An efficient ant colony system based on receding horizon control for the aircraft arrival sequencing and scheduling problem

The aircraft arrival sequencing and scheduling (ASS) problem is a salient problem in air traffic control (ATC), which proves to be nondeterministic polynomial (NP) hard. This paper formulates the ASS problem in the form of a permutation problem and proposes a new solution framework that makes the first attempt at using an ant colony system (ACS) algorithm based on the receding horizon control (RHC) to solve it. The resultant RHC-improved ACS algorithm for the ASS problem (termed the RHC-ACS-ASS algorithm) is robust, effective, and efficient, not only due to that the ACS algorithm has a strong global search ability and has been proven to be suitable for these kinds of NP-hard problems but also due to that the RHC technique can divide the problem with receding time windows to reduce the computational burden and enhance the solution's quality. The RHC-ACS-ASS algorithm is extensively tested on the cases from the literatures and the cases randomly generated. Comprehensive investigations are also made for the evaluation of the influences of ACS and RHC parameters on the performance of the algorithm. Moreover, the proposed algorithm is further enhanced by using a two-opt exchange heuristic local search. Experimental results verify that the proposed RHC-ACS-ASS algorithm generally outperforms ordinary ACS without using the RHC technique and genetic algorithms (GAs) in solving the ASS problems and offers high robustness, effectiveness, and efficienc

Design and Development of an RFID-based HIS - A Case Study

The Healthcare industry involves critical activities where small mistakes could cause huge loss of life and incur massive financial losses. Improving operational efficiency and enhancing data correctness of patients are the prime targets of using hospital information system (HIS). Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, with a unique ability to perform automatic data collection without any human intervention, has gained great interest in the healthcare industry. In this research, an RFID‐enabled HIS is proposed for improving operations in a hospital. This research presents the fundamentals of RFID, the benefits and its challenges, and also demonstrates three improved signature applications. It aims at providing the healthcare industry with a comprehensive understanding of RFID and its suitability for healthcare applications. The proposed system is considered to be suitably operational, practical, and affordable for healthcare organizations not only in China and Hong Kong, but also in other countries

Acute renal impairment in coronavirus-associated severe acute respiratory syndrome

Acute renal impairment in coronavirus-associated severe acute respiratory syndrome.BackgroundSevere acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a newly emerged infection from a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV). Apart from fever and respiratory complications, acute renal impairment has been observed in some patients with SARS. Herein, we describe the clinical, pathologic, and laboratory features of the acute renal impairment complicating this new viral infection.MethodsWe conducted a retrospective analysis of the plasma creatinine concentration and other clinical parameters of the 536 SARS patients with normal plasma creatinine at first clinical presentation, admitted to two regional hospitals following a major outbreak in Hong Kong in March 2003. Kidney tissues from seven other patients with postmortem examinations were studied by light microscopy and electron microscopy.ResultsAmong these 536 patients with SARS, 36 (6.7%) developed acute renal impairment occurring at a median duration of 20 days (range 5–48 days) after the onset of viral infection despite a normal plasma creatinine level at first clinical presentation. The acute renal impairment reflected the different prerenal and renal factors that exerted renal insult occurring in the context of multiorgan failure. Eventually, 33 SARS patients (91.7%) with acute renal impairment died. The mortality rate was significantly higher among patients with SARS and acute renal impairment compared with those with SARS and no renal impairment (91.7% vs. 8.8%) (P < 0.0001). Renal tissues revealed predominantly acute tubular necrosis with no evidence of glomerular pathology. The adjusted relative risk of mortality associated with the development of acute renal impairment was 4.057 (P < 0.001). By multivariate analysis, acute respiratory distress syndrome and age were the most significant independent risk factors predicting the development of acute renal impairment in SARS.ConclusionAcute renal impairment is uncommon in SARS but carries a high mortality. The acute renal impairment is likely to be related to multi-organ failure rather than the kidney tropism of the virus. The development of acute renal impairment is an important negative prognostic indicator for survival with SARS

Lynch Syndrome Associated with Two MLH1 Promoter Variants and Allelic Imbalance of MLH1 Expression

© 2015 The Authors. **Human Mutation published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Lynch syndrome is a hereditary cancer syndrome caused by a constitutional mutation in one of the mismatch repair genes. The implementation of predictive testing and targeted preventative surveillance is hindered by the frequent finding of sequence variants of uncertain significance in these genes. We aimed to determine the pathogenicity of previously reported variants (c.-28A > G and c.-7C > T) within the MLH1 5â²untranslated region (UTR) in two individuals from unrelated suspected Lynch syndrome families. We investigated whether these variants were associated with other pathogenic alterations using targeted high-throughput sequencing of the MLH1 locus. We also determined their relationship to gene expr ession and epigenetic alterations at the promoter. Sequencing revealed that the c.-28A > G and c.-7C > T variants were the only potentially pathogenic alterations within the MLH1 gene. In both individuals, the levels of transcription from the variant allele were reduced to 50% compared with the wild-type allele. Partial loss of expression occurred in the absence of constitutional epigenetic alterations within the MLH1 promoter. We propose that these variants may be pathogenic due to constitutional partial loss of MLH1 expression, and that this may be associated with intermediate penetrance of a Lynch syndrome phenotype. Our findings provide further evidence of the potential importance of noncoding variants in the MLH1 5â²UTR in the pathogenesis of Lynch syndrome.Link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Existence of the Abrikosov vortex state in two-dimensional type-II superconductors without pinning

Theory alternative to the vortex lattice melting theories is advertised. The vortex lattice melting theories are science fiction cond-mat/9811051 because the Abrikosov state is not the vortex lattice with crystalline long-range order. Since the fluctuation correction to the Abrikosov solution is infinite in the thermodynamic limit (K.Maki and H.Takayama, 1972) any fluctuation theory of the mixed state should consider a superconductor with finite sizes. Such nonperturbative theory for the easiest case of two-dimensional superconductor in the lowest Landau level approximation is presented in this work. The thermodynamic averages of the spatial average order parameter and of the Abrikosov parameter $\beta_{a}$ are calculated. It is shown that the position H_{c4} of the transition into the Abrikosov state (i.e. in the mixed state with long-range phase coherence) depends strongly on sizes of two-dimensional superconductor. Fluctuations eliminate the Abrikosov vortex state in a wide region of the mixed state of thin films with real sizes and without pinning disorders, i.e. H_{c4} << H_{c2}. The latter has experimental corroboration in Phys.Rev.Lett. 75, 2586 (1995).Comment: 4 pages, 0 figure

Nonlinear Parabolic Equations arising in Mathematical Finance

This survey paper is focused on qualitative and numerical analyses of fully nonlinear partial differential equations of parabolic type arising in financial mathematics. The main purpose is to review various non-linear extensions of the classical Black-Scholes theory for pricing financial instruments, as well as models of stochastic dynamic portfolio optimization leading to the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation. After suitable transformations, both problems can be represented by solutions to nonlinear parabolic equations. Qualitative analysis will be focused on issues concerning the existence and uniqueness of solutions. In the numerical part we discuss a stable finite-volume and finite difference schemes for solving fully nonlinear parabolic equations.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1603.0387

Measurement of Cosmic-ray Muon-induced Spallation Neutrons in the Aberdeen Tunnel Underground Laboratory

AbstractMuon-induced neutrons are one of the major backgrounds to various underground experiments, such as dark matter searches, low-energy neutrino oscillation experiments and neutrino-less double beta-decay experiments. Previous experiments on the underground production rate of muon-induced neutrons were mostly carried out either at shallow sites or at very deep sites. The Aberdeen Tunnel experiment aims to measure the neutron production rate at a moderate depth of 611 meters water equivalent. Our apparatus comprises of six layers of plastic-scintillator hodoscopes for tracking the incident cosmic-ray muons, and 760 L of gadolinium-doped liquid-scintillator for both neutron production and detection targets. In this paper, we describe the design and the performance of the apparatus. The preliminary result on the measurement of neutron production rate is also presented

Search for black holes and other new phenomena in high-multiplicity final states in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

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Search for high-mass diphoton resonances in proton-proton collisions at 13 TeV and combination with 8 TeV search

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