Avoidable blood transfusions

Si discute l'importanza di una analisi accurata nel definire il fattore di rischio di trasfusioni nella genesi della trombosi profonda delle vene degli arti inferior

A study of the age, growth, sexual maturity, and spawning of the anchoveta, Cetengraulis mysticetus, in the Gulf of Panama

ENGLISH: Crew members of tuna clippers and Commission personnel are collecting specimens of anchovetas (Cetengraulis mysticetus) for studies of the biology of this important tuna-bait species. More than 27,000 fish from 231 collections captured in the Gulf of Panama between June 1951 and January 1956 are the basis of this study of the age, growth, sexual maturity, and spawning season of this species in that area. Estimates of age and rate of growth were made by studying the temporal progression of modal size groups from monthly length frequency distributions. Sexual development and time of spawning were determined from gross examination of ovaries and measurements of ovarian eggs. SPANISH: Con el fin de estudiar la biología de la anchoveta (Cetengraulis mysticetus) los tripulantes de los barcos atuneros y el personal de la Comisión están recolectando especimenes de esta importante especie de carnada para capturar el atún. Mas de 27,000 ejemplares de las 231 colecciones hechas en el Golfo de Panamá entre junio de 1951 y enero de 1956, sirven de material al presente estudio sobre la edad, el crecimiento, la madurez sexual y las épocas de desove de esta especie en el área indicada. Las estimaciones de la edad y de la proporción del crecimiento fueron hechas a base del estudio de la progresión temporal de los grupos modales de tamaño en las distribuciones mensuales de frecuencias de longitud. El desarrollo sexual y el periodo de desove fueron determinados mediante el examen microscópico de los ovarios y las mediciones de los huevos ováricos. (PDF contains 79 pages.

An estimate of theta_14 independent of the reactor antineutrino flux determinations

In a previous paper [Phys. Rev. D 83, 113013 (2011)] we have shown that the solar sector data (solar and KamLAND) are sensitive to the parameter theta_14, encoding the admixture of the electron neutrino with a fourth (essentially) sterile mass eigenstate. In that work we evidenced that such data prefer a non-zero value of theta_14 and that such a preference is completely degenerate with that of non-zero theta_13. In this report we show how the evidence of theta_13 > 0, recently emerged from global neutrino data analyses, lifts such a degeneracy and disfavors the case of sterile neutrino mixing. By excluding from our analysis the total rate information coming from the reactor experiments we untie our results from any assumption on their flux normalization. In this way, we establish the robust upper bound sin^2 (theta_14) < 0.04 at the 90% C.L.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, minor changes, matches version accepted by PR

Notes on Oscillator-Like Interactions of Various Spin Relativistic Particles

The equations for various spin particles with oscillator-like interactions are discussed in this talk. Contents: 1. Comment on "The Klein-Gordon Oscillator"; 2. The Dirac oscillator in quaternion form; 3. The Dirac-Dowker oscillator; 4. The Weinberg oscillator; 5. Note on the two-body Dirac oscillator.Comment: LaTeX file, 12 pp. Talk given at the Second Workshop "Osciladores Arm\'onicos". Cocoyoc, M\'exico, March 23-25, 1994. To be published in NASA Conference Proceedings. Preprint IFUNAM FT-94-44, EFUAZ-94-0

No Place to Hide that Bytes won't Reveal: Sniffing Location-Based Encrypted Traffic to Track a User's Position

News reports of the last few years indicated that several intelligence agencies are able to monitor large networks or entire portions of the Internet backbone. Such a powerful adversary has only recently been considered by the academic literature. In this paper, we propose a new adversary model for Location Based Services (LBSs). The model takes into account an unauthorized third party, different from the LBS provider itself, that wants to infer the location and monitor the movements of a LBS user. We show that such an adversary can extrapolate the position of a target user by just analyzing the size and the timing of the encrypted traffic exchanged between that user and the LBS provider. We performed a thorough analysis of a widely deployed location based app that comes pre-installed with many Android devices: GoogleNow. The results are encouraging and highlight the importance of devising more effective countermeasures against powerful adversaries to preserve the privacy of LBS users.Comment: 14 pages, 9th International Conference on Network and System Security (NSS 2015

It is Hobbes, not Rousseau : an experiment on social insurance

We perform an experiment on social insurance to provide a laboratory replica of some important features of the welfare state. In the experiment, all individuals in a group decide whether to make a costly effort, which produces a random (independent) outcome for each one of them. The group members then vote on whether to redistribute the resulting and commonly known total sum of earnings equally amongst themselves. This game has two equilibria, if played once. In one of them, all players make effort and there is little redistribution. In the other one, there is no effort and nothing to redistribute. A solution to the repeated game allows for redistribution and high effort, by the threat to revert to the worst of these equilibria. Our results show that redistribution with high effort is not sustainable. The main reason for the absence of redistribution is that rich agents do not act differently depending on whether the poor have worked hard or not. There is no social contract by which redistribution may be sustained by the threat of punishing the poor if they do not exert effort. Thus, the explanation of the behavior of the subjects lies in Hobbes, not in Rousseau

A Semantic Web Annotation Tool for a Web-Based Audio Sequencer

Music and sound have a rich semantic structure which is so clear to the composer and the listener, but that remains mostly hidden to computing machinery. Nevertheless, in recent years, the introduction of software tools for music production have enabled new opportunities for migrating this knowledge from humans to machines. A new generation of these tools may exploit sound samples and semantic information coupling for the creation not only of a musical, but also of a "semantic" composition. In this paper we describe an ontology driven content annotation framework for a web-based audio editing tool. In a supervised approach, during the editing process, the graphical web interface allows the user to annotate any part of the composition with concepts from publicly available ontologies. As a test case, we developed a collaborative web-based audio sequencer that provides users with the functionality to remix the audio samples from the Freesound website and subsequently annotate them. The annotation tool can load any ontology and thus gives users the opportunity to augment the work with annotations on the structure of the composition, the musical materials, and the creator's reasoning and intentions. We believe this approach will provide several novel ways to make not only the final audio product, but also the creative process, first class citizens of the Semantic We

Modeling elastic wave propagation in fluid-filled boreholes drilled in nonhomogeneous media: BEM – MLPG versus BEM-FEM coupling

The efficiency of two coupling formulations, the boundary element method (BEM)-meshless local Petrov–Galerkin (MLPG) versus the BEM-finite element method (FEM), used to simulate the elastic wave propagation in fluid-filled boreholes generated by a blast load, is compared. The longitudinal geometry is assumed to be invariant in the axial direction (2.5D formulation). The material properties in the vicinity of the borehole are assumed to be nonhomogeneous as a result of the construction process and the ageing of the material. In both models, the BEM is used to tackle the propagation within the fluid domain inside the borehole and the unbounded homogeneous domain. The MLPG and the FEM are used to simulate the confined, damaged, nonhomogeneous, surrounding borehole, thus utilizing the advantages of these methods in modeling nonhomogeneous bounded media. In both numerical techniques the coupling is accomplished directly at the nodal points located at the common interfaces. Continuity of stresses and displacements is imposed at the solid–solid interface, while continuity of normal stresses and displacements and null shear stress are prescribed at the fluid–solid interface. The performance of each coupled BEM-MLPG and BEM-FEM approach is determined using referenced results provided by an analytical solution developed for a circular multi-layered subdomain. The comparison of the coupled techniques is evaluated for different excitation frequencies, axial wavenumbers and degrees of freedom (nodal points).Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad BIA2013-43085-PCentro Informático Científico de Andalucía (CICA