Do you spend too much time creating the building blocks of your graphics applications or finding and correcting errors? Geometric Tools for Computer Graphics is an extensive, conveniently organized ...collection of proven solutions to fundamental problems that you'd rather not solve over and over again, including building primitives, distance calculation, approximation, containment, decomposition, intersection determination, separation, and more. If you have a mathematics degree, this book will save you time and trouble. If you don't, it will help you achieve things you may feel are out of your reach. Inside, each problem is clearly stated and diagrammed, and the fully detailed solutions are presented in easy-to-understand pseudocode. You also get the mathematics and geometry background needed to make optimal use of the solutions, as well as an abundance of reference material contained in a series of appendices. FeaturesFilled with robust, thoroughly tested solutions that will save you time and help you avoid costly errors.Covers problems relevant for both 2D and 3D graphics programming.Presents each problem and solution in stand-alone form allowing you the option of reading only those entries that matter to you.Provides the math and geometry background you need to understand the solutions and put them to work.Clearly diagrams each problem and presents solutions in easy-to-understand pseudocode.Resources associated with the book are available at the companion Web site www.mkp.com/gtcg.* Filled with robust, thoroughly tested solutions that will save you time and help you avoid costly errors.* Covers problems relevant for both 2D and 3D graphics programming.* Presents each problem and solution in stand-alone form allowing you the option of reading only those entries that matter to you.* Provides the math and geometry background you need to understand the solutions and put them to work.* Clearly diagrams each problem and presents solutions in easy-to-understand pseudocode.* Resources associated with the book are available at the companion Web site www.mkp.com/gtcg.
There is growing evidence suggesting that vascular pathologies and dysfunction play a critical role in cognitive impairment, clinical Alzheimer's disease, and dementia. Vascular pathologies such as ...macroinfarcts, microinfarcts, microbleeds, small and large vessel cerebrovascular disease, and white matter disease are common especially in the brains of older persons where they contribute to cognitive impairment and lower the dementia threshold. Vascular dysfunction resulting in decreased cerebral blood flow, and abnormalities in the blood brain barrier may also contribute to the Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathophysiologic process and AD dementia. This review provides a clinical–pathological perspective on the role of vessel disease, vascular brain injury, alterations of the neurovascular unit, and mixed pathologies in the Alzheimer's disease pathophysiologic process and Alzheimer's dementia. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Vascular Contributions to Cognitive Impairment and Dementia edited by M. Paul Murphy, Roderick A. Corriveau and Donna M. Wilcock.
Aiming at a better understanding of anomalous and topological effects in gauge theories out of equilibrium, we study the real-time dynamics of a prototype model for CP violation, the massive ...Schwinger model with a θ term. We identify dynamical quantum phase transitions between different topological sectors that appear after sufficiently strong quenches of the θ parameter. Moreover, we establish a general dynamical topological order parameter, which can be accessed through fermion two-point correlators and, importantly, which can be applied for interacting theories. Enabled by this result, we show that the topological transitions persist beyond the weak-coupling regime. Finally, these effects can be observed with tabletop experiments based on existing cold-atom, superconducting-qubit, and trapped-ion technology. Our Letter thus presents a significant step towards quantum simulating topological and anomalous real-time phenomena relevant to nuclear and high-energy physics.
This review will focus on the synthesis, arrangement, structural assembly, for current and future applications, of 1D nanomaterials (tubes, wires, rods) in 2D and 3D ordered arrangements. The ability ...to synthesize and arrange one dimensional nanomaterials into ordered 2D or 3D micro or macro sized structures is of utmost importance in developing new devices and applications of these materials. Micro and macro sized architectures based on such 1D nanomaterials (e.g. tubes, wires, rods) provide a platform to integrate nanostructures at a larger and thus manageable scale into high performance electronic devices like field effect transistors, as chemo- and biosensors, catalysts, or in energy material applications. Carbon based, metal oxide and metal based 1D arranged materials as well as hybrid or composite 1D materials of the latter provide a broad materials platform, offering a perspective for new entries into fascinating structures and future applications of such assembled architectures. These architectures allow bridging the gap between 1D nanostructures and the micro and macro world and are the basis for an assembly of 1D materials into higher hierarchy domains. This critical review is intended to provide an interesting starting point to view the current state of the art and show perspectives for future developments in this field. The emphasis is on selected nanomaterials and the possibilities for building three dimensional arrays starting from one dimensional building blocks. Carbon nanotubes, metal oxide nanotubes and nanowires (e.g. ZnO, TiO(2), V(2)O(5), Cu(2)O, NiO, Fe(2)O(3)), silicon and germanium nanowires, and group III-V or II-VI based 1D semiconductor nanostructures like GaS and GaN, pure metals as well as 1D hybrid materials and their higher organized architectures (foremost in 3D) will be focussed. These materials have been the most intensively studied within the last 5-10 years with respect to nano-micro integration aspects and their functional and application oriented properties. The critical review should be interesting for a broader scientific community (chemists, physicists, material scientists) interested in synthetic and functional material aspects of 1D materials as well as their integration into next higher organized architectures.
Radiotherapy is under investigation for its ability to enhance responses to immunotherapy. However, the mechanisms by which radiation induces anti-tumour T cells remain unclear. We show that the DNA ...exonuclease Trex1 is induced by radiation doses above 12-18 Gy in different cancer cells, and attenuates their immunogenicity by degrading DNA that accumulates in the cytosol upon radiation. Cytosolic DNA stimulates secretion of interferon-β by cancer cells following activation of the DNA sensor cGAS and its downstream effector STING. Repeated irradiation at doses that do not induce Trex1 amplifies interferon-β production, resulting in recruitment and activation of Batf3-dependent dendritic cells. This effect is essential for priming of CD8
T cells that mediate systemic tumour rejection (abscopal effect) in the context of immune checkpoint blockade. Thus, Trex1 is an upstream regulator of radiation-driven anti-tumour immunity. Trex1 induction may guide the selection of radiation dose and fractionation in patients treated with immunotherapy.
Renewable energy polygeneration systems are a viable alternative to fossil-fuel based systems, but storage solutions may be necessary when aiming for high sustainability and autonomy. As each storage ...technology has different strengths and weaknesses, combinations of various storage solutions may lead to better techno-economic performance than singular approaches. To this purpose, an optimization model including a novel dispatch control strategy for a hybrid energy storage system (HESS) is proposed, which uses biogas for long-term and batteries for short-term storage. The model optimizes for minimum lifetime costs while exploiting the biomass resources with maximum efficiency and quantifying the additional solar and battery capacities needed. It is applied in a case study with an innovative biomass-based polygeneration system in a rural locality of Bolivia to serve electricity, potable water, and bio-slurry as fertilizer. The results indicate that even with maximized efficiency of the biomass resource conversion, large PV and battery capacities are necessary to satisfy the electricity demand of the locality. Despite of the high investment costs, the biomass-based polygeneration system would cost 22% less over the project lifetime than the fossil-fuel based reference system while being less dependent on fuel price changes. It would also reduce CO2-emissions by over 98%.
•Presenting a control strategy for polygeneration systems using biogas and batteries•Development of a model for such systems enhanced with PV and membrane distillation•Application of the model in a case study for a rural locality in Bolivia•Results show 22% lower lifetime costs and 98% less emissions but high capital costs•The model including the control strategy facilitate designing polygeneration HESS
Purpose Provide evidence-based recommendations updating the 2015 ASCO guideline on systemic therapy for patients with stage IV non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Methods The ASCO NSCLC Expert Panel ...made recommendations based on a systematic review of randomized controlled trials from February 2014 to December 2016 plus the Cancer Care Ontario Program in Evidence-Based Care's update of a previous ASCO search. Results This guideline update reflects changes in evidence since the previous guideline update. Fourteen randomized controlled trials provide the evidence base; earlier phase trials also informed recommendation development. Recommendations New or revised recommendations include the following. Regarding first-line treatment for patients with non-squamous cell carcinoma or squamous cell carcinoma (without positive markers, eg, EGFR/ALK /ROS1), if the patient has high programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression, pembrolizumab should be used alone; if the patient has low PD-L1 expression, clinicians should offer standard chemotherapy. All other clinical scenarios follow 2015 recommendations. Regarding second-line treatment in patients who received first-line chemotherapy, without prior immune checkpoint therapy, if NSCLC tumor is positive for PD-L1 expression, clinicians should use single-agent nivolumab, pembrolizumab, or atezolizumab; if tumor has negative or unknown PD-L1 expression, clinicians should use nivolumab or atezolizumab. All immune checkpoint therapy is recommended alone plus in the absence of contraindications. For patients who received a prior first-line immune checkpoint inhibitor, clinicians should offer standard chemotherapy. For patients who cannot receive immune checkpoint inhibitor after chemotherapy, docetaxel is recommended; in patients with nonsquamous NSCLC, pemetrexed is recommended. In patients with a sensitizing EGFR mutation, disease progression after first-line epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy, and T790M mutation, osimertinib is recommended; if NSCLC lacks the T790M mutation, then chemotherapy is recommended. Patients with ROS1 gene rearrangement without prior crizotinib may be offered crizotinib, or if they previously received crizotinib, they may be offered chemotherapy.
A growing number of communities in the United States are seeking to improve the sustainability of their transportation systems by shifting routine automobile travel to walking and bicycling. In order ...to identify strategies that may be most effective at increasing pedestrian and bicycle transportation in a specific local context, practitioners need a greater understanding of the underlying thought process that people use to select travel modes. Previous research from the travel behavior and psychology fields provides the foundation for a five-step, operational Theory of Routine Mode Choice Decisions. Walking and bicycling could be promoted through each of the five steps: awareness and availability (e.g., offer individual marketing programs), basic safety and security (e.g., make pedestrian and bicycle facility improvements and increase education and enforcement efforts), convenience and cost (e.g., institute higher-density, mixed land uses, and limited, more expensive automobile parking), enjoyment (e.g., plant street trees and increase awareness of non-motorized transportation benefits), and habit (e.g., target information about sustainable transportation options to people making key life changes). The components of the theory are supported by in-depth interview responses from the San Francisco Bay Area.
► Proposes an operational theory of routine mode choice decisions. ► Steps are awareness and availability, safety and security, convenience and cost, enjoyment, and habit.► Theory is supported by previous studies and interviews from San Francisco Bay Area. ► Provides framework for policies to increase sustainable transportation.
Low rank approximation of matrices has been well studied in literature. Singular value decomposition, QR decomposition with column pivoting, rank revealing QR factorization, Interpolative ...decomposition, etc. are classical deterministic algorithms for low rank approximation. But these techniques are very expensive (
operations are required for
matrices). There are several randomized algorithms available in the literature which are not so expensive as the classical techniques (but the complexity is not linear in n). So, it is very expensive to construct the low rank approximation of a matrix if the dimension of the matrix is very large. There are alternative techniques like Cross/Skeleton approximation which gives the low-rank approximation with linear complexity in n. In this article we review low rank approximation techniques briefly and give extensive references of many techniques.
•Scheduling surgery groups instead of Operating Room blocks reduces uncertainty.•Surgery groups bridges the gap between tactical and operational planning.•We use an exact single step approach instead ...of a commonly used decomposition approach.•Our approach improves Operating Room utilization by 14% and bed occupancy variation by 42 beds.
Surgery groups are clustered surgery procedure types that share comparable characteristics (e.g. expected duration). Scheduling OR blocks leaves many options for operational surgery scheduling and this increases the variation in usage of both the OR and downstream beds. Therefore, we schedule surgery groups to reduce the options for operational scheduling, ultimately bridging the gap between tactical and operational scheduling. We propose a single step mixed integer linear programming (MILP) approach that approximates the bed and OR usage and a simulated annealing approach. Both approaches are compared on a real-life data set and results show that the MILP performs best in terms of solution quality and computation time. Furthermore, the results show that our model may improve the OR utilization from 71% to 85% and decrease the bed usage variation from 53 beds to 11 beds compared to historical data. To show the potential and robustness of our model, we discuss several variants of the model requiring minor modifications. The use of surgery groups makes it easier to implementation our model in practice and, for operational planners, it is instantly clear where to schedule different types of surgery.
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