Mexitl: Multimedia in Executable Interval Temporal Logic

This paper explores a formalism for describing a wide class of multimedia document constraints, based on an interval temporal logic. We describe the requirements on temporal logic specification that arise from the multimedia documents application area. In particular, we highlight a canonical specification example. Then we present the temporal logic formalism that we use. This extends existing interval temporal logic with a number of new features: actions, framing of actions, past operators, a projection-like operator called filter and a new handling of interval length. A model theory, logic and satisfaction relation are defined for the notation, a specification of the canonical example is presented, and a proof system for the logic is introduced

Quality care at the end of life

2 pages.Editorial advocating improved end-of-life care

Nanoporous biocarbon as a storage system for methane

Abstract only availableActivated carbon produced from waste corn cobs have recently been developed as an efficient and economical form of gas storage. With rising gas prices and concerns of global warming, natural gas has been brought to attention as an alternative to gas and diesel. Activated carbons are capable of storing natural gas at low pressures and safe lengths of time via gas adsorption. Van der Waals interactions between methane gas molecules and the carbon solid forces the methane into a supercritical fluid that adsorbs onto surface of the solid. Methane uptake is assessed gravimetrically with steel sample cells. Masses are calibrated to correct for the effects due to air buoyancy. Data collected through methane isotherms, techniques of solid state NMR, and small-angle scattering reveal the pore structures and distribution of various carbon samples. The optimal pore size can be determined by executing methane isotherms at varying pressures between 25 and 500 psi. Ultimately, the same advances will be performed with hydrogen gas in exploring solutions and improvements to the gas crisis.U.S. Department of Energy Alliance for Collaborative Research in Alternative Fuel Technolog

Impact of stout-link smearing in lattice fermion actions

The impact of stout-link smearing in lattice fermion actions is examined through the consideration of the mass and renormalization functions of the overlap quark propagator over a variety of smeared configurations. Up to six sweeps of stout-link smearing are investigated. For heavy quark masses, the quark propagator is strongly affected by the smearing procedure. For moderate masses, the effect appears to be negligible. A small effect is seen for light quark masses, where dynamical mass generation is suppressed through the smearing procedure.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, presented at the XXVII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory - LAT2009, July 26-31 2009, Peking University, Beijing, Chin

Stout-link smearing in lattice fermion actions

The properties of the momentum space quark propagator in Landau gauge are studied for the overlap quark action in quenched lattice QCD. Numerical calculations are performed over four ensembles of gauge configurations, where three are smeared using either 1, 3, or 6 sweeps of stout-link smearing. We calculate the non-perturbative wave function renormalization function $Z(p)$ and the non-perturbative mass function $M(p)$ for a variety of bare quark masses. We find that the wave-function renormalization function is slightly sensitive to the number of stout-link smearing sweeps. For the mass function we find the effect of the stout-link smearing algorithm to be small for moderate to light bare quark masses. For a heavy bare quark mass we find a strong dependence on the number of smearing sweeps.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

An End of Term Exam: October Term 2003 at the Supreme Court of the United States

The goal of this Essay is to provide a resource of digestible proportions that any Court watcher (judge, lawyer, professor, student) can use to inform himself or herself about current developments at the Court. While the Essay discusses how the current Term compares to past ones, it does not do so simply as an exercise in dry social science. Instead, it highlights those trends of interest to both the scholar and the practitioner. Likewise, while the Essay discusses particular cases, it does not simply summarize facts and holdings. Instead, it places those doctrinal developments in a larger context, analyzes them, and critiques them. This Essay proceeds in two parts. The first part provides the broad overview of October Term 2003. It analyzes current statistics in the size and composition of the Court\u27s caseload and compares those figures to past terms. It also considers the justices\u27 voting patterns and which justices proved to be the “swing” votes, both generally and in particular fields. The second part focuses on the key cases of the Term. It addresses both what the Court decided and what it failed to decide. It critiques those decisions and considers their implications for future doctrinal developments. The Court Consensus offers some closing lessons to be drawn from the Term

Cardiac SNARE expression in health and disease

SNARE proteins are integral to intracellular vesicular trafficking, which in turn is the process underlying the regulated expression of substrate transporters such as the glucose transporter GLUT4 at the cell surface of insulin target tissues. Impaired insulin stimulated GLUT4 trafficking is associated with reduced cardiac function in many disease states, most notably diabetes. Despite this, our understanding of the expression and regulation of SNARE proteins in cardiac tissue and how these may change in diabetes is limited. Here we characterize the array of SNARE proteins expressed in cardiac tissue, and quantify the levels of expression of VAMP2, SNAP23, and Syntaxin4—key proteins involved in insulin-stimulated GLUT4 translocation. We examined SNARE protein levels in cardiac tissue from two rodent models of insulin resistance, db/db mice and high-fat fed mice, and show alterations in patterns of expression are evident. Such changes may have implications for cardiac function

Nanoporous biocarbons as a storage system for natural gas as fuel for vehicles

Abstract only availableNatural gas is a promising fuel source because it is safe, inexpensive, cleaner than gasoline, domestically produced, and already has an infrastructure for its distribution. Methane, the main component of natural gas, however, does not have a high energy density, and to store enough in today's natural gas storage tanks to power vehicles, the gas must be compressed to 3600 psi. To be strong enough to hold up at those high pressures, Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) tanks must be bulky and cylindrical, and occupy the trunk space in today's CNG cars, which is considered prohibitive to the cars' market success. ALL-CRAFT's purpose is to develop nanoporous biocarbons which can store methane at relatively low pressures, allowing future tanks to be flat and sleek, ideally occupying the space below the car, making natural gas vehicles attractive consumer products. As a long-term goal, ALL-CRAFT is optimizing biocarbons for hydrogen storage for fuel cells. Nanoporous carbons are like sponges, soaking up molecules of adsorbent gas. The nanoporous biocarbons store up to five times more methane than an empty tank at the same pressure, despite the fact that the carbon obviously takes up space. It does this using van der Waals forces which act on the methane molecules at short distances. These forces cause the methane to form a supercritical fluid film on the surface of the carbon. The extremely high surface area of ALL-CRAFT's carbon samples—recently approaching 4000 square meters of surface per gram of carbon sample—means that our carbons can hold 180 times their volume in methane. Biocarbons can be made from myriad biomass sources. ALL-CRAFT hopes to perfect a process for making them from corn cob; using just the cob is advantageous because this does not displace corn as a food source like Ethanol does.Missouri Academy at Northwest Missouri State University, Alliance for Collaborative Research in Alternate Fuel Technolog

A Technique for Foreground Subtraction in Redshifted 21 cm Observations

One of the main challenges for future 21 cm observations is to remove foregrounds which are several orders of magnitude more intense than the HI signal. We propose a new technique for removing foregrounds of the redshifted 21 cm observations. We consider multi-frequency interferometer observations. We assume that the 21 cm signals in different frequency channels are uncorrelated and the foreground signals change slowly as a function of frequency. When we add the visibilities of all channels, the foreground signals increase roughly by a factor of ~N because they are highly correlated. However, the 21 cm signals increase by a factor of ~\sqrt{N} because the signals in different channels contribute randomly. This enables us to obtain an accurate shape of the foreground angular power spectrum. Then, we obtain the 21-cm power spectrum by subtracting the foreground power spectrum obtained this way. We describe how to obtain the average power spectrum of the 21 cm signal.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure; To appear on the Astrophysical Journa