System Regulates the Water Contents of Fuel-Cell Streams

An assembly of devices provides for both humidification of the reactant gas streams of a fuel cell and removal of the product water (the water generated by operation of the fuel cell). The assembly includes externally-sensing forward-pressure regulators that supply reactant gases (fuel and oxygen) at variable pressures to ejector reactant pumps. The ejector supply pressures depend on the consumption flows. The ejectors develop differential pressures approximately proportional to the consumption flow rates at constant system pressure and with constant flow restriction between the mixer-outlet and suction ports of the ejectors. For removal of product water from the circulating oxygen stream, the assembly includes a water/gas separator that contains hydrophobic and hydrophilic membranes. The water separator imposes an approximately constant flow restriction, regardless of the quality of the two-phase flow that enters it from the fuel cell. The gas leaving the water separator is nearly 100 percent humid. This gas is returned to the inlet of the fuel cell along with a quantity of dry incoming oxygen, via the oxygen ejector, thereby providing some humidification

Which anticoagulant is safest for frail elderly patients with nonvalvular A-fib?

Consider apixaban, which demonstrated a lower adverse event (AE) rate than warfarin regardless of frailty status, for anticoagulation treatment of older patients with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation (AF); by comparison, AE rates for dabigatran and rivaroxaban were lower vs warfarin only among nonfrail individuals.J. Scott Earwood, MD; Justin L. Wilkie, MD; Jennifer L. Fernandez-Vasquez, MD, (Dwight David Eisenhower Army Medical Center, Fort Gordon)Includes bibliographical reference

La adopción homoparental y la problemática del abandono infantil en el Perú

El presente trabajo de investigación lleva por título, “LA ADOPCION HOMOPARENTAL Y LA PROBLEMÁTICA DEL ABANDONO INFANTIL EN EL PERU”. Este trabajo busca analizar la normativa sobre la adopción de menores en custodia del Estado peruano y a la espera de ser adoptados por personas capaces para su crianza. Asimismo acentuare las bases para demostrar que la idea de la adopción homoparental está siendo llevada a cabo en diversos países, los mismos que mantiene sobre todo velar por el cuidado y la protección del interés superior del niño y que con esto se promueva la normativa que refiera a la adopción homoparental para que se hagan valer no solo los derechos inherentes a los niños y niñas en estado de abandono y de ausencia familiar , sino también de aquellos que deseen constituir un hogar y una familia.This research work is entitled, "HOMOPARENTAL ADOPTION AND THE PROBLEMATIC OF CHILD ABANDONMENT IN PERU". This work seeks to analyze the regulations on the adoption of minors in the custody of the Peruvian State and waiting to be adopted by capable persons for their upbringing. Likewise, I will emphasize the bases to demonstrate that the idea of homoparental adoption is being carried out in various countries, the same ones that maintain above all to ensure the care and protection of the best interests of the child and that with this the regulations that refer to homoparental adoption so that not only the inherent rights of children in a state of abandonment and family absence are enforced, but also of those who wish to establish a home and family

Maximum Likelihood Estimation for Single Particle, Passive Microrheology Data with Drift

Volume limitations and low yield thresholds of biological fluids have led to widespread use of passive microparticle rheology. The mean-squared-displacement (MSD) statistics of bead position time series (bead paths) are either applied directly to determine the creep compliance [Xu et al (1998)] or transformed to determine dynamic storage and loss moduli [Mason & Weitz (1995)]. A prevalent hurdle arises when there is a non-diffusive experimental drift in the data. Commensurate with the magnitude of drift relative to diffusive mobility, quantified by a P\'eclet number, the MSD statistics are distorted, and thus the path data must be "corrected" for drift. The standard approach is to estimate and subtract the drift from particle paths, and then calculate MSD statistics. We present an alternative, parametric approach using maximum likelihood estimation that simultaneously fits drift and diffusive model parameters from the path data; the MSD statistics (and consequently the compliance and dynamic moduli) then follow directly from the best-fit model. We illustrate and compare both methods on simulated path data over a range of P\'eclet numbers, where exact answers are known. We choose fractional Brownian motion as the numerical model because it affords tunable, sub-diffusive MSD statistics consistent with typical 30 second long, experimental observations of microbeads in several biological fluids. Finally, we apply and compare both methods on data from human bronchial epithelial cell culture mucus.Comment: 29 pages, 12 figure

A search for rapidly pulsating hot subdwarf stars in the GALEX survey

NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) provided near- and far-UV observations for approximately 77 percent of the sky over a ten-year period; however, the data reduction pipeline initially only released single NUV and FUV images to the community. The recently released Python module gPhoton changes this, allowing calibrated time-series aperture photometry to be extracted easily from the raw GALEX data set. Here we use gPhoton to generate light curves for all hot subdwarf B (sdB) stars that were observed by GALEX, with the intention of identifying short-period, p-mode pulsations. We find that the spacecraft's short visit durations, uneven gaps between visits, and dither pattern make the detection of hot subdwarf pulsations difficult. Nonetheless, we detect UV variations in four previously known pulsating targets and report their UV pulsation amplitudes and frequencies. Additionally, we find that several other sdB targets not previously known to vary show promising signals in their periodograms. Using optical follow-up photometry with the Skynet Robotic Telescope Network, we confirm p-mode pulsations in one of these targets, LAMOST J082517.99+113106.3, and report it as the most recent addition to the sdBVr class of variable stars.Comment: 11 Pages, 8 Figures, Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Comparison of Transcript Profiles in Wild-Type and o2 Maize Endosperm in Different Genetic Backgrounds

Mutations in the Opaque2 (O2) gene of maize (Zea mays L.) improve the nutritional value of maize by reducing the level of zeins in the kernel. The phenotype of o2 grain is controlled by many modifier genes and is therefore strongly dependent on genetic background. We propose two hypotheses to explain differences in phenotypic severity in different genetic backgrounds: (i) Specific genes are differentially (o2 vs. wild-type) expressed only in certain genotypes, and (ii) A set of genes are differentially expressed in all backgrounds, but the degree of differential expression differs in different backgrounds. To determine the extent to which these two hypotheses contribute to determining the severity of o2 in different genetic backgrounds, we identified transcripts likely to be differentially expressed in several genetic backgrounds by transcript profile comparison of endosperm RNA pools from eight o2 inbred lines and their wild-type counterparts. The inbred line B46 was identified as having severe o2 phenotypes while the line M14 was identified as having minimal o2 phenotypes. The degree of wild-type vs. o2 differential expression of transcripts was determined for these two lines. We found that most genes that are downregulated by o2 tend to be differentially expressed to a greater degree in B46 than in M14, while upregulated genes tend to be more highly differentially expressed in one genetic background or the other. Thus, hypothesis one functions more prominently for upregulated genes while hypothesis two functions most prominently for downregulated genes

In What Ways Are Deep Neural Networks Invariant and How Should We Measure This?

It is often said that a deep learning model is "invariant" to some specific type of transformation. However, what is meant by this statement strongly depends on the context in which it is made. In this paper we explore the nature of invariance and equivariance of deep learning models with the goal of better understanding the ways in which they actually capture these concepts on a formal level. We introduce a family of invariance and equivariance metrics that allows us to quantify these properties in a way that disentangles them from other metrics such as loss or accuracy. We use our metrics to better understand the two most popular methods used to build invariance into networks: data augmentation and equivariant layers. We draw a range of conclusions about invariance and equivariance in deep learning models, ranging from whether initializing a model with pretrained weights has an effect on a trained model's invariance, to the extent to which invariance learned via training can generalize to out-of-distribution data.Comment: To appear at NeurIPS 202

Predicting the Next Best View for 3D Mesh Refinement

3D reconstruction is a core task in many applications such as robot navigation or sites inspections. Finding the best poses to capture part of the scene is one of the most challenging topic that goes under the name of Next Best View. Recently, many volumetric methods have been proposed; they choose the Next Best View by reasoning over a 3D voxelized space and by finding which pose minimizes the uncertainty decoded into the voxels. Such methods are effective, but they do not scale well since the underlaying representation requires a huge amount of memory. In this paper we propose a novel mesh-based approach which focuses on the worst reconstructed region of the environment mesh. We define a photo-consistent index to evaluate the 3D mesh accuracy, and an energy function over the worst regions of the mesh which takes into account the mutual parallax with respect to the previous cameras, the angle of incidence of the viewing ray to the surface and the visibility of the region. We test our approach over a well known dataset and achieve state-of-the-art results.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, to be published in IAS-1

Bioluminescent Magnetic Nanoparticles as Potential Imaging Agents for Mammalian Spermatozoa

Background: Nanoparticles have emerged as key materials for developing applications in nanomedicine, nanobiotechnology, bioimaging and theranostics. Existing bioimaging technologies include bioluminescent resonance energy transfer-conjugated quantum dots (BRET-QDs). Despite the current use of BRET-QDs for bioimaging, there are strong concerns about QD nanocomposites containing cadmium which exhibits potential cellular toxicity. Results: In this study, bioluminescent composites comprised of magnetic nanoparticles and firefly luciferase (Photinus pyralis) are examined as potential light-emitting agents for imaging, detection, and tracking mammalian spermatozoa. Characterization was carried out using infrared spectroscopy, TEM and cryo-TEM imaging, and ζ-potential measurements to demonstrate the successful preparation of these nanocomposites. Binding interactions between the synthesized nanoparticles and spermatozoon were characterized using confocal and atomic/magnetic force microscopy. Bioluminescence imaging and UV–visible-NIR microscopy results showed light emission from sperm samples incubated with the firefly luciferase-modified nanoparticles. Therefore, these newly synthesized luciferase-modified magnetic nanoparticles show promise as substitutes for QD labeling, and can potentially also be used for in vivo manipulation and tracking, as well as MRI techniques. Conclusions: These preliminary data indicate that luciferase-magnetic nanoparticle composites can potentially be used for spermatozoa detection and imaging. Their magnetic properties add additional functionality to allow for manipulation, sorting, or tracking of cells using magnetic techniques