Rock map of the Yellow River (Huang He) expedition, China, 1925-1927 : Sheet 10

This layer is part of a set of georeferenced, raster images of the manuscript, paper map set entitled: Ch'ing-Hai upper Yellow River expedition : Rock and Simpson, 1925-27, [cartography by J.F. Rock]. Scale 1:250,000. This layer image is of Sheet X [of 10] covering a portion of the Yellow River (Huang He) region in northeastern Sichuan Sheng, China, including the source of the Min Chiang (Min Jiang). The map set details the route and surrounding environs of the Arnold Arboretum's "Western China" expedition led by Joseph Rock, 1924-1927. The set covers a portion of the Yellow River (Huang He) region in south central China (Qinghai, Gansu, and Sichuan shengs (a portion of historic Tibet)). It shows features, labeled variously in English, Chinese, Wade-Giles transliteration, and Tibetan, including: rivers, streams, lakes, mountains, gorges, valleys, plateaus, plains, cities, towns, villages, provincial capitals, county seats, passes, monasteries, ruin sites, native tribe locations, and more. Relief is shown by hachures, spot heights, and landform drawings. The original manuscript map set is part of the Harvard College Library, Harvard Map Collection. "Joseph Rock traced his travels for the [Arnold] Arboretum's [Western China] 1924-1927 expedition in a colorful, hand-drawn map entitled 'Ch'ing-Hai upper Yellow River expedition.' The pen-and-ink drawing was made on ten sheets that when joined form a single, irregularly-shaped map, approximately six by eight feet in size. The individual sheets are numbered, using roman numerals; on sheet VII is a second title, 'Choni Territory, Upper and Lower T'ieh-Pu country and route to Sung-Pan, J. F. Rock, 1925-1927.' Topographical and other features are identified using a combination of English, Chinese characters, Wade-Giles transliterations and Tibetan script. Rock's attractive cursive style and use of hachures, spot heights, and landform drawings to depict relief add character to the map." -- Text from the Arnold Arboretum Web site.

Improvements in the 6-Min Walk Test and Spirometry Following Thoracentesis for Symptomatic Pleural Effusions

Background: Impairment in pulmonary capacity due to pleural effusion compromises daily activity. Removal of fluid improves symptoms, but the impact, especially on exercise capacity, has not been determined. Methods: Twenty-five patients with unilateral pleural effusion documented by chest radiograph were included. The 6-min walk test, Borg modified dyspnea score, FVC, and FEV, were analyzed before and 48 h after the removal of large pleural effusions. Results: The mean fluid removed was 1,564 +/- 695 mL. After the procedure, values of FVC, FEV and 6-min walk distance increased (P<.001), whereas dyspnea decreased (P<.001). Statistical correlations (P<.001) between 6-min walk distance and FVC (r=0.725) and between 6-min walk distance and FEV, (r=0.661) were observed. Correlations also were observed between the deltas (prethoracentesis X postthoracentesis) of the 6-min walk test and the percentage of FVC (r=0.450) and of FEV, (r=0.472) divided by the volume of fluid removed (P<.05). Conclusion: In addition to the improvement in lung function after thoracentesis, the benefits of fluid removal are more evident in situations of exertion, allowing better readaptation of patients to routine activities. CHEST 2011; 139(6):1424-1429

A fuzzy max-flow min-cut theorem

Interval-valued versions of the max-flow min-cut theorem and Karp-Edmonds algorithm are developed and provide robustness estimates for flows in networks in an imprecise or uncertain environment. These results are extended to networks with fuzzy capacities and flows. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Unified min-max and interlacing theorems for linear operators

There exist striking analogies in the behaviour of eigenvalues of Hermitian compact operators, singular values of compact operators and invariant factors of homomorphisms of modules over principal ideal domains, namely diagonalization theorems, interlacing inequalities and Courant-Fischer type formulae. Carlson and Sa [D. Carlson and E.M. Sa, Generalized minimax and interlacing inequalities, Linear Multilinear Algebra 15 (1984) pp. 77-103.] introduced an abstract structure, the s-space, where they proved unified versions of these theorems in the finite-dimensional case. We show that this unification can be done using modular lattices with Goldie dimension, which have a natural structure of s-space in the finite-dimensional case, and extend the unification to the countable-dimensional case.

Efficient computation of min and max sensor values in multihop networks

Consider a wireless sensor network (WSN) where a broadcast from a sensor node does not reach all sensor nodes in the network; such networks are often called multihop networks. Sensor nodes take individual sensor readings, however, in many cases, it is relevant to compute aggregated quantities of these readings. In fact, the minimum and maximum of all sensor readings at an instant are often interesting because they indicate abnormal behavior, for example if the maximum temperature is very high then it may be that a fire has broken out. In this context, we propose an algorithm for computing the min or max of sensor readings in a multihop network. This algorithm has the particularly interesting property of having a time complexity that does not depend on the number of sensor nodes; only the network diameter and the range of the value domain of sensor readings matter.

Exploiting a prioritized MAC protocol to efficiently compute min and max in multihop networks

Consider a wireless sensor network (WSN) where a broadcast from a sensor node does not reach all sensor nodes in the network; such networks are often called multihop networks. Sensor nodes take sensor readings but individual sensor readings are not very important. It is important however to compute aggregated quantities of these sensor readings. The minimum and maximum of all sensor readings at an instant are often interesting because they indicate abnormal behavior, for example if the maximum temperature is very high then it may be that a fire has broken out. We propose an algorithm for computing the min or max of sensor reading in a multihop network. This algorithm has the particularly interesting property of having a time complexity that does not depend on the number of sensor nodes; only the network diameter and the range of the value domain of sensor readings matter.

POTENTIALLY PATHOGENIC FREE-LIVING AMOEBAE IN SOME FLOOD-AFFECTED AREAS DURING 2011 CHIANG MAI FLOOD

SUMMARYThe survey was carried out to investigate the presence of potentially pathogenic free-living amoebae (FLA) during flood in Chiang Mai, Thailand in 2011. From different crisis flood areas, seven water samples were collected and tested for the presence of amoebae using culture and molecular methods. By monoxenic culture, FLA were detected from all samples at 37 °C incubation. The FLA growing at 37 °C were morphologically identified as Acanthamoeba spp., Naegleria spp. and some unidentified amoebae. Only three samples (42.8%), defined as thermotolerant FLA, continued to grow at 42 °C. By molecular methods, two non-thermotolerant FlA were shown to have 99% identity to Acanthamoeba sp. and 98% identity to Hartmannella vermiformis while the two thermotolerant FLA were identified as Echinamoeba exundans (100% identity) and Hartmannella sp. (99% identity). This first report of the occurrence of FLA in water during the flood disaster will provide information to the public to be aware of potentially pathogenic FLA.

Desenvolvimento de padrão gravimétrico de medição de caudal de fluidos entre 10 mL/min e 100 nL/min

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Mecânica

Semi-supervised segmentation of ultrasound images based on patch representation and continuous min cut.

Ultrasound segmentation is a challenging problem due to the inherent speckle and some artifacts like shadows, attenuation and signal dropout. Existing methods need to include strong priors like shape priors or analytical intensity models to succeed in the segmentation. However, such priors tend to limit these methods to a specific target or imaging settings, and they are not always applicable to pathological cases. This work introduces a semi-supervised segmentation framework for ultrasound imaging that alleviates the limitation of fully automatic segmentation, that is, it is applicable to any kind of target and imaging settings. Our methodology uses a graph of image patches to represent the ultrasound image and user-assisted initialization with labels, which acts as soft priors. The segmentation problem is formulated as a continuous minimum cut problem and solved with an efficient optimization algorithm. We validate our segmentation framework on clinical ultrasound imaging (prostate, fetus, and tumors of the liver and eye). We obtain high similarity agreement with the ground truth provided by medical expert delineations in all applications (94% DICE values in average) and the proposed algorithm performs favorably with the literature.

Susceptibility of Anopheles campestris-like and Anopheles barbirostris species complexes to Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax in Thailand

Nine colonies of five sibling species members of Anopheles barbirostris complexes were experimentally infected with Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax. They were then dissected eight and 14 days after feeding for oocyst and sporozoite rates, respectively, and compared with Anopheles cracens. The results revealed that Anopheles campestris-like Forms E (Chiang Mai) and F (Udon Thani) as well as An. barbirostris species A3 and A4 were non-potential vectors for P. falciparum because 0% oocyst rates were obtained, in comparison to the 86.67-100% oocyst rates recovered from An. cracens. Likewise, An. campestris-like Forms E (Sa Kaeo) and F (Ayuttaya), as well as An. barbirostris species A4, were non-potential vectors for P. vivax because 0% sporozoite rates were obtained, in comparison to the 85.71-92.31% sporozoite rates recovered from An. cracens. An. barbirostris species A1, A2 and A3 were low potential vectors for P. vivax because 9.09%, 6.67% and 11.76% sporozoite rates were obtained, respectively, in comparison to the 85.71-92.31% sporozoite rates recovered from An. cracens. An. campestris-like Forms B and E (Chiang Mai) were high-potential vectors for P. vivax because 66.67% and 64.29% sporozoite rates were obtained, respectively, in comparison to 90% sporozoite rates recovered from An. cracens.