The writings of al-Ghazālī give the distinct impression that he was highly concerned with the threat the Ismailis and their doctrines posed. By his own admission, he wrote six separate treatises to ...refute and condemn them, most importantly his Faḍāʾiḥ al-bāṭiniyya (The infamies of the esotericists), which he composed in the year 488h (1095) in the months prior to his renunciation of government service and departure from Baghdad. His attack focused on the doctrine known as taʿlīm, with its insistence on the unrivaled absolute authority of a single infallible Imam. He had in mind the Alamut teaching by Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ of a doctrine then widely advocated in the Abbasid–Seljuk East. Significantly, there is no sign of this term used in this manner in the western Fatimid domains either earlier or later. However, our knowledge of events in the career of Ḥasan and of his teachings come from much later sources and are in part legendary at best. Although the doctrine of taʿlīm was certainly implicit in Ismaili works long before, in this particular work al-Ghazālī directed his attentions squarely against a new teaching he encountered personally in his own time and place. But we know it otherwise primarily from accounts recorded much later, in particular al-Shahrastānī’s al-Milal wa-l-niḥal.
•Proposal of dual input power-split powertrain for EVs.•Optimization of energy management strategy.•Real-time control strategy for tracking ideal speeds to reduce energy consumption.
A novel ...power-split powertrain is proposed for the electric vehicles (EVs), which consists of dual propelling motor and one planetary gear set. The original motor is replaced by two downsize motor without changing the total power. The power distribution between the two downsize motors is determined by the parameters specifications of planetary gear set, which ensures the dual input powertrain has at least the same drivability performance as conventional single input powertrain. The planetary gear set is used to realize the power-split function by adjusting the gear ratio continuously to improve overall motor efficiency. The multibody dynamic model of the planetary gear set is built, considering the effect of inertia of all components. Based on the efficiency maps of the two motors, an energy management optimization model is built to minimize the consumed power of motors and transmission at each instant. The acceleration of sun gear and mechanical power of planetary gear set are constrained to avoid the large impact of transmission. A penalty factor is introduced in the objective function to realize the robust control of motor speed. Three driving cycles are used to demonstrate the improvement of energy efficiency compared to the traditional EVs with single-speed transmission.
In this paper, the vibration characteristics of a parallel hydraulic hybrid vehicle (PHHV) powertrain are investigated. A powertrain model is built to capture the natural frequencies and mode shapes ...before model reduction is conducted to simplify the system complexity. The natural frequencies and the mode shapes of the PHHV are compared with the original vehicle. Results show that with a hydraulic pump/motor (HPM) added on the powertrain, the dynamic response to engine excitation is increased only at the first natural frequency. Due to the minimum engine excitation frequency being higher than the first natural frequency of the system, resonance is avoided. The HPM also introduces excitation to the PHHV powertrain due to its instantaneous torque fluctuations. As HPM excitation is much smaller than the engine excitation, it does not produce excessive vibrations even though the powertrain frequency response is near its lowest resonant frequency. These results indicate that the NVH characteristics of the powertrain are not significantly influenced by the significant changes to the system architecture resulting from the addition of the HPM. Additionally, the HPM is not exposed to significant sources of vibration from the forced responses of the engine. Consequently, the need for substantive vibration isolation for the HPM is reduced.
Tissue segmentation and classification in MRI is a challenging task due to a lack of signal intensity standardization. MRI signal is dependent on the acquisition protocol, the coil profile, the ...scanner type, etc. While we can compute quantitative physical tissue properties independent of the hardware and the sequence parameters, it is still difficult to leverage these physical properties to segment and classify pelvic tissues. The proposed method integrates quantitative MRI values (T1 and T2 relaxation times and pure synthetic weighted images) and machine learning (Support Vector Machine (SVM)) to segment and classify tissues in the pelvic region, i.e.: fat, muscle, prostate, bone marrow, bladder, and air. Twenty-two men with a mean age of 30±14 years were included in this prospective study. The images were acquired with a 3 Tesla MRI scanner. An inversion recovery-prepared turbo spin echo sequence was used to obtain T1-weighted images at different inversion times with a TR of 14000 ms. A 32-echo spin echo sequence was used to obtain the T2-weighted images at different echo times with a TR of 5000 ms. T1 and T2 relaxation times, synthetic T1- and T2-weighted images and anatomical probabilistic maps were calculated and used as input features of a SVM for segmenting and classifying tissues within the pelvic region. The mean SVM classification accuracy across subjects was calculated for the different tissues: prostate (94.2%), fat (96.9%), muscle (95.8%), bone marrow (91%) and bladder (82.1%) indicating an excellent classification performance. However, the segmentation and classification for air (within the rectum) may not always be successful (mean SVM accuracy 47.5%) due to the lack of air data in the training and testing sets. Our findings suggest that SVM can reliably segment and classify tissues in the pelvic region.
Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most malignant form of brain tumors, with a dismal prognosis. During the course of the disease, microglia and macrophages both infiltrate the tumor ...microenvironment and contribute considerably in glioma development. Thus, tumor-associated microglia and macrophages have recently emerged as potentially key therapeutic targets. Here, we review the physiology of microglia and their responses in brain cancer. We further discuss current treatment options for GBM using radiotherapy, and novel advances in our knowledge of microglia physiology, with emphasis on the recently discovered pathway that controls the baseline motility of microglia processes. We argue that the latter pathway is an interesting therapeutic avenue to pursue for the treatment of glioblastoma.
Proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs) remain the leading evidence-based therapy for upper gastrointestinal disorders, including gastroesophageal reflux disease, dyspepsia, and peptic ulcer disease. The ...effectiveness of PPIs has led to overutilization in multiple treatment arenas, exposing patients to an increasing number of potential risks. The overutilization of PPIs in ambulatory care settings is often a result of failure to re-evaluate the need for continuation of therapy, or insufficient use of on-demand and step-down therapy. PPI overutilization in the inpatient setting is often a result of inappropriate stress ulcer prophylaxis (SUP) in nonintensive care unit patients, and failure to discontinue SUP prior to hospital discharge. Potential consequences of prolonged PPI therapy include hypergastrinemia, enterochromaffin-like cell hyperplasia, and parietal cell hypertrophy, leading to rebound acid hypersecretion. PPIs have been linked via retrospective studies to increased risk of enteric infections including Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea, community-acquired pneumonia, bone fracture, nutritional deficiencies, and interference with metabolism of antiplatelet agents. Reducing inappropriate prescribing of PPIs in the inpatient and outpatient settings can minimize potential for adverse events, and foster controllable cost expenditure.
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