Clinical and Neurophysiological correlates of cortical excitability changes studied using the cortical threshold tracking TMS in hyperkinetic and hypokinetic movement disorders

This thesis attempts to answer the question, “what is the significance of abnormal cortical excitability studies in movement disorders?” Remarkably similar cortical excitability findings have been reported in Parkinson's disease (PD) and Stiff-man syndrome (SMS) despite these disorders manifesting with hypokinetic and hyperkinetic movement disorders, respectively. In SMS patients, there was a significant reduction in short intracortical inhibition (SICI) with dissociation between the measures of cortical and spinal excitability and clinical measures of disease severity and plasma levels of anti-GAD antibodies. The results suggest that spinal hyperexcitability and muscle stiffness and spasms are unlikely to be simply due to cortical disinhibition of spinal circuits. In PD patients, there was a significant reduction in SICI and intracortical inhibition (ICF) which appeared to be dependent on disease severity and plasma levodopa levels. Most significant findings were detected in those who had been on long term levodopa carbidopa intestinal gel (LCIG) treatment. Specifically, there was a lack of decrement in hand tapping speed, an objective measure of bradykinesia, despite a significant reduction in matching plasma levodopa levels and SICI. These results raise the possibility of restoration of the long duration effect of levodopa as a result of sustained continuous dopaminergic therapy. This thesis confirms there is much value in further careful research of cortical excitability changes in Parkinson’s disease and other related movement disorders

Universal Expression for the Lowest Excitation Energy of Natural Parity Even Multipole States

We present a new expression for the energy of the lowest collective states in even-even nuclei throughout the entire periodic table. Our empirical formula is extremely valid and holds universally for all of the natural parity even multipole states. This formula depends only on the mass number and the valence nucleon numbers with six parameters. These parameters are determined easily and unambiguously from the data for each multipole state. We discuss the validity of our empirical formula by comparing our results with those of other studies and also by estimating the average and the dispersion of the logarithmic errors of the calculated excitation energies with respect to the measured ones.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

The Irony of the Unchecked Growth of Higher Education in South Korea: Crystallization of Class Cleavages and Intensifying Status Competition

This study raises questions about the discrepancy between the praise for Korean education by international organizations and Koreans dissatisfaction with their education. First, the study identifies the main reason for the discrepancy as inequality at the level of higher education. To track down the formation of the current problem of educational inequality and excessive competition for status, the study evaluates the historical changes in South Koreas education system in the past several decades, focusing on the unchecked expansion of higher education. In doing so, the study shows how the aggregate decisions made by individuals and families, and the political dynamics of the past five decades have affected broad policy regarding educational stratification in South Korea. In the last section, the study presents what has been an empirical pattern of educational stratification in Korea reflecting all these social changes during the past five decades in Korea

High-performance simulation with high-level modeling support

The computing power of recent massively parallel supercomputers is rising to the challenge of exploding demands for speed and memory that can be dedicated to a single problem. Still the difficulty in parallel programming persists and there is increasing demand for high level support for building discrete event models to execute on such platforms. We present a parallel DEVS-based (Discrete Event System Specification) simulation environment that can execute on distributed memory multicomputer systems. Underlying the environment is a parallel container class library for hiding the details of message passing technology while providing high level abstractions for hierarchical, modular DEVS models. The objective of Heterogeneous Container Class Library (HCCL) is to provide convenient object-oriented primitives for utilizing a collection of distributed computing resources to solve large problems and to speed up computations. Implemented by ensemble methods, parallel container class provides concurrency and a parallel computing paradigm at a higher level of abstraction encapsulating the details of the underlying message passing mechanisms. The difficulty of the synchronization problem was reduced by the inherent nature of ensemble method primitives. The DEVS/containers architecture for parallel simulation was first implemented on a massively parallel platform (CM-5) using CMMD message passing library. Then the SP2 implementation uses portable MPI so that the simulation architecture can be mapped to any heterogeneous and distributed computing environment. Observed performance of the C++ implementation working on the Thinking Machines CM-5 and IBM SP2 for high resolution ecosystem models demonstrates that high performance need not be sacrificed in providing high level abstractions to the discrete event modelling. The study of performance and exploitation of the natural parallelism in hierarchical discrete event models are also supported by capability of mapping DEVS models to the processors. The closure under coupling property and a mail message approach to interprocessor communication enable a user to easily partition and map DEVS models onto parallel platforms. We study how the mapping of DEVS models affect the performance and the efficiency of parallel simulation. The results are in agreement with earlier theory which predicts that optimal mappings are predictably influenced by communication overhead and communication/computation ratio

A Malicious Pattern Detection Engine for Embedded Security Systems in the Internet of Things

With the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), a large number of physical objects in daily life have been aggressively connected to the Internet. As the number of objects connected to networks increases, the security systems face a critical challenge due to the global connectivity and accessibility of the IoT. However, it is difficult to adapt traditional security systems to the objects in the IoT, because of their limited computing power and memory size. In light of this, we present a lightweight security system that uses a novel malicious pattern-matching engine. We limit the memory usage of the proposed system in order to make it work on resource-constrained devices. To mitigate performance degradation due to limitations of computation power and memory, we propose two novel techniques, auxiliary shifting and early decision. Through both techniques, we can efficiently reduce the number of matching operations on resource-constrained systems. Experiments and performance analyses show that our proposed system achieves a maximum speedup of 2.14 with an IoT object and provides scalable performance for a large number of patterns

Core–Shell Metal–Ceramic Microstructures: Mechanism of Hydrothermal Formation and Properties as Catalyst Materials

Unique metal–ceramic composites with core–shell microarchitecture (γ-Al₂O₃@Al and spinel-MeAl₂O₄@Al, Me = Zn, Ni, Co, Mn, and Mg) were obtained by a simple hydrothermal surface oxidation (HTSO) of Al metal particles in an aqueous solution of heterometal ions at elevated temperatures (393–473 K). The reactions afforded self-constructed core–shell microarchitecture with Al core encapsulated by the high-surface-area γ-Al₂O₃ or spinel metal aluminates (MeAl₂O₄) shell with various surface morphologies, compositions, and excellent physicochemical properties. Extensive experimental and theoretical investigation with period 3–6 metal elements (Na⁺, Ca²⁺, Sr²⁺, Ba²⁺, K⁺, Fe³⁺, Cu²⁺, Zn²⁺, Ni²⁺, Co²⁺, Mn²⁺, and Mg²⁺) at various metal concentrations and temperatures revealed that the heterogeneous self-construction of spinel-MeAl₂O₄@Al primarily depends on two intrinsic properties of the additive metal ions: (i) thermodynamic stability constant of the metal hydroxide complex and (ii) size of the metal ion. The spinel-MeAl₂O₄@Al microstructures formed with a limited number of hetero metal ions (Me = Zn²⁺, Ni²⁺, Co²⁺, Mn²⁺, and Mg²⁺) with (i) moderate rates of the hydroxide formation with compatible kinetics to the hydrolysis of aluminum on the Al surface and (ii) small size of additive metal ions enough for diffusion through the shell layer. As heterogeneous catalyst substrates, these metal–ceramic composites delivered markedly enhanced catalytic performance at intensive reaction conditions because of their facile heat transfer and superior physicochemical surface properties. The performance and effects of the core–shell metal–ceramic composites were demonstrated using Rh catalysts supported on MgAl₂O₄@Al. The Rh/MgAl₂O₄@Al catalyst was utilized for the endothermic glycerol stream reforming (C₃H₈O₃ + 3H₂O ⇄ 3CO₂ + 7H₂, Δ<i>H</i>₀²⁹⁸ = 128 kJ mol^–1), exhibiting markedly greater catalytic performance than the conventional Rh/MgAl₂O₄ under intensive reaction conditions attributed to significantly facilitated heat transport through the core–shell metal–ceramic microstructures

DEVS-C++: A High Performance Modeling and Simulation Environment

,s’imulution of landscape ecosystems with high reab-ism demands comput~ing power greatly exceeding that of current workstation technology. However, the prospects are excellent that modelling and simulation environrizents may be implemented on next-generation high, performance, heterogeneous distrib.uted comput-ing platforms. Computing technology is becoming powerful enough to support the,voluminous amounts of ~1l,o,~oledge/illformatioiz necessary for representing such systems and the speed required of simulations to provide reliuble answers in reasonable time. This pa-per provrdes an overview of n project to develop a high performance modelling and simulation environment to.support modelling of large-scale, high resolution land-.scape systems. L High performance simulation ‘The pa.per reports on design a,nd henchma.rking of a high performance computing environment support-iug simulat,ion of landscape ecosystems at high lev-(21s of resolut#ion and encompa.ssing la,rge areas, such a.s forests and watersheds. We report on experi-ence ga,ined in an NSF-ARPA sponsored Grand Chal-lenge Applica.tion Group project whose goals are: 1) constructing a. modelling and simulation environment U-rat employs massively parallel processing and Dis-crete Event, System Specificat,ion(DEVS) formalized models t.0 simulate interact,ions of ecosystem processes at srlect,able scales of spa.ce and time, 2) integrating, a.8 intrinsic to t,he environment, Geographical Infor-mation System(GIS) dat,a bases to provided realistic descript8ions of 3-dimensiona, landscapes, and 3) sup-porting experilllentation and interpretation throug

High Performance Modelling and Simulation: Progress and Challenges

Modelling large scale systems with natural and artificial components requires storage of voluminous amounts of knowledge/information as well as computing speed for simulations to provide reliable answers in reasonable time. Computing technology is becoming powerful enough to support such high performance modelling and simulation. This paper starts with an overview of a project to develop a simulation environment to support modelling of large-scale systems with high levels of resolution. Based on this framework we point out the need for a million fold increase in today&apos;s desktop computing power. We then discuss design features of the high performance environment that have been shown to offer speedups of the scale required. We show how the DEVS (Discrete Event System Specification) formalism provides the efficient and effective representation of both continuous and discrete processes in mixed artificial/natural systems necessary to fully exploit available computational resources. 1 Intr..

Zeolitic Imidazolate Framework Membrane with Marked Thermochemical Stability for High-Temperature Catalytic Processes

The thermochemical stability of metal organic framework (MOF) membranes is vital for the application in chemical-reaction and -separation processes, but understanding the stability of MOF membranes and structure–property relationships under antagonistic chemical atmosphere is still required. In this work, a supported zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF) membrane, ZIF-7/MgO-Al₂O₃, of unprecedented hydrothermal stability is obtained by a modulation of the acid–base chemistry at the membrane/support interface. The solid/solid interface acidity that has been overlooked in the fields turns out to have paramount inducing effects on the thermochemical stability of ZIF membranes, resulting in the catastrophic acid-catalyzed decomposition of ZIF frameworks at atomic level. The ZIF-7/MgO-Al₂O₃ of marked thermochemical stability permits the first significant application of MOF membranes for catalytic membrane reactor (MR) in severe and practical process conditions, performing water–gas shift reaction (CO + H₂O ↔ CO₂ + H₂) at considerably high temperatures (473–673 K) and steam concentrations (20–40%). The findings and results provide significant new insights on the property and stability of ZIF membranes with extensive opportunities for thermochemical processes that have been permitted only for the inorganic membranes such as zeolites, palladium, and metal oxides