Columbus, Nebraska: Southern Housing Development Design Proposal

The following paper proposes the design and creation of a new housing development in the city of Columbus, Nebraska in a lot to the south of the city and directly north of the Columbus wastewater treatment plant. The goal of this proposal is to provide readers with confidence that our company is the most qualified to complete the project and will create the safest, most comfortable, most efficient, and most cost-effective final design. This proposal seeks to offer a solution to the lack of affordable housing for the growing workforce in Columbus. In order to arrive at this solution, each subdiscipline of civil engineering (geotechnical, structural, water resources, environmental, and transportation) is utilized to research the existing conditions of the area and to then design the infrastructure of the housing development. Watershed delineation, soil analysis, environmental impact studies, and current traffic studies are types of research done to understand the existing conditions. Site cut and fill, storm and sanitary sewer network design, roadway layout and geometrics, and steel beam and column loading and connections are then created to produce a final design for the new neighborhood. This final design will include around 40 lots, slopes and roadway superelevation to drive sewer flow, a wide set of streets to provide high mobility and accessibility in the development, and a steel park structure for entertainment. The total surveying, design, and construction of this development is estimated to take around 36 weeks and cost $2.5 million

MULTIPLIER METHOD FOR PROXIMAL CONVEX OPTIMIZATION SEPARABLE

The aim of this work is to prove the convergence of a proximal multiplicator method using generalized distances to solve convex minimization problems with separable structure, motivated in particular by the solution of optimization problems that arising in telecommunication networks and management of electrical energy production. The used procedures were the collection of information in scientific journals and specialized books, the study of the same and finally the use of mathematical tools to study the convergence of the sequence of the proposed method. The results show that, under some appropriate assumptions, the iterations generated by the method are well defined and the sequence converges to an optimal solution of the problem. Due to the generality of the study some papers related to proximal methods such as the works of Chen and Teboulle (1994), Kyono and Fukushima (2000) and Auslender and Teboulle (2001) are particular cases of our approach

Swarm-based Descriptor Combination and its Application for Image Classification

In this paper, we deal with the descriptor combination problem in image classification tasks. This problem refers to the definition of an appropriate combination of image content descriptors that characterize different visual properties, such as color, shape and texture. In this paper, we propose to model the descriptor combination as a swarm-based optimization problem, which finds out the set of parameters that maximizes the classification accuracy of the Optimum-Path Forest (OPF) classifier. In our model,  a descriptor is seen as a pair composed of a feature extraction algorithm and a suitable distance function. Our strategy here is to combine distance scores defined by different descriptors, as well as to employ them to weight OPF edges, which connect samples in the feature space. An extensive evaluation of several swarm-based optimization techniques was performed. Experimental results have demonstrated the robustness of the proposed combination approach

3 G Diversity Summit

The 3G Summit sought to bring students together from multiple Universities to create collaboration across diversity groups in the New England area. The I Am U URI group put a call out to new members to work across Universities on collaborative goals. The summit was designed to accomplish 3 goals. Get people from multiple Universities to come together and talk about their experiences. Brainstorm things that everyone wants to work on. Establish contact information and ways to work together. This Summit was sponsored by HRL and the GLBT Center. Audio from this event can be streamed directly from this page

MÉTODO DEL PUNTO PROXIMAL y SUS APLICACIÓN A MODELOS ECONÓMICOS

The aim of this work is to study the convergence of a extension of the proximal point method for minimizing a class of nonconvex functions on the nonnegative orthant and give some applications of the method in the solution of economics models which appears in microeconomy. The used procedures were the collection of information in scientific journals and specialized books, the study of the same and finally the use of mathematical tools to study the convergence of the sequence of the method. The results show that, under some appropriate assumptions, the iterations generated by the method are well defined and the sequence converges weakly to a KKT point

Swarm-based Descriptor Combination and its Application for Image Classification

In this paper, we deal with the descriptor combination problem in image classification tasks. This problem refers to the definition of an appropriate combination of image content descriptors that characterize different visual properties, such as color, shape and texture. In this paper, we propose to model the descriptor combination as a swarm-based optimization problem, which finds out the set of parameters that maximizes the classification accuracy of the Optimum-Path Forest (OPF) classifier. In our model, a descriptor is seen as a pair composed of a feature extraction algorithm and a suitable distance function. Our strategy here is to combine distance scores defined by different descriptors, as well as to employ them to weight OPF edges, which connect samples in the feature space. An extensive evaluation of several swarm-based optimization techniques was performed. Experimental results have demonstrated the robustness of the proposed combination approach

Validation of a mouse xenograft model system for gene expression analysis of human acute lymphoblastic leukaemia

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Pre-clinical models that effectively recapitulate human disease are critical for expanding our knowledge of cancer biology and drug resistance mechanisms. For haematological malignancies, the non-obese diabetic/severe combined immunodeficient (NOD/SCID) mouse is one of the most successful models to study paediatric acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL). However, for this model to be effective for studying engraftment and therapy responses at the whole genome level, careful molecular characterisation is essential.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here, we sought to validate species-specific gene expression profiling in the high engraftment continuous ALL NOD/SCID xenograft. Using the human Affymetrix whole transcript platform we analysed transcriptional profiles from engrafted tissues without prior cell separation of mouse cells and found it to return highly reproducible profiles in xenografts from individual mice. The model was further tested with experimental mixtures of human and mouse cells, demonstrating that the presence of mouse cells does not significantly skew expression profiles when xenografts contain 90% or more human cells. In addition, we present a novel <it>in silico </it>and experimental masking approach to identify probes and transcript clusters susceptible to cross-species hybridisation.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We demonstrate species-specific transcriptional profiles can be obtained from xenografts when high levels of engraftment are achieved or with the application of transcript cluster masks. Importantly, this masking approach can be applied and adapted to other xenograft models where human tissue infiltration is lower. This model provides a powerful platform for identifying genes and pathways associated with ALL disease progression and response to therapy <it>in vivo</it>.</p

Morfologia dos órgãos genitais do macho do Lobo marinho (Arctocephalus australis) e implicações biológicas

Male capacity for spreading genes to a great number of descendents and to determine population dynamics depend directly on the genital organs. Morphological studies in pinnipeds are scarce and the functional meaning of some characteristics has never been discussed. We hypothesized that Arctocephalus australis (A. australis) shows morphophysiological adaptations in order to guarantee the perpetuation of the species in the unique annual mating season. Seven males, dead from natural causes, had their genital organs collected and fixed for morphological description. Some features differ from other described mammalian males and are closely related to the biology and reproductive cycle of this species, as the scrotal epidermis, absence of glandular portion in the ductus deferens and spermatogenic epithelium suggest a recrudescent testis period. The corona glandis exhibits a singular arrangement: its erectile border looks like a formation of petals and its association with the os penis gives a "lily-flower" form to this region. We propose the name margo petaliformis to this particular erectile border of the corona glandis because of its similarity to a flower corola. The male genital organs of A. australis show morphological features compatible with adaptation to environment requirements and reproductive efficiency