Microorganisms and Common Ophthalmic Diseases

The human eye is in constant contact to environmental conditions that increase its likelihood in being exposed to a multitude of pathogens. Studies have revealed that the normal microbial flora found around the ocular area contribute to the well-being of ocular health as they play a critical role in inhibiting the proliferation of other pathogenic species and maintaining the homeostatic balance. However an imbalance in this status quo may lead to diseases including dry eye syndrome, meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD), blepharitis, rosacea, allergies, keratitis, conjunctivitis and immunological conditions such as mucous membrane pemphigoid and Sjogren’s syndrome. Thus, it is important to investigate and understand the role of various microorganisms that lead to these ocular diseases, and this knowledge may lead to better future treatments. This review focuses on recent advances and insights of pathogens and related ocular diseases which can help the audience further understand the etiology and the control of these disease

Integration, management and communication of heterogeneous design resources with WWW technologies

Recently, advanced information technologies have opened new pos-sibilities for collaborative designs. In this paper, a Web-based collaborative de-sign environment is proposed, where heterogeneous design applications can be integrated with a common interface, managed dynamically for publishing and searching, and communicated with each other for integrated multi-objective de-sign. The CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) is employed as an implementation tool to enable integration and communication of design application programs; and the XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is used as a common data descriptive language for data exchange between heterogeneous applications and for resource description and recording. This paper also intro-duces the implementation of the system and the encapsulating issues of existing legacy applications. At last, an example of gear design based on the system is il-lustrated to identify the methods and procedure developed by this research

Permutation and sampling with maximum length CA for pseudorandom number generation

In this paper, we study the effect of dynamic permutation and sampling on the randomness quality of sequences generated by cellular automata (CA). Dynamic permutation and sampling have not been explored in previous CA work and a suitable implementation is shown using a two CA model. Three different schemes that incorporate these two operations are suggested - Weighted Permutation Vector Sampling with Controlled Multiplexing, Weighted Permutation Vector Sampling with Irregular Decimation and Permutation Programmed CA Sampling. The experiment results show that the resulting sequences have varying degrees of improvement in DIEHARD results and linear complexity compared to the CA

Low Energy Precision Test of Supersymmetry

Supersymmetry (SUSY) remains one of the leading candidates for physics beyond the Standard Model, and the search for SUSY will be a central focus of future collider experiments. Complementary information on the viability and character of SUSY can be obtained via the analysis of precision electroweak measurements. In this review, we discuss the prospective implications for SUSY of present and future precision studies at low energy.Comment: 118 pages, review pape

Delta Decay in the Nuclear Medium

The $\Delta$ decay in the nuclear medium is calculated in the relativistic meson-nucleon model. The delta spreading width is calculated and compared with the Pauli-blocked $\pi$N decay width. The influence of relativistic mean fields is also studied. We stress the importance of understanding the delta spreading width in interpreting experiments involving delta resonances.Comment: 13 pages (including figures), revte