Toolkit For Measurement Research Articles

Designing a Virtual Toolkit for Analysing Planetary Science Data in Virtual Reality.

To understand the surface evolution and potential habitability of other planets we must analyse their geology - the 3D structure and chemistry of the rocks that are exposed at the surface. Although rovers capture this 3D structure using stereo camera systems and other instruments, when we present this information to mission scientists for analysis it is generally confined to the 2D plane of a computer screen, and the spatial information is lost at the point when it is needed most. To address this problem, we design, develop, and evaluate a prototype Virtual Environment to present geological data in the 3D form in which it was originally captured, and users are supplied with a toolkit for measurement and annotation of data. We observed that users were inspired by the environment and felt more connected to it because they could move within the data; they valued the tools but did not trust the scale and therefore did not always trust the results. We conclude with recommendations for others working in this application area, and pose a series of questions for future research.

Protein G: β-galactosidase fusion protein for multi-modal bioanalytical applications.

β-galactosidase (β-gal) is one of the most prevalent markers of gene expression. Its activity can be monitored via optical and fluorescence microscopy, electrochemistry, and many other ways after slight modification using protein engineering. Here, we have constructed a chimeric version that incorporates a streptococcal protein G domain at the N-terminus of β-gal that binds immunoglobins, namely IgG. This protein G: β-galactosidase fusion enables β-gal-based spectrophotometric and electrochemical measurements of IgG. Moreover, our results show linearity over an industrially relevant range. We demonstrate applicability with rapid spectroelectrochemical detection of IgG in several formats including using an electrochemical sensing interface that is rapidly assembled directly onto electrodes for incorporation into biohybrid devices. The fusion protein enables sensitive, linear, and rapid responses, and in our case, makes IgG measurements quite robust and simple, expanding the molecular diagnostics toolkit for biological measurement.

Radiation interaction properties of verious polymers, satureted and unsaturated fatty acids: A comparative investigation of Monte carlo simulation and NISTXCOM

This work represents the study of mass attenuation coefficient, total atomic cross section, total electronic cross section, effective atomic number, effective electron density and half value layer for selected three polymers : Polyacetylene (C2H2n), Polyethelyne (C2H4n), Polypyrrole (C4H5n) seven Saturated fatty Acids : Arachidiec Acids (C20H32O2), Capric Acid (C10H20O2), Caprylic Acid (C8H16O2), Cerotic Acid (C26H52O2), Lauric Acid (C12H24O2), Myristic Acid(C14H28O2), Plamatic Acid(C16H32O2) and Six Unsaturated fatty Acids : Arachidonic Acid (C20H32O2), Decosahexaaenic Acid (C22H32O2), Eliadic Acid (C18H34O2), Lenoleic Acid (C18H32O2), Erucic Acid (C22H42O2), Oleic Acid(C18H34O2) using NIST-XCOM and Geant4 Monte-Carlo simulation at the energy range 122 keV to 1330keV. Successfully designed narrow beam geometry in Geant4 code for low energy electromagnetic interaction study. We found the errors within 0.001% in the determined results of mass attenuation coefficient and showed Geant4 isa powerful toolkit for measurement of radiation interaction parameter with matter. The variation in effective atomic number and effective electron density with incident photon energy were observed due to the prevalence of photon interaction processes. The Monte-Carlo simulations and theoretical simulation results have been showed that the polymers have good shielding properties as compared with saturated and unsaturated fatty acids. From obtained results, it was noticed that Geant4 Monte-Carlois in good accord XCOM database.

Post-tuberculosis lung health: perspectives from the First International Symposium.

ALTHOUGH CURABLE, TB frequently leaves the individual with chronic physical and psycho-social impairment, but these consequences have been largely neglected. The 1st International Post-Tuberculosis Symposium (Stellenbosch, South Africa) was held to discuss priorities and gaps in addressing this issue. A barrier to progress has been the varied terminology and nomenclature, so the Delphi process was used to achieve consensus on definitions. Lack of sufficient evidence hampered definitive recommendations in most domains, including prevention and treatment of post-TB lung disease (PTLD), but the discussions clarified the research needed. A consensus was reached on a toolkit for future PTLD measurement and on PTLD patterns to be considered. The importance of extra-pulmonary consequences and progressive impairment throughout the life-course was identified, including TB recurrence and increased mortality. Patient advocates emphasised the need to address the psychological and social impacts post TB and called for clinical guidance. More generally, there is an urgent need for increased awareness and research into post-TB complications.

DMLR: A toolkit for investigation of deoxyribozyme-mediated ligation based on real time PCR

Deoxyribozymes or DNAzyme are identified as catalytic DNA sequences which catalyze different chemical reactions. Ligating deoxyribozymes catalyze the formation of branched and linear products. Due to the lack of efficient read-out systems, there is no report on in vivo application of ligating deoxyribozymes. To expand the biological application of branched-RNA forming deoxyribozymes, we performed our study in order to suggest a practical toolkit for measurement of in vivo real-time activity of ligating deoxyribozymes. Further in vitro studies were designed to analyze the effects of the location of branch site on reverse transcriptase (RT) interference. With this toolkit even the activity of RT was measured precisely. Our results indicate that the activity of RT enzyme significantly affected by a 17 nt branched adaptor synthesized by 10DM24 ligating deoxyribozyme. The RT stalls at or near the RNA branch point during both initiation and elongation phases. The DNA synthesis is decreased 4.3 and 2.7 fold during initiation and elongation phases respectively.In conclusion, we introduce a general and practical toolkit called “DMLR” which is based on Real-time PCR method. The use of DMLR precisely determines RT behavior when encountered with any backbone modification with the ability of stopping the enzyme activity.

Kontrola timova - model i empirijski dokazi iz Bugarske

This paper suggests an original model for control on teams. The originality of the model is associated with a combination of management concepts and mathematical theories of fuzzy logic and fuzzy sets. In addition to the team control model, the author proposes a toolkit for measurement and evaluation of team performance. The toolkit incorporates fuzzy techniques and tools for quantification of evaluations, decision-making, study of joint influences and hidden effects. The results from testing the team control model at a Bulgarian University are also presented and discussed in this paper.

EpsiMu, A toolkit for permittivity and permeability measurement in microwave domain at real time of all materials: Applications to solid and semisolid materials

AbstractIn this article, we present a very simple toolkit for permittivity and permeability measurement in the microwave region in real time. This kit contains a coaxial cell and a dedicated software compatible with any Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) for the reconstruction of permittivity and permeability data. The customizing design of the coaxial cell depends on the applications and material forms. The dedicated software for overall cells reconstructs directly in real time the permittivity and the permeability from the S‐parameters measured. The Nicolson & Ross‐Weir algorithm is using after a de‐embedding process done by modeling our cell with an identity card (IC). The novelty of our method is that, after calibration process of the VNA to remove the cable effect, the measurement of the permittivity and permeability were done directly after only one measurement in real time. To validate the accuracy of this new measurement process for new applications, we reconstruct the permittivity of two material forms (dielectric or/and magnetic solids, semisolid). This new toolkit is called EpsiMu (www.epsimu.fr). © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 52:2643–2648, 2010; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.25570

An open-source toolkit for the volumetric measurement of CT lung lesions

An open source lesion sizing toolkit has been developed with a general architecture for implementing lesion segmentation algorithms and a reference algorithm for segmenting solid and part-solid lesions from lung CT scans. The CT lung lesion segmentation algorithm detects four three-dimensional features corresponding to the lung wall, vasculature, lesion boundary edges, and low density background lung parenchyma. These features form boundaries and propagation zones that guide the evolution of a subsequent level set algorithm. User input is used to determine an initial seed point for the level set and users may also define a region of interest around the lesion. The methods are validated against 18 nodules using CT scans of an anthropomorphic thorax phantom simulating lung anatomy. The scans were acquired under differing scanner parameters to characterize algorithm behavior under varying acquisition protocols. We also validated repeatability using six clinical cases in which the patient was rescanned on the same day (zero volume change). The source code, data sets, and a running application are all provided under an unrestrictive license to encourage reproducibility and foster scientific exchange.

A dynamic and scalable performance monitoring toolkit for cluster and grid environments

The low-cost and availability of network of workstations have made them an attractive solution for high performance computing. Striking progress of network technology is enabling high-performance global computing in which large sets of diverse and geographically distributed resources are transparently and coordinately employed to solve large-scale problems. In this paper, Visuel toolkit for performance measurement and analysis of parallel applications in cluster and grid environments is presented. It is a web-based interface designed not only to provide dynamic monitoring view and management information, but also performance activity of all computing nodes of computing platform involved in the execution of a parallel application. Evaluations using this toolkit show the effectiveness in easing the process of investigation and implementation of parallel applications.

Performance-based parallel application toolkit for high-performance clusters

Advances in computer technology, encompassed with fast emerging of multicore processor technology, have made the many-core personal computers available and more affordable. The availability of network of workstations and cluster of many-core SMPs have made them an attractive solution for high performance computing by providing computational power equal or superior to supercomputers or mainframes at an affordable cost using commodity components. In order to search alternative ways to extract unused and idle computing power from these computing resources targeting to improve overall performance, as well as to fully utilize the underlying new hardware platforms, these are major topics in this field of research. In this research paper, the design rationale and implementation of an effective toolkit for performance measurement and analysis of parallel applications in cluster environments is introduced; not only generating parallel applications' timing graph representation, but also to provide application execution's performance data charts. The goal in developing this toolkit is to permit application developers have a better understanding of the application's behavior among selected computing nodes purposed for that particular execution. Additionally, multiple execution results of a given application under development can be combined and overlapped, permitting application developers to perform "what-if" analysis, i.e., to deeper understand the utilization of allocated computational resources. Experimentations using this toolkit have shown its effectiveness on the development and performance tuning of parallel applications, extending the use in teaching of message passing, and shared memory model parallel programming courses.

The design and implementation of Visuel performance monitoring and analysis toolkit for cluster and grid environments

The computing power provided by high performance and low-cost PC-based clusters with Grid platforms are attractive and they are equal or superior to supercomputers and mainframes. In this paper, we present implementation and design rationale of Visuel toolkit for MPI parallel program performance measurement and analysis in cluster and grid environments. Most of performance visualization tools available today for high-performance platforms show solely system performance data (e.g., CPU load, memory usage, network bandwidth, server average load), and thus, being suitable for computing system activity visualization. The Visuel (Visuel (in French language) = to visualize) toolkit is web-based interface designed to show performance activities of all computing nodes of a distributed environment involved in the execution of MPI parallel program, such as CPU load level and memory usage of each computing node. In addition, this toolkit is able to display comparative performance data charts of MPI parallel applications and multiple executions under investigation. The usage of this toolkit shows that it outperforms in easing the process of investigation of parallel applications.

A simple way to calculate the Gini Coefficient for grouped as well as ungrouped data

Numerous methods have been proposed for calculating the Gini coefficient, the most widely used statistical measure of income inequality. The Milanovic (Bulletin of Economic Research, 46, 81-90, 1994) measure is simple, accurate and has attractive decomposition properties. However its use is confined to ungrouped data. This paper derives and applies the analogue of the Milanovic 94 measure for the case of grouped data. Both the grouped and ungrouped formulae offer a useful toolkit for inequality measurement.

A Tool Kit for Measurement of Organisational Learning: Methodological Requirements and an Illustrative Example

+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ !!!!!!!!!!!# ! % !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!# % !!!# !!!!!!!!!!!# & & % !!!!!!!!!!!!! % !!!!!!!# !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! & %! ! ! # !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! & & !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!! % !!!# !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!! & & !!!!!# & & ! % !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!! & !!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!# & & !!!!!!! % !!! & !!! & !!! !!!!!# & !!! % !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! # %

JEWEL: design and implementation of a distributed measurement system

The distributed measurement system JEWEL, developed within project RelaX, is described. JEWEL consists of a flexible toolkit for low-interference online performance measurement integrated with a powerful adaptable graphical presentation facility and a generic interactive experiment control system. JEWEL supports a large set of different system models as well as a wide variety of interfaces to the observed system. Two examples are presented in order to demonstrate its flexibility.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>