Considerable Time Delay Research Articles

Intercellular Bridge Mediates Ca2+ Signals between Micropatterned Cells via IP3 and Ca2+ Diffusion

Intercellular bridges are plasma continuities formed at the end of the cytokinesis process that facilitate intercellular mass transport between the two daughter cells. However, it remains largely unknown how the intercellular bridge mediates Ca2+ communication between postmitotic cells. In this work, we utilize BV-2 microglial cells planted on dumbbell-shaped micropatterned assemblies to resolve spatiotemporal characteristics of Ca2+ signal transfer over the intercellular bridges. With the use of such micropatterns, considerably longer and more regular intercellular bridges can be obtained than in conventional cell cultures. The initial Ca2+ signal is evoked by mechanical stimulation of one of the daughter cells. A considerable time delay is observed between the arrivals of passive Ca2+ diffusion and endogenous Ca2+ response in the intercellular-bridge-connected cell, indicating two different pathways of the Ca2+ communication. Extracellular Ca2+ and the paracrine pathway have practically no effect on the endogenous Ca2+ response, demonstrated by application of Ca2+-free medium, exogenous ATP, and P2Y13 receptor antagonist. In contrast, the endoplasmic reticulum Ca2+-ATPase inhibitor thapsigargin and inositol trisphosphate (IP3) receptor blocker 2-aminoethyl diphenylborate significantly inhibit the endogenous Ca2+ increase, which signifies involvement of IP3-sensitive calcium store release. Notably, passive Ca2+ diffusion into the connected cell can clearly be detected when IP3-sensitive calcium store release is abolished by 2-aminoethyl diphenylborate. Those observations prove that both passive Ca2+ diffusion and IP3-mediated endogenous Ca2+ response contribute to the Ca2+ increase in intercellular-bridge-connected cells. Moreover, a simulation model agreed well with the experimental observations.

INDICATORS OF BANKING ACTIVITY — A LEADING INDICATORS OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF REGIONS (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE CENTRAL FEDERAL DISTRICT)

Officially published statistics on socio-economic development of the regions implies significant disadvantages such as considerable time delay and insufficient validity. Analysis of banking indicators greatly contributes to easing the problems. Indicators on payment dynamics, changes in payment and settlement infrastructure, the structure of the bank resources, and lending to various loaners successfully complement and verify findings based on the traditional economic data on the real sector of the economy and the financial condition of citizens. In the Central Federal District, data on the banking sector activity confirms the official economic growth rates. During research no relations were found between the average per capita income and the amount of bank savings of individuals. We revealed the dominance of mortgage lending in the debt structure of individuals. Share of mortgage lending is larger in the most depressive regions. We figured out the inverse relationship between the growth of debt load and overdue debt in Central Federal region. The large companies contribute to the development of the most successful regions the way more than small and medium-sized business. Digitalization is a sequence of economic growth.

Mycobacterium marinum lymphocutaneous infection

Mycobacterium marinum is a nontuberculous mycobacteria with worldwide distribution that lives in fresh or salt water and is responsible for infections in fish, and sometimes in humans. Human disease consists mainly of cutaneous nodules, but deep structure involvement may also occur. Diagnosis of M. marinum infection remains a challenge, with a considerable time delay between onset of symptoms and diagnosis. We present a 33-year-old man with no immunosuppressive history who was seen in our department with skin nodules over his hand and forearm, distributed in a sporotrichoid pattern. His hobbies included maintaining an aquarium of tropical fish. Histological examination of the patient's skin biopsy was compatible with the diagnosis of mycobacterial infection, and the Ziehl-Neelsen staining revealed acid-fast bacilli. Molecular techniques confirmed the suspicion of M. marinum infection. A necropsy was performed on one of the patient's fish, more specifically, a Poecilia reticulata, and resulted in identification of M. marinum from its gut. The patient was treated with clarithromycin, ethambutol, and rifampicin for 9 months, with clearance of infection.

Monitoring public interest toward pertussis outbreaks: an extensive Google Trends–based analysis

Pertussis is a vaccine-preventable disease. Despite this, it remains a major health problem among children in developing countries and in recent years, has re-emerged and has led to considerable outbreaks. Pertussis surveillance is of paramount importance; however, classical monitoring approaches are plagued by some shortcomings, such as considerable time delay and potential underestimation/underreporting of cases. This study aims at investigating the possibility of using Google Trends (GT) as an instrument for tracking pertussis outbreaks to see if infodemiology and infoveillance approaches could overcome the previously mentioned issues because they are based on real-time monitoring and tracking of web-related activities. In the present study, GT was mined from inception (01 January 2004) to 31 December 2015 in the different European countries. Pertussis was searched using the 'search topic' strategy. Pertussis-related GT figures were correlated with the number of pertussis cases and deaths retrieved from the European Centre for Disease prevention and Control database. At the European countries level, correlation between pertussis cases and GT-based search volumes was very large (ranging from 0.94 to 0.97) from 2004 to 2015. When examining each country, however, only a few reached the threshold of statistical significance. GT could be particularly useful in pertussis surveillance and control, provided that the algorithm is better adjusted and refined at the country level.

A method for predicting dissolved oxygen in aquaculture water in an aquaponics system

Aquaponics systems combine vegetable cultivation with fish culture (Rao et al., 2017). Several environmental factors influence water quality, among which dissolved oxygen is the most critical. The dissolved oxygen-related processes are nonlinear and unstable and are characterized by considerable time delays and time variances. In an aquaponics system, the dissolved oxygen content is affected by changes in the aquaculture water and in the greenhouse climate. Understanding the changes in dissolved oxygen and ensuring its stability requires effective prediction approaches and corrective measures. Traditional prediction methods are characterized by low stability, low accuracy and poor timeliness. A dissolved oxygen prediction model based on fuzzy neural networks is proposed in this paper. With a large number of inputs, the fuzzy network has high dimensonality, a complex model structure, and low precision, among other limitations. A genetic algorithm can be used to optimize the centre and width of the fuzzy neural network’s middle layer and determine the optimal parameter combination, thus improving the efficiency and predictive accuracy of the model (Liu et al., 2014). The results show that a fuzzy neural network optimized using a genetic algorithm is more stable, more accurate, and more suitable for predicting dissolved oxygen than a fuzzy neural network and backpropagation neural network in an aquaponics system. Predicting dissolved oxygen is critical to the stability of an aquaponics system.

Sensitivity analysis of surface topography using the submerged non uniform piezoelectric micro cantilever in liquid by considering interatomic force interaction

The aim of this study is modeling and investigating the micro-cantilever (MC) vibration behavior of atomic force microscopy (AFM) more accurately by taking into account the simultaneous effects of the MC shear changes and it’s torsional moment in the fluid environment. The MC vibration amplitude has been investigated in various equilibrium distances under the effect of MC angle, probe length, density and viscosity of different working environments. Surfaces topography has been studied in first three natural frequencies under the non-venial fluid effect. Obtained results illustrate a considerable time delay reduction compared to the air environment, particularly in the tapping mode and higher frequencies. Efast sensitivity analysis statistical method, which is found efficient and quick, has been applied in order to analyze the geometrical parameters’ effects on the MC vibration behavior. Results indicate the low intensity of the effect exerted by the layers’ width compared to the effect of the length.

Filtering disaster responses using crowdsourcing

Abstract Most disaster responses require manual processing to eliminate errors, which is currently handled by the government. Although this process ensures quality of the information, considerable time delays occur. With the rapid development of the Internet and mobile devices, crowd-based platforms have been developed and used for disaster responses. However, three obvious drawbacks exist with crowdsourcing: errors, duplications, and unstructured formats. This study aims to develop a computational method, called the Artificial and Crowd Intelligence (ACI) filter, to overcome these drawbacks. To verify the ACI filter, 876 responses collected from an actual flood that occurred on June 10th, 2012, in Taiwan, were used; 284 volunteers from the Internet were recruited for the testing. The results show that the ACI filter eliminates 26.25% of the responses. The percentage of mistaken validations was 0.00% and the percentage of mistaken eliminations was 3.91%. This demonstrates that the ACI filter, by combining machine and human intelligence, can successfully improve crowd response accuracy.

PriLive: privacy-preserving real-time filtering for next-generation sequencing.

In next-generation sequencing, re-identification of individuals and other privacy-breaching strategies can be applied even for anonymized data. This also holds true for applications in which human DNA is acquired as a by-product, e.g. for viral or metagenomic samples from a human host. Conventional data protection strategies including cryptography and post-hoc filtering are only appropriate for the final and processed sequencing data. This can result in an insufficient level of data protection and a considerable time delay in the further analysis workflow. We present PriLive, a novel tool for the automated removal of sensitive data while the sequencing machine is running. Thereby, human sequence information can be detected and removed before being completely produced. This facilitates the compliance with strict data protection regulations. The unique characteristic to cause almost no time delay for further analyses is also a clear benefit for applications other than data protection. Especially if the sequencing data are dominated by known background signals, PriLive considerably accelerates consequent analyses by having only fractions of input data. Besides these conceptual advantages, PriLive achieves filtering results at least as accurate as conventional post-hoc filtering tools. PriLive is open-source software available at https://gitlab.com/rki_bioinformatics/PriLive. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Process-parallel virtual quality evaluation for metal cutting in series production

Within the metal cutting industry, methods of statistical process control are used to monitor the product quality of series processes. Following the specifications of an initial test planning, produced components are inspected in a sample-like manner. Due to the large number of machining centers, the resulting high output of manufactured parts and centrally installed quality assurance departments, there is still a considerable time delay when feeding back negative trends or tolerance violations. Within this period, scrap parts may be produced. The approach presented in this paper addresses this problem. Based on a combination of process-parallel recorded sensor signals and available manufacturing data along the CAD-CAM-NC process chain, an online material removal simulation is performed next to a real milling process. Within the simulation, the properties of cutting tools, machine tool and manufacturing process directly impacting workpiece quality are compiled in efficient models that run simultaneously and further approximate the machined workpiece shape. The resulting, digital workpiece is measured virtually based on given quality requirements defined in ISO 1101 to allow an early identification of negative trends and quality issues while reducing long quality feedback loops.

Not quite a black hole

Astrophysical black hole candidates, although long thought to have a horizon, could be horizonless ultra-compact objects. This intriguing possibility is motivated by the black hole information paradox and a plausible fundamental connection with quantum gravity. Asymptotically free quadratic gravity is considered here as the UV completion of general relativity. A classical theory that captures its main features is used to search for solutions as sourced by matter. We find that sufficiently dense matter produces a novel horizonless configuration, the 2-2-hole, which closely matches the exterior Schwarzschild solution down to about a Planck proper length of the would-be horizon. The 2-2-hole is characterized by an interior with a shrinking volume and a seemingly innocuous timelike curvature singularity. The interior also has a novel scaling behavior with respect to the physical mass of the 2-2-hole. This leads to an extremely deep gravitational potential in which particles get efficiently trapped via collisions. As a generic static solution, the 2-2-hole may then be the nearly black endpoint of gravitational collapse. There is a considerable time delay for external probes of the 2-2-hole interior, and this determines the spacing of echoes in a post-merger gravitational wave signal.

Wigner photoemission time delay from endohedral anions

Characteristic features of Wigner photoemission time delay from endohedral anions A@${\mathrm{C}}_{60}{}^{q}$ along with their dependence on the anion charge $q$ are unraveled. Specifically, significant enhancement of the time delay in the innermost dipole photoionization channels near threshold is found, owing to the presence of the Coulomb confined resonances (CRs). Moreover, it is shown that interchannel coupling of the inner-shell Coulomb CRs with outer-shell photoionization channels results in resonantly enhanced time delay in the release of the outer-shell photoelectron well above, several hundreds eV, the outer-shell thresholds. It is also demonstrated that, and explained why, photoionization cross sections of the innermost subshells as well as outer subshells (near the inner-subshell threshold) depends only very weakly on the anion charge $q$, but the dependence of the corresponding time delays on $q$ can be significant. Furthermore, Coulomb CRs are found to emerge in the innermost quadrupole photoionization channels as well, thereby causing considerable time delay in the quadrupole photoemission. These findings are illustrated in calculations of the photoionization of inner and outer subshells of the endohedral anions Ne@${\text{C}}_{60}{}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ and Ne@${\mathrm{C}}_{60}{}^{\ensuremath{-}5}$ that were chosen as case studies.

The aerospace vehicle control characterizing by considerable time delay

In this paper, we propose to compensate the time delay in the vehicle response by a display that demonstrates the vector of predictive velocity projected on the surface located on a preliminary defined distance from the operator’s eyes. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated for the tasks of lunar rover docking and control.

Three-layer intelligence of planetary exploration wheeled mobile robots: Robint, virtint, and humint

The great success of the Sojourner rover in the Mars Pathfinder mission set off a global upsurge of planetary exploration with autonomous wheeled mobile robots (WMRs), or rovers. Planetary WMRs are among the most intelligent space systems that combine robotic intelligence (robint), virtual intelligence (virtint), and human intelligence (humint) synergetically. This article extends the architecture of the three-layer intelligence stemming from successful Mars rovers and related technologies in order to support the R&D of future tele-operated robotic systems. Double-layer human-machine interfaces are suggested to support the integration of humint from scientists and engineers through supervisory (Mars rovers) or three-dimensional (3D) predictive direct tele-operation (lunar rovers). The concept of multilevel autonomy to realize robint, in particular, the Coupled-Layer Architecture for Robotic Autonomy developed for Mars rovers, is introduced. The challenging issues of intelligent perception (proprioception and exteroception), navigation, and motion control of rovers are discussed, where the terrains’ mechanical properties and wheel-terrain interaction mechanics are considered to be key. Double-level virtual simulation architecture to realize virtint is proposed. Key technologies of virtint are summarized: virtual planetary terrain modeling, virtual intelligent rover, and wheel-terrain interaction mechanics. This generalized three-layer intelligence framework is also applicable to other systems that require human intervention, such as space robotic arms, robonauts, unmanned deep-sea vehicles, and rescue robots, particularly when there is considerable time delay.

Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic considerations of antimicrobial drug therapy in cancer patients with kidney dysfunction.

Patients with cancer have a high inherent risk of infectious complications. In addition, the incidence of acute and chronic kidney dysfunction rises in this population. Anti-infective drugs often require dosing modifications based on an estimate of kidney function, usually the glomerular filtration rate (GFR). However, there is still no preferential GFR formula to be used, and in acute kidney injury there is always a considerable time delay between true kidney function and estimated GFR. In most cases, the anti-infective therapy should start with an immediate and high loading dose. Pharmacokinetic as well as pharmacodynamic principles must be applied for further dose adjustment. Anti-infective drugs with time-dependent action should be given with the target of high trough concentrations (e.g., beta lactam antibiotics, penems, vancomycin, antiviral drugs). Anti-infective drugs with concentration-dependent action should be given with the target of high peak concentrations (e.g., aminoglycosides, daptomycin, colistin, quinolones). Our group created a pharmacokinetic database, called NEPharm, hat serves as a reference to obtain reliable dosing regimens of anti-infective drugs in kidney dysfunction as well as renal replacement therapy. To avoid the risk of either too low or too infrequent peak concentrations, we prefer the eliminated fraction rule for dose adjustment calculations.

Linearization of a heat-transfer system model with approximation of transport time delay

A method is proposed for linearizing the nonlinear model of a heat-transfer facility the state variables of which at equilibrium points are determined by numerically solving the initial bilinear system of differential equations for a stationary position of the control valve equipped with a constant-speed electric drive. The considerable transport time delay resulting from the distributed design of the heat-transfer system secondary circuit is approximated by a limited number of first-order inertial sections for obtaining a mathematical model in the Cauchy form. The proposed linearization method is tested on an operating hot-water supply heat-transfer system, and the study results are presented in the form of transient curves.

Measurement of time delays in gated radiotherapy for realistic respiratory motions.

Gated radiotherapy is used to reduce internal motion margins, escalate target dose, and limit normal tissue dose; however, its temporal accuracy is limited. Beam-on and beam-off time delays can lead to treatment inefficiencies and/or geographic misses; therefore, AAPM Task Group 142 recommends verifying the temporal accuracy of gating systems. Many groups use sinusoidal phantom motion for this, under the tacit assumption that use of sinusoidal motion for determining time delays produces negligible error. The authors test this assumption by measuring gating time delays for several realistic motion shapes with increasing degrees of irregularity. Time delays were measured on a linear accelerator with a real-time position management system (Varian TrueBeam with RPM system version 1.7.5) for seven motion shapes: regular sinusoidal; regular realistic-shape; large (40%) and small (10%) variations in amplitude; large (40%) variations in period; small (10%) variations in both amplitude and period; and baseline drift (30%). Film streaks of radiation exposure were generated for each motion shape using a programmable motion phantom. Beam-on and beam-off time delays were determined from the difference between the expected and observed streak length. For the system investigated, all sine, regular realistic-shape, and slightly irregular amplitude variation motions had beam-off and beam-on time delays within the AAPM recommended limit of less than 100 ms. In phase-based gating, even small variations in period resulted in some time delays greater than 100 ms. Considerable time delays over 1 s were observed with highly irregular motion. Sinusoidal motion shapes can be considered a reasonable approximation to the more complex and slightly irregular shapes of realistic motion. When using phase-based gating with predictive filters even small variations in period can result in time delays over 100 ms. Clinical use of these systems for patients with highly irregular patterns of motion is not advised due to large beam-on and beam-off time delays.

Fuzzy Logic Based Battery Power Management for PV and Wind Hybrid Power System

This paper proposes an approach for the hybrid solar photovoltaic and wind power system in Battery management for stand-alone applications. Battery charging process is nonlinear, time-varying with a considerable time delay so it is difficult to achieve the best energy management performance by using traditional control approaches. A fuzzy control strategy for battery charging or discharging used in a renewable power generation system is analyzed in the paper. To improve the life cycle of the battery, fuzzy control manages the desired state of charge (SOC). A fuzzy logic-based controller to be used for the Battery SOC control of the designed hybrid system is proposed and compared with a classical PI controller for the performance validation. The entire designed system is modelled and simulated using MATLAB/Simulink Environment.

Triadic social interactions operate across time: a field experiment with wild chimpanzees

Social animals cooperate with bonding partners to outcompete others. Predicting a competitor's supporter is likely to be beneficial, regardless of whether the supporting relationship is stable or transient, or whether the support happens immediately or later. Although humans make such predictions frequently, it is unclear to what extent animals have the cognitive abilities to recognize others' transient bond partners and to predict others' coalitions that extend beyond the immediate present. We conducted playback experiments with wild chimpanzees to test this. About 2 h after fighting, subjects heard recordings of aggressive barks of a bystander, who was or was not a bond partner of the former opponent. Subjects looked longer and moved away more often from barks of the former opponents' bond partners than non-bond partners. In an additional experiment, subjects moved away more from barks than socially benign calls of the same bond partner. These effects were present despite differences in genetic relatedness and considerable time delays between the two events. Chimpanzees, it appears, integrate memories of social interactions from different sources to make inferences about current interactions. This ability is crucial for connecting triadic social interactions across time, a requirement for predicting aggressive support even after a time delay.

Anatomy of green open access

Open access (OA) is free, unrestricted access to electronic versions of scholarly publications. For peer‐reviewed journal articles, there are two main routes to OA: publishing in OA journals (gold OA) or archiving of article copies or manuscripts at other web locations (green OA). This study focuses on summarizing and extending current knowledge about green OA. A synthesis of previous studies indicates that green OA coverage of all published journal articles is approximately 12%, with substantial disciplinary variation. Typically, green OA copies become available after considerable time delays, partly caused by publisher‐imposed embargo periods, and partly by author tendencies to archive manuscripts only periodically. Although green OA copies should ideally be archived in proper repositories, a large share is stored on home pages and similar locations, with no assurance of long‐term preservation. Often such locations contain exact copies of published articles, which may infringe on the publisher's exclusive rights. The technical foundation for green OA uploading is becoming increasingly solid largely due to the rapid increase in the number of institutional repositories. The number of articles within the scope of OA mandates, which strongly influence the self‐archival rate of articles, is nevertheless still low.

Dynamic Task Allocation in Multi-Hop Multimedia Wireless Sensor Networks with Low Mobility

This paper presents a task allocation-oriented framework to enable efficient in-network processing and cost-effective multi-hop resource sharing for dynamic multi-hop multimedia wireless sensor networks with low node mobility, e.g., pedestrian speeds. The proposed system incorporates a fast task reallocation algorithm to quickly recover from possible network service disruptions, such as node or link failures. An evolutional self-learning mechanism based on a genetic algorithm continuously adapts the system parameters in order to meet the desired application delay requirements, while also achieving a sufficiently long network lifetime. Since the algorithm runtime incurs considerable time delay while updating task assignments, we introduce an adaptive window size to limit the delay periods and ensure an up-to-date solution based on node mobility patterns and device processing capabilities. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that yields multi-objective task allocation in a mobile multi-hop wireless environment under dynamic conditions. Simulations are performed in various settings, and the results show considerable performance improvement in extending network lifetime compared to heuristic mechanisms. Furthermore, the proposed framework provides noticeable reduction in the frequency of missing application deadlines.