Distributed multimedia applications require a variety of levels of quality of service (QoS) from communication networks and end-systems which realize the multimedia interface with the human users or provide remotely accessed multimedia information. The management of these services has to take into account the available resources and the user's wishes concerning the desired quality and costs. Ba...

Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) have received intensive attentions owing to the abundant and inexpensive sodium (Na) resource. Layered vanadium oxides are featured with various valence states and corresponding compounds, and through multi-electron reaction they are capable to deliver high Na storage capacity. The rational construction of unique structures is verified to improve their Na storage pro...

Abstract: We develop three-dimensional electromagnetic inverse scattering methods to reconstruct buried objects in layered media. The nonlinear inverse problem is solved iteratively via conjugate gradient approach; within each iteration, the problem is linearized by Born and Distorted Born approximations. The forward solution for layered media is provided by the stabilized biconjugate-gradient ...

Multi-level transactions are a variant of open nested transactions in which the subtransactions correspond to operations at different levels of a layered system architecture. The point of multi-level transactions is that the semantics of high-level operations can be exploited in order to increase concurrency. As a consequence, undoing a transaction requires compensation of completed subtransact...

Peter B. Moyle, Patrick K. Crain, Keith Whitener, & Jeffrey F. Mount Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology, University of California, 1 Shields Avenue, Davis CA 95616, U.S.A. (email: [email protected]) The Nature Conservancy, Cosumnes River Preserve, 13501 Franklin Blvd., Galt CA 95632, U.S.A. Department of Geology, University of California, 1 Shields Avenue, Davis CA 95616 U...

OBJECTIVE Many changes have been initiated in the Dutch hospital sector to optimize health-care delivery: national agenda-setting, increased competition and transparency, a new system of hospital reimbursement based on diagnosis-treatment combinations, intensified monitoring of quality and a multi-layered organizational development programme based on quality improvement collaboratives. The obje...