Analysis awkward posture at food production activity using RULA assessment

If the workers continuously perform the activities throughout the working hours, they may experience prolonged standing which creates fatigue and causes an occupational hazard which includes slips and falls. The goal of this study was to identify awkward postures during food production activities. 40 workers with minimum of 1 year experience working in food production were involved. The comfort level was measured using Rapid Upper Limb Assessment and Computer-Aided Three-Dimensional Interactive Application software analysis, expressed in scoring level. Critical activities grilling meat, frying, dish cloth and wash utensil at food production contributed to high RULA score of 7. The specific working postures have to be identified among food production workers. This study can provide a preliminary data to determine the correct working postures for food production workers.Keywords: working position; food production; awkward posture; RULA score, fatigue and standin

Predictions for B→KγγB \to K \gamma \gamma decays

We present a phenomenological study of the rare double radiative decay $B\to K \gamma\gamma$ in the Standard Model (SM) and beyond. Using the operator product expansion (OPE) technique, we estimate the short-distance (SD) contribution to the decay amplitude in a region of the phase space which is around the point where all decay products have energy $\sim m_b/3$ in the rest frame of the $B$-meson. At lowest order in 1/Q, where $Q$ is of order $m_b$, the $B\to K \gamma\gamma$ matrix element is then expressed in terms of the usual $B\to K$ form factors known from semileptonic rare decays. The integrated SD branching ratio in the SM in the OPE region turns out to be $\Delta {\cal{B}}(B \to K \gamma \gamma)_{SM}^{OPE} \simeq 1 \times 10^{-9}$. We work out the di-photon invariant mass distribution with and without the resonant background through $B\to K \{\eta_c,\chi_{c0}\}\to K\gamma \gamma$. In the SM, the resonance contribution is dominant in the region of phase space where the OPE is valid. The present experimental upper limit on $B_s \to \tau^+ \tau^-$ decays, which constrains the scalar/pseudoscalar Four-Fermi operators with $\tau^+ \tau^-$, leaves considerable room for new physics in the one-particle-irreducible contribution to $B\to K \gamma \gamma$ decays. In this case, we find that the SD $B\to K \gamma \gamma$ branching ratio can be enhanced by one order of magnitude with respect to its SM value and the SD contribution can lie outside of the resonance peaks.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures; Note added on Schouten identity and 2 references added; v4: typos in Eqs (8), (44) and erroneous statement on mixing before Eq (44) fixed. All results and conclusions unchange

Bat mortality due to collision with wind turbines in Kutch District, Gujarat, India

Globally, India is at fifth position in wind power generation with an installed capacity of 14550 MW. Based onrecent reports from certain parts of the world there is also a growing concern on the environmental impact of wind turbines on bats and birds in other places too. In the Indian context the impact of wind farms on birds and bats are less studied with very little scientific literature available on the subject. Since September 2011, we have been conducting research on birds and bats mortality in wind farms of Kutch District, Gujarat, India. During the study period two carcasses of the Greater Mouse-tailed Bat Rhinopoma microphyllum were recorded due to collision with wind turbines

Chiral perturbation theory with Wilson-type fermions including a2a^2 effects: Nf=2N_f=2 degenerate case

We have derived the quark mass dependence of $m_{\pi}^2$, $m_{\rm AWI}$ and $f_{\pi}$, using the chiral perturbation theory which includes the $a^2$ effect associated with the explicit chiral symmetry breaking of the Wilson-type fermions, in the case of the $N_f=2$ degenerate quarks. Distinct features of the results are (1) the additive renormalization for the mass parameter $m_q$ in the Lagrangian, (2) $O(a)$ corrections to the chiral log ($m_q\log m_q$) term, (3) the existence of more singular term, $\log m_q$, generated by $a^2$ contributions, and (4) the existence of both $m_q\log m_q$ and $\log m_q$ terms in the quark mass from the axial Ward-Takahashi identity, $m_{\rm AWI}$. By fitting the mass dependence of $m_\pi^2$ and $m_{\rm AWI}$, obtained by the CP-PACS collaboration for $N_f=2$ full QCD simulations, we have found that the data are consistently described by the derived formulae. Resumming the most singular terms $\log m_q$, we have also derived the modified formulae, which show a better control over the next-to-leading order correction.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figures (10 eps files), Revtex4, some discussions and references added, the final version to appear in PR

Short and long distance contributions to B→K∗γγB \to K^* \gamma \gamma

We study the decay of the neutral B meson to $K^* \gamma \gamma$ within the framework of the Standard Model, including long distance contributions.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures; A sign error in the numerical estimation corrected. Results and figures changed. Results for resonance contributions also updated to match with the experimetal values in the narrow width approximatio

Farnesol as a multifunctional candidate for treatment development

Farnesol is a C15 isoprenyl alcohol generated from the hydrolysis of farnesyl diphosphate under the action of farnesol synthase in plants. Although this sesquiterpenoid alcohol has been exploited in a wide variety of industrial applications, serious discussions on the possible use of this agent in disease treatment have been scant until now. In this article, we review the current understanding of the physiological properties of farnesol and the potential use of the agent as a candidate for treatment development. In fact, since the turn of the last century, farnesol has been found not only to trigger apoptosis in tumor cells but also to be able to function as a quorum-sensing molecule in Candida albicans to influence infection dynamics. By offering a snapshot of recent advances in research on farnesol, it is expected that this article can provide more insights into future research on farnesol for the development of different treatment strategies

CP violation in the decay mode B→πγγB\to \pi \gamma \gamma

Within the framework of Standard Model, the exclusive decay mode $B\to \pi \gamma \gamma$ is studied. Although the usual short distance contribution is small compared to the similar $B\to K\gamma\gamma$ mode, the process offers the possibility of studying the CP violation, a feature absent in the $B \to K$ counterpart.Comment: 11 page latex file including 2 ps figures. Typos corrected, minor changes. To appear in PR

Energy-aware Successor Tree Consistent EDF Scheduling for PCTGs on MPSoCs

Multiprocessor System-on-Chips (MPSoCs) computing architectures are gaining popularity due to their high-performance capabilities and exceptional Quality-of-Service (QoS), making them a particularly well-suited computing platform for computationally intensive workloads and applications.} Nonetheless, The scheduling and allocation of a single task set with precedence restrictions on MPSoCs have presented a persistent research challenge in acquiring energy-efficient solutions. The complexity of this scheduling problem escalates when subject to conditional precedence constraints between the tasks, creating what is known as a Conditional Task Graph (CTG). Scheduling sets of Periodic Conditional Task Graphs (PCTGs) on MPSoC platforms poses even more challenges. This paper focuses on tackling the scheduling challenge for a group of PCTGs on MPSoCs equipped with shared memory. The primary goal is to minimize the overall anticipated energy usage, considering two distinct power models: dynamic and static power models. To address this challenge, this paper introduces an innovative scheduling method named Energy Efficient Successor Tree Consistent Earliest Deadline First (EESEDF). The EESEDF approach is primarily designed to maximize the worst-case processor utilization. Once the tasks are assigned to processors, it leverages the earliest successor tree consistent deadline-first strategy to arrange tasks on each processor. To minimize the overall expected energy consumption, EESEDF solves a convex Non-Linear Program (NLP) to determine the optimal speed for each task. Additionally, the paper presents a highly efficient online Dynamic Voltage Scaling (DVS) heuristic, which operates in O(1) time complexity and dynamically adjusts the task speeds in real-time}. We achieved the average improvement, maximum improvement, and minimum improvement of EESEDF+Online-DVS 15%, 17%, and 12%, respectively compared to EESEDF alone. Furthermore, in the second set of experiments, we compared EESEDF against state-of-the-art techniques LESA and NCM. The results showed that EESEDF+Online-DVS outperformed these existing approaches, achieving notable energy efficiency improvements of 25% and 20% over LESA and NCM, respectively. \hl{Our proposed scheduler, EESEDF+Online-DVS, also achieves significant energy efficiency gains compared to existing methods. It outperforms IOETCS-Heuristic by approximately 13% while surpassing BESS and CAP-Online by impressive margins of 25% and 35%, respectively

A Systematic Analysis of the Lepton Polarization Asymmetries in the Rare B Decay, B -> X_s\tau^+\tau^-

The most general model-independent analysis of the lepton polarization asymmetries in the rare B decay, \Bstt, is presented. We present the longitudinal, normal and transverse polarization asymmetries for the $\tau^+$ and $\tau^-$, and combinations of them, as functions of the Wilson coefficients of twelve independent four-Fermi interactions, ten of them local and two nonlocal. These procedures will tell us which type of operators contributes to the process. And it will be very useful to pin down new physics systematically, once we have the experimental data with high statistics and a deviation from the Standard Model is found.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures, LaTe

Analysis of Gene Sets Based on the Underlying Regulatory Network

Networks are often used to represent the interactions among genes and proteins. These interactions are known to play an important role in vital cell functions and should be included in the analysis of genes that are differentially expressed. Methods of gene set analysis take advantage of external biological information and analyze a priori defined sets of genes. These methods can potentially preserve the correlation among genes; however, they do not directly incorporate the information about the gene network. In this paper, we propose a latent variable model that directly incorporates the network information. We then use the theory of mixed linear models to present a general inference framework for the problem of testing the significance of subnetworks. Several possible test procedures are introduced and a network based method for testing the changes in expression levels of genes as well as the structure of the network is presented. The performance of the proposed method is compared with methods of gene set analysis using both simulation studies, as well as real data on genes related to the galactose utilization pathway in yeast.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78147/1/cmb.2008.0081.pd