Workshop: Practical Examples for Teaching Discrete Mathematics in an Information Systems Curriculum

This workshop, designed for Faculty in Information Systems (IS) programs that have received or are seeking ABET IS accreditation, offers practical information and experience on how to design and implement a discrete mathematics course and modules for information systems (IS) programs seeking ABET IS accreditation or already accredited by ABET. The workshop will deliver small group practice with materials, online software resources, activities, and teaching techniques are targeted toward needs and interests of IS students. These materials and resources can be used (1) in a discrete mathematics course, (2) in modules in core curriculum courses, such as networking and data communications, operating systems, database management, systems analysis and design, programming and application development, network security, or (3) in both. Such materials, resources, and activities foster motivation and confidence for students as well as understanding of how the concepts presented serve in learning and will serve them in career settings. The technological and societal relevance of discrete mathematics concepts in the IS curriculum is covered. A matrix correlates each local ABET-accreditable core curriculum with a standard set of discrete mathematics topics to derive relevant topic coverage. Experiences in the information systems (IS) and information systems management (ISM) programs at Robert Morris University (RMU) guided the design of this workshop. The workshop includes orientation to rationale (based on matrix of discrete mathematics and IS core curriculum topics), design, and resources. shows how a formal discrete mathematics foundation supports the reliability of information technology, and covers assessment

Discrete Razumikhin-type technique and stability of the Euler-Maruyama method to stochastic functional differential equations

A discrete stochastic Razumikhin-type theorem is established to investigate whether the Euler--Maruyama (EM) scheme can reproduce the moment exponential stability of exact solutions of stochastic functional differential equations (SFDEs). In addition, the Chebyshev inequality and the Borel-Cantelli lemma are applied to show the almost sure stability of the EM approximate solutions of SFDEs. To show our idea clearly, these results are used to discuss stability of numerical solutions of two classes of special SFDEs, including stochastic delay differential equations (SDDEs) with variable delay and stochastically perturbed equations

Rotating Black Holes in Metric-Affine Gravity

Within the framework of metric-affine gravity (MAG, metric and an independent linear connection constitute spacetime), we find, for a specific gravitational Lagrangian and by using {\it prolongation} techniques, a stationary axially symmetric exact solution of the vacuum field equations. This black hole solution embodies a Kerr-deSitter metric and the post-Riemannian structures of torsion and nonmetricity. The solution is characterized by mass, angular momentum, and shear charge, the latter of which is a measure for violating Lorentz invariance.Comment: 32 pages latex, 3 table

Depletion of B-cells with rituximab improves endothelial function and reduces inflammation among individuals with rheumatoid arthritis.

BackgroundIndividuals with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are at increased risk for cardiovascular disease, partly due to systemic inflammation and endothelial dysfunction. B-cells play an important pathogenic role in the inflammatory process that drives RA disease activity. Rituximab, a chimeric murine/human monoclonal antibody that depletes B-cells, is an effective therapy for RA. The purpose of this study was to determine whether B-cell depletion with rituximab reduces systemic inflammation and improves macrovascular (brachial artery flow-mediated dilation, FMD) and microvascular (reactive hyperemia) endothelial function in RA patients.Methods and resultsRA patients received a single course of rituximab (1000 mg IV infusion at baseline and on day 15). FMD, reactive hyperemia, inflammatory markers, and clinical assessments were performed at baseline, week 12, and week 24. Twenty patients (95% female, median age 54 years) completed the study. Following treatment, FMD improved from a baseline of 4.5±0.4% to 6.4±0.6% at 12 weeks (mean±SE; P<0.0001), followed by a decline at week 24; a similar pattern was observed for hyperemic velocity. Significant decreases in RA disease scores, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and circulating CD19+ B-cells were sustained through week 24. Cholesterol and triglycerides became significantly although modestly elevated during the study.ConclusionsDepletion of B-cells with rituximab improved macrovascular and microvascular endothelial function and reduced systemic inflammation, despite modest elevation in lipids. Given these results, rituximab should be evaluated in the future for its possible role in reducing excess cardiovascular risk in RA.Clinical trial registrationURL http://ClinicalTrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT00844714

Vicinities for Spatial Data Processing: a Statistical Approach to Algorithm Design

Abstract Spatial data processing is often the core function in many information system applications. Algorithm design for these applications generally aims at being worst case optimal for processing efficiency. We propose a different approach applying the notion of vicinity. We partition the object space into grid cells of size adapted to the statistical dimensions of the input data objects for processing, and consider only those data objects sharing the same common grid cells. We describe the processing steps of the algorithm in our approach and analyze the performance. We also experimented with different data patterns in our implementation. We believe that our approach can be efficient and practicable for the computation of geometric intersection and spatial interference detection. These are essentially the core functions in geographic information systems, computer graphics and computer aided design systems as well. We also briefly discuss our understanding of how the grid cell size may affect the performance with regard to varying patterns of the input data objects

Alloy oxidation as a route to chemically active nanocomposites of gold atoms in a reducible oxide matrix

While nanoparticles are being pursued actively for a number of applications, dispersed atomic species have been explored far less in functional materials architectures, primarily because composites comprising dispersed atoms are challenging to synthesize and difficult to stabilize against sintering or coarsening. Here we show that room temperature oxidation of Au–Sn alloys produces nanostructures whose surface is terminated by a reducible amorphous oxide that contains atomically dispersed Au. Analysis of the oxidation process shows that the dispersal of Au in the oxide can be explained by predominant oxygen anion diffusion and kinetically limitedmetalmass transport, which restrict phase separation due to a preferential oxidation of Sn. Nanostructures prepared by oxidation of nanoscale Au–Sn alloys with intermediate Au content (30–50%) show high activity in a CO-oxidation probe reaction due to a cooperative mechanism involving Au atoms as sites for CO adsorption and reaction to CO2 embedded in a reducible oxide that serves as a renewable oxygen reservoir. Our results demonstrate a reliable approach toward nanocomposites involving oxide-embedded, atomically dispersed noble metal species

Alloy oxidation as a route to chemically active nanocomposites of gold atoms in a reducible oxide matrix

While nanoparticles are being pursued actively for a number of applications, dispersed atomic species have been explored far less in functional materials architectures, primarily because composites comprising dispersed atoms are challenging to synthesize and difficult to stabilize against sintering or coarsening. Here we show that room temperature oxidation of Au–Sn alloys produces nanostructures whose surface is terminated by a reducible amorphous oxide that contains atomically dispersed Au. Analysis of the oxidation process shows that the dispersal of Au in the oxide can be explained by predominant oxygen anion diffusion and kinetically limitedmetalmass transport, which restrict phase separation due to a preferential oxidation of Sn. Nanostructures prepared by oxidation of nanoscale Au–Sn alloys with intermediate Au content (30–50%) show high activity in a CO-oxidation probe reaction due to a cooperative mechanism involving Au atoms as sites for CO adsorption and reaction to CO2 embedded in a reducible oxide that serves as a renewable oxygen reservoir. Our results demonstrate a reliable approach toward nanocomposites involving oxide-embedded, atomically dispersed noble metal species

Distributed Caching for Complex Querying of Raw Arrays

As applications continue to generate multi-dimensional data at exponentially increasing rates, fast analytics to extract meaningful results is becoming extremely important. The database community has developed array databases that alleviate this problem through a series of techniques. In-situ mechanisms provide direct access to raw data in the original format---without loading and partitioning. Parallel processing scales to the largest datasets. In-memory caching reduces latency when the same data are accessed across a workload of queries. However, we are not aware of any work on distributed caching of multi-dimensional raw arrays. In this paper, we introduce a distributed framework for cost-based caching of multi-dimensional arrays in native format. Given a set of files that contain portions of an array and an online query workload, the framework computes an effective caching plan in two stages. First, the plan identifies the cells to be cached locally from each of the input files by continuously refining an evolving R-tree index. In the second stage, an optimal assignment of cells to nodes that collocates dependent cells in order to minimize the overall data transfer is determined. We design cache eviction and placement heuristic algorithms that consider the historical query workload. A thorough experimental evaluation over two real datasets in three file formats confirms the superiority -- by as much as two orders of magnitude -- of the proposed framework over existing techniques in terms of cache overhead and workload execution time