Energy Efficient Ant Colony Algorithms for Data Aggregation in Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, a family of ant colony algorithms called DAACA for data aggregation has been presented which contains three phases: the initialization, packet transmission and operations on pheromones. After initialization, each node estimates the remaining energy and the amount of pheromones to compute the probabilities used for dynamically selecting the next hop. After certain rounds of transmissions, the pheromones adjustment is performed periodically, which combines the advantages of both global and local pheromones adjustment for evaporating or depositing pheromones. Four different pheromones adjustment strategies are designed to achieve the global optimal network lifetime, namely Basic-DAACA, ES-DAACA, MM-DAACA and ACS-DAACA. Compared with some other data aggregation algorithms, DAACA shows higher superiority on average degree of nodes, energy efficiency, prolonging the network lifetime, computation complexity and success ratio of one hop transmission. At last we analyze the characteristic of DAACA in the aspects of robustness, fault tolerance and scalability.Comment: To appear in Journal of Computer and System Science

Will absence of GPAT1 improve diet-induced atherosclerosis in ApoE heterozygous mice?

This thesis separated into two parts. The first part examined how the lack of GPAT affects atherosclerosis that depends on a western diet. The second part examined whether the lack of GPAT does ameliorates the atherosclerosis developing on an atherogenic diet. In the first part, we fed ApoE+/-/GPAT1-/- mice and ApoE+/- mice on western diet for 4 months. We found that ApoE+/-/GPAT1-/- mice and ApoE+/- mice did not develop atherosclerotic lesions after 4 months of western diet. ApoE+/-/GPAT1-/- mice had lower serum cholesterol, hepatic triacylglycerol and body weight than ApoE+/- mice. We could not conclude that ApoE+/-/GPAT1-/- mice could improve atherosclerosis. In the second experiment, we fed ApoE+/- and ApoE+/-/GPAT1-/-mice an atherogenic diet (15.8% fat, 1.25% cholesterol, 0.5% cholate) for 90 days. We wanted to see if ApoE+/-/GPAT1-/- mice improve the diet-induced atherosclerosis on these ApoE+/-mice. We found out the ApoE+/-/GPAT1-/- mice increased their serum cholesterol and VLDL-cholesterol compared to ApoE+/- mice. The atherosclerotic lesion sizes of ApoE+/-/GPAT1-/- mice and ApoE+/- mice were similar. We concluded that the absence of GPAT could not improve the diet-induced atherosclerosis

N,N′-Bis(6-methyl-2-pyrid­yl)oxamide

In the crystal structure of the title compound, C14H14N4O2, the mol­ecules are almost planar (mean deviation 0.028 Å) and a weak intra­molecular N—H⋯O hydrogen bond between the H atom bound to an oxamide N atom and a carbonyl O atom is found. The asymmetric unit consits of one half-mol­ecule which is located on a centre of inversion

A CMMI-based approach for medical software project life cycle study

In terms of medical techniques, Taiwan has gained international recognition in recent years. However, the medical information system industry in Taiwan is still at a developing stage compared with the software industries in other nations. In addition, systematic development processes are indispensable elements of software development. They can help developers increase their productivity and efficiency and also avoid unnecessary risks arising during the development process. Thus, this paper presents an application of Light-Weight Capability Maturity Model Integration (LW-CMMI) to Chang Gung Medical Research Project (CMRP) in the Nuclear medicine field. This application was intended to integrate user requirements, system design and testing of software development processes into three layers (Domain, Concept and Instance) model. Then, expressing in structural System Modeling Language (SysML) diagrams and converts part of the manual effort necessary for project management maintenance into computational effort, for example: (semi-) automatic delivery of traceability management. In this application, it supports establishing artifacts of “requirement specification document”, “project execution plan document”, “system design document” and “system test document”, and can deliver a prototype of lightweight project management tool on the Nuclear Medicine software project. The results of this application can be a reference for other medical institutions in developing medical information systems and support of project management to achieve the aim of patient safety. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/2193-1801-2-266) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Interpersonal Relationships among University Safety Professionals: The Impact of a Safety Departmentf

PresentationForming strong interpersonal relationships enables an organization or individual to achieve more favorable outcomes. The objectives of this study were to examine the frequency of interpersonal interactions among safety professionals (SPs) employed at Taiwanese universities and the factors that affected this frequency. To accomplish these objectives, we mailed questionnaires to a simple random sampling of 200 university SPs. Moreover, an interpersonal relationship scale was developed in this study; exploratory factor and internal consistency analyses revealed that the scale was valid and reliable. Results derived from the questionnaire revealed that in SP interpersonal relationships, general affairs department personnel, laboratory or internship unit supervisors, and teaching staff ranked highest in frequency of interactions. Multivariate analysis of variance results showed that establishing a safety department exerted a statistically significant effect on SP interpersonal relationships. SPs employed by universities with safety departments interacted more frequently with both internal and external relationships. Therefore, we suggest that universities without a safety department establish such a department to strengthen the labor safety and health structure, thereby benefitting SPs in fulfilling responsibilities to promote safety and health management

6,6′-Dimethyl-2,2′-[oxalylbis(aza­nedi­yl)]dipyridinium dichloride acetonitrile solvate

In the crystal structure of the title compound, C14H16N4O2 2+·2Cl−·CH3CN, weak inter­molecular N—H⋯Cl hydrogen bonds are found between the H atoms bound to the pyridine and amine N atoms and the chloride anions. The asymmetric unit consits of one half cationic mol­ecule which is located on a centre of inversion, one chloride anion in a general position and one half acetonitrile mol­ecule which is located on a twofold axis. Because of symmetry, the C—H hydrogens of the acetonitrile solvent mol­ecule are disordered over two orientations