Reductions in operations personnel and the availability of more capable automation technology have resulted in increased automation of space control systems. One of the challenges of deploying autonomous systems is ensuring that people can interact effectively with them. An important strategy for such interaction is providing for different levels of control autonomy, or adjustable autonomy. At TRACLabs/Metrica, we are developing software for human interaction with control software supporting adjustable levels of autonomy. Our domain of application is the control of space systems and robots for NASA's manned space exploration program at the Johnson Space Center. Traditionally test and flight operations have been manually intensive. Flight controllers monitor astronauts directly controlling the operation of space vehicle systems, robotics, and life support systems. The use of automated software changes the role of humans in command and control. Low level data monitoring and control is replaced by the supervision of autonomous control and by joint human-computer task performance. These new human tasks require new types of information and new ways of presenting this information, as well as new ways of intervening in autonomous operations. Additionally, these changes in operations have increased the likelihood of humans supervising multiple automated systems that are physically dispersed and functionally diverse. It is important to provide an integrated view of system operations and to support access to such information from remote locations. Intelligent information processing is needed to derive and integrate heterogeneous control data in support of these new human tasks. And an architecture is needed that supports remote human interaction with distributed, autonomous control systems.


The fine-scale density distribution of Chione stutchburyi Finlay, 1927 (Bivalvia Veneridae) was studied in a soft shore estuarine lagoon. A pilot survey of density variability was made using a hierarchical sampling procedure. Densities were compared within and between 3 sampling locations, and within-site variability was shown to be important. Fine-scale spatial and temporal variability for a single systematically sampled site over a 30 mo survey period was examined using autocorrelation techniques. The advantages of systematic sampling and autocorrelation techniques for the detection and description of spatial and temporal patterns are discussed.


F1,F2,BC1 and BC2 generations were obtained through crossing,self-crossing and back-crossing by Chinese cabbage〔Brassica campestris L.ssp.pekinensis(Lour)Olsson〕of green leaves with purple pakchoi〔Brassica campestris L.ssp.chinensis(L.)Makino var.communis Tsen et Lee〕of purple leaves in order to study the genetic characteristics of leaf color.The results showed that leaf colors of F1 hybrid were purple,but its leaf colors were lighter than those of purple pakchoi.The ratios were close to 3 purple:1 green for F2 progenies,1 purple:1 green for BC1 progenies.For BC2 progenies,all plants owned purple colors.The results of χ2 test further proved that heredity of leaf color with purple genes on Chinese cabbage was controlled by one pair of gene.Purple genes were dominant genes compared with green genes and they showed addition effect.


Latino children are disproportionately affected by obesity but are less likely than non-Latino children to receive obesity counseling. Although it is


Hybrid nanomaterial (powdered fungi and ZnFe2O4) was developed and studied for gas sensing application, specifically for NO2 gas detection. In this study, powdered Rhizopus species W3 and ZnFe2O4 nano-powder were mixed at equal proportion to carryout sensing experiments. The conjugated material film was coated on the interdigitated electrodes (IDEs) by drop drying method, to determine the NO2 gas sensing characteristics. It was found that the response of these hybrid materials decrease resistance, thereby resembling the p-type semiconductor. The fungi W3 - ZnFe2O4 hybrid composite sensor showed better response, sensitivity, selectivity, stability and reproducibility at room temperature towards 30 ppm of NO2. N. Miura et al. reported in 2002 ZnFe2O4 showed good sensitivity for NO2 (436 ppm) at 700°C operating temperature. Therefore, in this present work effort was made to prepare novel hybrid material that is feasible, eco-friendly, flexible, cost-effective, low maintenance and light weight new device.


Abstract— Although B6O materials have shown excellent potentials for wear resistant and cutting tool applications, the problem of low fracture toughness and the difficulties to densify has delayed the application of B6O materials in the industry. In this work, efforts have been directed towards improving the fracture toughness and densification of these materials by incorporating suitable secondary phases and tailoring the microstructure to the desired properties. Synthesized B6O was hot pressed at 1850oC and 80 MPa in an argon environment, with nickel compounds (nickel (Ni) and nickel oxide (NiO)). The addition of 1.10 vol.% of additives improved the densification of the B6O powders in comparison to the pure B6O material. The fracture mode observed in the sintered materials is mainly transgranular.


Phenomenology of personal experience of psychologist and qualitative researcher as a participant of 13th European Congress on Psychology (Stockholm, Sweden, June 9-12, 2013) is presented in this essay. First-time experience of large International Conference participation is analyzed. Co-working as an abstract reviewer is described. Impressions, metaphors and travel notice.


Abstract : In this paper, we describe the interrelation between the microstructures of CrWMn high carbon steels of cold punch dies and strength, fracture resistance at static bending state, deflection and fracture toughness after various heat treatments. The influence of microstructures on the pregnant period of the fatigue crack No and the fatigue crack growth rate da/dN is also studied. Our experimental results show that after carbides refining pretreatment, the quenching and tempering structures have maximum strength, the No increases remarkably and the da/dN decreases at the low stress intensity factore Delta K range. After carbides refining pretreatment, the isothermal quenching structures have the best combination of strength and toughness of a mixed martensite structure with 50% bainite is obtained. It also can prolong the pregnant period of nucleation of fatigue cracks and reduce da/dN at the midstream intensity factor Delta K range. According to the examination of fatigue fractures by a scattering electron microscope, the fracture of a conventional quenching and tempering structure with coarse carbides is mainly intergranular.


The nanoparticles of highly fluorescent rubrene prepared by reprecipitation method using sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) exhibited narrower particle size distribution when examined by the Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) technique. The average particle size obtained is 87.2 nm and the zeta potential −13.8 mV given by a zetasizer indicated that the rubrene nanoparticles (RUBNPs) entrapped in SDS surfactant are negatively charged therefore changing the photo absorption and emission properties of the aqueous suspension of nanoparticles. The red shifted UV-photo absorption band of RUBNPs in comparison with the absorption band of rubrene in tetrahydrofuran (THF) solution is because of J-type aggregates in the aqueous suspension of nanoparticles, which also results in Aggregation Induced Enhanced Emission (AIEE) at λmax = 564 nm. The presence of Fe2+ in the aqueous suspension of RUBNPs showed quenching of fluorescence at 564 nm and the quenching results fit into a conventional Stern–Volmer relation in the concentration range of 0–80 μg mL−1 of Fe2+ ions solution with a good linear relationship. The possible mechanism of fluorescence quenching of RUBNPs is explained by considering the adsorption of the Fe2+ cation electrostatically on the negatively charged surface of the nanoparticle generated by SDS capping. The proposed sensing method of RUBNPs for selective detection of Fe2+ ion is successfully applied for the quantification of Fe2+ from pharmaceutical tablets.


This article criticises Alvin Plantinga's claim that 'basic' design beliefs, which arise without a conscious inference, have more positive epistemic status than non-basic ones and that we cannot evaluate the probabilities involved in inferential, inductive design arguments.


This work supplements the main results given in our paper "The Chandler wobble is a phantom" (eprint arXiv:1109.4969) and refines the reasons for which researchers previously failed in interpreting the physical meaning of observed zenith distance variations.The main reason for the Chandler wobble problem emergence was that, in analyzing time series with the step multiple of solar day, researchers ignored the nature of the solar day itself. In addition, astrometric instruments used to measure the zenith distance relative the local normal are, by definition, gravity independent, since the local normal is tangential to the gravitation field line at the observation point. Therefore, the measured zenith distances involve all the instantaneous gravitational field distortions. The direct dependence of the zenith distance observations on the gravitational effect of the Moon's perigee mass enables us to conclude that the Chandler wobble is fully independent of the possible motion of the Earth's rotation axis within the Earth.


Activin A was originally isolated and characterised as a reproductive feedback regulator of follicle-stimulating hormone. While potent paracrine networks involving activin and its binding protein, follistatin, are present in the gonad and pituitary, recent focus has been on emerging roles in a number of other systems, such as erythropoiesis, neuronal survival, embryonic development and inflammatory processes. The latter relatively new property was first suggested by us when follistatin in the circulation was elevated in sheep undergoing surgical trauma. We have since focussed on a model of acute inflammatory challenge using the bacterial cell wall component lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or endotoxin. This has highlighted that the release of activin into the bloodstream occurs extremely rapidly, within about 50 min. The response appears to be biphasic and precedes or is at least coincident with the release of a number of key pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as tumour necrosis factor α and interleukin-6. The mechanisms of this release are still being delineated, but it is fever- and prostaglandin-independent, and largely unaffected by blocking other key cytokine responses. Nevertheless, it is directly downstream of the LPS receptor and its activation pathway. Importantly, activin's property as an inflammatory cytokine appears to be borne out in a number of clinical inflammatory syndromes such as septicemia, suggesting that it is a hitherto undescribed component of the organism's innate immune response to infection.


It is pointed out that the notation of the theory of functionals and the theorem in it analogous to Taylor's theorem facilitates a compact discussion of perturbation and variation methods in quantum mechanics, both for bound state and scattering problems. With this aid it is shown (i) how stationary expressions required for variation methods may be sought and found, (ii) that the perturbation and variation methods are virtually identical, (iii) that second order perturbations and expressions stationary to the second order may be found similarly, though these are complicated. The form found for the second order perturbation of bound states differs from that commonly used in that it does not explicitly involve the eigenfunctions of states other than that perturbed.


Introduction: Cataract is the leading cause of treatable blindness worldwide. Phacoemulsification with intraocular lens (IOL) implantation is the most common surgical procedure performed for the treatment of cataract. The diabetic cornea has decreased corneal endothelial cell density (CED) due to cell dysfunction and malfunctioning repair systems. Objective: To compare the mean endothelial cell density before and after phacoemulsification in patients with diabetes mellitus. Material and Methods: A total number of 30 patients who presented for cataract extraction were included. Data regarding patients age, gender, duration of diabetes mellitus and side of cataract was collected. One day before surgery, CED was measured in all patients using Specular Microscope. After 2 weeks of surgery, CED was measured again. Results: Mean age of patients included in this study was 48.70±8.39 years. Mean duration of diabetes mellitus was 5.03±2.85 years. There were 16 (53.33%) males and 14 (46.67%) female patients. There were 15 (50.00%) patients with right eye and also 15 (50.00%) with left eye. On comparison of mean ECD between the Groups, the mean pre-operative ECD was 2753.05±126.91 Cells/mm2 and post-operative ECD was 2451.16±160.93 Cells/mm2, this difference was statistically significant with p value <0.0001. Conclusion: Phacoemulsification is associated with significant decrease in endothelial cell density in diabetic patients presenting with cataract. The benefit of this study is that it adds to the existing body of literature on impact of phacoemulsification on endothelial cell density in diabetic patients which can help in the development of advanced surgical techniques and better post operative management in such patients. Keywords: Endothelial cell density, phacoemulsification, diabetes mellitus.


IR fluorophore-modified DNAs and IR fluorescence imaging provide a safe and effective alternative for investigating ligand-DNA interactions than those involving radioactivity. These DNAs can be synthesized by conventional phosphoramidite chemistries and are commercially available. However, they are relatively expensive, which can be prohibitive if many different DNA probes are required. Described here is the design of modular DNA probes that can be synthesized by PCR using conventional templates and a defined set of IR fluorophore-modified primers. These have been found effective for investigating protein-DNA interactions in a variety of assays, including Electrophoretic Mobility Shift Assays (EMSA), Restriction Endonuclease Protection Assays (REPA), and the iterative selection method Restriction Endonuclease Protection, Selection, and Amplification (REPSA). Protocol development supported by grants from the NIH (1R15GM104833-01) and NSF (MCB-1714778). of 40 – 60%. Programs such as Primer3web and IDT OligoAnalyzer can be used to design effective primers. The central region's length and sequence will be dependent upon the ligand-DNA interactions being investigated. Figure 1 shows an example of a modular DNA probe from our laboratory that has been used to study a series of mutations in the consensus binding site of a Thermus thermophilus HB8 transcriptional regulatory protein SbtR by EMSA REPA. Important


Physical activity realized on a regular and systematic way has demonstrated to be extremely beneficial in preven tion, development, and rehabilitation of health. This paper shows the results of an experimental design of pre- and postintervention measurements of a studied population. The objective of this study was to evaluate a pilot program called taller balon con orientacion nutricional (Nutrition Counseling Workshop Ball) that promotes benefits for overweight and obese children with the practice of physical activity. Measurements of height, weight, and physical activity levels were examined from a total population of 234 children. 60 children were diagnosed with overweight or obesity problems; only 24 children agreed to participate in the pilot workshop. Lipids profile (triglycerides, total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol) was measured in the studied population. The results showed that a significant percentage of the studied population had initially high levels of blood lipids, and that 85 % of the population maintained lower le


A method for reproducing media content in a terminal and a terminal having a function for reproducing media content are disclosed. The method for reproducing media content in a terminal includes accessing a content server; and reproducing at least one media content configured with the accessed content server, among at least one media content which is previously stored in the terminal. Accordingly, the terminal is able to reproduce the media content configured with the accessed content server while receiving contents from the accessed content server.


It is important to model strokes and their relationships for on-line handwriting recognition, because they reflect character structures. We propose to model them explicitly and statistically with Bayesian networks. A character is modeled with stroke models and their relationships. Strokes, parts of handwriting traces that are approximately linear, are modeled with a set of point models and their relationships. Points are modeled with conditional probability tables and distributions for pen status and X, Y positions in the 2-D space, given the information of related points. A Bayesian network is adopted to represent a character model, whose nodes correspond to point models and arcs their dependencies. The proposed system was tested on the recognition of on-line handwritten digits. It showed higher recognition rates than the HMM based recognizer with chaincode features and was comparable to other published systems.


Abstract. Seeds of five Bulgarian cotton varieties, stored for one and two years, were subjected to five pre-sowing electromagnetic treatments with different intensity and duration of exposure. It was found that the selected values of controllable factors had stimulating effect on the total length and total mass of sprout and root. The total length of sprout and root increased by 7.5-16.4% (p<0.05), the total mass of sprout and root increased by 7.8-12.7% (p<0.05). The best treatment options were 1[U=(8…5)kV, τ =(15…35)s] and 4[U=(6…3)kV, τ =(5…25)s]. Electromagnetic treatments had stronger positive effect on seeds stored for one year. Compared to the untreated control, corresponding to each storage period, the electromagnetic impact had stimulating effect for both storage periods: for the total length of sprout and root the increase was by 7.6-21.1% and 2.3-11.0% at option 4; for the total mass of sprout and root it was by 10.8-16.5% at option 1 and 4.5-9.1% at option 4, respectively, at one-year and two-year storage of seeds. In comparison with the control Chirpan-539 variety, untreated seeds, one-year storage, higher values for both studied characteristics were found only for seeds stored for one-year: for the total length of root and sprout at the varieties Natalia, treatment options 1 and 4, Nelina and Helius, options 2 and 4 and Chirpan-539, option 1; for the total mass of root and sprout at the varieties Nelina, options 1, 2 and 3 and Chirpan-539, option 5. Compared to the untreated control corresponding to each variety, the stimulating effect of the pre-sowing electromagnetic treatment for the two characteristics was found for all varieties, for both storage periods. The Helius variety was the most responsive to the electromagnetic impact, with the strongest stimulating effect for both characteristics, at the one-year storage of seeds the total length of sprout and root increased most strongly by 34.8-43.9% at options 1, 4 and 2[U=(6…3)kV, τ =(15…35)s], and the total mass of sprout and root increased by 48.5% at options 1.


A brief description of the THEMISTOCLE experiment is given.The new results, theoretical (simulations) and analysis of new data is presented. We found a systematic decrease of the energy of our showers after introducind nucleus-nucleus interaction in our shower MC generations. The analysis of all our disponible observations of the CRAB NEBULA is presented. The new developments on the waveform of the Cerenkov impulsion and oncoarse imaging in preparation are described. Presented by Jirka Vrana at International Symposium on Cosmic Ray Physics in Tibet, August 12-17, 1994.


— AMS-02 is running since four years: a powerful apparatus for dark matter searches has been set up, in order to study the important antiparticle-toparticle ratios and cosmic leptons and nuclei spectra, up to the TeV scale. Official papers dedicated to hadronic physics are incoming. The unprecedented precision of AMS-02 data permits to greatly reduce the astrophysical uncertainties which affect cosmic rays (CR) propagation, allowing to study CR anomalies and highlight new phenomena, to corroborate or falsify present dark matter (DM) theories and to explore the TeV-ish dark matter scenario opportunities.


Determining the channel order, which is usually the first step in communication signal processing, is studied in this paper. A novel scheme based on the noise estimation is proposed and it uses exclusively the second-order statistics of the received signal. Simulation demonstrates that it works better than Liavas' criterion.


An attempt was made to examine the effect of gender and academic competence on coping processes of adolescents. The study adopted a 2 (academically competent adolescents versus academically less-competent adolescents) × 2 (boys versus girls) factorial design. In the present study, two hundred forty adolescents (120 academically competent adolescents securing 80% or more marks and 120 academically less-competent adolescents securing 50% or less mark) are randomly sampled from different urban colleges of Odisha. All the subjects were first year graduate students. The participants of all the four groups were compared with respect to their coping processes. The result indicated that academically competent adolescents adopted more problem- focused coping strategies and academically less-competent adolescents adopted more emotion-focused coping strategies. Again, boys used more problem-focused while girls used more emotion-focused coping strategies. Keywords : The Effect of gender and academic competence on coping process of adolescents


The synthesis of cholestane-3,7,24-triol was studied using deoxycholic acid as a starting material.Firstly,methyl deoxycholate was synthesized via the reaction of deoxycholic acid with methanol.Then cholestane-3,7,24-triol was obtained by the reduction of methyl deoxycholate by the NaBH4-PEG400-THF system using ultrasonic waves.


Tropicoporus is a recently proposed genus that was segregated from Inonotus s.l. and includes species with important wood decay and medicinal functions. The description of T. stratificans sp. nov. is based on more than 10 specimens collected on fallen decayed wood in subtropical forests of Rio Grande do Sul State. The species is recognized by its resupinate, poroid, golden brown, perennial basidiomes that become multi-layered, dimitic hyphal system, abundant hymenial setae, and subglobose to ellipsoid, brownish-yellow to ferruginous-brown basidiospores. Based on nrDNA ITS sequences, Bayesian and maximum likelihood phylogenetic analyses of Tropicoporus nested the new taxon in the T. linteus  clade. A description and illustrations of the new species are provided.


Description Development of bispecific antibodies to target mutant peptides in cancer At the start of my PhD, my advisers tasked me with the challenge of using antibodies to target driver mutation-derived mutant peptides that are presented on the surface of cancer cells. I was new to the field of tumor immunology and did not appreciate how wild a concept this was or all the hurdles that would await. My naïvety allowed me to believe that this approach might work against cancer cells in a Petri dish or even in a mouse model. Yet I never imagined that this challenge would blossom into a project encompassing numerous team members and multiple laboratories, resulting within a few short years in several licensed patents and a start-up company that develops clinical-grade products.


A continuum model for the high-rate, thermo-mechanical deformation of single-crystal cyclotrimethylene trinitramine (RDX) is developed. The model includes the effects of anisotropy, large deformations, nonlinear thermo-elasticity, phase transformations, and plastic slip. A multiplicative decomposition of the deformation gradient is used. The volumetric elastic component of the deformation is accounted for through a free-energy based equation of state for the low- (α) and high-pressure (γ) polymorphs of RDX. Crystal plasticity is addressed using a phenomenological thermal activation model. The deformation gradient for the phase transformation is based on an approach that has been applied to martensitic transformations. Simulations were conducted and compared to high-rate, impact loading of oriented RDX single crystals. The simulations considered multiple orientations of the crystal relative to the direction of shock loading and multiple sample thicknesses. Thirteen slip systems, which were inferred from in...


AIM: In this research, the apoptosis mechanism in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) exposed to increasingly high Hcy concentrations was investigated by examining the intracellular signaling pathways. METHODS: HUVEC were cultured and pretreated with Hcy. Twenty-four h after Hcy treatment, cell apoptosis was detected by Annexin V and DNA ladder analysis. Caspase3 and c-IAP1/2 mRNA expression were examined using reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and protein expression detected by Western blotting. The activation of caspase 3 was measured with the specific substrate DEVD-AMC. RESULTS: Hcy (0.3 mmol/L) induced apoptosis of HUVEC. Caspase 3 mRNA and protein expressions increased and activation enhanced with the concentration of increasing Hcy, but c-IAP2 mRNA and protein expression decreased. CONCLUSION: Hcy induces apoptosis of HUVEC in vivo by activating caspase 3 and inhibiting protein c-IAP-2 mRNA and protein expression.


Abstract : High-level spacecraft charging events in sunlight are discussed and statistically analyzed to determine environmental parameters critical to charging and the region of space near geosynchronous altitude where charging occurs. Significant levels of spacecraft charging are shown to occur only between 1900 LT and 0900 LT at any altitude or latitude of the SCATHA satellite orbit. High-level charging is shown to occur only during periods when the magnetic activity index is 2+ or greater. Distribution functions of energetic electrons and ions are presented for 3 high-level charging periods on days 114, 241 and 363, 1979. Moments of the distribution functions are determined, and fitting techniques used to derive two-Maxwellian densities and temperatures are discussed. Results are provided in a format usable in satellite design specifications.


Abstract The wind field plays a decisive role in haze generation and dissipation processes over the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) region. Although geographically the BTH region is under the influence of the East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM), this study finds that common indices of the EAWM cannot adequately describe the actual wind speed changes in the BTH region. Thus, observational data are used to analyze the interannual variations of the winter wind field over the BTH region. The results show that the average winter wind speed is 2.0 m s−1, with a slight rate of decline of 0.01 m s−1 yr−1. In most cases, strong-wind years correspond to negative sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies over the tropical Pacific, whereas weak-wind years correspond to positive SST anomalies. Moreover, correlation and composite analyses show that the interannual variability is affected by multiple factors, including the following: (1) the pressure gradient in the high and middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, as in strong-wind years the pressure gradient helps cold air move from high latitudes to middle latitudes; (2) the skin temperature in Eurasia, as low skin temperature in Eurasia in strong-wind years is conducive to the accumulation of cold air; and (3) the SST of the tropical Pacific east of the Philippines, as in strong-wind years the high temperature of this area affects the BTH region through anticyclonic activity and associated tropical circulation systems.


Abstract The age-adjusted incidence rate (AAR) of colorectal cancer in Korea peaked in 2011 and then began todecline. However, the AAR of colorectal cancer in Jeju increased continually from 1999 to 2013. Compared with the16 major cities in Korea, the inhabitants of Jeju-do have a low cancer screening program participation rate, high alcohol consumption rate and high BMI. The present study aimed to provide a statistical basis for the lowering ofthe incidence of colorectal cancer in Jeju-do. The Jeju regional cancer institute data from 1999 to 2013 was usedto analyze the between Jeju-do and Korea using the Joinpoint Regression program (Statistical Methodology and Applications Branch, Surveillance Research Program, National Cancer Institute) Version 4.2.0 - April 2015. The AARof colorectal cancer in Jeju-do has being increasing because of the increase in the rates of male colon cancer (averageannual percent change 8.422%, p-value< 0.000), female colon cancer (AAPC 6.136%, p-value< 0.000), male rectal cancer (AAPC 4.221%, p-value 0.003) and colon cancer in people aged over 50 years (AAPC 7.986% p-value< 0.000). The results of this study suggest that the treatment of precancerous lesions of the male rectum and lowering of the incidence of colon cancer in people aged over 50 years are necessary to reduce the colorectal cancer incidencerate in Jeju-do.


This article uses the pure arbitrage concept, debt denomination, and tax arbitrage to offer another look at theissue of inefficiencies and biasedness in the currency futures market. Unlike covered interest arbitrage (quasi-arbitrage), pure interest arbitrage explicitly considers the rewired financing costs and the investment return in arbitrage to constitute theoretcal bounds of currency futures price. A form of interest rate parity obtains as a result, which is referred to as FIRP. Debt denomination decisions by multinational firrns are then examined to yield another form of interest rate oSaIrRitv$.h r eelfpesrr eexdp tola ains EpIaRstP e. Imt ipsi froicuanld f itnhdatinthgese oxfi sitneenfcfeic oief nPcliResP aanndd biasedness in the currency futures markets. Furthermore, we show that tax arbitrage by multinational firms can contribute to the rejection of the unbiasedness hypothesis.


Emerging market economies have enjoyed increased access to world capital markets over the past few decades, with their borrowing costs in these markets constituting important determinants of their economic development. Since the late 1990's, these costs (measured as their spreads over US Treasury bonds calculated from JP Morgan's Emerging Market Bond Index (EMBI)), while generally trending down, have fluctuated widely (Figure 1). In this paper, for a subset of 18 emerging-market economies, two broad questions will be addressed:  To what extent have fluctuations in EMBI spreads for these economies over the past 8 years been due to the influence of world financial-market conditions compared with home-country developments; and


We study code design for two-user Gaussian multiple access channels (GMACs) under fixed channel gains and under quasi-static fading. We employ low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes with BPSK modulation and utilize an iterative joint decoder. Adopting a belief propagation (BP) algorithm, we derive the PDF of the log-likelihood-ratios (LLRs) fed to the component LDPC decoders. Via examples, it is illustrated that the characterized PDF resembles a Gaussian mixture (GM) distribution, which is exploited in predicting the decoding performance of LDPC codes over GMACs. Based on the GM assumption, we propose variants of existing analysis methods, named modified density evolution (DE) and modified extrinsic information transfer (EXIT). We derive a stability condition on the degree distributions of the LDPC code ensembles and utilize it in the code optimization. Under fixed channel gains, the newly optimized codes are shown to perform close to the capacity region boundary outperforming the existing designs and the off-the-shelf point-to-point (P2P) codes. Under quasi-static fading, optimized codes exhibit consistent improvements upon the P2P codes as well. Finite block length simulations of specific codes picked from the designed ensembles are also carried out and it is shown that optimized codes perform close to the outage limits.


SMEs are flexible to changes and may even face the challenge of changing the industry or technology. Although they are innovative, they face a lot of risk in their struggle to win a niche market. There are numerous studies regarding open innovation in SMEs, but few of them get the focus on risk drivers and methods to mitigate it. This paper analyzes the innovation degree in Romania compared to EU, analyzes the SMEs' internal and external risk drivers associated with open innovation, and suggests different ways to reduce the risk of implementing innovation


Seven commercial soybean paste were tested for ACE inhibition effect. In purification of ACE inhibitor from No. 2 soybean paste, acetone fraction had 57% protein yield with 92.8% ACE inhibition effect. Inhibitor was purified from acetone fraction of soybean paste by Sephadex G-25, Sephadex LH-20 and ODS column chromatography and HPLC. value of the purified inhibitor was 0.6 mg/ml. The inhibitor showed the competitive inhibition patterns on ACE. Amino acid analysis showed that the peptides consist of Ala, Phe, Leu, Glu, Gly, Ser, and Asp.


Motivation Few online services exist for rendering high-quality viral capsid figures compatible with common productivity software to develop effective infographics in the field of virology. Results The capsid.js library renders class I viral capsids within an online application that parameterizes style options, perspectives, and lattice patterns with SVG export. Availability This project is actively developed on GitHub (https://github.com/dnanto/capsid), distributed under the MIT License, hosted on GitHub Pages, and runs on modern browsers (https://dnanto.github.io/capsid/capsid.html). Supplementary information Supplementary data are available on GitHub.


As technology is developing exponentially and the world is moving towards automation, the resources have to be transferred through the internet which requires routers to connect networks and forward bundles (information). Due to the vulnerability of routers the data and resources have been hacked. The vulnerability of routers is due to minimum authentication to the network shared, some technical attacks on routers, leaking of passwords to others, single passwords. Based on the study, the solution is to maximize authentication of the router by embedding an application that monitors the user entry based on MAC address of the device, the password is frequently changed and that encrypted password is sent to a user and notifies the admin about the changes. Thus, these routers provide high-level security to the forward data through the internet.


Sweden has a long and rich tradition of folk music recorded. During the 1970s, the genre flourished and got a new boost in the 1990s.In the regions Norrbotten and Vasterbotten a number of artists a ...


In the years since her friends gathered to say good-bye at her funeral m December 1975, Hannah Arendt's thought has met both an increasingly enthusiastic welcome and an ever thorough criticism from the growing audience of her readers and commentators. Perhaps the most interesting phase of this current reception is now hidden from public view because it is taking place m the small classroom gatherings of colleges where she is being read with the fresh eyes of a new generation, who can appreciate her apart from the controversies that so determined reactions to her writings while she lived. Although several recent dissertations devoted to her work indicate these new readings, most of the books and articles which have taken her as their theme reflect the perspectives of her contemporaries or her own students. Their efforts already make up a formidable literature. At the time of


Dual beam antennas with similar gain and beam-width require multiple antennas fed separately with controlled input phase shifts or a single antenna with a complicated feeding mechanism. To reduce this design complexity, this paper presents an approach that uses one antenna, a simple feeding network and a pair of simple metamaterial-based frequency selective surfaces with uniform rectangular unit cells. Four different surfaces are studied for a 13.6 GHz scalable design fed by one planar source antenna at a time. Results show that different combinations vary the near field phase, which affects beam orientation and gain, and that a single far field beam can be transformed into a dual beam with a split up to 34°. The best design has simulated and measured gain of 14.5 dB for the boresight beam and ∼11 dB for each of the dual beam.


This article employs content analysis to study topics and themes of televangelist Pat Robertson's televised "700 Club" in the last months of 1988 and early 1989, after Robertson lost the race for the Republican presidential nomination and a Bush administration took office. The study found that in the 30 episodes analyzed, social, political, and religious topics each accounted for about one-third of topics mentioned. The tone of political discussions was often disapproving. Areas of the world emphasized were North and South America and the Middle East. The study speculates that the religious right is keeping its hand in the national agenda-building process.


July 1985: Armed with a decade of experience in the transplant literature, cyclosporine (CSA) was an effective and rapidly acting immunosuppressant, interfering with both the induction and amplification of inflammation. Its mechanism of action was thought to be inactivation of calcineurin, which subsequently prevented the transcription of mRNA encoding for interleukin-2, thereby interfering with mucosal inflammation. We postulated that patients with severe ulcerative colitis (UC) would benefit from parenteral administration, and that blood levels would be more reliable when the drug was given by continuous infusion. Replete with literature on the renal toxicity of CSA in transplant patients, we postulated that toxicity would be different in patients who had normal renal function. 1986–1989: Patients with severe UC who had failed intensive steroid therapy were studied in an open, uncontrolled manner. Our initial dose of CSA was 4 mg/kg/day infused continuously; blood levels were easily maintained, response was a mean of 5.8 days, and 73% of patients avoided colectomy. There were no serious adverse events and we continued CSA orally at 8 mg/kg/day. Our outpatient management evolved by observation, but we recognized that CSA is an induction rather than a maintenance medication. 1991–1992: In conjunction with the University of Chicago, we initiated a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in patients who had failed intravenous steroid therapy.1 Our intent was to study a total of 50 patients; however, after studying 20 patients a study monitor as well as 2 independent reviewers found a significant difference in the response rates of each group and the study was terminated. In all, 82% responded to CSA, 0% responded to placebo, and of the 9 placebo patients who did not respond initially, 55% did well when crossed over to open-label CSA. No patient developed nephrotoxity; however, a single patient had a grand mal seizure. Subsequent to our initial studies, there have been 4 controlled trials of CSA's effect on patients with severe UC. Although each study had individual differences, they all reproduced our acute response rate of 80%. D'Haens et al2 studied 30 patients who were randomized to either CSA or methylprednisone. After 8 days, 64% of patients who received CSA and 53% who received steroids were in clinical remission. Those considered responders were then continued on oral CSA and Immuran. At 1 year, 78% of the CSAtreated group were in remission as opposed to 37% who were initially treated with steroids. Svavoni et al3 randomized patients with severe disease to monotherapy with CSA, versus a group treated with both steroids and CSA. At 2 weeks, 93% of patients on both therapies were in clinical remission, whereas 67% of those treated with CSA alone were in clinical remission. Van Assche et al4 reproduced a similar response rate of 83% in patients receiving intravenous CSA for severe UC, both in patients receiving 2 mg/kg/day and in patients who received 4 mg/kg/day. Moskovitz et al5 again reproduced the 83% response rate to parenteral CSA, and in my own series of 156 patients the short-term response was 81%. Review of the large uncontrolled data again reproduced responses between 70%–80%. Of these open trials6–9 the preferred dosage administered was 4 mg/kg/day, and similar to the aforementioned controlled trials the response was rapid, and maintenance of remission long-term was improved by addition of 6-MP or Immuran. In fact, there has never been a series reported where there is less than a 60% response rate to parenteral CSA. As mentioned in the historical introduction, the initial toxicity data of CSA was determined in patients who had undergone either renal or hepatic transplantation.10 We assumed that their inherent renal disease contributed to the associated toxicity, and that patients with IBD and normal renal function would respond differently. Since the renal insult is caused by vasoconstriction of the afferent arteriole, and is reversible within 2 weeks after the drugs discontinuation, we reasoned that healthy patients would manifest a lower degree of renal damage. Initially, we minimized toxicity by patient selection, and too-frequent CSA, BUN, and creatinine levels. We had little toxicity in our open, controlled, and personal series. Sandborn and colleagues11 reReceived for publication March 28, 2007; Accepted November 9, 2007. From the Henry Janowitz Department of Gastroenterology, Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York, New York. Reprints: Simon Lichtiger, MD, Henry Janowitz Department of Gastroenterology, Mount Sinai Medical Center, 1755 York Ave., New York, NY 10128 (e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com). Copyright © 2008 Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America, Inc. DOI 10.1002/ibd.20363 Published online 11 February 2008 in Wiley InterScience (www. interscience.wiley.com).


In this paper we extend the niteness result on the p-primary torsion subgroup in the Chow group of zero cycles on the selfproduct of a semistable elliptic curve obtained in joint work with S. Saito to primes p dividing the conductor. On the way we show the niteness of the Selmer group associated to the symmetric square of the elliptic curve for those primes. The proof uses p-adic techniques, in particular the Fontaine-Jannsen conjecture proven by Kato and Tsuji. 1991 Mathematics Subject Classi cation: Primary 14H52; Secondary 19E15, 14F30.


We have studied the interactions between two heavy mesons ($D^{(*)}$-$D^{(*)}$, $\bar D^{(*)}$-$\bar D^{(*)}$, $B^{(*)}$-$B^{(*)}$, or $\bar B^{(*)}$-$\bar B^{(*)}$) within heavy meson chiral effective field theory and investigated possible molecular states. The effective potentials are obtained with Weinberg's scheme up to one-loop level. At the leading order, four body contact interactions and one pion exchange contributions are considered. In addition to two pion exchange diagrams, we include the one-loop chiral corrections to contact terms and one pion exchange diagrams at the next-to-leading order. The effective potentials both in momentum space and coordinate space are investigated and discussed extensively. The possible molecular states are also studied and the binding energies are provided by solving the Schrodinger equation. The results will be helpful for the experimental search for the doubly-heavy molecular states.


In this paper, the nonlinear evolution of a bistable interstellar medium is investigated using two-dimensional simulations with a realistic cooling rate, thermal conduction, and physical viscosity. The calculations are performed using periodic boundary conditions without any external dynamical forcing. As the initial condition, a spatially uniform unstable gas under thermal equilibrium is considered. At the initial stage, the unstable gas quickly segregates into two phases: cold neutral medium (CNM) and warm neutral medium (WNM). Then, self-sustained turbulence with velocity dispersion of 0.1–0.2 km s−1 is observed in which the CNM moves around in the WNM. We find that the interfacial medium (IFM) between the CNM and WNM plays an important role in sustaining the turbulence. The self-sustaining mechanism can be divided into two steps. First, thermal conduction drives fast flows streaming into concave CNM surfaces toward the WNM. The kinetic energy of the fast flows in the IFM is incorporated into that of the CNM through the phase transition. Second, turbulence inside the CNM deforms interfaces and forms other concave CNM surfaces, leading to fast flows in the IFM. This drives the first step again and a cycle is established by which turbulent motions are self-sustained.


Feeding trial was carried out to investigate the nutritional value of black acha (Digitaria iburua) grains as feed resource using 240 day old Ross-360 broiler chicks. Four dietary treatments of sixty birds per treatment were randomly allotted to diets composed of unpolished whole black acha (UWBA), polished whole black acha (PWBA), unpolished milled black acha (UMBA) and polished milled black acha (PMBA) grains. At the end of eight weeks, feacal samples and tissues from some organs were collected and analyzed for nutrient digestibility and histopathology parameters respectively. Chemical analysis was also carried out for the different forms of black acha grains. Carcass characteristics were determined. Birds fed PMBA grains had best feed intake, weight gain, FCR. The economics of production showed no significant (P>0.05) difference across the treatments. Nutrient digestibility of birds fed PMBA diet showed significant (P<0.05) difference for all the digestibility parameters. The duodenum, gizzard and liver showed normal histological appearance. The dressed weight showed significant (P<0.05) difference with birds fed PMBA diet weighing more than the other treatments. It could be concluded that PMBA diet can be used in the diets of broiler chickens without adverse effect on performance and health status of the birds. Keywords : Digitaria iburua , black acha, broiler, performance, digestibility, histology, carcass characteristics.


ABSTRACT Furnace slag is a by-product of the steel industry containing high amounts of silica. This inexpensive material existsin large quantities and can be used for the synthesis of zeolite. In the present study, a zeolite was synthesised using the slag by hydrothermal method, and it was used in biodiesel production from waste oil. Analysis of the physical and chemical properties of synthesised zeolitewas performed using XRF, TGA, BET, FE-SEM,XRD and EDAX.In catalysing biodiesel production, effective parameters on biodiesel production including reaction time, the molar ratio of methanol to oil, and the catalyst dosehave been investigated.The produced biodiesel was analysed by gas chromatography (GC) and its characteristics were compared with the ASTM D-6751 standard. In the optimised conditions including the molar ratio of methanol to oil 12, the reaction time of 4 h and, catalyst dose of 3 Wt. %, about 96% of biodiesel production was achieved.The reusability of the catalyst was also investigated and it was found that the catalyst can be recovered and reused for several times. Accordingly, it can be concluded that the synthesised zeolite in the present study can be a useful material for biodiesel production.


We use the combination of density functional theory and dynamical mean-field theory to compute the Curie temperature of the iron body-centered cubic α phase and probe its pressure dependence. Our calculations reveal that TC shows a decrease which is very weak over a domain of pressures that is much larger than the stability domain of the α phase. This is consistent with the experimental results. We highlight the importance of the Hund's coupling J not only on the electronic and magnetic properties but also on the structural properties. Lastly, we analyze the electronic and magnetic properties under pressure and discuss the evolution of magnetic moments in both phases in relation to the change of Curie temperature.


Macau farmers in the 20th Century were considered the underclass of society, and little was recorded on documents describing their lives and farming; thus research findings related to them were scattered. In view of this, there is a pressing need for adopting oral history as a possible means to discover more on this historical topic. The historical information, being gathered from detailed site investigation and interviews, serves the purpose of verifying the related written sources, finding out causes and results, providing missing information, and amending the historical materials that already existed. Studying Macau farmers with the approach of oral history is actually a process of two-way interaction and, to achieve better results, in which full preparation for all clues is fundamental. It's essential that interviews are conducted in a respectful and friendly manner, with the subjects who participated or observed past events. Moreover, it's vital to use various methods to examine these oral materials and ensure that they are separating fact from fiction.


Extensive use of pharmaceutical drugs has resulted in widespread use of antibiotic remedies in the environment and consequently has made a strong public concern worldwide. Present study aimed at assessing the possible effects of combined ultrasound (sonolysis) and UV/ZnO and UV/WO3 photocatalytic processes on the removal of cephalexin from aqueous solutions. A pilot-scale Plexiglas reactor with working volume of 1 L was used in this study. A constant frequency of 40 Hz was used in ultrasound processes. Effects of various experimental parameters on sonophotocatalytic degradation were investigated. These included 200–400 mg/L of ZnO, 100–200 mg/L of WO3, contact time of 60–120 min and cephalexin concentration of 50–100 mg/L. Response surface methodology was applied in the experimental design. Results showed that sonolytic degradation was not significantly effective and the maximum degradation rate reached 19.3. The maximum photocatalytic removal of UV/ZnO and UV/WO3 reached 66.5 and 78.6, respectively. The effect of cephalexin concentration on the efficiency of processes was negative, but contact time and catalytic dosage had direct effects on the process. This was carried out under optimal conditions, including antibiotic concentration of 50 mg/L, contact time of 120 min, 400 mg/L of ZnO and 200 mg/L of WO3. The ratio of BOD5/COD was calculated 0.31 and it ranged from 0 to 0.24 using UV/WO3 and UV/ZnO, respectively. The models of cephalexin removal from photocatalytic processes were quadratic (R2 = 0.966–0.982). Results revealed that successful combination of sonolytic and photocatalytic (sonophotocatalytic) treatments can strongly remove cephalexin from aqueous solutions. © 2017 Desalination Publications. All rights reserved.


Cultural heritage landscapes present historical and cultural civilization signs and legacies in its exceptional surroundings and landscape which considered today as a necessary incentive to attract cultural tourists. This study points to propose a conceptual analysis of cultural inheritance and how they are linked to the concepts of landscape, heritage and identity within landscape ideas. It also discusses how these cultural landscapes can be measured and incorporated into spatial and physical training. The cultural heritage conservation matter provides tools for reaching suitable solutions for sustainable development based on the culture of people and geographical region. A region of southern districts in Iran, especially villages or historical grounds that is linked to landscapes, as one of famous spectacular cultural landscapes that express historical values and ecosystem that some of them are so unique in the world. This paper expresses issues of cultural Urbanism and landscape and Using a quantities research approach to solve the main aspects of sustainable development in one of the cultural heritage landscapes in the name of Harireh historical city which is located nearby to Persian Gulf already and popular with visitors and has featured in official tourism development plans and ways to getting best strategy for saving.


We are exploring the properties of obscured starburst galaxies, using observations of atomic fine structure lines taken with the Short Wavelength Spectrometer aboard ISO. However, it is important to ascertain how well our starburst models can recover the properties of the stellar populations in more distant starbursts. For this purpose, we use observations of a nebular "shell" in the 30 Doradus region, to show that our models reliably predict the presence of the very massive stars observed directly in the 30 Doradus region. We use the population synthesis code STARS (Kovo, Alexander, & Sternberg 1999) to produce a composite spectral energy distribution (SED) for the starburst from a library of model stellar SEDs. Our model library contains a hybrid grid of non-LTE model atmospheres for stars with Tel I > 25000 K (Pauldrach et al. 1998), standard Kurucz atmospheres for stars with Tel I < 19000 K, and interpolated models for intermediate temperatures. The photoionization code CLOUDY (Ferland et al. 1996) is then used to predict the nebular emission created by the stellar population.


A New Approach for Detecting and Monitoring Saharan Dusts from Space
The Saharan region has long been indicated as the main source in the world of soil dust in the atmosphere. Saharan dust storms are particularly investigated because they represent a potential risk for human health and cause damages and disruptions to the transport routes and communication. They can have direct implications (strictly related to the desertification processes affecting the Sub Saharan region) on the Earth's climatic system and/or on the precipitation regimes. In recent years, in addition to the ground monitoring systems, several satellite techniques have been proposed to detect and monitor Saharan dust clouds. The success of these methodologies, as those exploiting the reverse absorption behaviour shown by silicate particles, in comparison with ice crystals and water droplets, at 11 and 12 μm wavelengths (split-window), is strongly dependent on the observational conditions (day/night, land/sea, etc.) and on the specific aerosol properties (mainly size distribution and complex refractive index). In particular, although dust and meteorological clouds generally show a different spectral behaviour in the split window bands, an effective discrimination of these features still represent a major issue. In this paper, a Robust Satellite data analysis Technique (RST), which already highlighted good performances in detecting desert dust aerosol, has been further tested, analyzing an important Saharan dust event affecting Mediterranean basin in May 2010, with results compared to those provided by two traditional split window methods. Outcomes of this study, achieved using, for the first time, daytime infrared MSG-SEVIRI (Meteosat Second Generation-Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infra-red Imager) data, confirm that RST, thanks to a good trade-off between sensitivity and reliability of detection, may profitably be used for monitoring Saharan dust events from space in different observational conditions.


A numerical simulation, considering the two-way interactions of the electromagnetic, thermal, and fluid fields with deformation associated during a levitation melting process, is performed using the finite-element method. Material properties dependent on temperature are applied for the simulation. In addition, surface-to-ambient radiation and phase change are considered, and the arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian formulation is employed to model the deformation of a metal sample during the melting process. The oscillations of the metal sample at different times are also simulated. The oscillations, melting time, deformation, and distributions of the electromagnetic-thermal-fluid fields are obtained at different moments. A general way to dynamically predict the melting process of induction heating and its performance evaluations are provided in this paper.


Multidimensional models of leadership in sport suggest that in order to maximize performance there should be congruence between the actual coaching behaviour and behaviours preferred by players. This study examined the preferred coaching leadership behaviours in prolonged periods of perceived success and failure in eighty-eight elite soccer players in Norway using the Leadership Scale for Sport (LSS). The three preferred behaviours were Positive Feedback, Training & Instruction, and Democratic Behaviour in both scenarios. All preferred behaviours (except Autocratic Behaviour) were higher in the unsuccessful scenario (p <.01). Negative relationships existed between age/experience and Social Support, Democratic Behaviours and Positive Feedback in the successful scenario and between age/experience and Social Support and Democratic Behaviours in the unsuccessful scenario (p <.05). The findings therefore have implications for adapting coaching leadership behaviours when players of different ages and with different levels of experience encounter prolonged periods of success or failure.


Religion and State in Argentina: laïcité or religious freedom? This essay illustrates the relationship between religion and state in Argentina starting from 1810, i.e. the beginning of Argentina's first government. It then explores to what extent this relationship was influenced by the French modernity prototype with regard to the nation-state formation. The study also focuses on the fall of the separatist model and on the strengthening of the religious influence on politics from 1930 to 1983, under various military governments, during the postdictatorial period and the year 2000.


Management of feral mammalian populations depends of understanding the ecological niche, among other factors. The Sierra La Laguna Biosphere Reserve (REBISLA) primary goal is the conservation of endemic fauna and flora from the region and the maintenance of the ecosystems service. During decades this Reserve has housed a population of feral pigs (Sus scrofa), but the pig´s behavior and effects on the plant communities is unknown, besides the general perception is that they have been detrimental to the ecosystem. This research assessed growing rate, body condition, reproduction, and taxonomic composition and nutritional and energy contents of the diet of 46 pigs sampled along nine collects made for an annual cycle (February 2008-January 2009) in the Reserve. The results show faster growth in females (K= 0.160) than in males (K= 0.014), and in adult animals the wither height was higher in males than in females (average 71.4 vs. 64.3 cm). Body condition was highly variable, the greatest thickness was in adult females during spring in the pine-oak forest, when there was a food with high proportion of acorns and gross energy. Reproductive values were: 78.9% of implantation rate, 5.6 piglets per litter, sex ratio at birth was 94 males:100 females, 49.1% of survival rate in suckling piglets, 2.75 suckling piglets per litter, and 89% of females ≥ 8 months had reproductive activity. Reproductive activity was found throughout the year, there was no significant seasonal difference in the number of conceptions (Hc= 6.602, X20.05,3= 7.815) and births (Hc= 1.727, X20.05,3= 7.815). Fruits and seeds was the group with the highest percentage of inclusion in the pig´s diet (means= 20.52-94.69%). Winter in the tropical deciduous forest was the only collect with small inclusion of fruit and seeds (q= 5.175-6.254, q0.05,30,8= 4.602). The main fruits and seeds in diet were acorns (Quercus spp.) and pine nuts (Pinus lagunae) in forest communities from spring to autumn, and wild figs (Ficus palmeri) in the tropical deciduous forest in spring; other fruits and/or seeds were of Erythea brandegeei, Washingtonia robusta, Sideroxylum occidentalis and Lysiloma microphylla. The following most consumed food group was the leaves and stems in summer and winter in the forest, represented by vine Ipomoea spp. and fleshy cacti Opuntia spp. Intake of tuber Arracacia brandegeei was dominant during winter in the tropical deciduous forest. Intake of pupae, larvae and adults of invertebrates was constant and low throughout the year. Intake of vertebrates was occasional and minimal, but stood out well during summer in the tropical deciduous forest (q= 4.690-6.876, q0.05,30,8= 4.602). We also determined a constant and variable inclusion of a mineral component, which was primarily composed of gravel. At different times of the year the pigs consumed an average of 5 and 10 food items. The greatest similarities between the diets were found during winter in the tropical deciduous forest and summer in the pine-oak forest. The nutritional and energy contents of ingest were: from low to moderate levels of crude protein (58.0-202.9 g/kg of DM); from moderate to high concentrations of lipids (28.3-265.4 g/kg of DM), non-structural carbohydrates (72.8-768.7 g/kg of DM), ash (13.1-269.1 g/kg of DM), gross energy (3705.6-6128.1 kcal/kg of DM), digestible energy (2005.0-4271.8 kcal/kg of DM) and metabolizable energy (1903.2-4191.3 kcal/kg of DM) and high concentrations of neutral detergent fiber (209.8-733.0 g/kg of DM) and acid detergent fiber (148.6-606.0 g/kg of DM). The conclusions are: a) females reach adult size between 1 and 2 years old and males after 2 years old; b) body condition depends of particular characteristics like reproduction and availability of food; c) there was evidence of reproduction all along year, with higher pregnancy rate of females ≥ 8 months and mortality rate of suckling piglets; d) pigs showed a feeding behavior of frugivore–herbivore, frugivore–granivore, and stenophagy.; c) the diet was dominated by seeds of Quercus spp. and P. lagunae as well as leaves of Ipomoea spp., and fruits of F. palmeri, which had the highest energy density, allowing pigs cover their metabolizable energy for maintenance with less intake food.
The current population pig at the Reserve has not seemed to affect significantly stability and natural dynamic of ecosystems, although it could to be a risk in the future, then a management plan can implement a control program which is based in catch quotas by ranchers and hence obtain a quality organic product.


In this study,a real-time RT-PCR was developed for quantitative analysis of chicken IL-2 mRNA and the expression levels of IL-2 mRNA in the primary immune organs of SPF chickens infected with reticuloendotheliosis virus(REV) were detected by using this method.The results indicated that IL-2 gene expression levels in the spleen,thymus and bursa of Fabricius in SPF chickens from REV infected group were significantly higher(p0.05) than those in the control group at 7,14,21,28,35,42 and 49 days post REV infection,except that the day 21 and 28 in the spleen were not significantly changed(p0.05).The results show that the expression of ChIL-2 was able to be induced by REV infection.


In 1988, P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens published The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe. They challenged the number of works attributed to Defoe, which, they said, had "swollen from 101 items to 570."1 They claimed that Defoe's biographers and bibliographers — George Chal mers (1742-1825), Walter Wilson (1781-1847), William Lee (1812-c. 90), James Crossley (1800-33), W. P. Trent (1862-1939), and John Robert Moore (1890-1973) — had added unwarranted items to Defoe's canon.2


The asymmetric unit of the title salt solvate, 2C11H15ClNO+·2C6H2N3O7 −·C2H6OS, contains two crystallographically independent 4-(4-chlorophenyl)-4-hydroxypiperidinium cations, two picrate anions and a dimethyl sulfoxide solvent molecule. In each cation, the piperidinium ring adopts a chair conformation. In the crystal structure, the cations, anions and solvent molecules are connected by intermolecular O—H⋯O, N—H⋯O and C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, forming a three-dimensional network.


The heart disease cases are rising day by day and it is very Important to predict such diseases before it causes more harm to human lives. The diagnosis of heart disease is such a complex task i.e., it should be performed very carefully. The work done in this research paper mainly focuses on which patients has more chance to suffer from this based on their various medical feature such as chest pain etc. We proposed a system of heart disease prediction that is used to diagnose whether the patient is a victim or not by using the previous medical features of the patient. Support vector machine and k-nearest neighbor algorithms of machine learning are used to predict and classify the patient with heart disease. The models gave satisfactory results and were capable for predicting a heart disease by using k-nearest neighbor and support vector machine which gave a good accuracy in contrast to the algorithms that were used in the previous research such as naive bayes etc.


I. IN T R O D U C T IO N Verticesdescribethebasicinteractionsbetween theelem entarydegreesoffreedom ofQCD and arethusofcentralim portancefortheunderstandingofnon-trivialphenom ena in the physicsofstrong interactions.Thepropertiesofvertices,in particularin the m om entum regim e oftheaverageconstituentm om entum ,arecrucialforthe form ation ofbound states.Furtherm ore,thefar-infrared


Common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia L.) is an invasive annual plant with highly allergenic pollen. Its spread often occurs along roadsides, where it builds stable and rapidly growing populations. The most sustainable way of controlling the species is to prevent seed production in order to deplete the soil seed bank. Therefore, in a 4-years field (2019 to 2022) trial four different cutting regimes differing in timing and frequency of cuts as well as two different means of physical control are tested on eight roadside verges in Bavaria, characterized by different climatic conditions and traffic densities. On the basis of soil seedbank samplings along these roadside verges as well as on the road embankments the study should reveal which cutting regime is most effective in the prevention of flower and seed formation of common ragweed.
In addition, a 3-years field trial (2019 to 2021) on the competitive suppression of common ragweed by four different seed mixtures combined with three different cutting regimes was implemented on three different sites. First results showed that the primary habitat of common ragweed is the roadside verge: 97.9% of all plants counted as well as 96.7% of all seeds found in the soil seed bank were concentrated on the first 1.5 m next to the lane, irrespective of the soil properties and the inclination of the embankment.


A GP who helped his girlfriend smuggle duty free cigarettes into the United Kingdom and falsely claimed to have won a medal for rescuing a child has been struck off the medical register.

Alan Pollock, 50, was given a two year suspended prison sentence at Lewes Crown Court in January 2015 after admitting running the cigarette scam between 2011 and 2013 with his …


An improved firefly algorithm (FA)-based band selection method is proposed for hyperspectral dimensionality reduction (DR). In this letter, DR is formulated as an optimization problem that searches a small number of bands from a hyperspectral data set, and a feature subset search algorithm using the FA is developed. To avoid employing an actual classifier within the band searching process to greatly reduce computational cost, criterion functions that can gauge class separability are preferred; specifically, the minimum estimated abundance covariance and Jeffreys-Matusita distances are employed. The proposed band selection technique is compared with an FA-based method that actually employs a classifier, the well-known sequential forward selection, and particle swarm optimization algorithms. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms others, providing an effective option for DR.


India has been growing at around 8 percent for the past few years and is expected to be on a high growth trajectory for the next decade or two. It requires corresponding growth in energy resources to fuel this burgeoning economy. In this context, this paper traces out the policy measures implemented by the government from the end of the cold war. These policy measures can be broadly categorized as enhancing the supply sources through diversification and liberalization of energy sector to attract private investments and bring in additional efficiencies, managing risk by securing the sea lines of communication and building strategic petroleum reserves, and conserving demand through promoting efficiencies and price restructuring of the markets. This paper analyses the effectiveness of these policy measures and points out the existing hurdles in their full implementation. Finally, it briefly draws out the political and economic challenges India would face in the pursuit of these strategies, both on the domestic and external fronts.


6586 Background: U.S. veterans have been shown to be a vulnerable population with high cancer rates, yet practice pattern information is lacking. Linkage of cancer registry, Medicare, and VA data p...


Salient object detection (SOD) is a binary pixelwise classification to distinguish objects in an image and also has attracted many research interests in the optical remote sensing images (RSIs). The existing state-of-the-art method exploits the full encoder–decoder architecture to predict salient objects in the optical RSIs, suffering from the problem of unsmooth edges and incomplete structures. To address these problems, in this article, we propose a boundary-aware network (BANet) with two-stage partial decoders sharing the same encoders for SOD in RSIs. Specifically, a boundary-aware partial decoder (BAD) is introduced at the first stage to focus on learning clear edges of salient objects. To solve the pixel-imbalance problem between boundary and background, an edge-aware loss is proposed to guide learning the BAD network. The resulting features are then used in turn to enhance high-level features. Afterward, the structure-aware partial decoder (SAD) is further introduced at the second stage to improve the structure integrity of salient objects. To alleviate the problem of incomplete structures, the structural-similarity loss is further proposed to supervise learning the SAD network. In a consequence, our proposed BANet can predict salient objects with clear edges and complete structure, while reducing model parameters due to the discardment of low-level features. Besides, training a deep neural network requires a large amount of images, and the current benchmark datasets for optical RSIs are not large enough. Therefore, we also create a large-scale challenging dataset for SOD in RSIs. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our proposed BANet outperforms previous RSI SOD models on all the existing benchmark datasets and our new presented dataset available at https://github.com/QingpingZheng/RSISOD.


I AM a language teacher interested in new and better methods of teaching foreign languages. You are specialists eager to find new and better methods of educating visually handicapped children and youth. Perhaps you will synthesize my special. ty with yours to establish a link between what I have to offer and what you have to offer for the benefit of these children. Visually handicapped children are not handicapped when it comes to learning foreign languages. Today, more and more children are learning foreign languages by a method which does not require books, pencils, or eyes. Call it what you will: oralaural, .aural.oral, audio-oral, audio-lingual, direct, functional, or, if you wish, the natural method. All these fancy appellations proclaim what every mother has observed: that children learn their first, i.e, native language by listening, then imitating sounds and speech patterns-until through daily exposure, practice, and correction-they venture to say things on their own. Only long after they have mastered the sounds and structures of language are they in. troduced to the written language, first through read. ing and later by writing.


In 1992, The American Naturalist published a special supplement entitled: "Sensory Drive. Does Sensory Drive Biology Bias or Constrain the Direction of Evolution?" organized by John Endler. The supplement contained a seminal paper on "sensory drive" by Endler (1992a) as well as several other well-cited papers on sensory exploitation (Ryan and Keddy-Hector 1992), background matching with respect to motion (Fleishman 1992), chemical cues in mammals and amphibians (Alberts 1992; Roth et al. 1992), and the relationship between auditory processing and call properties in frogs (Narins 1992). The paper by Endler was especially important; it has been cited over 1,200 times and has inspired research at many levels of ecology and evolution across diverse taxa and sensory modalities. In this paper and associated ones, Endler laid out the primary components that influence the evolution of signaling systems, placing a large emphasis on the environmental conditions under which signaling occurs (Endler 1992a, 1992b, 1993). Twenty-five years later, the American Society of Naturalists held a symposium on "25 Years of Sensory Drive" at the 2017 Evolution meetings in Portland, Oregon, organized by Becky Fuller. This special column in Current Zoology summarizes the work presented there as well as other contributions made for the column. In this editorial, we first review sensory drive and the state of the field when it emerged. We then summarize the work in this special column and suggest fruitful ways forward.

Figure 1 shows the sensory drive framework. In order for signaling to occur between a signaler and a receiver the following must happen: The signaler gives off signal(s) using one or more signal modalities, and those signals have particular properties (e.g., reflectance, pitch, degree of polarization, chemical structure, etc.). The signals are given off in particular times and places. In order for the signal to be successful, the signal must travel through the environmental conditions under which signaling takes place and be detected by the receiver against a background of other potential stimuli. The signal is then detected (or not) by the sensory system of the receiver and processed by the brain, which influences the perception of the signals and the resulting behavior (i.e., decision criteria). Of course, there are other things can influence the evolution of the signaler and the receiver, which are indicated in Figure 1. The receiver must do many things with its sensory systems other than merely detect signals used in communication. It must also find food, avoid predators, and find proper habitat, all of which can exert natural selection on sensory system properties. In Figure 1, this is exemplified by "Detectability of food" and foraging success (fs). In addition, the act of signaling may make signalers more conspicuous to predators and other actors that would exploit signals. The environmental conditions under which signaling takes place can affect the roles of predators and eavesdroppers just as it can with signalers and intended receivers.

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Figure 1

Diagram of the main processes in sensory drive, modified and revised from Endler (1992). Solid arrows indicate evolutionary processes. Dashed arrows with upper case symbols indicate immediate or functional effects: Eo: immediate effects of ecological and optical conditions on signalling conditions. V: immediate effect of microenvironment on the visibility of prey. P: immediate effect of microenvironment on visibility to predators, and also natural selection caused by microenvironmental conditions acting on predator senses and behaviour. Lower Case Symbols: Fs: feeding success that directly affects the evolution of the senses. Ms: mating success that affects sensory evolution directly. Ss: sexual selection (Good Genes, Fisher Process, etc.) That influences mate-choice criteria evolution directly. The asterisks identify the three components of sensory exploitation, a well-studied subset of sensory drive.


The aim of this thesis is to translate and study Sarah Macdonald's travel literature, Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure. I translate the first chapter of this novel and apply translation theories and techniques to discuss the first draft of my translation and the difficulties I encountered during translating. This thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter one is an introduction to my study motives, purposes of translating this book, and an explanation of my study methods. Chapter two introduces the works and translations of travel literature and briefly introduces Sarah Macdonald and her books. In Chapter three, I review and discuss Peter Newmark's and Lawrence Venuti's translation theories to propose the strategies for translating this book and analyzing my first draft. In Chapter four, I use translation techniques to discuss the cause of and how to solve difficulties in translation. Chapter five is a conclusion of this thesis, including my comments on the some important points of this study and my suggestions for translating intercultural literature.


After the annexation of the territory between the Pruth and Dniester Rivers in 1812 by Russia, the north of Bessarabia was settled by Rusin immigrants from Bukovina, which had been annexed by Austria in 1774. Many of the settlers, who remained in Bessarabia permanently, accepted Russian citizenship. At the beginning of the 20th C. over 250 thousand Rusins lived in Bessarabia. Unfortunately these figures are relative and do not show the true number of migrants. Several researchers indicate that there was a massive settlement of Rusins to Bessarabia from the Austro-Hungarian Empire before the beginning of WWI. According to the census of 1897, 23 157 foreigners resided in Bessarabia. 15 994 were Austro-Hungarian subjects (basically Rusins). The situation for the Austro-Hungarian subjects on the territory of Bessarabia changed before and during WWI, when their status automatically changed into being subjects of a state which was at war with Russia. On the whole, in the Province of Bessarabia the attitude toward the Rusins, as to the other Slavs, who were subjects of a state which was at war with Russia, was totally liberal. The Rusins, who registered themselves at the time as Little Russians, were considered as representatives of the Russian nation. Along with this it was not forbidden to apply for and receive Russian citizenship as before the war as well as after it began. Even when Bessarabia was a zone of the front, the local authorities, at the request of the landowners, did not deport the Rusins, as subjects of Austro-Hungary, from Bessarabia.


As we are in the development phase of our own super computer, we have identified several applications which are
highly computationally intensive applications for a normal desktop computer to achieve the solution. These identified
applications are related to multidisciplinary like bio-medical, mathematics, fluiddynamics, genetic algorithms. We are actually identifying the parallel computations involved in each application which are independent to each other and
optimizing it to perform better in our design of supercomputer. We basically use clustered node approach in which one master node distributes the jobs to multiple
client nodes after identifying parallel computations involved in the application which are independent to each other. The application uses massively computationally
intensive huge data which are SIMD based. We have around 20 nodes with 2 GPUs per node to optimize the computation. We have developed a cluster with job scheduler code to distribute the task to multiple clients after identifying parallel computations which are independent. This paper gives us a great satisfaction in studying the concept
of high-performance in various fields of computationally intensive applications. The main application we focussed on is retinal pattern matching using shape extractors using the fast computing method of extracting bifurcation points.


The purpose of the present investigation was to study the excretion by the foetal kidney of the sheep of three normal components of foetal sheep blood, namely glucose, fructose and meso-inositol. Evidence has been put forward that in man these substances share some common element of the reabsorptive mechanism; thus Gammeltoft & Kjerulf-Jensen (1943) have suggested that glucose and fructose compete, while Daughaday & Larner (1954) suggested a common mechanism for glucose and meso-inositol. The results reported here indicate that glucose reabsorption is well established in the foetus by the middle of gestation, whereas fructose and mesoinositol are only poorly reabsorbed.


Field tests in carbonate-cemented California turbidite and shaly gulf coast sandstone reservoirs, laboratory studies, literature review, and computer model calculations confirm that alkyl ester hydrolysis rate is sensitive to pH changes observed under field conditions in some oil reservoirs. pH dependence is a consequent of (1) formation of acid, a byproduct of ester hydrolysis, and (2) the partial oil solubility of esters, which causes the ester bank to lag behind the brine front. During injection, generated acid is carried away by the overflush brine as it passes through and runs ahead of the slower ester bank. Therefore, pH and hydrolysis rate remain relatively high in the ester bank. When injection stops, the produced acid remains in the ester bank, lowers the pH, and retards hydrolysis. As production begins, the hydrolysis rate increases because the brine overflushes the ester bank again, carries away the acid, and raises the pH. The paper includes field-tested methods to detect pH-driven rate effects and a test sequence that measures and accounts for transit reactions that can invalidate the results. The authors hope that the detection methods and new test sequence can be used to minimize the problem and improve the reliability of the ester-based SWTT.


This is a theoretical-reflective essay that aims to approach the way in which the role of women has been biased by social representations, inherited by generations. In these representations, men are more closely associated with work and professional development, while women are mainly associated with housework and family. One of the epicenters of this problem, in addition to the above, is education. Overall, in Latin America, and specifically in Colombia, social inequalities are very deep and reflect a gender gap, permanently reproduced, which could be traced in terms of colonization and intersectionality. This paper will address three key moments. Firstly, it places women in education; secondly, it observes, from a general point of view, the challenges in terms of gender equity for higher education (HE) from the incorporation of the Information and


High voltage direct current transmission(HVDC) system is a characteristic non-linear control system,and conventional PI control scheme cannot work effectively when the system is subjected to a severe disturbance.With the combination of differential geometry and variable structure control,a new nonlinear control algorithm is proposed,in which the nonlinear feedback of the system is linearized through differential geometry and the control strategy is designed with mature sliding mode variable structure control theory.The feasibility of the algorithm is proved by simulation with PSCAD/EMTDC.


The analysis of various volatile materials has been greatly facilitated by the development of gas chromato graphy. In the case of fatty materials, the separation of each component by gas chromatography may be affect ed by two factors; the length of the carbon chain and the number (and/or the position) of unsaturated bonds. It is therefore very likely that components differing in both the factors would have the same or appro ximately coinciding retention volumes on a separating column (stationary phase), resulting in a superimposed peak or an inseparable broad peak. Consequently, uncertainty in identification and quantitative determi nation due to such superimposition of components has been regarded as inevitable in gas chromatographic analysis. To avoid this difficulty, chromatography is often ac companied by various supplemental procedures such as hydrogenation1) or bromination1,3) of the sample, and a comparison is made of the chromatograms obtained before and after these additional procedures. Alternatively, fractionation by means of fractional distillation, urea-adduct formation,3) or precipitation of heavy metal salts is employed. However, in spite of the tedious nature of such procedures, the reliability of the results thus obtained is often unsatisfactory. On the other hand, it is well known that two or more components forming one unseparable peak on an A -column are separable from each other on another properly chosen B-column.4) Although this can be applied to an analysis of the components contained in a specific peak, some of the components separated on the B-column, in turn, might give superimposed peak(s) with other components. In such a case, the situation becomes so complicated that such procedures have turned out to be of little value for identification and quantitative analysis. The present paper provides a new method for the complete gas chromatographic analysis of fatty materi als without the use of any tedious additional pro cedures. This involves a mathematical treatment of two chromatograms obtained on two separate runs with different columns. First, the necessary conditions for complete separa tion and quantitative measurement of each component (through a mathematical process) based on two chro matograms will be considered. In a mixture containing n components, the propor tion (%) by weight of a component i in the mixture will be referred to as ci. That is,


In this paper, we are obtaining and solving the problem of face identification and verification including with mask and without mask face images. In this algorithm they model allows users to use the webcam, digital cameras and multimedia cameras for identify and detect several face related features in the faces. In this paper, we are conducting detailed and systematic result to verify the effectiveness of these classic feature learning systems on linear and nonlinear class imbalanced outcomes. We also demonstrate more discriminatory deep representation features can be learned through the implementation of a deep network model. This model is maintaining the margin of the both classes including clusters. With using Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), they are providing efficient result in with mask and without mask face image. They are providing good result in both offline and real time performance with predictable value of accuracy. They are done research in evaluations of being made for publicly available datasets like DEEPFace and with mask and without mask dataset. The proposed model is working best result in different-different face related datasets to identify with face mask and without face mask images.


This article discusses the methods improvement in packaging department at traditional herbal pharmacy company. In this department, all processes are still done manually using human power, consist of labeling process, pillbox packaging process, and dozen packaging process. The consequence, a good standard method should be needed to do these processes. The Two-Hand Process Chart and micromotion study are used to analyze the present method. Based on this analysis, the methods improvement is done to find a better method to do the packaging process. The improvements include the revision of hand motions that are categorized as ineffective motion in each process and the design of temporary box as a tool for dozen packaging process. Experiments of the proposed method showed the cycle time reduction of labeling is 0.64 seconds (28) per bottle and the combination of pillbox and dozen packaging is 17.46 seconds (25.83) per dozen.


Almost every database management system (DBMS) supporting transactions created in the last decade implements multi-version concurrency control (MVCC). But these systems rely on physical data structures (e.g., B+trees, hash tables) that do not natively support multi-versioning. As a result, there is a disconnect between the logical semantics of transactions and the DBMS's underlying implementation. System developers must invest in engineering efforts to coordinate transactional access to these data structures and nontransactional maintenance tasks. This burden leads to challenges when reasoning about the system's correctness and performance and inhibits its modularity. In this paper, we propose the Deferred Action Framework (DAF), a new system architecture for scheduling maintenance tasks in an MVCC DBMS integrated with the system's transactional semantics. DAF allows the system to register arbitrary actions and then defer their processing until they are deemed safe by transactional processing. We show that DAF can support garbage collection and index cleaning without compromising performance while facilitating higher-level implementation goals, such as non-blocking schema changes and self-driving optimizations.


Time-of-flight single-photon counting laser ranging offers an important tool for remote sensing and imaging. However, limited by the temporal properties of a single-photon detection and counting system, it encounters a challenge for high-resolution and high-precision distance metrology. Here, we incorporated dual-comb based laser ranging, an enabling technique for rapid distance measurements with high precision and large range ambiguity, with time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC) technology and demonstrated its feasibility for precise laser ranging under a photon-starved condition. Based on interferometric measurements of two asynchronous 2.8-pW, 25-GHz electro-optic laser combs with TCSPC, micrometer-level ranging precision was achieved for consistent distance measurements (a stand-off distance of 15.6 m) over several days. New opportunities might open up for high-resolution and high-precision single-photon counting laser ranging.


The history of motivational research in education is traced through chapters on motivation in the Encyclopedia of Educational Research from 1941 to 1990. Discussion of the drive concept, the motivation-learning distinction, the role of individual differences, and the emergence of cognitive concerns and the self are examined. Great shifts are documented, and current as well as future trends are discussed


RNA isolated from highly purified poliovirus preparations consists of infectious and noninfectious fractions which can be separated by chromatography on methyl-esterified bovine serum albumin adsorbed on celite. The percentage of the infectious fraction varies from preparation to preparation.


Most existing pattern recognition techniques are based on using a fixed set of features, hand-crafted or learned by non supervised methods, to classify the data samples. But in natural and uncontrolled environments, sometimes it can be useful to use more adaptive classifiers. We propose a learning algorithm based on a boosting scheme where features are adapted to the classification task, resulting in an incremental learning approach. As a boosting scheme, a new classifier is trained at every step, but also a new feature extraction process is performed. The features are computed taking into account the most difficult examples to classify at each step, and are not imposed heuristically. The experimental results achieved show a significative increase in the learning speed as well as in the classification performance with respect to the classic boosting algorithm.


The ICAS Annual General Meeting and Special General Meeting were held on 26 April 2019 at CA House, Edinburgh. The following results were announced at the AGM and SGM: Election of Office Bearers


Why did one of the funniest writers of the twentieth century turn into one of the most crashing monomaniacal bores of any century? This is the fundamental question of Kenneth Tynan's life, to which question the ancillary enigmas include: (a) Was the boringness implicit in the brilliance, as a dead swan is proverbially implicit in a singing swan; and (b) How did flashes of the brilliance continue to occur even when the boringness was at its most mephitic?


OBJECTIVE To research the protective effect of the ethanol extract from Semen Persicae for acute liver injury in mice,and explore its mechanism of action.METHODS The Kunming mice were divided into 4 groups randomly: control group,model group,Semen Persicae(2.4,1.2 g·kg-1)groups,except control group,each group of first batch using CCl4 of 0.12% peanut oil for ip,each group of second batch using ethanol of 30% with 50% after 24 h for ip.to prepare acute liver injury models.The activities of ALT and AST in the blood serum,activities of ALT,AST,SOD and MDA,with contents of GSH in liver homogenates were determined.And calculated the index of liver weight.RESULTS The ethanol extract from Semen Persicae could reduce the activities of ALT and AST in blood serum of acute liver injury mice models,the activities of AST and contents of MDA in liver homogenates.It could raise the activities of SOD and the contents of GSH.CONCLUSION The ethanol extract from Semen Persicae possesses certain protective effects for acute liver injury.The mechanism relates its anti-peroxidation.


The reliability analysis of multi-membered structural systems such as steel tubular offshore platforms has proved to be a challenging task, and one on which increasing interest is being focussed. The modelling of applied wave loading for such structures is reviewed herein, together with appropriate statistical models. For the structural analysis in reliability theory work, a single wave load system only has been most commonly considered. Real wave trains, however reach the various structural components at different times and this may have an effect on the sequence of most likely member failure. This can, in turn, affect the calculated probability of failure for the structure as a whole, as is demonstrated in the paper for a reasonably realistic but idealized offshore structure.


Objective To clone and express the human soluble interleukin-4 receptor. Methods HIL-4R cDNA was amplified with total RNA from Rail cell by RT-PCR, then insert a cDNA encoding the extracellular domain of the human IL-4R was inserted into pMD-18T vector and sequenced. The recombinant plasmids pQE80L/ sIL-4R were transformed into E.coli DH5α, the expression of sIL-4R were checked by SDS-PAGE and Western blotting.Results The cloned human sIL-4R cDNA sequence is identical to the published sequence. SIL-4R is expressed in E. coli DH5α. Conclusion We constructed successfully the recombinant human sIL-4R . It lays the foundation for studying biological actions and potential utility in treatment of asthma.


This paper reports on research conducted on the Optimal Reconfiguration (OR) of distribution networks using Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP). It describes a new solution algorithm, called HYPER, which finds the minimum loss on/off status of line switches, shunt capacitors and distributed generators. This approach allows the full linearization of the OR problem, which can then be solved using efficient and commercially available MILP solvers like CPLEX. It stands out by its relative ease of implementation, guaranteed optimality and feasibility, range of applications and consideration of practical concerns.


The current developments in the fields of networking and sensor technology enable more and more number of devices of the real world to be an integral part of Internet of Things (IoT). This leads to the generation of huge volumes of data on the scale sufficient enough to qualify as an instance of big data. This big data includes various types of hidden information that are useful for different kinds of services and applications. In this paper, an enhanced big data based framework for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) system is presented. Where the prediction accuracy of the existing state-of-art work is enhanced by using map-reduce genetic algorithm. The results show that the proposed framework is more accurate when compared with the existing works.


There is a tradition of advocating the 'two basics' (basic knowledge and basic skills) in Chinese mathematics education. The direct consequence is that Chinese students are able to produce excellent performance in the international mathematics examinations and outstanding results in the international mathematics competitions. In this article, we will present why and how Chinese teachers teach the 'two basics,' and how combine the pupil's creativity with their 'two basics.' Open ended problem solving is a way to meet the goal. The following topics will be concerned: Culture background; the speed of computation; 'make perfect' ; Efficiency in classroom; Balance between 'two basics' and personal development. In Particular, Chinese mathematics educators pay more attentions to the link between open ended problem solving and the 'two basics' principal.


USA This case study research explores the experiences of high school English teachers in a Louisiana school district and their perspectives on teaching English learners (ELs). The purpose of this study is to assess the perspectives of secondary English teachers in meeting the needs of ELs and to determine the impact of race and culture on Louisiana ESL education. Interpreting the interviews and open-ended discussion questions through the frameworks of culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995; McGee Banks & Banks, 1995; Gay, 2004; 2010; Brown-Jeffy & Cooper, 2011) and critical race theory of education (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Sleeter, 2017), this research sheds light on the state of ESL education for teachers in Louisiana as well as its implications for the ever-increasing population of ELs in this without even thinking about the to and seem to to in eyes have a chance in their new life".