Discussion of the design of satellite-laser measurement stations in the eastern Mediterranean under the geological aspect. Contribution to the earthquake prediction research by the Wegener Group and to NASA's Crustal Dynamics Project

Research conducted for determining the location of stations for measuring crustal dynamics and predicting earthquakes is discussed. Procedural aspects, the extraregional kinematic tendencies, and regional tectonic deformation mechanisms are described

Utilization of Cone Beam CT for Reconstruction of Dose Distribution Delivered in Image-guided Radiotherapy of Prostate Carcinoma - Bony Landmark Setup Compared to Fiducial Markers Setup

The purpose of my doctoral thesis was to compare two different styles of prostate image- guided radiotherapy: bony landmark (BL) setup vs. fiducial markers (FM) setup. Twenty-nine prostate patients were treated with daily BL setup and 30 patients with daily FM setup. Delivered dose distribution was reconstructed on cone-beam CT (CBCT) acquired once a week immediately after the alignment. Target dose coverage was evaluated by the proportion of the CTV encompassed by the 95% isodose. Original plans employed 1 cm safety margin. Alternative plans assuming smaller 7 mm margin between CTV and PTV were evaluated in the same way. Rectal and bladder volumes were compared with initial ones. While the margin reduction in case of BL setup makes the prostate coverage significantly worse (p = 0.0003, McNemar's test), in case of FM setup with the reduced 7 mm margin, the prostate coverage is even better compared to BL setup with 10 mm margin (p = 0.049, Fisher's exact test). Moreover, partial volumes of organs at risk irradiated with a specific dose can be significantly lowered (p < 0.0001, unpaired t-test). Reducing of safety margin is not acceptable in case of BL setup, while the margin can be lowered from 10 mm to 7 mm in case of FM setup.Cílem mé dizertační práce bylo porovnat dvě techniky obrazem řízené radioterapie lokalizovaného karcinomu prostaty: zacílení na kostní struktury (BL) vs. zacílení na implantované kontrastní markery (FM). Dvacet devět pacientů bylo nastavováno na kostěné struktury a třicet pacientů bylo nastavováno na implantované kontrastní markery. Za účelem rekonstrukce dodané dávkové distribuce bylo pacientům jednou týdně, ihned po jejich nastavení, provedeno zobrazení cone beam CT (CBCT). Pokrytí cílových objemů předepsanou dávkou bylo hodnoceno prostřednictvím podílu CTV pokrytého 95% izodózou. Původní ozařovací plány byly vytvořeny s bezpečnostním lemem o velikosti 1 cm. Stejným způsobem byly hodnoceny alternativní ozařovací plány, předpokládající menší 7mm bezpečnostní lem mezi CTV a PTV. Objemy rekta a močového měchýře byly porovnány s původními objemy na plánovacím CT. Zatímco zmenšení bezpečnostního lemu by v případě nastavení na kostní struktury významně zhoršilo pokrytí prostaty (p = 0.0003, McNemar's test), v případě nastavení na implantované kontrastní markery s bezpečnostním lemem sníženým na 7 mm by pokrytí prostaty bylo dokonce ještě lepší než v případě nastavení na kostní struktury s původním 10mm lemem (p = 0.049, Fisher's exact test). Navíc snížením bezpečnostního lemu můžeme významně snížit...Ústav lékařské biofyzikyDepartment of Medical BiophysicsLékařská fakulta v Hradci KrálovéFaculty of Medicine in Hradec Králov

Anterior segment diseases presented in an interactive videotape format

With the overwhelming amount of information provided in ocular disease courses, it is often useful to have a convenient method for supplementing course material. With this in mind, a videotape has been produced which will serve as a convenient and effective teaching aid for second year students. Rather than a simple presentation of facts, this tape is formatted in a manner that encourages participative learning. The student extracts the relevant facts from the case history, forms her/his own diagnosis, observes the recorded eye condition, makes a differential diagnosis and develops a treatment plan. All of this information is available within the tape itself

Cloudtop

Even as users rely more on the web for their computing needs, they continue to depend on a desktop-like area for quick access to in-use resources. The traditional desktop is file-centric and prone to clutter, making it suboptimal for use in a web-dominated world. This paper introduces Cloudtop, a browser plugin that offers a lightweight workplace for temporary items, optimized around the idea that its contents originate from and will ultimately return to the web. Cloudtop improves upon the desktop by 1) implementing a simple, time-based notebook metaphor for managing clutter, 2) capturing and bundling extensible metadata for web resources, and 3) providing a platform for greater interface uniformity across sites

Automatic implementation generation for pervasive applications

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-71).This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Pervasive computing promises to put computers in almost every corner of our life. Unfortunately, it also promises to make programmers' jobs harder since they cannot know what components are available in the run-time environment and as such, cannot statically plan out their programs. To help this situation, we propose goal-oriented programming, which may be more amenable to programming pervasive applications. Goal-oriented programming adds a level of indirection between Goals, high-level intentions such as "make me available for chat," and Techniques, the code that implements the intentions. Each Technique is a combination of code and prerequisite subgoals, so that a Technique can be itself goal-oriented. By decomposing an application this way, it is possible to automatically build parts of it based on the runtime environment. When an application would like a Goal satisfied, the implementation Planner first finds Techniques that can satisfy the Goal, and then recurses to satisfy the Techniques' subgoals. After a sufficient number of Techniques are found, the Planner evaluates the Techniques in some user-defined way, and chooses a set to execute. This work focuses on programming framework that isolates the planning aspect of goal-oriented programming from the Goals and Techniques themselves. We provide a reference Planner and evaluate its how well the Planner performs in simulation.by Justin Mazzola Paluska.M.Eng

Clui: A Platform for Handles to Rich Objects

On the desktop, users are accustomed to having visible handles to objects that they want to organize, share, or manipulate. Web applications today feature many classes of such objects, like flight itineraries, products for sale, people, recipes, and businesses, but there are no interoperable handles for high-level semantic objects that users can grab. This paper proposes Clui, a platform for exploring a new data type, called a Webit, that provides uniform handles to rich objects. Clui uses plugins to 1) create Webits on existing pages by extracting semantic data from those pages, and 2) augmenting existing sites with drag and drop targets that accept and interpret Webits. Users drag and drop Webits between sites to transfer data, auto-fill search forms, map associated locations, or share Webits with others. Clui enables experimentation with handles to semantic objects and the standards that underlie them

Structured decomposition of adaptive applications

Thesis (Elec. E. in Computer Science)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2012.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 57-58).We describe an approach to automate certain high-level implementation decisions in a pervasive application, allowing them to be postponed until run time. Our system enables a model in which an application programmer can specify the behavior of an adaptive application as a set of open-ended decision points. We formalize decision points as Goals, each of which may be satisfied by a set of scripts called Techniques. The set of Techniques vying to satisfy any Goal is additive and may be extended at runtime without needing to modify or remove any existing Techniques. Our system provides a framework in which Techniques may compete and interoperate at runtime in order to maintain an adaptive application. Technique development may be distributed and incremental, providing a path for the decentralized evolution of applications. Benchmarks show that our system imposes reasonable overhead during application startup and adaptation.by Justin Mazzola Paluska.Elec.E.in Computer Scienc

Computing with Chunks

Thesis (Sc. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2013.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 145-150).Modern computing substrates like general-purpose GPUs, massively multi-core processors, and cloud computing clusters offer practically unlimited resources at the cost of requiring programmers to manage those resources for correctness, efficiency, and performance. Instead of using generic abstractions to write their programs, programmers of modern computing substrates are forced to structure their programs around available hardware. This thesis argues for a new generic machine abstraction, the Chunk Model, that explicitly exposes program and machine structure, making it easier to program modern computing substrates. In the Chunk Model, fixed-sized chunks replace the flat virtual memories of traditional computing models. Chunks may link to other chunks, preserving the structure of and important relationships within data and programs as an explicit graph of chunks. Since chunks are limited in size, large data structures must be divided into many chunks, exposing the structure of programs and data structures to run-time systems. Those run-time systems, in turn, may optimize run-time execution, both for ease of programming and performance, based on the exposed structure. This thesis describes a full computing stack that implements the Chunk Model. At the bottom layer is a distributed chunk memory that exploits locality of hardware components while still providing programmer-friendly consistency semantics and distributed garbage collection. On top of the distributed chunk memory, we build a virtual machine that stores all run-time state in chunks, enabling computation to be distributed through the distributed chunk memory system. All of these features are aimed at making it easier to program modern computing substrates. This thesis evaluates the Chunk Model through example applications in cloud computing, scientific computing, and shared client/server computing.by Justin Mazzola Paluska.Sc.D

Rozšíření měřicího rozsahu pádové trubky na výzkumném energetickém centru

Better understanding of combustion process in large scale pulverized coal boilers can help with increasing of coal combustion efficiency and decreasing of pollutant emissions, such as nitrogen oxides and arguable carbon dioxide. This improvement cannot be performed without testing in labor-atory conditions. For this purpose, a new testing facility called the drop tube has been built in the Energy Research Center (ERC) of VSB-Technical University of Ostrava. This paper describes the methodology of pulverized coal thermo-kinetic properties determination with the use of the Drop Tube Test Facility and the first steps in improvement of this methodology. There is a new design of the sampling probe, an improved one, gas-tight double-wall design, implemented into the methodolo-gy lately. The intermediate space is vacuumed for the purpose of better isolating properties of the probe. Further, the probe is newly supplemented with a cryogenic control valve for smooth regulation of small flow rates of cooling media - liquid nitrogen. These innovations bring cooling media sav-ings, especially thanks to increased efficiency of this media’s cooling potential. Furthermore, smoother regulation allows a sample cooling in an accurately defined point.Lepší pochopení spalovacího procesu ve velkých práškových uhelných kotlích může pomoci se zvyšováním efektivity spalování uhlí a snížením emisí znečišťujících látek jako jsou oxidy dusíku a diskutabilní oxid uhličitý. Tato zlepšení není možné provést bez laboratorního zkoušení. Pro tento účel bylo na Výzkumném energetickém centru VŠB-Technické univerzity Ostrava postaveno nové testovací zařízení nazvané pádová trubka. Tento článek popisuje metodiku stanovení termo-kinetických vlastností uhelného prášku s použitím pilotního testovacího zařízení pádové trubky a popisuje první kroky ke zlepšení této metodiky. Do metodiky je nově začleněna druhá vylepšená verze odběrové chladící sondy, která je vyhotovena v plynotěsném dvouplášťovém provedení. Mezi-prostor je pro zlepšení izolačních vlastností sondy evakuován. Dále je sonda nově doplněna kryogenním regulačním ventilem pro jemně nastavitelné dávkování chladícího média – tekutého dusíku. Tyto inovace přináší úspory ve spotřebě chladícího media zejména díky zvýšení účinnosti chladícího potenciálu tohoto media. Dále plynulejší regulace umožňuje zchlazení vzorku v přesně definovaném místě

Vision: a Lightweight Computing Model for Fine-Grained Cloud Computing

Cloud systems differ fundamentally in how they offer and charge for resources. While some systems provide a generic programming abstraction at coarse granularity, e.g., a virtual machine rented by the hour, others offer specialized abstractions with fine-grained accounting on a per-request basis. In this paper, we explore Tasklets, an abstraction for instances of short-duration, generic computations that migrate from a host requiring computation to hosts that are willing to provide computation. Tasklets enable fine-grained accounting of resource usage, enabling us to build infrastructure that supports trading computing resources according to various economic models. This computation model is especially attractive in settings where mobile devices can utilize resources in the cloud to mitigate local resource constraints