Blending in Future Space-based Microlensing Surveys

We investigate the effect of blending in future gravitational microlensing surveys by carrying out simulation of Galactic bulge microlensing events to be detected from a proposed space-based lensing survey. From this simulation, we find that the contribution of the flux from background stars to the total blended flux will be equivalent to that from the lens itself despite the greatly improved resolution from space observations, implying that characterizing lenses from the analysis of the blended flux would not be easy. As a method to isolate events for which most of the blended flux is attributable to the lens, we propose to use astrometric information of source star image centroid motion. For the sample of events obtained by imposing a criterion that the centroid shift should be less than three times of the astrometric uncertainty among the events for which blending is noticed with blended light fractions $f_{\rm B}>0.2$, we estimate that the contamination of the blended flux by background stars will be less than 20% for most ($\sim 90$) of the sample events. The expected rate of these events is $\gtrsim 700$ events/yr, which is large enough for the statistical analysis of the lens populations.Comment: total 6 pages, including 5 figures, ApJ, in pres

Plastic Shrinkage Properties of Natural Fiber Reinforced Shotcrete

Recently, natural hemp fibers have been developed for use in wet or dry mix shotcrete instead of conventional synthetic fibers made from petroleum. Synthetic fibers, which is mainly in polypropylene, has been used for controlling an initial shrinkage cracking in concrete, however, the effect was poor showing a severe plastic shrinkage cracking. Plastic shrinkage cracking is a nonstructural crack that occurs due to the surface drying of concrete in a plastic condition due to rapid evaporation of bleeding water. The volume reduction due to plastic shrinkage and the resulting tensile stress exceeds the tensile strength of the concrete. In particular, plastic shrinkage cracking occurs mainly in large surface area members. It may be evolved from the surface to a considerable depth, or in the case of a very thin structure, it may go all over the depth of the member. In addition, since it is long enough to be easily distinguished by naked eyes and cracks are generated widely, it is not aesthetically pleasing and anxiety about the stability of the concrete can be increased. Also, the plastic shrinkage crack accelerates penetration of chloride and moisture, causing corrosion of the reinforcing bar, and durability of the concrete is lowered. The theoretical effect of natural fibers on plastic shrinkage cracks is that when natural fibers are mixed into concrete, they become wet by absorbing the water. Then, in the pumping, water in the wet natural fiber is supplied to the concrete by the pumping pressure to increase the pumpability. Re-absorbing the water after spraying increases the adhesion and build-up thickness. The absorbed water could be supplied to the shotcrete and resulted in reducing a plastic shrinkage and dry shrinkage. This paper investigates the plastic shrinkage properties of shotcrete containing natural fibers. A series of experimental program were conducted to analysis the theoretical background and to select the optimized natural fiber content

Development of Threat Evaluation Tool for Distributed Network Environment

Current information protection systems only detect and warn against individual intrusion, and are not able to provide a collective and synthesized alert message. In this paper, we propose a new Meta-IDS system which is called ``SIA System''. The SIA system can filter redundant alert messages, analyze mixed attacks using correlation alert messages from each sensor and respond to security threats quickly, after classifying them into one of four different statuses. Then we implement the SIA system and test the efficiency of it in the managed networks. Thus we confirm that the SIA system enables security managers to deal with security threats efficiently

Xanthogranulomatous Cystitis Arising from the Posterior Wall of the Bladder

Xanthogranulomatous cystitis is a rare, benign chronic inflammatory disease of unknown etiology. Herein we report a case of a 41-year-old man who presented with painless hematuria and a bladder mass on imaging studies

Improved reversibility in lithium-oxygen battery: Understanding elementary reactions and surface charge engineering of metal alloy catalyst

Most Li-O-2 batteries suffer from sluggish kinetics during oxygen evolution reactions (OERs). To overcome this drawback, we take the lesson from other catalysis researches that showed improved catalytic activities by employing metal alloy catalysts. Such research effort has led us to find Pt3Co nanoparticles as an effective OER catalyst in Li-O-2 batteries. The superior catalytic activity was reflected in the substantially decreased overpotentials and improved cycling/rate performance compared to those of other catalysts. Density functional theory calculations suggested that the low OER overpotentials are associated with the reduced adsorption strength of LiO2 on the outermost Pt catalytic sites. Also, the alloy catalyst generates amorphous Li2O2 conformally coated around the catalyst and thus facilitates easier decomposition and higher reversibility. This investigation conveys an important message that understanding elementary reactions and surface charge engineering of air-catalysts are one of the most effective approaches in resolving the chronic sluggish charging kinetics in Li-O-2 batteries.

A multicenter, prospective, randomized, controlled trial evaluating the safety and efficacy of intracoronary cell infusion mobilized with granulocyte colony-stimulating factor and darbepoetin after acute myocardial infarction: study design and rationale of the 'MAGIC cell-5-combination cytokine trial'

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Bone marrow derived stem/progenitor cell transplantation after acute myocardial infarction is safe and effective for improving left ventricular systolic function. However, the improvement of left ventricular systolic function is limited. This study will evaluate novel stem/progenitor cell therapy with combination cytokine treatment of the long-acting erythropoietin analogue, darbepoetin, and granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) in patients with acute myocardial infarction.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The 'MAGIC Cell-5-Combination Cytokine Trial' is a multicenter, prospective, randomized, 3-arm, controlled trial with blind evaluation of the endpoints. A total of 116 patients will randomly receive one of the following three treatments: an intravenous darbepoetin infusion and intracoronary infusion of peripheral blood stem cells mobilized with G-CSF (n = 58), an intracoronary infusion of peripheral blood stem cells mobilized with G-CSF alone (n = 29), or conventional therapy (n = 29) at phase I. Patients with left ventricular ejection fraction < 45% at 6 months, in the patients who received stem cell therapy at phase I, will receive repeated cell therapy at phase II. The objectives of this study are to evaluate the safety and efficacy of combination cytokine therapy with erythropoietin and G-CSF (phase I) and repeated progenitor/stem cell treatment (phase II).</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>This is the first study to evaluate the safety and efficacy of combination cytokine based progenitor/stem cell treatment.</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p><url>http://www.ClinicalTrials.gov</url> identifier: <a href="http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00501917">NCT00501917</a>.</p

Internal-External Boundary Attention Fusion for Glass Surface Segmentation

Glass surfaces of transparent objects and mirrors are not able to be uniquely and explicitly characterized by their visual appearances because they contain the visual appearance of other reflected or transmitted surfaces as well. Detecting glass regions from a single-color image is a challenging task. Recent deep-learning approaches have paid attention to the description of glass surface boundary where the transition of visual appearances between glass and non-glass surfaces are observed. In this work, we analytically investigate how glass surface boundary helps to characterize glass objects. Inspired by prior semantic segmentation approaches with challenging image types such as X-ray or CT scans, we propose separated internal-external boundary attention modules that individually learn and selectively integrate visual characteristics of the inside and outside region of glass surface from a single color image. Our proposed method is evaluated on six public benchmarks comparing with state-of-the-art methods showing promising results

Patterns and Variation in the Sex Ratio at Birth in the Republic of Korea

In this paper, we examine sex ratio patterns at birth (SRB) among sub-areas of South Korea during the 1990s. We report higher than biologically normal SRBs at varying levels of geography, for three years in the 1990s. These high SRBs are mainly due to prenatal sex identification followed by female-specific induced abortion. This strategy has been implemented in the Republic of Korea following the country's dramatic reduction in fertility. Higher than biologically normal sex ratios at birth carry important implications for the society's males and females, particularly a few decades after their births, when young people begin to exercise marriage options. We estimate that approximately 25 years after 1990, around 2015, approximately 10 to 13 percent of marriage-age males in South Korea will be unsuccessful in their courtship pursuits. In 2015, there could be as many as 400,000 South Korean men of marriageable ages unable to find wives. We explore implications of this unbalanced marriage market for South Korea and its excess male population

trans-(1,8-Dibenzyl-1,3,6,8,10,13-hexa­azacyclo­tetra­deca­ne)diisonicotinatonickel(II)

In the centrosymmetric title compound, [Ni(C6H4NO2)2(C22H34N6)], the NiII ion is bonded to the four secondary N atoms of the macrocyclic ligand in a square-planar fashion and two carboxyl­ate O atoms of the isonicotinate ions in axial positions, resulting in a tetra­gonally distorted octa­hedron. An offset face-to-face π–π stacking inter­action [centroid–centroid distance = 3.674(4) Å] and N—H⋯N and N—H⋯O hydrogen-bonding inter­actions give rise to a one-dimensional supra­molecular structure in the solid state