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Cemented pavement materials (CPMs) are essential components in pavement structures, yet accurately predicting their service life due to fatigue damage remains challenging. Laboratory fatigue test results are commonly employed to predict the service life of CPMs by applying a lab-to-field shift factor (SF). However, traditional approaches rely heavily on experimental data, posing challenges in ensuring the certainty of lab-to-field results. Additionally, inconsistencies in lab-to-field fatigue failure criteria further complicate SF development. To address these challenges, this study proposes a mechanism-based methodology for developing SF. This methodology comprises a rigorous two-scale fatigue model developed by the authors to characterise the fatigue performance of CPMs at the lab scale and predict their performance at the field scale, thereby facilitating the development of SFs. These SFs are established based on a consistent lab-to-field fatigue failure criterion (i.e. the modulus reduction of CPMs). By accounting for strain differences between laboratory and field scales, SFs are derived in the strain-fatigue life space. Application of this approach to typical Australian CPMs, namely siltstone and hornfels, yields mechanism-based SFs of 1.19 and 1.21, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to its versatility in formulation and manufacturing, self-emulsifying drug delivery systems (SEDDS) can be used to design parenteral formulations. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the effects of excipients on the behavior of SEDDS formulations upon parenteral administration, particularly their interactions with blood plasma and cell membranes. In this study, we prepared three neutrally charged SEDDS formulations composed of medium-chain triglycerides as the oil phase, polyoxyl-35 castor oil (EL35) and polyethylene glycol (15)-hydroxystearate (HS15) as the nonionic surfactants, medium-chain mono- and diglycerides as the co-surfactant, and propylene glycol as the co-solvent. The cationic surfactant, didodecyldimethylammonium bromide (DDA), and the anionic surfactant, sodium deoxycholate (DEO), were added to the neutral SEDDS preconcentrates to obtain cationic and anionic SEDDS, respectively. SEDDS were incubated with human blood plasma and recovered by size exclusion chromatography. Data showed that SEDDS emulsion droplets can bind plasma protein to different extents depending on their surface charge and surfactant used. At pH 7.4, the least protein binding was observed with anionic SEDDS. Positive charges increased protein binding. SEDDS stabilized by HS15 can adsorb more plasma protein and induce more plasma membrane disruption activity than SEDDS stabilized by EL35. These effects were more pronounced with the HS15 + DDA combination. The addition of DDA and DEO to SEDDS increased plasma membrane disruption (PMD) activities, and DDA (1% w/w) was more active than DEO (2% w/w). PMD activities of SEDDS were concentration-dependent and vanished at appropriate dilution ratios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Powdery mildew, caused by the ascomycete Podosphaera aphanis, is an important disease of strawberry. A slightly modified version of a method using steam thermotherapy to rid diseases and pests from strawberry transplants was tested against strawberry powdery mildew. Experiments took place in Norway and Florida, with potted strawberry plants heavily infected with the fungus. Aerated steam treatments of the plants were carried out as follows: a pre-treatment with steaming at 37 °C for 1 h was followed by 1 h at ambient temperature before plants were exposed to steaming at 40, 42, or 44 °C for 2 or 4 h in Norway and 44 °C for 4 h in Florida. Following steaming, plants from the different treatments and the untreated control were kept apart and protected from outside contamination of powdery mildew by growing them in closed containers with over-pressure. On steamed plants, hyphae of P. aphanis were dead and without any new spore formation after treatments, independent of temperature or exposure time; however, up to 99% of the area infected with powdery mildew prior to treatments contained actively sporulating lesions on non-steamed plants. None of the new leaves formed after steaming had powdery mildew, whereas more than half of the new leaves on non-treated plants were infected by P. aphanis. This investigation clearly indicates that steam thermotherapy can eradicate powdery mildew from strawberry transplants, and this can be achieved at lower temperatures and exposure times than previously reported for other pathogens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the effects of CaTiO3, BaTiO3, and BaZrO3 doping on the phase transition and strain properties of lead-free 0.76Bi1/2Na1/2TiO3-0.24SrTiO3 (BNT-24ST) piezoceramics. The nonergodicity of the BNT-24ST ceramic was stabilized as a function of CaTiO3 doping, corresponding to the existence of the ferroelectric-to-relaxor phase transition temperature (TF-R) peak in the dielectric permittivity curves of the samples. However, the BaTiO3- or BaZrO3- doped NBT-24ST samples promote the transition from a nonergodic to an ergodic relaxor phase. The 0.01 mol BaTiO3 or 0.01 mol BaZrO3 doping decreases the TF-R peak of the NBT-24ST sample to below room temperature. Interestingly, it is noted that the nonergodic-to-ergodic relaxor phase transition of the BaTiO3-doped BNT-24ST ceramics was faster than that of the BaZrO3-doped BNT-24ST ceramics. The 0.01 mol BaTiO3-doped BNT-24ST sample presents a maximum dielectric constant of ~ 8000. The maximum piezoelectric actuator coefficient (uni-Smax/Emax) of ~ 525 pm/V was observed for the 0.01 mol BaTiO3-doped BNT-24ST ceramic. The effect of the tolerance factor on the phase transition and electrical properties of the BNT-24ST-ABO3 ceramics is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations have been used to study the mechanical behavior as well as the structural change of cubic (c-) Si3N4 upon uniaxial tensile loading. The Si3N4 sample is simulated under the cooling process and high pressure. At temperature of 300 K, most nitrogen (N) atoms arrange into fcc lattice, and the rest of N atoms have hcp and amorphous (a-) structures. The hcp and a- N atoms gather into a band. Upon uniaxial tensile tests, this c- Si3N4 exhibits elastic and plastic deformations. The fcc and hcp N atoms transform into a- N atoms under tensile loading. The band of a- structure develops and spreads across the sample with increasing strain. The transformation of SiNx units occurs from high to low coordination number in the a- structure. The large simplexes, with radii of 2.0 Å and above, grow and coalesce only in the a- structure during tensile loading, leading to form the porous structure. The formation of porous a- structure causes ductile deformation at high strain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of steam thermotherapy on Botrytis spp. populations in strawberry transplants was evaluated. Tray plants rooted in 0.2 L peat plugs of seasonal flowering cvs. Falco, Sonsation, and Soprano, and everbearing cvs. Favori and Murano were pre-treated with steam at 37 °C for 1 h, followed by 1 h at ambient temperature and air humidity, and then 2 or 4 h steam treatment at 44 °C. Except for one cultivar with a slight reduction in yield, there were no negative effects on plant performance. Compared to untreated transplants, mean incidence of Botrytis on the five cultivars was reduced by 43 and 86% with the 2 and 4 h treatments, respectively. Within cultivars the reduction was significant in 2 and 3 experiments following the 2 and 4 h treatments, respectively. Sclerotia from four different isolates of Botrytis were subjected to treatment including 4 h of steam thermotherapy and subsequently tested for viability. Following 14 days of incubation, 90 to 100% (mean 97%) of treated sclerotia failed to produce mycelial growth compared with untreated sclerotia, which all germinated and produced mycelia. Botrytis isolates recovered from both treated and untreated strawberry transplants were tested for resistance to seven fungicides, including boscalid, fenhexamid, fludioxonil, fluopyram, pyraclostrobin, pyrimethanil and thiophanate-methyl. Multiple fungicide resistance was common; 35.5% of isolates were resistant to fungicides from at least three FRAC groups. Results indicate that steam thermotherapy treatment strongly reduces populations of Botrytis spp., including fungicide-resistant strains, in strawberry transplants with negligible negative impacts on the transplants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have long been considering the role of spatial migration linkages in the housing market as it is important to help planners and policymakers review housing supply and estimate housing demand to provide sufficient housing supply to meet household needs in future. Many have investigated the trade-off between house price and migration but little attention has been paid to exploring their spatial interactions in housing market areas at the local level. To fill the gap, this paper intended to use a GIS approach to uncover the inside values of the 2011 migration flow data and the 2011 house price data to identify the spatial migration patterns in the housing market areas for Greater Manchester in the UK. The results showed that there were specific spatial linkages in various local areas, and finding the problematic patterns may help us make the local housing market operate better by changing the existing problematic patterns, and improving housing conditions and/or transportation system. The contribution of this paper was to demonstrate the usefulness of the GIS approach in generating the useful information hidden in the big data sources to generate new knowledge regarding the spatial relationship between the components of the local housing market system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we investigated if a steam treatment program used to produce disease-free strawberry transplants has the potential to also eliminate strawberry mite (Phytonemus pallidus) and two-spotted spider mite (Tetranychus urticae). Crowns of strawberry plants collected in a commercial field, containing young, folded leaves with all life stages of P. pallidus, and strawberry leaf discs on water agar with T. urticae with non-diapausing adult females and eggs from a laboratory rearing, were exposed to warm aerated steam in a steam cabinet in a series of four experimental runs over 2 years. The steam treatments constituted of a 1-h pre-treatment with 37 °C steam followed by a 1-h recovery period at 21–25 °C, and then a main steam treatment at 44 °C for either 2, 4 (both P. pallidus and T. urticae) or 6 h (the more heat tolerant T. urticae only). After steaming, the plant material with P. pallidus or T. urticae were incubated at 21–25 °C until survival was assessed after 1–6 days, depending on the mite species and life-stage. Non-steamed plant material with mites was used as controls. The 4-h treatment killed all P. pallidus eggs, larvae and adults, and the 2-h treatment killed all individuals in all three stages except for one egg in one of the runs. There were no or minor effects of the steam treatments on T. urticae adult and egg survival. Based on these results, the tested steam treatments may be used to eliminate the strawberry mite but not the two-spotted spider mite from strawberry planting material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accuracy of the location estimation of sensors in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is important to many applications such as environment surveillance applications. In large-scale and distributed WSNs, locations of the sensors may not be recorded during the deployment process, resulting in the need of localization techniques to help collect the sensor location information. WSNs are highly vulnerable to localization attacks since the localization techniques totally rely on the neighboring relations to determine the location of sensors. In other words, some of malicious sensor nodes can take the advantage of the neighboring relations to manipulate the localization process. In this paper, we propose two localization algorithms to overcome both common types of localization attacks, independent attacks and collusion attacks. In the first algorithm, we propose the Improved Randomized Consistency Position Algorithm to determine the location of unknown nodes using the location estimation information provided by the three random anchor nodes and using the PSO algorithm paradigm to identify the coordinates of the unknown nodes' location. In addition, the second algorithm, which is a combination of voting method, location optimization, and the PSO algorithm paradigm to identify the location of unknown nodes, is referred to as the Enhanced Attack-Resistant Secure Localization Algorithm. Through rigorous theoretical analysis and experimentation, we demonstrate that our proposed localization algorithms yield better performance comparing to the existing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herein, a facile pulse electrodeposition procedure with a 1 s off-time between pulses is reported for a successful fabrication of porous nickel oxide (NiO) films on an indium tin oxide substrate. Large transmittance modulation of 39.2% at 550 nm, fast switching speed (coloring and bleaching of 5.2 s and 2.3 s), high coloration efficiency of 20.01 cm2 C−1, and long-term stability over 750 cycles were achieved. In comparison to the NiO films synthesized by continuous electrodeposition, the porous morphology of the NiO fabricated by pulsed electrodeposition facilitates charge transfer and electrolyte infiltration, as well as reduces the expansion/shrinkage of the NiO lattice during OH− insertion/extraction, resulting in an outstanding electrochromic performance. These results show that pulsed electrodeposition is a promising method for manufacturing NiO films with enhanced EC performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the effects of cracks and elastic foundation of functionally grade plate (FGP) with bidirectional thickness changes are studied. The crack is assumed to appear at the center or at the edge of the plate with its length and angle of inclination being variable. The plates are made of functionally grade material, whose properties change along the thickness of the plate. The plate with thickness varying linearly along two axes is placed on a two-parameter elastic foundation. High-order shear deformation theory and phase-field method are used to calculate the critical force of plate instability. To ensure the reliability of the calculation method, part of the article’s results are compared with the results of some other reputable articles. The calculated plate instability coefficient depends on the following parameters: crack length and inclination angle; parameter of plate thickness change; ratio of component materials; two elastic foundation parameters; and the ratio of two sides of the plate. The results showed that crack length, linear thickness variation index along the axes, volume fraction index of material and elastic foundation stiffness have great influence on the stability of FGP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biliary atresia (BA) is a progressive inflammation and fibrosis of the biliary tree characterized by the obstruction of bile flow, which results in liver failure, scarring and cirrhosis. This study aimed to explore the elusive aetiology of BA by conducting whole exome sequencing for 41 children with BA and their parents (35 trios, including 1 family with 2 BA-diagnosed children and 5 child-mother cases). We exclusively identified and validated a total of 28 variants (17 X-linked, 6 de novo and 5 homozygous) in 25 candidate genes from our BA cohort. These variants were among the 10% most deleterious and had a low minor allele frequency against the employed databases: Kinh Vietnamese (KHV), GnomAD and 1000 Genome Project. Interestingly, AMER1, INVS and OCRL variants were found in unrelated probands and were first reported in a BA cohort. Liver specimens and blood samples showed identical variants, suggesting that somatic variants were unlikely to occur during morphogenesis. Consistent with earlier attempts, this study implicated genetic heterogeneity and non-Mendelian inheritance of BA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preterm birth risk is associated with early softening of the uterine cervix in pregnancy due to the accelerated remodeling of collagen extracellular matrix. Studies of mice model of pregnancy were performed with an imaging Mueller polarimeter at different time points of pregnancy to find polarimetric parameters for collagen scoring. Mueller matrix images of the unstained sections of mice uterine cervices were taken at day 6 and day 18 of 19-days gestation period and at different spatial locations through the cervices. The logarithmic decomposition of the recorded Mueller matrices mapped the depolarization, linear retardance, and azimuth of the optical axis of cervical tissue. These images highlighted both the inner structure of cervix and the arrangement of cervical collagen fibers confirmed by the second harmonic generation microscopy. The statistical analysis and two-Gaussians fit of the distributions of linear retardance and linear depolarization in the entire images of cervical tissue (without manual selection of the specific regions of interest) quantified the randomization of collagen fibers alignment with gestation time. At day 18 the remodeling of cervical extracellular matrix of collagen was measurable at the external cervical os that is available for the direct optical observations in vivo. It supports the assumption that imaging Mueller polarimetry holds promise for the fast and accurate collagen scoring in pregnancy and the assessment of the preterm birth risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cardiovascular disease is one of the leading causes of death in the United States and obesity significantly increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. The measurement of blood pressure (BP) is critical in monitoring and managing cardiovascular disease hence new wearable devices are being developed to make BP more accessible to physicians and patients. Several wearables utilize photoplethysmography from the wrist vasculature to derive BP assessment although many of these devices are still at the experimental stage. With the ultimate goal of supporting instrument development, we have developed a model of the photoplethysmographic waveform derived from the radial artery at the volar surface of the wrist. To do so we have utilized the relation between vessel biomechanics through Finite Element Method and Monte Carlo light transport model. The model shows similar features to that seen in PPG waveform captured using an off the shelf device. We observe the influence of body mass index on the PPG signal. A degradation the PPG signal of up to 40% in AC to DC signal ratio was thus observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital image correlation (DIC) technique is a method of measuring the displacement and strain of the entire area of a structure by comparing surface images taken by digital cameras before and after deformation of the structure. The DIC technique is currently being spotlighted because it can overcome the weakness of conventional contact measurement methods. So far a single DIC system with one camera or two cameras has been used for most applications. However, many structures need two or more DIC systems in order to measure their deformation efficiently and precisely. For example, the stress concentration problem and the cylindrical shell buckling problem are typical applications for a multi-DIC system. This study focuses on the stress concentration problem. The paper presents a globallocal deformation measurement method with a multi-DIC system. First, a tensile test of an aluminum beam was performed and compared with the strain gage method to validate the accuracy of DIC method. Then the tensile test specimens with a hole or a notch were prepared, and one DIC system measured the local deformation near a hole or a notch and the other DIC system measured the global deformation of the specimen. The results confirmed the proposed multi-DIC technique can be applied to the stress concentration problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex disorder with an unclear aetiology and an estimated global prevalence of 1%. However, studies of ASD in the Vietnamese population are limited. Here, we first conducted whole exome sequencing (WES) of 100 children with ASD and their unaffected parents. Our stringent analysis pipeline was able to detect 18 unique variants (8 de novo and 10 ×-linked, all validated), including 12 newly discovered variants. Interestingly, a notable number of X-linked variants were detected (56%), and all of them were found in affected males but not in affected females. We uncovered 17 genes from our ASD cohort in which CHD8, DYRK1A, GRIN2B, SCN2A, OFD1 and MDB5 have been previously identified as ASD risk genes, suggesting the universal aetiology of ASD for these genes. In addition, we identified six genes that have not been previously reported in any autism database: CHM, ENPP1, IGF1, LAS1L, SYP and TBX22. Gene ontology and phenotype-genotype analysis suggested that variants in IGF1, SYP and LAS1L could plausibly confer risk for ASD. Taken together, this study adds to the genetic heterogeneity of ASD and is the first report elucidating the genetic landscape of ASD in Vietnamese children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Potato soft rot Pectobacteriaceae (SRP) cause large yield losses and are persistent in seed lots once established. In Norway, different Pectobacterium species are the predominant cause of soft rot and blackleg disease. This work aimed to evaluate the potential of real-time PCR for quantification of SRP in seed tubers, as well as investigating the status of potato seed health with respect to SRP in Norway. A total of 34 seed potato lots, including certified seeds, was grown and monitored over three consecutive years. All seed lots contained a quantifiable amount of SRP after enrichment, with very few subsamples being free of the pathogens. A high SRP prevalence based on a qPCR assay, as well as a high symptom incidence in certified seeds were observed, suggesting that current criteria for seed certification are insufficient to determine tuber health and predict field outcomes. Pectobacterium atrosepticum was the most abundant species in the examined seed lots and present in all lots. Consistently good performance of first generation seed lots with respect to blackleg and soft rot incidence, as well as low quantity of SRP in these seed lots demonstrated the importance of clean seed potatoes. Weather conditions during the growing season seemed to govern disease incidence and SRP prevalence more than seed grade. The impact of temperature, potato cultivar and Pectobacterium species on tuber soft rot development were further examined in tuber infection experiments, which showed that temperature was the most important factor in nearly all cultivars. Large-scale quantification of latent infection and predictive models that include contributing factors like weather, infecting bacterial species and cultivar are needed to reduce soft rot and blackleg. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heat transfer through thermal insulation material is an important process in the design and performance evaluation of an insulation system, which is a key component of space vehicles. Accurate information on heat transfer analysis requires determination of thermal contact resistance (TCR) between the insulation material and the super-alloy plate. In this study, test equipment was designed to measure the TCR as well as the effective thermal conductivity of low thermal conductivity fibrous insulation material at high temperatures and in atmospheric pressure conditions. Two heat-flux meters were used to measure the heat flux from the bottom (high temperature) to the top (low temperature) of a fibrous sample in the test column. The two-thickness method was used to obtain the TCR and the effective thermal conductivity. An uncertainty analysis was also evaluated, which proved that the most important factor in the TCR measurement was the heat flux calculation. The result reveals that the TCR values become high at small contact pressures. The TCR decreased with an increase in the compressive load and significantly contributed to the total thermal resistance of the fibrous sample, approximately 42% and 35% when the average temperature of the sample was 190 °C and 290 °C, respectively. The effective thermal conductivity of the fibrous sample decreased slightly with an increase in the average temperature due to the presence of the carbonization of the binder resin. The numerical method validated the experimental results well. In addition, the micrograph images of the contact surface were investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the high speed flight of vehicles, the thermal behavior and interactions of structures in a high-temperature environment are important for thermal-structural design. In this research, the thermal interaction behavior of a circular aluminum plate inside a stainless steel ring was investigated at temperature up to 550°C using a non-contact and full-field high-temperature deformation measurement method. This study uses an infrared radiation heating system to create a high-temperature operation environment. The techniques were developed and implemented in a radiation heating facility, enabling non-contact displacement, strain measurements through Digital image correlation (DIC) technique. The images of the structure surface due to thermal load at various temperatures were recorded with Chargedcoupled device cameras. Afterwards, full-field thermal deformation of the sample was determined with DIC technique. Finally, finite element analysis was used to calculate high-temperature deformation of the circular plate-ring structure. The results of the experiment were close to the simulation results. In addition, the process of both heating-up and cooling-down was also considered to examine the recoverable characteristic of the structure. The results show the efficacy of DIC in achieving such measurements at high-temperatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence of Fusarium dry rot in potatoes produced in Norway was investigated in a survey for three consecutive years in the period 2010 to 2012. A total of 238 samples (comprising 23,800 tubers) were collected, representing different cultivars and production regions in Norway. Fusarium spp. were detected in 47% of the samples, with one to three species per sample. In total, 718 isolates of Fusarium spp. were recovered and identified to seven species. The most commonly isolated species was Fusarium coeruleum, comprising 59.6% of the total Fusarium isolates and found in 17.2% of the collected samples, followed by Fusarium avenaceum (27.2% of the isolates and found in 27.7% of the samples). Fusarium sambucinum was the third most prevalent species (6.4% in 8.8% of the samples) and Fusarium culmorum the fourth (5.2% in 6.3% of the samples). Less prevalent species included Fusarium cerealis, Fusarium graminearum, and Fusarium equiseti (<1% in 0.4 to 1.3% of the samples). F. coeruleum was the most prevalent species in northern and southwestern Norway, whereas F. avenaceum was dominating in eastern Norway. The potato cultivars Berber and Rutt were susceptible to all Fusarium spp. A new TaqMan real-time PCR assay specific for F. coeruleum was developed, which successfully identified Norwegian isolates. This and other previously developed real-time PCR assays targeting different Fusarium species were evaluated for their ability to detect latent infections in potatoes at harvest. This study provides new information on the current occurrence of different Fusarium species causing Fusarium dry rot in potatoes in Europe including areas far into the arctic in the north of Norway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Safety property checking is mandatory in the validation process of critical software. When formal verification tools fail to prove some properties, the automatic generation of counterexamples for a given loop depth is an important issue in practice. We investigate in this paper the capabilities of constraint-based bounded model checking for program verification and counterexample generation on real applications. We introduce dynamic post-condition variable-driven strategy ( DPVS), a new backjumping strategy we developed to handle an industrial application from a car manufacturer, the Flasher Manager. This backjumping strategy is used to search a faulty path and to collect the constraints of such a path. The simplified control flow graph (CFG) of the program is explored in a backward way, starting from the post-condition and jumping to the most promising node where the variables of the post-condition are defined. In other words, the constraints are collected by exploring the CFG in a dynamic and non-sequential backward way. The Flasher Manager application has been designed and simulated using the Simulink platform. However, this module is concretely embedded as a C program in a car computer, thus we have to check that the safety properties are preserved on this C code. We report experiments on the Flasher Manager with our constraint-based bounded model checker, and with CBMC, a state-of-the-art bounded model checker. Experiments show that DPVS and CBMC have similar performances on one property of the Flasher Manager; DPVS outperforms CBMC to find a counterexample for two properties; two of the properties of the Flasher Manager remain intractable for CBMC and DPVS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A survey of the prevalence of skin blemish diseases in potatoes after the growing seasons of 2008 and 2009 was carried out on 247 potato lots representing different cultivars and production regions in Norway. The results showed the presence of silver scurf ( Helminthosporium solani) in all lots. Skin spot ( Polyscytalum pustulans) and black scurf ( Rhizoctonia solani) were found in 80% of the lots, and black dot ( Colletotrichum coccodes) and common scab caused by Streptomyces spp. were present in 50-70%. Also, powdery scab ( Spongospora subterranea) occurred in 65-80% of the lots, and root-lesion nematodes ( Pratylenchus spp.) were detected in 60% of the sub-samples that exhibited symptoms of common scab. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider the problem of survivable routing in dynamic WDM networks with single link failure model. Our work mainly concerns in how to dynamically determine a protection cycle (i.e., two link-disjoint paths between a node pair) to establish a dependable lightpath with backup paths sharing. This problem is identified as NP-complete, thus a heuristic for finding near optimal solution with reasonable computation time is usually preferred. Inspired from the principle of ant colony optimization, we propose in this paper an ant-based mobile agents algorithm for this problem with improved blocking performance. To enable the new ant-based algorithm, we propose to use on each network node both a routing table that contains a set of feasible protection cycles between source destination nodes and also a pheromone table for mobile agents. By keeping a suitable number of mobile agents in a network to continually and proactively update the routing tables based on the current network congestion state, the routing solution of a connection request can be obtained with a reasonable computation time. Extensive simulation results upon the ns-2 network simulator and two typical network topologies show that our new algorithm can achieve a significantly lower blocking probability than the promising algorithm for dynamic lightpath protection proposed in [11] with a comparable computation complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An author index is presented for this issue of the periodicals.

We present an effective approach to manage, review, and distribute Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) images with multiple monitors using Windows98 (Microsoft Corp, Redmond, WA) that can be implemented in an office-based setting. Computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and angiographic DICOM images were collected, compressed, and stored using Medweb (Medweb, Inc, San Francisco, CA) software. The Medweb server used the Linux/UNIX operating system on a Pentium 333-MHz processor with 128 MB of RAM. Short-term storage capacity was about 2 weeks with routine usage of an 11-GB hard drive. Images were presented for reading on a dual-monitor Windows98 Pentium display station with 160 MB of RAM using a Medweb/Netscape (Netscape Communications Corp, Mountain View, CA) viewer. There was no significant discrepancy in diagnosis between electronic and conventional film images. Mean reading time for 32 cases was 118 seconds. The Medweb JAVA plug-in viewer loaded the first image within 30 seconds of selecting the case for review. Full uncompressed 16-bit images allowed different window setting to better assess for pathology. Multiple monitors allowed viewing various hanging protocols. Cine viewing was also possible. Key diagnostic images were electronically transmitted to referring physicians. On-call radiologists were able to access images through the Internet. By combining Medweb, DICOM, and web-browser software using desktop personal computers (PCs), an easily accessible picture archiving and communications system (PACS) is available to radiologists and referring physicians. Multiple monitors are easily configured and managed using Windows98. This system can sustain changes and can be extended to provide variable functions using inexpensive PCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combining DICOM software and internet access using desktops, an accessible and low-cost PACS system is conveniently available to the medical community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High quality images from clinical CT, MRI and angiography were available to remote desktop computers at virtually no cost. Film queue data files were relatively small and represented the findings of interest. No proprietary software was required for viewing. Residents were able to transfer images into the file server after only a few minutes of training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]