Envelope Protection for Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This paper describes the design, development, and testing of an automatic envelope protection system as implemented on Georgia Institute of Technology's unmanned helicopter GTMax. The envelope protection system makes use of online-learning adaptive neural networks to generate online dynamic models, which are used to estimate limits on controller commands. The system provides command capability up to the limit boundaries while preventing envelope exceedance. Simulation and flight-test results are provided for load factor and rotor stall limit protection during aggressive maneuvering

Factors associated with extended remission in neovascular age-related macular degeneration on pro re nata treatment protocol.

AimTo show the characteristics and outcomes of patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) who had extended remission (ER) while on a pro re nata (PRN) treatment protocol.MethodsThis was a retrospective case-control study of a consecutive series of patients with nAMD treated with a PRN antivascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) drug regimen. ER was defined as the absence of haemorrhage, intraretinal/subretinal fluid on optical coherence tomography and leakage on fluorescein angiography for 52 weeks after cessation of anti-VEGF therapy. Matching patients with nAMD who did not achieve ER were included as control group. Cox regression analysis was fitted to identify predictors of time to achieve ER and time to recurrence. A logistic regression analysis of baseline characteristics was used to identify predictors of achieving ER.ResultsOf 830 eyes treated with anti-VEGF monotherapy, 77 (9.2%) eyes achieved ER during a median follow-up of 236 weeks (range 70-525 weeks). Cox regression analysis showed that ER was achieved earlier in eyes with isolated intraretinal fluid (HR, 2.05; 95% CI 1.929 to 4.520; p=0.045) at presentation. Logistic regression analysis showed that type 3 choroidal neovascularisation (OR, 0.090; 95% CI 0.021 to 0.382; p=0.001), thinner choroid (OR, 0.993; 95% CI 0.988 to 0.998; p=0.004) and absence of macular atrophy (OR, 0.233; 95% CI 0.065 to 0.839; p=0.026) at baseline increased the likelihood of achieving ER.ConclusionER is achievable in 9.2% of patients under PRN therapy for nAMD. At presentation with nAMD, anatomical features on retinal imaging may predict the likelihood of achieving ER and a shorter time to achieve ER

Agents of nosocomial bacteremia and microorganisms ısolated from blood cultures in an ıntensive care unit patients

Amaç: Nozokomiyal infeksiyonlar içinde nozokomiyal bakteriyemiler önemli bir yer tutmaktadır. Biz bu çalışmada 1998 yılı boyunca reanimasyon ünitesinde izlenen hastalara ait kan kültürlerinde üreyen mikroorganizmalar ile bu hastalarda tanımlanan nozokomiyal bakteriyemi etkenlerini birlikte değerlendirmeyi amaçladık. Yöntem: 1998 yılı boyunca izlenen hastalara ait 557 kan kültürü BACTEC 9120 (Becton Dickinson, ABD) otomatize kan kültür sisteminde izlenmiştir. Kateter kültürleri ise Maki ’nin tanımladığı semikantitatif yöntemle yapılmıştır. Bulgular: Nozokomiyal bakteriyemi etkenleri içinde gram negatif basillerin % 63 oranı ile ön planda olduğu belirlenmiştir. Bu üniteden gelen kan kültürlerinde izole edilen mikroorganizmalar içinde de gram negatif basillerin oranı % 57 olarak bulunmuştur. Sonuç: Reanimasyon ünitesinde tanımlanan nozokomiyal bakteriyemi etkenlerinin dağılımında, yoğun bakım ünitelerinde beklendiği üzere gram negatif basillerin ön planda olduğu, bunu gram pozitif kokların izlediği belirlenmiştir. Kan kültürlerinde üreyen mikroorganizmalar irdelendiğinde ise (klinik olarak anlamlı bulunmayan gram pozitif koklara ait üremelerden dolayı yine ikinci sırada yer almakla birlikte) gram pozitif kokların oranı biraz daha yüksek bulunmuştur.Objective: Blood-stream infections consist a high proportion of nosocomial infections. Blood cultures and nosocomial bacteremia agents were evaluated in patients hospitalized in our reanimation unit during 1998. Material and Method: A total of 557 blood cultures were observed in automatic culture system BACTEC 9120 (Becton Dickinson, USA) whereas catheter cultures were evaluated according to Makis semi-quantitative method. Results: Gram negative bacilli constituted 63 % of all nosocomial blood-stream infection agents and 57 % of all microorganisms isolated from blood cultures. Conclusion: As expected in intensive care units, gram negative bacteria were the leading agents of nosocomial bacteremia

Water Waves and Light: Two Unlikely Partners

We study a generic model governing optical beam propagation in media featuring a nonlocal nonlinear response, namely a two-dimensional defocusing nonlocal nonlinear Schrödinger (NLS) model. Using a framework of multiscale expansions, the NLS model is reduced first to a bidirectional model, namely a Boussinesq or a Benney-Luke-type equation, and then to the unidirectional Kadomtsev-Petviashvili (KP) equation – both in Cartesian and cylindrical geometry. All the above models arise in the description of shallow water waves, and their solutions are used for the construction of relevant soliton solutions of the nonlocal NLS. Thus, the connection between water wave and nonlinear optics models suggests that patterns of water may indeed exist in light. We show that the NLS model supports intricate patterns that emerge from interactions between soliton stripes, as well as lump and ring solitons, similarly to the situation occurring in shallow water

Pituitary infiltration by non-Hodgkin's lymphoma: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Pituitary adenomas represent the most frequently observed type of sellar masses; however, the presence of a rapidly growing sellar tumor, diabetes insipidus, ophthalmoplegia and headaches in an older patient strongly suggests metastasis to the pituitary. Since the anterior pituitary has a great reserve capacity, metastasis to the pituitary and pituitary involvement in lymphoma are usually asymptomatic. Whereas diabetes insipidus is the most frequent symptom, patients can present with headaches, ophthalmoplegia and bilateral hemianopsia.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>A 70-year-old woman with no previous history of malignancy presented with headaches, right oculomotor nerve palsy and diabetes insipidus. As magnetic resonance imaging revealed a sellar mass involving the pituitary gland and infundibular stalk, which also extended into the right cavernous sinus and sphenoid sinus, the patient underwent an immediate transsphenoidal decompression surgery. Her prolactin was 102.4 ng/ml, whereas her gonadotropic hormone levels were low. A low level of urine osmolality after overnight water deprivation, along with normal plasma osmolality suggested diabetes insipidus. Histological examination revealed that the mass had been the infiltration of a high grade B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma involving respiratory system epithelial cells. Paranasal sinus computed tomography scanning and magnetic resonance imaging of the thorax and abdomen were performed. Since magnetic resonance imaging did not reveal any abnormality, after paranasal sinus computed tomography was performed, we concluded that the primary lymphoma originated from the sphenoid sinus and infiltrated the pituitary. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy to the sellar area were planned, but the patient died and her family did not permit an autopsy.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Lymphoma infiltration to the pituitary is difficult to differentiate from pituitary adenoma, meningioma and other sellar lesions. To plan the treatment of lymphoma infiltration of the pituitary gland, it must be differentiated from other sellar lesions.</p

Reproducibility of scientific workflows execution using cloud-aware provenance (ReCAP)

© 2018, Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature. Provenance of scientific workflows has been considered a mean to provide workflow reproducibility. However, the provenance approaches adopted so far are not applicable in the context of Cloud because the provenance trace lacks the Cloud information. This paper presents a novel approach that collects the Cloud-aware provenance and represents it as a graph. The workflow execution reproducibility on the Cloud is determined by comparing the workflow provenance at three levels i.e., workflow structure, execution infrastructure and workflow outputs. The experimental evaluation shows that the implemented approach can detect changes in the provenance traces and the outputs produced by the workflow

The ocean sampling day consortium

Ocean Sampling Day was initiated by the EU-funded Micro B3 (Marine Microbial Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biotechnology) project to obtain a snapshot of the marine microbial biodiversity and function of the world’s oceans. It is a simultaneous global mega-sequencing campaign aiming to generate the largest standardized microbial data set in a single day. This will be achievable only through the coordinated efforts of an Ocean Sampling Day Consortium, supportive partnerships and networks between sites. This commentary outlines the establishment, function and aims of the Consortium and describes our vision for a sustainable study of marine microbial communities and their embedded functional traits

Enabling FAIR research in Earth Science through research objects

Data-intensive science communities are progressively adopting FAIR practices that enhance the visibility of scientific breakthroughs and enable reuse. At the core of this movement, research objects contain and describe scientific information and resources in a way compliant with the FAIR principles and sustain the development of key infrastructure and tools. This paper provides an account of the challenges, experiences and solutions involved in the adoption of FAIR around research objects over several Earth Science disciplines. During this journey, our work has been comprehensive, with outcomes including: an extended research object model adapted to the needs of earth scientists; the provisioning of digital object identifiers (DOI) to enable persistent identification and to give due credit to authors; the generation of content-based, semantically rich, research object metadata through natural language processing, enhancing visibility and reuse through recommendation systems and third-party search engines; and various types of checklists that provide a compact representation of research object quality as a key enabler of scientific reuse. All these results have been integrated in ROHub, a platform that provides research object management functionality to a wealth of applications and interfaces across different scientific communities. To monitor and quantify the community uptake of research objects, we have defined indicators and obtained measures via ROHub that are also discussed herein.Published550-5645IT. Osservazioni satellitariJCR Journa