This document constitutes progress in analyzing the visibility of the care economy (non-remunerated work) in Colombia, based on some general reflections on the sexual division of labor, welfare and the care economy. Thus the value of statistics on the use of time stands out not only for issues related to gender, but also in terms of equality, exclusion and poverty. By analyzing the available information we can find that care services are highly concentrated in women which easily leads to the conclusion that this work is producing the goods with major determinant for the development of future generations social externality and produces widespread benefits who do not pay for them, hence the importance of visibility.


Objective: To test the hypothesis that promoting breakfast cereal consumption, as part of a web-based programme, results in loss of body mass. Methods: Single centre, single blind, randomised parallel study. Test group followed a fully interactive website (B) with 'prescribed' breakfast cereals. Control group followed website (A) giving standard advice on weight loss. Study site visits at 0, 4, 12 and 24 weeks for measurements of height, weight, skinfolds, body fat, waist and hip circumference. 180 subjects were randomly allocated to two equal groups. Subjects were in good health and aged 19-50 years, with a BMI ranging from 25-40 kg/m2. At baseline there was no difference in mean age or BMI between the two groups. Results: The percentage change in body mass loss was greater when following website B than website A (n = 90; ITT repeated measures p = 0.013). For completers (website A: n = 62, website B: n = 64), the percentage change in body mass loss was also greater for website B than website A (repeated measures p = 0.023). Conclusion: The advice and motivation offered by an interactive website, including provision and consumption of breakfast cereals, results in significantly greater loss of body mass compared to the use of a standard website. It is not possible to discern which of the three factors is responsible.


The prmary objective of these experiments was to help resolve the problem of therapeusis in subacute bacterial endocarditis. The more rational and inocuous approach of animal experimentation appealed to us rather than direct evaluation of new expedients in human patients afflicted with the disease. It is true that countless therapeutic measures have been advanced for this disease, which alone attests to the futility of most of them. For our purpose it is essential that the disease be reproduced consistently in a convenient laboratory animal. This initial report deals with methods and procedures adopted to achieve the greatest possible incidence of the experimental disease in rabbits. Experimental endocarditis produced by bacteria other than Streptococcus viidans isolated from human cases has been reported many imes.13 There are also numerous reports of experimental endocarditis produced by traumatizing the endocardium or by the injection of particulate matter in addition to bacterial inoculations." Dreschfeld,8 in i887, was the first investigator to reproduce the disease without first resorting to mechanical injury of the cardiac valves. Horder 9 and Rosenow 10 also produced endocardial vegetations by simply injecting intravenously cultures of Str. viridans. The most recent work in this direction is the splendid accomplishment of MacNeal, Spence and Wasseen,' who demonstrated that it is possible to transmit endocarditis lenta of man to the rabbit by repeated intravenous injections of large amounts of pure cultures in serum-broth. The technic followed was an adaptation of the pattern suggeted by MacNeal and his co-workers.' Strains of Str. viridans were obtained by blood culture from clinically typical cases of subacute bacterial endocarditis. The organisms were subplanted in meat infusion broth which was occasionally enriched with rabbit plasma. One to 6 cc. of a fresh 24-hour culture was injected daily into an ear vein of a rabbit for 6 days. After an interval of 48 hours, a blood culture was taken and the sequence then repeated. This program was continued for variable period6 until repeated positive blood cultures, progressive loss in weight and the development of cardiac murmurs heralded the presence


The invention relates to a frame member (1) of a vehicle body with a hutprofilformigen metal profile (2) whose outer side (3) forms in the installed condition of the profiled metal plate (2) with a partial area of the visible side of the component (1). In order to achieve that its size can be reduced in a simple manner without compromising in crash safety, it is proposed that the frame member (1) comprises a stiffening structure part (5) made of a lightweight material, which in the interior (6) of hutprofilformigen sheet metal profile (2) is arranged and fixed on the latter. Furthermore, a method is provided for producing the same.


The emergence of platform work has provided new opportunities for job creation, yet it also poses numerous challenges, thereby placing the topic at the centre of the policy debate. At the same time, discussion of the platform economy usually fails to acknowledge the coexistence of different platform models and their diverse socioeconomic impact with regard to the SDGs and the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR). This paper aims to contribute to the debate on regulating platform work by testing the 'Charter of digital workers' rights' arising from the Platform Labour in Urban Spaces (PLUS) European project, in three platform cooperatives: Fairbnb.coop, SMart, and Katuma. The empirical analysis and testing are based on qualitative surveys, co-creation sessions and interviews. The analysis could prove useful for further EU policy, national transposition of EU legislation and potential legislation worldwide. The results show the importance of providing a clear-cut definition of platform work, as well as considering different platform models. More specifically, the paper reflects on the definition and fair scheduling of working time (total amount of working hours, scheduling, and disconnection), fair and decent remuneration, the right to information on contractual conditions and the right to transparency in algorithmic systems, and training rights.


Reform of the leadership system of the trade unions at villages and towns is the key factor to consolidate and develop the work achievements of the trade unions at the newly- built enterprises. It is very effective for the trade unions at villages and towns to adopt the form of the trade union work commission at the time of organization and establishment, but along with the development and regularization of the trade unions at villages and towns gradually, and the disadvantages arising from this kind of form existing in the trade union work commission shall obviously turn up. Therefore, we need to rationalize the organization and leadership system of the trade unions at villages and towns, in accordance with the principle of the combination and representative system, we should widen the channels for the direct election and employment of the trade union cadres. In this way, we could enhance the enterprising spirit and sense of responsibility of the trade union cadres at villages and towns unceasingly.


Sensors can sense different phenomena of the real world, such as environmental temperature, humidity and pressure, so they have wide applications in the fields of all kinds of sensing and monitoring. However, heterogeneous sensing devices, networks and data hinder the integration of the applications. Multi-source data fusion technology is used to monitor different environmental parameters by a variety of different types of sensors and then to process the different environmental parameters by the mathematical algorithm to judge the occurrence of some phenomenon. A large number of calculations are needed in the algorithm and different algorithms are used for the particular issues. The technology of Web of Things is used to shield the difference of the underlying sensing devices, networks and data by Web technology in order to provide a good platform for information integration. Based on this, a light-weight rule-based practical method is adopted to integrate the fine-grained multi-source data sensed under WoT platform into the high-level information, which can support multiple application scenarios at the same time and sends the procured information to the decision center by the real-time Web technology.


Lu Xun and Mei Lanfang are considered to be nationally and internationally be renowned masters of culture and art of the 1920's.However,as a criticizer of the old cultures of China,Lu Xun had a strong attitude towards Peking Opera,especially 'men acting as women' in traditional Peking Opera so much so that he even openly criticized Mei Lanfang,the representative of Beijing Opera.Although Mr.Mei never disputed with him or even reacted to his criticism all his life,the inharmonious relationship between the two great figures was really a great pity in the Chinese literature history.Therefore,examining the origin and reason of this case will be of great significance to a more complete understanding of the two great masters as well as the development of Peking Opera.


With often robust metrics on user activity, social media provides an excellent case study. Researchers at UC Santa Barbara and University of Southern California (USC) investigated diversity, equity and inclusion across Snapchat. They found that content produced by the company reflected the diversity of the U.S. population. In fact, data showed, that racial minorities were slightly over represented. Content from partnered companies didn't do as well, but fit with patterns in the broader entertainment industry.


In this study we observe the influence on morphologic effects of light condition on the leaf of 'Darselect' strawberry(Fragaria ananassa Duch),by using traditional paraffin section technology.The treatments of three light intensities (shades) and five light qualities(films) increased leaf size and the ratio of leaf length and width,and the decrease in leaf-thickness(decreased thickness of adaxial epidermis).70% shade and red film incresed,50%,90% shade and white film decresed ratio of cell length to width on the adaxial epidermis.The thickness of palisade tissue were decreased by three light intensities and five light qualities; The length of palisade tissue cells was increased only by white film.The results suggested that leaf thickness,the radtio of leaf length to width,thickness of palisade tissue and length of palisade tissue cells were decreased with the increase of shade;In combination with results of the transmissivity of typical spectral emission in different films,the results also suggested blue film increased leaf thickness and decreased the radtio of leaf length to width;yellow film decreased thickness of palisade tissue and length of palisade tissue cells.


Talk about the learning activities, implies a broad around the speeches that have emerged in the Comprehensive Professional Training and policy implications, economic, social and educational traveled throughout the times. In this case to reflect on the formation, relate perspectives that pass through the disciplinary processes, the pretensions of education/training in the SENA and bets on the subject of educational quality. In them, it seeks to understand the speeches, structure and practices that is established between the activities of learning and educational practice in the areas of training; practices that give account of a diversity of knowledge, and that allows mobilities epistemic, axiologicas and human. It then reviews the concept of learning activity in the SENA context, its dynamics and horizon of possibilities.


This qualitative study provides an understanding of how and when individuals experience transformational change as a consequence of reading narratives. Six participants who attributed significant personal changes to reading were recruited and interviewed. The investigators used grounded theory method to analyze these interviews and identify processes through which change unfolded. The core category of the analysis was identification with characters' experiences created a safe venue to consider threat and experiment with new possibilities and perspectives. Empathizing with protagonists enabled readers to integrate new modes of responding to personally difficult situations. Implications for bibliotherapy and narrative therapy are discussed.


Abstract : The objective of the symposium is to show the progress in theoretical and experimental work since last year's meeting with the hope that it will help further advance the use of Walsh and similar functions from the academic level to the level of practical use. The main objective is to determine if substantial benefit in equipment performance, reliability and other factors can be obtained from the application of these functions to such important areas as filtering of signals, computer signal processing, voice signal compression, multiplexing, spectrometry, and many others.


Purpose – This paper aims to report on the information security behaviors of smartphone users in an affluent economy of the Middle East. Design/methodology/approach – A model based on prior research, synthesized from a thorough literature review, is tested using survey data from 500 smartphone users representing three major mobile operating systems. Findings – The overall level of security behaviors is low. Regression coefficients indicate that the efficacy of security measures and the cost of adopting them are the main factors influencing smartphone security behaviors. At present, smartphone users are more worried about malware and data leakage than targeted information theft. Research limitations/implications – Threats and counter-measures co-evolve over time, and our findings, which describe the state of smartphone security at the current time, will need to be updated in the future. Practical implications – Measures to improve security practices of smartphone users are needed urgently. The findings ind...


Objective:To observe the clinical therapeutic effect of Xiong Zhi Xin Dan Soup(XZXD)in teating the cerebral infarction.Method:120 acute cerebral infarction patients are radomly divided into two groups,the treated group(n=60)takes XZXD orally.while the cotrol group(n=60)adopting conventional treatment of western medicine.All patients treatment around carry out nerve function to be short of to harm level to give a mark and follow in 6 months to visit.Result:The treated group is 96.67% always efficently,advances to recover to lead 21.67%,two groups is compared discrepancy has significance(P0.01),two groups of nerve functions are short of to harm level to improve after giving a mark to treat than having before treatment,treatment group improves obviously than the control group,discrepancy has significance(P0.05).Conclusion:Xiong Zhi Xin Dan soup treats acute cerebral infarction clinical curative effect definite,and is better than conventional treatment of western medicine obviously.


In this work, we explore the use of methods that allow a significant acceleration of genetic analysis within microchips fabricated from low thermal conductivity materials such as glass or polymers. Although these materials are highly suitable for integrating a number of genetic analysis techniques onto lab‐on‐a‐chip devices, their low thermal conductivity limits the rate at which heat can be transferred and hence lowers the speed of thermal cycling. However, short thermal cycling times are the key to bringing PCR to clinical point‐of‐care applications. Although shrinking the PCR reaction chamber volume can increase the speed of thermal cycling, this strategy is not always suitable, particularly when dealing with clinical samples with low analyte concentrations. In the present work, we combine two alternate strategies for decreasing the time required to perform PCR: implementing a heat sink and optimizing the PCR protocol. First, the heat sink substantially reduces the thermal resistance opposing heat dissipation into the ambient environment, and eliminates the parasitic thermal capacitance of the regions in the microchip that do not require heating. The low thermal conductivity of glass is used to our advantage to design the heat‐sink placement to achieve fast thermal transitions while maintaining low power consumption. Second, we explore the application of two‐stage PCR to provide a further reduction in the time required to perform genetic amplification by merging the annealing and extension stages of the commonly used three‐stage PCR approach. In combination, we reduce the time required to perform thermal cycling by roughly a factor of 3 while improving the temperature control.


We present a real-time three-dimensional automatic target recognition approach appropriate for future light detection and ranging–based missiles. Our technique extends the speeded-up robust features method into the third dimension by solving multiple two-dimensional problems and performs template matching based on the extreme case of a single pose per target. Evaluation on military targets shows higher recognition rates under various transformations and perturbations at lower processing time compared to state-of-the-art approaches.


With the basic similitude laws of model tests,a model test set of artificial seepage ground freezing with two holes was set up. According to the orthogonal designation and completion of model tests of seepage ground freezing of two holes, studied the closure time of two ice poles and the upward and downward temperature development influenced by different seepage velocity and holes space under the condition of the normal brine freezing technology. The closure time mount up sharply, when seepage velocity increases from second level of 0.7 m/h to the third level of 1.0 m/h, and the seepage velocity is the most important factor effected the development of upward freezing wall. The best way to stand against water flow influence is to cut down the holes space.


Biomass Energy Research announces on a bimonthly basis the current worldwide research and development (R&D) information available on biomass power systems, alternate feedstocks from biomass, and biofuels supply options.


This study aimed to examine the main factors influencing employee retention at private universities in Kurdistan. A quantitative method was used to analyze the data in this study, the researcher prepared questionnaire and distributed in the private universities. The survey was divided into two sections; the first section was demographic analysis which started with respondent's age, gender, and level of education. The second section of survey consisted of 28 questions regarding factors affecting employee retention. A random sampling method was used in this study. The researcher distributed 140 questionnaires, 115 questionnaires were received and being completed properly and 25 questionnaires were missing. Participants were varied as for age, gender and level of education. The findings revealed that the highest value was for job security, which demonstrates that the degree of employee retention increases by their job security factors. Keywords— employee retention, compensation, job security, demographic, private university, Kurdistan.


This paper pays close attention to the adaptive neural network tracking control. Aiming at a class of uncertain nonlinear systems with completely unknown output disturbance and unknown time delay, a corresponding robust control method is proposed based on the backstepping design technology. Neural network approximation is introduced as a very effective estimation technique for modeling uncertain partitions in the design process of virtual controller. The suitable Lyapunov–Krasovskii function is constructed, and by using the organic combination of Young's inequality, unknown time delays are compensated. Nussbaum function is used to handle unknown virtual control directions. A practical robust control method is proposed to deal with the controller singularity problems. A priori knowledge is not required for this method. In this method, all signals achieve semi-global uniform ultimate boundedness, and it is demonstrated that the tracking error eventually converges the region around the origin. The simulation results verify this method's feasibility and effectiveness.


Traditionally, various Hindustani (North Indian) ragas have been performed at specific times of day, such as dawn, dusk, midday, and evening. Human physiology also exhibits common circadian patterns, with reduced arousal at night, rising during the morning, culminating in peak arousal, and then declining arousal towards the end of the day. This raises the question of how and whether the musical features of ragas for each time of day are related to these circadian patterns of arousal. We formally examined associations between traditionally designated time-of-day classifications and musical features from 65 Hindustani raga performances. Our results showed that only pitch-related features are predictive of time-of-day classifications. Surprisingly, non-pitch factors known to correlate with arousal, such as tempo, did not covary with raga time-of-day practices. In general, the results are consistent with rules for North Indian raga performances described by Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (1860–1936) that emphasize the presence or prevalence of particular tones in the raga. The results point to a combination of enculturated and embodied influences in conveying musical arousal. Specifically, they suggest that while time-of-day-related raga listening practices may have been initially influenced by embodied processes, they have ultimately been reshaped by pitch-related cultural norms.


Understanding physical activity is essential in the fight against child obesity. Certain accelerometers may be more useful in assessing this variable in children; easier to wear devices may facilitate better compliance and measurement over longer time periods. The objectives of this study were to a) compare children's acceptability of various accelerometers and b) compare their research utility. Children 7–10 y (n=25) were recruited within Yolo County, CA to test each of three accelerometers; the Philips Actical™ (worn on hip), the SenseWear BodyMedia™ (upper arm) and the Polar Active™ (wrist). Each week children received a device to wear over 5 continuous days. Parents were asked to note device removals. After each use, children and parent each completed a structured interview with trained staff. Upon completion, children were asked to place the devices in order from most to least preferred. The Polar Active was most accepted by children and useful to researchers in providing data on activity intensity levels. This device also engaged children with real time feedback on activity achievements. These findings will aid researchers in choosing measurement tools for children's physical activity.


Abstract : An investigation has been made concerning the disturbances from a surface cylinder aligned with the flow in turbulent boundary layers. The object is to study the flow around Preston tubes. Mean velocities and rms-values of the fluctuations were obtained in the centre plane of the cylinder when immersed in turbulent pipe flow. A rough estimate of the drag due to the surface sylinder was also obtained in this case. The pressure distribution near the cylinder was measured in a flat plate boundary layer, and flow visualizations were made with the oil flow technique. In addition, smoke pictures were obtained of the flow for the cases when the boundary layer thickness on the plate was negligible compared to the tube diameter. The present results are of interest in connection with the use of Preston tubes, in particular with regard to the measurement of static pressure. (Author)


In 63 patients with sympotms of central nervous system involvement, serum anc cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples were used to investigate C-reactive protein (CRP) by double immunodiffusion. CRP was detected in 28 sera. It was never found in CSF. The finding, by applying this technique, of CRP in the serum only was not useful for the diagnosis of central nervous system disease. The content and fate of CRP in CSF must be approached with more sensitive methods.


The /sup A/X/sub ..lambda../..-->../sup A/-1X+p+..pi../sup -/ decays of the hypernuclei /sup 4/He/sub ..lambda../ and /sup 3/H/sub ..lambda../ are examined and the polarization of the particles produced is studied. For the decay of /sup 4/He/sub ..lambda../ a realistic model for inclusion of the p--/sup 3/He interaction is developed; the model makes use of the p/sup 3/He scattering phase shifts calculated taking into account the noncentral forces. It is shown that the strong interaction in the p-/sup 3/He system largely determines the polarization of the protons and /sup 3/He nuclei in /sup 4/He/sub ..lambda../..-->../sup 3/He+p+..pi../sup -/ decays. Existence of a specific mechanism of polarization of recoil nuclei with nonzero spins in hypernucleus decays is pointed out. Polarization effects in leptonic decays of /sup 3/H/sub ..lambda../ are also discussed briefly.


Hydrogen chloride (HCl) and aluminum oxide (Al2O3) are major exhaust products of solid rocket motors (SRM). Samples of calcination-produced alumina were exposed to continuously flowing mixtures of gaseous HCl/H2O in nitrogen. Transient sorption rates, as well as maximum sorptive capacities, were found to be largely controlled by specific surface area for samples of alpha, theta, and gamma alumina. Sorption rates for small samples were characterized linearly with an empirical relationship that accounted for specific area and logarithmic time. Chemisorption occurred on all aluminas studied and appeared to form from the sorption of about a 2/5 HCl-to-H2O mole ratio. The chemisorbed phase was predominantly water soluble, yielding chloride/aluminum III ion mole ratios of about 3.3/1 suggestive of dissolved surface chlorides and/or oxychlorides. Isopiestic experiments in hydrochloric acid indicated that dissolution of alumina led to an increase in water-vapor pressure. Dissolution in aqueous SRM acid aerosol droplets, therefore, might be expected to promote evaporation.


Aerosol assisted atmospheric pressure plasma deposition of antibacterial coating was developed for engineering of coatings on silicon wafer and Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) membrane. The chemical and morphological characteristics of the coatings were analyzed on silicon wafer to optimize the discharge condition. It is found that the new method is capable of composite coatings with high antibacterial deposition on both silicon wafers and PET membranes.


Scotland gave golf to the world. With more golf courses per head than any other country, it is still a golfer's paradise. They range from remote honesty box clubs to the superb Open Championship courses and the exclusive conservative clubs of the towns. But Scotland's strength lies in the host of enjoyable courses throughout the land which welcome visitors, and this book helps visitors to find these clubs. Key features include: gives a brief history of the birth and evolution of the game in Scotland; a guide to the language of golf; includes a map which pin-points the best courses; the most spectacular drives; lists nine best "sporty" holes for adventurous golfers; lists nine best "scenic" holes for the more leisurely; and a complete list of every course in Scotland, revised and updated for this edition.


Lead oxide hydrate mentioned in the earlier literature with several formulas between PbO · H2O and PbO · 0.33 H2O has been synthesized and investigated by high resolution X-ray powder methods, thermogravimetry and infrared spectroscopy. The unit cell was found from 62 powder reflections to be tetragonal with a = 8.009 ± 0.003 A, c = 9.312 ± 0.005 A, Z = 12 [PbO · 0.33 H2O]. These data were confirmed by WEISSENBERG and Precession photographs of single crystals grown as a corrosion product on metallic lead. The space group is D–P4/mnc or C–P4 nc. Thermogravimetric measurements, corrected for a slight content of superficially bound carbon dioxide detected by infrared spectroscopy, lead to the most probable formula 3 PbO · H2O or PbO · 0.33 H2O. As infrared spectra show the presence of a HOH deformation vibration, the compound is considered to be an oxide hydrate and not an oxide hydroxide of lead.


A novel method and instrument capable of either monitoring continuously a condensation process or estimating the thickness of a liquid layer in the μm range are presented. The underlying physical principle is a variant of the photopyroelectric technique in which the changes in the thermal wave propagation due to the presence of the liquid layer are sensed by the pyroelectric sensor. The theoretical model developed supports the experimental results obtained.


In connection with biodiversity that has recently become the topic, competition to secure biological genetic resources is being heightened all over the world. Korea also has a variety of efforts to secure and preserve plant genetic resources, and has recognized the importance of the function and role of arboretums. Arboretums in Korea, however, have the problems in terms of quality due to the rapid increase. One of the problems is shortages in experts who are essential for the proper functioning of arboretums. To solve the problem, the State introduced Gardener Training Program certification system and started to train gardeners. However, gardeners who have actually employed at arboretums are less than 20% and thus the problem of shortages in experts still exists. In this context, this study examined 44 registered arboretums in Korea to find out the current situation of experts; analyzed arboretum experts and the program certification system in view of relevant laws; and investigated the current situation of training programs being operated in three Gardener Training Program certification organizations. Finally, this study conducted a survey of 68 gardeners who completed the training program at Chollipo Arboretum and tried to suggest a plan for securing experts from the gardener training programs. The plan for utilizing the trained gardeners as experts in arboretums is as follows: First, legal standards for the employment of experts in arboretums should be strengthened. Second, it is necessary to evaluate training programs, in order to raise the reliability of arboretum experts` expertise. Third, official validity that can be honored in all arboretums should be granted to a certificate of program completion. Finally, networks of gardeners who completed the programs should be formed through follow-up management of them.


[Problem] It is to provide a transport apparatus which can prolong the life. [MEANS FOR SOLVING PROBLEMS] guide unit (2), but not be guide to the guide unit (2) comprises a movable body (4) to move, the moving body 4, is engaged with the guide unit (2) a first engagement part in (411A) provided, and the first direction (X) the thus movably guide unit (2) a first support (41A), and a guide unit (2) walking the fit second walk in the alignment supporting the portion of ( equipped and supported by a first direction (with the second support (41B) supported to be movable along the X) in the guide unit (2), the first support (41A) and a second support (41B) to 411B), and a holding portion 45 for holding a processing part 89, the first engagement portion (411A) has, by the deformation of the mobile body (4), a first reverse moment (M12) and the load, the first reverse moment (M12), the backward than working part 89 the holding part if held in the 45 to by the load first walk moment (M11) which loads the engagement part (411A) of the machined part (89) moment The.


To the Editor: Choroid plexus carcinoma (CPC) is a rare epithelial brain neoplasm with aggressive course. About half of CPCs have been associated with Li–Fraumeni cancer predisposition syndrome (LFS) caused by germline (nonsomatic) mutations in ТР53 gene.1 Photon radiation therapy is contraindicated in patients with LFS, including LFSassociated choroid plexus carcinomas (LFS-CPCs), because of the dramatically worse outcomes for LFS-CPCs after photon irradiation compared tono-radiation regimens,with 2-year overall survival of 0.18 ± 0.1 and 0.58 ± 0.12, respectively.2 Here, we report a case of disseminated LFS-CPC successfully treated with high-dose methotrexate therapy (HDMTX) and alternating carboplatin/cyclophosphamide regimens followed by craniospinal proton beam radiation therapy (PBRT). A 2-year-9-month-old male was brought to emergency after falling from a chair and hitting his head. The clinical image at the admission was dominated by symptoms of cranial hypertension. Computed tomography (CT) imaging revealed a hyperdense lesion in the third ventricle, enhanced by contrast, and occlusive hydrocephalus (Figure 1A,B). The patient underwent neuroendoscopic resection of the third ventricular tumor. No complications and no negative dynamics in neurological status were observed in the postoperative period. Histological examination revealed a bulk of tumor with necrotic alterations, coagulated blood, and a tiny area of poorly differentiated malignancy with mitoses. Immunohistochemical reactivity for SYN, GFAP, S100, CK7, and Ki67 (up to 15%) yielded a diagnosis of choroid plexus carcinoma,WHOGrade III. Molecular genetic analysis of the tumor tissue revealed a pathogenic variant TP53 с.818G>A, p.(Arg273His), rs28934576, COSMIC ID10660. Presence of the variant in nontumor tissue samples collected from the patient (peripheral blood leukocytes, buccal epithelium) confirmed its germline (nonsomatic) nature. Absence of the variant in both parents indicated its de novo status. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the central nervous system (CNS) performed before and after contrast enhancement on second postoperative day showed postoperative changes, within the brain, the contrast was absorbed by three foci: two located in the inferior horn of the right lateral ventricle and the suprasellar region, and one in the right lateral ventricle. In the spinal cord images, small contrastabsorbing foci were observed over the total length of the spinal cord, with formation of two closely situated nodules, on dorsal surface at the Th12/L1 level on the right, small foci along the filum terminale, and one nodule at the lumbar sac level (Figure 1C–F). The patient underwent three cycles of HDMTX—5 g/m2 methotrexate on day 1 with folinic acid rescue and vincristine 1.5 mg/m2 on days 8 and 15 alongside supportive therapy. HDMTX was followed by four cycles of alternating CarbEV/CycEV chemotherapy, tolerated satisfactorily. After that the patient received craniospinal PBRT—a 36 Gy total focal dose and additional 18 Gy boost to metastatic foci. The parents were fully informed in advance about the potential long-term side effects of radiation therapy, including the risks of secondary malignancies, neurocognitive sequelae, and musculoskeletal growth retardation. Theparents accepted tshese risks and insistedon immediate craniospinal PBRT indicated due to the presence of the initial metastatic lesion and aggressive course of the disease with confirmed syndromic nature. After completion of PBRT, the patient's condition was monitored continually according to the protocol for patients with Li–Fraumeni syndrome. The control MR images of CNS reveal positive dynamics for brain metastases and no dynamics for metastatic foci in the spinal cord. The patient has presented with no extracranial neoplasms throughout the observation period lasting 6 years since diagnosis. The vertebrae did not receive a full dose of radiation. Still, the child exhibits growth retardation; his height (112.5 cm) is 3.2 standard deviations below the mean. The learning-related and adaptive behavior scales indicate cognitive impairments with attentional processing deficit. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first successful treatment of LFS-CPC with PBRT in a pediatric patient. Better understanding of possible therapeutic impacts of PBRT in patients with CPCs arising in the genetic context of LFSwould require further investigation. All proceduresperformed in the studieswere in accordancewith the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.


Background: Pediatric dermatoses are distinct group of disorders, comprising of skin problems encounteredduring childhood and adolescence. Skin diseases are a major health problem in the peadiatric age group which vary in pattern and presentation compared to adults. Aim: To ascertain the pattern of various dermatoses occurring in children aged below 12 years attending theout patient department of Dermatology Venereology, Leprosy, NRI Medical College and General Hospital,Chinakakani, Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh. Methodology: This was a cross sectional, clinical observational study in pediatric patients attending DVL OPDof tertiary care centre Chinakakani between December 2015 – November 2016. Results: Among 100 patients the most common age group is 4-6 yrs (38%) followed by 7-9 yrs (31%). Sex ratio in our study is 1.38:1(M: F). Common disease observed is infections 27.6%, followed by Infestations 16.2%,hypersensitivity disorders 15.2%. Eczemas13.3%, Nutritional disorders (4.8%), sweat and sebaceous glandlesions (3.8%), papulosquamous disorders, hair and nail disorders, pigmentary disorders, Transient Disordersof Neonate (2.9% each), Nevi & Nevoid disorders and Photodermatoses (1.9% each) Connective tissuedisorders, Congenital and developmental disorders (1% each). Conclusion: The present study brings out the unique features of Tropical pediatric dermatology. The incidenceof pediatric dermatoses can be brought down by increasing awareness and literacy rates among parents and the populationregarding etiology and spread of pediatric diseases and also by improving sanitation, nutrition and personal hygiene of children.


As a new idea of management,corporate culture plays a more and more important role in the development of a corporate.This paper analyses the meaning of corporate culture and discusses the problems existing in the construction of corporate culture in China,and then puts forword some countermeasures on how to improve the situation.


The transonic regime, extending from Mach numbers at which shock waves first appear with the associated drag rise to Mach numbers at which the head shock wave is firmly attached to the nose of the body, is well known. Not so well known, perhaps, is the reason for the failure of linearized theory to describe the flow in this regime, in particular, to permit an accurate calculation of the pressure.


With the introduction of high precision coating and monitoring method for EDFA gain flattening filter,it′s error tolerance characteristics are analyzed by a computer simulated program based on a normal distribution monitoring errors model and the most sensitive layers to film thickness errors are found.


Despite a burgeoning demand for parallel programs, the tools available to developers working on shared-memory multicore processors have lagged behind. One reason for this is the lack of hardware support for inspecting the complex behavior of these parallel programs. Inter-thread communication, which must be instrumented for many types of analyses, may occur with any memory operation. To detect such thread communication in software, many existing tools require the instrumentation of all memory operations, which leads to significant performance overheads. To reduce this overhead, some existing tools resort to random sampling of memory operations, which introduces false negatives. Unfortunately, neither of these approaches provide the speed and accuracy programmers have traditionally expected from their tools. In this work, we present Aikido, a new system and framework that enables the development of efficient and transparent analyses that operate on shared data. Aikido uses a hybrid of existing hardware features and dynamic binary rewriting to detect thread communication with low overhead. Aikido runs a custom hypervisor below the operating system, which exposes per-thread hardware protection mechanisms not available in any widely used operating system. This hybrid approach allows us to benefit from the low cost of detecting memory accesses with hardware, while maintaining the word-level accuracy of a software-only approach. To evaluate our framework, we have implemented an Aikido-enabled vector clock race detector. Our results show that the Aikido enabled race-detector outperforms existing techniques that provide similar accuracy by up to 6.0x, and 76% on average, on the PARSEC benchmark suite.


Large scale of wind generators is one of important methods to reduce the cost of the wind power system, and has been the growing trend of wind power market in recent years. In this paper, design strategies for large-scale permanent magnet (PM) generators with surface mounted PM (SPM) and V-shaped interior PM (IPM-V) are introduced. Since the weight and cost are the reference points for large-scale generators, influences of design parameters, such as pole number, magnet thickness, and yoke thickness, on total weights and costs are investigated. With the advantages of short end-windings and high torque density, fractional-slot concentrated windings (FSCWs) are adopted. Since the design parameters of the IPM generator are more than that of the SPM generator, the design flows of the IPM generator are also more complicated. Moreover, the performance of the optimal SPM and IPM wind generators with FSCWs are investigated respectively and compared, including flux density, back-electromotive force (EMF), power factor, torque density, torque ripple and losses. The capacities of anti-demagnetization of machines with both rotor types are also analyzed. Finite element analysis (FEA) is carried out in this paper to analyze and compare these performances.


It presents aspects of cataloging and the Resource Description and Access (RDA) and its theoretical contributions on the new guidelines for the collection of information resources, which have their focus to the digital environment. It presents the current situation of theoretical discussions that took place in the period 2010 to 2014 among specialists. Analyzes the national and international literature regarding the cataloging and related topics, including the RDA. The research appears as literature, the survey type. Data were analyzed by categorization, through reading and analysis of abstracts and keywords of articles. The results of national and international search had similar themes. Its were assembled into nine groups: training; catalogs; authority control; implementations; conceptual models; RDA; technology; descriptive treatment resources; and thematic treatment resources. It was identified that in some themes, Brazilian publications stand as, for example, about conceptual models and descriptive treatment, although with regard to RDA subject, the international production stands out.


In this paper we show that collagenase-3 cleavage of type I collagen has a marked effect on α2β1 integrin-mediated interactions with the collagen fragments generated. Isolated α2β1 integrin and α2 integrin A-domain were found to bind to both native collagen and native K fragment and, to a lesser degree, native S fragment. Whole integrin and integrin A-domain binding were lost after heat denaturation of the collagen fragments. At physiological temperature, cell adhesion to triple-helical K fragment via α2β1 integrin was still possible; however, no α2β1 integrinmediated adhesion to the S fragment was observed. Unwinding of the collagen fragment triple helices by heating to physiological temperatures prior to adsorption to plastic tissue culture plates resulted in total abrogation of HT1080 cell attachment to either fragment. These results provide significant evidence in support of a role for matrixmetalloproteinase cleavage of the extracellular matrix in modifying cell-matrix interactions.


estates, their emigration decisions, their decisions to rent on Amherst Island, and their subsequent economic success. The analysis Wilson draws from these case studies points to the dominant significance of tenant right, though she vividly details as well the impact of the more standard variables of the migration literature: family-and-friends effects, impartible inheritance, wage differentials, and low-passage fares that appeared as emigrants served as return "ballast" in the timber trade from Canada. As economic and social history, A New Lease on Life is a richly detailed study of a particular form of migrant and land tenure linkage between the Old World and the New. The landlords and tenants who are the subjects of the work were anomalies—most Irish immigrants did not move from farming and fishing to farming and fishing, and even fewer moved to a tenant status on New World land. Economic historians familiar with Mokyr's book or Barbara Solow's The Land Question and the Irish Economy, 1870-1903) (Cambridge, MA, 1971) might wish to have seen Wilson draw closer ties to the tenancy issues raised there (unfortunately, neither work is cited). Although it does not explore broadly representative cases of Irish landholding, migration, and New World landholding, the book is a fine piece of scholarship on what might be termed the "microeconomic foundations" of labor markets and land tenure.


Single-loop detectors are the most common sensors employed by freeway traffic management agencies. The data are used for traffic management and traveler information. Single-loop detectors can only measure flow and occupancy. Although speed is often the most useful metric, it can only be estimated at conventional single-loop detectors. Typically this estimate comes from the quotient of flow and occupancy multiplied by the fixed, assumed average effective vehicle length. This conventional approach is limited because the actual average effective vehicle length will vary from sample to sample. Many researchers have proposed alternatives to address this problem, and although many of the methods work well under normal conditions, there has been limited research into methods that yield reliable estimates under heavy truck traffic. Heavy truck flows may arise as a function of location or time of day, for example, with proximity to a trucking facility or in early mornings when the number of passenger vehicles drops, respectively. This article presents a new methodology to estimate speed from single-loop detectors in conditions where trucks comprise a large percentage of the fleet. While the focus is on single loop detectors, the work is equally applicable to side-fire microwave radar detectors that emulate single-loop detectors.


although this in itself is no sin.) One might go even farther and say that in general the book is weak in constructing concepts and perceptive interpretations of observations so newsily related. (See page 153 for one example of author's habit of citing "one study that shows ..." without documentation.) As examples of interest and teaching devices, notice the statements that precede each chapter and the emphasis on tradejournal sources to encourage current reading. However, references of a more substantial character are scarce (see, particularly, pricing section, page 200). The chapter preliminaries might have been more effective in the form of questions in the opinion of this reviewer, and occasionally these proverbs or precepts appeared not to follow the chapter cont:nt. Assertions are frequently left unsubstantIated. and often arise from the quotation of some business "authority" (See page 471 for the unnecessarily weak criticism of break-even analysis. See page 161 for assertions about irrational consumer behavior or page 509 on imitating competitor's behavior.) There appears to be some naivete on the interpretation of the effectiveness of selling efforts. (See page 403 regarding contests where correlation and causation are confused.) There are points where the enthusiasm for exciting new developments (perhaps, a reflection of the source material again) leads to flimsy and vague statements. (See, for example, the fail~re to be more specific in assessing the marketing implications of automation, page 452.) On balance, the most important feature of the book is its arrangement and viewpoint. The content does not, in the reviewer's opinion, fully take advantage of it. For example, the viewpoint of the manufacturer as a seller in the section on channel choice, especially, is tacitly adopted. And it is also in this section that the author has the most difficulty in holding to his original viewpoint without vacillating between general institutional description in the traditional vein and the market problems of the firm. Perhaps such shifting is inevitable, and gradually we will learn to handle it with more finesse than was in evidence in this early attempt. In closing, the reviewer wishes to commend the author for his effort in attempting to find a better organization of material for teaching basic marketing and for presenting a framework which points in a worth-while direction.


Robert Steven Ledley (1926-2012) is one of the most influential Medical informatics scientists in the history of development of Medical informatics (1-3). Robert S. Ledley and his colleague Lee B. Lusted (1922-1994) wrote a seminal 1959 paper in Science that many people cite as the publication that launched the informatics field (Reasoning Foundations of Clinical Diagnosis).


Review of Is Socialism Dead?: The Meaning of Mitterrand by Daniel Singer.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.


AbstractPersonas are fictional users which are defined by their goals, and are often used to represent a specific group of people. The purpose of this study consisted of creating personas in order to analyze the patients of the Karolinska University hospital´s Rheumatology clinic. This study's aim was to create a more patient-centered healthcare, and to give focus to the patients' goals and needs. The assignment is an inquiry from CTMH, and is performed in collaboration with Karolinska University hospital and Clinical Innovation Fellowships. The process started with a literature study, followed by developing and submitting an application for ethical vetting. The next step was to interview some of the personnel of Karolinska University hospital that had experience with patients suffering from a rheumatic disease. This was done in order to get a background before the next phase of the project took place: interviewing patients. The scope of the study was limited to only including patients suffering from the rheumatic disease Rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Based on the interviews done with patients, a survey was created and sent out to 200 randomly selected patients with RA. The result of the survey was then used in several cluster analyzes, which divided the patients into groups based on their answers. The groups from these analyzes that gave the clearest division and the most interesting answers were then selected. The results consisted of four personas which were evaluated by a focus group. The conclusion of the results and the evaluation was that the personas created are easy to recognize and well usable. The four personas are a good tool for analyzing the patients of the Rheumatology clinic, and are a step towards placing the patients' goals and needs as key elements in the healthcare of today.


Additional work and expense for validation of confirmatory methods mark the major impact of commission decision 2002/657/EC on routine laboratories. In an effort to reduce this workload, different types of samples have been included within the same validation study for β-Agonists and for Chloramphenicole, respectively. In the sample preparation and measuring part of the validation process, 50 % of time and materials were thus saved. Results reveal that either sample matrices subject to hydrolysis, or matrices processed without hydrolysis, may be included in the same study. All performance data CCa and CCβ obtained are smaller than the given (except for CAP still temporary) minimum required performance limits. These findings do support the concept previously described for stilbenes, natural and synthetic steroid hormones in part 1 of this paper. Due to the disproportional operating expense involved, the strategy for implementation of validated confirmatory methods in routine laboratories currently embarked on is questioned, and a cost saving and more efficient alternative in line with commission decision 2002/657/EC is suggested.


A method for efficient detection of the dominant local rotational symmetry in grey level images of convergent beam electron diffraction (CBED) patterns is described. A general approach is to define a local measure of rotational symmetry that transforms the symmetry detection problem to an optimization problem, and obtain the symmetric regions by an efficient global optimization algorithm. In this paper, we present a correlation function as the measure of rotational symmetry. The value depends on the center of the supporting region, its size, and the rotational angle. The genetic algorithm is used to search the global maximum of the rotational symmetry. According to the unique characteristic of CBED patterns, some segmentation methods are applied to the images of CBED patterns to reduce the search space of the global optimization algorithm, thus this method is shown in experiments to be both effective and quick.


The mulluscicidal potency of Hedychium gardniarum (Zingiberaceae) was studied. The plant powder was extracted by successive solvents of increasing polarity. It was found that the petroleum ether extract had the most powerful molluscicidal activity. Phytochemical screening revealed the absence of alkaloids, saponins and cyanogenig compounds. A pentacyclic triterpenic compound was isolated from the petroleum ether extract which was found to be the most toxic principal to Biomphalaria alexandrina.


Open Relation Extraction (OpenRE) aims at clustering relation instances to extract relation types. By learning relation patterns between named entities, it clusters semantically equivalent patterns into a unified relation cluster. Existing clustering-based OpenRE methods only consider the information of the instance itself, ignoring knowledge of any relations between instances. Therefore, a Cross-Attention Fusion based Graph Convolution Auto-Encoder (CAGCE) method for Open Relation Extraction is proposed. The Auto-Encoder learns the semantic information of the sentence instance itself, and the Graph Convolution Network learns the relational similarity information between sentences. Then, the two heterogeneous representations are crossed and fused layer-by-layer through a cross-attention fusion mechanism. Finally, the fused features are used for clustering to form the relation types. A comparison with baseline models using the FewRel and NYT-FB datasets shows the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method.


To further increase prediction accuracy, improve power management and reduce waste, this paper proposes a hybrid electric load forecasting model based on wavelet analysis (WA) and least squares support vector regression (LSSVR) with particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. Where wavelet analysis is used to transform the original electric data sequence into multi-resolution subsets during the preprocessing stage and then the decomposed subsets are inserted into LSSVR to realize prediction, finally the ultimate prediction results are obtained via the wavelet reconstruction with all the independent prediction results. However, the key to influence forecasting accuracy is the parameters used in the LSSVR, in this paper PSO is used to optimize the kernel parameter Δ and the regularization parameter γ of LSSVR and choose the appropriate parameters for the hybrid forecasting model. The effectiveness of the proposed hybrid model has been proved in electric load prediction; the prediction results show that the proposed hybrid model outperforms the Elman networks model, the radial basis function (RBF) neural network model and LSSVR optimized only with PSO. The hybrid model achieves satisfying results, the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) with 0.907% and the coefficient of determination (R 2) with 0.9936, it offers a higher forecasting precision.


In response to the aging of the European labor market population, organizations have implemented various personnel policies that potentially contribute to older workers' prolonged and productive working lives. Little is known, however, about who uses which of these policies. This chapter studies which older workers (within organizations offering them) are most likely to participate in two of the most frequently implemented policies: flexibility and phasing-out policies. It relies on both the employee's and the employer's perspective to investigate two cost–benefit related arguments: older workers' age and their job compatibility with certain personnel policies. The study also tests the importance of two attitudinal considerations: gender roles and managerial agism. The results indicate that cost–benefit considerations are important drivers of policy uptake among older workers. Among workers aged 50+, older age still increases the likelihood of participating in phasing-out policies. High status workers' jobs are more compatible with flexibility policies, and workers in physical jobs are more likely to use phasing-out policies. The expectations for attitudinal considerations were not confirmed. Managerial agism does not influence participation in either measure and, surprisingly, older women show lower use of flexibility policies than older men, which may point to a selection effect.


The Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) is an important parameter widely used for assessing the earthquake effects at a given site and also for the development of design response spectra for seismic calculation use. The aim of this paper is to predict the PGA and investigate the effect of seismological parameters using feed forward artificial neural network. For this purpose, the KiK-net database is used to extract a selection of 1104 records, and a multi-layer perceptron architecture with the error back-propagation learning algorithm has been adopted to develop a model correlating the PGA to the following independent variables: earthquake magnitude Mjma, the focal depth d, source-to-site distance Repi, the shear-wave velocity down to 30 m (VS30) and resonant frequency (f800). An analysis of the effect of directionality on the PGA was performed, and it was found that a principal direction with respect to the E-N direction can be obtained for which corresponds an increase of the PGA that may reach up to 35%. Therefore, a radial angle parameter has been included in the input of the ANN model. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was carried out for each input parameter in order to evaluate the weight of their influence on the PGA. The results indicated that the predicted values of the PGA by the neural network are in good agreement with the corresponding target values. The performance analysis of the input parameters shows that the epicenter distance and the newly introduced radial angle are first order parameters influencing the PGA compared to the depth and shear-wave velocity which have a less significant impact.


We propose a novel assembly technique for compact and cost-effective arrayed optical modules. A compact 10-Gbps times 4-ch transmitter module that uses this technique has been successfully demonstrated.


Objective—The peroxisome proliferator activated receptor-gamma (PPAR&ggr;) protein is a nuclear transcriptional activator with importance in diabetes management as the molecular target for the thiazolidinedione (TZD) family of drugs. Substantial evidence indicates that the TZD family of PPAR&ggr; agonists may retard the development of atherosclerosis. However, recent clinical data have suggested that at least one TZD may increase the risk of myocardial infarction and death from cardiovascular disease. In this study, we used a genetic approach to disrupt PPAR&ggr; signaling to probe the protein's role in smooth muscle cell (SMC) responses that are important for atherosclerosis. Methods and Results—SMC isolated from transgenic mice harboring the dominate-negative P465L mutation in PPAR&ggr; (PPAR&ggr;L/+) exhibited greater proliferation and migration then did wild-type cells. Upregulation of ETS-1, but not ERK activation, correlated with enhanced proliferative and migratory responses PPAR&ggr;L/+ SMCs. After arterial injury, PPAR&ggr;L/+ mice had a ≈4.3-fold increase in the development of intimal hyperplasia. Conclusion—These findings are consistent with a normal role for PPAR&ggr; in inhibiting SMC migration and proliferation in the context of restenosis or atherosclerosis.


R. Novick said that our article 'The two-component system ArlS–ArlR is a regulator of virulence gene expression in Staphylococcus aureus' (Fournier et al. , 2001, Mol Microbiol 41: 247–261) should be regarded as tentative because of substantial 'uncertainties'. In this article published in 2001, and not in 2000, as stated several times by R. Novick in his review, we described the effect of the arl mutation on the expression of various virulence factor genes. The 'uncertainties' mentioned by R. Novick relate to the first part of our article, which corresponds to only 10% of the work. At the start of the study, we used strain ISP794, which is a derivative of strain 8325 carrying the three prophages f 11, f 12 and f 13. In the original article, we concluded from this part of the work that strain 8325 was not suitable to study the effect of the Arl system on virulence gene expression. Indeed, the production of secreted virulence factors in the presence of the arlS mutation decreased in the 8325 background, whereas it increased in the 8325-4 background, corresponding to the 8325 strain cured of the three prophages. Thus, the production of virulence factors differs in the 8325 and 8325-4 backgrounds, because of either prophages or undefined mutations in the 8325 background. We decided to study the action of the Arl system in the 8325-4 background. Thus, the effects of the Arl system on virulence factor expression, corresponding to the bulk of our results, were studied in the 8325-4 background, and the results obtained are therefore not tentative. (i) Comment: b -haemolysin activities are reported for a f 13 lysogen, although hlb is insertionally inactivated by the prophage. Response: strain 8325 carries the f 13 lysogen in the b haemolysin gene. Table 2 should be corrected as follows: b -haemolysin activities were not determined whereas a toxin activities were 69 ± 4 haemolytic units for strain BF28 (8325) and 6 ± 2 haemolytic units for strain BF29 (8325 arlS – ). (ii) Comment: b -lactamase activities are reported for strains of the NCTC8325 series, which are b -lactamase negative. Response: strain 8325 does not carry a b -lactamase gene. However, to make it possible to measure b -lactamase activity, we introduced a plasmid, pI258, encoding a b -lactamase. This is indicated in the Experimental procedures of our article (p. 258, first paragraph of secreted proteins). (iii) Comment: quantitative b -lactamase activities were determined by measuring minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs). This is invalid owing to the profound inoculum effect seen with b -lactamase. Response: we used b -lactamase activity as a control for secreted protein because b -lactamase is not a virulence factor. We previously determined MICs because it had been reported that MICs determined for similar amounts of inoculum are correlated with the amount of b -lactamase produced by strains (Chapman and Steigbigel, 1983, J Infect Dis 147: 1078–1089). We investigated the correlation between MICs and the amount of b -lactamase in more detail by determining MICs for various inocula and b -lactamase activities in the culture supernatant, using nitrocefin, as described previously (Fournier et al. , 2000, J Bacteriol 182: 664–671). At 10 5


The CaCu3Ti4O12 (CCTO) has the advantage for the various applications especially for capacitive elements in microelectronic devices over the ferroelectric materials including BaTiO3. CCTO is a ceramic compound with a high dielectric constant but it has a high loss tangent at room temperature. In this work, the Influences of PtO2 doping on the dielectric properties of CaCu3Ti4O12 (CCTO) ceramics were investigate. The ceramics CCTO and PtO2 doping CCTO were studied by X- ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy. The dielectric properties have been measured as a function of temperature and frequency range 0.1 - 500 kHz. The XRD shows the CCTO structure does not changes after doping with platinum. The results show that PtO2 doped can reduce the mean grain sizes of CCTO, but the dielectric constant still remained a height. The samples of 2.0 mol% Pt-doped have exhibited high dielectric constant of about 22,000 and the loss tangent about 0.7 at room temperature and frequency at 10 kHz. The reduced of the loss tangent could be interpreted with the internal barrier layer capacitor model (IBLC)


The article applied to Mn in the low chromium cast iron which develops a new abrasion-resistant cast iron of Cr and Mn for the lower hardness and the worse of abrasion-resistant of the low chromium cast iron.It analyzes Mn in the high chromium cast iron distribution by the scanning electricity mirror.The experimental result indicates that Mn can be large scale enhancement material casting of hardness,from 54HRC to 61HRC,and causes degree of hardness distribution to be even.


A longitudinal analysis was performed to evaluate the impact of one element of the federal Gun Control Act of 1968. This law banned purchase of handguns by persons aged 18 to 20. The analysis tested whether the share of arrests for 3 violent crime types trended downward, of less strongly upward, after the law went into effect, controlling for trends in the share of the population in this age group. Results indicate that there was no impact of these age restrictions on handgun purchases, on the 18-to-20 share of arrests for homicide, robbery, or aggravated assault.


Registered Charity Number 207890 Showcasing Photonic Crystal Enhanced Microscopy: A new label-free imaging method for quantitative imaging of live cell adhesion, representing one of the optics-based biosensor technologies developed by the Nano Sensors Group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, directed by Professor Brian T. Cunningham. More information can be found at: nano.ece.illinois.edu.


(5) fails to conduct comparative analyses across regions. Against this backdrop, the book certainly represents a welcome cross-fertilization between comparative politics and IRT. However, it does not successfully develop a clear and concise IRT theoretical framework that can be applied to other cases. Therefore, it might be read more as a work of comparative politics with a link to international relations. Koga provides a much-needed contribution and a fresh empirical perspective by examining the RSIs of non-great powers. They are in stark contrast to, for instance, the United Nations, the European Union, and NATO, which are the most recurrent case studies in IR. The book also adds non-Western perspectives on the process and rationale behind institutional change, although it does not examine them, theoretically, far enough. The extensive fieldwork conducted by the author makes the empirical material very rich and positions this study as a unique perspective for conducting a cross-regional comparative analysis. However, there are a few questions that need clarification and some choices that need further justification. First, including the OAU as a case study of an African RSI alongside ECOWAS is not justified. Why did the author not focus on other regional institutions in Africa, such as the East African Community or the South African Development Community, instead of focusing on the OAU? The dynamics, structures, and constraints of the OAU are vastly different from those of ECOWAS or other regional organizations. Second, by including institutions as different as ASEAN, OAU, and ECOWAS, the author falls into the problem of losing explanatory power because the overarching theoretical frameworks are too comprehensive. The richness of the scope of the analysis is thus at once a strength of this work and a weakness. It is a strength because not many studies (if any) have undertaken such a formidable task, and it is a weakness because the theoretical framework is made less rigorous by taking such a broad approach. Lastly, the argument about member states' calculations of actual/expected change and their decisions based on them to consolidate, displace, or layer is rather intuitive and self-evident. It does not present a provocative new perspective on how institutional change occurs. The book could have been stronger if it diverged from the literature typically used to analyze what the author describes as greatpower institutions and developed a non-great-power framework for understanding institutional change from a non-Western perspective. In this respect, an interesting future project would be to deliver on the promise of expanding the literature on institutions beyond that exhibiting a Western bias by actually developing a novel theoretical framework that could then be applied to a particular set of non-Western empirical cases. With this being said, Reinventing Regional Security Institutions in Asia and Africa is a valuable contribution to IR scholars looking to branch out and learn more about institutional change.


Exploring the Ln/succinate system and the template effect in hydrothermal synthesis made it possible to obtain [La2(Succ)3(H2O)3]·2H2O and [Ln2(Succ)3(H2O)2] where Ln = La, Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, and Tb. The first case is a 2D network with a sql plane net topology. The 3D supramolecular network is formed by strong hydrogen bonds, which give rise to a pcu network. In the second case, a family of 3D compounds with a bnn topology could be synthesized. Both compounds can be obtained in the presence of 5-sulfosalicylate (5-SSA3–) as a template agent, and the presence of toluene in the reaction enables formation only of [Ln2(Succ)3(H2O)2] compounds. This paper addresses a systematic synthetic and theoretical study of the formation equilibrium of the molecules reported. The influence of the template agent on the formation of porous MOFs and the luminescent behavior are addressed.


Antibacterial activity of aqueous and organic root bark extracts of Gliricidia sepium were investigated against S. aureus, B. subtilis, C.pyogenes, S. typhi and E. coli using the disc diffusion method. The water and ethanolic extracts showed inhibitory effects on the microorganisms under study. The n-hexane extract was not active on all the microorganisms. The results showed that the plant extracts of Gliricidia sepium would be useful as antifungi, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory.


Leishmaniasis represents a series of severe neglected tropical diseases caused by protozoa of the genus Leishmania and is widely distributed around the world. Here, we present the syntheses of Morita-Baylis-Hillman adducts (MBHAs) prepared from eugenol, thymol and carvacrol, and their bioevaluation against promastigotes of Leishmania amazonensis. The new MBHAs are prepared in two steps from essential oils in moderate to good yields and present IC50 values in the range of 22.30–4.71 μM. Moreover, the selectivity index to the most potent compound is very high (SIrb > 84.92), far better than that of Glucantime® (SIrb 1.39) and amphotericin B (SIrb = 22.34). Conformational analysis were carried out at the M062X//6-31+G(d,p) level of theory to corroborate a hypothesis about the nitroaromatic bioreduction mechanism.


To improve the survivability of the cloud data center,aiming at numerous fault issues which are brought about by the increasing complexity of the software and hardware,a kind of heartbeat detection and fault assessment scheme ensuring the efficient cloud data center operation was put forward,which was based on the traditional server heartbeat detection mechanism and combined with the characteristics of cloud computing.The simulation on the platform in the laboratory was carried out.Results show that the scheme can detect failure nodes in time and evaluate fault level by using fuzzy integration method according to the established standard,providing the basic reference and guarantee for management and operation of the cloud data center.


Introduction Glossary General Procedures Quick Introduction to the Internet Civil Litigation Tribunals, Other Bodies, ADR Family Law Criminal Law State Funding Licensing Appeals, Judicial Review, Case Stated Companies and Businesses Probate Conveyancing Finding the Right Job Useful Web Addresses


Cumulonimbus clouds, which are manifestations of great instability in the atmosphere, constitute a serious hazard to aviation. Heavy turbulence, hail and lightning associated with Cb clouds may endanger safety of aircraft. Updraft and downdraft, which in some cases are as high as 6000 ft min-1 as also gusts experienced in Cb clouds may lead to loss of control or structural damage to aircraft. There have been instances of wind-screens of aircraft being holed, perspex astrodomes shattered and deicer boots ripped off due to hail. Hence knowledge of the structure and in particular the vertical extent of Cb clouds is most essential for safe flight-planning. Very little data in respect of heights of tops of Cb clouds in India and other tropical countries are avail-able.


Chinese overseas companies have dominated business in Asia and most of them
were successful. Thus, it is interesting to be analysed whether this type of
companies have uniqueness in managing their companies, considering there is a
relationship between management and culture. This study provides a literature
review on Chinese overseas management. Then, based on those previous studies
the strength and weakness of this style of management are concluded. This study
also points out management style of Indonesia companies based on literature
review, and then provides a comparison between Chinese overseas and Indonesia
company management style. The analysis is based on some theories of culture.
The contribution of this study is providing insight for future study to define
effective management style.


We propose a general definition of a Veneziano-model amplitude in terms of the support property of its double inverse Laplace transform. A practical test of this property is then formulated and applied to ..pi pi.. scattering. It is satisfied by the nonexotic ..pi pi.. amplitudes but not by the exotic ..pi../sup +/..pi../sup +/ scattering amplitude. However there are significant deviations from the explicit Lovelace-Shapiro model and the isovector-exchange amplitude is better represented by the symmtric-group model of Frampton.


Abstract The study aims to investigate the effect of hollow yarn structure and the sheath-core proportion of hollow yarns on the permeability properties of the knitted fabrics. In order to accomplish this, core yarns in the yarn count of 59 tex were produced by using cotton, viscose, wool, and polyester fibers in the sheath and different ratios of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) in the core. After completion of yarn production on ring spinning frame, the yarns in the form of packages were used to produce plain knitted fabrics. Fabrics were then divided into two groups, one of which was washed during a time period in order to remove PVA from the core to obtain hollow yarn structure. Air and water permeability, and wicking properties of the knitted fabrics were measured before and after washing processes. Mechanical properties such as pilling and bursting strength of the fabrics were also examined. The results show that washing process and PVA proportion used to produce core spun yarns have a significant effect on the permeability and mechanical properties of the fabrics.


In rice (Oryza sativa L.), seeds exposed to heat stress during grain filling exhibit delayed germination because of DNA methylation levels at promoters of abscisic acid (ABA, a germination-inhibiti...


This paper addresses the calculation of thermochemical nonequilibrium rarefied hypersonic air flows. A multi-temperature thermochemical model developed earlier for simulation of air ionization in low-density regime is used. UV radiation in the air molecular bands and IR radiation of NO molecule are considered. On the basis of comparison with the Bow Shock vehicle flight tests and shock-tube experiments a model of electronic excitation for air is developed. For the velocities and spectral range considered the main radiation consists of NO(P,Y,8) molecular bands. Analysis of groundbased and flight experimental data enables to determine a contribution of individual molecular bands. Cross sections of collision excitation were adjusted for the best matching of numerical data with experimental ones.


Overcoming destructive changes in the processes of transformation of the natural resource use of territorial communities requires the development of new approaches aimed at ensuring a balance of interests and effective interaction between the authorities, business, and the state in the field of environmental management. An urgent task is to form an updated systemic organization of spatial natural and economic formations to implement integrated management of the natural resource potential of Ukraine. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the methodology of a system-integrated assessment of the natural and economic potential of Ukraine in the context of sustainable development. The methodological basis of the research is the subject-object method. The dialectical method of applying economic laws, analysis, synthesis, economic-statistical, monographic, and abstract-logical methods was used to generalize the results obtained. Ways of solving the problems of transforming the model of state influence on the modernization processes of public-private forms of ensuring sustainable development of territories were proposed. It will allow finding a balance in the structure of resource management, in the plane of the spatial organization of natural economic activity. The authors focus on forming management systems at the lower territorial level. The updated, by modern requirements, methodology for assessing the efficiency of using the space of economic activity has been substantiated. It has been proved that an actual result can be achieved when considering three fundamental regularities of ensuring the efficiency of production and economic, interregional and intersectoral interaction of regional social, economic, and ecological systems. These study results are the basis for forming a systemic and universal concept of the transition of Ukraine and its regions to sustainable development in conditions of resource constraints and the constant strengthening of social, political, military, environmental, and economic threats and risks.


The present invention relates to an apparatus for calibrating a machine tool. For hand-held power tool, especially configured jigsaw (2) of the tool (1), a means is provided for calibration, and furthermore the present invention relates to a detection method, the particular detection method to be used in conjunction with machine tool background to the identification mark in unstable.


Judicious tailoring of the interface between the SnO2 electron‐transport layer and the perovskite buried surface plays a pivotal role in obtaining highly efficient and stable perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Herein, a DL‐carnitine hydrochloride (DL) is incorporated into the perovskite/SnO2 interface to suppress the defect‐states density. A DL‐dimer is obtained at the interface by an intermolecular esterification reaction. For the SnO2 film, the Cl− in the DL‐dimer can passivate oxygen vacancies (VO) through electrostatic coupling, while the N in the DL‐dimer can coordinate with the Sn4+ to passivate Sn‐related defects. For the perovskite film, the DL‐dimer can passivate FA+ defects via hydrogen bonding and Pb‐related defects more efficiently than the DL monomer. Upon DL‐dimer modification, the interfacial defects are effectively passivated and the quality of the resultant perovskite film is improved. As a result, the DL‐treated device achieves a gratifying open‐circuit voltage (VOC) of 1.20 V and a champion power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 25.24%, which is a record value among all the reported FACsPbI3 PSCs to date. In addition, the unencapsulated devices exhibit a charming stability, sustaining 99.20% and 90.00% of their initial PCEs after aging in air for 1200 h and continuously operating at the maximum power point tracking for 500 h, respectively.


In order to compare panels produced using different technologies in a meaningful manner, it is important to use testing protocols that are relevant to each technology, and that provide results representative of the actual performance of the module under working conditions. Preconditioning process and testing protocols affect the module performance and must be controlled in order to obtain accurate comparisons. The effects of preconditioning processes and testing protocols on various PV technologies are studied and analyzed.


Stud~nt Traffic Court Saturday elected Don Lindholm, M, Burlington. chief justice of the Court for the coming term. Other members of the Court are Dave Coppin. B3, ELmhurst, Ill. ; Dave Killinger, Ll, St. Petersburg. Fla.; Bob Bateson. La, CoraLvilJ.e: and Pat Smith. A3, Elmhurst. Ill. The Court has jurisdiction of all appeaLs from tickets issued by SUI Campus PolJce. Lindholm said that at the Court·s opening session Saturday. 24 appeals were considered. This is quite a few less than normally are on the docket at the Court's weekly sessions. Lindholm stressed that the Court has full power to consider any appeal from tickets issued .by the campus police. and that if the Court dismisses a ticket. that action is final. When the Court upholds 41 ticket there is still the right of appeal to the Office of Student Affairs. if the student so elects. Students wishing to appeal tickets issued by tbe Campus PolJcc should pick up appeal forms at the Student Council o[(ice Ln the Memorial Union. or at the Office of Student Affairs . Instructions are found on the forms. The Court's sessions are held each Saturday morning. The Court forms the judicial branch of the SUI Student Council.


This paper presents a model for searching and grouping of business process models. To search business process models, the model contains a module for multimodal indexing that takes into account textual and structural information of models. To group models, an adaptation of the Lingo algorithm was used; it is based on singular value decomposition and frequent phrases extracted from the description (textual and structural information) of the business process models retrieved according to a query. The evaluation of model was conducted by executing the search process on a closed test-collection built collaboratively, that containing 146 business process models, and comparing the results with a set of relevant business process models obtained from an evaluation issued by 59 experts. Measures of relevance such as graded precision and recall shown promising results in the search process, as well as the quality assessment of the sets formed by the grouping process.


The purpose of this study was to evaluate and compare two behavior screening instruments—the Behavioral and Emotional Screening System and the Behavior Screening Checklist. The sample consisted of 492 elementary school children from the southeastern United States. The psychometric properties of the screening instruments were evaluated in terms of intra-rater agreement, concurrent validity, and predictive validity of academic and behavioral outcomes. Results revealed that both screeners were significantly correlated with behavioral and academic variables. Consumers of screening instruments are encouraged to select an instrument that has sound psychometric properties and is practical for use in applied settingsC.


Nowadays, the role of light weight materials has grown up in important industries such as aerospace and biomechanics, but before the appliance, their strength should be increased. A modern way to increase this factor along with the lightweight factoris using bimetal sheets, hence, the design of multilayer sheets has been very much considered recently. In this study, explosive welded Cu/St/Cu multilayer sheets were used in the incremental forming process to determine the springback phenomenon on different layers. The results indicated that rotational speed, feeding rate, and vertical step parameters can affect spring back in single point incremental forming process (SPIF).Three levels of vertical step size, tool rotational speed, and feed rate have been considered as the input process parameters and spring back as the output.In order to design a better experiment and analyze the data, the Taguchi method was selected on the basis of DOEin Mini-Tab software andthe results have been analyzed by two states. In the first state,the value which was closest to the nominal value is considered to be the optimal result which obtained for spring back angles with parameters of 0.75 mm for the vertical step down, 200 rpm for the rotational speed and 500 and 1000 mm/min for the feeding rate. In the second state, the least amount is considered as the optimal result in which the values of 0.5 and 1 mm of the vertical step down, 150 and 100 rpm of the rotational speed, and 1500 and 500 mm/min of the feeding rate formed the optimal outcome.


Objective To evaluate the efficacy and safety of pemetrexed combined with nedaplatin in the treatment of elderly patients with advanced lung adenocacinoma.Methods 47 elderly patients with advanced lung adenocacinoma from January 2009 to June 2012 were randomly divided into control group(20 cases) and observation group(27 cases).The control group was treated by gemcitbine 1 000 mg / m2 combined with nedaplatin 80 mg / m2(d1),while the observation group was treated by pemetrexed 500 mg / m2 combined with nedaplatin 80 mg / m2(d1),with 21 days as 1 cycle.The effect rate and toxic and side effect of the two groups were observed.Results There were no significant differences between the two groups in overall response rate〔40.7%(11 /27) in the treatment group vs.35.0%(7 /20) in the control group,χ2 = 0.0720,P = 0.7885〕.But there were significant differences between the two groups in over grade Ⅲ leukocypenia(χ2 = 4.3649,P = 0.0330).Conclusion Pemetrexed combined with nedaplatin shows good efficacy in the treatment of elderly patients with advanced lung adenocacinoma.The toxicities were not serious and it can be safely used in practice.


The article addresses the problem of environmental pollution during the production of petroleum products at logistics support, highlights the negative factors of oil distillation and processing of products, which include atmospheric pollution the oceans and the lithosphere, and provides a brief description of some wastewater treatment methods and recommendations for the protection of atmospheric air.
Oil refineries are a source of air, water and land pollution by hydrocarbons, hydrocarbon oxides, sulfur oxides, hydrogen sulfide, nitrogen oxides, phenols and aldehydes.
Oil refining is a multistage process for separating a mixture of different carbon and hydrogen atoms in a molecule, as well as for constructing carbohydrates into separate fractions and changing the structure of molecules of individual fractions, this process is not waste-free.
 A significant amount of harmful and toxic substances enter the environment. The environmental problems of oil distillation and direct distillation processing include air pollution throughout the oceans and lithosphere.
The safety of technological processes is determined by a number of factors: the method of production and its hardware design, the degree of continuity of the process, its optimal operating parameters, the quantity, composition, properties and state of aggregation of the initial, intermediate and final products, and others.
Oil and oil products form fire-hazardous, explosive and toxic mixtures with air. Special attention is paid to the methods and methods of pumping, storing and using both oil and its refined products.
Thus, in order to obtain a productive result of improving the ecology in the production of petroleum products, attention is drawn to the main directions of the development of waste-free and low-waste technologies at the present stage of society development.
Keywords: ecology, complex measures, air pollution, environmental protection, waste water treatment, mechanical methods, waste-free and low-waste technologies.


This article aims to demonstrate the transformations undergone by families over time. Families have changed according to different historical and economic factors; religious or socio-political frameworks. The hierarchical model of family composition developed around the patriarch eventually gave way to a family in which the power is now distributed equally among its members. With the modernization of society the family became a nuclear institution with several relational structures, leading to the emergence of plural family configurations. As a consequence, a new conception of family emerged, associated not only to biological or civilian aspects, but especially focused on the bond of affection as an indispensable element for its maintenance, regardless of the gender of those involved. Therefore, homoaffective unions are a social fact. The only difference between a stable union and the homoaffective ones is that these are not based on gender differences, which is a definition required by the law. Both forms of union are based on sharing a common life, respect, solidarity, commitment and affective bonds. It seems reasonable to expect that the legislation should be applied to both types of stable unions as a form of giving them the same status. With society ́s transformations, these new family configurations seek for visibility and demand the state's legal protection. This demand for rights ended up in a historical decision taken by the Federal Supreme Court that extended to homoaffective unions all the rights heteroaffective ones have, which represents a shift in paradigms. The State can't deny legal protection, nor exclude homoaffective unions from their right of citizenship, nor restrict their right to freedom, as this would completely destroy the characteristics of a democratic state.


Allocation of public budgets requires deliberate analyses of the costs and benefits of alternative budget usages, which must be made using the same metric. The use of monetary term is the standard metric in government budgeting and is ideal for cost-benefit analysis. This paper systematically searched and reviewed literature on monetary valuation of urban nature's health effects. Although extensive research has demonstrated urban nature's positive health effects for humans, the review only found ten items in the literature, including four peer-reviewed journal articles, one book chapter, and five reports. Large monetary values were found. These estimates are useful as an argument for urban planners promoting investment in urban green infrastructure. The small number of studies calls for more research. Specifically, more research is required to investigate the monetary values of urban nature's other health effects, including the impact on depression and obesity. Case studies covering larger geographical areas are needed to account for heterogeneities across countries.


Among the most widely used tests for evaluating seed vigor, electrical conductivity (EC) stands out as one of the most promising due to its speed and simplicity. This study aimed to verify if the EC test could be used to evaluate the physiological quality of seed lots of Piptadenia moniliformis Benth. A seed lot, which was classified by seed tegument color and size, was used based on seed retention in round-hole screens, sizes 11 and 15, constituting 10 sub-lots. Prior to germination and the EC test, the seeds were immersed in concentrated sulfuric acid for 20 minutes in order to overcome tegument dormancy. During the EC test, we soaked seeds in 75 mL of water at 25 oC and tested eight soaking periods (2, 4, 6, 24, 48, 72, 96, and 120 h) and two seed quantities (25 and 50) per replicate. The EC test, regardless of the number of seeds or soaking period, was not adequate for evaluating the physiological quality of color- or size-classified seed lots from P. moniliformis Benth. .


Study of the function and meaning of the street within the urban structure: from tracing the street network, within a city's layout to the differentiation of function (and corresponding street design) in 19th-and 20th-century urbanism, with special reference to the role of the street in the projects of le corbusier. With 4 figures.


Background: Recurrent stroke is one of the major causes of death in stroke patients. Introducing stroke prevention education package to improve the lifestyle behavioral factors could reduce the vascular events. The Secondary Prevention by Structured Semi-Interactive Stroke Prevention Package (SPRINT) study in India aims to assess the role of a stroke prevention education package to reduce recurrent strokes, myocardial infarction, and death in patients with stroke. The objective is to formulate the detailed statistical analysis plan for the SPRINT India prior to trial unblinding. Methods: The plan was developed by trial statisticians with the help of principal investigator and management team of the SPRINT study. The chosen primary and secondary outcome measures and knowledge of critical baseline data were used to construct the statistical analysis plan. All collected data will be thoroughly reviewed. Patient baseline characteristics will be summarized with relevant descriptive statistics. The findings are planned and explained for the most appropriate statistical comparison between the groups. Results: The final statistical analysis plan corresponds to established criteria and will allow for transparent and efficient reporting. Conclusions: The SPRINT trial statistical analysis plan is developed in order to avoid analysis bias arising from prior knowledge of findings and to explicitly summarize prespecified analyses.


Franchising effectively encourages entrepreneurship, creates jobs, passes on skills and then ultimately promotes business growth and private ownership. We investigate the inner workings of this concept.


Mycobacterium avium and Mycobacterium tuberculosis are human pathogens that infect and replicate within macrophages. Both organisms live in phagosomes that fail to fuse with lysosomes and have adapted their lifestyle to accommodate the changing environment within the endosomal system. Among the many environmental factors that could influence expression of bacterial genes are the concentrations of single elements within the phagosomes. We used a novel hard x-ray microprobe with suboptical spatial resolution to analyze characteristic x-ray fluorescence of 10 single elements inside phagosomes of macrophages infected with M. tuberculosis and M. avium or with avirulent M. smegmatis. The iron concentration decreased over time in phagosomes of macrophages infected with Mycobacterium smegmatis but increased in those infected with pathogenic mycobacteria. Autoradiography of infected macrophages incubated with 59Fe-loaded transferrin demonstrated that the bacteria could acquire iron delivered via the endocytic route, confirming the results obtained in the x-ray microscopy. In addition, the concentrations of chlorine, calcium, potassium, manganese, copper, and zinc were shown to differ between the vacuole of pathogenic mycobacteria and M. smegmatis. Differences in the concentration of several elements between M. avium and M. tuberculosis vacuoles were also observed. Activation of macrophages with recombinant IFN-γ or TNF-α before infection altered the concentrations of elements in the phagosome, which was not observed in cells activated following infection. Siderophore knockout M. tuberculosis vacuoles exhibited retarded acquisition of iron compared with phagosomes with wild-type M. tuberculosis. This is a unique approach to define the environmental conditions within the pathogen-containing compartment.


The abundance of Cervidae species is increasing in Lithuania as well as in the whole Baltic region. High densities of forest ruminants: Moose (Alces alces), Red deer (Cervus elaphus), Roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), Fallow deer (Dama dama) and European bison (Bison bonasus) cause a significant damage both to natural forest regeneration and afforestation. Strong negative impact on forest regeneration lead to increased costs of forest regeneration, formation and maintenance. Thus, the balance among intensive silviculture and big game management must be found for sustainable use of environment recourses. In our study, we observed the influence of cervids density increment to natural forest regeneration in mixed broadleaf forest, which is located near the Zuvintas strict reserve, and in landscape point of view connected with other forest arrays by natural migration corridors. We found that natural regenerated forest understory is hardly damaged as well as cultural forest plantations. Thus, hunting pressure in our research area is obviously too low and the current abundance of wild ruminants will not allow the economically effective intensive silviculture. After investigation we found a steady Cervidae abundance, not exceeding the highest optimal densities. Cervid winter pasture quality is relatively good – economically and browsing very intensively did not effect ecologically important tree species regeneration in forest understory. However, damage degree to forest regeneration in our observed stands was very high. Natural as well as artificial forest regeneration is rather difficult, thus cervid densities should be reduced of expensive protection tools should be implemented in forest regeneration stands.