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A family of 700-W Ka-band Coupled-Cavity Traveling-Wave Tubes (CCTWTs) has been successfully developed, built, and tested at Communications and Power Industries (CPI). These CCTWTs are capable of up to 700-W Continuous Wave (CW) output power with 2.0 GHz of instantaneous bandwidth. They were built with the intended use for the commercial satellite and military communication market. We discuss the design and successful demonstration of the family of CCTWTs, including the VTA-6428S2B prototype which achieved over 700-W (783-W maximum output power) with an overall efficiency reaching as high as 52%.

Much has been written concerning fuzzy theory in recent years. To the uninitiated, and to many of the initiated as well, the picture which emerges may appear unclear and often contradictory. This is frustrating, but not surprising. The following attempts to clarify some of the more befuddling aspects of fuzzy theory by presenting a representation of fuzzy theory and its relation to classical theory, illuminating semantic interpretations of fuzzy theory, discussing the assumption of burden of proof in fuzzy theory arguments by providing a trial law analogy, and concluding with a view toward the broad implications of fuzzy theory.

Preceding ischemia or concurrent hypotension is known to enhance aminoglycoside nephrotoxicity; however, the underlying mechanisms responsible have not been determined. To investigate the effect of preceding mild ischemia on cellular gentamicin handling, brush-border membrane vesicle binding and in vivo cellular gentamicin uptake were quantified using [3H]gentamicin as a tracer. Fifteen minutes of ischemia resulted in a marked increase in apical membrane gentamicin binding (2.8 +/- 0.4 vs. 4.9 +/- 0.8 nmol/mg protein, P < 0.01). This increase was associated with an increased number of binding sites (3.7 +/- 0.3 vs. 9.1 +/- 2.3 nmol/mg protein, P < 0.01) and a reduced binding affinity (11.8 +/- 2.2 vs. 27.7 +/- 10.4 microM, P < 0.01). This increase in gentamicin binding was accompanied by alterations in apical membrane phospholipids including a doubling of phosphatidylinositol (PI) levels (13.8 +/- 0.4 vs. 27.5 +/- 3.1 nmol/mg protein, P < 0.01). Furthermore, treatment of apical membrane vesicles with PI-specific phospholipase C markedly reduced the difference in gentamicin binding between paired control and ischemic membrane fractions. Increased gentamicin binding was associated with increased in vivo uptake of gentamicin by S1/S2 and S3 cells. Outer cortical uptake of gentamicin increased from 2.18 +/- 0.39 to 2.68 +/- 0.27 nmol/mg protein (P < 0.01) after 15 min of ischemia and 4 h of reperfusion. Juxtamedullary uptake also increased from 1.39 +/- 0.31 to 1.75 +/- 0.12 nmol/mg protein (P < 0.01). Immunocytochemical techniques, utilizing immunogold labeling, showed gentamicin was taken up via the receptor-mediated endocytic pathway by S1/S2 and S3 cells. After ischemic injury gentamicin was localized in abnormal intracellular accumulations in S3 but not S1 or S2 cells. Taken together, these data indicate ischemia results in a marked increase in apical gentamicin binding due to increases in apical PI content. This is associated with increased internalization by S1/S2 and S3 cells and abnormal intracellular compartmentalization of gentamicin within S3 cells.

One of After Effects' strengths is that you don't have to pre-render anything: All of your sources, layers, and manipulations are “live” all the time, allowing you to make unlimited changes. However, calculating everything all the time can slow down both your work and your final render. Newer versions of After Effects have gotten much better about internally caching the results of comps and frames it calculates (especially if you enable Preferences > Memory & Cache > Enable Disk Cache), but you will still find yourself spending a lot of time waiting.

After Effects features a variety of settings that control importing files, opening multiple compositions, previewing audio, the appearance and interactivity of the program, plus numerous other details. In this chapter, we'll give an overview of what these settings mean and what they do, highlighting those settings that we find aid our efficiency.

Reality is fine, but it's not always what you want. Sometimes you need a captured movie to play back more quickly, more slowly, or backward, or to stop altogether. After Effects has options to Time Stretch a clip, which gives it a new constant speed, or Time Remap it, which allows the speed to change over time. Both often result in staggered motion compared with the original clip, so at the end of this chapter we will discuss Frame Blending which can help smooth out the result.

The Vector Paint effect has been largely made obsolete by the new Paint tools in After Effects, but it still has its fans for a couple of reasons: Vector Paint offers an onion skin mode plus the ability to wiggle the paint stroke paths, with no loss in quality.

After Effects can be thought of as a blank canvas - a canvas that comes with hundreds of brushes and tools to create images with. The problem with blank canvases and too many tools is that it can be hard to know where to start. Therefore, in this first chapter we want to give you an overview of the After Effects user interface, including ideas of how to rearrange it to better suit your needs from task to task. Just as important, we want to give you an idea of how After Effects “thinks” - how projects are structured, how to import sources, and how everything comes together. You won't learn to paint quite yet, but at least you'll know which end of the brush to hold before you move forward.

You may have heard the expression “painting with light”; it's an appropriate description of what After Effects lets you do. You can illuminate layers, add colored casts to them, overlight them to add intensity or blow them out, vignette them, have them cast shadows… even cause layers to project their own images onto other layers. All of this comes with a price, of course: Lights are one of the deepest subjects in After Effects. We'll start with some basic concepts, progress through adjusting illumination and shadows, and end with advanced techniques such as creating virtual gels and gobos.

One of the richest areas for exploration in After Effects is its “effects” side. The variety of effects supplied with After Effects ranges from the extremely utilitarian to the extremely wild, each with anywhere from one to 127 parameters that you can adjust. Fortunately, virtually all effects share the same basic methods of adjusting and animating those parameters.

Real 3D programs have several advantages over After Effects: For example, their objects have real depth, and the texturing and lighting options are far more advanced. However, this power often comes with a significant speed penalty, which can be a problem when accommodating client changes. After Effects is also the better tool in which to refine the final look of your 3D worlds. Offloading portions of the work from your 3D program to After Effects will save time while giving you more power and flexibility - but it requires some effort to set up.

After Effects has never made audio one of its strong points. If you need to seriously rework a soundtrack, do it in a dedicated audio program. But if you just need to edit, mix, and do some basic improvement or “sweetening” to your sound track, After Effects already has the tools you need.

The previous chapter was devoted to Track Mattes: having one layer create transparency for one other layer. Stencils, however, create transparency for all layers underneath. You can use a layer's luminance or alpha channel as a stencil, and invert it as well. This chapter also covers the Preserve Transparency switch, and an obscure but useful mode called Alpha Add.

Not all footage items look best full screen. And not all come with their own alpha channels to block out the parts you don't want to see. Therefore, we often use masks to “cut out” the alpha channels we require. You can create masks in a variety of ways: You can draw a path using the mask tools in either the Layer or Comp panel, specify the dimensions numerically, or paste a path created in Illustrator or Photoshop.

N o layer or composition is an island – at least, not in complex animations. In this lesson, you will learn how to group layers and build composition hierarchies, making it easier to create and manage complex animations. First up will be parenting, where one layer's animation can influence that of others. After that we'll work with nesting and precomposing compositions: ways to bundle together layers, keyframes, and effects into one comp and treat the result as a single layer in another comp.

I n the first two lessons, we focused on animating the properties of layers. However, your sources may have built-in animation of their own – namely, the frame-to-frame movement inside a video clip. Therefore, we're going to spend a good portion of this lesson showing how to move a clip in time, edit its in and out points, and work with its frame rate and ability to loop. From there, we'll move onto combining clips using Blending Modes – the “secret sauce” that creates rich, deeply layered looks. We'll end by showing alternate ways to work with effects, including using Adjustment Layers and taking advantage of Animation Presets.

F rom opening titles to closing credits, bullet points to lower thirds, and conveying information to creating abstract backgrounds, one of the most common elements in motion graphics is the use of text. Fortunately, After Effects has a very powerful text engine – but it's hardly the most intuitive tool in the world. In this lesson, we'll show you how to professionally typeset text, then animate it in interesting ways.

I n this lesson, you will become acquainted with two admittedly mind-bending areas of After Effects. First we will cover expressions, which can help you save time while animating. After you master those, we will show you how to make time literally stand still – as well as speed up, slow down, and go by more smoothly.

I n this lesson, you will work through a number of easy exercises to help build your animation skills. Along the way, you will become familiar with working in the After Effects Graph Editor, applying Keyframe Assistants, and taking maximum advantage of a layer's Anchor Point. We'll also show you advanced tricks such as using Motion Sketch to hand-draw your animation path, using Roving Keyframes to maintain smooth speed changes over complex paths, the best approach for “motion control” style movements, and the crucial component needed to create “slam down” animations.

L ife is easy when you can capture everything to tape or film exactly the way you want it. But reality often intervenes: Maybe the camera shook too much. Or maybe it wasn't possible to have the actors perform in front of the exact background required. Maybe you couldn't get a license to blow up that building in real life, or shoot arcs of electricity across a canyon.

A fter Effects CS3 Professional (also known as Version 8) introduces several new features aimed specifically at animators and motion graphics artists. You'll play with three of them here: Brainstorm, the Puppet tool, and Shape layers.

After Effects offers a set of paint tools for painting directly on layers. You can use vector-based paint tools accessed from a pair of dedicated panels to retouch footage and create animated graphical elements, plus use cloning to remove unwanted elements and replicate areas of a layer. The brush strokes are non-destructive. Individual brush, clone and eraser strokes can be edited and animated in the Timeline.

I n this lesson, we will be focusing on different ways to create transparency. One of the keys to creating an interesting composite of multiple images is to make portions of those images transparent, so that you can see other images behind or through them. This is one of the main techniques that set motion graphic design and visual effects compositing apart from video editing.

3 D Space is one of the most rewarding areas to explore in After Effects. A simple switch allows each layer to move in the Z dimension – closer to and farther away from the viewer – in addition to left and right. Layers may also be rotated in 3D, which gives the ability to view them from new angles. You can selectively add cameras and lights to a composition, allowing you to cast shadows and move around your imaginary 3D world.

T hroughout this book, you've been learning features in After Effects through a series of short exercises. In this final lesson, you will create a complex single project containing multiple elements and compositions: You will animate a character, and then set him in a 3D world.

Consultants and other professional service firms compete by bringing their knowledge resources to bear on their customers’ challenging problems. Such knowledge resources can reside in workers and/o...

Social entrepreneurs have a wider interest than traditional commercial firms, given their commitment to social improvement. Just as governments do, they may step in to facilitate research into solu...

We report here a prospective study evaluating an alternative to the roentgenographic confirmation of "fine-bore" nasoenteral feeding tubes. Of 78 nasoenteral intubations in 46 patients using a Dobbhoff (Biosearch Medical Products) weighted enteral feeding tube, gastric aspirates were evaluated in 28. Auscultation was performed in all 78. Data was collected at initial placement prior to x-ray confirmation. Observers used color-coded pH paper to analyze gastric aspirate (pH 4 was not very helpful in predicting malposition (37%) especially when pH altering medications were used. Aspiration of contents was successful in 85% of patients. We conclude that when the pH of the nasogastric tube aspirate is < 4.0, x-ray films are not needed to prove the accuracy of tube placement. In other situations, a film is indicated since auscultation is inaccurate.

123 Background: After the IOM report “From Cancer Patient to Cancer Survivor - Lost in Transition” was issued, there was a widespread call to develop Survivorship programs. Few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of these programs. Prior studies have focused on perceptions of, or preferences for, certain models of survivorship care. Therefore, our goal was to retrospectively evaluate our effectiveness based on patient perception, quality of life (QOL) and compliance with NCCN guidelines for follow-up. Methods: Eligible patients completed all of their breast cancer treatment at GHS. Surveys were sent out to evaluate patient knowledge and QOL. Chart review was conducted to assess NCCN compliance. Survivorship clinic attendees and non-attendees were matched for age and disease stage for comparison purposes of the outcomes (QOL, NCCN compliance, overall effectiveness) using descriptive statistics analysis. Chi-squares and t-tests/ANOVA statistical tests were used for categorical and continuous data significance respectively. Results: We found survivorship clinic patients (n=65) tended to perceive their concerns, in various categories, to be more adequately addressed than non-attendees (n=52), with significant differences in the areas of practical concerns and questions regarding late-term side effects. Categories in which there were no significant differences tended to be highly rated in both groups. There was also a significant difference in compliance with two NCCN guidelines for those attending survivorship. Additionally, women attending the survivorship appointment utilized supportive resources more than those who did not attend. Conclusions: Survivorship clinic attendees felt certain concerns were better addressed, were more compliant with NCCN recommended follow-up, and used supportive services more often than non-attendees. Statistically significant differences in other categories may be found in a larger sample size. These measures can be used to help us improve our survivorship services and for other institutions to measure quality and effectiveness of their programs.

Transaction cost economics (Williamson, 1985) has become a widely accepted theory for understanding firm boundary and governance choices in intermediate product market (IPM) transactions. TCE does ...

Uncertainty in production processes has proven to be a useful lens through which to explain the international entry mode choices of large manufacturing firms. This paper adapts that approach to sug...

Biodiversity informatics plays a central enabling role in the research community's efforts to address scientific\ud conservation and sustainability issues. Great strides have been made in the past decade establishing a framework\ud for sharing data, where taxonomy and systematics has been perceived as the most prominent discipline involved.\ud To some extent this is inevitable, given the use of species names as the pivot around which information is\ud organised. To address the urgent questions around conservation, land-use, environmental change, sustainability,\ud food security and ecosystem services that are facing Governments worldwide, we need to understand how the\ud ecosystem works. So, we need a systems approach to understanding biodiversity that moves significantly beyond\ud taxonomy and species observations. Such an approach needs to look at the whole system to address species\ud interactions, both with their environment and with other species.\ud It is clear that some barriers to progress are sociological, basically persuading people to use the technological\ud solutions that are already available. This is best addressed by developing more effective systems that deliver\ud immediate benefit to the user, hiding the majority of the technology behind simple user interfaces. An\ud infrastructure should be a space in which activities take place and, as such, should be effectively invisible.\ud This community consultation paper positions the role of biodiversity informatics, for the next decade, presenting\ud the actions needed to link the various biodiversity infrastructures invisibly and to facilitate understanding that can\ud support both business and policy-makers. The community considers the goal in biodiversity informatics to be full\ud integration of the biodiversity research community, including citizens’ science, through a commonly-shared,\ud sustainable e-infrastructure across all sub-disciplines that reliably serves science and society alike.

This paper examines the question of whether and how systemic factors can impact the probability that an entire organizational field will collapse, using Complex Systems Theory. We develop a model for how such a collapse might occur and suggest that increasing levels of embeddedness within the organizational field allow even modest perturbations to bring down the entire system. The model is tested using a mathematical simulation, obtaining results consistent with our assertions.

This paper uses the concepts of organizational fitness and fitness landscapes to examine management challenges that arise from social entrepreneurship efforts. Organizations pursuing social entrepr...

This paper analyzes changes in gender employment rate (GER) differentials for whites and blacks in the United States from 1950 to 2008. We document the evolution of the GER gap, which narrows considerably within both racial groups and turns slightly negative for blacks. We document the changing employment levels that drive these patterns as well as compositional shifts in each gender-race population. Among whites, nearly all of the narrowing is attributable to increasing employment rates among women. For blacks, a large component of the narrowing is explained by declining employment rates among men. Black employment rates decline precipitously for the least educated and post-1980 are reduced further by increased institutionalization and declining marriage rates. In an analysis of state-level interdecade changes in female outcomes, we find that a worsening of black male employment prospects is associated with an increase in female education and a decline in marriage and fertility rates.

The medical diagnostic imaging support workstation has been in clinical use at selected military medical centers since March 1992. The workstation is a critical component in picture archiving and communications systems representing the interface between the system and the end user. The workstation has undergone several software changes over the last year based on feedback from end users. The present performance of the workstation in terms of image manipulation and navigation, response time, database, and reliability is emphasized. Discussion includes clinical acceptance, lessons learned, and future enhancements.© (1994) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.