Handling Emergency Management in [an] Object Oriented Modeling Environment

It has been understood that protection of a nation from extreme disasters is a challenging task. Impacts of extreme disasters on a nation's critical infrastructures, economy and society could be devastating. A protection plan itself would not be sufficient when a disaster strikes. Hence, there is a need for a holistic approach to establish more resilient infrastructures to withstand extreme disasters. A resilient infrastructure can be defined as a system or facility that is able to withstand damage, but if affected, can be readily and cost-effectively restored. The key issue to establish resilient infrastructures is to incorporate existing protection plans with comprehensive preparedness actions to respond, recover and restore as quickly as possible, and to minimize extreme disaster impacts. Although national organizations will respond to a disaster, extreme disasters need to be handled mostly by local emergency management departments. Since emergency management departments have to deal with complex systems, they have to have a manageable plan and efficient organizational structures to coordinate all these systems. A strong organizational structure is the key in responding fast before and during disasters, and recovering quickly after disasters. In this study, the entire emergency management is viewed as an enterprise and modelled through enterprise management approach. Managing an enterprise or a large complex system is a very challenging task. It is critical for an enterprise to respond to challenges in a timely manner with quick decision making. This study addresses the problem of handling emergency management at regional level in an object oriented modelling environment developed by use of TopEase software. Emergency Operation Plan of the City of Hampton, Virginia, has been incorporated into TopEase for analysis. The methodology used in this study has been supported by a case study on critical infrastructure resiliency in Hampton Roads

Highly Stable, Near-Unity Efficiency Atomically Flat Semiconductor Nanocrystals of CdSe/ZnS Hetero-Nanoplatelets Enabled by ZnS-Shell Hot-Injection Growth

Colloidal semiconductor nanoplatelets (NPLs) offer important benefits in nanocrystal optoelectronics with their unique excitonic properties. For NPLs, colloidal atomic layer deposition (c-ALD) provides the ability to produce their core/shell heterostructures. However, as c-ALD takes place at room temperature, this technique allows for only limited stability and low quantum yield. Here, highly stable, near-unity efficiency CdSe/ZnS NPLs are shown using hot-injection (HI) shell growth performed at 573 K, enabling routinely reproducible quantum yields up to 98%. These CdSe/ZnS HI-shell hetero-NPLs fully recover their initial photoluminescence (PL) intensity in solution after a heating cycle from 300 to 525 K under inert gas atmosphere, and their solid films exhibit 100% recovery of their initial PL intensity after a heating cycle up to 400 K under ambient atmosphere, by far outperforming the control group of c-ALD shell-coated CdSe/ZnS NPLs, which can sustain only 20% of their PL. In optical gain measurements, these core/HI-shell NPLs exhibit ultralow gain thresholds reaching approximate to 7 mu J cm(-2). Despite being annealed at 500 K, these ZnS-HI-shell NPLs possess low gain thresholds as small as 25 mu J cm(-2). These findings indicate that the proposed 573 K HI-shell-grown CdSe/ZnS NPLs hold great promise for extraordinarily high performance in nanocrystal optoelectronics

Molecular control of endurance training adaptation in male mouse skeletal muscle

Skeletal muscle has an enormous plastic potential to adapt to various external and internal perturbations. Although morphological changes in endurance-trained muscles are well described, the molecular underpinnings of training adaptation are poorly understood. We therefore aimed to elucidate the molecular signature of muscles of trained male mice and unravel the training status-dependent responses to an acute bout of exercise. Our results reveal that, even though at baseline an unexpectedly low number of genes define the trained muscle, training status substantially affects the transcriptional response to an acute challenge, both quantitatively and qualitatively, in part associated with epigenetic modifications. Finally, transiently activated factors such as the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ coactivator 1α are indispensable for normal training adaptation. Together, these results provide a molecular framework of the temporal and training status-dependent exercise response that underpins muscle plasticity in training

Mixed-mode implementation of particle filters

In this paper, we develop new mixed-mode implementations for particle filters and compare them to a digital implementation. The motivation for the mixed-mode implementation is to achieve low-power implementation of particle filters. The specific application considered is a bearings-only, single-target tracking algorithm. Specifically, we develop mixed-mode implementations that use analog components to realize nonlinear functions in the particle filter algorithm. The analog implementation of nonlinear functions uses low-power multiple-input translinear element (MITE) networks. Simulation results for one mixed-mode implementation of the bearings-only tracker show that the analog errors are low enough to support accurate tracking. Redesign of the mixed-mode implementation in a second form with more analog components will result in nearly twenty times less power dissipation

Cecum perforation due to tuberculosis in a renal transplant recipient: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Tuberculosis can present in many varied clinical situations in immunosuppressed patients. It has been reported that the sigmoid colon is the most common site for colonic perforation in renal transplant recipients and diverticulitis is its most common cause. Cecal perforation because of tuberculosis is extremely rare in a renal transplant recipient. We present the case of a renal transplant patient with cecal perforation due to tuberculosis, 10 years after renal transplantation.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>A 39-year-old Caucasian man, who was a renal transplant recipient, was admitted to our emergency surgery unit with an acute abdomen. A cecal perforation was found at exploratory laparotomy, and a right hemicolectomy with an end ileostomy and transverse colonic mucous fistula were performed. Necrotizing granulomatous colitis due to tuberculosis was reported in the histopathologic examination.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Colonic perforations in immunosuppressed patients may have unusual presentations and unusual causes. Tuberculosis infection should be considered in the differential diagnosis during the histopathologic evaluation in immunocompromised patients such as renal transplant recipients.</p

Simple and Complex Metafluids and Metastructures with Sharp Spectral Features in a Broad Extinction Spectrum: Particle-Particle Interactions and Testing the Limits of the Beer-Lambert Law

Metallic nanocrystals (NCs) are useful instruments for light manipulation around the visible spectrum. As their plasmonic resonances depend heavily on the NC geometry, modern fabrication techniques afford a great degree of control over their optical responses. We take advantage of this fact to create optical filters in the visible-near IR. Our systems show an extinction spectrum that covers a wide range of wavelengths (UV to mid-IR), while featuring a narrow transparency band around a wavelength of choice. We achieve this by carefully selecting the geometries of a collection of NCs with narrow resonances that cover densely the spectrum from UV to mid-IR except for the frequencies targeted for transmission. This fundamental design can be executed in different kinds of systems, including a solution of colloidal metal NCs (metafluids), a structured planar metasurface or a combination of both. Along with the theory, we report experimental results, showing metasurface realizations of the system, and we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these different approaches, paying particular attention to particle-particle interaction and to what extent it hinders the intended objective by shifting and modifying the profile of the planned resonances through the hybridization of their plasmonic modes. We have found that the Beer-Lambert law is very robust overall and is violated only upon aggregation or in configurations with nearly-touching NCs. This striking property favors the creation of metafluids with a narrow transparency window, which are investigated here.Comment: Includes Supplementary Information, totaling 32 pages and 8 figure

The ABCD of obesity: An EASO position statement on a diagnostic term with clinical and scientific implications

Obesity is a frequent, serious, complex, relapsing, and chronic disease process that represents a major public health problem. The coining of obesity as an adiposity-based chronic disease (ABCD) is of particular relevance being in line with EASO’s proposal to improve the International Classification of Diseases ICD-11 diagnostic criteria for obesity based on three dimensions, namely etiology, degree of adiposity, and health risks. The body mass index as a unique measurement of obesity does not reflect the whole complexity of the disease. Obesity complications are mainly determined by 2 pathological processes, i.e., physical forces (fat mass disease) as well as endocrine and immune responses (sick fat disease), which are embedded in a cultural and physical context leading to a specific ABCD stage

Sugar-sweetened beverages and weight gain in children and adults: a systematic review from 2013 to 2015 and a comparison with previous studies

Objective: Partly inconsistent findings from previous reviews have fueled discussions on the impact of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) on obesity development. The aim was to systematically review the recent evidence in children and adults. Methods: Data were retrieved from the databases MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Cochrane library for the period January 2013 to October 2015. A systematic review of prospective cohort studies and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) relating SSBs to weight measures was conducted. Results: 30 publications met the inclusion criteria. Prospective cohort studies (96%; n = 26) showed a positive association between consumption of SSBs and weight/BMI in adults and children (n = 242,352), and only one cohort study in children showed no association. Findings from three RCTs in children demonstrated that SSB consumption had an effect on BMI/BMI z-score. The one RCT in adults showed no significant effect of the intervention. 63% of the studies were of good, 30% of medium quality, and none was funded by industry. Conclusion: Recent evidence suggests that SSB consumption is positively associated with or has an effect on obesity indices in children and adults. By combining the already published evidence with the new one, we conclude that public health policies should aim to reduce the consumption of SSBs and encourage healthy alternatives such as water. (c) 2017 The Author(s) Published by S. Karger GmbH, Freibur