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Fuel consumption is an important factor to be considered in the process of weather routing. How to choose an appropriate route according to the requirements is particularly important. This paper proposes a method to optimize the ship weather routing. Based on the original genetic algorithm, the trigonometric function selection operator is introduced, the mutation operator is improved to increase the search range in the initial stage of the algorithm, and gradually narrow the search range in the middle and late stages of the algorithm, thus the convergence is sped up and the running time of the algorithm is reduced. Aiming at the incomplete ship speed fuel consumption comparison table, this paper uses SPSS (Statistical Product and Service Solutions) software to perform curve fitting and a curve with the best fitting degree is found. Then the curve equation is used to calculate the total fuel consumption of the case ship (S175 container ship) sailing through between the two ports Yokohama (35° N, 141° E) and San Francisco (37° N, 123° W), to verify the performance of the improved algorithm. Aiming at the minimum fuel consumption, the fuel consumption of the optimized route is reduced by 7.84% compared with that of the Rhumb Line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land cover classification is one of the most important applications of POLSAR images. In this paper, a hybrid biogeography-based optimization support vector machine (HBBOSVM) has been introduced to classify POLSAR images of RADARSAT 2 in band C acquired from San Francisco, USA. The main purpose of this classification is to minimize the number of features and maximize classification accuracy. The proposed method consists of three main steps: preprocessing, feature selection and classification. As preprocessing, radiometric calibration, speckle reduction and feature extraction have been performed. In the proposed HBBO, the combination of onlooker bee of artificial bee colony (ABC) and migration operator of biogeography-based optimization has been applied in order to optimal feature selection. Then, SVM has been used to classify the pixels into specific labels of land-covers. The ground truth samples have been generated by google earth image, Pauli RGB image, high resolution image and national land cover database (NLCD 2006). The performance of HBBOSVM has been compared with BBOSVM, ABCSVM, particle swarm optimization support vector machine (PSOSVM) and the results of previous studies. In addition, the performance of HBBO is evaluated upon 20 well-known benchmark problems. According to the obtained results, the overall accuracy and average accuracy of HBBOSVM are 96.01% and 93.37% respectively which is the best result in comparison with other results. The HBBOSVM has better performance than other algorithms in terms of overall accuracy, kappa coefficient, average accuracy, convergence trend, and stability. In addition, the HBBO can be considered as a successful meta-heuristic for benchmark problems. This paper displays that the combined approach of optimization and machine learning methods provides powerful results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper additive models with p-order autoregressive conditional symmetric errors based on penalized regression splines are proposed for modeling trend and seasonality in time series. The aim with this kind of approach is try to model the autocorrelation and seasonality properly to assess the existence of a significant trend. A backfitting iterative process jointly with a quasi-Newton algorithm are developed for estimating the additive components, the dispersion parameter and the autocorrelation coefficients. The effective degrees of freedom concerning the fitting are derived from an appropriate smoother. Inferential results and selection model procedures are proposed as well as some diagnostic methods, such as residual analysis based on the conditional quantile residual and sensitivity studies based on the local influence approach. Simulations studies are performed to assess the large sample behavior of the maximum penalized likelihood estimators. Finally, the methodology is applied for modeling the daily average temperature of San Francisco city from January 1995 to April 2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a simple yet effective rotation averaging pipeline, termed Incremental Rotation Averaging (IRA), which is inspired by the well-developed incremental Structure from Motion (SfM) techniques. Unlike the traditional rotation averaging methods which estimate all the absolute rotations simultaneously and focus on designing either robust loss function or outlier filtering strategy, here the absolute rotations are estimated in an incremental way. Similar to the incremental SfM, our IRA is robust to relative rotation outliers and could achieve accurate rotation averaging results. In addition, we propose several key techniques, such as initial triplet and Next-Best-View selection, Weighted Local/Global Optimization, and Re-Rotation Averaging, to push the rotation averaging results one step further. Ablation studies and comparison experiments on the 1DSfM, Campus, and San Francisco datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our IRA and its advantages over the state-of-the-art rotation averaging methods in accuracy and robustness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article elaborates on the study conducted by Charles Cobb, a neurosurgeon at the California Pacific Medical Center, in San Francisco, California. Aside from practicing his profession, he is also a virus hunter, Since 1998, he studied on whether viruses have an association with brain tumours. He and his co-authors discovered that the human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) needs a particular cellular receptor, normally involved in growth-factor signaling, to infect a type of cancer cell in the brain. He found out that this type of virus causes defects at birth and fatal diseases in immunocompromised people, especially patients with AIDS. People who are infected with the virus is associated with the occurrence of glioma, an extremely aggressive form of brain cancer that is difficult to treat.

The article analyzes the missing link between T lymphocytes and psoriasis. The observations of Immunologist Yan Zheng and his colleagues at the company Genentech in San Francisco, California are discussed in detail. An overview of the cause for the white cell infiltration into the skin and the role of IL-22 in causing the disease of psoriasis, through experimentation on mice, is presented. The article also presents the observations of Wenjun Ouyang on TH 17 and T22 to find the missing link.

Multi-focus image fusion is a process of combining a set of images that have been captured from the same scene but with different focuses in order to construct an additional sharper image. This process plays an important role in the image processing and machine vision fields. Various algorithms have been developed for this task. The key challenge in the design of multi-focus image fusion algorithms is how to evaluate the local content information of each image from the source images. Simple, but effective, block-based techniques at pixel level are widely used for multi-focus image fusion. However, a fixed block size may not be applicable to every application. A block size that is too small or too large is also not desirable. Hence, optimization of the block size is necessary in order to obtain a fused image that comprises the sharper parts of the source images. Recently, a number of techniques based on evolutionary computation have been applied to block-based multi-focus image fusion. The artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is one of the more popular evolutionary computational approaches used to find an optimal solution. In this paper, an efficient and robust block-based multi-focus image fusion method based on the optimal selection of sharper image blocks from source images using best-so-far ABC strategies is proposed. Experiment results show that the proposed method is able to provide good results and outperforms other conventional methods, both visually and quantitatively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a multi-step etching method based on Bosch process was investigated to fabricate a slightly tapered via. The diameter of vias was scaled from 40 to 100 µm. Isotropic etching step was added into Bosch process to control the angle of the tapered vias. The slope angle could be adjusted by changing the time settings of isotropic etching step. The influence of the platen temperature was also studied. The passivation and etching steps are extremely sensitive to temperature. Silicon grass could be formed at low temperature. The two different processes of isotropic SF6 etching and Cl2/HBr etching were also compared. The wrinkles and cracks were observed on the surface after treatment with isotropic SF6 etching. The Cl2/HBr etching method is much better for removing the scallops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immediately after an earthquake a healthcare system within a city, comprising several hospitals, endures an extraordinary demand. This paper proposes a new methodology to estimate whether the hospital network has enough capacity to withstand the emergency caused by an earthquake. The ability of healthcare facilities and to provide a broad spectrum of emergency services immediately after a seismic event is assessed through a metamodel that assumes waiting time as main response parameter to assess the hospital network performance. The First Aid network of San Francisco subjected to a 7.2 Mw magnitude earthquake has been used as case study. The total number of injuries and their distributions among the six major San Francisco's Emergency Departments have been assessed and compared with their capacity that has been determined using a survey conducted by the medical staff of the hospitals. The numerical results have shown that three of the six considered San Francisco's hospitals cannot provide emergency services to the estimated injured. Two alternatives have been proposed to improve the performance of the network. The first one redistributes existing resources while the second one considers additional resources by designing a new Emergency Department. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Poor communication between referring clinicians and specialists may lead to inefficient use of specialist services. San Francisco General Hospital implemented an electronic referral system (eReferral) that facilitates iterative pre-visit communication between referring and specialty clinicians to improve the referral process.Objective: The purpose of the study was to determine the impact of eReferral (compared with paper-based referrals) on specialty referrals.Design: The study was based on a visit-based questionnaire appended to new patient charts at randomly selected specialist clinic sessions before and after the implementation of eReferral.Participants: Specialty clinicians.Main Measures: The questionnaire focused on the self-reported difficulty in identifying referral question, referral appropriateness, need for and avoidability of follow-up visits.Key Results: We collected 505 questionnaires from speciality clinicians. It was difficult to identify the reason for referral in 19.8% of medical and 38.0% of surgical visits using paper-based methods vs. 11.0% and 9.5% of those using eReferral (p-value 0.03 and <0.001). Of those using eReferral, 6.4% and 9.8% of medical and surgical referrals using paper methods vs. 2.6% and 2.1% were deemed not completely appropriate (p-value 0.21 and 0.03). Follow-up was requested for 82.4% and 76.2% of medical and surgical patients with paper-based referrals vs. 90.1% and 58.1% of eReferrals (p-value 0.06 and 0.01). Follow-up was considered avoidable for 32.4% and 44.7% of medical and surgical follow-ups with paper-based methods vs. 27.5% and 13.5% with eReferral (0.41 and <0.001).Conclusion: Use of technology to promote standardized referral processes and iterative communication between referring clinicians and specialists has the potential to improve communication between primary care providers and specialists and to increase the effectiveness of specialty referrals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data collected during a 4 year ethnography, this paper examines how the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) has impacted homeless women in San Francisco who are also victims of domestic violence. Specifically this paper looks at how the behavior of abusive men prevents homeless women from successfully navigating the new welfare-to-work requirements and maintaining stable employment. Findings indicate that despite the discourse touting the success of welfare reform, the 1996 PRWORA has further disenfranchised an already devastated population systematically forcing them further onto the margins of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ideas of the papers in this special section have originally been presented at the first edition of the workshop on Specification and Validation of Real Time and Embedded Systems (SVERTS) that was held as a satellite workshop of the UML 2003 Conference in San Francisco. The motivation for initiating this workshop was the fact that UML started to be used more and more also for modelling real-time and embedded software systems, whereas it was lacking features for appropriately modelling this kind of systems. Another motivation was the fact that UML was missing an accepted dynamic semantics, or at least a framework for defining profiles not just in terms of syntax, but also their semantics. The six papers in this section reflect all parts of this problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drug overdose is now the leading cause of unintentional death nationwide, driven by increased prescription opioid overdoses. To better understand urban opioid overdose deaths, this paper examines geographic, demographic, and clinical differences between heroin-related decedents and prescription opioid decedents in San Francisco from 2010 to 2012. During this time period, 331 individuals died from accidental overdose caused by opioids (310 involving prescription opioids and 31 involving heroin). Deaths most commonly involved methadone (45.9 %), morphine (26.9 %), and oxycodone (21.8 %). Most deaths also involved other substances (74.9 %), most commonly cocaine (35.3 %), benzodiazepines (27.5 %), antidepressants (22.7 %), and alcohol (19.6 %). Deaths were concentrated in a small, high-poverty, central area of San Francisco and disproportionately affected African-American individuals. Decedents in high-poverty areas were significantly more likely to die from methadone and cocaine, whereas individuals from more affluent areas were more likely die from oxycodone and benzodiazepines. Heroin decedents were more likely to be within a younger age demographic, die in public spaces, and have illicit substances rather than other prescription opioids. Overall, heroin overdose death, previously common in San Francisco, is now rare. Prescription opioid overdose has emerged as a significant concern, particularly among individuals in high-poverty areas. Deaths in poor and affluent regions involve different causative opioids and co-occurring substances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the contemporary phenomenon of artists who, because of institutional changes in the social organization of the visual arts, become their own gatekeepers by running their own galleries, managing their own exposure and re-establishing direct contact with their audiences and communities. The author contends that the ways in which artists have pursued and organized their own galleries shed light on both the functioning of the established social organization of art and the circumstances that bring about its change. The paper explores the organization, operations and viability of visual artist-managed galleries in the San Francisco and Santa Cruz areas of California as an alternative to the established organization of the art market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With its emphasis on empowerment, individual and community capacity building, and translating research findings into action, community-based participatory research (CBPR) may be particularly advantageous in work with urban immigrant populations. This paper highlights eight ways in which CBPR has been shown to add value to work with urban underserved communities. It then describes the background, context, and methods of an ecological CBPR project, the Chinatown Restaurant Worker Health and Safety Study, conducted in San Francisco, California, and draws on study processes and outcomes to illustrate each of the eight areas identified. Challenges of using CBPR, particularly with urban immigrant populations, briefly are described, drawing again on the Chinatown study to provide illustrative examples. We discuss lessons learned, through this and other studies, for the effective use of CBPR with urban immigrant populations. We conclude that despite its challenges, this transdisciplinary, community-partnered and action-oriented approach to inquiry can make substantial contributions to both the processes and the outcomes of the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few existing studies have examined health and oral health needs and treatment-seeking behavior among the homeless and injection drug users (IDUs). This paper describes the prevalence and correlates of health and oral health care needs and treatment-seeking behaviors in homeless IDUs recruited in San Francisco, California, from 2003 to 2005 ( N = 340). We examined sociodemographic characteristics, drug use patterns, HIV status via oral fluid testing, physical health using the Short Form 12 Physical Component Score, self-reported needs for physical and oral health care, and the self-reported frequency of seeking medical and oral health care. The sample had a lower health status as compared to the general population and reported a frequent need for physical and oral health care. In bivariate analysis, being in methadone treatment was associated with care-seeking behavior. In addition, being enrolled in Medi-Cal, California's state Medicaid program, was associated with greater odds of seeking physical and oral health care. Methamphetamine use was not associated with higher odds of needing oral health care as compared to people who reported using other illicit drugs. Homeless IDUs in San Francisco have a large burden of unmet health and oral health needs. Recent cuts in Medi-Cal's adult dental coverage may result in a greater burden of oral health care which will need to be provided by emergency departments and neighborhood dental clinics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article relates how publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti discovered the City Lights Pocket Bookstore in San Francisco, California in 1953, and how it became part of the city's publishing history. Business was brisk from the start. City Lights Magazine published only five issues, but Ferlinghetti soon started publishing the Pocket Poets series, thinking of French bookstores that also operated as small presses. Pressure to expand developed, and by accident, the bookstore expanded into the cellar, competing for space with storage of a giant paper dragon used annually in the New Year's celebration in Chinatown.

The article presents abstracts of various research papers on perinatal pediatrics that will be discussed in the 2004 National Conference and Exhibition, to be held from October 8-10, 2004 in San Francisco, California. Inflammatory mediators increase in response to various neonatal clinical conditions such as infection and hypoxia-ischemia. This study was conducted to determine which inflammatory mediators increase during and following asphyxia in piglets and to assess the effects of volume resuscitation following asphyxia on these inflammatory mediators. Neonates with congenital heart disease may require surgical repair with cardiopulmonary bypass and deep hypothermic circulatory arrest.

Provides information on the annual meeting of pediatric radiology society to be held at San Francisco Fairmont Hotel on May 5-10, 2005. Format changes for the presentation of papers and workshop; Theme of the conference; List of schedule of activities.

Sensing SF6 decomposed species is an effective approach to evaluate the operation status of insulation devices. In this paper, we reported a novel nanomaterial, Rh-doped HfSe2 (Rh–HfSe2) monolayer, as a promising media to realize the selective and sensitive detection of SO2 based on the first-principles theory. Our calculations indicated that Rh–HfSe2 monolayer shows a good performance for SO2 adsorption, while it behaves inactive for SOF2 or SO2F2 adsorption. This allows its further exploration as a specific SO2 sensor in SF6 insulation devices. The electron deformation density (EDD) and density of state (DOS) are also adopted to analyze the electronic behavior of Rh–HfSe2 monolayer during gas adsorption. The frontier molecular orbital theory is carried out to understand the sensing mechanism of our proposed material towards SO2 molecule. So, this work steps forward to carry out our final aim of assembling a sensor array and fulfilling the selective detection of different SF6 decomposed species, which can provide significant guidance for the future trail research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article profiles Matthew Lewin, an emergency-care doctor with a specialty in widlerness medicine. In addition to operating as a medic in places such as Chile, Peru and Mongolia, he has released more than 40 papers on work that ranges from defensive behaviour of moth larvae and exotic parasites to how to open the throat of a person during improvised surgery. He has trained U.S. special-forces medics, national-park responders and medical students at the University of California in San Francisco, California, in methods to treat patients in the field.

Information about several papers discussed at a symposium on artificial molecular machines is presented. The symposium titled "2008 Materials Research Society Spring Meeting," was held in San Francisco, California. Researcher Ben Feringa described how the supramolecular chirality of liquid crystals could be determined by the chirality of a synthetic molecular motor. Researcher Taro Uyeda demonstrated the harnessing of the motility of living cells to drive artificial micromechanical assemblies.

Describes progress in the legal case in which the University of California, San Francisco, alleges that Genentech Inc. infringed on its patent for DNA for human growth hormone. Hormone leading to the development of the drug Protropin; Views of Genentech executives about the case; Details about key testimony; Problems with a paper published in `Nature' related to the case; Colleagues who have had to tesify against one another. INSET: Who's telling the truth about crucial plasmid?.