Diagnosis of weaknesses in modern error correction codes: a physics approach

One of the main obstacles to the wider use of the modern error-correction codes is that, due to the complex behavior of their decoding algorithms, no systematic method which would allow characterization of the Bit-Error-Rate (BER) is known. This is especially true at the weak noise where many systems operate and where coding performance is difficult to estimate because of the diminishingly small number of errors. We show how the instanton method of physics allows one to solve the problem of BER analysis in the weak noise range by recasting it as a computationally tractable minimization problem.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

Imobilizacija Na,K-ATPpaze izolovane iz sinaptičkih plazma-membrana mozga pacova

Rat brain Na,K-ATPase partially purified by SDS from synaptic plasma membranes (SPM) was immobilized by adsorption on nitrocellulose (NC), polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and glass fiber (GF) membranes, Partial SDS solubilization increased the enzyme activity by 40%. With regard to the presentation of the enzyme activity. nitrocellulose Was shown to be the optimal support for die immobilization, The enzyme showed the highest percentage activity (14%) after 30 min of SPM adsorption. at 20 degreesC under the vaccum. with 25 mug of proteins per NC disc filter. In addition, adsorption on NC stabilizes the Na,K-ATPase, since the activity was substantial 72 h after adsorption at 20 degreesC, After adsorption. the sensitivity of the enzyme to HgCl2 and CdCl2 inhibition was higher, The results show that immobilized Na,K-NTPase SPM can be used as a practical model for the detection of metal ions in different samples.Delimično prečišćena Na,K-ATPaza sinaptičkih plazma–membrana (SPM) mozga pacova imobilizovana je adsorpcijom na nitrocelulozne (NC) poliviniliden-fluorid (PVDF) membrane i membrane od staklenih vlakana (SV). Aktivnost enzima delimično prečišćenog solubilizacijom SDS-om povećana je oko 40%. Najveći procenat aktivnosti (14%) enzim zadržava posle 30 minuta adsorpcije SPM na 20ºC, pod vakuumom, sa 25 μg proteina po nitroceluloznom disku. Na,K-ATPaza imobilizovana na nitroceluloznoj membrani stabilna je 72 sata na 20ºC. Adsorpcijom, osetljivost enzima na inhibiciju Hg2+ i Cd2+ se povećava. Rezultati pokazuju da se imobilizovana Na,K-ATPaza SPM može koristiti za detekciju toksičnih metalnih jona u različitim uzorcima

Effect of Consecutive Cut and Vegetation Stage on Cncps Protein Fractions in Alfalfa (Medicago Sativa L.)

Crude protein (CP) of forages can be separated into fractions of differentiated abilities to provide available amino acids in the lower gut of ruminants. This knowledge is critical to develop feeding systems and to predict animal responses. The objective of this research was to asses whether CP concentrations and the relative proportion of CP fractions by CNCPS in alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) cv K-28 were affected by different cuts and vegetation stages. Fraction B2, which represents true protein of intermediate ruminal degradation rate, was the largest single fraction in all cuts except in the third cut. Soluble fraction A was less than 400 g kg-1 CP in all cuts except in the third cut, while the unavailable fraction C ranged from 56 g kg-1 CP in the first cut to 134.8 g kg-1 CP in the fourth cut. The remaining fraction B3 (true protein of very low degradation rate) only represented less than 60 g kg-1 of total CP. Results showed that undegraded dietary protein represented a small proportion of total CP in alfalfa from the first to the fourth cut

Seismic response assessment and protection of statues and busts

Recent post-earthquake surveys carried out in Europe have shown that earthquake actions pose an immense threat to museums and their contents. For example, during the earthquake on 21 July 2017 in the island of Kos (Greece), severe and widespread damage on the city’s archaeological museum was reported (Figure 1). The earthquake extensively damaged the sculpture exhibition, where many pieces were dislocated, leaned against the walls, or overturned. Fortunately, the earthquake occurred when human visitors were not in the museum, since the damage to the exhibits varied from very light (minor fracturing) to severe (complete overturning and fracture of artefacts). In the case of heavy and slender sculptures, the overturning mechanism, apart from damaging the sculptures themselves, is a serious threat to other standing exhibits in the gallery and the visitors. It is, therefore, of paramount importance to have at our disposal methods and tools for characterising the seismic risk of museum artefacts and, where necessary, proposing cost-efficient protective measures. The study of the seismic vulnerability of museum artefacts, especially of slender, human-formed statues, is related to the research on the dynamic response of rocking rigid blocks. The dynamic characteristics of the hosting structures are also important. This is evident from the fact that, on many occasions, damage to the structure was reported leaving the exhibits intact and vice-versa. Although the problem is coupled, it can be studied looking separately at the structure and its contents, provided that the contents are not attached to the building. The seismic response of building contents is a topic of growing interest, since it is directly related to seismic loss assessment and earthquake community resilience. Building contents can be either attached to the structure, or may consist of objects that are simply standing. Museum exhibits belong to the latter category, while free-standing components are often studied as rocking objects and hence their response is sensitive to acceleration and velocity-based quantities and also to their geometry. Today, there is lack of standards, while the existing approaches are general in concept and do not sufficiently address the variety of rocking objects. The problem becomes more complicated when it comes to priceless objects such as museum artefacts where more refined and targeted studies are required for understanding their seismic response and also for proposing rapid tools for assessing their seismic risk. The paper presents an extensive experimental campaign on the seismic response of artefacts, with emphasis on statues and busts. The tests took place in the framework of SEREME project (Seismic Resilience of Museum Contents) at the AZALEE seismic simulator of CEA in Saclay, Paris under the auspices of the SERA project. The aim is to understand the seismic response of statues and busts and then develop novel and cost-effective risk mitigation schemes for improving the seismic resilience of museum valuable contents. The study is focused on the investigation of the seismic response of two real-scale marble roman statues and three busts of three roman emperors standing on pedestals of different types and size. Both isolated and non-isolated artefacts are considered, while two new and highly efficient base isolation systems, tailored to art objects, will be tested. The first isolator is a pendulum-based system, while the second utilizes Shape Memory Alloy wires. Furthermore, the paper examines the importance of the hosting building, i.e. building type and story. Specifically tailored, numerical models of varying complexity, for single and two-block rocking systems, were developed for the needs of this study and are also assessed against the experimental results

Urgent need to clarify the definition of chronic critical limb ischemia - a position paper from the European Society for Vascular Medicine

Chronic critical lower limb ischemia (CLI) has been defined as ischemia that endangers the leg. An attempt was made to give a precise definition of CLI, based on clinical and hemodynamic data (Second European Consensus). CLI may be easily defined from a clinical point of view as rest pain of the distal foot or gangrene or ulceration. It is probably useful to add leg ulcers of other origin which do not heal because of severe ischemia, and to consider the impact of frailty on adverse outcome. From a hemodynamic viewpoint there is no consensus and most of the existing classifications are not based upon evidence. We should thus propose a definition and then validate it in a prospective cohort in order to define the patients at major risk of amputation, and also to define the categories of patients whose prognosis is improved by revascularisation. From today\u27s available data, it seems clear that the patients with a systolic toe pressure (STP) below 30 mmHg must be revascularised whenever possible. However other patients with clinically suspected CLI and STP above 30 mmHg must be evaluated and treated in specialised vascular units and revascularisation has to be discussed on a case by case basis, taking into account other data such as the WiFi classification for ulcers.In conclusion, many useful but at times contradictory definitions of CLI have been suggested. Only a few have taken into account evidence, and none have been validated prospectively. This paper aims to address this and to give notice that a CLI registry within Europe will be set up to prospectively validate, or not, the previous and suggested definitions of CLI

A Study of the Learnability of Relational Properties: Model Counting Meets Machine Learning (MCML)

This paper introduces the MCML approach for empirically studying the learnability of relational properties that can be expressed in the well-known software design language Alloy. A key novelty of MCML is quantification of the performance of and semantic differences among trained machine learning (ML) models, specifically decision trees, with respect to entire (bounded) input spaces, and not just for given training and test datasets (as is the common practice). MCML reduces the quantification problems to the classic complexity theory problem of model counting, and employs state-of-the-art model counters. The results show that relatively simple ML models can achieve surprisingly high performance (accuracy and F1-score) when evaluated in the common setting of using training and test datasets - even when the training dataset is much smaller than the test dataset - indicating the seeming simplicity of learning relational properties. However, MCML metrics based on model counting show that the performance can degrade substantially when tested against the entire (bounded) input space, indicating the high complexity of precisely learning these properties, and the usefulness of model counting in quantifying the true performance

The burden of breast, cervical, and colon and rectum cancer in the Balkan countries, 1990–2019 and forecast to 2030.

Background Despite effective prevention and control strategies, in countries of the Balkan region, cancers are the second leading cause of mortality, closely following circulatory system diseases. Objective To describe trends in the burden of breast, cervical, and colon and rectum cancer in the Balkan region and per country between 1990 and 2019, including a forecast to 2030. Methods We described the 2019 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) estimates for breast, cervical, and colon and rectum cancers in eleven Balkan countries over the period 1990–2019, including incidence, years lived with disability (YLD), years of life lost (YLL), and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) rates per 100,000 population and accompanied 95% uncertainty interval. With the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average, we forecasted these rates per country up to 2030. Results In the Balkan region, the highest incidence and DALYs rates in the study period were for colon and rectum, and breast cancers. Over the study period, the DALYs rates for breast cancer per 100,000 population were the highest in Serbia (reaching 670.84 in 2019) but the lowest in Albania (reaching 271.24 in 2019). In 2019, the highest incidence of breast cancer (85 /100,000) and highest YLD rate (64 /100,000) were observed in Greece. Romania had the highest incidence rates, YLD rates, DALY rates, and YLL rates of cervical cancer, with respective 20.59%, 23.39% 4.00%, and 3.47% increases for the 1990/2019 period, and the highest forecasted burden for cervical cancer in 2030. The highest incidence rates, YLD rates and DALY rates of colon and rectum cancers were continuously recorded in Croatia (an increase of 130.75%, 48.23%, and 63.28%, respectively), while the highest YLL rates were in Bulgaria (an increase of 63.85%). The YLL rates due to colon and rectum cancers are forecasted to progress by 2030 in all Balkan countries. Conclusion As most of the DALYs burden for breast, cervical, and colon and rectum cancer is due to premature mortality, the numerous country-specific barriers to cancer early detection and quality and care continuum should be a public priority of multi-stakeholder collaboration in the Balkan region

Methodological considerations in injury burden of disease studies across Europe: a systematic literature review

Background Calculating the disease burden due to injury is complex, as it requires many methodological choices. Until now, an overview of the methodological design choices that have been made in burden of disease (BoD) studies in injury populations is not available. The aim of this systematic literature review was to identify existing injury BoD studies undertaken across Europe and to comprehensively review the methodological design choices and assumption parameters that have been made to calculate years of life lost (YLL) and years lived with disability (YLD) in these studies. Methods We searched EMBASE, MEDLINE, Cochrane Central, Google Scholar, and Web of Science, and the grey literature supplemented by handsearching, for BoD studies. We included injury BoD studies that quantified the BoD expressed in YLL, YLD, and disability-adjusted life years (DALY) in countries within the European Region between early-1990 and mid-2021. Results We retrieved 2,914 results of which 48 performed an injury-specific BoD assessment. Single-country independent and Global Burden of Disease (GBD)-linked injury BoD studies were performed in 11 European countries. Approximately 79% of injury BoD studies reported the BoD by external cause-of-injury. Most independent studies used the incidence-based approach to calculate YLDs. About half of the injury disease burden studies applied disability weights (DWs) developed by the GBD study. Almost all independent injury studies have determined YLL using national life tables. Conclusions Considerable methodological variation across independent injury BoD assessments was observed; differences were mainly apparent in the design choices and assumption parameters towards injury YLD calculations, implementation of DWs, and the choice of life table for YLL calculations. Development and use of guidelines for performing and reporting of injury BoD studies is crucial to enhance transparency and comparability of injury BoD estimates across Europe and beyond

Squeezing and expanding light without reflections via transformation optics

This paper was published in OPTICS EXPRESS and is made available as an electronic reprint with the permission of OSA. The paper can be found at the following URL on the OSA website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/OE.19.003562. Systematic or multiple reproduction or distribution to multiple locations via electronic or other means is prohibited and is subject to penalties under law[EN] We study the reflection properties of squeezing devices based on transformation optics. An analytical expression for the angle-dependent reflection coefficient of a generic three-dimensional squeezer is derived. In contrast with previous studies, we find that there exist several conditions that guarantee no reflections so it is possible to build transformation-optics-based reflectionless squeezers. Moreover, it is shown that the design of antireflective coatings for the non-reflectionless case can be reduced to matching the impedance between two dielectrics. We illustrate the potential of these devices by proposing two applications in which a reflectionless squeezer is the key element: an ultra-short perfect coupler for high-index nanophotonic waveguides and a completely flat reflectionless hyperlens. We also apply our theory to the coupling of two metallic waveguides with different cross-section. Finally, we show how the studied devices can be implemented with non-magnetic isotropic materials by using a quasi-conformal mapping technique. © 2011 Optical Society of America.Financial support by the Spanish MICINN under contract CONSOLIDER EMET (CSD2008-00066) and PROMETEO-2010-087 R&D Excellency Program (NANOMET) is gratefully acknowledged. C. G.-M., R. O. and F.J. R.-F. acknowledge financial support from grants FPU of MICINN, FPI of U.P.V. and FPI of Generalitat Valenciana, respectively.García Meca, C.; Tung, MM.; Galán Conejos, JV.; Ortuño Molinero, R.; Rodríguez Fortuño, FJ.; Martí Sendra, J.; Martínez Abietar, AJ. (2011). Squeezing and expanding light without reflections via transformation optics. Optics Express. 19(4):3562-3575. https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.19.003562S35623575194Yang, R., Abushagur, M. A., & Lu, Z. (2008). Efficiently squeezing near infrared light into a 21nm-by-24nm nanospot. Optics Express, 16(24), 20142. doi:10.1364/oe.16.020142Vivien, L., Laval, S., Cassan, E., Le Roux, X., & Pascal, D. (2003). 2-d taper for low-loss coupling between polarization-insensitive microwaveguides and single-mode optical fibers. Journal of Lightwave Technology, 21(10), 2429-2433. doi:10.1109/jlt.2003.817692Pendry, J. B. (2006). Controlling Electromagnetic Fields. Science, 312(5781), 1780-1782. doi:10.1126/science.1125907Leonhardt, U., & Philbin, T. G. (2006). General relativity in electrical engineering. New Journal of Physics, 8(10), 247-247. doi:10.1088/1367-2630/8/10/247Rahm, M., Cummer, S. A., Schurig, D., Pendry, J. B., & Smith, D. R. (2008). Optical Design of Reflectionless Complex Media by Finite Embedded Coordinate Transformations. Physical Review Letters, 100(6). doi:10.1103/physrevlett.100.063903Rahm, M., Roberts, D. A., Pendry, J. B., & Smith, D. R. (2008). Transformation-optical design of adaptive beam bends and beam expanders. Optics Express, 16(15), 11555. doi:10.1364/oe.16.011555Grzegorczyk, T. M., Chen, X., Pacheco, J., Chen, J., Wu, B.-I., & Kong, J. A. (2005). REFLECTION COEFFICIENTS AND GOOS-HANCHEN SHIFTS IN ANISOTROPIC AND BIANISOTROPIC LEFT-HANDED METAMATERIALS. Progress In Electromagnetics Research, 51, 83-113. doi:10.2528/pier04040901Taillaert, D., Bogaerts, W., Bienstman, P., Krauss, T. F., Van Daele, P., Moerman, I., … Baets, R. (2002). An out-of-plane grating coupler for efficient butt-coupling between compact planar waveguides and single-mode fibers. IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, 38(7), 949-955. doi:10.1109/jqe.2002.1017613Roelkens, G., Vermeulen, D., Van Thourhout, D., Baets, R., Brision, S., Lyan, P., … Fédéli, J.-M. (2008). High efficiency diffractive grating couplers for interfacing a single mode optical fiber with a nanophotonic silicon-on-insulator waveguide circuit. Applied Physics Letters, 92(13), 131101. doi:10.1063/1.2905260Tsuchizawa, T., Yamada, K., Fukuda, H., Watanabe, T., Jun-ichi Takahashi, Takahashi, M., … Morita, H. (2005). Microphotonics devices based on silicon microfabrication technology. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, 11(1), 232-240. doi:10.1109/jstqe.2004.841479Li, J., & Pendry, J. B. (2008). Hiding under the Carpet: A New Strategy for Cloaking. Physical Review Letters, 101(20). doi:10.1103/physrevlett.101.203901Vasić, B., Isić, G., Gajić, R., & Hingerl, K. (2009). Coordinate transformation based design of confined metamaterial structures. Physical Review B, 79(8). doi:10.1103/physrevb.79.085103Shalaev, V. M. (2008). PHYSICS: Transforming Light. Science, 322(5900), 384-386. doi:10.1126/science.1166079Xiong, Y., Liu, Z., & Zhang, X. (2009). A simple design of flat hyperlens for lithography and imaging with half-pitch resolution down to 20 nm. Applied Physics Letters, 94(20), 203108. doi:10.1063/1.3141457Kildishev, A. V., & Narimanov, E. E. (2007). Impedance-matched hyperlens. Optics Letters, 32(23), 3432. doi:10.1364/ol.32.003432Gaillot, D. P., Croënne, C., Zhang, F., & Lippens, D. (2008). Transformation optics for the full dielectric electromagnetic cloak and metal–dielectric planar hyperlens. New Journal of Physics, 10(11), 115039. doi:10.1088/1367-2630/10/11/115039Tichit, P.-H., Burokur, S. N., & de Lustrac, A. (2010). Waveguide taper engineering using coordinate transformation technology. Optics Express, 18(2), 767. doi:10.1364/oe.18.000767Zang, X., & Jiang, C. (2010). Manipulating the field distribution via optical transformation. Optics Express, 18(10), 10168. doi:10.1364/oe.18.010168Chang, Z., Zhou, X., Hu, J., & Hu, G. (2010). Design method for quasi-isotropic transformation materials based on inverse Laplace’s equation with sliding boundaries. Optics Express, 18(6), 6089. doi:10.1364/oe.18.00608