Functional adaptivity for digital library services in e-infrastructures: the gCube approach

We consider the problem of e-Infrastructures that wish to reconcile the generality of their services with the bespoke requirements of diverse user communities. We motivate the requirement of functional adaptivity in the context of gCube, a service-based system that integrates Grid and Digital Library technologies to deploy, operate, and monitor Virtual Research Environments defined over infrastructural resources. We argue that adaptivity requires mapping service interfaces onto multiple implementations, truly alternative interpretations of the same functionality. We then analyse two design solutions in which the alternative implementations are, respectively, full-fledged services and local components of a single service. We associate the latter with lower development costs and increased binding flexibility, and outline a strategy to deploy them dynamically as the payload of service plugins. The result is an infrastructure in which services exhibit multiple behaviours, know how to select the most appropriate behaviour, and can seamlessly learn new behaviours

Study of abnormal liver function tests in pregnancy in a tertiary centre in North Kerala

Background: Abnormal liver function tests in pregnancy require proper evaluation and diagnosis. The underlying disorder can have a significant effect on the outcome of both mother and fetus. The present study was done with the objective to study the clinical profile, incidence and possible causes of derangements of liver function tests.Methods: The pregnant women with abnormal liver function were studied prospectively. All the liver function tests values were studied along with other required tests to identify the cause. The fetal and maternal outcome were also noted.Results: The incidence of abnormal liver function tests was 6.7%. Among these 96% were due to pregnancy specific liver dysfunction mainly due to hypertensive disorders. The mean value of bilirubin was more in infective hepatitis. There were 4 cases of intra uterine deaths and no maternal death.Conclusions: Pregnancy specific disorders are the major cause of abnormal liver function tests in pregnancy especially in the third trimester

Archimedes' law and its corrections for an active particle in a granular sea

We study the origin of buoyancy forces acting on a larger particle moving in a granular medium subject to horizontal shaking and its corrections before fluidization. In the fluid limit Archimedes' law is verified; before the limit memory effects counteract buoyancy, as also found experimentally. The origin of the friction is an excluded volume effect between active particles, which we study more exactly for a random walker in a random environment. The same excluded volume effect is also responsible for the mutual attraction between bodies moving in the granular medium. Our theoretical modeling proceeds via an asymmetric exclusion process, i.e., via a dissipative lattice gas dynamics simulating the position degrees of freedom of a low density granular sea.Comment: 22 pages,5 figure

ReLock: a resilient two-phase locking RESTful transaction model

Service composition and supporting transactions across composed services are among the major challenges characterizing service-oriented computing. REpresentational State Transfer (REST) is one of the approaches used for implementing Web services that is gaining momentum thanks to its features making it suitable for cloud computing and microservices-based contexts. This paper introduces ReLock, a resilient RESTful transaction model introducing general purpose transactions on RESTful services by a layered approach and a two-phase locking mechanism not requesting any change to the RESTful services involved in a transaction

Evaluation of an enhanced service for medication review with follow up in Swiss community pharmacies: Pre-post study protocol.

In Switzerland, 20,000 people are hospitalized each year as result of drug related problems (DRPs). The sources of DRPs can be related to patients' behavior (i.e., wrong administration) or to health processes (i.e., drug-drug interaction). No community pharmacy (CP) service focus on DRPs related to patients' behavior is currently recognized or remunerated in Switzerland. A medication review with follow up (MRF) has been developed to evaluate prescription and non-prescription medication. To evaluate the impact of MRF service for the identification and management DRPs associated to patients' behavior and to describe pharmaceutical interventions carried out through MRF. A pre-post intervention study with a cluster design and one intervention group will be carried out in CPs in the canton of Vaud (Switzerland) for 15 months. Volunteer pharmacists will be trained on the identification and management of DRPs related to patients' behavior. After training, they will include randomly selected adults taking four or more chronic drugs prescribed for at least three months prior to recruitment. Then, they will conduct three pharmacist-patient face-to-face consultations at 6-month intervals. Tasks will be differentiated by pharmacy technician or pharmacist to triage expired medication or to manage DRPs in a structured manner, respectively. The primary outcome is the identification of DRPs associated to patients' behavior. Secondary outcomes are to assess patients' medication knowledge, number of expired medications, interventions carried out by pharmacists and pharmacists' satisfaction. The study will begin in April 2023 in 19 to 35 pharmacies that will recruit at least 162 patients. A sub analysis will be carried out for patients with 65 years old or over. The MRF intervention features a training designed for an enhanced evaluation of patient's behavior towards their medication. The study will allow the assessment and management of DRPs in Swiss CPs with the support of the local health authorities and pharmacist association. Clinicaltrials.gov NCT05348538

Implications of image plane line-edge roughness requirements on extreme ultraviolet mask specifications

Line-edge roughness (LER) and the related effect of contact size variation remain as significant challenges facing the commercialization of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. LER is typically viewed as a resist problem; however, recent simulation results have shown that the mask can indeed be an important contributor. Problems arise from both mask absorber LER as well as mask multilayer roughness leading to random phase variations in the reflected beam (see Fig. 1). The latter effect is especially important as higher coherence off-axis illumination conditions are used and defocus is considered. Here we describe these effect in detail and explore how they will impact EUV mask requirements for the 22-nm half-pitch node and beyond. Figure 2 shows modeling results for 22-nm lines printed in a 0.32-numerical aperture system with 100-nm defocus assuming a mask with 0.24-nm rms multilayer roughness and no absorber edge roughness (unlike the example in Fig. 1). The impact of the phase roughness on the printed line-edge roughness is clearly evident and demonstrates the basic problem with mask roughness. The more detailed modeling-based analysis to be presented will account for performance throughout the process window as well as non-stochastic resist effects. We note that the mean-field resist effect is important to consider because, in practice, the resist is the limiting resolution element in the system and therefore dominates the mask-error enhancement factor (MEEF). As is typically the case with projection-optic-induced MEEF, the resist-induced MEEF will lead to even tighter mask requirements. Note that we do not consider resist stochastic effects since the purpose of this study is isolate mask-induced sources of image-plane roughness

Microwave Acid Leaching of Beneficiated Ilmenite for the Production of Synthetic Rutile

Beneficiated ilmenite is an intermediate product formed by the aqueous rusting of metallised ilmenite and separation of iron oxide. This product enriched with TiO2 by the removal of metallic iron can further be upgraded by subs-equent removal of residual iron by acid leaching for the production of synthetic rutile which is a preferred tita-nium feedstock for the preparation of TiO2 pigment

Aqua­{6,6′-dimeth­oxy-2,2′-[ethane-1,2-diylbis(nitrilo­methyl­idyne)]diphenolato}(4-hydroxy­benzoato)manganese(III)

The title compound, [Mn(C18H18N2O4)(C7H5O3)(H2O)], was synthesized by a template reaction of ethane-1,2-diamine and 3-methoxy­salicylaldehyde in presence of manganese(II) 4-hydroxy­benzoate. The Jahn–Teller-distorted manganese(III) centre has an octa­hedral geometry. Extensive O—H⋯O hydrogen-bonding inter­actions generate a two-dimensional sheet structure parallel to (103)