Absolute Guarantee Research Articles

Minmizing service span with batch-position-based learning effects

We consider the learning effects in the coordination of production and outbound distribution for manufacturers. The objective is to minimize service span, which lasts from the beginning of production to the completion of delivery of products. In production, a batch-processing facility is used to process jobs which have different sizes. Batch-position-based learning effects are considered since workers become skillful gradually after processing batches one by one. In distribution, a vehicle with a fixed capacity is used to deliver products the customer and the transportation time from the manufacturer to the customer is a constant. We show the coordinated scheduling problem is NP-hard in the strong sense. We propose properties of optimal solutions and we provide an approximation algorithm for the problem. The absolute performance guarantee of the algorithm is 1.667 and the asymptotic performance guarantee is 1.223. Then we consider the problem where there are infinite vehicles and the performance guarantees are respectively 1.5 and 1.223. Finally we analyze the performance of the algorithm by the change of the problem scale, the learning index and operational factors. We propose managerial suggestions for decision makers of manufacturers according to our results.

Epitope Mapping via Phage Display from Single-Gene Libraries.

Antibodies are widely used in a large variety of research applications, for diagnostics and therapy of numerous diseases, primarily cancer and autoimmune diseases. Antibodies are binding specifically to target structures (antigens). The antigen-binding properties are not only dependent on the antibody sequence, but also on the discrete antigen region recognized by the antibody (epitope). Knowing the epitope is valuable information for the improvement of diagnostic assays or therapeutic antibodies, as well as to understand the immune response of a vaccine. While huge progress has been made in the pipelines for the generation and functional characterization of antibodies, the available technologies for epitope mapping are still lacking effectiveness in terms of time and effort. Also, no technique available offers the absolute guarantee of succeeding. Thus, research to develop and improve epitope mapping techniques is still an active field. Phage display from random peptide libraries or single-gene libraries are currently among the most exploited methods for epitope mapping. The first is based on the generation of mimotopes and it is fastened to the need of high-throughput sequencing and complex bioinformatic analysis. The second provides original epitope sequences without requiring complex analysis or expensive techniques, but depends on further investigation to define the functional amino acids within the epitope. In this book chapter, we describe how to perform epitope mapping by antigen fragment phage display from single-gene antigen libraries and how to construct these types of libraries. Thus, we also provide figures and analysis to demonstrate the actual potential of this technique and to prove the necessity of certain procedural steps.

Adoption of Photovoltaic Systems Along a Sure Path: A Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) Study Applied to the Analysis of GHG Emission Impacts

The expansion of photovoltaic solar energy in the world is significant. However, its contribution to decreases in greenhouse gases (GHG) is not an absolute guarantee. In this context, it is necessary to evaluate its benefits in advance, considering the structure of the electric energy supply matrix of the country producing the photovoltaic solar system, as well as the country where the technology will be implemented. This study evaluates the adoption of renewable sources for electric power generation in a country with a high share of renewable energy. A life-cycle assessment (LCA) of a set of multi-Si photovoltaic (PV) systems installed in the Brazilian northeast (NE), was carried out. The actual generation data of 10 plants totaling 1.1 MWp installed capacity were evaluated during two years of operation. Energy payback time (EPBT), greenhouse gas emission rate (GHGe-rate), and emission payback time were calculated. The great influence of the electric matrix characteristics of the country manufacturing PV systems was evidenced in the results. The interconnected Brazilian electrical system had a 2020 projected GHGe-rate of 63.9 g CO2/kWh, while the results of 70% of the photovoltaic solar power plants (PSPS) assessed herein exhibit higher GHGe-rates. Thus, in countries where the electric matrix comprises a high share of renewable sources, such as Brazil, the incentive to use PV systems manufactured in nations whose electric matrix registers high emission factors should be well evaluated in terms of the impacts of GHG concentrations and the promotion of sustainable development, in order to avoid indirect import of significant amounts of carbon embedded in the systems.

Post-marketing safety surveillance and reevaluation of Motherwort injection: A clinical study of 10 094 cases

OBJECTIVETo investigate the safety profiles of Motherwort injection (MI). METHODSA multi-center, prospective and drug-derived hospital intensive monitoring method was conducted to assess the safety of MI in real world applications. This study was based on a very large population after the injection was approved and marketed in China. All patients using the injection in participating hospitals were monitored to determine the incidence, pattern, severity and outcome of associated adverse events. RESULTSThe post-marketing surveillance was performed in 10 094 female patients from April to December, 2015. The incidence of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) was 0.79‰ (8/10 094). Among the 8 patients, the reported adverse events mainly included systemic abnormalities, such as fever, chills and eyelid edema; skin and appendages disorders, such as pruritus and rash; gastrointestinal disorders, such as nausea, abdominal distension and pain; heart rate and rhythm disorders, such as palpitation and increased heart rate. All of these ADRs were mild in severity. CONCLUSIONIn this study the ADRs incidence rate of MI is very low, which supports that it is generally safe for use in obstetric and gynecological diseases. However, the total number of 8 ADRs recorded over a relatively short time span seems limited, and the low number of reports could not represent an absolute guarantee of safety.

Due Diligence in International Tax Law

The concept of due diligence has been primarily developed in the state context (e.g., investor protection, environmental law), where it has been stated that “[t]he obligation to take preventative measures is one of due diligence, not an absolute guarantee against the occurrence of harm.” In international finance law, the concept is applied to private actors, especially financial institutions. The concept was first developed in the prevention of money laundering (covered elsewhere in this book) but then applied to prevention of tax evasion. In that context, since it would put an unreasonable burden on financial institutions to completely prevent tax evasion, all that is required is due diligence. This chapter describes how the due diligence standard was developed in international tax law before 2008, and then how the standard was greatly modified after the financial crisis, the enactment of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act of 2010 (FATCA), and the subsequent development of the Common Reporting Standards (CRS).

Biopsy proven fibroadenomas- how frequent is pathologies other than fibroadenomas post-excision?

Introduction: Breast fibroadenoma (FA) is a common benign tumour diagnosed usually through ‘Triple Assessment’. FA that is large, symptomatic or exhibit interval growth is recommended for excision. Some patients question the need for excision if preoperative assessment concluded FA while others want to be absolutely sure that the ‘FA’ that is not excised and managed conservatively is absolutely a FA. The aim of the present study is to ascertain the magnitude of unexpected post-excision pathology when a biopsy proven FA is excised according to the current UK guideline.Materials and Method: Retrospectively analysis of patients who underwent surgery for FA excision over a 3 year period. Data on patient demographics, ultrasound findings and size at diagnosis, any interval change in size, indication for excision were collected and pathology pre- and post-excision compared.Result: Of the 276 FA excised in 258 patients in 3years, a preoperative diagnosis of FA was confirmed in 251 cases while 25 breast lumps were excised based on the benign features on examination and imaging. The post excision histopathology confirmed the preoperative diagnosis of FA in 264 (95.7%), phyllodes in 8(3%) and 4 (1.3%) other pathologies.Conclusion: 4.3% of FA excised in our specialist unit after Triple Assessment returns pathology other than FA post-excision, mostly benign phyllodes. FAs should be managed conservatively after triple assessment but surgery should be offered if there is still any doubt as there is no absolute guarantee that the presumed FA is actually a FA. For medicolegal reasons and culture of openness, patients should be aware of this possibility especially if FA is managed conservatively.

A BP Network Control Approach for QoS-Aware MAC in Cloud Robotics

The basic idea of Cloud Robotics is dynamically uploading the compute-intensive applications to the cloud, which greatly enhances the intelligence of robots for the high processing and parallel ability of cloud. However, for the nature of uncertainty of mobility, different kinds of applications on robot may have different Quality of service (QoS). The paper proposes a BP network for QoS-aware MAC(BPFD-MAC) in Cloud Robotics form a view control theory, which can support both absolute and relative QoS guarantees while the energy saving. The hard and soft QoS constraints are de-coupled by normalized into a two-level cascade feedback loop. The former is Active Time Loop (AT-Loop) to enforce the absolute QoS guarantee for real-time application and the later is Contention Window Loop (CW-Loop) to enforce the relative QoS guarantee for Best Effort traffics. Finally, the Back-propagating (BP) neuron network based PID is used for self-tuning parameters and controller design. The hardware experiments demonstrate the feasibility of BPFD-MAC. Comparing with FD-MAC, BPFD-MAC has new feature of absolute QoS support and further developed two advantages:In the condition of heavy loads, BPFD have about 18% great throughput and 14% great power efficient; and in light load, BPFD have lower total energy consumption.

Financial Effects of Private Vs. Government Stock Ownership: Evidence from Literature of Listed Chinese Companies

We collect evidence from the literature of listed Chinese companies about private vs. government stock ownership in seven financial areas. Based on a total of 106 financial effects examined, our study categorizes 39% as positive effects of private ownership, 25% as negative effects of private ownership, and 36% as mixed or ambiguous. Thus, private ownership seems to have an advantage over government ownership, but privatization per se in China seems not an absolute guarantee for effective corporate financial management.

Understanding and Managing the Dynamics of Computer Viruses

An exposition of the nature, structure and mode of operation of computer viruses is hereby presented, with the assertion that computer viruses are best managed through a proactive measure using a cryptographically strong checksumming algorithm that generates a fingerprint for each executable stored on the system. Verification is then performed prior to running an executable file to ascertain that the system is in a ‘safe state’ since the last run. This ensures inoculation against all present and future viruses with absolute guarantee. Keywords: Executable-file, cryptographic-checksum, interrupt-vector, encryption, signature.

Exploiting the structure of furthest neighbor search for fast approximate results

We present a novel strategy for approximate furthest neighbor search that selects a set of candidate points using the data distribution. This strategy leads to an algorithm, which we call DrusillaSelect, that is able to outperform existing approximate furthest neighbor strategies. Our strategy is motivated by a study of the behavior of the furthest neighbor search problem, which has significantly different structure than the nearest neighbor search problem, and can be understood with the help of an information-theoretic hardness measure that we introduce. We also present a variant of the algorithm that gives an absolute approximation guarantee; under some assumptions, the guaranteed approximation can be achieved in provably less time than brute-force search. Performance studies indicate that DrusillaSelect can achieve comparable levels of approximation to other algorithms, even on the hardest datasets, while giving up to an order of magnitude speedup. An implementation is available in the mlpack machine learning library (found at http://www.mlpack.org).

QoSperformance of IEEE 802.11 in MAC and PHY layer using Enhanced OAR Algorithm

Objective: The main objective of our research is to improve the QoS in Media Access Control (MAC) and Physical (PHY) layer and to provide more deterministic network performance so that data’s that were transferred by the network nodes could in a better quality and network resources could be utilized effectively. Methods/ Statistical Analysis: The performance of QoS of IEEE 802.11 in MAC and PHY layer are studied using an enhanced opportunistic auto rate protocol e-OAR.The proposed algorithm uses distributed protocol for access control. This works by providing delay to the packets to increase efficiency of output. By allocating nodes in the basis, strength and efficiency of nodes will increase transmission efficiency by the help of e-OAR. Findings: The main function of MAC layer is secure packet delivery, access control and security in a network. PHY layer in IEEE802.11 standard describes two forms of spread spectrum modulation. The enhancement required in order to get a good QoS is by minimizing the time delay in transfer of data in physical nodes as the nodes are made of physical parts loss less transmission. For the competent use of a multi-rate physical layer, an e-OAR might be used which is very close to MAC layer. Absolute QoS guarantees is critical to provide, the relative QoS guarantees may be equipped by differentiation services. But, to provide characterized services, 802.11 protocols needs to be altered and it introduces three means for modifying DCF performance of 802.11 for assisting the differentiation of service. It decreases packet delay for improving performance of the system. Applications/Improvements: The QoS of IEEE 802.11 in MAC and PHY layer for improving throughput and packet delay of channel by using an e-OAR performance is interpreted in this study. The relative proposal guarantees are achieved using service differentiation DCF.

Providing Utility-Optimal Throughput Guarantees in Wireless LANs

With the pervasive use of IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (LANs), increasingly more application flows with different quality-of-service (QoS) requirements will be deployed therein, e.g., home multimedia. This paper is concerned with providing utility-optimal throughput guarantees when diverse application flows share the limited bandwidth. Our proposal provides the absolute throughput guarantees for inelastic flows (such as Internet Protocol television) and the proportional throughput guarantees for elastic flows (such as text message) while maximizing the entire system bandwidth utilization. To this end, we first establish a general theoretical framework on the utility-optimal problem. We then present the exact and approximate solutions and prove the existence and uniqueness of the approximate solution. Finally, extensive simulations are performed, which validate that the approximate solution can well achieve the desired objectives.

Strength of Crypto-Semantic System of Tabular Data Protection

The strength of the crypto-semantic method (CSM) of text data protection based on the use of lexicographical systems in the form of applied linguistic corpora within the formally defined restrictions of selected spheres of applied uses has been analyzed. The levels of cryptographic strength provided by the crypto-semantic method of data protection with due regard of a cryptanalyst’s resource capabilities are determined. The conditions under which the CSM provides absolute guarantee of text data protection from confidentiality compromise are determined.

Beyond the Stars

It is well-known that cloud application performance can critically depend on the network. Over the last years, several systems have been developed which provide the application with the illusion of a virtual cluster : a star-shaped virtual network topology connecting virtual machines to a logical switch with absolute bandwidth guarantees. In this paper, we debunk some of the myths around the virtual cluster embedding problem. First, we show that the virtual cluster embedding problem is not NP-hard, and present the fast and optimal embedding algorithm VC-ACE for arbitrary datacenter topologies. Second, we argue that resources may be wasted by enforcing star-topology embeddings, and alternatively promote a hose embedding approach. We discuss the computational complexity of hose embeddings and derive the HVC-ACE algorithm. Using simulations we substantiate the benefits of hose embeddings in terms of acceptance ratio and resource footprint.

Cryo-injury in algae and the implications this has to the conservation of micro-algae

AbstractAs with all products and processes exploiting biological materials algal biotechnology has an absolute requirement for stable, function-fulfilling master stockcultures. Conventionally microalgae and cyanobacteria are maintained by serial transfer with inocula (2.5-25% v/v) being transferred to fresh medium and the culture being held under controlled environmental conditions. This method is satisfactory for many algal taxa, but by its nature cannot provide an absolute guarantee of phenotypic or genotypic stability. Cryopreservation at ultra-low temperatures (> -130oC) is the only methodology that can provide this level of security to master stock-cultures; however, many algae are recalcitrant to cryopreservation with low or no survival. This review explores the reasons of this cryo-recalcitrance on the application of conventional colligative, two-step cryopreservation protocols and points towards the options available to enhance postcryopreservation viability.

Cosmetic Sequelae After Oncoplastic Surgery of the Breast. Classification and Factors for Prevention

Oncoplastic surgery is an essential tool in the surgical approach to women with breast cancer. These techniques are not absolute guarantee for a good cosmetic result and therefore some patients will have cosmetic sequelae secondary to poor surgical planning, the effects of adjuvant treatments or the need for resection greater than originally planned. The high frequency of these cosmetic sequelae in oncology practice makes it necessary to classify them for optimal surgical planning. The aim of this paper is to present a classification of cosmetic sequelae after oncoplastic procedures to identify those factors that are crucial to its prevention. This classification contains 4 groups: breast contour deformities, asymmetries, alterations in nipple-areola complex (NAC) and defects in the three dimensional structure of the breast. A significant group of these sequelae (asymmetries and deformities) are associated with breast irradiation and need an accurate information process with patients to set realistic expectations about cosmetic results. Finally, there is another group of sequelae (NAC disorders and three-dimensional structure) that are related to poor planning and deficiencies in surgical approach, therefore specific training is essential for learning these surgical techniques.

Secuelas estéticas de la cirugía oncoplástica de la mama. Clasificación y principios para su prevención

Oncoplastic surgery is an essential tool in the surgical approach to women with breast cancer. These techniques are not absolute guarantee for a good cosmetic result and therefore some patients will have cosmetic sequelae secondary to poor surgical planning, the effects of adjuvant treatments or the need for resection greater than originally planned. The high frequency of these cosmetic sequelae in oncology practice makes it necessary to classify them for optimal surgical planning. The aim of this paper is to present a classification of cosmetic sequelae after oncoplastic procedures to identify those factors that are crucial to its prevention. This classification contains 4 groups: breast contour deformities, asymmetries, alterations in nipple-aréola complex (NAC) and defects in the three dimensional structure of the breast. A significant group of these sequelae (asymmetries and deformities) are associated with breast irradiation and need an accurate information process with patients to set realistic expectations about cosmetic results. Finally, there is another group of sequelae (NAC disorders and three-dimensional structure) that are related to poor planning and deficiencies in surgical approach, therfore specific training is essential for learning these surgical techniques.

Performance guarantees for a scheduling problem with common stepwise job payoffs

We consider a single machine scheduling problem with unequal release dates and a common stepwise payoff function for the jobs. The goal is to maximize the sum of the jobs payoffs, which are defined with regard to some common delivery dates. The problem is strongly NP-hard. In this paper, we propose a polynomial time approximation algorithm with both absolute and relative performance guarantees. The time complexity of the approximation algorithm is O(KNlog⁡N), N being the number of jobs and K the number of delivery dates.

Nearly optimal bounds for distributed wireless scheduling in the SINR model

We study the wireless scheduling problem in the SINR model. More specifically, given a set of $$n$$ links, each a sender–receiver pair, we wish to partition (or schedule) the links into the minimum number of slots, each satisfying interference constraints allowing simultaneous transmission. In the basic problem, all senders transmit with the same uniform power. We analyze a randomized distributed scheduling algorithm proposed by Kesselheim and Vöcking, and show that it achieves $$O(\log n)$$ -approximation, an improvement of a logarithmic factor. This matches the best ratio known for centralized algorithms and holds in arbitrary metric space and for every length-monotone and sublinear power assignment. We also show that every distributed algorithm uses $$\varOmega (\log n)$$ slots to schedule certain instances that require only two slots, which implies that the best possible absolute performance guarantee is logarithmic.

CLFV and the origin of neutrino masses

The neutrino oscillations constitute the unique absolute guarantee we have at the moment that charged lepton flavor violation (CLFV) processes do exist. Even if the associated rates are in general expected very suppressed, it turns out that this is not always necessarily the case. In the framework of the three basic seesaw models, we review the possibilities of having observable rates. Each seesaw case presenting a quite different CLFV pattern, we show how these observable rates could allow us to distinguish these various possible neutrino mass origins.