Utilisation des logiciels d'ingénierie assistée par ordinateur dans la division ST

De juin à septembre 2000, une enquête portant sur l'utilisation des logiciels d'Ingénierie Assistée par Ordinateur (IAO) a été menée dans la division ST. Cent cinquante-trois personnes, fonctionnaires et prestataires de services, ont été interrogées sur les logiciels IAO utilisés, AutoCAD en particulier. Ce document présente les résultats statistiques bruts de cette enquête ainsi que les principales interprétations qui ont été dégagées de l'analyse de ces résultats. Il débouche, ensuite, sur des propositions concrètes dont certaines ont déjà été mises en oeuvre

Water in Relation to the Establishment of Chukar Partridge in Utah Deserts

The effects artificial watering devices (guzzlers) have on chukar (Alectoris graeca) populations were studied in Juab County, Utah. The effect of water was determined by a comparision of chukar populations near guzzlers with water to guzzlers without water. The closure of two guzzlers had a pronounced effect on the distribution of chukars and the number of chukars decreased significantly at the two guzzlers after their closure. Water concentrated the chukars, therefore, influencing their activities. During the water-critical period, between 1 July and 1 October, frequent, possibly daily, trips were made to water by chukars. Reproduction and chick survival was high in the vicinity of the guzzlers. In 1967, 21 chukar broods averaged 10.0 ± 4.6 young per brood while in 1968, 36 broods averaged 11.5 ± 5.2 young per brood. In 1968, hunter success was exceptionally high averaging 1.3 birds per hour and 4.6 birds per hunter

Une chaîne d'applications intégrées

Dans leurs phases d'étude, d'installation, de maintenance et de suivi technico-financier des contrats d'appui, les activités du groupe électricité sont largement basées sur l'utilisation d'applications informatiques. Couplées à des bases de données, ces applications CERN étroitement interconnectées, sont développées autour de noyaux informatiques industriels. Toutes les phases d'un projet, tel que le LHC, bénéficient de ces bases de données enrichies par le personnel du CERN et par ses partenaires industriels. Ce document présente le maquettage virtuel des ouvrages du génie-civil et des équipements du CERN. Il traite également de la gestion de ces équipements, de leur câblage, de leur maintenance et du suivi des contrats de sous-traitance

A Virtual CAD Model of the LHC

Integrating the large and complex LHC machine into the existing LEP tunnel is a major challenge. Space was not really a problem to fit the LEP machine into its tunnel, but LHC cryostats are much larger than the LEP quadrupoles and the external cryogenic line fills even more the tunnel. Space problems lead to small clearances. Possible conflicts, or at least the most penalising ones, between installed equipment or with transport, must be solved beforehand in order to avoid unacceptable delays and extra costs during the installation. Experience gained with LEP has already shown the help that Computer-Aided Engineering tools could provide for the integration. A virtual model of the LHC is presently prepared. The actual LEP tunnel, known with a quite good accuracy (centimetre level), has been modelled and all the elements of the machine constructed as 3D objects with the CAD system are positioned accurately on the basis of data generated from the theoretical definition. These layouts are used to generate the reference sections and to check the clearances. Examples of this powerful approach applied to engineering for accelerators are given

Performances of the PS² parallel storage and processing system for tomographic image visualization

We propose a new approach for developing parallel I/O- and compute-intensive applications. At a high level of abstraction, a macro data flow description describes how processing and disk access operations are combined. This high-level description (CAP) is precompiled into compilable and executable C++ source language. Parallel file system components specified by CAP are offered as reusable CAP operations. Low-level parallel file system components can, thanks to the CAP formalism, be combined with processing operations in order to yield efficient pipelined parallel I/O and compute intensive programs. The underlying parallel system is based on commodity components (PentiumPro processors, Fast Ethernet) and runs on top of WindowsNT. The CAP-based parallel program development approach is applied to the development of an I/O and processing intensive tomographic 3D image visualization application. Configurations range from a single PentiumPro I-disk system to a four PentiumPro 27-disk system. We show that performances scale well when increasing the number of processors and disks. With the largest configuration, the system is able to extract in parallel and project into the display space between three and four 512×512 images per second. The images may have any orientation and are extracted from a 100 MByte 3D tomographic image striped over the available set of disk

Fully automated deep learning powered calcium scoring in patients undergoing myocardial perfusion imaging

BACKGROUND To assess the accuracy of fully automated deep learning (DL) based coronary artery calcium scoring (CACS) from non-contrast computed tomography (CT) as acquired for attenuation correction (AC) of cardiac single-photon-emission computed tomography myocardial perfusion imaging (SPECT-MPI). METHODS AND RESULTS Patients were enrolled in this study as part of a larger prospective study (NCT03637231). In this study, 56 Patients who underwent cardiac SPECT-MPI due to suspected coronary artery disease (CAD) were prospectively enrolled. All patients underwent non-contrast CT for AC of SPECT-MPI twice. CACS was manually assessed (serving as standard of reference) on both CT datasets (n = 112) and by a cloud-based DL tool. The agreement in CAC scores and CAC score risk categories was quantified. For the 112 scans included in the analysis, interscore agreement between the CAC scores of the standard of reference and the DL tool was 0.986. The agreement in risk categories was 0.977 with a reclassification rate of 3.6%. Heart rate, image noise, body mass index (BMI), and scan did not significantly impact (p=0.09 - p=0.76) absolute percentage difference in CAC scores. CONCLUSION A DL tool enables a fully automated and accurate estimation of CAC scores in patients undergoing non-contrast CT for AC of SPECT-MPI

Disproportional decrease in office blood pressure compared with 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure with antihypertensive treatment: dependency on pretreatment blood pressure levels

The long-term relationship between 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) and office BP in patients on therapy is not well documented. From a registry we included all patients in whom antihypertensive therapy needed to be uptitrated. Drug treatment included the direct renin inhibitor aliskiren or an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor/angiotensin receptor blocker or drugs not blocking the renin-angiotensin system, alone or on top of an existing drug regimen. In all patients, office BP and 24-hour ABP were obtained at baseline and after 1 year with validated devices. In the study population of 2722 patients, there was a good correlation between the change in office BP and 24-hour ABP (systolic: r=0.39; P<0.001; diastolic: r=0.34; P<0.001). However, the numeric decrease in office BP did not correspond to the decrease in ABP in a 1:1 fashion, for example, a decrease of 10, 20, and 30 mm Hg corresponded to a decrease of ~7.2, 10.5, and 13.9 mm Hg in systolic ABP, respectively. The disproportionally greater decrease in systolic office BP compared with ABP was dependent on the level of the pretreatment BP, which was consistently higher for office BP than ABP. The white coat effect (difference between office BP and ABP) was on average 10/5 mm Hg lower 1 year after intensifying treatment and the magnitude of that was also dependent on pretreatment BP. There was a disproportionally greater decrease in systolic office BP than in ABP, which for both office BP and ABP seemed to depend on the pretreatment BP level

Synthesizing parallel imaging applications using the CAP Computer-Aided Parallelization tool

Imaging applications such as filtering, image transforms and compression/decompression require vast amounts of computing power when applied to large data sets. These applications would potentially benefit from the use of parallel processing. However, dedicated parallel computers are expensive and their processing power per node lags behind that of the most recent commodity components. Furthermore, developing parallel applications remains a difficult task. In order to facilitate the development of parallel applications, we propose the CAP computer aided parallelization tool which enables application programmers to specify at a high level of abstraction the flow of data between pipelined parallel operations. In addition, the CAP tool supports the programmer in developing parallel imaging and storage operations. CAP enables combining efficiently parallel storage access routines and image processing sequential operations. The paper shows how processing and I/O intensive imaging applications must be implemented to take advantage of parallelism and pipelining between data access and processing. The paper's contribution is: (1) to show how such implementations can be compactly specified in CAP; and (2) to demonstrate that CAP specified applications achieve the performance of custom parallel code. The paper analyzes theoretically the performance of CAP specified applications and demonstrates the accuracy of the theoretical analysis through experimental measurement

Low-dose CT from myocardial perfusion SPECT/CT allows the detection of anemia in preoperative patients

BACKGROUND To assess whether low-dose CT for attenuation correction of myocardial perfusion single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) allows for identification of anemic patients and grading anemia severity. METHODS AND RESULTS Patients who underwent a preoperative blood-test and low-dose CT scan, as a part of a cardiac SPECT exam, between 01 January 2015 and 31 December 2017 were enrolled in this retrospective study. Hemoglobin (Hb) levels and hematocrit were derived from clinical records. CT images were visually assessed (qualitative analysis) for the detection of inter-ventricular septum sign (IVSS) and aortic rim sign (ARS) and quantitative analysis were performed. The diagnostic accuracy for detecting anemia was compared using Hb values as the standard of reference. A total of 229 patients were included (110 with anemia; 57 mild; 46 moderate; 7 severe). The AUC of IVSS and ARS were 0.830 and 0.669, respectively (p<0.0001). The quantitative analysis outperformed ARS and IVSS; (AUC of 0.893, p=0.29). The optimal anemia cut-off using Youden index was 4.5 HU. CONCLUSION Quantitative analysis derived from low-dose CT images, as a part of cardiac SPECT exams, have a diagnostic accuracy similar to that of hematocrit for the detection of anemia and may allow discriminating different anemia severities