Evaluation of HIV infected Cells

In this paper, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infected cells is found out using a Simulink model. The Simulink solution is equivalent or very close to the exact solution of the problem. Accuracy of the Simulink solution to this problem is better than the existing numerical methods. The main advantage of Simulink model is that solution of any dynamicalproblem can be obtained by anybody without writing any codes. Anillustrative numerical example is presented for the proposed method

Integration of smed and triz in improving productivity at semiconductor industry

A case study on a test handler’s changeover process was conducted in a semiconductor organization (Intel Technology Sdn. Bhd.). The test handler being a constraint operation in the production supports the testing of two of the mainstream chipset products. Though the test handler is capable to support multiple chipset products but due to the equipment configuration complexity, the changeover process today requires an average 4 hours to fully complete. The long changeover duration degrades the overall productivity especially inability to meet customer demand timely, lower utilization and rising cost issues. These identified issues are potential factors that could impact the sustainability of the organization in long run. This case study focuses on improving the changeover process using techniques from Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) and Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ). Both the techniques have individual strengths and weakness and thus the focus will be to integrate them to complement each other to enhance the changeover process duration further. Problems in the current process like non standard practices, complex hardware setup and waste activities that plagued today are process were identified and categorized accordingly. Later, appropriate techniques from SMED and TRIZ were proposed to counter these issues systematically. SMED will be used mostly for task simplification while TRIZ will be used for hardware part redesigns and overall process optimization. The end of mind of this study is to achieve a lean and optimized changeover process that can be performed below 30 minutes with no safety, quality or output concerns

The sequencing of agricultural market reforms in Malawi

The paper analyzes the welfare impacts of alternative sequencing scenarios of agricultural market reforms in Malawi using a profit maximization approach. The simulation results show that, contrary to the sequencing path adopted in the 1980's, Malawi's Government should have liberalized the maize sector first, followed by the groundnut export sector, and once a supply response was generated, input subsidies could have been phased out, without generating a negative impact on producers' welfare and food security.Agricultural economics. ,Food security Malawi. ,

The Business Cycle and Health: An Analysis of How Macroeconomic Conditions Impact Health Outcomes in the U.S.

The U.S. spends about twice as much per person on healthcare, yet the disease burden remains higher in the U.S. than in comparable countries (Sawyer and Cox 2018; Sawyer and Gonzales 2017). Although health status is perceived to be an outcome of individual decision making, the business cycle also affects health. While the effect of macroeconomic shocks on health outcomes has been studied extensively, results remain inconclusive. This analysis uses longitudinal data over 30 years and panel data models to examine the effect of macroeconomic conditions on obesity, diabetes, hypertension, depression, congestive heart failure, and heart attack or myocardial infarction. I find that health varies countercyclically with the business cycle when both real GDP and the unemployment rate are used as measures of the business cycle: as the economy improves, the probability of disease increases and health declines. A 1% increase in real GDP increases the probability of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and depression by 0.264%, 0.021%, 0.102%, and 0.030%, respectively. A 1% increase in real GDP decreases vigorous exercise by 2.484 hours per week and increases alcohol consumption by 1.447 days per month. A recession year increases this countercyclical effect, perhaps because the time constraint shifts outward more than the income constraint shifts inward. My thesis fills several gaps in the existing literature, providing valuable knowledge on health determinants, the health costs of economic growth, and potential public health policy responses

The Advection-Diffusion Equation and the Enhanced Dissipation Effect for Flows Generated by Hamiltonians

We study the Cauchy problem for the advection-diffusion equation when the diffusive parameter is vanishingly small. We consider two cases - when the underlying flow is a shear flow, and when the underlying flow is generated by a Hamiltonian. For the former, we examine the problem on a bounded domain in two spatial variables with Dirichlet boundary conditions. After quantizing the system via the Fourier transform in the first spatial variable, we establish the enhanced-dissipation effect for each mode. For the latter, we allow for non-degenerate critical points and represent the orbits by points on a Reeb graph, with vertices representing critical points or connected components of the boundary. A transformation to action-angle coordinates allows for angle-averaging, which in turn allows for quantizing in a similar fashion to the shear flow. The resulting system is an effective diffusion equation (trivial quantum number) paired with a countable family of Schrodinger equations (nontrivial quantum numbers). For the latter, we are able to construct a Lyapunov functional with enhanced characteristic time scales which are much shorter than the inverse of the diffusivity. We apply tools from non-self-adjoint spectral theory to infer enhanced rates of dissipation of the semigroup evolution operator, and we show that the solution of the advection-diffusion equation converges to the solution of the effective diffusion equation as the diffusive parameter becomes vanishingly small

Broadcast and Verifiable Secret Sharing: New Security Models and Round Optimal Constructions

Broadcast and verifiable secret sharing (VSS) are central building blocks for secure multi-party computation. These protocols are required to be resilient against a Byzantine adversary who controls at most t out of the n parties running the protocol. In this dissertation, we consider the design of fault-tolerant protocols for broadcast and verifiable secret sharing with stronger security guarantees and improved round complexity. Broadcast allows a party to send the same message to all parties, and all parties are assured they have received identical messages. Given a public-key infrastructure (PKI) and digital signatures, it is possible to construct broadcast protocols tolerating any number of corrupted parties. We address two important issues related to broadcast: (1) Almost all existing protocols do not distinguish between corrupted parties (who do not follow the protocol) and honest parties whose secret (signing) keys have been compromised (but who continue to behave honestly); (2) all existing protocols for broadcast are insecure against an adaptive adversary who can choose which parties to corrupt as the protocol progresses. We propose new security models that capture these issues, and present tight feasibility and impossibility results. In the problem of verifiable secret sharing, there is a designated player who shares a secret during an initial sharing phase such that the secret is hidden from an adversary that corrupts at most t parties. In a subsequent reconstruction phase of the protocol, a unique secret, well-defined by the view of honest players in the sharing phase, is reconstructed. The round complexity of VSS protocols is a very important metric of their efficiency. We show two improvements regarding the round complexity of information-theoretic VSS. First, we construct an efficient perfectly secure VSS protocol tolerating t < n/3 corrupted parties that is simultaneously optimal in both the number of rounds and the number of invocations of broadcast. Second, we construct a statistically secure VSS protocol tolerating t < n/2 corrupted parties that has optimal round complexity, and an efficient statistical VSS protocol tolerating t < n/2 corrupted parties that requires one additional round

Development of a GIS-based safety analysis system

The objective of this study is to develop a safety analysis system that integrates crash data and roadway related information. This system is developed in a Geographic Information System (GIS) environment. It includes customized user interfaces to support queries to analyze data and to display results either in graphical or tabular formats. The system also affords the capabilities to export such results. The system permits analyses to be performed either at individual locations such as intersections, or for roadway segments. These analyses are based on data fields included in the crash database. The queries may be based on individual attributes recorded in the crash database or by combining multiple attributes from the database. The system also contains a module to identify high crash locations based on methods identified from the published literature. The methods range from those based on simple crash frequency to more complex methods which incorporate different weights for crashed based on the crash outcomes. An application of the system is illustrated using data from the Las Vegas metropolitan are in the state of Nevada; The system can be used to identify safety issues in a region, and to plan and deploy appropriate countermeasures to enhance safety. It also can be used to monitor the effectiveness of traffic safety programs. Such a system could also be used to screen projects and operational strategies to be funded in through appropriate funding processes