Regular Counterparts Research Articles

Development of functional milk desserts enriched with resistant starch based on consumers’ perception

Sensory characteristics play a key role in determining consumers' acceptance of functional foods. In this context, the aim of the present work was to apply a combination of sensory and consumer methodologies to the development of chocolate milk desserts enriched with resistant starch. Chocolate milk desserts containing modified waxy maize starch were formulated with six different concentrations of two types of resistant starch (which are part of insoluble dietary fiber). The desserts were evaluated by trained assessors using Quantitative Descriptive Analysis. Moreover, consumers scored their overall liking and willingness to purchase and answered an open-ended question. Resistant starch caused significant changes in the sensory characteristics of the desserts and a significant decrease in consumers' overall liking and willingness to purchase. Consumer data was analyzed applying survival analysis on overall liking scores, considering the risk on consumers liking and willing to purchase the functional products less than their regular counterparts. The proposed methodologies proved to be useful to develop functional foods taking into account consumers' perception, which could increase their success in the market.

Application-specific topology generation algorithms for network-on-chip design

Network-on-chip (NoC) is an alternative approach to traditional communication methods for system-on-chip architectures. Irregular topologies are preferable for the application specific NoC designs as they offer huge optimisation space in contrast to their regular counterparts. Generating an application-specific topology as part of the synthesis flow of a NoC architecture is a challenging problem as there may be several topology alternatives, each of which may be superior to the others based on the different objective criteria. In this study, the authors tackle at this problem and propose a heuristic and a genetic algorithm-based methods. The heuristic method, called TopGen, is a two-phase application-specific topology generation algorithm aiming to minimise the energy consumption of the system. TopGen first decomposes the given application into clusters based on the communication traffic. It then maps the clusters onto the routers and connects them in such a way that the communication cost of the network is minimised. The second algorithm, called GA-based topology generation algorithm-based topology generation algorithm (GATGA), is based on a genetic algorithm, which initially creates a set of solutions and uses genetic operators to reproduce new topologies from them. The authors compared our algorithms with existing methods through several multimedia benchmarks and custom generated graphs. TopGen and GATGA obtained better results than previous methods with negligible area and link length overheads.

A Survey on Leveraged and Inverse Exchange-Traded Funds

Leveraged and inverse ETFs, which promise to deliver two or three times the return of a specified benchmark (in a positive or a negative fashion) on a daily basis, have become a fast-growing innovation in the ETF industry. In this article, a sample of 40 inverse and 28 leveraged ETFs belonging to Proshares family is examined to see how frequently these ETF types deliver their stated multiple, finding that they basically fail to meet their daily target. We then search whether there is any significant day-of-the-week effect on the effort of Proshares to achieve their investment goal. The results indicate that the discrepancy between the actual return and the predefined multiple is smaller on Wednesday. In the last step, we compare Proshares to regular ETFs tracking the same indexes, at first taking into account the daily volume, trading frequency, and expense ratios. The results demonstrate that the leveraged ETF market is less liquid than the regular ETF market (less volume and trading frequency) while the leveraged and inverse ETFs are more expensive than their regular counterparts. Secondly, we compare return and risk of Proshares and regular ETFs, taking into consideration the return and risk of the indexes as well. The findings show that, on average, the inverse ETFs underperform their regular ETF competitors and the corresponding indexes while they are more risky than them. On the other hand, the results of the study provide weak evidence that the leveraged ETFs, on average, outperform the regular ETFs and the indexes but they are more hazardous.

Availability and accessibility of healthier options and nutrition information at New Zealand fast food restaurants

The aim of this study was to assess the availability of healthier options and nutrition information at major New Zealand fast food chains. A cross-sectional survey was undertaken at 24 fast food stores (two from each of 12 major chains) using on-site visits, telephone calls, and website searches. Of available products, only 234/1126 (21%) were healthier options. Healthier options were generally cheaper and lower in energy, total fat, saturated fat, sugar, and sodium per serve than their regular counterparts. Regular options were commonly high in sugar or sodium per serve (mean sugar content of beverages = 56 g (11 teaspoons) and sodium content of burgers and pasta = 1095 mg and 1172 mg, respectively). Nutrition information was available at 11/12 (92%) restaurant chains (range = 0% at Tank Juice to 99% at Domino’s Pizza). However, <1% of this information was available at the point-of-purchase. Therefore, there is huge potential for improving nutrition in the New Zealand fast food restaurant setting. Implications of these findings for policy and food industry include: consideration of mandatory menu labelling, increasing the percentage of healthier options available, and improving the nutrient content of regular options at New Zealand fast food restaurants.

Cooperative Learning in Physical Education and Acceptance of Students with Learning Disabilities

This study examined the effect of cooperative learning on the acceptance of mainstream students with academic learning disabilities in physical education and the links between their athletic abilities and the acceptance by their regular counterparts. Eight sixth grade classes (M age = 11.8 years) practiced either in a cooperative learning structure (n = 105) or individual structure (n = 112). The sociometric rating scale technique (Frederickson & Furnham, 1998) was employed to assess acceptance. Results showed that cooperative learning positively influenced the acceptance of the disabled mainstream students by their peers; however, the disabled mainstream students’ athletic abilities were related to acceptance only in the individual structure.

A review on microchannel heat exchangers and potential applications

Energy conversion and utilization are continuous but ever increasing processes for sustainability and economic development. Environmental concerns, such as thermal and air pollution, have dictated the practices of energy conservation and recovery, as well as the implementation of clean energy sources. Heat exchangers are an important component for processes where energy conservation is achieved through enhanced heat transfer. Such issues as increased energy demands, space limitations, and materials savings have highlighted the necessity for miniaturized light-weight heat exchangers, which provide high heat transfer for a given heat duty. However, while traditional heat exchangers employ conventional tubes (⩾6 mm) with various cross-sections, orientations, and even the enhanced surface textures, the technology is nearing its limits. Microchannels (broadly ⩽1 mm) represent the next step in heat exchanger development. They are a particular target of research due to their higher heat transfer and reduced weight as well as their space, energy, and materials savings potential over regular tube counterparts. In contrast to traditional tube heat exchangers, the heat transfer and fluid flow correlations, and the systematic design procedures are not yet well established for microchannels. It remains to be established whether the classical fluid flow and heat transfer theories and correlations are valid for microchannels. Numerous investigations are underway with researchers consolidating evidence on both sides of this question. This paper surveys the published literature on the status and potential of microchannels, and it identifies research needs, and defines the scope for long-term research. Based on results from the review, an air-to-liquid crossflow experimental infrastructure has been developed and commissioned. It will be used to investigate the heat transfer and fluid flow for a variety of working fluids in different microchannel test specimens. Further information and the heat balance status of the developed test facility are also presented. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

지진 하중을 받는 평면 비정형 건물의 편심과 손상도의 상관관계에 대한 연구

비정형 평면을 가진 건물의 추가적인 손상의 원인이 되는 비틀림과 비정형성의 척도인 편심과의 관계에 대한 많은 연구들이 진행되어 왔으나 손상도와 편심의 직접적인 관계에 대한 연구는 수행된 적이 거의 없다. 본 연구에서는 비정형 평면을 가진 건물의 복잡한 지진 응답에 적용할 수 있는 3차원 손상도 계수를 이용하여 건물의 손상도와 편심에 대한 정량적인 관계를 분석하였다. 이를 통해 건물의 편심이 커지면 최대변위는 줄어들지만 비틀림 거동이 증가하여, 손상의 집중으로 인해 전반적인 손상도 계수가 증가함이 관찰되었다. 또한, 2차원 주기가 비슷한 경우에는, 건물의 길이가 최대변위와 최대 비틀림에 미치는 영향이 작으며 이로 인해 전체 손상도 계수에도 그 영향이 미미한 것으로 관찰되었다. 해석 결과를 바탕으로 중약진 지역에서 편심의 크기가 10%, 20%, 30%인 단층 건물은 편심이 없는 건물에 비해서 각각 평균 3~5%, 13~18%, 33~47% 정도의 손상도 증가가 있을 것으로 분석하였다. 이와 같은 편심-손상도 관계는비정형 평면을 가진 건물의 내진 설계에 있어서 기본 구조 계획 수립과 내진 성능 평가에 유용한 자료가 될 것으로 생각된다. Most previous research on the seismic response of structures with plan irregularities have focused on the relationship between the eccentricity and the amount of torsion. This approach cannot provide the direct relationship between the irregularity and the damage. Therefore, an investigation on the relationship between the eccentricities of buildings with plan irregularities and the damage index was performed. Inelastic dynamic time-history analyses were performed on one-story buildings with various eccentricities. For the damage assessment, a 3D damage index was adopted to reflect the effect of the bi-directional response and torsion. Based on the analysis results, buildings with eccentricities of 10%, 20% and 30% will suffer 3~5%, 13~18%, and 33~47% more damage than their regular counterparts, respectively.

ENTANGLEMENT-ASSISTED QUANTUM ERROR-CORRECTING CODES CONSTRUCTED FROM IRREGULAR REPEAT ACCUMULATE CODES

In some contexts, it would make sense to look for codes that can use the maximal amount of shared ebits between sender and receiver, in order to boost qubit channel yield. Also, the codes are also expected to have feat net rates, when there are not enough ebits shared between the sender and receiver. In this paper, entanglement-assisted irregular quantum error-correcting codes achieving this goal are constructed from quaternary classical irregular repeat accumulate codes. Because of their sparse tanner graphs, the constructed codes have relatively low polynomial time-encoding complexity, and can be efficiently decoded by using sum–product algorithm. Moreover, the simulation results show that they outperform their existing quantum regular counterparts which are based on binary classical regular codes.

Effect of Comonomer Sequence Distribution on the Adsorption of Random Copolymers onto Impenetrable Flat Surfaces

We study the effect of comonomer sequence distributions in random copolymers (RCPs) on RCP adsorption on flat impenetrable surfaces. RCP poly(styrene-co-4-bromostyrene) (PBrxS), where x denotes the mole fraction of 4-bromostryrene (4-BrS), is prepared by bromination of parent homopolystyrene. By varying the solvent quality during the bromination, either “truly random” (good solvent) or “random-blocky” (poor solvent) PBrxS RCPs are prepared. Adsorption studies of PBrxS from various solvents at silica surfaces reveal that the adsorption of PBrxS increases with (1) increasing blockiness of the macromolecule, (2) increasing content of 4-BrS in PBrxS, and (3) decreasing solvent quality. Additionally, the effect of comonomer sequence distribution on RCP adsorption is modeled in detail using a coarse-grained statistical mechanical model and fully atomistic simulations based on configurational-biased grand-canonical Monte Carlo (CB-GCMC) technique. The main result from the simulations can be summarized as follows: (1) Increasing the degree of “blockiness” in comonomer distribution enhances the adsorption of macromolecules dissolved in a good solvent. (2) Near the adsorption transition, the amount of adsorbed segments in “random-blocky” copolymers is larger relative to their regular multiblock counterparts. (3) Lowering the solvent quality facilitates copolymer adsorption. Overall, the findings from computer modeling are found to be in a good agreement with the experimental data.

Modularity and robustness of bone networks

Cortical bones, essential for mechanical support and structure in many animals, involve a large number of canals organized in intricate fashion. By using state-of-the art image analysis and computer graphics, the 3D reconstruction of a whole bone (phalange) of a young chicken was obtained and represented in terms of a complex network where each canal was associated to an edge and every confluence of three or more canals yielded a respective node. The representation of the bone canal structure as a complex network has allowed several methods to be applied in order to characterize and analyze the canal system organization and the robustness. First, the distribution of the node degrees (i.e. the number of canals connected to each node) confirmed previous indications that bone canal networks follow a power law, and therefore present some highly connected nodes (hubs). The bone network was also found to be partitioned into communities or modules, i.e. groups of nodes which are more intensely connected to one another than with the rest of the network. We verified that each community exhibited distinct topological properties that are possibly linked with their specific function. In order to better understand the organization of the bone network, its resilience to two types of failures (random attack and cascaded failures) was also quantified comparatively to randomized and regular counterparts. The results indicate that the modular structure improves the robustness of the bone network when compared to a regular network with the same average degree and number of nodes. The effects of disease processes (e.g., osteoporosis) and mutations in genes (e.g., BMP4) that occur at the molecular level can now be investigated at the mesoscopic level by using network based approaches.

Dirac-Yang monopoles in all dimensions and their regular counterparts

The Dirac-Yang monopoles are singular Yang-Mills field configurations in all Euclidean dimensions. The regular counterpart of the Dirac monopole in D = 3 is the’ t Hooft-Polyakov monopole, the former being simply a gauge transform of the asymptotic fields of the latter. Here, regular counterparts of Dirac-Yang monopoles in all dimensions are described. In the first part of this work, the hierarchy of Dirac-Yang monopoles will be defined; in the second part, the motivation to study these in a topical context will be briefly presented; and in the last part, two classes of regular counterparts to the Dirac-Yang hierarchy will be presented.

A Fast Passivity Test for Stable Descriptor Systems via Skew-Hamiltonian/Hamiltonian Matrix Pencil Transformations

Passivity of a linear system is an important property to guarantee stable global simulation. Most circuits and interconnected systems are naturally described as descriptor systems (DSs) or singular state spaces. Passivity tests for DSs, however, are much less developed compared to their regular (nonsingular) state space counterparts. For large-scale DSs, the existing linear-matrix-inequality test is computationally prohibitive. Other system decoupling techniques involve complicated algorithms and sometimes ill-conditioned transformations. This paper proposes a simple DS passivity test based on the insight that the sum of a passive system and its adjoint must render an impulse-free system under minimal realization. The proper part (nonimpulsive part) and the residue matrix at infinity (impulsive part), if any, of a passive DS are conveniently extracted using numerically efficient skew-Hamiltonian/Hamiltonian matrix pencil techniques. Numerical experiments confirm the effectiveness of the proposed test over conventional approaches.

Flow dimension and capacity for structuring urban street networks

This paper aims to measure the efficiency of urban street networks (a kind of complex networks) from the perspective of the multidimensional chain of connectivity (or flow). More specifically, we define two quantities: flow dimension and flow capacity, to characterize structures of urban street networks. To our surprise, for the topologies of urban street networks, previously confirmed as a form of small world and scale-free networks, we find that (1) the range of their flow dimensions is rather wider than their random and regular counterparts, (2) their flow dimension shows a power-law distribution, and (3) they have a higher flow capacity than their random and regular counterparts. The findings confirm that (1) both the wider range of flow dimensions and the higher flow capacity can be a signature of small world networks, and (2) the flow capacity can be an alternative quantity for measuring the efficiency of networks or that of the individual nodes. The findings are illustrated using three urban street networks (two in Europe and one in the USA).

Trends in the management of type 2 diabetes: an emerging role for insulin.

This review is intended to explore the pathophysiology of type 2 diabetes, examine the role of insulin as a means of achieving glycemic control in people with type 2 diabetes, and provide a practical approach for insulin use in type 2 diabetes in the managed care setting. This manuscript is based on the results of a MEDLINE literature search and presentations by the authors at a symposium titled, "Emerging Changes in Diabetes Management," that took place on October, 14, 2004, at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy's 2004 Educational Conference in Baltimore, Maryland. Despite advances in oral treatment, type 2 diabetes remains a substantial source of microvascular and macrovascular complications that cause unacceptable levels of morbidity, mortality, and cost. Accumulating clinical evidence suggests that insulin treatment, both basal and prandial, can advance the treatment of type 2 diabetes and reduce the risks for serious sequelae by providing consistent and optimal glycemic control. By more closely mimicking the actions of endogenous insulin, in terms of onset and duration of action, insulin analogues offer clear advantages over their regular insulin counterparts.

Vision pyramids that do not grow too high

In irregular pyramids, their vertical structure is not determined beforehand as in regular pyramids. We present three methods, all based on maximal independent sets from graph theory, with the aim to simulate the major sampling properties of the regular counterparts: good coverage of the higher resolution level, not too large sampling gaps and, most importantly, the resulting height, e.g. the number of levels to reach the apex. We show both theoretically and experimentally that the number of vertices can be reduced by a factor of 2.0 at each level. The plausibility of log (diameter) pyramids is supported by psychological and psychophysical considerations. Their technical relevance is demonstrated by enhancing appearance-based object recognition. An irregular pyramid hypothesis generation for robust PCA through top–down attention mechanisms achieves higher speed and quality than regular pyramids and non-pyramidal approaches.

THE STUDY OF THE DYNAMICS OF IRREGULAR SPAN LENGTHS OF BRIDGE STRUCTURES

The article is devoted to the possibility of replacement of complex inseparable irregular bridge structures by their regular counterparts, with minimal errors in definition of the own frequencies. The analysis has been performed on a real five-span bridge structure, designed under a 66 +126 +147 +115 + 76 – meter scheme.

Self-embedded context-free grammars with regular counterparts

In general, it is undecidable if an arbitrary context-free grammar has a regular solution. Past work has focused on special cases, such as one-letter grammars, non self-embedded grammars and the fi...

Solitons in regular and random split-step systems

Fundamental properties of solitons in the recently introduced split-step model (SSM) are investigated. The SSM is a system that consists of periodically alternating dispersive and nonlinear segments, a period being of the same order of magnitude as the soliton’s dispersion length. The model including fiber loss and gain can always be reduced to its lossless version. First, we develop a variational approximation that makes it possible to explain the existence of SSM solitons that were originally found solely in numerical form. Overall dynamic behavior of a SSM is described by a phase diagram that identifies an established state (stationary soliton, breather with long-period oscillations, splitting into several pulses, or decay into radiation) depending on the amplitude and the width of the initial pulse. In particular, strong saturation in the dependence of the amplitude of the established soliton on the amplitude of the initial pulse is found. The results clearly show some similarities and drastic differences between the SSM and the ordinary soliton model based on the nonlinear Schrodinger equation. A random version of the SSM is introduced, with the length of the system’s cell uniformly distributed in some interval, which is a relevant case for applications to fiber-optic telecommunication networks. It is found that the dynamics of the SSM solitons as well as interactions between them in random systems (both single-channel and multichannel systems) are virtually the same as in their regular counterparts.

Conductance and congestion in power law graphs

It has been observed that the degrees of the topologies of several communication networks follow heavy tailed statistics. What is the impact of such heavy tailed statistics on the performance of basic communication tasks that a network is presumed to support? How does performance scale with the size of the network? We study routing in families of sparse random graphs whose degrees follow heavy tailed distributions. Instantiations of such random graphs have been proposed as models for the topology of the Internet at the level of Autonomous Systems as well as at the level of routers. Let n be the number of nodes. Suppose that for each pair of nodes with degrees d u and d v we have O(d u d v ) units of demand. Thus the total demand is O(n 2 ) . We argue analytically and experimentally that in the considered random graph model such demand patterns can be routed so that the flow through each link is at most O(n log 2 n) . This is to be compared with a bound O(n 2 ) that holds for arbitrary graphs. Similar results were previously known for sparse random regular graphs, a.k.a. "expander graphs." The significance is that Internet-like topologies, which grow in a dynamic, decentralized fashion and appear highly inhomogeneous, can support routing with performance characteristics comparable to those of their regular counterparts, at least under the assumption of uniform demand and capacities. Our proof uses approximation algorithms for multicommodity flow and establishes strong bounds of a generalization of "expansion," namely "conductance." Besides routing, our bounds on conductance have further implications, most notably on the gap between first and second eigenvalues of the stochastic normalization of the adjacency matrix of the graph.

A new algorithm for regularizing one-letter context-free grammars

Constructive methods for obtaining regular grammar counterparts for some sub-classes of context-free grammars (CFGs) have been investigated by many researchers. An important class of grammars for which this is always possible is the one-letter CFG. We show in this paper a new constructive method for transforming an arbitrary one-letter CFG to an equivalent regular expression of star-height 0 or 1. Our new result is considerably simpler than a previous construction by Leiss, and we also propose a new normal form for a regular expression with only a single-star occurrence. Through an alphabet factorization theorem, we show how to go beyond the one-letter CFG in a straight-forward way.