International Nuclear Medicine Consensus on the Clinical Use of Amyloid Positron Emission Tomography in Alzheimer's Disease.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the main cause of dementia, with its diagnosis and management remaining challenging. Amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) has become increasingly important in medical practice for patients with AD. To integrate and update previous guidelines in the field, a task group of experts of several disciplines from multiple countries was assembled, and they revised and approved the content related to the application of amyloid PET in the medical settings of cognitively impaired individuals, focusing on clinical scenarios, patient preparation, administered activities, as well as image acquisition, processing, interpretation and reporting. In addition, expert opinions, practices, and protocols of prominent research institutions performing research on amyloid PET of dementia are integrated. With the increasing availability of amyloid PET imaging, a complete and standard pipeline for the entire examination process is essential for clinical practice. This international consensus and practice guideline will help to promote proper clinical use of amyloid PET imaging in patients with AD

Process Patterns for Component-Based Software Development

Abstract. Component-Based Development (CBD) has been broadly used in software development, as it enhances reusability and flexibility, and reduces the costs and risks involved in systems development. It has therefore spawned many widely-used approaches, such as Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) and software product lines. On the other hand, in order to gain a competitive edge, organizations need to define custom processes tailored to fit their specific de-velopment requirements. This has led to the emergence of process patterns and Method Engineering approaches. We propose a set of process patterns commonly encountered in component-based development methodologies. Seven prominent component-based method-ologies have been selected and reviewed, and a set of high-level process patterns recurring in these methodologies have been identified. A generic process framework for component-based development has been proposed based on these process patterns. The process patterns and the generic framework can be used for developing or tailoring a process for producing component-based systems

Intelligent tracking control of a DC motor driver using self-organizing TSK type fuzzy neural networks

[[abstract]]In this paper, a self-organizing Takagi–Sugeno–Kang (TSK) type fuzzy neural network (STFNN) is proposed. The self-organizing approach demonstrates the property of automatically generating and pruning the fuzzy rules of STFNN without the preliminary knowledge. The learning algorithms not only extract the fuzzy rule of STFNN but also adjust the parameters of STFNN. Then, an adaptive self-organizing TSK-type fuzzy network controller (ASTFNC) system which is composed of a neural controller and a robust compensator is proposed. The neural controller uses an STFNN to approximate an ideal controller, and the robust compensator is designed to eliminate the approximation error in the Lyapunov stability sense without occurring chattering phenomena. Moreover, a proportional-integral (PI) type parameter tuning mechanism is derived to speed up the convergence rates of the tracking error. Finally, the proposed ASTFNC system is applied to a DC motor driver on a field-programmable gate array chip for low-cost and high-performance industrial applications. The experimental results verify the system stabilization and favorable tracking performance, and no chattering phenomena can be achieved by the proposed ASTFNC scheme.[[notice]]補正完畢[[incitationindex]]SCI[[booktype]]紙本[[booktype]]電子

Magnetic Field Amplification in Galaxy Clusters and its Simulation

We review the present theoretical and numerical understanding of magnetic field amplification in cosmic large-scale structure, on length scales of galaxy clusters and beyond. Structure formation drives compression and turbulence, which amplify tiny magnetic seed fields to the microGauss values that are observed in the intracluster medium. This process is intimately connected to the properties of turbulence and the microphysics of the intra-cluster medium. Additional roles are played by merger induced shocks that sweep through the intra-cluster medium and motions induced by sloshing cool cores. The accurate simulation of magnetic field amplification in clusters still poses a serious challenge for simulations of cosmological structure formation. We review the current literature on cosmological simulations that include magnetic fields and outline theoretical as well as numerical challenges.Comment: 60 pages, 19 Figure

Probing exotic phenomena at the interface of nuclear and particle physics with the electric dipole moments of diamagnetic atoms: A unique window to hadronic and semi-leptonic CP violation

The current status of electric dipole moments of diamagnetic atoms which involves the synergy between atomic experiments and three different theoretical areas -- particle, nuclear and atomic is reviewed. Various models of particle physics that predict CP violation, which is necessary for the existence of such electric dipole moments, are presented. These include the standard model of particle physics and various extensions of it. Effective hadron level combined charge conjugation (C) and parity (P) symmetry violating interactions are derived taking into consideration different ways in which a nucleon interacts with other nucleons as well as with electrons. Nuclear structure calculations of the CP-odd nuclear Schiff moment are discussed using the shell model and other theoretical approaches. Results of the calculations of atomic electric dipole moments due to the interaction of the nuclear Schiff moment with the electrons and the P and time-reversal (T) symmetry violating tensor-pseudotensor electron-nucleus are elucidated using different relativistic many-body theories. The principles of the measurement of the electric dipole moments of diamagnetic atoms are outlined. Upper limits for the nuclear Schiff moment and tensor-pseudotensor coupling constant are obtained combining the results of atomic experiments and relativistic many-body theories. The coefficients for the different sources of CP violation have been estimated at the elementary particle level for all the diamagnetic atoms of current experimental interest and their implications for physics beyond the standard model is discussed. Possible improvements of the current results of the measurements as well as quantum chromodynamics, nuclear and atomic calculations are suggested.Comment: 46 pages, 19 tables and 16 figures. A review article accepted for EPJ

Diversity of hard-bottom fauna relative to environmental gradients in Kongsfjorden, Svalbard

A baseline study of hard-bottom zoobenthos in relation to environmental gradients in Kongsfjorden, a glacial fjord in Svalbard, is presented, based on collections from 1996 to 1998. The total species richness in 62 samples from 0 to 30 m depth along five transects was 403 species. Because 32 taxa could not be identified to species level and because 11 species are probably new to science, the total number of identified species was 360. Of these, 47 species are new for Svalbard waters. Bryozoa was the most diverse group. Biogeographic composition revealed features of both Arctic and sub-Arctic properties of the fauna. Species richness, frequency of species occurrence, mean abundance and biomass generally decreased towards the tidal glaciers in inner Kongsfjorden. Among eight environmental factors, depth was most important for explaining variance in the composition of the zoobenthos. The diversity was consistently low at shallow depths, whereas the non-linear patterns of species composition of deeper samples indicated a transitional zone between surface and deeper water masses at 15–20 m depth. Groups of “colonial” and “non-colonial” species differed in diversity, biogeographic composition and distribution by location and depth as well as in relation to other environmental factors. “Non-colonial” species made a greater contribution than “colonial” species to total species richness, total occurrence and biomass in samples, and were more influenced by the depth gradient. Biogeographic composition was sensitive to variation of zoobenthic characteristics over the studied depth range. A list of recorded species and a description of sampling sites are presented

Clusters of galaxies: setting the stage

Clusters of galaxies are self-gravitating systems of mass ~10^14-10^15 Msun. They consist of dark matter (~80 %), hot diffuse intracluster plasma (< 20 %) and a small fraction of stars, dust, and cold gas, mostly locked in galaxies. In most clusters, scaling relations between their properties testify that the cluster components are in approximate dynamical equilibrium within the cluster gravitational potential well. However, spatially inhomogeneous thermal and non-thermal emission of the intracluster medium (ICM), observed in some clusters in the X-ray and radio bands, and the kinematic and morphological segregation of galaxies are a signature of non-gravitational processes, ongoing cluster merging and interactions. In the current bottom-up scenario for the formation of cosmic structure, clusters are the most massive nodes of the filamentary large-scale structure of the cosmic web and form by anisotropic and episodic accretion of mass. In this model of the universe dominated by cold dark matter, at the present time most baryons are expected to be in a diffuse component rather than in stars and galaxies; moreover, ~50 % of this diffuse component has temperature ~0.01-1 keV and permeates the filamentary distribution of the dark matter. The temperature of this Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium (WHIM) increases with the local density and its search in the outer regions of clusters and lower density regions has been the quest of much recent observational effort. Over the last thirty years, an impressive coherent picture of the formation and evolution of cosmic structures has emerged from the intense interplay between observations, theory and numerical experiments. Future efforts will continue to test whether this picture keeps being valid, needs corrections or suffers dramatic failures in its predictive power.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Space Science Reviews, special issue "Clusters of galaxies: beyond the thermal view", Editor J.S. Kaastra, Chapter 2; work done by an international team at the International Space Science Institute (ISSI), Bern, organised by J.S. Kaastra, A.M. Bykov, S. Schindler & J.A.M. Bleeke

Integrating sequence and array data to create an improved 1000 Genomes Project haplotype reference panel

A major use of the 1000 Genomes Project (1000GP) data is genotype imputation in genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Here we develop a method to estimate haplotypes from low-coverage sequencing data that can take advantage of single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) microarray genotypes on the same samples. First the SNP array data are phased to build a backbone (or 'scaffold') of haplotypes across each chromosome. We then phase the sequence data 'onto' this haplotype scaffold. This approach can take advantage of relatedness between sequenced and non-sequenced samples to improve accuracy. We use this method to create a new 1000GP haplotype reference set for use by the human genetic community. Using a set of validation genotypes at SNP and bi-allelic indels we show that these haplotypes have lower genotype discordance and improved imputation performance into downstream GWAS samples, especially at low-frequency variants. © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved