Kidney surveillance in the spotlight: contrast-induced acute kidney injury illuminated

Acute kidney injury comprises a heterogeneous group of conditions characterized by a sudden decrease in renal function over hours to days. Contrast-induced acute kidney injury (CI-AKI) is caused by radiographic contrast agents used in diagnostic imaging. In the current issue of the JCI, Lau et al. use a mouse model of CI-AKI to study the role of resident and infiltrating phagocytes, recruited leukocytes, and tubular cells in the immune surveillance response to contrast agents. This study has the potential to provide innovative therapies for human CI-AKI

Weighing Aims in Doxastic Deliberation

In this paper, I defend teleological theories of belief against the exclusivity objection. I argue that despite the exclusive influence of truth in doxastic deliberation, multiple epistemic aims interact when we consider what to believe. This is apparent when we focus on the processes involved in specific instances (or concrete cases) of doxastic deliberation, such that the propositions under consideration are specified. First, I out- line a general schema for weighing aims. Second, I discuss recent attempts to defend the teleological position in relation to this schema. And third, I develop and defend my proposal that multiple epistemic aims interact in doxastic deliberation—a possibility which, as of yet, has received no serious attention in the literature

Atmospheric chemistry of gas-phase polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons: formation of atmospheric mutagens.

The atmospheric chemistry of the 2- to 4-ring polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), which exist mainly in the gas phase in the atmosphere, is discussed. The dominant loss process for the gas-phase PAH is by reaction with the hydroxyl radical, resulting in calculated lifetimes in the atmosphere of generally less than one day. The hydroxyl (OH) radical-initiated reactions and nitrate (NO3) radical-initiated reactions often lead to the formation of mutagenic nitro-PAH and other nitropolycyclic aromatic compounds, including nitrodibenzopyranones. These atmospheric reactions have a significant effect on ambient mutagenic activity, indicating that health risk assessments of combustion emissions should include atmospheric transformation products

A personal networking solution

This paper presents an overview of research being conducted on Personal Networking Solutions within the Mobile VCE Personal Distributed Environment Work Area. In particular it attempts to highlight areas of commonality with the MAGNET initiative. These areas include trust of foreign devices and service providers, dynamic real-time service negotiation to permit context-aware service delivery, an automated controller algorithm for wireless ad hoc networks, and routing protocols for ad hoc networking environments. Where possible references are provided to Mobile VCE publications to enable further reading

Advanced Solar Power Systems

The Advanced Solar Power System (ASPS) concentrator uses a technically sophisticated design and extensive tooling to produce very efficient (80 to 90%) and versatile energy supply equipment which is inexpensive to manufacture and requires little maintenance. The advanced optical design has two 10th order, generalized aspheric surfaces in a Cassegrainian configuration which gives outstanding performance and is relatively insensitive to temperature changes and wind loading. Manufacturing tolerances also have been achieved. The key to the ASPS is the direct absorption of concentrated sunlight in the working fluid by radiative transfers in a black body cavity. The basic ASPS design concepts, efficiency, optical system, and tracking and focusing controls are described

A resource management architecture for future mobile communications systems

This paper presents an overview of a hierarchical Resource Management architecture for future mobile communications systems. The architecture is designed to be generic and can therefore be adopted for a range of Radio Access Methodologies. In particular it provides a mechanism for radio resource management across airinterfaces such as those being defined for use with UMTS. Given the move towards packet-switched technologies both in the Core Network and the Radio Access Network [1], the architecture embraces the concept of statistical QoS applied to individual flows in the form of a commitment level. I

Telerobot task planning and reasoning: Introduction to JPL artificial intelligence research

A view of the capabilities and areas of artificial intelligence research which are required for autonomous space telerobotics extending through the year 2000 is given. In the coming years, JPL will be conducting directed research to achieve these capabilities, as well as drawing heavily on collaborative efforts conducted with other research laboratories

Knowledge-based diagnosis for aerospace systems

The need for automated diagnosis in aerospace systems and the approach of using knowledge-based systems are examined. Research issues in knowledge-based diagnosis which are important for aerospace applications are treated along with a review of recent relevant research developments in Artificial Intelligence. The design and operation of some existing knowledge-based diagnosis systems are described. The systems described and compared include the LES expert system for liquid oxygen loading at NASA Kennedy Space Center, the FAITH diagnosis system developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the PES procedural expert system developed at SRI International, the CSRL approach developed at Ohio State University, the StarPlan system developed by Ford Aerospace, the IDM integrated diagnostic model, and the DRAPhys diagnostic system developed at NASA Langley Research Center

The use of function points to find cost analogies

Finding effective techniques for the early estimation of project effort remains an important — and frustratingly elusive — research objective for the software development community. We have conducted an empirical study of 21 real time projects for a major software developer. The study collected a range of counts and measures derived from specification documents, including a derivative of Function Points intended for highly constrained systems. Notwithstanding the fact that the projects were drawn from a comparatively stable environment, traditional approaches for building prediction systems, (for example, regression analysis) failed to yield a useful predictive model. By contrast, estimation based upon the automated search for analogous projects produced more accurate estimates. How much this is a characteristic of this particular dataset and how much these findings might be more generally replicated is uncertain. Nevertheless, these results should act as encouragement for follow up research on a much under utilised estimation technique