Realizability of metamaterials with prescribed electric permittivity and magnetic permeability tensors

We show that any pair of real symmetric tensors \BGve and \BGm can be realized as the effective electric permittivity and effective magnetic permeability of a metamaterial at a given fixed frequency. The construction starts with two extremely low loss metamaterials, with arbitrarily small microstructure, whose existence is ensured by the work of Bouchitt{\'e} and Bourel and Bouchitt\'e and Schweizer, one having at the given frequency a permittivity tensor with exactly one negative eigenvalue, and a positive permeability tensor, and the other having a positive permittivity tensor, and a permeability tensor having exactly one negative eigenvalue. To achieve the desired effective properties these materials are laminated together in a hierarchical multiple rank laminate structure, with widely separated length scales, and varying directions of lamination, but with the largest length scale still much shorter than the wavelengths and attenuation lengths in the macroscopic effective medium.Comment: 12 pages, no figure

Developing a manually annotated clinical document corpus to identify phenotypic information for inflammatory bowel disease

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems can be used for specific Information Extraction (IE) tasks such as extracting phenotypic data from the electronic medical record (EMR). These data are useful for translational research and are often found only in free text clinical notes. A key required step for IE is the manual annotation of clinical corpora and the creation of a reference standard for (1) training and validation tasks and (2) to focus and clarify NLP system requirements. These tasks are time consuming, expensive, and require considerable effort on the part of human reviewers.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Using a set of clinical documents from the VA EMR for a particular use case of interest we identify specific challenges and present several opportunities for annotation tasks. We demonstrate specific methods using an open source annotation tool, a customized annotation schema, and a corpus of clinical documents for patients known to have a diagnosis of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). We report clinician annotator agreement at the document, concept, and concept attribute level. We estimate concept yield in terms of annotated concepts within specific note sections and document types.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Annotator agreement at the document level for documents that contained concepts of interest for IBD using estimated Kappa statistic (95% CI) was very high at 0.87 (0.82, 0.93). At the concept level, F-measure ranged from 0.61 to 0.83. However, agreement varied greatly at the specific concept attribute level. For this particular use case (IBD), clinical documents producing the highest concept yield per document included GI clinic notes and primary care notes. Within the various types of notes, the highest concept yield was in sections representing patient assessment and history of presenting illness. Ancillary service documents and family history and plan note sections produced the lowest concept yield.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Challenges include defining and building appropriate annotation schemas, adequately training clinician annotators, and determining the appropriate level of information to be annotated. Opportunities include narrowing the focus of information extraction to use case specific note types and sections, especially in cases where NLP systems will be used to extract information from large repositories of electronic clinical note documents.</p

Faunistic Composition, Ecological Properties and Zoogeographical Composition of the Family Elateridae (Coleoptera) of the Central Anatolian Region of Turkey

The focus of this study was to understand the faunistic composition, ecological properties and zoogeographical composition of Elateridae (Coleoptera) of the Central Anatolian region. 72 species belonging to seven subfamilies and 25 genera were identified. The major part of the Elateridae fauna of the Central Anatolian region is formed by the subfamilies Elaterinae and Cardiophorinae. The genus Cardiophorus was the most species-rich genus. The species composition of the Elateridae fauna of the Central Anatolian region is partially consistent with known Elateridae fauna of Turkey. The Central Anatolian region shares most species with the European part of the Western Palaearctic as does the Elateridae fauna of Turkey. Detailed localities of nine species are given for the first time for Turkey, with emphasis on the Central Anatolian region

РАСЧЕТ ЭЛЕКТРОДИНАМИЧЕСКОЙ СТОЙКОСТИ ПРОВОДОВ ВОЗДУШНЫХ ЛИНИЙ

In aerial transmission lines aluminium multiwire conductors are in use. Owing to their flexible design the electrodynamic effect of short circuit currents may lead to intolerable mutual rendezvous and even cross-whipping of the phase conductors. The increasing motion of the conductors caused by effect of the short-circuit electrodynamic force impulse is accompanied by the dynamic load impact affecting the conductors, insulating and supporting constructions of the aerial lines. Intensity of the short-circuit currents electrodynamic impact on the flexible conductors depends on the short circuit current magnitude. For research into electrodynamic endurance of the conductors of the aerial lines located at the vertices of arbitrary triangle with spans of a large length, the authors assume the conductor analytical model in the form of a flexible tensile thread whose mass is distributed evenly lengthwise the conductor. With this analytical model, by the action of the imposed forces the conductor assumes the form conditioned by the diagram of applied external forces, and resists neither bending nor torsion. The initial conditions calculation task reduces to solving the flexible thread statics equations. The law of motion of the conductor marginal points comes out of the conjoint solution of dynamic equations of the conductor and structural components of the areal electric power lines. Based on the proposed algorithm, the researchers of the Chair of the Electric Power Stations of BNTU developed a software program LINEDYS+, which in its characteristics yields to no foreign analogs, e. g. SAMSEF. To calculate the initial conditions they modified a software program computing the flexible conductor mechanics named MR 21. The conductor short-circuit electrodynamic interaction estimation considers structural elements of the areal lines, ice and wind loads, objective parameters of the short circuit. The software programs are accommodated with the simple and intelligible user interface and can produce automatic reports. For the computation certainty valuation of the developed software program, comparison of the experimental and design values was performed on an engineering prototype span of the French state-owned company Electricite de France. На воздушных линиях применяются многопроволочные алюминиевые провода. Из-за их гибкой конструкции в результате электродинамического действия токов короткого замыкания могут происходить недопустимые взаимные сближения и даже схлестывания фазных проводников друг с другом. Ускоренное движение проводов, вызванное действием импульса электродинамических усилий при коротком замыкании, сопровождается ударными динамическими нагрузками, действующими на провода, изоляционные и опорные конструкции воздушных линий. Интенсивность электродинамического действия токов короткого замыкания на гибкие проводники воздушных линий зависит от величины токов короткого замыкания. Для исследования электродинамической стойкости проводов воздушных линий, расположенных по вершинам произвольного треугольника в пролетах большой длины, принимается расчетная модель в виде гибкой растяжимой нити, масса которой равномерно распределена по ее длине. При такой расчетной модели провод под действием внешних сил принимает форму, обусловленную эпюрой приложенных сил, и не сопротивляется изгибу и кручению. Задача расчета начальных условий сводится к решению уравнений статики гибкой нити. Закон движения краевых точек проводов установлен из совместного решения уравнений динамики проводов и конструктивных элементов воздушных ЛЭП. На основе предлагаемого алгоритма на кафедре «Электрические станции» БНТУ разработана компьютерная программа LINEDYS+, которая по своим характеристикам не уступает зарубежным аналогам, например SAMSEF. Для расчета начальных условий модифицировали компьютерную программу механического расчета гибких проводников MR 21. Электродинамическое взаимодействие проводов при коротком замыкании оценивается с учетом конструктивных элементов воздушных линий, гололедных и ветровых нагрузок, реальных характеристик короткого замыкания. Компьютерные программы снабжены простым и понятным пользовательским интерфейсом и могут создавать автоматические отчеты. Оценка достоверности расчетов по разработанной компьютерной программе выполнялась сопоставлением экспериментальных и расчетных данных для опытного пролета французской государственной компанией Electricite de France.

Pattern Recognition Analysis of Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectra of Brain Tissue Extracts from Rats Anesthetized with Propofol or Isoflurane

BACKGROUND: General anesthesia is routinely used as a surgical procedure and its safety has been endorsed by clinical outcomes; however, its effects at the molecular level have not been elucidated. General anesthetics influence glucose metabolism in the brain. However, the effects of anesthetics on brain metabolites other than those related to glucose have not been well characterized. We used a pattern recognition analysis of proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectra to visualize the changes in holistic brain metabolic phenotypes in response to the widely used intravenous anesthetic propofol and the volatile anesthetic isoflurane. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Rats were randomized into five groups (n = 7 each group). Propofol and isoflurane were administered to two groups each, for 2 or 6 h. The control group received no anesthesia. Brains were removed directly after anesthesia. Hydrophilic compounds were extracted from excised whole brains and measured by proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. All spectral data were processed and analyzed by principal component analysis for comparison of the metabolite profiles. Data were visualized by plotting principal component (PC) scores. In the plots, each point represents an individual sample. The propofol and isoflurane groups were clustered separately on the plots, and this separation was especially pronounced when comparing the 6-h groups. The PC scores of the propofol group were clearly distinct from those of the control group, particularly in the 6-h group, whereas the difference in PC scores was more subtle in the isoflurane group and control groups. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The results of the present study showed that propofol and isoflurane exerted differential effects on holistic brain metabolism under anesthesia

Development and implementation of clinical guidelines : an artificial intelligence perspective

Clinical practice guidelines in paper format are still the preferred form of delivery of medical knowledge and recommendations to healthcare professionals. Their current support and development process have well identified limitations to which the healthcare community has been continuously searching solutions. Artificial intelligence may create the conditions and provide the tools to address many, if not all, of these limitations.. This paper presents a comprehensive and up to date review of computer-interpretable guideline approaches, namely Arden Syntax, GLIF, PROforma, Asbru, GLARE and SAGE. It also provides an assessment of how well these approaches respond to the challenges posed by paper-based guidelines and addresses topics of Artificial intelligence that could provide a solution to the shortcomings of clinical guidelines. Among the topics addressed by this paper are expert systems, case-based reasoning, medical ontologies and reasoning under uncertainty, with a special focus on methodologies for assessing quality of information when managing incomplete information. Finally, an analysis is made of the fundamental requirements of a guideline model and the importance that standard terminologies and models for clinical data have in the semantic and syntactic interoperability between a guideline execution engine and the software tools used in clinical settings. It is also proposed a line of research that includes the development of an ontology for clinical practice guidelines and a decision model for a guideline-based expert system that manages non-compliance with clinical guidelines and uncertainty.This work is funded by national funds through the FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within project PEst-OE/EEI/UI0752/2011"

Frequent CXCR4 tropism of HIV-1 subtype A and CRF02_AG during late-stage disease - indication of an evolving epidemic in West Africa

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>HIV-1 is one of the fastest evolving pathogens, and is distinguished by geographic and genetic variants that have been classified into different subtypes and circulating recombinant forms (CRFs). Early in infection the primary coreceptor is CCR5, but during disease course CXCR4-using HIV-1 populations may emerge. This has been correlated with accelerated disease progression in HIV-1 subtype B. Basic knowledge of HIV-1 coreceptor tropism is important due to the recent introduction of coreceptor antagonists in antiretroviral therapy, and subtype-specific differences regarding how frequently HIV-1 CXCR4-using populations appear in late-stage disease need to be further investigated. To study how frequently CXCR4-using populations appear in late-stage disease among HIV-1 subtype A and CRF02_AG, we evaluated the accuracy of a recombinant virus phenotypic assay for these subtypes, and used it to determine the HIV-1 coreceptor tropism of plasma samples collected during late-stage disease in Guinea-Bissau. We also performed a genotypic analysis and investigated subtype-specific differences in the appearance of CXCR4 tropism late in disease.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We found that the recombinant virus phenotypic assay accurately predicted HIV-1 coreceptor tropism of subtype A and CRF02_AG. Over the study period (1997-2007), we found an increasing and generally high frequency of CXCR4 tropism (86%) in CRF02_AG. By sequence analysis of the V3 region of our samples we developed a novel genotypic rule for predicting CXCR4 tropism in CRF02_AG, based on the combined criteria of the total number of charged amino acids and net charge. This rule had higher sensitivity than previously described genotypic rules and may be useful for development of future genotypic tools for this CRF. Finally, we conducted a literature analysis, combining data of 498 individuals in late-stage disease, and found high amounts of CXCR4 tropism for all major HIV-1 subtypes (60-77%), except for subtype C (15%).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The increase in CXCR4 tropism over time suggests an evolving epidemic of CRF02_AG. The results of the literature analysis demonstrate the need for further studies investigating subtype-specific emergence for CXCR4-tropism; this may be particularly important due to the introduction of CCR5-antagonists in HIV treatment regimens.</p