1,186 research outputs found

    Inverter ratio failure detector

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    A failure detector which detects the failure of a dc to ac inverter is disclosed. The inverter under failureless conditions is characterized by a known linear relationship of its input and output voltages and by a known linear relationship of its input and output currents. The detector includes circuitry which is responsive to the detector's input and output voltages and which provides a failure-indicating signal only when the monitored output voltage is less by a selected factor, than the expected output voltage for the monitored input voltage, based on the known voltages' relationship. Similarly, the detector includes circuitry which is responsive to the input and output currents and provides a failure-indicating signal only when the input current exceeds by a selected factor the expected input current for the monitored output current based on the known currents' relationship

    One Year of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation

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    Epidemiologic evaluation of Nhanes for environmental Factors and periodontal disease.

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    Periodontitis is a chronic inflammation that destroys periodontal tissues caused by the accumulation of bacterial biofilms that can be affected by environmental factors. This report describes an association study to evaluate the relationship of environmental factors to the expression of periodontitis using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Study (NHANES) from 1999-2004. A wide range of environmental variables (156) were assessed in patients categorized for periodontitis (n = 8884). Multiple statistical approaches were used to explore this dataset and identify environmental variable patterns that enhanced or lowered the prevalence of periodontitis. Our findings indicate an array of environmental variables were different in periodontitis in smokers, former smokers, or non-smokers, with a subset of specific environmental variables identified in each population subset. Discriminating environmental factors included blood levels of lead, phthalates, selected nutrients, and PCBs. Importantly, these factors were found to be coupled with more classical risk factors (i.e. age, gender, race/ethnicity) to create a model that indicated an increased disease prevalence of 2-4 fold across the sample population. Targeted environmental factors are statistically associated with the prevalence of periodontitis. Existing evidence suggests that these may contribute to altered gene expression and biologic processes that enhance inflammatory tissue destruction

    A guide for many authors:Writing manuscripts in large collaborations

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    Writing manuscripts collaboratively affords both opportunities and challenges: Collaborative papers can benefit from the expertise, perspectives, and collective effort of the group but can lack coherence or be produced inefficiently. When collaborations are large, involving tens or hundreds of researchers, there are more and different opportunities and challenges, like appropriately crediting the contributions of many people. This paper is a practical guide for authors writing collaborative manuscripts, particularly those working in large collaborations. We emphasize the importance of deliberate leadership and describe five general strategies that lead authors can employ to maximize opportunities and navigate challenges: care in recruiting the author team, care in crediting the author team, clear and frequent communication, organized materials, and deliberate and early decision-making. For each, we offer specific tips in line with these strategies (e.g., use collaboration agreements, leverage Open Science practices). We then suggest how lead authors can structure the writing and revising process to produce a coherent manuscript and offer tips for submitting papers and responding to peer-reviews. A repository of resources for people writing manuscripts in collaborations is available at osf.io/dzwcn

    Late Pleistocene fishes of the Tennessee River Basin: an analysis of a late Pleistocene freshwater fish fauna from Bell Cave (site ACb-2) in Colbert County, Alabama, USA

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    The Tennessee River Basin is considered one of the most important regions for freshwater biodiversity anywhere on the globe. The Tennessee River Basin currently includes populations of at least half of the described contemporary diversity of extant North American freshwater fishes, crayfish, mussel, and gastropod species. However, comparatively little is known about the biodiversity of this basin from the Pleistocene Epoch, particularly the late Pleistocene (∼10,000 to 30,000 years B.P.) leading to modern Holocene fish diversity patterns. The objective of this study was to describe the fish assemblages of the Tennessee River Basin from the late Pleistocene using a series of faunas from locales throughout the basin documented from published literature, unpublished reports, and an undocumented fauna from Bell Cave (site ACb-2, Colbert County, AL). Herein we discuss 41 unequivocal taxa from 10 late Pleistocene localities within the basin and include a systematic discussion of 11 families, 19 genera, and 24 identifiable species (28 unequivocal taxa) specific to the Bell Cave locality. Among the described fauna are several extirpated (e.g., Northern Pike Esox lucius, Northern Madtom Noturus stigmosus) and a single extinct (Harelip Sucker Moxostoma lacerum) taxa that suggest a combination of late Pleistocene displacement events coupled with more recent changes in habitat that have resulted in modern basin diversity patterns. The Bell Cave locality represents one of the most intact Pleistocene freshwater fish deposits anywhere in North America. Significant preservational, taphonomic, sampling, and identification biases preclude the identification of additional taxa. Overall, this study provides a detailed look into paleo-river ecology, as well as freshwater fish diversity and distribution leading up to the contemporary biodiversity patterns of the Tennessee River Basin and Mississippi River Basin as a whole

    Patient-Specific Variations in Biomarkers across Gingivitis and Periodontitis

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    This study investigates the use of saliva, as an emerging diagnostic fluid in conjunction with classification techniques to discern biological heterogeneity in clinically labelled gingivitis and periodontitis subjects (80 subjects; 40/group) A battery of classification techniques were investigated as traditional single classifier systems as well as within a novel selective voting ensemble classification approach (SVA) framework. Unlike traditional single classifiers, SVA is shown to reveal patient-specific variations within disease groups, which may be important for identifying proclivity to disease progression or disease stability. Salivary expression profiles of IL-1ß, IL-6, MMP-8, and MIP-1α from 80 patients were analyzed using four classification algorithms (LDA: Linear Discriminant Analysis [LDA], Quadratic Discriminant Analysis [QDA], Naïve Bayes Classifier [NBC] and Support Vector Machines [SVM]) as traditional single classifiers and within the SVA framework (SVA-LDA, SVA-QDA, SVA-NB and SVA-SVM). Our findings demonstrate that performance measures (sensitivity, specificity and accuracy) of traditional classification as single classifier were comparable to that of the SVA counterparts using clinical labels of the samples as ground truth. However, unlike traditional single classifier approaches, the normalized ensemble vote-counts from SVA revealed varying proclivity of the subjects for each of the disease groups. More importantly, the SVA identified a subset of gingivitis and periodontitis samples that demonstrated a biological proclivity commensurate with the other clinical group. This subset was confirmed across SVA-LDA, SVA-QDA, SVA-NB and SVA-SVM. Heatmap visualization of their ensemble sets revealed lack of consensus between these subsets and the rest of the samples within the respective disease groups indicating the unique nature of the patients in these subsets. While the source of variation is not known, the results presented clearly elucidate the need for novel approaches that accommodate inherent heterogeneity and personalized variations within disease groups in diagnostic characterization. The proposed approach falls within the scope of P4 medicine (predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory) with the ability to identify unique patient profiles that may predict specific disease trajectories and targeted disease management

    MARINE FISHES (CHONDRICHTHYES, HOLOCEPHALI, ACTINOPTERYGII) FROM THE UPPER CRETACEOUS (CAMPANIAN) RYBUSHKA FORMATION NEAR BELOE OZERO, SARATOV OBLAST, RUSSIA

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    A diverse fish paleofauna occurs in the upper Campanian portion of the Rybushka Formation exposed near Saratov city in the Saratov Oblast, Russia. Twenty taxa have been identified, including two holocephalans (Ischyodus bifurcatus and Amylodon karamysh), twelve elasmobranchs (Synechodus sp., Cederstroemia sp., Cretalamna cf. C. borealis, C. cf. C. sarcoportheta, Archaeolamna kopingensis, Eostriatolamia segedini, E. venusta, Pseudocorax laevis, Squalicorax kaupi, Squalicorax morphotype 1, Squalidae indet., and Squatirhina sp.), and six teleosts (Pachyrhizodus sp., Saurocephalus lanciformis, Paralbula casei, Enchodus cf. E. dirus, E. cf. E. gladiolus, and E. petrosus). Many of these taxa are new to the Campanian fish record of Russia, and the assemblage demonstrates that there is significant taxonomic overlap between the Rybushka Formation paleofauna and that of North America
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