First Data Release of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program

The Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP) is a three-layered imaging survey aimed at addressing some of the most outstanding questions in astronomy today, including the nature of dark matter and dark energy. The survey has been awarded 300 nights of observing time at the Subaru Telescope and it started in March 2014. This paper presents the first public data release of HSC-SSP. This release includes data taken in the first 1.7 years of observations (61.5 nights) and each of the Wide, Deep, and UltraDeep layers covers about 108, 26, and 4 square degrees down to depths of i~26.4, ~26.5, and ~27.0 mag, respectively (5sigma for point sources). All the layers are observed in five broad bands (grizy), and the Deep and UltraDeep layers are observed in narrow bands as well. We achieve an impressive image quality of 0.6 arcsec in the i-band in the Wide layer. We show that we achieve 1-2 per cent PSF photometry (rms) both internally and externally (against Pan-STARRS1), and ~10 mas and 40 mas internal and external astrometric accuracy, respectively. Both the calibrated images and catalogs are made available to the community through dedicated user interfaces and database servers. In addition to the pipeline products, we also provide value-added products such as photometric redshifts and a collection of public spectroscopic redshifts. Detailed descriptions of all the data can be found online. The data release website is https://hsc-release.mtk.nao.ac.jp/.Comment: 34 pages, 20 figures, 7 tables, moderate revision, accepted for publication in PAS

Transculturalization of a Diabetes-Specific Nutrition Algorithm: Asian Application

The prevalence of type 2 diabetes (T2D) in Asia is growing at an alarming rate, posing significant clinical and economic risk to health care stakeholders. Commonly, Asian patients with T2D manifest a distinctive combination of characteristics that include earlier disease onset, distinct pathophysiology, syndrome of complications, and shorter life expectancy. Optimizing treatment outcomes for such patients requires a coordinated inclusive care plan and knowledgeable practitioners. Comprehensive management starts with medical nutrition therapy (MNT) in a broader lifestyle modification program. Implementing diabetes-specific MNT in Asia requires high-quality and transparent clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) that are regionally adapted for cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic factors. Respected CPGs for nutrition and diabetes therapy are available from prestigious medical societies. For cost efficiency and effectiveness, health care authorities can select these CPGs for Asian implementation following abridgement and cultural adaptation that includes: defining nutrition therapy in meaningful ways, selecting lower cutoff values for healthy body mass indices and waist circumferences (WCs), identifying the dietary composition of MNT based on regional availability and preference, and expanding nutrition therapy for concomitant hypertension, dyslipidemia, overweight/obesity, and chronic kidney disease. An international task force of respected health care professionals has contributed to this process. To date, task force members have selected appropriate evidence-based CPGs and simplified them into an algorithm for diabetes-specific nutrition therapy. Following cultural adaptation, Asian and Asian-Indian versions of this algorithmic tool have emerged. The Asian version is presented in this report

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Interference Avoidance and Scheduling Schemes for Two-tier LTE Networks

Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) and single carrier-frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) are two long term evolution (LTE) radio access technologies for downlink and uplink transmission respectively, which are used to provide multiple user access. However, since mobile users are normally located indoors and served by cellular networks, the radio signal can be hindered due to the obstacles, which may affect connection quality. Although in two-tier networks, which consist of macrocells and femtocells, femtocells can offload the traffic from macrocells thereby improving indoor signal coverage, the dynamic deployment feature of femtocells may result in signal interference due to limited frequency spectrum. The tradeoff between broad signal coverage and increased signal interference deserves further exploration for practical network operation. In this dissertation, dynamic frequency resource management is proposed to avoid both co-tier and cross-tier interference in two-tier LTE networks and to increase frequency channel utilization under co-channel deployment. A graph-based non-conflict group discovery algorithm is proposed to discover the disjoint interference-free groups among femtocells in order to avoid the co-tier interference. A macrocell uses the femtocell gateway for frequency resource allocation among femtocells to avoid cross-tier interference. We formulate the optimized downlink frequency resource assignment as a fractional knapsack problem, and solve the problem by using a greedy method. The simulation results show that the average downlink data transfer rate can be increased from 21% to 60%, while downlink idle rate and blocking rate are decreased in the range of $15$ and $60$ respectively, as compared with conventional graph coloring and graph-based dynamic frequency reuse schemes in a co-channel environment. Optimized uplink frequency resource allocation is formulated as an activity selection problem that can be solved using a greedy method. Simulation results demonstrate the ability of the proposed method in reducing the average blocking rate, as compared with round-robin, recursive maximum expansion, adaptive resource allocation and allocate as granted-robust SC-FDMA uplink scheduling schemes, in addition to enhance the average satisfaction rate, average data rate, and fairness index. Due to the reuse feature over non-interference frequency groups, the proposed interference avoidance and uplink scheduling schemes demonstrated an improvement of between 3% to 61% in overall data transfer rate, compared with full channel reuse, conventional graph coloring and dedicated channel deployment schemes.摘 要. i ABSTRACT ii Contents iii List of Figures iv List of Tables vi Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Background 5 2.1 SC-FDMA uplink scheduling 5 2.2 Types of interference in two-tier networks 6 2.3 Integrated scheduling and interference coordination 8 2.4 Graph-based spectrum allocation strategy 9 Chapter 3 Interference Avoidance and Scheduling Schemes 11 3.1 System model 11 3.2 non-Conflict Group Discovery Algorithm 14 3.3 Dynamic frequency resource management 17 3.4 Fractional knapsack problem and downlink scheduling 20 3.5 Activity selection-based uplink scheduling 21 Chapter 4 System simulations and performance evaluation 27 4.1 Simulation environment and parameters for downlink 27 4.2 Simulation results for downlink and interference avoidance 30 4.3 Simulation environment and parameters for uplink 34 4.4 Simulation results for uplink and interference avoidance 36 Chapter 5 Conclusions 43 References 4

Downregulation of Caveolin-1 in a Murine Model of Acute Allergic Airway Disease

Airway remodeling refers to the structural changes in the airways of asthma. Caveolin-1 reduces cell growth and negatively regulates smooth muscle cell proliferation. The aim was to investigate lung caveolin-1 status in a murine model of acute allergic airway disease. Methods: Six- to eight-week-old female BALB/c mice were sensitized by intraperitoneal injections of phosphate-buffered saline or ovalbumin (OVA) and aluminium hydroxide on Days 0 and 14, challenged with aerosolized saline or OVA (1%) on Days 21–25, 28–32, and 35. The mice were killed 1 day after the last OVA/saline challenge. Serum OVA-specific immunoglobulin E (IgE) was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Peribronchial inflammation was quantified by morphometric analysis. Lung caveolin-1 and Type I collagen mRNA expression was determined by real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction. Total lung collagen was measured using Sircol Assay Kit. Results: Serum OVA-specific IgE levels were significantly elevated in OVA-challenged mice when compared with saline-challenged mice. Percentage of inflammatory cells in the bronchoalveolar lavage was significantly higher in the OVA-challenged animals. The animals’ lungs that were sensitized and challenged with OVA contained large numbers of inflammatory cells concentrated near the airways and in the perivascular areas. The thickness of the bronchial epithelial layer and smooth muscle layer and the numbers of total inflammatory cells and eosinophils significantly increased in OVA-challenged mice. Caveolin-1 mRNA expression significantly decreased and Type I collagen mRNA expression significantly increased in the lung tissue of OVA-challenged mice. Conclusion: These results suggest that caveolin-1 seems to be involved in the pathogenesis of airway remodeling of acute allergic airway disease