introduction: to describe the underlay tympanoplasty technique using an acellular dermal graft(alloderm) for tympanic membrane (tm) reconstruction in a guinea pig model and to demonstrate the feasibility of the technique using alloderm tissue harvested from the prepuce as a source of tissue for future grafting in human tm reconstruction.   materials and methods: the prepuce was divided during c...

We present a statistical analysis of freak waves1 measured during the 203 h of observation on sea surface elevation at a location in the coastal zone of the Baltic Sea (2.7 m depth) during June–July 2008. The dataset contains 97 freak waves occurring in both calm and stormy weather conditions. All of the freak waves are solitary waves, 63% of them having positive shape, 17.5% negative shape and...

In this paper, it is demonstrated that decision feedback equalization (DFE) based on soft-decisions is able to outperform hard-decision DFE, with an attractive computational cost that is polynomial in the number of symbols to be recovered. A group of soft-decision feedback equalizers (SDFE) with probabilistic data association are developed for multiinput multi-output (MIMO) wireless communicati...

This article is concerned with a new fourth-order implicit time-stepping scheme for the simulation of acoustic waves. For an enhanced efficiency, the new scheme is incorporated with a locally one-dimensional (LOD) procedure. Its stability and accuracy are analyzed and compared with those of the standard explicit fourth-order scheme. It has been observed from various experiments that the computa...

In this paper, we propose an improved cryptanalysis of the double-branch hash function RIPEMD-160 standardized by ISO/IEC. Firstly, we show how to theoretically calculate the step differential probability of RIPEMD-160, which was stated as an open problem by Mendel et al. at ASIACRYPT 2013. Secondly, based on the method proposed by Mendel et al. to automatically find a differential path of RIPE...

The gas-assisted gravity drainage (GAGD) process is designed and practiced based on gravity drainage idea and uses the advantage of density difference between injected CO2 and reservoir oil. In this work, one of Iran western oilfields was selected as a case study and a sector model was simulated based on its rock and fluid properties. The pressure of CO2 gas injection was close to the MMP of th...

this study was carried out to assess the effects of alfalfa hay level and replacing corn grain by other grains in starter on daily feed intake, average daily gain (adg) and feed efficiency (fe) of pre and post-weaning dairy calves during the pre and post-weaning periods. for this purpose, a database meta-analysis used in the present study. statistical analyses were performed using proc mixed in...

We present an experimentally feasible scheme to create single photons deterministically out of a non-deterministic spontaneous parametric downconversion source. We give an efficiency analysis of obtaining exactly one photon in the output. Furthermore, we experimentally demonstrate a way to control the purity of an output photon using a partial measurement of a polarization-entangled photon pair...

We previously designed Partial Order Conflict Driven Clause Learning (PO-CDCL), a variation of the satisfiability solving CDCL algorithm with a partial order on decision levels, and showed that it can speed up the solving on problems with a high independence between decision levels. In this paper, we more thoroughly analyze the reasons of the efficiency of PO-CDCL. Of particular importance is t...

Switch and stay combining (SSC) is an attractive diversity technique due to its low complexity and compatibility to resourceconstrained wireless networks. This letter proposes a distributed SSC for partial relay selection networks in order to achieve spatial diversity as well as to improve spectral efficiency. Simulation results show that the performance loss (in terms of bit error probability)...