Decision Support Facility for the APS Control System

The Advanced Photon Source is now in its fifth year of routine beam production. The EPICS-based [1] control system has entered the phase in its life cycle where new control algorithms must be implemented under increasingly stringent operational and reliability requirements. The sheer volume of the control system (~270,000 records, ~145 VME-based input-output controllers (IOCs), and ~7,000,000 lines of EPICS ASCII configuration code), presents a daunting challenge for code maintenance. The present work describes a relational database that provides an integrated view of the interacting components of the entire APS control system, including the IOC low-level logic, the physical wiring documentation, and high-level client applications. The database is extracted (booted) from the same operational CVS repository as that used to load the active IOCs. It provides site-wide decision support facilities to inspect and trace control flow and to identify client (e.g., user interface) programs involved at any selected point in the front-end logic. The relational database forms a basis for generalized documentation of global control logic and its connection with both the physical I/O and with external high-level applications

Testing and Implementation Progress on the Advanced Photon Source (APS) Linear Accelerator (Linac) High-Power S-band Switching System

An S-band linear accelerator is the source of particles and the front end of the Advanced Photon Source injector. In addition, it supports a low-energy undulator test line (LEUTL) and drives a free-electron laser (FEL). A waveguide-switching and distribution system is now under construction. The system configuration was revised to be consistent with the recent change to electron-only operation. There are now six modulator-klystron subsystems, two of which are being configured to act as hot spares for two S-band transmitters each, so that no single failure will prevent injector operation. The two subsystems are also used to support additional LEUTL capabilities and off-line testing. Design considerations for the waveguide-switching subsystem, topology selection, control and protection provisions, high-power test results, and current status are describedComment: Linac 2000 paper No. THE07 3 pages with 3 figure

Platelet-rich plasma for regeneration of neural feedback pathways around dental implants: a concise review and outlook on future possibilities

published_or_final_versio

The state of the Martian climate

60°N was +2.0°C, relative to the 1981–2010 average value (Fig. 5.1). This marks a new high for the record. The average annual surface air temperature (SAT) anomaly for 2016 for land stations north of starting in 1900, and is a significant increase over the previous highest value of +1.2°C, which was observed in 2007, 2011, and 2015. Average global annual temperatures also showed record values in 2015 and 2016. Currently, the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of lower latitudes

Ultrasound Liver Fibrosis Diagnosis using Multi-indicator guided Deep Neural Networks

Accurate analysis of the fibrosis stage plays very important roles in follow-up of patients with chronic hepatitis B infection. In this paper, a deep learning framework is presented for automatically liver fibrosis prediction. On contrary of previous works, our approach can take use of the information provided by multiple ultrasound images. An indicator-guided learning mechanism is further proposed to ease the training of the proposed model. This follows the workflow of clinical diagnosis and make the prediction procedure interpretable. To support the training, a dataset is well-collected which contains the ultrasound videos/images, indicators and labels of 229 patients. As demonstrated in the experimental results, our proposed model shows its effectiveness by achieving the state-of-the-art performance, specifically, the accuracy is 65.6%(20% higher than previous best).Comment: Jiali Liu and Wenxuan Wang are equal contributio

Platelet-Rich Plasma Promotes the Proliferation of Human Muscle Derived Progenitor Cells and Maintains Their Stemness

Human muscle-derived progenitor cells (hMDPCs) offer great promise for muscle cell-based regenerative medicine; however, prolonged ex-vivo expansion using animal sera is necessary to acquire sufficient cells for transplantation. Due to the risks associated with the use of animal sera, the development of a strategy for the ex vivo expansion of hMDPCs is required. The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of using platelet-rich plasma (PRP) for the ex-vivo expansion of hMDPCs. Pre-plated MDPCs, myoendothelial cells, and pericytes are three populations of hMDPCs that we isolated by the modified pre-plate technique and Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorting (FACS), respectively. Pooled allogeneic human PRP was obtained from a local blood bank, and the effect that thrombin-activated PRP-releasate supplemented media had on the ex-vivo expansion of the hMDPCs was tested against FBS supplemented media, both in vitro and in vivo. PRP significantly enhanced short and long-term cell proliferation, with or without FBS supplementation. Antibody-neutralization of PDGF significantly blocked the mitogenic/proliferative effects that PRP had on the hMDPCs. A more stable and sustained expression of markers associated with stemness, and a decreased expression of lineage specific markers was observed in the PRP-expanded cells when compared with the FBS-expanded cells. The in vitro osteogenic, chondrogenic, and myogenic differentiation capacities of the hMDPCs were not altered when expanded in media supplemented with PRP. All populations of hMDPCs that were expanded in PRP supplemented media retained their ability to regenerate myofibers in vivo. Our data demonstrated that PRP promoted the proliferation and maintained the multi-differentiation capacities of the hMDPCs during ex-vivo expansion by maintaining the cells in an undifferentiated state. Moreover, PDGF appears to be a key contributing factor to the beneficial effect that PRP has on the proliferation of hMDPCs. © 2013 Li et al

State of the climate in 2013

In 2013, the vast majority of the monitored climate variables reported here maintained trends established in recent decades. ENSO was in a neutral state during the entire year, remaining mostly on the cool side of neutral with modest impacts on regional weather patterns around the world. This follows several years dominated by the effects of either La Niña or El Niño events. According to several independent analyses, 2013 was again among the 10 warmest years on record at the global scale, both at the Earths surface and through the troposphere. Some regions in the Southern Hemisphere had record or near-record high temperatures for the year. Australia observed its hottest year on record, while Argentina and New Zealand reported their second and third hottest years, respectively. In Antarctica, Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station reported its highest annual temperature since records began in 1957. At the opposite pole, the Arctic observed its seventh warmest year since records began in the early 20th century. At 20-m depth, record high temperatures were measured at some permafrost stations on the North Slope of Alaska and in the Brooks Range. In the Northern Hemisphere extratropics, anomalous meridional atmospheric circulation occurred throughout much of the year, leading to marked regional extremes of both temperature and precipitation. Cold temperature anomalies during winter across Eurasia were followed by warm spring temperature anomalies, which were linked to a new record low Eurasian snow cover extent in May. Minimum sea ice extent in the Arctic was the sixth lowest since satellite observations began in 1979. Including 2013, all seven lowest extents on record have occurred in the past seven years. Antarctica, on the other hand, had above-average sea ice extent throughout 2013, with 116 days of new daily high extent records, including a new daily maximum sea ice area of 19.57 million km2 reached on 1 October. ENSO-neutral conditions in the eastern central Pacific Ocean and a negative Pacific decadal oscillation pattern in the North Pacific had the largest impacts on the global sea surface temperature in 2013. The North Pacific reached a historic high temperature in 2013 and on balance the globally-averaged sea surface temperature was among the 10 highest on record. Overall, the salt content in nearsurface ocean waters increased while in intermediate waters it decreased. Global mean sea level continued to rise during 2013, on pace with a trend of 3.2 mm yr-1 over the past two decades. A portion of this trend (0.5 mm yr-1) has been attributed to natural variability associated with the Pacific decadal oscillation as well as to ongoing contributions from the melting of glaciers and ice sheets and ocean warming. Global tropical cyclone frequency during 2013 was slightly above average with a total of 94 storms, although the North Atlantic Basin had its quietest hurricane season since 1994. In the Western North Pacific Basin, Super Typhoon Haiyan, the deadliest tropical cyclone of 2013, had 1-minute sustained winds estimated to be 170 kt (87.5 m s-1) on 7 November, the highest wind speed ever assigned to a tropical cyclone. High storm surge was also associated with Haiyan as it made landfall over the central Philippines, an area where sea level is currently at historic highs, increasing by 200 mm since 1970. In the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide all continued to increase in 2013. As in previous years, each of these major greenhouse gases once again reached historic high concentrations. In the Arctic, carbon dioxide and methane increased at the same rate as the global increase. These increases are likely due to export from lower latitudes rather than a consequence of increases in Arctic sources, such as thawing permafrost. At Mauna Loa, Hawaii, for the first time since measurements began in 1958, the daily average mixing ratio of carbon dioxide exceeded 400 ppm on 9 May. The state of these variables, along with dozens of others, and the 2013 climate conditions of regions around the world are discussed in further detail in this 24th edition of the State of the Climate series. © 2014, American Meteorological Society. All rights reserved