Innovation, the diesel engine and vehicle markets: Evidence from OECD engine patents

This paper uses a patent data set to identify factors fostering innovation of diesel engines between 1974 and 2010 in the OECD region. The propensity of engine producers to innovate grew by 1.9 standard deviations after the expansion of the car market, by 0.7 standard deviations following a shift in the EU fuel economy standard, and by 0.23 standard deviations. The propensity to develop emissions control techniques was positively influenced by pollution control laws introduced in Japan, in the US, and in the EU, but not with the expansion of the car market. Furthermore, a decline in loan rates stimulated the propensity to develop emissions control techniques, which were simultaneously crowded out by increases in publicly-funded transport research and development. Innovation activities in engine efficiency are explained by market size, loan rates and by (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) diesel prices, inclusive of taxes. Price effects on innovation, outweigh that of the US corporate average fuel economy standards. Innovation is also positively influenced by past transport research and development. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd

Deformation of a liquid film by an impinging gas jet: Modelling and experiments

© 2019, Avestia Publishing. We consider liquid in a cylindrical beaker and study the deformation of its surface under the influence of an impinging gas jet. Analyzing such a system not only is of fundamental theoretical interest, but also of industrial importance, e.g., in metallurgical applications. The solution of the full set of governing equations is computationally expensive. Therefore, to obtain initial insight into relevant regimes and timescales of the system, we first derive a reduced-order model (a thin-film equation) based on the long-wave assumption and on appropriate decoupling the gas problem from that for the liquid and taking into account a disjoining pressure. We also perform direct numerical simulations (DNS) of the full governing equations using two different approaches, the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) package in COMSOL and the volume-of-fluid Gerris package. The DNS are used to validate the results for the thinfilm equation and also to investigate the regimes that are beyond the range of validity of this equation. We additionally compare the computational results with experiments and find good agreement

Automated design of robust discriminant analysis classifier for foot pressure lesions using kinematic data

In the recent years, the use of motion tracking systems for acquisition of functional biomechanical gait data, has received increasing interest due to the richness and accuracy of the measured kinematic information. However, costs frequently restrict the number of subjects employed, and this makes the dimensionality of the collected data far higher than the available samples. This paper applies discriminant analysis algorithms to the classification of patients with different types of foot lesions, in order to establish an association between foot motion and lesion formation. With primary attention to small sample size situations, we compare different types of Bayesian classifiers and evaluate their performance with various dimensionality reduction techniques for feature extraction, as well as search methods for selection of raw kinematic variables. Finally, we propose a novel integrated method which fine-tunes the classifier parameters and selects the most relevant kinematic variables simultaneously. Performance comparisons are using robust resampling techniques such as Bootstrap$632+$and k-fold cross-validation. Results from experimentations with lesion subjects suffering from pathological plantar hyperkeratosis, show that the proposed method can lead to$sim 96$correct classification rates with less than 10% of the original features

Maize silage for dairy cows: mitigation of methane emissions can be offset bij and use change

Increasing the digestibility of cattle rations by feeding grains and whole plant silages from maize have been identified as effective options to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. The effect of ploughing grassland for maize crops have not been taken into account yet. A intensive dairy farm is used as an example to demonstrate the trade offs by this type of land use change when more maize silage is fed to dairy cows. The model DAIRY WISE has been used to calculate the mitigation by the changed ration, the Introductory Carbon Balance Model to calculate the changes in soil organic carbon and nitrogen caused by ploughing grassland for maize crops. The losses of soil carbon and the loss of sequestration potential are much larger than the annual mitigation by feeding more maize. The ecosystem carbon payback time defines the years of mitigation that are needed before the emissions due to land use change are compensated. For ploughing grassland on sandy soils, the carbon payback time is 60 years. A higher global warming potential for methane can reduce the carbon payback time with 30%. Ploughing clay soils with a higher equilibrium level of soil organic matter increases the payback time by maximally 70%. The payback times occur only in the case of permanent maize cropping, grass maize rotations cause annual losses of nitrous oxide that are larger than the mitigation by feeding more maize

Factorizing LambdaMART for cold start recommendations

Recommendation systems often rely on point-wise loss metrics such as the mean squared error. However, in real recommendation settings only few items are presented to a user. This observation has recently encouraged the use of rank-based metrics. LambdaMART is the state-of-the-art algorithm in learning to rank which relies on such a metric. Despite its success it does not have a principled regularization mechanism relying in empirical approaches to control model complexity leaving it thus prone to overfitting. Motivated by the fact that very often the users' and items' descriptions as well as the preference behavior can be well summarized by a small number of hidden factors, we propose a novel algorithm, LambdaMART Matrix Factorization (LambdaMART-MF), that learns a low rank latent representation of users and items using gradient boosted trees. The algorithm factorizes lambdaMART by defining relevance scores as the inner product of the learned representations of the users and items. The low rank is essentially a model complexity controller; on top of it we propose additional regularizers to constraint the learned latent representations that reflect the user and item manifolds as these are defined by their original feature based descriptors and the preference behavior. Finally we also propose to use a weighted variant of NDCG to reduce the penalty for similar items with large rating discrepancy. We experiment on two very different recommendation datasets, meta-mining and movies-users, and evaluate the performance of LambdaMART-MF, with and without regularization, in the cold start setting as well as in the simpler matrix completion setting. In both cases it outperforms in a significant manner current state of the art algorithms

Human Microsporidial Infections

Microsporidia are eukaryotic, spore forming obligate intracellular parasites, first recognised over 100 years ago. Microsporidia are becoming increasingly recognised as infectious pathogens causing intestinal and extra-intestinal diseases in both immuno-competent and immuno-suppressed patients. They are characterised by the production of resistant spores that vary in size depending on the species; and poses a unique organelle, the polar tubule (polar filament), which is coiled inside the spore as demonstrated by its ultra structure. Other unusual characteristics are the lack of mitochondria and the prokaryotic-like ribosomes, which indicate the primitive nature of the group. Presently there are seven genera, Enterocytozoon, Encephalitozoon, Nosema, Pleistophora, Trachi pleistophora, Brachiola, vittaforma species which have been reported from human hosts as agents of systemic, ocular, intestinal and muscular infections, are described and the diagnosis, treatment, and source of infections discussed

DNMTs are required for delayed genome instability caused by radiation

This is an open-access article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. The article may be redistributed, reproduced, and reused for non-commercial purposes, provided the original source is properly cited - Copyright @ 2012 Landes Bioscience.The ability of ionizing radiation to initiate genomic instability has been harnessed in the clinic where the localized delivery of controlled doses of radiation is used to induce cell death in tumor cells. Though very effective as a therapy, tumor relapse can occur in vivo and its appearance has been attributed to the radio-resistance of cells with stem cell-like features. The molecular mechanisms underlying these phenomena are unclear but there is evidence suggesting an inverse correlation between radiation-induced genomic instability and global hypomethylation. To further investigate the relationship between DNA hypomethylation, radiosensitivity and genomic stability in stem-like cells we have studied mouse embryonic stem cells containing differing levels of DNA methylation due to the presence or absence of DNA methyltransferases. Unexpectedly, we found that global levels of methylation do not determine radiosensitivity. In particular, radiation-induced delayed genomic instability was observed at the Hprt gene locus only in wild-type cells. Furthermore, absence of Dnmt1 resulted in a 10-fold increase in de novo Hprt mutation rate, which was unaltered by radiation. Our data indicate that functional DNMTs are required for radiation-induced genomic instability, and that individual DNMTs play distinct roles in genome stability. We propose that DNMTS may contribute to the acquirement of radio-resistance in stem-like cells.This study is funded by NOTE, BBSRC and the Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellowship

The [alpha/Fe] Ratios in Dwarf Galaxies: Evidence for a Non-universal Stellar Initial Mass Function?

It is well established that the [alpha/Fe] ratios in elliptical galaxies increase with galaxy mass. This relation holds also for early-type dwarf galaxies, although it seems to steepen at low masses. The [alpha/Fe] vs. mass relation can be explained assuming that smaller galaxies form over longer timescales (downsizing), allowing a larger amount of Fe (mostly produced by long-living Type Ia Supernovae) to be released and incorporated into newly forming stars. Another way to obtain the same result is by using a flatter initial mass function (IMF) in large galaxies, increasing in this way the number of Type II Supernovae and therefore the production rate of alpha-elements. The integrated galactic initial mass function (IGIMF) theory predicts that the higher the star formation rate, the flatter the IMF. We have checked, by means of semi-analytical calculations, that the IGIMF theory, combined with the downsizing effect (i.e. the shorter duration of the star formation in larger galaxies), well reproduces the observed [alpha/Fe] vs. mass relation. In particular, we show a steepening of this relation in dwarf galaxies, in accordance with the available observations.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures; to appear in the proceedings of the JENAM 2010 Symposium on Dwarf Galaxies (Lisbon, September 9-10, 2010

Energy density of foods and beverages in the Australian food supply: influence of macronutrients and comparison to dietary intake.

OBJECTIVES: The energy density (ED) of the diet is considered an important determinant of total energy intake and thus energy balance and weight change. We aimed to compare relationships between ED and macronutrient content in individual food and beverage items as well as population diet in a typical Western country. DESIGN: Nutrient data for 3673 food items and 247 beverage items came from the Australian Food and Nutrient database (AusNut). Food and beverage intake data came from the 1995 Australian National Nutrition Survey (a 24-h dietary recall survey in 13 858 people over the age of 2). Relationships between ED and macronutrient and water content were analysed by linear regression with 95% prediction bands. RESULTS: For both individual food items and population food intake, there was a positive relationship between ED and percent energy as fat and negative relationships between ED and percent energy as carbohydrate and percent water by weight. In all cases, there was close agreement between the slopes of the regression lines between food items and dietary intake. There were no clear relationships between ED and macronutrient content for beverage items. Carbohydrate (mostly sucrose) contributed 91, 47, and 25% of total energy for sugar-based, fat-based, and alcohol-based beverages respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The relationship between ED and fat content of foods holds true across both population diets and individual food items available in the food supply in a typical Western country such as Australia. As high-fat diets are associated with a high BMI, population measures with an overall aim of reducing the ED of diets may be effective in mediating the growing problem of overweight and obesity

First detection of intestinal microsporidia in Northern Nigeria

Microsporidia are intracellular spore-forming protozoa that are increasingly being recognized as pathogens in humans. Faecal samples were taken from 2250 HIV/AIDS and 1050 HIV-negative patients from Kano and Makurdi in Northern Nigeria, and were investigated for microsporidial infections by Giemsa staining technique (Light microscopy). In Kano, Enterocytozoon bienuesi was detected in 8 (14.17%) and Encephalitozoon intestinalis in 5 (2.60%) out of 192 HIV/AIDS patients screened. A mixed infection of both 0.52% was observed. Results from Makurdi showed that Enterocytozoon bienuesi was detected in 13 (0.65%) and Encephalitozoon intestinalis in 96 (4.78%) out of 2008 HIV/AIDS patients examined. No mixed infection was observed. Microsporidial spores were not found in 1050 HIV-negative patients screened from both areas. There was a significant difference (X2, p<0.05) in infection rates between the HIV/AIDS and HIV-negative patients. This study aimed at detecting the prevalence of intestinal microsporidia to provide baseline data on the status of this disease in Nigeria. Detection of Microsporidia in Immuno-compromised patients has not been described previously in this area