Given a set of spatial objects, our task is to assign all the objects to the minimum number of service sites and to find the regions for building these service sites. Each service site has a coverage region (i.e., an area of service) and a capacity (i.e., a maximum number of objects it can serve, called k-constraint). The service sites can provide service for objects located within the coverage...

Bullous ichthyosiform erythroderma (BIE) is a rare disorder of keratinization (mutations in either keratin 1 or 10). It typically presents with fragile skin, which gives way to gradual evolutionof hyperkeratosis. Flaccid blisters, peeling, and superficial erosions at sites of minor trauma or friction are apparent within the first few hours of life. Yellow-brown, waxy, ridged or corrugated...

One-dimensional (1D) subwavelength corrugated metal structures has been described to support spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs). Here we demonstrate that a periodically modulated 1D subwavelength corrugated metal structure can convert spoof SPPs to propagating waves. The structure is fed at the center through a slit with a connected waveguide on the input side. The subwavelength corrugated...

Recent functional neuroimaging studies have revealed that occipital or visual cortical areas in individuals blinded in o_r around birth are metabolically active during tactile, auditory and cognitive stimulation. These findings suggest that in the early blind (EB) the areas that are normally engaged by visual stimulation process non-visual information (a phenomenon referred to as cross-modal re...

We previously showed that nordihydroguaiaretic acid (NDGA) and other antioxidants inhibit the resumption of meiosis in oocyte-cumulus complexes (OCC) and denuded oocytes (DO). Because NDGA is well known to be an inhibitor of lipoxygenases (LOX), we assessed whether other LOX inhibitors influence spontaneous germinal vesicle breakdown (GVBD) in OCC and DO. Spontaneous GVBD in rat OCC obtained fr...

Background: In contrast to pharyngo-laryngeal cancer, definitive radiation-chemotherapy of advanced oral cavity cancer (OCC) results in inferior disease control rates. Surgery in combination with radiation +/concomitant chemotherapy is therefore the treatment of choice for squamous cell OCC stages >/=pT1-2pN0-1. Modern intensity modulated radiation techniques (IMRT) allow more conformal dose di...

There is an ever-increasing demand for more complex transactions and higher throughputs in transaction processing systems leading to higher degrees of transaction concurrency and, hence, higher data contention. The conventional two-phase locking (2PL) Concurrency Control (CC) method may, therefore, restrict system throughput to levels inconsistent with the available processing capacity. This is...

Disoriented 4-year-old children use a distinctive container to locate a hidden object, but do they reorient by this information? We addressed this question by testing children's search for objects in a circular room containing one distinctive and two identical containers. Children's search patterns provided evidence that the distinctive container served as a direct cue to a hidden object's loca...

We examine pressure-driven nonequilibrium transport of linear, circular, and star polymers through a nanochannel containing a rectangular pit with full hydrodynamic interactions and thermal fluctuations. We demonstrate that with sufficiently small pressure differences, there is contour length-dependent entropic trapping of the polymer in the pit when the pit and the polymer sizes are compatible...