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To test the Clustered Cardiometabolic Risk (CCMR) factor explaining the relationship between physical activity and physical quality of life (QOL).Using the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2003-2006, 2,445 adults completed the CDC Healthy Days Questionnaire for measuring QOL, wore the accelerometer for assessing physical activity pattern (PAP), and completed triglyceride, glucose, serum insulin, waist circumference, blood pressure, and HDL-cholesterol tests from which the CCMR factor was created. Physical QOL was classified as poor (≥14 days with poor physical health within past 30 days) vs. good (14 days). We classified PAP by moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), light-intensity physical activity (LIPA), and sedentary behavior (SB). We defined MVPA, LIPA, and SB as ≥2020 counts/minute, 100-2019 counts/minute, and ≤99 counts/minute, respectively. We further classified PAP status as unhealthy (MVPA150 min/weekSBLIPA) or healthy (MVPA150 min/weekSBLIPA, or MVPA ≥150 min/week regardless of SBLIPA or SBLIPA). Logistic regressions analyzed the association between unhealthy PAP and poor physical QOL, adjusting for the CCMR factor, age, sex, education, and smoking behavior.Compared with having healthy PAP, individuals having unhealthy PAP had an elevated risk of poor physical QOL (OR = 1.96; 95% CI = 1.42-2.72). However, this association was explained by higher levels of the CCMR factor (OR = 1.46; 95% CI = 1.07-1.99) through poorer serum insulin (OR = 1.35; 95% CI = 1.04-1.75) and waist circumference (OR = 1.23; 95% CI = 1.02-1.50).The CCMR factor (typically insulin and waist circumference) explained the association between unhealthy physical activity and poor physical QOL.

BACKGROUND: Childhood cancer survivors are at elevated risk for poor health-related quality-of-life (HRQOL). Identification of potentially modifiable risk factors associated with HRQOL is needed to inform survivorship care. METHODS: Participants included 4294 adult childhood cancer survivors from the St. Jude Lifetime Cohort Study who completed a survey and clinical assessment at entry into the survivorship cohort (baseline) and follow-up (median interval: 4.3 years) between 2007 and 2019. The SF-6D compared utility-based HRQOL of survivors to an independent sample from the U.S. Medical Expenditures Panel Survey. Chronic health conditions (CHCs) were graded using modified Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events. General linear models examined cross-sectional and temporal associations of HRQOL with CHC burden (total and by organ-system), adjusting for potential risk factors. FINDINGS: Survivors reported poorer HRQOL compared to the general population (effect size [d] = −0.343). In cross-sectional analyses at baseline, significant non-demographic risk factors included higher total CHC burden (driven by more severe cardiovascular [d = −0.119, p = 0.002], endocrine [d = −0.112, p = 0.001], gastrointestinal [d = −0.226, p

The Internet of Things is a highly integrated and integrated application of information technology that can better meet the needs of people’s development. With the popularity of the Internet of Things, the number of Internet of Things devices has increased, and the communication between devices and devices has become more complicated. Because the Internet of Things has some common problems with the Internet, a more effective, secure and trusted IoT platform has become the focus of many research scholars. Blockchain, as a decentralized, non-tamperable and highly credible technology, fits well with the development trend of networking. Identity authentication is an important part of the service architecture and can effectively solve the security in the Internet of Things. Hidden dangers. Therefore, in view of the low efficiency and lack of security in the traditional IoT server architecture, this paper proposes a blockchain-based networked identity authentication system. Firstly, according to the characteristics of the blockchain, the key technologies of the blockchain are briefly explained. Then, the overall design scheme design, the user end system design and the equipment end system design of the identity authentication system. Finally, the experimental platform is built, and the functional testing of the blockchain platform, device and client is carried out respectively The throughput of the system is obtained by the block rate and the outbound time of the blockchain under the condition of the privacy blockchain. The memory usage and the corresponding traffic consumption during the process of creating the wallet and data upload are analyzed to verify the stability of the system and to verify the rationality of the IoT identity authentication system based on the blockchain.

OBJECTIVE: Although exposure to air pollution and pollen is associated with asthma exacerbation and increased healthcare utilization, longitudinal effects of fine particulate matter 2.5 (PM(2.5)), ozone (O(3)), and pollen exposure on asthma control status in pediatric patients are understudied. This study investigated effects of exposure to PM(2.5), O(3), and pollen on asthma control status among pediatric patients with asthma. METHODS: A total of 229 dyads of pediatric patients with asthma and their parents were followed-up for 15 months. The Asthma Control and Communication Instrument was used to measure asthma control, which was reported weekly by parents during a 26-week period. PM(2.5) and O(3) data were collected from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Air Quality System. Pollen data were obtained from Intercontinental Marketing Services Health. Mean air pollutant and pollen exposures within 7 days prior to the reporting of asthma control were used to estimate weekly exposures for each participant. Linear mixed-effects models were performed to test associations of PM(2.5), O(3), and pollen exposure with asthma control status. Sensitivity analyses were performed to evaluate the robustness of findings by different exposure monitoring days per week and distances between monitoring sites and participants’ residences. RESULTS: Elevated PM(2.5) concentration and pollen severity were associated with poorer asthma control status (p

Cloud computing and services have greatly changed the way how people develop and use software, and also raised a lot of new research issues. In this paper, we investigate two such important issues, service deployment and service request scheduling, for composite cloud services in dynamic cloud environments. We present load-aware service deployment approaches for dynamic workload and a service request scheduling method based on task ranking mechanisms. The proposed approaches can effectively improve the execution performance of composite cloud services in dynamic cloud environments. A series of simulation experiments have been conducted to evaluate the proposed approaches. The experimental results show that our approaches outperform previous methods significantly in terms of average service response time.

OBJECTIVES: To identify pediatric patient-reported outcomes (PROs) that are associated with chronic conditions and to evaluate the effects of chronic disease activity on PROs. STUDY DESIGN: Participants 8–24 years-old and their parents were enrolled into 14 studies that evaluated PROMIS® PROs across 10 chronic conditions--asthma, atopic dermatitis, cancer, cancer survivors, chronic kidney disease, Crohn’s disease, juvenile idiopathic arthritis, lupus, sickle cell disease, and type 1 diabetes mellitus. PRO scores were contrasted with the United States general population of children using nationally representative percentiles. PRO-specific coefficients of variation were computed to illustrate the degree of variation in scores within versus between conditions. Condition-specific measures of disease severity and Cohens d effect sizes were used to examine PRO scores by disease activity. RESULTS: Participants included 2,975 child respondents and 2,392 parent respondents who provided data for 3,409 unique children: 52% were 5–12 years-old, 52% female, 25% African-American/Black, and 14% Hispanic. Across all 10 chronic conditions, children reported more anxiety, fatigue, pain, and mobility restrictions than the general pediatric population. Variation in PRO scores within chronic disease cohorts was equivalent to variation within the general population, exceeding between-cohort variation by factors of 1.9 (mobility) to 5.7 (anxiety). Disease activity was consistently associated with poorer self-reported health, and these effects were weakest for peer relationships. CONCLUSIONS: Chronic conditions are associated with symptoms and functional status in children and adolescents across 10 different disorders. These findings highlight the need to complement conventional clinical evaluations with those obtained directly from patients themselves using PROs.

Purpose: To characterize pediatricians’ perceived constraints and areas of confidence in assessing patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in the U.S., and to test associations of these factors with implementing PRO assessment. Methods: Using a random sample from the members of American Medical Association, we recruited general pediatricians and pediatric subspecialists to complete a survey (July 2011 to December 2013). Perceived constraints and confidence in PRO assessment were compared by age, pediatric specialty (general pediatrics, 7 subspecialties), practice settings (academic, private), and region of practice. Multivariable logistic regression tested associations of demographic, constraint, and confidence factors with implementing PRO assessment. Findings: The survey was completed by 458 participants (response rate 48.5%); of them, 40.4%, 15.9%, 15.5%, and 8.1% were general pediatricians, cardiology, hematology/oncology, and pulmonary specialists, respectively. PRO assessment was implemented by 29.0% of the pediatricians. The top five constraints for PRO assessment included limited time/manpower (79.0%), limited training (77.4%), lengthy PRO instruments (76%), lack of meaningful cut-offs on PRO scores (75.5%), and unavailable PRO instruments (75.0%). Limited knowledge about PROs (OR 3.80; 95% CI 1.65, 4.80) and unavailability of PRO instruments (OR 1.81; 95% CI 1.04, 3.16) increased the odds of not implementing the assessment, whereas confidence in PRO assessments compatible with norms (OR 0.34; 95% CI 0.20, 0.58) and perceived benefit over clinical judgment alone (OR 0.58; 95% CI 0.34, 0.99) decreased the odds of not implementing the assessment. Interpretation: Significant barriers to PRO assessment in pediatric settings suggest the need for providing training, resources, and practical guidance toward implementation. Funding Statement: Supported in part by the U.S. National Institutes of Health grants through the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (K23 HD057146) and the National Cancer Institute (Cancer Center Support P30 CA021765), as well as the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities. Declaration of Interests: The authors disclose no conflicts of interest. Ethics Approval Statement: Pediatricians were required to complete an informed consent form, as a prerequisite to complete the questionnaire. The Institutional Review Board at the University of Florida approved this study.

BACKGROUND: We aimed to evaluate validity of natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) algorithms in identifying features of unstructured patient-reported outcomes (PROs) for child/adolescent cancer survivors vs. expert judgment as the gold standard. METHODS: A cross-section study to collect unstructured PROs from 52 survivors aged 8-17.9 years and 35 caregivers who visited a Comprehensive Cancer Center in 2016. PROs including pain interference and fatigue symptoms were reported through in-depth interviews. After verbatim transcription, analyzable sentences (i.e., meaning units) were semantically labeled by 2 content experts based on problems with physical, cognitive, or social attributes. Two NLP/ML methods were used to extract and validate the semantic features: 1) Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) and 2) Word2vec plus one of the ML methods, the Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and precision-recall (PR) curves evaluated the accuracy and validity of NLP/ML methods, respectively. FINDINGS: In total, 391 meaning units in pain interference and 423 in fatigue domains were labeled and analyzed. Compared to Word2vec/SVM and Word2vec/XGBoost, BERT demonstrated higher accuracy on both symptom domains, including 0.931 (95%CI=0.905, 0.957) and 0.916 (95% CI=0.887, 0.941) for problems with cognitive and social attributes on pain interference, and 0.929 (95% CI=0.903, 0.953) and 0.917 (95% CI=0.891, 0.943) for problems with cognitive and social attributes on fatigue. In addition, BERT yielded superior areas under the ROC curve for cognitive attribute on pain interference and fatigue domains (0.923 [95% CI=0.879, 0.997]; 0.948 [95% CI=0.922, 0.979]), and superior areas under the PR curve for cognitive attribute on pain interference and fatigue domains (0.818 [95% CI=0.735, 0.917]; 0.855 [95% CI=0.791, 0.930). INTERPRETATIONS: As an alternative to standard PRO surveys, collecting unstructured PROs via interviews or conversations during clinical encounters and applying NLP/ML methods can facilitate PRO assessment in cancer survivors. FUNDING STATEMENT: The research reported in this manuscript was supported by the National Cancer Institute under award numbers U01CA195547 and P30CA021765-33, and the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases of the National Institutes of Health under award number U19AR069525. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agencies. DECLARATION OF INTERESTS: All co-authors declare no conflict of interest. ETHICS APPROVAL STATEMENT: The research protocol was approved by St. Jude’s Institutional Review Board. Assent from survivors and consent from caregivers were obtained.

The purpose of this study was to refine an instrument to capture the perceived needs of parents whose children are seriously ill. This article describes the psychometric properties of the Parents' Needs Scale (PNS), a translated, revised 22-item short form from an original instrument that was developed and tested on parents of children with cancer in Hong Kong.The study was done in three stages that included (a) factor analysis of two samples recruited from clinics in Northern Virginia of parents of children with cancer (n = 74) and end stage renal disease (ESRD) (n = 30); (b) known groups validity testing with two groups of parents recruited in a parallel study on children with special needs (n = 15) and a control group of well children (n = 23); and (c) concurrent validity testing on the subsample of parents of children with special needs using the known measure of Impact on the Family Scale (IFS). Data collection for the stages included mailed questionnaires and follow-up telephone interviews.Exploratory factor analysis using the common factor approach identified two domains: (1) needs related to my child's illness and (2) needs unrelated to my child's illness. The factorial structure was followed by item scaling tests to determine item-level convergence and discriminative validity, as well as scale reliability for the two domains (Cronbach's alpha = 0.93 and 0.90). Domain-level discriminant validity tests yielded significant differences on several expected characteristics of the child and/or family based on the literature. The final 22-item scale was reworded and used to establish known groups validity by comparing the two groups of children with acute illnesses from the previous study with two control groups of parents of children who were well or children with special needs but not acutely ill, yielding significant results on both factors (p 0.001). A final test of concurrent validity was performed on the parents of children with special needs measures of parent need with their reported impact on the family yielding significant correlations on predicted variables.The PNS can measure parents' needs with demonstrated psychometric validity and reliability.

CCD spectrometers are widely used in many fields for quick and accurate measurement of spectra. This paper firstly analyzes various noise phenomena by using Ocean Optics USB4000 spectrometer, including readout noise, photoelectron noise, dark noise and fixed pattern noise. Secondly, noise models of CCD-based spectrometers are built based on the theoretical analysis of noise phenomena. A number of noise-limiting techniques are applied to broadband spectra and line spectra with different noise levels. Lastly by comparing the denoising results, the optimal denoising algorithms are proposed for different spectral characteristics and noise levels.

The paper studies how to improve the trading decision of Taiwan stocks with the information of US stock market. Our method first aligns the trading days between Taiwan and US stock markets. Next, the similarity between the portfolio index (PI, constructed from 100 Taiwan stocks) and one of the US stock indices, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), NASDAQ composite index (NASDAQ), or Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P 500), is computed, respectively. The trading signals of PI or each US stock index are generated by the method of Lee et al. Finally, the consensus signals of PI are determined by the majority vote scheme with the weighted functions, calculated from the similarity. The testing period of PI starts from 2000/1/4 to 2017/12/29, totally 4480 days. As the experimental results show, the index combination (PI, DJIA, NASDAQ) with the weighted function W(4) is considered to be the best combination for trading PI. Its average annualized return (cumulative return) achieves 15.03% (1170.42%), which is better than the method of Lee et al. 13.88% (947.65%), and the buy-and-hold strategy 9.85% (442.90%).

In recent times, Tourism and Travel are considered a flexible, dynamic, and ever-growing industry. The Smart Tourism Destinations concept arises from the advancement of smart cities. Since information technologies are considered a key competitive element of a city's destination, tourism companies invest extensively in smart system initiatives. Moreover, the smart city concept and related approaches are increasingly recognized by cities worldwide to optimize sustainable environments. Furthermore, a smart tourist city faces the challenge of creating urban areas that residents and tourists can experience together, particularly in cities that pose new tourism challenges. This paper proposes the Data-Driven Sustainable Smart City Framework (DDSSCF) for sustainable green tourism strategies and policies. This paper explores the aspects of technologies essential for creating a smart city and a fashionable tourism destination. The preservation of the climate, protected cultural heritage, and natural resources would contribute to an environment, the economic, social sustainable field of tourism by reducing hazardous pollutants and energy usage. Therefore, based on the preservation limit, it has been classified into three components includes-green architecture, green waste, and green energy as a part of the green management framework at the same time. Hence, green tourism, including marketing efforts, such as green marketing, are necessary for the vision of successful adequate green management activities. The experimental results show that the proposed method enhances efficiency ratio when compared to other existing methods.

Poor asthma control in children is related to impaired patient-reported outcomes (PROs; eg, fatigue, depressive symptoms, anxiety), but less well studied is the effect of PROs on children's school performance and sleep outcomes. In this study we investigated whether the consistency status of PROs over time affected school functioning and daytime sleepiness in children with asthma.Of the 238 children with asthma enrolled in the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Pediatric Asthma Study, 169 children who provided survey data for all 4 time points were used in the analysis. The child's PROs, school functioning, and daytime sleepiness were measured 4 times within a 15-month period. PRO domains included asthma impact, pain interference, fatigue, depressive symptoms, anxiety, and mobility. Each child was classified as having poor/fair versus good PROs per meaningful cut points. The consistency status of each domain was classified as consistently poor/fair if poor/fair status was present for at least 3 time points; otherwise, the status was classified as consistently good. Seemingly unrelated regression was performed to test if consistently poor/fair PROs predicted impaired school functioning and daytime sleepiness at the fourth time point.Consistently poor/fair in all PRO domains was significantly associated with impaired school functioning and excessive daytime sleepiness (Ps .01) after controlling for the influence of the child's age, sex, and race/ethnicity.Children with asthma with consistently poor/fair PROs are at risk of poor school functioning and daytime sleepiness. Developing child-friendly PRO assessment systems to track PROs can inform potential problems in the school setting.

Enterovirus 71 (EV71) is one of the major pathogens that cause severe enteroviral infections. Our aim was to study the behavioral and household risk factors for its serious complications.Between May 2011 and November 2012, we enrolled children who had symptoms of EV71 infection from six hospitals in Taiwan. The caregivers of each patient were interviewed to determine their hand hygiene habits in relation to EV71 infection. The severity of EV71 infection was classified as follows: Stage 1, hand-foot-mouth disease or herpangina; Stage 2, meningitis or myoclonic jerk; Stage 3A, encephalitis; Stage 3B, cardiopulmonary failure. Stages 2 to 3B were defined as severe EV71 infection. Children with Stages 3A and 3B infection were designated as the critical group.A total of 399 patients had laboratory-confirmed EV71 infection. Three risks factors were associated with the different degrees of severity in EV71 infection. Children2 years old had much greater risks for severe EV71 infection [odds ratio (OR) 1.8; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.2-2.8], delayed medical evaluation for critical infection (OR 9.4; 95% CI, 3.6-24.1), and developmental retardation for cardiopulmonary failure (OR 8.3; 95% CI, 2.0-33.7). Among all the habits and household factors, caregivers in the critical group had a significantly lower rate in terms of cleaning the faucet after washing their hands (OR 2.63; 95% CI, 1.14-6.08).Children2 years old, developmental retardation, and delayed medical intervention were associated with severe EV71 infection. Cleaning water faucets after hand washing was a protective habit that reduced the risk of complications.

Multistage diffraction of a dispersion-compensated polarization Sagnac interferometer (DCPSI) reduces the fringe visibility of interference fringes generated in a focal plane array, thereby leading to the poor quality of the reconstructed polarization images. In this paper, a double total reflection prism between the DCPSI and imaging lens is added to limit the effect of multistage diffraction and improve the imaging quality. First, the influence of multistage diffraction on the interference fringes and the ratio of fringe amplitude to the background was analyzed. Second, the range of angles of the two right angle prisms was calculated. Simulation and experiment were carried out to prove the superiority of the proposed method. Result shows that the ratio of fringe amplitude to the background increases from 1/5 to 1/3 and from 1/10 to 1/6 in simulation and experiment when a double total reflection prism structure is added respectively. This method can reduce the influence of multistage diffraction on interference fringes and improve the image quality of DCPSI effectively.

Workflow scheduling on parallel systems has long been known to be a NP-complete problem. As modern grid and cloud computing platforms emerge, it becomes indispensable to schedule mixed-parallel workflows in an online manner in a speed-heterogeneous multi-cluster environment. However, most existing scheduling algorithms were not developed for online mixed-parallel workflows of rigid data-parallel tasks and multi-cluster environments, therefore they cannot handle the problem efficiently. In this paper, we propose a scheduling framework, named Mixed-Parallel Online Workflow Scheduling (MOWS), which divides the entire scheduling process into four phases: task prioritizing, waiting queue scheduling, task rearrangement, and task allocation. Based on this framework, we developed four new methods: shortest-workflow-first, priority-based backfilling, preemptive task execution and All-EFT task allocation, for scheduling online mixed-parallel workflows of rigid tasks in speed-heterogeneous multi-cluster environments. To evaluate the proposed scheduling methods, we conducted a series of simulation studies and made comparisons with previously proposed approaches in the literature. The experimental results indicate that each of the four proposed methods outperforms existing approaches significantly and all these approaches in MOWS together can achieve more than 20% performance improvement in terms of average turnaround time. A scheduling framework for mixed-parallel workflows of rigid tasks is proposed.The framework highlights four scheduling phases for further research directions.Four task scheduling methods are developed for optimizing execution performance.

Objectives Few studies have investigated the complex relationship among asthma control, sleep problems, and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) among children with asthma. This study aimed to test the longitudinal effect of asthma control status on asthma-specific HRQOL through the mechanism of nighttime sleep quality and daytime sleepiness. Methods The Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS ® ) Pediatric Asthma Study included 229 dyads of asthmatic children and their parents with two years of follow-up for assessing the change in asthma control, sleep problems, and asthma-specific HRQOL. The Asthma Control and Communication Instrument was used to measure asthma control status. Nighttime sleep quality assessment was based on difficulty falling asleep and getting up, and sleep disturbance. The Iowa Pediatric Daytime Sleeping Scale was used to assess daytime sleepiness. The PROMIS Asthma Impact Scale was used to measure asthma-specific HRQOL. Multilevel structural equation modeling was performed to quantify the direct and indirect effects of asthma control status on asthma-specific HRQOL through nighttime sleep quality and daytime sleepiness. Results Poorer asthma control status was directly associated with lower asthma-specific HRQOL at within-subject and between-subject levels ( p 0.05); however, effects of asthma control on asthma-specific HRQOL were indirectly influenced through daytime sleepiness at the within-subject level ( p 0.05), and through nighttime sleep quality and daytime sleepiness at the between-subject level ( p 0.05). Conclusions Asthma control status is associated with asthma-specific HRQOL, and this association is mediated by nighttime sleep quality and daytime sleepiness. Clinicians should address sleep problems related to asthma control to improve HRQOL for asthmatic children.

The Flory–Orwoll–Vrij (FOV) equation is commonly used to analyze the interaction parameters of vapors in polymer melts. The theory considers the free volume effects and requires several pure component parameters, which can be determined from the pressure–volume–temperature (PVT) data of liquids. For polymers the specific volume can be predicted using three characteristic parameters over a temperature and pressure range. For low molecular weight liquids, molar core volume, V*, external degree of freedom, C, and interaction energy parameter, ET, which was introduced in this study, showed linear relationships with the carbon number for several series of homologues. A group calculation method to estimate characteristic parameters was proposed in this study. The free volume effect depended on the reduced volumes of solutes and polymers. It increased when the system temperature increased. Inverse gas chromatography (IGC) data of Flory–Huggins parameters, χ, of several polar solvents in poly(vinyl chloride) and poly(tetramethylene glycol) were positive, but the exchange energy parameters, X12, were negative and consistent with the molecular interaction consideration.

Image quality assessment is an indispensable in computer vision applications, such as image classification, image parsing. With the development of Internet, image data acquisition becomes more conveniently. However, image distortion is inevitable due to imperfect image acquisition system, image transmission medium and image recording equipment. Traditional image quality assessment algorithms only focus on low-level visual features such as color or texture, which could not encode high-level features effectively. CNN-based methods have shown satisfactory results in image quality assessment. However, existing methods have problems such as incomplete feature extraction, partial image block distortion, and inability to determine scores. So in this paper, we propose a novel framework for image quality assessment based on deep learning. We incorporate both low-level visual features and high-level semantic features to better describe images. And image quality is analyzed in a parallel processing mode. Experiments are conducted on LIVE and TID2008 datasets demonstrate the proposed model can predict the quality of the distorted image well, and both SROCC and PLCC can reach 0.92 or higher.

We propose a graph model for solving the service deployment problem on cloud.Our approach considers both communication costs and execution parallelism.Service deployment is transformed into a typical minimum k-cut problem for solution. Cloud computing has caused a revolution in our way of developing and using software. Software development and deployment based on the new models of Software as a Service (SaaS) and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) are expected to bring a lot of benefits for users. However, software developers and service providers have to address new challenging issues before such benefits can be realized. This paper explores one of the critical issues, service deployment, for reducing execution time of composite SaaS applications, and proposes an integrated approach to the service deployment problem which takes not only inter-service communication costs but also the potential parallelism among services into consideration. In the approach, two types of graphs are developed to model the communication costs between services, Service Dependency Graph (SDG), and potential parallelism among services, Service Concurrence Graph (SCG), respectively. Then, these two graphs are integrated into a single Service Relationship Graph (SRG) and the service deployment problem is transformed into a minimum k-cut problem for solution. A series of experiments were conducted to evaluate the proposed approach. The experimental results indicate that our approach outperforms previous deployment methods significantly in terms of service response time.

Background The authors conducted a study to validate the following 3 evidence-based, process-of-care quality measures focused on dental caries prevention for children with an elevated risk of experiencing caries: sealants for 6- to 9-year-olds, sealants for 10- to 14-year-olds, and topical fluoride. Methods Using evidence-based guidelines, the Dental Quality Alliance developed measures for implementation with administrative data at the plan and program levels. To validate the measures, the authors used data from the Florida and Texas Medicaid programs and Children’s Health Insurance Programs and from national commercial dental benefit plans. Data were extracted from 414 randomly selected dental office records to validate the use of administrative data to accurately calculate the measures. The authors also assessed statistically significant variations in overall measure performance. Results Agreement between administrative data and dental records was 95% for sealants (κ = 0.82) and 90% for topical fluoride (κ = 0.78). Sensitivity and specificity were 90.7% and 88.5% for topical fluoride and 77.8% and 98.8% for sealants, respectively. Variation in overall measure performance was greatest for topical fluoride (χ 2 = 5,887.1; P 2 = 548.6; P 2 = 22.7; P Conclusions These evidence-based, caries prevention process-of-care quality measures can be implemented feasibly and validly using administrative claims data. Practical Implications The measures can be used to assess, monitor, and improve the proportion of children with an elevated risk of experiencing dental caries who receive evidence-based caries prevention services.

An extension of the integrated production–delivery lot sizing model under stochastic delivery time with transportation cost is investigated. The delivery time is assumed to be exponentially distributed. The presumption, the optimum delivery quantity determining the minimum of the transportation cost, has been widely adopted in transportation management models. Hence, we model the transportation cost as a function of delivery quantity. We consider comprehensive costs in the optimization problem. The expected total cost per unit of time with respect to the delivery quantity is proved to be a convex function under certain feasible conditions. As a result of computational studies, our proposed production–delivery decision model has shown notably adaptable when the delivery time is random. In particular, when the producer’s and retailer’s carrying costs are low, and/or mean time of delivery and transportation costs are high, our suggested policy saves more than 9% as opposed to the scheme recommended by prior researches, which manifests highly advanced gains.

In this paper, Al-doped ZnO (AZO) films are deposited on glasses substrate by RF magnetron sputtering. The optical, electrical and morphological properties of AZO films textured by wet-etching with different etchants, H3PO4, HCl, and HNO3 are studied. It is found that the textured structure could enhance the light scattering and light trapping ability of amorphous silicon solar cells. The textured AZO film etched with HNO3 exhibits optimized optical properties (T% ≧ 80% over entire wavelength, haze ratio > 40% at 550 nm wavelength) and excellent electrical properties (ρ = 5.86 × 10−4 Ωcm). Scanning electron microscopy and Atomic force microscopy are used to observe surface morphology and average roughness of each textured AZO films. Finally, the textured AZO films etched by H3PO4, HCl and HNO3 were applied to front electrode layer for p–i–n amorphous silicon solar cells. The highest conversion efficiency of amorphous silicon solar cell fabricated on HNO3-etched AZO film was 7.08% with open-circuit voltage, short-circuit current density and fill factor of 895 mV, 14.92 mA/cm2 and 0.56, respectively. It shows a significantly enhancement in the short-circuit current density and conversion efficiency by 16.2% and 20.2%, respectively, compared with the solar cell fabricated on as-grown AZO film.

Careful gas–liquid chromatographic (GLC) studies provide thermodynamic data for insights into solution processes in non-volatile solvents. In a previous study, thermodynamic properties of solutes at infinitesimal dilution of several liquid crystals measured by GLC were examined. It was noted that enthalpy of solutions in mesophases was positive and higher than those of isotropic stationary phases. The variation of enthalpy of solutions among different solutes was also shown to be higher than what can be explained by the solubility parameter model. The temperature dependency of the disorder parameter in Flory’s theory of liquid crystals was used to explain high values of the enthalpy and entropy of solution. In this study the interaction parameter expression derived with orientation dependent interaction was used to explain the solute dependency on the enthalpy of solutions. The theory showed that the enthalpy of solution depends on the polarizability anisotropy and the solubility parameter of solutes. The theory also predicted a linear plot of the enthalpy of solutions between the mesophases of the same liquid crystal, or between mesophases of different liquid crystals, for the same set of solutes.

We conducted a chronoamperometric study to observe the electrochemical behaviors of the nucleation mechanism of electrodeposited Cu(In,Al)Se 2 films. A change from instantaneous nucleation to progressive nucleation was observed by increasing the copper concentration. SEM and EDS analyses demonstrated that the surface morphologies and chemical compositions of precursor and post-annealed Cu(In,Al)Se 2 films were influenced by the nucleation mechanism. They exhibited that Cu(In,Al)Se 2 films had roughly cauliflower-like and triangular structures with Cu-poor composition at the instantaneous nucleation mechanism, whereas smooth and round structures with Cu-rich composition at the progressive nucleation mechanism. Additionally, the quality, growth orientation, composition phase, and optical energy band gap of Cu(In,Al)Se 2 films were examined using X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns, Raman spectra, and ( αhν ) 2 vs. hν plots (UV–vis). Thereafter, the performances of rudimentary Cu(In,Al)Se 2 solar cells fabricated at various copper concentrations were discussed, the conversion efficiency of electrodeposited Cu(In,Al)Se 2 solar cells were unpublished in previous literatures. Our studies demonstrated that the performances of Cu(In,Al)Se 2 solar cells were significantly related to the surface morphology and composition of Cu(In,Al)Se 2 absorber layer. The highest conversion efficiency of Cu(In,Al)Se 2 solar cells fabricated at a 2-mM copper concentration was 1.96% with open-circuit voltage, short-circuit current, fill factor, R sh and R s values of 0.189 V, 29.21 mA/cm 2 , 35.4%, 125 Ω and 2.82 Ω, respectively.

Careful gas chromatographic (GLC) studies provide thermodynamic data for insights into solution processes in non-volatile solvents. In this study, thermodynamic properties of solutes at infinite dilution of several liquid crystals measured by GLC were examined. The enthalpy and entropy of solutions in mesophases were positive and higher than those of isotropic stationary phases. When solute transfer enthalpy (Δ H tr ) and transfer entropy (Δ S tr ) between two phases of a liquid crystal were examined, remarkable enthalpy–entropy compensation relations were observed. This was because the small values of transfer free energy. Both Δ H tr and T Δ S tr had large values and were almost equal, resulting in small values of transfer free energy. The temperature dependency of the disorder parameter in Flory's theory of liquid crystals was used to explain high values of the enthalpy and entropy of solution.

With the continuous development of society and the rapid advancement of science and technology, all walks of life are increasingly required to effectively manage their projects or affairs. Decision-making is the basis of project management, and the formation of decisions determines the formulation of corresponding programs, organizations and businesses. Decision-making is generated by decision makers based on the multi-faceted information they have, so decision management systems and information systems are inseparable in the management of projects and transactions. At present, research on decision management systems emphasizes management and decisions, and few researchers combine decision management and related information. In view of the current research deficiencies, and taking into account the needs of various industries for image applications, this paper introduces image quality evaluation methods, and systematically studies the decision management system and information system framework. The experiment part takes the intelligent image recognition and prevention system of citrus pests and diseases as an example, and the role of image quality in decision management system and information system from the perspective of practice. The results show that through the image quality evaluation system, in the identification and prevention of citrus pests and diseases, it can combine various aspects of information to make effective prevention and control decisions. The results show that the introduction of image quality evaluation can improve the comprehensiveness of information system. On this basis, decision-making system can help decision makers make correct decisions quickly and effectively.

In a heterogeneous multi-cluster (HMC) system, processor allocation is responsible for choosing available processors among clusters for job execution. Traditionally, processor allocation in HMC considers only resource fragmentation or processor heterogeneity, which leads to heuristics such as Best-Fit (BF) and Fastest-First (FF). However, those heuristics only favor certain types of workloads and cannot be changed adaptively. In this paper, a temporal look-ahead (TLA) method is proposed, which uses an allocation simulation process to guide the decision of processor allocation. Thus, the allocation decision is made dynamically according to the current workload and system configurations. We evaluate the performance of TLA by simulations, with different workloads and system configurations, in terms of average turnaround time. Simulation results indicate that, with precise runtime information, TLA outperforms traditional processor allocation methods and has up to an 87% performance improvement.

We describe the racial and ethnic variation in family impact resulting from caring for a child with a life-threatening illness. Parents of children aged 2-21 years diagnosed with a potentially life-threatening illness and enrolled in Florida's Medicaid and Children's Medical Services Network programs were surveyed. Two hundred sixty-six telephone surveys were conducted in English and Spanish between November 2007 and April 2008. In adjusted models, compared with Whites, Latinos reported that their child's illness resulted in a greater negative impact on the family. Continued study of this group of parents is critical to developing culturally appropriate interventions to reduce strain and burden and improve the quality of life for families.

The surface morphology and the microstructure of CuInSe 2 precursor films have been investigated by co-electrodeposition with different [Cu 2+ ] concentrations from 2 mM to 4 mM. The characteristic of the precursor films was examined using field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), glancing incidence angle X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) and micro-Raman spectrometer, respectively. The surface morphology of the precursor films become more smoother and compact with choice of appropriate [Cu 2+ ] concentration (3–3.5 mM) in the electrolyte. The relation between surface morphology and [Cu 2+ ] concentration is also considered in terms of electrodeposition nucleation mechanisms using the mathematical models of Scharifker and Hills. It is suggested that the higher [Cu 2+ ] concentrations can provide more numbers of nucleation sites on the surface of the electrode. Results simulated from the Rietveld refinement method suggest that decreasing d Cu Se is related to charge transfer from interstitial copper atoms and can affect the film microstructure. Micro-Raman spectrum also shows that the excess Cu atoms in the precursor films does not contribute significantly to large amounts of secondary phases but rather exists in the crystallite structure as other defect types.

Scheduling workflow applications in grid environments is a great challenge, because it is an NP-complete problem. Many heuristic methods have been presented in the literature and most of them deal with a single workflow application at a time. In recent years, several heuristic methods have been proposed to deal with concurrent workflows or online workflows, but they do not work with workflows composed of data-parallel tasks. In this paper, we present an online scheduling approach for multiple mixed-parallel workflows in grid environments. The proposed approach was evaluated with a series of simulation experiments and the results show that the proposed approach delivers good performance and outperforms other methods under various workloads.

In this study, the optical properties and morphologies of Al-doped ZnO (AZO) films textured by the chemical wet-etching method with three different acid species are investigated. An initial AZO film is sputtered on a glass substrate by rf magnetron sputtering. The film surface was then textured by wet-etching using diluted HCl, HNO3 or H3PO4. The average transmittance of all the post-treated ZnO:Al films remains around 75–80% as measured by a UV–vis analyzer. A haze ratio calculation shows that the light scattering properties can be significantly controlled by varying the etchant species, acid concentration, and etching time. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to find the average roughness of the textured AZO films. In this study, the HNO3 etchant gives the highest haze ratio of 49.2% at a wavelength of 550 nm. The textured ZnO:Al films with an electrical resistivity of 5.47 × 10−4 Ω-cm, carrier concentrations of 3.98 × 1020 cm−3 and mobility of 28.7 cm2 V−1 s−1, can be obtained when etched in diluted HNO3 for 60 s. It is found that the chemical wet-etched AZO glass substrate appears to be helpful in enhancing the short circuit current (Jsc) when applied on silicon thin film solar cells.

Bacterial cellulose (BC) has been studied as biomedical material due to its nanoscale fiber network, biocompatibility, and high water holding capacity. However, BC exhibits a poor rehydration after drying due to its high crystallinity. In this study, hydroxypropylmethyl cellulose (HPMC) was added into a BC fermentation culture medium to interfere with the formation of BC structure in situ and create a modified BC, named HBC. Notably, mechanical strength in HBC declined. SEM images showed that, while the cellulose bundle width of HBC was enlarged, the cellulose network void in HBC shrank. X-ray diffraction and FTIR analysis revealed that the addition of HPMC reduced the crystallinity index (CrI). HBC also exhibited the highest rehydration ratio as well as the lowest crystallinity at 0.75% HPMC addition level (named 0.75%HBC). The 0.75%HBC also exhibited a higher composition ratio of EMG/BC composite and showed the improvement in water and small molecule absorption.

In an attempt to obtain bacterial cellulose (BC) with improved rehydration ability, Tween 80, urea, fluorescent brightener, hydroxypropylmethyl cellulose (HPMC) and carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) were introduced into BC fermentation medium. Measurements of the mechanical strength of the resulting BCs (TBC, UBC, FBC, HBC and CBC) showed a decline except for UBC. SEM images showed that, although the cellulose bundle widths of FBC, HBC and CBC increase, the cellulose network void in FBC grew, while those in HBC and CBC shrank. X-ray diffraction and FT-IR analysis demonstrated that the addition of HPMC and CMC reduced the degree of crystallinity in their corresponding MBCs from 70.54% to 52.23% and 45.38%, respectively. HBC and CBC also exhibited the highest rehydration ability among all MBCs as well as the lowest crystallinity. The in situ modification with HPMC and CMC during fermentation can effectively improve rehydration ability of BC by altering its network structure.

Workflow management systems have been widely used in many business process management (BPM) applications. There are also a lot of companies offering commercial software solutions for BPM. However, most of them adopt a simple client/server architecture with one single centralized workflow-management server only. As the number of incoming workflow requests increases, the single workflow-management server might become the performance bottleneck, leading to unacceptable response time. Development of parallel servers might be a possible solution. However, a parallel server architecture with a fixed-number of servers cannot efficiently utilize computing resources under time-varying system workloads. This paper presents a distributed workflow-management server architecture which adopts dynamic resource provisioning mechanisms to deal with the probable performance bottleneck. We implemented a prototype system of the proposed architecture based on a commercial workflow management system, Agentflow. A series of experiments were conducted on the prototype system for performance evaluation. The experimental results indicate that the proposed architecture can deliver scalable performance and effectively maintain stable request response time under a wide range of incoming workflow request workloads.

We present a new method, second harmonic generation (SHG) imaging for the study of starch structure. SHG imaging can provide the structural organization and molecular orientation information of bio-tissues without centrosymmetry. In recent years, SHG has proven its capability in the study of crystallized bio-molecules such as collagen and myosin. Starch, the most important food source and a promising future energy candidate, has, for a decade, been shown to exhibit strong SHG response. By comparing SHG intensity from different starch species, we first identified that the SHG-active molecule is amylopectin, which accounts for the crystallinity in starch granules. With the aid of SHG polarization anisotropy, we extracted the complete χ(2) tensor of amylopectin, which reflects the underlying molecular details. Through χ(2) tensor analysis, three-dimensional orientation and packing symmetry of amylopectin are determined. The helical angle of the double-helix in amylopectin is also deduced from the tensor, and the value corresponds well to previous X-ray studies, further verifying amylopectin as SHG source. It is noteworthy that the nm-sized structure of amylopectin inside a starch granule can be determined by this far-field optical method with 1-μm excitation wavelength. Since SHG is a relatively new tool for plant research, a detailed understanding of SHG in starch structure will be useful for future high-resolution imaging and quantitative analyses for food/energy applications.

To investigate the effects of starch characteristics on the quality of noodle making, white salted noodles (WSN) made from reconstituted flours, in which the wheat starch was substituted by different cereal starches, including waxy and non-waxy rice starches, waxy wheat starch and waxy corn starch, were prepared. The rheological properties of raw WSN were mainly influenced by the size of starch granules, where the small starch granules, such as for rice starches, exhibited high amounts of water absorption during dough preparation and a dense packing of starch granules inside a thin gluten-strand network. The rheological properties of cooked WSN were mainly dominated by the amylose content and fine structure of the amylopectin, which resulted in the differences in water absorption and cooking time required for cooked WSN.

This study examined whether 3-month outcomes of a brief image-based multiple behavior intervention on health habits and health-related quality of life of college students were sustained at 12-month follow-up without further intervention.A randomized control trial was conducted with 303 undergraduates attending a public university in southeastern US. Participants were randomized to receive either a brief intervention or usual care control, with baseline, 3-month, and 12-month data collected during fall of 2007.A significant omnibus MANOVA interaction effect was found for health-related quality of life, p=0.01, with univariate interaction effects showing fewer days of poor spiritual health, social health, and restricted recent activity, p's0.05, for those receiving the brief intervention. Significant group by time interaction effects were found for driving after drinking, p=0.04, and moderate exercise, p=0.04, in favor of the brief intervention. Effect sizes typically increased over time and were small except for moderate size effects for social health-related quality of life.This study found that 3-month outcomes from a brief image-based multiple behavior intervention for college students were partially sustained at 12-month follow-up.

Limited evidence examines agreement between the ratings of adolescents' health-related quality of life (HRQOL) by parents and adolescents especially accounting for measurement properties. This study aimed to test whether agreement exists between the dyads using a methodology of measurement invariance.We conducted a telephone survey to collect data from parents and their adolescents enrolled in Florida's Children's Medical Services (376 pairs) using the PedsQL 4.0. We used multi-group confirmatory factor analysis to test measurement invariance, including configural (equivalent HRQOL construct), metric (equivalent item-domain associations), scalar (equivalent starting value of ratings), and residual (equivalent nonsystematic measurement errors of ratings) invariance. We also investigated correlates of discrepancies in the dyadic ratings.There were equivalent HRQOL constructs and item-domain associations between the dyads. However, some items show different starting values and nonsystematic errors in the dyadic ratings. After adjusting for noninvariant items, adolescents reported significant higher HRQOL scores than parents in all domains (P0.05). Parents' rating of adolescents' health significantly contributed to discrepancies in the dyadic ratings (P0.05).Adolescents rated HRQOL higher than their parents. This discrepancy was associated with severe health conditions. Without assuring measurement invariance, comparisons of the dyadic HRQOL ratings can be misleading.

ObjectiveThere is a debate regarding the use of disease-specific versus generic instruments for health-related quality of life (HRQOL) measures. We tested the psychometric properties of HRQOL measures using the Diabetes-39 (D-39) and the Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36).MethodsThis was a cross-sectional study collecting data from 280 patients in Taiwan. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to evaluate construct validity of the two instruments. Known-groups validity was examined using laboratory indicators (fasting, 2-hour postprandial plasma glucose, and hemoglobin A1c), presence of diabetic complications (retinopathy, nephropathy, neuropathy, diabetic foot disorder, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disorders), and psychosocial variables (sense of well-being and self-reported diabetes severity). Overall discriminative power of the two instruments was evaluated using the C-statistic.ResultsThree distinct factors were extracted through factor analysis. These factors tapped all subscales of the D-39, fourphysical subscales of the SF-36, and four mental subscales of the SF-36, respectively. Compared with the SF-36, the D-39 demonstrated superior known-groups validity for 2-hour postprandial plasma glucose groups but was inferior for complication groups. Compared with the SF-36, the D-39 discriminated better between self-reported severity known groups, but was inferior between well-being groups. In overall discriminative power, the D-39 discriminated better between laboratory known groups. The SF-36, however, was superior in discriminating between complication known groups.ConclusionsFor psychometric properties, the D-39 and the SF-36 were superior to each other in different regards. The combined use of a disease-specific instrument and a generic instrument may be a useful strategy for diabetes HRQOL assessment.

Thermodynamic properties of three organic solute families in 4,4-bis(heptyloxyl)azoxybenzene (BHOAB) at infinite dilution were determined from gas–liquid chromatographic retention data. The reduced free energies of transfer of solutes between liquid crystal phases at transition temperatures were determined and related to the “disorder parameter” of Flory's liquid crystal theory. Reduced free energies of transfer between phases were functions of solute solubility parameters. From these, the “effective solubility parameters” of the liquid crystal phases could be evaluated. The effective solubility parameter of the smectic phase was lower than the other phases, despite being determined at lower temperatures and higher phase density. Changes in liquid crystal organization in the mesophases, which affect functional group contacts between the liquid crystal and solute molecules, are proposed to explain this behavior.