A failure recovery planning prototype for Space Station Freedom

NASA is investigating the use of advanced automation to enhance crew productivity for Space Station Freedom in numerous areas, including failure management. A prototype is described that uses various advanced automation techniques to generate courses of action whose intents are to recover from a diagnosed failure, and to do so within the constraints levied by the failure and by Freedom's configuration and operating conditions

Workshop on evaluating personal search

The first ECIR workshop on Evaluating Personal Search was held on 18th April 2011 in Dublin, Ireland. The workshop consisted of 6 oral paper presentations and several discussion sessions. This report presents an overview of the scope and contents of the workshop and outlines the major outcomes

A hybrid CA-PDE Model of chlamydia trachomatis infection in the female genital tract

Chlamydia trachomatis is amongst the most common sexually transmitted diseases in the world and when left untreated, may lead to serious sequelae particularly in women such as pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy and infertility. Currently, most mathematical modelling in the literature regarding Chlamydia is based on time dependent differential equations. The serious pathology associated with C. trachomatis occurs when the chlamydial infection ascends to the upper genital tract. But no modelling study has investigated the important spatial aspects of the disease. In this work, we include spatiotemporal considerations of the progression of chlamydial infection in the genital tract. This novel direction is achieved using cellular automata modelling with probabilistic decision processes. In this presentation, the modelling strategy will be described, as well as its relationship with existing models and the advances in understanding that are achieved with such a model. Such an approach provides valuable insights into disease progression and will lead to experimentally testable predictions and a basis for further investigation in this area

The diagnostic performance of routinely acquired and reported computed tomography imaging in patients presenting with suspected pleural malignancy

Objectives: Contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT) provides essential cross-sectional imaging data in patients with suspected pleural malignancy (PM). The performance of CT in routine practice may be lower than in previously reported research. We assessed this relative to ‘real-life’ factors including use of early arterial-phase contrast enhancement (by CT pulmonary angiography (CTPA)) and non-specialist radiology reporting. Materials and methods: Routinely acquired and reported CT scans in patients recruited to the DIAPHRAGM study (a prospective, multi-centre observational study of mesothelioma biomarkers) between January 2014 and April 2016 were retrospectively reviewed. CT reports were classified as malignant if they included specific terms e.g. “suspicious of malignancy”, “stage M1a” and benign if others were used e.g. “indeterminate”, “no cause identified”. All patients followed a standard diagnostic algorithm. The diagnostic performance of CT (overall and based on the above factors) was assessed using 2 × 2 Contingency Tables. Results: 30/345 (9%) eligible patients were excluded (non-contrast (n = 13) or non-contiguous CT (n = 4), incomplete follow-up (n = 13)). 195/315 (62%) patients studied had PM; 90% were cyto-histologically confirmed. 172/315 (55%) presented as an acute admission, of whom 31/172 (18%) had CTPA. Overall, CT sensitivity was 58% (95% CI 51–65%); specificity was 80% (95% CI 72–87%). Sensitivity of CTPA (performed in 31/315 (10%)) was lower (27% (95% CI 9–53%)) than venous-phase CT (61% (95% CI 53–68%) p = 0.0056). Sensitivity of specialist thoracic radiologist reporting was higher (68% (95% CI 55–79%)) than non-specialist reporting (53% (95% CI 44–62%) p = 0.0488). Specificity was not significantly different. Conclusion: The diagnostic performance of CT in routine clinical practice is insufficient to exclude or confirm PM. A benign CT report should not dissuade pleural sampling where the presence of primary or secondary pleural malignancy would alter management. Sensitivity is lower with non-thoracic radiology reporting and particularly low using CTPA

A failure management prototype: DR/Rx

This failure management prototype performs failure diagnosis and recovery management of hierarchical, distributed systems. The prototype, which evolved from a series of previous prototypes following a spiral model for development, focuses on two functions: (1) the diagnostic reasoner (DR) performs integrated failure diagnosis in distributed systems; and (2) the recovery expert (Rx) develops plans to recover from the failure. Issues related to expert system prototype design and the previous history of this prototype are discussed. The architecture of the current prototype is described in terms of the knowledge representation and functionality of its components

The B-coder: an improved binary arithmetic coder and probability estimator

In this paper we present the B-coder, an efficient binary arithmetic coder that performs extremely well on a wide range of data. The B-coder should be classed as an `approximate’ arithmetic coder, because of its use of an approximation to multiplication. We show that the approximation used in the B-coder has an efficiency cost of 0.003 compared to Shannon entropy. At the heart of the B-coder is an efficient state machine that adapts rapidly to the data to be coded. The adaptation is achieved by allowing a fixed table of transitions and probabilities to change within a given tolerance. The combination of the two techniques gives a coder that out-performs the current state-of-the-art binary arithmetic coders

The B-coder: an improved binary arithmetic coder and probability estimator

In this paper we present the B-coder, an efficient binary arithmetic coder that performs extremely well on a wide range of data. The B-coder should be classed as an `approximate’ arithmetic coder, because of its use of an approximation to multiplication. We show that the approximation used in the B-coder has an efficiency cost of 0.003 compared to Shannon entropy. At the heart of the B-coder is an efficient state machine that adapts rapidly to the data to be coded. The adaptation is achieved by allowing a fixed table of transitions and probabilities to change within a given tolerance. The combination of the two techniques gives a coder that out-performs the current state-of-the-art binary arithmetic coders

Recent Cases

The principle that the government must not only refrain from providing special preference to a particular religion, but, that it also must stand apart from religion in general is abridged once the government seeks to provide sustenance to religious interests. Government neutrality is preserved, however, when the government merely provides fertile ground on which religious interests can thrive independently. Because state-imposed employment accommodation of religious precepts creates proselytizing opportunities upon which religious interests flourish and because there is no overriding government interest in requiring such accommodation, Title VII\u27s Randolph Amendment transgresses establishment clause prohibitions. John P. Kelly ========================= The court perhaps considered it unnecessary to explicate fully the parameters of the employer\u27s duty, since the instant case involved an activity that was not related directly to the employer\u27s business operations and required no great expenditure to eliminate. The lack of a clear delineation of what duty an employer owes, however, renders the opinion of questionable usefulness in cases that involve more difficult factual situations.The court also fails to analyze whether injunctive relief is appropriate in all cases in which an employer has breached his duty to provide a safe workplace. Normally, injunctive relief is available only when all remedies at law are inadequate either because the impending harm is not compensable in monetary damages or because the harm is a continuing one that would necessitate a multiplicity of legal actions. Although the plaintiff in the instant case easily could have satisfied either of these conditions, the failure of the court to impose the traditional equity requirements, coupled with the court\u27s broad statement as to its equity powers, may imply that injunctive relief is always available when an employer breaches his duty to provide a safe workplace. The propriety of such expansive injunctive relief, however, may be seriously questioned in states that have enacted occupational safety and health acts patterned after OSHA. The traditional requirement that all remedies at law be inadequate before equitable relief is available embraces administrative avenues of relief as well as judicial relief, and all of the state occupational safety and health acts provide extensive administrative remedies for occupational hazards. Courts in those states therefore may require those remedies to be exhausted, or at least shown to be ineffective or inapplicable, before they make injunctive relief available. Although analytically incomplete in several respects, the opinion of the instant court appears to reach the correct result. The common law purported to impose upon employers a duty to provide a safe workplace for their employees, but it provided no adequate remedy to compel compliance with that duty. The instant decision corrects this anomaly in the law and may well promote an invigorating reconsideration of the role of the common law in the field of occupational health and safety. G. David Dod

A novel human glucocorticoid receptor SNP results in increased transactivation potential.

Glucocorticoids are one of the most widely used therapeutics in the treatment of a variety of inflammatory disorders. However, it is known that there are variable patient responses to glucocorticoid treatment; there are responders and non-responders, or those that need higher dosages. Polymorphisms in the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) have been implicated in this variability. In this study, ninety-seven volunteers were surveyed for polymorphisms in the human GR-alpha (hGRα), the accepted biologically active reference isoform. One isoform identified in our survey, named hGR DL-2, had four single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), one synonymous and three non-synonymous, and a four base pair deletion resulting in a frame shift and early termination to produce a 743 amino acid putative protein. hGR DL-2 had a decrease in transactivation potential of more than 90%. Upon further analysis of the individual SNPs and deletion, one SNP, A829G, which results in a lysine to glutamic acid amino acid change at position 277, was found to increase the transactivation potential of hGR more than eight times the full-length reference. Furthermore, the hGRα-A829G isoform had a differential hyperactive response to various exogenous steroids. Increasing our knowledge as to how various SNPs affect hGR activity may help in understanding the unpredictable patient response to steroid treatment, and is a step towards personalizing patient care