Thermal-structural design study of an airframe-integrated Scramjet

Design concepts are developed and evaluated for a cooled structures assembly for the Scramjet engine, for engine subsystems mass, volume, and operating requirements, and for the aircraft/engine interface. A thermal protection system was defined that makes it possible to attain a life of 100 hours and 1000 cycles. The coolant equivalence ratio at the Mach 10 maximum thermal loading condition is 0.6, indicating a capacity for airframe cooling. The mechanical design is feasible for manufacture using conventional materials. For the cooled structures in a six-module engine, the mass per unit capture area is 12.4 KN/sq m. The total weight of a six-module engine assembly including the fuel system is 14.73 KN

A novel deep mining model for effective knowledge discovery from omics data

Knowledge discovery from omics data has become a common goal of current approaches to personalised cancer medicine and understanding cancer genotype and phenotype. However, high-throughput biomedical datasets are characterised by high dimensionality and relatively small sample sizes with small signal-to-noise ratios. Extracting and interpreting relevant knowledge from such complex datasets therefore remains a significant challenge for the fields of machine learning and data mining. In this paper, we exploit recent advances in deep learning to mitigate against these limitations on the basis of automatically capturing enough of the meaningful abstractions latent with the available biological samples. Our deep feature learning model is proposed based on a set of non-linear sparse Auto-Encoders that are deliberately constructed in an under-complete manner to detect a small proportion of molecules that can recover a large proportion of variations underlying the data. However, since multiple projections are applied to the input signals, it is hard to interpret which phenotypes were responsible for deriving such predictions. Therefore, we also introduce a novel weight interpretation technique that helps to deconstruct the internal state of such deep learning models to reveal key determinants underlying its latent representations. The outcomes of our experiment provide strong evidence that the proposed deep mining model is able to discover robust biomarkers that are positively and negatively associated with cancers of interest. Since our deep mining model is problem-independent and data-driven, it provides further potential for this research to extend beyond its cognate disciplines

An HST/COS legacy survey of intervening SiIII absorption in the extended gaseous halos of low-redshift galaxies

Doubly ionized silicon (SiIII) is a powerful tracer of diffuse ionized gas inside and outside of galaxies. It can be observed in the local Universe in ultraviolet (UV) absorption against bright extragalactic background sources. We here present an extensive study of intervening SiIII-selected absorbers and their relation to the circumgalactic medium (CGM) of galaxies at low redshift (z<=0.1), based on the analysis of UV absorption spectra along 303 extragalactic lines of sight obtained with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) on board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Along a total redshift path of Dz=24 we identify 69 intervening SiIII systems that all show associated absorption from other low and high ions. We derive a bias-corrected number density of dN/dz(SiIII)=2.5 for absorbers with column densities log N(SiIII)>12.2. We develop a geometrical model for the absorption-cross section of the CGM around the local galaxy population and find excellent agreement between the model predictions and the observations. We further compare redshifts and positions of the absorbers with that of ~64,000 galaxies using archival galaxy-survey data. For the majority of the absorbers we identify possible host galaxies within 300 km/s of the absorbers and derive impact parameters rho<200 kpc, demonstrating that the spatial distributions of SiIII absorbers and galaxies are highly correlated. Our study indicates that the majority of SiIII-selected absorbers in our sample trace the CGM of nearby galaxies within their virial radii at a typical covering fraction of ~70 per cent. From a detailed ionization model we estimate that diffuse gas in the CGM around galaxies, as traced by SiIII, contains substantially more baryonic mass than their neutral interstellar medium.Comment: 32 pages, 17 figures; final version accepted for publication in A&

Thermal-structural design study of an airframe-integrated Scramjet

The development and evaluation of a design concept for the cooled structures assembly for the Scramjet engine is discussed. Development concepts for engine subsystems and design concepts for the aircraft/engine interface are included. A thermal protection system was defined which makes it possible to attain a life of 100 hr and 1000 cycles, the specified goal. The coolant equivalence ratio at the Mach 10 maximum thermal loading condition is 0.6, indicating a capacity for airframe cooling. The mechanical design is feasible for manufacture using conventional materials. For the cooled structures in a six module engine, the mass per unit capture area is 1256 kg/sq m. The total mass of a six module engine assembly including the fuel system is 1502 kg

Automated Software Quality Visualisation Using Fuzzy Logic Techniques

In the past decade there has been a concerted effort by the software industry to improve the quality of its products. This has led to the inception of various techniques with which to control and measure the process involved in software development. Methods like the Capability Maturity Model have introduced processes and strategies that require measurement in the form of software metrics. With the ever increasing number of software metrics being introduced by capability based processes, software development organisations are finding it more difficult to understand and interpret metric scores. This is particularly problematic for senior management and project managers where analysis of the actual data is not feasible. This paper proposes a method with which to visually represent metric scores so that managers can easily see how their organisation is performing relative to quality goals set for each type of metric. Acting primarily as a proof of concept and prototype, we suggest ways in which real customer needs can be translated into a feasible technical solution. The solution itself visualises metric scores in the form of a tree structure and utilises Fuzzy Logic techniques, XGMML, Web Services and the .NET Framework. Future work is proposed to extend the system from the prototype stage and to overcome a problem with the masking of poor scores

Use of Most Bothersome Symptom as a Coprimary Endpoint in Migraine Clinical Trials: A Post-Hoc Analysis of the Pivotal ZOTRIP Randomized, Controlled Trial.

ObjectiveTo better understand the utility of using pain freedom and most bothersome headache-associated symptom (MBS) freedom as co-primary endpoints in clinical trials of acute migraine interventions.BackgroundAdhesive dermally applied microarray (ADAM) is an investigational system for intracutaneous drug administration. The recently completed pivotal Phase 2b/3 study (ZOTRIP), evaluating ADAM zolmitriptan for the treatment of acute moderate to severe migraine, was one of the first large studies to incorporate MBS freedom and pain freedom as co-primary endpoints per recently issued guidance by the US Food and Drug Administration. In this trial, the proportion of patients treated with ADAM zolmitriptan 3.8 mg, who were pain-free and MBS-free at 2 hours post-dose, was significantly higher than for placebo.MethodsWe undertook a post-hoc analysis of data from the ZOTRIP trial to examine how the outcomes from this trial compare to what might have been achieved using the conventional co-primary endpoints of pain relief, nausea, photophobia, and phonophobia.ResultsOf the 159 patients treated with ADAM zolmitriptan 3.8 mg or placebo, prospectively designated MBS were photophobia (n = 79), phonophobia (n = 43), and nausea (n = 37). Two-hour pain free rates in those with photophobia as the MBS were 36% for ADAM zolmitriptan 3.8 mg and 14% for placebo (P = .02). Corresponding rates for those with phonophobia as the MBS were 14% and 41% (P = .05). For those whose MBS was nausea, corresponding values were 56% and 16%, respectively (P = .01). Two-hour freedom from the MBS for active drug vs placebo were 67% vs 35% (P &lt; .01) for photophobia, 55% vs 43% (P = .45) for phonophobia, and 89% vs 58% for nausea (P = .04). MBS freedom but not pain freedom was achieved in 28%. Only 1 patient (1%) achieved pain freedom, but not MBS freedom. The proportion with both pain and MBS freedom was highest (56%) among those whose MBS was nausea.ConclusionIn this study, the use of MBS was feasible and seemed to compare favorably to the previously required 4 co-primary endpoints

The gustin (CA6) gene polymorphism, rs2274333 (A/G), as a mechanistic link between PROP tasting and fungiform taste papilla density and maintenance

Taste sensitivity to PROP varies greatly among individuals and is associated with polymorphisms in the bitter receptor gene TAS2R38, and with differences in fungiform papilla density on the anterior tongue surface. Recently we showed that the PROP non-taster phenotype is strongly associated with the G variant of polymorphism rs2274333 (A/G) of the gene that controls the salivary trophic factor, gustin. The aims of this study were 1) to investigate the role of gustin gene polymorphism rs2274333 (A/G), in PROP sensitivity and fungiform papilla density and morphology, and 2) to investigate the effect of this gustin gene polymorphism on cell proliferation and metabolic activity. Sixty-four subjects were genotyped for both genes by PCR techniques, their PROP sensitivity was assessed by scaling and threshold methods, and their fungiform papilla density, diameter and morphology were determined. In vitro experiments examined cell proliferation and metabolic activity, following treatment with saliva of individuals with and without the gustin gene mutation, and with isolated protein, in the two iso-forms. Gustin and TAS2R38 genotypes were associated with PROP threshold (p=0.0001 and p=0.0042), but bitterness intensity was mostly determined by TAS2R38 genotypes (p<0.000001). Fungiform papillae densities were associated with both genotypes (p<0.014) (with a stronger effect for gustin; p=0.0006), but papilla morphology was a function of gustin alone (p<0.0012). Treatment of isolated cells with saliva from individuals with the AA form of gustin or direct application of the active iso-form of gustin protein increased cell proliferation and metabolic activity (p<0.0135). These novel findings suggest that the rs2274333 polymorphism of the gustin gene affects PROP sensitivity by acting on fungiform papilla development and maintenance, and could provide the first mechanistic explanation for why PROP super-tasters are more responsive to a broad range of oral stimul

Boruvka meets nearest neighbors

Computing the minimum spanning tree (MST) is a common task in the pattern recognition and the computer vision fields. However, little work has been done on efficient general methods for solving the problem on large datasets where graphs are complete and edge weights are given implicitly by a distance between vertex attributes. In this work we propose a generic algorithm that extends the classical Boruvka's algorithm by using nearest neighbors search structures to significantly reduce time and memory consumption. The algorithm can also compute in a straightforward way approximate MSTs thus further improving speed. Experiments show that the proposed method outperforms classical algorithms on large low-dimensional datasets by several orders of magnitude. © Springer-Verlag 2013.Fil:Tepper, M. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina.Fil:Mejail, M. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina