In-vehicle communication networks : a literature survey

The increasing use of electronic systems in automobiles instead of mechanical and hydraulic parts brings about advantages by decreasing their weight and cost and providing more safety and comfort. There are many electronic systems in modern automobiles like antilock braking system (ABS) and electronic brakeforce distribution (EBD), electronic stability program (ESP) and adaptive cruise control (ACC). Such systems assist the driver by providing better control, more comfort and safety. In addition, future x-by-wire applications aim to replace existing braking, steering and driving systems. The developments in automotive electronics reveal the need for dependable, efficient, high-speed and low cost in-vehicle communication. This report presents the summary of a literature survey on in-vehicle communication networks. Different in-vehicle system domains and their requirements are described and main invehicle communication networks that have been used in automobiles or are likely to be used in the near future are discussed and compared with key references

Mental disorders frequency alternative and complementary medicine usage among patients with hypertension and type 2 diabetes mellitus

Objectives: Diabetes mellitus (DM) and hypertension (HT) are chronic disorders with which mental disorders may coexist and for which patients may resort to alternative medicine use. Alternative and complementary medicine is a treatment option that patients tend to use. This study is to determine the prevalence of mental disorders among patients diagnosed with DM and HT and their use of alternative medicine methods.Materials and Methods The study was conducted in a primary care setting. The data were collected from the Family Health Center No. 4 at Çankaya, Ankara, Turkey. It involved patients aged between 18 and 65, who were on follow‑up treatment for DM and HT. Patients accepted to participate in the study were administered the sociodemographic data form, the Primary Care Evaluation of Mental Disorders (PRIME‑MD) questionnaire and the alternative medicine inquiry form.Participants: One hundred and sixteen patients with HT and 119 patients with DM (type 2) were recruited for the study.Results: In this study, 47.4% of HT patients and 53.8% of the DM patients were diagnosed with a PRIME‑MD. The most commonly encountered disorder was mood disorders, in 37.1% of the HT patients and 45.4% of the DM patients. In this study, four HT patients (0.3%) and no DM patients stated that they resorted to complimentary medicine, which can use be used alongside conventional medical treatment and may help to feel better and cope better with any chronic condition. All four HT patients were using multivitamin combinations to support the treatment. As the alternative medicine usage was described as treatment used instead of conventional medical treatment we did not find any patient using alternative medicine.Conclusions: Mental disorders may coexist with HT and DM. Some of the HT and DM patients suffering from a mental disorder seek psychiatric support, while others do not. We believe that it is important to examine patients for mental disorders, while being followed‑up for a chronic disease.Keywords: Alternative medicine, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, mental disorde

Schedulability analysis of synchronization protocols based on overrun without payback for hierarchical scheduling frameworks revisited

In this paper, we revisit global as well as local schedulability analysis of synchronization protocols based on the stack resource policy (SRP) and overrun without payback for hierarchical scheduling frameworks based on fixed-priority preemptive scheduling (FPPS). We show that both the existing global and local schedulability analysis are pessimistic, present improved analysis, and illustrate the improvements by means of examples

Essays on Decision Making: Intertemporal Choice and Uncertainty

Being labeled as a social science, much of economics is about understanding human behavior; be it in the face of uncertainty or delayed payoffs through time or strategic situations such as auctions, bargaining, and so on. This thesis will be concerned with the first two, namely uncertainty and time preferences. The main focus of this thesis is what we can summarize with two broad titles: "irrationalities" in human behavior and an alternative perspective on 'rational behavior". My claim requires a clarification of what is meant by rational or irrational behavior. In one of the early discussions of this topic, Richter (1966) defined a rational consumer as someone for whom there exists a total, reflexive, and transitive binary relation on the set of commodities so that his choice data consists of maximal elements of this binary relation. In this respect, Richter (1966) only imposed minimal consistency conditions on behavior for it to be labeled as rational. Although his setting does not involve any uncertainty or time dimension, analogues of these conditions exist for the models we consider here as well. So one can extend the rationality notion of Richter (1966) to our models too. Yet the essence of his approach to rationality is different than the one we take up in this thesis. This minimalistic approach of Richter would leave little space for discussions on rational behavior because much behavior would be rational except for a few cleverly constructed counterexamples. Instead we will consider more widely accepted norms of rationality and analyze them in the framework of uncertainty and time preferences. The widely accepted norms of rationality mentioned above are understood to be axioms that lead to decision rules describing people's behavior. In the case of decision making under risk and uncertainty the most commonly used decision model is expected utility, and in the case of dynamic decision making, it is the constant discounted utility model. Although there are models that combine both to explain decision making in a dynamic stochastic settings, in this thesis we study them in isolation to assess the nature of the models in more detail

Drugs with anticholinergic side-effects in primary care

Background: Anticholinergic drugs in elderly people have been associated with some serious side.effects. Patients in Turkey tend to attend primary care centers to have prescriptions of the drugs they chronically use. However, very little are known about how frequent that these drugs are prescribed and their side-effects in Turkish population. We aimed to investigate the usage and side.effects of drugs with anticholinergic  properties in patients over 65 years of age attending to primary care centers.Materials and Methods: Five hundred and sixty.three subjects were interviewed with a questionnaire of 16 questions inquiring their medication and possible side.effects. Timed up and go test (TUGT) and standardized mini.mental test (SMMT) were also performed.Results: Medical records of 563 individuals were screened to detect  anticholinergic medication. Twenty.eight patients were using anticholinergic medication. Mean duration of anticholinergic medication usage was 3.17 years. Mean number of falls occurred in the previous year was 1.14 « 1.17. Mean SMMT score was 27.20 « 1.13. Mean TUGT scores mean was 12.4 « 1.25. Drowsiness in 18 patients (65%), dry mouth in 15 patients (53%), dry eyes in 15 patients (53%), constipation in 11 patients (39%), blurred vision in 11 patients (%39), urinary hesitancy in eight patients (28%), confusion in six patients (21%) were reported. We found that none of the subjects were evaluated in terms of fall risk or mental status by their  doctors before the prescription of drugs with anticholinergic effects.Conclusions: A suggested approach to improve drug safety was reported as to reduce the use of anticholinergic drugs when it is possible. Psychiatrists and family physicians should select less anticholinergic drugs for  medication and have to evaluate their patientsf fall risk and their cognitive status before prescribing drugs with anticholinergic side effects.Key words: Anticholinergic side effects, cognitive status, fall risk, primary car

Minimum Configuration Insensitive Multifunctional Current-Mode Biquad Using Current Conveyors and All-Grounded Passive Components

This paper proposes a new current conveyorbased high-output impedance single-input three-output current mode filter with minimum configuration. It contains two dual output second generation current conveyors, one third generation dual output current conveyor, and four grounded resistors and capacitors. The circuit simultaneously provides low-pass, band-pass, and high-pass filtering outputs, without any passive component matching conditions and restrictions on input signals. Additionally, the proposed circuit offers following advantages: Minimum active and passive element count, high output and low input impedances, suitable for cascading identical currentmode sections, all passive elements are grounded (no virtual grounding), low natural frequency and Q-factor sensitivities. The influences of non-ideal current conveyors on the proposed circuit are researched in the last

Cytogenetic analysis on Turkonalassus quercanus Keskin, Nabozhenko et Alpagut-Keskin, 2017 (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae: Helopini)

Cytogenetic features of the endemic Western Anatolian tenebrionid species Turkonalassus quercanus Keskin, Nabozhenko et Alpagut-Keskin, 2017 were analyzed using conventional and differential staining. Chromosome preparations were obtained from the gonads of both males and females. The karyotype of T. quercanus was found to be 2n = 20 (9 + Xyp), which is considered the modal number for Tenebrionidae. The heteromorphic sex chromosomes of T. quercanus form a parachute like bivalent at metaphase I (MI) of male meiosis. Both conventional and differential staining have shown that predominantly metacentric chromosomes of T. quercanus exhibit a typical pericentromeric heterochromatin pattern. As per results of the silver staining, the existence of a prominent nucleolus at prophase I and a highly impregnated area associated with Xyp at MI are indicated the sex chromosomal location of NOR. In comparison with previously published cytogenetic data on other species of the tribe Helopini which are presenting the same karyotype formula, our results suggest that a series of chromosomal rearrangements may have been involved in their karyotype evolution

Specialized dynamical properties of promiscuous residues revealed by simulated conformational ensembles

The ability to interact with different partners is one of the most important features in proteins. Proteins that bind a large number of partners (hubs) have been often associated with intrinsic disorder. However, many examples exist of hubs with an ordered structure, and evidence of a general mechanism promoting promiscuity in ordered proteins is still elusive. An intriguing hypothesis is that promiscuous binding sites have specific dynamical properties, distinct from the rest of the interface and pre-existing in the protein isolated state. Here, we present the first comprehensive study of the intrinsic dynamics of promiscuous residues in a large protein data set. Different computational methods, from coarse-grained elastic models to geometry-based sampling methods and to full-atom Molecular Dynamics simulations, were used to generate conformational ensembles for the isolated proteins. The flexibility and dynamic correlations of interface residues with a different degree of binding promiscuity were calculated and compared considering side chain and backbone motions, the latter both on a local and on a global scale. The study revealed that (a) promiscuous residues tend to be more flexible than nonpromiscuous ones, (b) this additional flexibility has a higher degree of organization, and (c) evolutionary conservation and binding promiscuity have opposite effects on intrinsic dynamics. Findings on simulated ensembles were also validated on ensembles of experimental structures extracted from the Protein Data Bank (PDB). Additionally, the low occurrence of single nucleotide polymorphisms observed for promiscuous residues indicated a tendency to preserve binding diversity at these positions. A case study on two ubiquitin-like proteins exemplifies how binding promiscuity in evolutionary related proteins can be modulated by the fine-tuning of the interface dynamics. The interplay between promiscuity and flexibility highlighted here can inspire new directions in protein-protein interaction prediction and design methods. © 2013 American Chemical Society

Human Cancer Protein-Protein Interaction Network: A Structural Perspective

Protein-protein interaction networks provide a global picture of cellular function and biological processes. Some proteins act as hub proteins, highly connected to others, whereas some others have few interactions. The dysfunction of some interactions causes many diseases, including cancer. Proteins interact through their interfaces. Therefore, studying the interface properties of cancer-related proteins will help explain their role in the interaction networks. Similar or overlapping binding sites should be used repeatedly in single interface hub proteins, making them promiscuous. Alternatively, multi-interface hub proteins make use of several distinct binding sites to bind to different partners. We propose a methodology to integrate protein interfaces into cancer interaction networks (ciSPIN, cancer structural protein interface network). The interactions in the human protein interaction network are replaced by interfaces, coming from either known or predicted complexes. We provide a detailed analysis of cancer related human protein-protein interfaces and the topological properties of the cancer network. The results reveal that cancer-related proteins have smaller, more planar, more charged and less hydrophobic binding sites than non-cancer proteins, which may indicate low affinity and high specificity of the cancer-related interactions. We also classified the genes in ciSPIN according to phenotypes. Within phenotypes, for breast cancer, colorectal cancer and leukemia, interface properties were found to be discriminating from non-cancer interfaces with an accuracy of 71%, 67%, 61%, respectively. In addition, cancer-related proteins tend to interact with their partners through distinct interfaces, corresponding mostly to multi-interface hubs, which comprise 56% of cancer-related proteins, and constituting the nodes with higher essentiality in the network (76%). We illustrate the interface related affinity properties of two cancer-related hub proteins: Erbb3, a multi interface, and Raf1, a single interface hub. The results reveal that affinity of interactions of the multi-interface hub tends to be higher than that of the single-interface hub. These findings might be important in obtaining new targets in cancer as well as finding the details of specific binding regions of putative cancer drug candidates