The determination of orbits using Picard iteration

The determination of orbits by using Picard iteration is reported. This is a direct extension of the classical method of Picard that has been used in finding approximate solutions of nonlinear differential equations for a variety of problems. The application of the Picard method of successive approximations to the initial value and the two point boundary value problems is given

The potential use of service-oriented infrastructure framework to enable transparent vertical scalability of cloud computing infrastructure

Cloud computing technology has become familiar to most Internet users. Subsequently, there has been an increased growth in the use of cloud computing, including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). To ensure that IaaS can easily meet the growing demand, IaaS providers usually increase the capacity of their facilities in a vertical IaaS increase capability and the capacity for local IaaS amenities such as increasing the number of servers, storage and network bandwidth. However, at the same time, horizontal scalability is sometimes not enough and requires additional strategies to ensure that the large number of IaaS service requests can be met. Therefore, strategies requiring horizontal scalability are more complex than the vertical scalability strategies because they involve the interaction of more than one facility at different service centers. To reduce the complexity of the implementation of the horizontal scalability of the IaaS infrastructures, the use of a technology service oriented infrastructure is recommended to ensure that the interaction between two or more different service centers can be done more simply and easily even though it is likely to involve a wide range of communication technologies and different cloud computing management. This is because the service oriented infrastructure acts as a middle man that translates and processes interactions and protocols of different cloud computing infrastructures without the modification of the complex to ensure horizontal scalability can be run easily and smoothly. This paper presents the potential of using a service-oriented infrastructure framework to enable transparent vertical scalability of cloud computing infrastructures by adapting three projects in this research: SLA@SOI consortium, Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI), and OpenStack

Processing of spatial-frequency altered faces in schizophrenia: Effects of illness phase and duration

Low spatial frequency (SF) processing has been shown to be impaired in people with schizophrenia, but it is not clear how this varies with clinical state or illness chronicity. We compared schizophrenia patients (SCZ, n534), first episode psychosis patients (FEP, n522), and healthy controls (CON, n535) on a gender/facial discrimination task. Images were either unaltered (broadband spatial frequency, BSF), or had high or low SF information removed (LSF and HSF conditions, respectively). The task was performed at hospital admission and discharge for patients, and at corresponding time points for controls. Groups were matched on visual acuity. At admission, compared to their BSF performance, each group was significantly worse with low SF stimuli, and most impaired with high SF stimuli. The level of impairment at each SF did not depend on group. At discharge, the SCZ group performed more poorly in the LSF condition than the other groups, and showed the greatest degree of performance decline collapsed over HSF and LSF conditions, although the latter finding was not significant when controlling for visual acuity. Performance did not change significantly over time for any group. HSF processing was strongly related to visual acuity at both time points for all groups. We conclude the following: 1) SF processing abilities in schizophrenia are relatively stable across clinical state; 2) face processing abnormalities in SCZ are not secondary to problems processing specific SFs, but are due to other known difficulties constructing visual representations from degraded information; and 3) the relationship between HSF processing and visual acuity, along with known SCZ- and medication-related acuity reductions, and the elimination of a SCZ-related impairment after controlling for visual acuity in this study, all raise the possibility that some prior findings of impaired perception in SCZ may be secondary to acuity reductions

AAA in a cloud-based virtual DIME network architecture (DNA)

The design of a cloud architecture can be difficult according the business logic complexity which Cloud Service Providers (SPs) want to achieve. This paper describes a possible solution for simplifying the design of cloud-based services exploiting a DIME Network Architecture (DNA). More specifically, exploiting the signaling channel and FCAPS of DIMEs, we discuss an approach for the management of SSO Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting in cloud-based services

Impact of Perceived Organizational Virtuousness and Psychological Capital on Work Performance: The mediating effect of employee well-being

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T2 magnetic resonance assay and detection of ocular candidiasis

Purpose : T2 magnetic resonance (T2MR) assay for diagnosis of candidemia is a new nanodiagnostic approach to detect amplified DNA of candida species from whole blood specimens without the need for prior isolation. This assay only takes a few hours, compared to days for traditional fungal blood culture, and it has reported sensitivity of 89% to 98%. However, no studies have investigated whether T2MR is superior to traditional cultures in detecting ocular candidemia complications, namely infectious chorioretinitis and endophthalmitis. We performed a retrospective clinical study to examine sensitivity of T2MR for ocular candidiasis. Methods : All inpatient ophthalmology consultations for ocular candidiasis at Henry Ford Hospital, an urban tertiary-care academic hospital, between August 2015 and December 2017 were reviewed. Clinical and microbiology data were collected from inpatient records. Patients were diagnosed with \u27definite ocular involvement\u27 if dilated exam revealed evidence of chorioretinitis or endophthalmitis. \u27Suspicious for chorioretinitis\u27 was defined as lesions initially thought to be candida but later determined to be other pathology. Results : Of 164 patients included in our study, 99 (60%) were T2MR positive while 120 (73%) were blood culture positive. Ophthalmologic exam found 22 patients (13%) had definite ocular candida infections, a higher rate than other reports using blood culture for diagnosis. Of these, 20 patients had chorioretinitis and 2 had endophthalmitis. Eleven patients (7%) were suspicious for chorioretinitis; and 131 patients (80%) with no evidence of ocular involvement. One case required immediate intravitreal injection. This case was diagnosed by blood culture as T2MR was not properly collected. Only one other patient developed endophthalmitis during admission and underwent intravitreal injection. This patient had positive T2MR and blood cultures. Sensitivity of T2MR was 75% for those with definite chorioretinitis as compared to 64% for blood cultures. However, there were no statistically significant differences between the two tests among the three categories. Conclusions : Our results indicate that T2MR assay may be more sensitive than blood cultures for detecting ocular complications of candidemia. T2MR is a useful tool in management of candidemia as it is much faster than blood cultures which allows for earlier ophthalmologic examination and intervention on patients with ocular candida infections

SE4COG \u2718: Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Software Engineering for Cognitive Services

Welcome to the 1st International Workshop on Software Engineering for Cognitive Services (SE4COG 2018). We are excited and happy to have you here. The motivation for the workshop comes from the recognition that we are entering a new era of computing and we are moving in a somewhat uncharted territory.We are transitioning from a deterministic model where services are invoked with known, fixed, understood parameters and the service performs exactly what is requested, barring systems error, to a scenario where services try to interpret the user request in the best possible way and access the resources they consider appropriate for fulfilling the request, amongst a large and rapidly evolving set of available base APIs to be invoked.In this workshop, we will discuss the issues and challenges that such services bring from a software engineering perspective. Through a set of talks, panels, and open discussions we will try to understand and identify which are the fundamental differences of cognitive services and how we need to approach both the challenges they present but also the opportunities.Are current approaches to service design valid and applicable for cognitive services? What about requirements, testing, and even entirely new problems from a service engineering perspective, such as training? Even basic notions of correctness change and become somewhat blurred in cognitive service design, and it seems that disciplines such as HCI, information retrieval, knowledge management, and various sides of artificial intelligence become deeply intertwined in the service engineering process.How about service deployment in distributed elastic cloud infrastructures that are ubiquitous? How do we address service quality assurance at run-time such as response time, security, regulatory compliance of data mobility in the face of non-deterministic fluctuations in workloads and available computing resources? Are current software engineering practices adequate to harness the multi-core servers, GPUs, Optical software defined WANs to provide the scale, resiliency and efficiency demanded by global communication, collaboration and commerce services?These are only some of the issues and questions we will consider during the workshop. We hope in your active participation as we will need all your brainpower to identify the promising research directions and lay out a map that is hopefully useful for researchers exploring this new ground