Scheduling language and algorithm development study. Volume 2, phase 2: Introduction to plans programming

A user guide for the Programming Language for Allocation and Network Scheduling (PLANS) is presented. Information is included for the construction of PLANS programs. The basic philosophy of PLANS is discussed, and access and update reference techniques are described along with the use of tree structures

Differences Between an Aerobic and Yoga Group Exercise on Measures of Mood, Stress, and Group Cohesion

Please refer to the pdf version of the abstract located adjacent to the title

Scheduling language and algorithm development study. Volume 3, phase 2: As-built specifications for the prototype language and module library

Detailed specifications of the prototype language and module library are presented. The user guide to the translator writing system is included

Prevalence and attributable health burden of chronic respiratory diseases, 1990–2017 : a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017

Background: Previous attempts to characterise the burden of chronic respiratory diseases have focused only on specific disease conditions, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or asthma. In this study, we aimed to characterise the burden of chronic respiratory diseases globally, providing a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis on geographical and time trends from 1990 to 2017. Methods: Using data from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2017, we estimated the prevalence, morbidity, and mortality attributable to chronic respiratory diseases through an analysis of deaths, disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), and years of life lost (YLL) by GBD super-region, from 1990 to 2017, stratified by age and sex. Specific diseases analysed included asthma, COPD, interstitial lung disease and pulmonary sarcoidosis, pneumoconiosis, and other chronic respiratory diseases. We also assessed the contribution of risk factors (smoking, second-hand smoke, ambient particulate matter and ozone pollution, household air pollution from solid fuels, and occupational risks) to chronic respiratory disease-attributable DALYs. Findings: In 2017, 544·9 million people (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 506·9–584·8) worldwide had a chronic respiratory disease, representing an increase of 39·8% compared with 1990. Chronic respiratory disease prevalence showed wide variability across GBD super-regions, with the highest prevalence among both males and females in high-income regions, and the lowest prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. The age-sex-specific prevalence of each chronic respiratory disease in 2017 was also highly variable geographically. Chronic respiratory diseases were the third leading cause of death in 2017 (7·0% [95% UI 6·8–7·2] of all deaths), behind cardiovascular diseases and neoplasms. Deaths due to chronic respiratory diseases numbered 3 914 196 (95% UI 3 790 578–4 044 819) in 2017, an increase of 18·0% since 1990, while total DALYs increased by 13·3%. However, when accounting for ageing and population growth, declines were observed in age-standardised prevalence (14·3% decrease), age-standardised death rates (42·6%), and age-standardised DALY rates (38·2%). In males and females, most chronic respiratory disease-attributable deaths and DALYs were due to COPD. In regional analyses, mortality rates from chronic respiratory diseases were greatest in south Asia and lowest in sub-Saharan Africa, also across both sexes. Notably, although absolute prevalence was lower in south Asia than in most other super-regions, YLLs due to chronic respiratory diseases across the subcontinent were the highest in the world. Death rates due to interstitial lung disease and pulmonary sarcoidosis were greater than those due to pneumoconiosis in all super-regions. Smoking was the leading risk factor for chronic respiratory disease-related disability across all regions for men. Among women, household air pollution from solid fuels was the predominant risk factor for chronic respiratory diseases in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, while ambient particulate matter represented the leading risk factor in southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania, and in the Middle East and north Africa super-region. Interpretation: Our study shows that chronic respiratory diseases remain a leading cause of death and disability worldwide, with growth in absolute numbers but sharp declines in several age-standardised estimators since 1990. Premature mortality from chronic respiratory diseases seems to be highest in regions with less-resourced health systems on a per-capita basis. Funding: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 license. **Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 5 including Federation University Australia affiliate “Muhammad Aziz Rahman” is provided in this record*

The Effects of Foam Rolling on Hamstring Flexibility, Muscle Soreness and Power

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Exomoon simulations

We introduce and describe our newly developed code that simulates light curves and radial velocity curves for arbitrary transiting exoplanets with a satellite. The most important feature of the program is the calculation of radial velocity curves and the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect in such systems. We discuss the possibilities for detecting the exomoons taking the abilities of Extremely Large Telescopes into account. We show that satellites may be detected also by their RM effect in the future, probably using less accurate measurements than promised by the current instrumental developments. Thus, RM effect will be an important observational tool in the exploration of exomoons.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures with 9 figure panels, accepted by EM&

Spectrum occupancy measurement: a case for cognitive radio network in lagos, Nigeria

The proliferation in technologies and with the recent introduction of new paradigm for wireless communication, the demand for wireless devices has increased drastically in recent years. This therefore, posed a major threat on the available frequency spectrum and as a result, an efficient method for the utilisation of the limited frequency spectrum is required. As the scarcity of frequency spectrum is a major problem in the telecommunication field, cognitive radio technology has been identified as a promising solution to this problem. Cognitive radio allows the opportunistic access of licensed bands by unlicensed users without causing harmful interference to the licensed user. There is a need to evaluate the utilisation level of the licensed bands in order to identify which frequency bands can be used for cognitive radio implementation. Nevertheless, spectrum measurement campaigns have been conducted mostly in USA and a few other locations around the world. In this paper, the results of the measurement campaign conducted in Ikeja, the capital city of Lagos, Nigeria covering the range of frequency 700 MHz up to 2.2 GHz is presented. The measurement results are analysed and compared to the frequency allocation table published by the Nigerian Communications Commission. The results obtained show that the frequency spectrum is underutilised and therefore a significant amount of spectrum is available for the future implementation of cognitive radio networks

Acute Cardiorespiratory and Kinematic Adjustments upon Early Exposure to Barefoot Running

Please view abstract in the attached PDF file

Quantum Decay of Domain Walls in Cosmology II: Hamiltonian Approach

This paper studies the decay of a large, closed domain wall in a closed universe. Such walls can form in the presence of a broken, discrete symmetry. We study a novel process of quantum decay for such a wall, in which the vacuum fluctuates from one discrete state to another throughout one half of the universe, so that the wall decays into pure field energy. Equivalently, the fluctuation can be thought of as the nucleation of a second closed domain wall of zero size, followed by its growth by quantum tunnelling and its collision with the first wall, annihilating both. We therefore study the 2-wall system coupled to a spherically symmetric gravitational field. We derive a simple form of the 2-wall action, use Dirac quantization, obtain the 2-wall wave function for annihilation, find from it the barrier factor for this quantum tunneling, and thereby get the decay probability. This is the second paper of a series.Comment: 27 pages LaTeX, using revtex and psfig. 3 figure

Sparse and Constrained Stochastic Predictive Control for Networked Systems

This article presents a novel class of control policies for networked control of Lyapunov-stable linear systems with bounded inputs. The control channel is assumed to have i.i.d. Bernoulli packet dropouts and the system is assumed to be affected by additive stochastic noise. Our proposed class of policies is affine in the past dropouts and saturated values of the past disturbances. We further consider a regularization term in a quadratic performance index to promote sparsity in control. We demonstrate how to augment the underlying optimization problem with a constant negative drift constraint to ensure mean-square boundedness of the closed-loop states, yielding a convex quadratic program to be solved periodically online. The states of the closed-loop plant under the receding horizon implementation of the proposed class of policies are mean square bounded for any positive bound on the control and any non-zero probability of successful transmission