit, beginning from the trigone up to the membranous urethra. The neurovascular bundles run under the pelvic fascia on both sides and go through to the bladder neck at 5 and 7 o'clock. Computer remodeling demonstrated that neurovascular structures had a close association with the bladder neck and the seminal vesicle. Computer program made it possible to rotate all 3D-reconstructed figures by 360° and examine them from all possible angles. All reconstructed structures can be examined together at the same time or one by one. Surgeons must pay special attention to the continence area described as a single unit, beginning from trigone to the membranous urethra, during the surgery. Meticulous dissection of the neurovascular bundles, especially close to the seminal vesicles and bladder neck, during the radical prostatectomy is necessary. These reconstructions can be used for the educational purpose of medical students as well as the urology surgeons

KLEIN: A New Family of Lightweight Block Ciphers

Resource-efficient cryptographic primitives become fundamental for realizing both security and efficiency in embedded systems like RFID tags and sensor nodes. Among those primitives, lightweight block cipher plays a major role as a building block for security protocols. In this paper, we describe a new family of lightweight block ciphers named KLEIN, which is designed for resource-constrained devices such as wireless sensors and RFID tags. Compared to the related proposals, KLEIN has advantage in the software performance on legacy sensor platforms, while in the same time its hardware implementation can also be compact