Acetabular loading in active abduction.

Operative fixation of fragments in acetabular fracture treatment is not strong enough to allow weight bearing before the bone is healed. In some patients, even passive or active nonweight-bearing exercises could lead to dislocation of fragments and posttraumatic osteoarthritis. Therefore, early rehabilitation should avoid loading the acetabulum in the regions of fracture lines. The aim of the paper is to estimate acetabular loading in nonweight-bearing upright, supine, and side-lying leg abduction. Three-dimensional mathematical models of the hip joint reaction force and the contact hip stress were used to simulate active exercises in different body positions. The absolute values of the hip joint reaction force and the peak contact hip stress are the highest in unsupported supine abduction (1.3 MPa) and in side-lying abduction (1.2 MPa), lower in upright abduction (0.5 MPa), and the lowest in supported supine abduction (0.2 MPa). All body positions the hip joint reaction force and the peak contact hip stress are the highest in the posterior-superior quadrant of acetabulum, followed by anterior-superior quadrant, posterior-inferior quadrant, and finally anterior-inferior quadrant. Spatial distribution of the average acetabular loading shows that early rehabilitation should be planned according to location of the fracture lines.     

Efficient 3-D TOF PET Reconstruction Using View-Grouped Histo-Images: DIRECT—Direct Image Reconstruction for TOF

For modern time-of-flight (TOF) positron emission tomography (PET) systems, in which the number of possible lines of response and TOF bins is much larger than the number of acquired events, the most appropriate reconstruction approaches are considered to be list-mode methods. However, their shortcomings are relatively high computational costs for reconstruction and for sensitivity matrix calculation. Efficient treatment of TOF data within the proposed DIRECT approach is obtained by 1) angular (azimuthal and co-polar) grouping of TOF events to a set of views as given by the angular sampling requirements for the TOF resolution, and 2) deposition (weighted-histogramming) of these grouped events, and correction data, into a set of ldquohisto-images,rdquo one histo-image per view. The histo-images have the same geometry (voxel grid, size and orientation) as the reconstructed image. The concept is similar to the approach involving binning of the TOF data into angularly subsampled histo-projections - projections expanded in the TOF directions. However, unlike binning into histo-projections, the deposition of TOF events directly into the image voxels eliminates the need for tracing and/or interpolation operations during the reconstruction. Together with the performance of reconstruction operations directly in image space, this leads to a very efficient implementation of TOF reconstruction algorithms. Furthermore, the resolution properties are not compromised either, since events are placed into the image elements of the desired size from the beginning. Concepts and efficiency of the proposed data partitioning scheme are demonstrated in this work by using the DIRECT approach in conjunction with the row-action maximum-likelihood (RAMLA) algorithm.     

Influence of sulfated arabino- and glucuronoxylans charging-behavior regarding antithrombotic properties

During the last decade xylans were widely researched and several derivatives have been developed and analyzed. However, the application properties of these new products are still sparsely known. The main objective of the presented investigation was to examine whether sulfated xylans from different sources (hard wood and oat-spelt) possess antithrombotic properties and how their protonation/deprotonation behavior in water solutions influence these properties. Two types of xylans, glucuronoxylan derived from beech wood, and arabinoxylan from oat spelt, were sulfated. Infrared spectroscopy, elemental analysis, NMR and size exclusion chromatography were applied for analyzing the success of derivatization. Deprotonation/protonation behavior of xylan samples in water solutions was analyzed by titration methods and the antithrombotic properties were investigated using activated partial thromboplastin time determination.The results showed significant increases in negative charges for the sulfated samples, which were a consequence of introducing sulfated groups as strong acids. However, the increase of antithrombotic properties was not influenced only by the presence of certain amounts of sulfate functional groups but also by the total negative-charges originating from both sulfate and carboxyl groups. The later was proved by the high linear correlation between the activated partial thromboplastin time values, and the total charge of the samples.     

Remote-based text-to-speech modules’ evaluation framework: the RES framework

The ECESS consortium (European Center of Excellence in Speech Synthesis) aims to speed up progress in speech synthesis technology, by providing an appropriate evaluation framework. The key element of the evaluation framework is based on the partition of a text-to-speech synthesis system into distributed TTS modules. A text processing, prosody generation, and an acoustic synthesis module have been specified currently. A split into various modules has the advantage that the developers of an institution active in ECESS, can concentrate its efforts on a single module, and test its performance in a complete system using missing modules from the developers of other institutions. In this way, complete TTS systems can be built using high performance modules from different institutions. In order to evaluate the modules and to connect modules efficiently, a remote evaluation platform—the Remote Evaluation System (RES) based on the existing internet infrastructure—has been developed within ECESS. The RES is based on client–server architecture. It consists of RES module servers, which encapsulate the modules of the developers, a RES client, which sends data to and receives data from the RES module servers, and a RES server, which connects the RES module servers, and organizes the flow of information. RES can be used by developers for selecting RES module from the internet, which contains a missing TTS module needed to test and improve the performances of their own modules. Finally, the RES allows for the evaluation of TTS modules running at different institutions worldwide. When using the RES client, the institution performing the evaluation is able to set-up and performs various evaluation tasks by sending test data via the RES client and receiving results from the RES module servers. Currently ELDA is setting-up an evaluation using the RES client, which will then be extended to an evaluation client specializing in the envisaged evaluation tasks.     

A Numerical Analysis of the Local Anomalies in a Natural-Draft Cooling Tower

This paper presents experimental and numerical analyses of the aero-thermodynamic characteristics of a natural-draft cooling tower. The influence of local technical faults in the fill and rain region on the cooling tower's performance was estimated. Measurements of the air velocity and the temperature above the droplet eliminators showed a noticeable non-uniformity of both parameters. This is caused by a non-uniform airflow resistance and heat-transfer rate within the fill and rain region. Based on these measurements, a commercial CFD model was customized with additional relations describing the heat- and mass-transfer, as well as the airflow resistance in individual regions of the cooling tower. The results of a 3D numerical simulation of the cooling tower are the temperature and velocity distributions within the entire cooling tower. A comparison of nominal and actual cooling tower operation shows regions with unfavorable air temperatures or velocities. Thus, the inefficiently operating areas of the cooling tower's cross-section can be identified. These areas cause non-homogeneous aero-thermodynamic characteristics and have an influence on the integral characteristics of the cooling tower. A sample calculation of an actual cooling tower shows the usefulness of the method when it comes to improving the cooling tower's performance. The improvement can be achieved by modifying the fill resistance and water distribution.     

Application of Lactobacillus plantarum in Functional Products Based on Fermented Buckwheat

In this work, 12 plant‐based potential probiotic mashes were produced by fermenting buckwheat with lactic acid cocci of the Fresco DVS 1010 culture and the human‐derived isolate Lactobacillus plantarum HM1. The effect of single and coculture fermentation was studied at 30 and 37 ± 0.5 °C for 8 hr (5% CO₂), followed by a storage period of 21 days (6 ± 0.5 °C). Although milk is the typical growth medium for lactic acid bacteria (LAB), presumably viable counts of Fresco reached levels of 10⁸ to 10⁹ CFU/mL (specific growth rates ranging from 1.07 to 1.40 hr^?1) with higher counts in coculture fermentation (13%) that differed statistically significantly (P < 0.05). After storage, 194 to 4700 mg/kg lactic acid was found in the mashes, with significantly higher contents after cocultivation (11% to 96%). Based on the overall acceptance of the designed products, milk‐based mashes right after the fermentation were evaluated as the most satisfactory (3.3 to 3.6). Those after the storage period (21 days) exhibited an attractive sensory acceptability (2.2 to 3.2).     

2.5-D simultaneous multislice reconstruction by series expansion methods from Fourier-rebinned PET data

True three-dimensional (3-D) volume reconstruction from fully 3-D data in positron emission tomography (PET) has only a limited clinical use because of its large computational burden. Fourier rebinning (FORE) of the fully 3-D data into a set of 2-D sinogram data decomposes the 3-D reconstruction process into multiple 2-D reconstructions of decoupled 2-D image slices, thus substantially decreasing the computational burden even in the case when the 2-D reconstructions are performed by an iterative reconstruction algorithm. On the other hand, the approximations involved in the rebinning combined with the decoupling of the image slices cause a certain reduction of image quality, especially when the signal-to-noise ratio of the data is low. We propose a 2.5-D Simultaneous Multislice Reconstruction approach, based on the series expansion principle, where the volume is represented by the superposition of 3-D spherically symmetric bell-shaped basis functions. It takes advantage of the time reduction due to the use of the FORE (2-D) data, instead of the original fully 3-D data, but at the same time uses a 3-D iterative reconstruction approach with 3-D basis functions. The same general approach can be applied to any reconstruction algorithm belonging to the class of series expansion methods (iterative or noniterative) using 3-D basis functions that span multiple slices, and can be used for any multislice sinogram or list mode data whether obtained by a special rebinning scheme or acquired directly by a PET scanner in the 2-D mode using septa. Our studies confirm that the proposed 2.5-D approach provides a considerable improvement in reconstruction quality, as compared to the standard 2-D reconstruction approach, while the reconstruction time is of the same order as that of the 2-D approach and is clinically practical even on a general-purpose computer.     

Efficient Development of Lexical Language Resources and their Representation

Statistical approaches in speech technology, whether used for statistical language models, trees, hidden Markov models or neural networks, represent the driving forces for the creation of language resources (LR), e.g., text corpora, pronunciation and morphology lexicons, and speech databases. This paper presents a system architecture for the rapid construction of morphologic and phonetic lexicons, two of the most important written language resources for the development of ASR (automatic speech recognition) and TTS (text-to-speech) systems. The presented architecture is modular and is particularly suitable for the development of written language resources for inflectional languages. In this paper an implementation is presented for the Slovenian language. The integrated graphic user interface focuses on the morphological and phonetic aspects of language and allows experts to produce good performances during analysis. In multilingual TTS systems, many extensive external written language resources are used, especially in the text processing part. It is very important, therefore, that representation of these resources is time and space efficient. It is also very important that language resources for new languages can be easily incorporated into the system, without modifying the common algorithms developed for multiple languages. In this regard the use of large external language resources (e.g., morphology and phonetic lexicons) represent an important problem because of the required space and slow look-up time. This paper presents a method and its results for compiling large lexicons, using examples for compiling German phonetic and morphology lexicons (CISLEX), and Slovenian phonetic (SIflex) and morphology (SImlex) lexicons, into corresponding finite-state transducers (FSTs). The German lexicons consisted of about 300,000 words, SIflex consisted of about 60,000 and SImlex of about 600,000 words (where 40,000 words were used for representation using finite-state transducers). Representation of large lexicons using finite-state transducers is mainly motivated by considerations of space and time efficiency. A great reduction in size and optimal access time was achieved for all lexicons. The starting size for the German phonetic lexicon was 12.53 MB and 18.49 MB for the morphology lexicon. The starting size for the Slovenian phonetic lexicon was 1.8 MB and 1.4 MB for the morphology lexicon. The final size of the corresponding FSTs was 2.78 MB for the German phonetic lexicon, 6.33 MB for the German morphology lexicon, 253 KB for SIflex and 662 KB for the SImlex lexicon. The achieved look-up time is optimal, since it only depends on the length of the input word and not on the size of the lexicon. Integration of lexicons for new languages into the multilingual TTS system is easy when using such representations and does not require any changes in the algorithms used for such lexicons.     

Soil-moisture estimation from TerraSAR-X data using neural networks

Early prediction of natural disasters like floods and landslides is essential for reasons of public safety. This can be attained by processing Synthetic-Aperture Radar (SAR) images and retrieving soil-moisture parameters. In this article, TerraSAR-X product images are investigated in combination with a water-cloud model based on the Shi semi-empirical model to determine the accuracy of soil-moisture parameter retrieval. SAR images were captured between January 2008 and September 2010 in the vicinity of the city Maribor, Slovenia, at different incidence angles. The water-cloud model provides acceptable estimated soil-moisture parameters at bare or scarcely vegetated soil areas. However, this model is too sensitive to speckle noise; therefore, a pre-processing step for speckle-noise reduction is carried out. Afterwards, self-organizing neural networks (SOM) are used to segment the areas at which the performance of this model is poor, and at the same time neural networks are also used for a more accurate approximation of model parameters’ values. Ground-truth is measured using the Pico64 sensor located on the field, simultaneously with capturing SAR images, in order to enable the comparison and validation of the obtained results. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the water-cloud model accuracy over all incidence angles.     

Banks and information technology: marketability vs. relationships

This paper evaluates the impact of information technology (IT) on the operations of banks and the structure of the banking industry, including implications for stability. On the one hand, banks can focus on relationship banking and use IT developments to tailor services to individual needs and build enhanced, albeit modified, relationships with customers. On the other hand, IT better allows banks to exploit economies of scale and scope, which are most evident in transaction banking. Another manifestation of IT is via financial innovations that have enhanced marketability. Stability enters the picture because increased marketability facilitates opportunistic behavior. Together with enhanced herding behavior and changes in industry structure, this could undermine stability and augment systemic risk, calling for a regulatory overhaul.