Load-balanced parallel banded-system solvers

AbstractSolving banded systems is important in the applications of science and engineering. This paper presents a load-balancing strategy for solving banded systems in parallel when the number of processors used is small. An optimization-based load-balancing analysis is given to determine how many loads should be assigned to each processor in order to minimize the time requirement. Some experimentations are carried out on the nCUBE 2E multiprocessor to demonstrate the speedup advantage of the proposed load-balancing strategy. The speedup improvement ratio ranges from 47% to 66% (from 12% to 24%) when using 4 (8) processors

Low Intensity of Running Favors for Anabolic Response after Resistance Exercise

Purpose: Whether active or passive recovery after resistance exercise may affect anabolic and catabolic response is not clear. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of active (moderate or low intensity running) and passive (rest) recovery after resistance exercise on testosterone, cortisol and testosterone/cortisol ratio (T/C) responses. Methods: By counter-balanced design, nine recreationally active males (age: 23.89 ± 0.86 yrs of age; height: 172.89 ± 1.30 cm; weight: 68.37 ± 2.72 kg; VO2max: 56.56 ± 1.70 ml/kg/min) completed three tests including: 65% VO2max running (moderate intensity, RM), 40% VO2max running (low intensity, RL) and passive rest (RR) following 3sets of four resistance exercises (bench press, leg extension, front lat pulldown and leg curl, 12 repetitions at 60%1RM with 2min rest among all sets and exercises). In order to evaluate the systemic anabolic status, we measured plasma testosterone, cortisol and T/C ratio before resistance exercise (baseline), immediately after either active or passive recovery (post), and 30min after recovery (rest). Results: In RM group, T/C was significantly lower (decrease 18.5%, p\u3c.05) than baseline at rest. In RL group, T/C was significantly higher (increase 79.1% at post and increase 123.2% at rest, p\u3c.05) than baseline at post and rest, respectively. At rest, the T/C of RL was higher than RM (RM: 0.49 ± 0.12, RL: 1.08 ± 0.19, p\u3c.05). Conclusions: Resistance exercise and low intensity aerobic exercise is more favorable to enhance anabolic response during post-exercise recovery

Increased Risk for Invasive Breast Cancer Associated with Hormonal Therapy: A Nation-Wide Random Sample of 65,723 Women Followed from 1997 to 2008

BACKGROUND: Hormonal therapy (HT) either estrogen alone (E-alone) or estrogen plus progesterone (E+P) appears to increase the risk for breast cancer in Western countries. However, limited information is available on the association between HT and breast cancer in Asian women characterized mainly by dietary phytoestrogens intake and low prevalence of contraceptive pills prescription. METHODOLOGY: A total of 65,723 women (20-79 years of age) without cancer or the use of Chinese herbal products were recruited from a nation-wide one-million representative sample of the National Health Insurance of Taiwan and followed from 1997 to 2008. Seven hundred and eighty incidents of invasive breast cancer were diagnosed. Using a reference group that comprised 40,052 women who had never received a hormone prescription, Cox proportional hazard models were constructed to determine the hazard ratios for receiving different types of HT and the occurrence of breast cancer. CONCLUSIONS: 5,156 (20%) women ever used E+P, 2,798 (10.8%) ever used E-alone, and 17,717 (69%) ever used other preparation types. The Cox model revealed adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) of 2.05 (95% CI 1.37-3.07) for current users of E-alone and 8.65 (95% CI 5.45-13.70) for current users of E+P. Using women who had ceased to take hormonal medication for 6 years or more as the reference group, the adjusted HRs were significantly elevated and greater than current users and women who had discontinued hormonal medication for less than 6 years. Current users of either E-alone or E+P have an increased risk for invasive breast cancer in Taiwan, and precautions should be taken when such agents are prescribed

Seismic behavior of pile in liquefiable soil ground by centrifuge shaking table tests

Dramatic failure of pile foundations caused by the soil liquefaction was founded and leading to many studies on the seismic behavior of pile. The failures were often accompanied with settlement, lateral displacement and tilting of superstructures. Therefore soil-structure interaction effects must be properly considered in the design of pile. Two centrifuge models were conducted by shaking table at an acceleration field of 80 g. The purpose of this study was to investigate the seismic response of piles attached with different tip mass and embedded in liquefied or non-liquefied deposits. From the results, it was found that the maximum bending moment of pile occurs at the depth of 4 m and 5 m for dry sand and saturated sand models, respectively. The more tip mass leads to the more permanent lateral displacement and the more residual bending moment

Integration of Genetic Programming and TABU Search Mechanism for Automatic Detection of Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Cervical Spondylosis

Cervical spondylosis is a kind of degenerative disease which not only occurs in elder patients. The age distribution of patients is unfortunately decreasing gradually. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is the best tool to confirm the cervical spondylosis severity but it requires radiologist to spend a lot of time for image check and interpretation. In this study, we proposed a prediction model to evaluate the cervical spine condition of patients by using MRI data. Furthermore, to ensure the computing efficiency of the proposed model, we adopted a heuristic programming, genetic programming (GP), to build the core of refereeing engine by combining the TABU search (TS) with the evolutionary GP. Finally, to validate the accuracy of the proposed model, we implemented experiments and compared our prediction results with radiologist’s diagnosis to the same MRI image. The experiment found that using clinical indicators to optimize the TABU list in GP+TABU got better fitness than the other two methods and the accuracy rate of our proposed model can achieve 88% on average. We expected the proposed model can help radiologists reduce the interpretation effort and improve the relationship between doctors and patients