This study was undertaken to investigate the natural materials before and after appropriate physicochemical treatments. The samples were collected at different depths from the outcrop Lamsied located in the Tarfaya-Boujdour basin. This work concerns a mineralogical and geochemical characterization of local black shale. For instance, mineralogical and granulometric analysis showed that the local black shale is composed essentially of calcite, and the texture does not depend neither on the depth nor on the lithology. The distribution of stable elements such as rare earth elements (RRE) and other trace and major elements was determined. Different techniques of analysis were used for the characterization of the samples. Enrichment or depletion of major elements was observed. NASC-normalized REE patterns revealed a heavy REE (HREE) enrichment, a light REE (LREE) depletion, a positive Eu anomaly and a negative Ce anomaly. The result indicates reduction conditions. Results of correlation analysis suggest the association of La, Ce, Dy, Ho, Er, Yb and Lu with terrigenous minerals and of Eu, Sm and Tm with carbonates and TOC (total organic carbon).


An approach is presented to increase the toughness (KIC) while retaining high hardness (H) of Zr-W-N nanocrystalline coatings using energetic ions bombardment. Tuning KIC and H values was made possible by a careful control over the substrate bias, i.e., the kinetic energy (Uk∼9-99 J/cm3) of the bombarding ions, while keeping the deposition temperature relatively low (200 oC). Structural and mechanical characterization revealed a maximum wear resistance (H/Er∼0.23) and fracture toughness (KIC∼2.25 MPam) of ZrWN coatings at Uk∼72 J/cm3. A direct Uk-microstructure-KIC-H relationship suggests that tailoring mechanical properties for a given application is possible by tuning Uk and, hence, ZrWN-coatings' microstructure.


The paper develops a genetic algorithm (GA) based "growing" technique to design and synthesise analogue circuits with practical constraints, such as the manufacturer's preferred component values. Most existing problems when evolutionary search techniques are applied to circuit design are addressed. The developed GA technique is then applied both to synthesise the topology of a network and perform value optimisation on the components based on a set of commonly used component values (E-12 series). Passive filter networks synthesised this way are realisable, effective and of novel topology. It is anticipated that this technique can be extended to active networks.


This paper is about integration of multi-media technology and college English teaching.From aspect of teaching activities,it has produced a significant impact on the traditional college English teaching both in the content and the mode of teaching,and improved teaching effect,promoted teaching reform,impulsed the process of teaching modernization.At the same time,we should pay attention to how to use the multi-media technology in proper way.


Abstract The effect of antennal contact with host‐related stimuli on the subsequent flight response to host‐specific volatiles was examined in the specialist parasitoid, Microplitis croceipes (Cresson) (Hymenoptera: Braconidae). In a choice test between two species of caterpillars feeding on cowpea, free‐flying female M.croceipes lacking prior contact with host cues landed more often on sources of odour from its host, Heliothis tea (Boddie), than from non‐host Spodoptera frugiperda (Smith). After female parasitoids contacted host cues with their antennae, more landings on sources containing hosts were observed only when caterpillars used in the pre‐flight treatment and in the odour sources fed on the same plant species. The degree to which host‐experienced wasps landed more often on hosts as compared with non‐hosts varied with host‐instar and plant species. The role of learning in host finding in specialist parasitoids is discussed.


Oxide defects originating from Czochralski silicon substrates are characterized. It is shown that oxide defect density is significantly large for the oxide thickness range of 20–200 nm. This noteworthy feature is valid for dry oxidation and HCl oxidation alike. It is considered that small defects in the silicon substrate surface layer are introduced into the growing oxides during thermal oxidation and that the small defects in oxides provide conductive paths across the oxides. The origin of the small defects is not known at present. A simple model is proposed in an effort to show the relation between the size and density of the small defects. The oxide thickness dependence data of oxide defect density are characterized in terms of the small‐defect behaviors. The relationship between the small‐defect size L and the density ρ in the Cz‐Si substrates is shown as ρ=ρ0 exp(−L/L0), where ρ0=107 cm−3 and L0=48 nm. In addition, oxide surface etching of thick oxides followed by oxide defect evaluation of the thinn...


In the first year of my dictatorship I will ban sugar coated doughnuts, atonal music, phenylbutazone, and hospital public relations departments. With the ruthlessness of irrational dictators I will outlaw multivitamin pills, ties with horizontal stripes, malpractice lawyers, useless expensive drugs, and hot and cold water taps that turn in opposite directions.

Handsome women will not chew gum with their mouths open, petty bureaucrats will not notify their 500 employees of their …


Nowadays carbon nanotubes (CNT"s) have achieved the concern in the field of novel drug delivery system. CNT"s can be surface modification (example, functionalized) with certain groups in order to change their physicochemical and biological characteristics to improve the solubility of many drugs for efficiency tumour targeting as drug delivery. Due to the larger surface are, this unique characteristic of CNT"s able to penetrate into target cells and free the drug molecules at the targeted site without leaking to non-targeted cells or broken up. CNT"s also serve as a protein carrier, as vectors in gene delivery, delivery of vaccine and involved in treatment of broken bone. The method involved in production of nanosized CNT"s including arc discharge, laser vaporization, chemical vaporization and electric arc technique. Furthermore, study structures of the CNT"s are important to gain the properties and characteristics of CNT"s, which including strength, kinetic, electric, thermal and etc. Those properties of CNT"s will affect the efficient of delivery of drug to the target site. Therefore, the present review described about application, properties, production and classification of carbon nanotubes in drug delivery system.


Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image is a radar system that observes topographic maps using microwaves as an active sensor. Due to the backscattering characteristics of SAR, speckle is distributed in the image, making it difficult to analyze. This paper investigates the classically used unsupervised method of SAR image segmentation that can easily recognize and analyze SAR images and the recently used deep learning algorithm, and compare the accuracy using performance metrics. Although the method using deep learning has the problem of insufficient dataset, it improves performance by 10-20% compared to unsupervised. Also, among deep learning algorithms, how the algorithms used in Electro Optical / Infrared (EO / IR) are used in SAR images and problems are investigated. In a recent study, the SAR image considered as a visible light image and applied it to a deep learning algorithm using eo to obtain results. In the future, more benchmark datasets for SAR images should be built, and research on deep learning algorithms using SAR data information will be conducted.


Significance We use machine learning on membrane-permeating ⍺-helical host defense peptides to study the nature of their functional commonality and sequence homology. Machine learning is combined with calibrating experiments to show that the metric in our support vector machine model correlates not with antimicrobial activity but with a peptide's ability to generate the negative Gaussian membrane curvature necessary for membrane permeation. Moreover, we use the classifier reflexively to map the undiscovered sequence space of antimicrobial peptides and identify taxonomies of peptides with similar topological membrane remodeling activity, including endogenous neuropeptides, viral fusion proteins, topogenic peptides, and amyloids. There are some ∼1,100 known antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), which permeabilize microbial membranes but have diverse sequences. Here, we develop a support vector machine (SVM)-based classifier to investigate ⍺-helical AMPs and the interrelated nature of their functional commonality and sequence homology. SVM is used to search the undiscovered peptide sequence space and identify Pareto-optimal candidates that simultaneously maximize the distance σ from the SVM hyperplane (thus maximize its "antimicrobialness") and its ⍺-helicity, but minimize mutational distance to known AMPs. By calibrating SVM machine learning results with killing assays and small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), we find that the SVM metric σ correlates not with a peptide's minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), but rather its ability to generate negative Gaussian membrane curvature. This surprising result provides a topological basis for membrane activity common to AMPs. Moreover, we highlight an important distinction between the maximal recognizability of a sequence to a trained AMP classifier (its ability to generate membrane curvature) and its maximal antimicrobial efficacy. As mutational distances are increased from known AMPs, we find AMP-like sequences that are increasingly difficult for nature to discover via simple mutation. Using the sequence map as a discovery tool, we find a unexpectedly diverse taxonomy of sequences that are just as membrane-active as known AMPs, but with a broad range of primary functions distinct from AMP functions, including endogenous neuropeptides, viral fusion proteins, topogenic peptides, and amyloids. The SVM classifier is useful as a general detector of membrane activity in peptide sequences.


Objective:To study the inhibitory effect of simvastatin on the activity of T lymphocytes.Methods:Jurkat cells were incubated with PHA with of without simvastatin in vitro,simvastatin was added on 2 h before PHA.The cells were collected after incubation 24,48,72 h.Then the expression of cell markers such as CD25、CD69 on cell surface was assayed with flow cytometry,and the levels of TNF-α and IL-6 mRNA were quantified with real time fluorescent quantitative polymerase chain reaction.The TNF-α and IL-6 concentrations in the supernatants of Jurkat cells were measured by radioimmunoassay,and the transportion of NF-κB into the nuclear was detected by immunocytochemistry.Results:①Simvastatin significantly inhibited the expression of CD25 and CD69 on T lymphocyte surfaces(P0.05);②The expression and production of TNF-α and IL-6 were inhibited by simvastatin(P0.05);③Simvastatin significantly inhibited the transportion of NF-κB into the nuclear(P0.05).Conclusion:Simvastatin had inhibitory effect on the activity of human peripheral blood T lymphocytes,it may be the mechanism of anti-arteriosclerosis and heart dysfunction.


According to newspapers in Iran the nations entire economic structure is fundamentally bankrupt and in desperate need of urgent and sweeping reforms. They note that there are 84000 prostitutes operating on the streets of Tehran and 250 brothels; 60 new runaway girls hitting Tehrans streets every day; 40% of all drug-addicted women in Iranian prisons have AIDS; 4 million youths under the age of 20 suffer from depression; and unemployment is steadily rising. This deterioration is primarily the result of mismanagement by Irans theocratic rulers: their corruption incompetence arbitrary decisions religious legal codes and antiglobalization instincts. The problem for Irans ruling clerics is that they cannot provide enough new jobs without privatizing their state-dominated economy and attracting foreign investment. They also cannot reform the economy and attract foreign investors who will bring new technology and new markets without reforming every pillar of their ruling system.


Fire spread prediction is a crucial technology for fighting forest fires. Most existing fire spread models focus on making predictions after a specific time, and their predicted performance decreases rapidly in continuous prediction due to error accumulation when using the recursive method. Given that fire spread is a dynamic spatiotemporal process, this study proposes an expanded neural network of long short-term memory based on self-attention (SA-EX-LSTM) to address this issue. The proposed model predicted the combustion image sequence based on wind characteristics. It had two detailed feature transfer paths, temporal memory flow and spatiotemporal memory flow, which assisted the model in learning complete historical fire features as well as possible. Furthermore, self-attention mechanisms were integrated into the model's forgetting gates, enabling the model to select the important features associated with the increase in fire spread from massive historical fire features. Datasets for model training and testing were derived from nine experimental ground fires. Compared with the state-of-the-art spatiotemporal prediction models, SA-EX-LSTM consistently exhibited the highest predicted performance and stability throughout the continuous prediction process. The experimental results in this paper have the potential to positively impact the application of spatiotemporal prediction models and UAV-based methods in the field of fire spread prediction.


In elderly patients, persistent pain negatively impacts quality of life. An interdisciplinary approach to pain management and emphasis on quality improvement will help to achieve better therapeutic outcomes. Managing pain in the geriatric population is challenging because of age-related changes in pain perception, cognition, pharmacokinetics, and drug effects. Improvement and maintenance of physical and emotional function is the goal. Pharmacotherapy should be initiated conservatively and titrated to effective doses with minimal adverse effects. Milder pain should be treated with non-opioid analgesics with a progression toward opioids and/or adjuvant medications as the pain intensifies. Acetaminophen, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), opioids, and adjuvant medications represent most of the analgesic agents used in pain management. Knowing the underlying mechanism of pain will help guide pharmacologic therapy. The patient should be monitored initially, with every dose change, and periodically to assess efficacy and severity of adverse effects.


The invention provides a humanoid engineering robot. The humanoid engineering robot aims to solve the problems that an existing robot cannot express the control consciousness to the robot by a human timely and efficiently, and requirements of the human for the flexibility of all joints of the robot cannot be met. The humanoid engineering robot can act along with the limbs of a human body. The humanoid engineering robot mainly comprises a fully-hydraulically-powered robot executing device, a posture sensing unit, a human movement capturing device, a programmable logic controller (PLC) control unit, a control valve bank, an auxiliary man-machine interaction unit and a power unit. Plans and decisions which cannot be made by the robot in an unknown spatial environment or a task are realized by the human. The capacity to cope with severe environment of the robot is brought into play, the intelligence of the human is also brought into play, and organic interaction between the human and the robot is achieved.


implications of Chile's neoliberal system for science, governance, and environmental protection: salmon farming, the Celco Arauco mill, the Pascua Lama mining project, and the HidroAysén hydroelectric dam initiative. Each represents a major environmental flashpoint in an important industrial sector that generated substantial public debate, mobilization, and dynamics of conflict and accommodation among the actors involved. These were environmental conflicts of national import, and this book offers a fine-grained analysis of each, based on archival research and an impressive number of interviews (approximately 100). Each case study examines knowledge production processes and conflicts over the value of science, with different outcomes that foreground the difficulties of establishing scientific legitimacy in Chile's neoliberal democracy.


perpetuating dialectic of exclusion. Jock Young's latest book encapsulates some of the major concerns currently facing Western governments. It asks searching questions, the answers to which are far from clear cut, and can make for uncomfortable reading, from either a personal or professional perspective. The author puts his faith in progressive politics as the means of resisting the inevitability of the dystopian scenarios he evokes. However, I found it difficult to share his optimism given the current global political climate, which, I think, probably proves his point! Either way, this is cutting edge criminology which deserves a much wider readership than that which academic texts normally attract.


There are shown experimental investigations of wear-resistance, contact stiffness and anti-friction properties of flat surfaces at their relative sliding. A technological support of quality parameters in flat friction surfaces after their sput-tering and strengthening is described.


Letter to McLean and Searancke regarding parts of land set aside for Wairarapa Maori
Quantity: 1 piece (2 pages on 1 leaf).


The paper reviews the state of water quality in Ialomita River Basin (IRB), Romania, between 2007 and 2018 using the land use/land cover and basin-specific conditions effects on sediments and nutrients load. On-site monitoring was performed in two control sections of the Ialomita River, one in the upper part of the basin (near Targoviste city) and the second near the discharge into the Danube (downstream of Tandarei town). The statistical averages of water parameters for 10 years' monitoring in the control section that is close to the Ialomita River discharge in Danube were pH = 7.60 (range: 6.41–8.40), NH4-N = 1.20 mg/L (0.02–14.87), alkalinity = 4.12 mmol/L (1.34–6.27), NO3-N = 2.60 mg/L (0.08–17.30), PO4-P = 0.09 mg/L (0–0,31), dissolved oxygen (DO) = 8.87 mg/L (2.72–15.96), BOD5 = 5.50 mg/L (0.01–74.71), suspended solids (TSS) = 508.32 mg/L (15.2–4457), total dissolved salts (TDS) = 733.69 mg/L (455.2–1053), and river discharge = 38.60 m3/s (8.22–165). Expected mean concentration and soil and water assessment tool (SWAT) modeling have been employed in the GIS environment to extend the approach to large spatial patterns within the basin. The estimated average specific emission on the total area for nitrogen was 3.2 kg N/ha, and 0.3 kg P/ha for phosphorus highly influenced by the agricultural activities. The results are useful to raise awareness regarding water-quality degradation and the need to stop and even reverse such trends for local and national sustainable development.


The evolution of aircraft wake vortices from the roll-up until vortex decay is studied by large-eddy simulation. An aircraft model and the surrounding flow field obtained from high-fidelity Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes simulation are swept through a ground-fixed computational domain to initialize the wake. After the wake initialization a large-eddy simulation of the vortical wake is performed until vortex decay. In this paper the methodology is tested with a NACA 0012 wing and applied to the DLR-F6 wing-body model in cruise condition and a long-range aircraft model in high-lift configuration which was used in the European Aircraft Wing with Advanced Technology Operation project. The correlation between the detailed roll-up process of the vorticity sheet shedding from the main wing and the characteristics of the rolled-up vortex pair such as vortex circulation, core radius, and separation is investigated with and without ambient turbulence. In both the DLR-F6 wing-body and the long-range aircraft models...


Chronicle is the important material for the study of historical personage and problems. It is attached great importance in the field of historiography. The chronicle of people in the Ming Dynasty has become the rare precious historical data with important academic value because of its great length, large quantity, and strong authenticity. However, the academia still lacks the systematic studies and use about it at present. This article discusses from four aspects the method to find out materials by means of the Chronicle and several principles that should be paid attention to when it is used.


The article analyzes the use of the gerund and gerundial constructions in the literary text and ways of its rendering into the Ukrainian language. After studying the novel "The Great Gatsby" by S. Fitzgerald, the author identified and analyzed various forms of the gerund and defined their functions in the sentence. It is noted that the grammatical aspect of translation, which involves the reproduction of the formal side of the original, is currently a pressing problem in translation studies, as translation analysis of the text is impossible without taking into account the purely linguistic component. The author conducted a comparative analysis of the text of the original and its translations into Ukrainian. The research material was Ukrainian translations of the novel made by M. Pinchevskyi, O. Makrovolskyi, and A. Pekhnyk. It is emphasized that the method of translation of the gerund depends on its function in the sentence. In Ukrainian, gerunds can be rendered by a noun, verb, adverbial participle, subordinate clause, or can be omitted. In the novel, the gerund is mostly used in the function of an object, adverbial modifier and attribute and is translated by a noun and infinitive. In most cases, the authors of the translation were unanimous in choosing the way of rendering the gerund in the recipient language. Translation of the English gerund into Ukrainian sometimes causes difficulties. One of the techniques that helps a translator is transformations. Since the gerund is a grammatical category, in the process of its translation grammatical transformations of inner partitioning and replacement of word order are used first of all. The noun characteristics of the gerund is the basis for lexical-semantic transformations of contextual and synonymous substitution, compression and decompression, permutation, transposition, descriptive and antonymous translation. The translations made by M. Pinchevskyi, O. Makrovolskyi, and A. Pekhnyk are full of various transformations, the application of which brings the text closer to the norms of the Ukrainian language and makes its perception easier for the Ukrainian reader.


The present invention relates to a motorized hair roller winder comprising a handgrip and a rotary drum driven by a motor making it possible, in use, to wind a lock of hair around said hair roller fixed beforehand to the winder, characterized in that said winder comprises an in-built heating means allowing said hair roller to be heated until such a time as said hair roller is removed from the rotary drum.


The wide band amplifiers with large dynamic range, are absolutely necessary in professional radio receivers and active antennas, for reducing the intermodulation products and cross modulation. This paper suggests some types of such amplifiers and presents a comparative study of these, which points out their advantages.


We report the effect of metal-oxide nanocomposites on the performance of bulk heterojunction polymer solar cells. A photoactive layer composed of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) was blended with a newly developed ZrTiO4/Bi2O3 (BITZ) metal-oxide nanocomposite. We observed a short-circuit current density of 9.90 mA/cm2, an open-circuit voltage of 0.64 V, and a fill factor of 0.60. The overall power conversion efficiency increased from 3.20 to 3.72% with an external quantum efficiency improvement of 66%. The enhancement in performance was attributed to the improved absorption and fast transport of charge carriers by the suppressed recombination of photo-generated electrons and holes.


The present invention relates to improved water-absorbent storage layer for use in hygiene products, in this case the water-absorbent storage layer is essentially cellulose free.


A polymer electrolyte composition characterized by compris ing: (1) a crosslinked material of a polyether binary copoly mer which has a main chain comprising repeating units rep resented by the formula (i) and crosslinking units represented by the formula (ii) and which has a weight-average molecular weight of 10 to 10", (2) an electrolyte solution comprising an aprotic organic solvent, (3) an additive, as an optical ingredi ent, which comprises an ether compound having an ethylene oxide unit, and (4) an electrolyte salt compound comprising a lithium salt compound. The composition is excellent in liquid retention and ionic conductivity, is usable in a wide tempera ture range, and has excellent electrochemical properties.


A novel vertical cascaded planar electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) structure is proposed for SSN suppression with the ultra- wideband at the restraining depth of i30dB by analyzing the simultaneous switching noise (SSN) suppression mechanism and the equivalent circuit model for EBG structure. Moreover, the SSN suppression bandwidth can be broadened by using difierent novel EBG structures required by vertically cascading difierent planar EBG structures. In addition, the structure is verifled to meet signal integrity (SI) by the time-domain simulation. The tested results show that the presented EBG is accordant to the simulated results of the theory method by the vector network analyzer. The proposed structures provide a new designing method for EBG structures to improve the ability of suppressing SSN.


The both banks of Yangtze River in Wuhan are the first terrac,where the geological condition is poor,and the water head of confined aquifer is high and related to Yangtze River.At the same time,the environmental condition of Wuhan nearby the Yangtze river is complex.As the excavation's depth increasing,the design of dewatering and the technology of construction in soft soil region with high water head of confined aquifer are summarized detailedly,then the regulation and calculation of the settlement of the ground surface are discussed.


May was a mild and sunny month with high pressure dominating for extended periods in much of southern Britain. Correspondingly, some southern catchments registered less than half the average May rainfall – contributing to the 3rd driest Dec-May period for England & Wales since 1976. Fortunately, the May rainfall patterns generally favoured the gathering grounds of many upland reservoirs and some seasonally notable increases in stocks were registered (e.g. in the Lake District and North Wales). All index reservoirs in Scotland and Northern Ireland reported above average early June stocks and overall stocks for England & Wales are appreciably above the early summer average. The apparent inconsistency with the scale of the recent rainfall deficiencies owes much to the record reservoir stocks registered in the autumn of 2008. River flow patterns were typical of the late spring but depressed runoff rates characterised some impermeable eastern and southern catchments by the end of May. Seasonally high evaporative demands contributed to above average soil moisture deficits across much of the country by month-end, terminating the 2008/09 aquifer recharge season across the greater part of the UK. Groundwater levels are following typical recession patterns across most major aquifers. Overall water resources status is well within the normal early June range but a hot dry summer could impact particularly on flows in responsive rivers.


What are the sources and effects of global shocks that drive global food prices? We examine this question using a sign-restricted structural VAR model and rich data on domestic output and its components for 82 countries from 1980 to 2011. After identifying the relevant demand and supply shocks that explain fluctuations in real food prices, we quantify their dynamic effects on net food-importing and food-exporting economies. We find that negative global food shocks have contractionary effects on the domestic output of net food importers, and they are transmitted through deteriorating trade balances and declining household consumption. We document expansionary and shorter-lived effects for net food exporters. By contrast, positive global demand shocks that also increase real food prices stimulate the domestic output of both groups of countries. Our results indicate that identifying the source of a shock that affects global food prices is crucial to evaluating its domestic effects. The adverse effects of negative global food shocks on household consumption are larger for net food importers with relatively high shares of food expenditures in household budgets and those with relatively high food trade deficits as a share of total food trade. However, global food and energy shocks jointly explain only 8 to 14 percent of the variation in domestic output, leaving a large fraction unexplained by these commodity-specific shocks.


Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) is an extensively used material for various applications from automobile to toys. The material is known to have good machinability along with toughness and thermal-stability. The present investigation is aimed at understanding the effect of high strain rate loading (>1000 /s) on the dynamic response of ABS for potential benefits in energy absorption in mechanical and structural applications. Considering this, uniaxial compression tests on ABS polymer have been performed at different high strain rates (1000 /s – 4000 /s) and temperatures (250C – 1100C) using split Hopkinson Bar (SHB) test setup. The results indicate that the material shows a linear relationship between the true stress and the true strain up to its yield point. High plastic deformation is observed at higher strain rates along with higher levels of stress. However, as the strain rate is increased, there is more evidence of collapse ultimately leading to the failure of the specimens. The material is not much sensitive to strain rate. These high strain rate data may be useful for safety and structural integrity assessment of structures subjected to dynamic loading.


In the spring of the year 1895, Dr. II. O. Forbes, the Director of the Corporation Museum at Liverpool, obtained several living specimens of Malapterurus electricus , which were brought from the mouth of the river Senegal by Mr. A. Ridyard (s.s. "Niger"), and through the liberality of the Museum Committee four of these were placed at our disposal. The fish remained in excellent health for a period of over six months; they were kept in tanks placed in a warm room at a temperature of 80° Fahrenheit and were fed with small worms or pieces of m eat; the specimens were from 5 to 6 inches long and gave powerful shocks to the hand when touched.


Mixed singing in songbirds is usually considered to result from erroneous learning from other species, but we suggest it might be rather adaptive. Our results show that mixed singing of Thrush Nightingale males, which incorporate songs of the Common Nightingale in their repertoires in areas where both species co-occur, may help these 2 species to establish boundaries of their territories, and thus facilitate their coexistence before divergence in ecological niches evolves.


A LC-MS method for quantitative determination of the oridonin in rat plasma was established.Acetonitrile-Water(V/V=50∶50) flowphase system,C18 column(150mm×2.0mm,5Lm),HPLC/Electrospray ionization mass spectrometric detection(HPLC/ESI-MS) and acetic ether were explored as extractant.The assay was found to be linear for oridonin concentrations in the range 0.018Lg·mL-1to 9.2Lg·mL-1,with a lower limit 0.018Lg·mL-1quantification.The extractive recovery and RSD were 100.56%—101.74% and 8.88%.This method provided an effective and reliable LC-MS method to evaluate the pharmacokinetics profile of oridonin in rat plasma.It may be a reliable technology to study pharmacokineties of oridonin in a human body.


Background: The exact pathophysiology of varicocele and the subsequent alteration of spermatogenesis has been the subject of much debate. Approximately 40% of men with primary infertility have a varicocele, and more than half of them experience improvements in semen parameters after varicocelectomy. AIM: The purpose of the presented paper is referred to establish of varicocele prevalence in population from 7 to 26, as well as to estiamtion sperm test parameters (sperm count, motility and morphology) before and after the varicocelectomy. Material and methods: The varococele prevalence was established in premature age (7 – 15), adolescets (16 -18) and adults (19 -26)  in population of 2117 men. Varicocele grade and side, as well as testical volume were also estimated. In surgically treated patients (high inquinal  varicocelectomy – Palomo), semen analysis parameters was establihed before and three months after the procedured. Results show a highest frequency of varicocele in subpopulation of adults (19 – 26). After  surgery, sperm count and motility were improved,significantly (p<0,000), since the abnormal forms did not decreas significantly. Conclusion: Improvement of the two most important semen analysis parameters after the surgery was found. This fact encourages those who advocate early surgical treatment of varicocele, since the varicocelectomy would prevent fertility disorders.


In this paper, we report on our findings from the first evaluation of MOT 2.0, an Adaptive Web 2.0 e-learning tool, which supports: 1) collaborative authoring (i.e. editing content of other users, describing content using tags, rating, commenting on the content, etc); 2) authoring for collaboration (i.e., adding author activities, such as defining groups of authors, subscribing to other authors, communication between authors, etc); 3) group-based adaptive authoring via group-based privileges; 4) social annotation i.e., tagging, rating, and feedback on the content via group-based privileges; 5) adaptive authoring, by recommending related content and/or other authors; adaptive delivery based on users' activities. Our main contributions are: 1) defining a new social layer in LAOS, a five-layer model for generic adaptive hypermedia authoring; 2) removing the barrier between tutors, learners and authors, which all become authors, with different sets of privileges; 3) adding the power of group-based authoring to the course creating.


Cigarette smoking is an act which is associated with many disorders that are preventable. This study was aimed at assessing the status of some plasma biochemical parameters in chronic male cigarette smokers. Blood specimens were collected into lithium heparinized anticoagulated bottles from forty male subjects aged 18-30 years who are addicted to smoking of 10-15 cigarettes per day for a period of 6-10 years(experimental group) and another forty male subjects with no evidence of cigarette smoking, aged 18-30 years (control group).The blood specimens were spun and the plasma obtained were used for the quantitative measurement of urea, C-reactive proteins, uric acid, sodium, potassium and total testosterone using spectrophotometer S23A13192 model. The results revealed significant elevations (p ≤ 0.05) in the plasma concentrations of C-reactive protein, sodium and potassium in the experimental group as compared with that of the control group while a significant decrease (p ≤ 0.05) in the plasma concentrations of uric acid and total testosterone were obtained in the experimental group as compared with that of the control group. The results further revealed that there was no significant difference (p ≥ 0.05) in the plasma concentration of urea in the experimental group compared with control group. In conclusion, this study has shown that smoking of 10-15 cigarettes per day for a period of 6-10 years has effects on the plasma concentrations of C-reactive protein, uric acid, sodium, potassium and total testosterone affirming its danger to human health. It is therefore recommended that smokers of 10-15 cigarettes per day for a period of 6-10 years should embark on routine laboratory investigations on the above mentioned significant plasma biochemical parameters in order to prevent any health problems that may subsequently lead to death.


SPEAKING AT a recent reunion of Nursing Standard Clinical Practice and Management Award (CPMA) winners, Gail Dowling, a winner in 1993, was clear that: The most useful part of winning this award was the chance to learn about different management techniques and to explore how I could use these to develop my own personal style. I've used so much of what I learnt then in my everyday work.'


Seismicity can be induced by rock failures or slips along geologic structures around mine workings. Depending on their intensity and proximity to the working area, seismic events may raise safety concerns in underground mining operations. However, the geological and mining parameters leading to destructive seismic events are poorly understood. Monitoring seismic events coupled with geomechanical modeling can be useful tools for understanding underlying mechanisms and main factors causing destructive seismic events. This paper reviews seismic events recorded in a deep longwall mine (>450 m) in Virginia and evaluates the geologic conditions that lead to areas with high seismic event activities (> 1 ML) during mining of longwall panels. Two pseudo two-dimensional models of areas with high and low seismic event activities are constructed in 3DEC software. The variation in the energy content of elastic models is monitored, and potentially damaging events with compression-type and shear-type signatures are identified. The modeling results are compared with historic seismic data to evaluate the model performance in forecasting the seismic potential in each model. The results show the applicability of energy balance calculations for forecasting the approximate location and timing of destructive seismic events.

 One source of potential hazards for underground mining operations is mining-induced seismicity. Seismic events during mining are recognized to be violent failure in close proximity to the mining area. The violent failures can occur due to sudden crushing of rock in compression or sudden slip along preexisting weakness planes such as fault and dyke contacts. Deployment of seismic networks and recording the events during the operation has become one of the industry routines for managing risks associated with the seismicity. However, in most cases the main challenge is to find the link between geologic structures, mining parameters, and seismic activities. If no clear link is apparent, it is difficult to design effective proactive measures to reduce seismic potential in a mining design. To better understand the causal mechanism of mining-induced seismicity, seismological and rock mechanics' analyses need to be mutually investigated.
 Following (Salamon, 1970), many studies have shown the energy budget consideration as the missing link between seismology and rock mechanics (Sears, 2009; Garvey, 2013; Khademian & Ozbay, 2018) One possible approach is to use numerical modeling to analyze the state of energy of the rock before and after mining. The occurrence and intensity of a seismic event can be recognized when there is a relatively significant release of energy in the system. However, the uncertainty in the required field data to perform such analyses has limited their applicability.


We consider a minimax routing problem related to visiting megacities under precedence conditions and cost functions with task list dependence. It is supposed that some megacity system requiring visiting above all is selected. For solving, an approach with decomposition into a set of two minimax routing problems is proposed. A two-step widely understood dynamic programming procedure realizing an optimal composition solution is constructed. The above-mentioned optimality is established by theoretical methods. Application of the results obtained is possible under investigation of multi-stage processes connected with regular allocation of resources. Another variant of application concerns the particular case of one-element megacities (i.e., cities) and may be related to the issues of aviation logistics under organization of flights using one tool (airplane or helicopter) under system of tasks on the realization of passing cargo transportation with prioritization of visits realized above all.


The invention provides a large-mismatch silicon-based substrate antimonide transistor with high electron mobility. The large-mismatch silicon-based substrate antimonide transistor comprises a substrate, a composite buffering layer growing on the substrate, an insert layer growing on the composite buffering layer, an AlSb isolation layer growing on the insert layer, a sub channel layer growing on the AlSb isolation layer, an antimonide lower potential barrier layer growing on the sub channel layer, an InAs channel layer growing on the antimonide lower potential barrier layer, an antimonide isolation layer growing on the InAs channel layer, a doping layer growing on the antimonide isolation layer, wherein the doping layer is InAs doped with a Si plane or delta doping of Te; an upper potential barrier layer growing on the doping layer, wherein the upper potential barrier layer is a composite potential barrier layer consisting of an AlSb layer and an InAlAs layer; and an InAs cap layer growing on the upper potential barrier layer, wherein the InAs cap layer is an unintentionally doped InAs or n type doped InAs.


Abstract Tungsten based W–1C and W–2B4C–1C (wt-%) powders synthesised by mechanical alloying (MA) for milling durations of 10, 20 and 30 h, in wet (ethanol) and dry conditions, were characterised. X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy investigations revealed Co contamination which increased with increasing milling time during wet milling. X-ray diffraction investigations revealed the presence of W and WC phases in all powders, Co3C intermetallic in the wet milled W–1C powders and W2B intermetallic phase in both wet and dry milled W–2B4C–1C powders. As blended and MA processed powders were consolidated into green compacts by uniaxial cold pressing at 500 MPa and solid phase sintered at 1680°C under hydrogen and argon atmospheres for 1 h. X-ray diffraction investigations revealed the presence of W2C intermetallic phase in sintered composites produced from both wet and dry milled W–1C powders and the W2B intermetallic phase in sintered material from the wet milled W–2B4C–1C powder. Sintered composites from wet milled powders showed relative densities >91%, with the maximum density of 99·5% measured for the sintered 30 h wet milled W–2B4C–1C composites. Microhardness values for the wet milled W–1C and W–2B4C–1C composites were 2–2·5 times higher than those for dry milled composite powders. A maximum hardness value of 23·7±2·1 GPa was measured for the sintered W–2B4C–1C composite wet milled for 20 h.


Photographic and P h o t o e l e c t r i c measurements were made on the shock e x c i t e d spectra of Argon and Helium. The plasma temperature and e l e c t r o n d e n s i t y i n the r e g i o n behind the shock wave were c a l c u l a t e d from the spectroscopic measurements. These q u a n t i t i e s were compared wi t h the values obtained from the Rankine Hugoniot shock theory i n c l u d i n g the e f f e c t o f i o n i z a t i o n . Considerable disagreement was found between experimental r e s u l t s and t h e o r e t i c a l p r e d i c t i o n s .


In March 2010, the Hong Kong government published a consultation paper to propose statutory codification of certain requirements to disclose price sensitive information by listed corporations as the first step of giving statutory backing to the Listing Rules. This article compares the legislative proposals in Hong Kong with Australia's continuous disclosure regime under Chapter 6CA of its Corporations Act, and seeks to identify what the former can learn from the latter's model in implementing a statutorily-backed listing rules. It is argued that Hong Kong should follow an evolutionary approach by first giving statutory backing to basic continuous disclosure obligations.


The interdependence of technology and culture shows that architecture technology is inseparable from architecture culture. Therefore, architecture technology plays a very important role amidst the construction of regional architecture culture.Through analysis on the three expressions of architecture technology in regional characteristics of architecture culture, the authors proposed the idea that the architecture designers should make full use of the culture inheritance character of technology gene, maintain the regional characteristics of architecture, and develop the regional architecture culture in a sustained way by mastering the technology "gene" and embedding the "gene" into the design of regional architecture.


Constant velocity joint in the form of a counter track joint with the features: an outer joint part (12) having a first longitudinal axis (La) and axially opposite to each other lying a connection side and has an opening side, and the first outer ball tracks (22) and second outer ball tracks (24), having an inner joint member having and a second longitudinal axis (Li) and connecting means-setting for the opening side of the outer joint part (12) shaft, the first inner ball tracks (23) and second inner ball tracks (25), the first outer ball tracks (22) and the first inner ball tracks (23) form first pairs with each other, the second outer ball tracks (24) and the second inner ball tracks (25) form second pairs of tracks each other, the pairs of tracks each accommodate a torque transmitting ball (14), a ball cage (15) sits between the outer joint part (12) and the inner joint part (13) and comprises circumferentially distributed cage windows (18), each for receiving at least one of the torque transmitting balls (14) the center points (K) of the balls (14) from ...


Adrenocortical Tumor(ACT) is one of common endocrine tumors and the main cause of Adrcnocortical Carcinoma(ACC) leading to death.There are lots of problems in the clarity of diagnosis that can not be solved in the application of the classic Weiss system.With the development of science and technology,people have begun to explore new ways to identify whether an ACT is benign or malignant so that there some new specific methods now,such as imageology and molecular biology techniques,which can be used to further improve the clarity of ACT diagnosis.The results with the imageology and molecular biology techniques for the identification of the tumors are discussed in a comparative way so as to identify whether an ACT is benign or malignant.


Objective: Aim of the study was to elucidate possible association of KIF6 gene Trp719Arg polymorphism with the changes of the arterial wall in patients with hypertension. Design and method: We included into study 120 patients with hypertension (58 (43.8%) men and 62 (56.2%) women). The average age of 63,4 ± 13,5 years. 20% of patients had type 2 diabetes, 37.5% smoked, 8.3% had a history of stroke, 25% - myocardial infarction. All patients underwent color duplex scanning of carotid arteries with measurement of the intima-media thickness (IMT). The stiffness of the arteries was evaluated by measuring the PWV on the segment of the carotid-femoral and carotid-radial artery. The study was performed on the automated computer system Complior Colson (France), per standard procedures. Polymorphic markers were identified by PCR-RFLP in real time. Results: The frequency distribution of genotypes of polymorphic marker Trp719Arg KIF6 gene in the studied group corresponds to the equation Hradi-Weinberg equilibrium and were as follows: Trp/Trp - 40.8%, Trp/Arg - 43.4%, Arg/Arg - 15,8%. Carriers Arg / Arg genotype had a significantly greater IMT of carotid arteries compared to carriers of other genotypes as a right (0,98 ± 0,034 mm and 0,85 ± 0,027 mm respectively, p = 0.023) and left (0, 93 ± 0.023 mm and 0,80 ± 0,039 mm respectively, p = 0,028. Carriers of the Arg/Arg genotype also had higher central aortic pulse pressure (50,0 ± 2,19 mm Hg vs 42,2 ± 3.21 mm Hg, p = 0,032) and carotid-femoral PWV (13,21 ± 0.561 m/s vs 9,56 ± 0,896 m/s, p = 0,048) compared to carriers of other genotypes. Conclusions: Thus, we identified association of Arg/Arg genotype of KIF6 gene Trp719Arg polymorphism with an increase in the IMT of the carotid arteries and presents of arterial stiffness.


Summary To compare the resolving power of starch-urea gel (SUGE) and polyacrylamide-agarose gel electrophoresis (PAAGE) in caprine casein analysis, polyacrylamide gel isoelectric focusing (PAGIF) was used as reference method. The PAAGE or SUGE patterns in the first dimension were allowed to migrate by PAGIF in an orthogonal direction giving rise to two-dimensional (2-D) separations. Using this procedure, some individual bands considered to be homogeneous by SUGE or PAAGE were found to be complex mixtures of casein components. A detailed analysis of the analytical capabilities of SUGE and PAAGE was performed. Procedures based on the densitometric reading of SUGE and PAAGE patterns seemed to give inaccurate results on the quantitative composition of caprine casein. Among the electrophoretic methods assayed, the 2-D procedure gave the best resolution of casein fractions.


EHC ® is an integrated combination of controlled-release plant-derived carbon plus micro-scale zero valent iron (ZVI) particles used for stimulating in situ chemical reduction of otherwise persistent organic compounds in groundwater. EHC-M ® uses the same combination plus a source of sulphate (if needed) to promote the precipitation of dissolved metals. In evaluating the longevity of EHC, several consumption mechanisms of the reactive components need to be considered:-ZVI oxidation and carbon fermentation due to consumption (reduction) of terminal electron acceptors (TEAs), such as dissolved oxygen (DO), nitrate and sulfate;-Anaerobic corrosion of ZVI;-Organic contaminant reduction; and-Trace metal reduction and precipitation. These processes are not independent of one another and are also controlled by site conditions such as groundwater flow velocity, inorganic aqueous concentrations, VOC concentrations and temperature. Although it is somewhat difficult to separate the longevity of the iron from that of the carbon given that they are present together, theoretical calculations supported by results from long-term laboratory studies and mature field sites can be used to estimate the effective lifetime of EHC. To evaluate potential rates of ZVI consumption in EHC, the following theoretical calculations due to reactions with VOCs and inorganic electron acceptors are presented for a hypothetical site, but similar calculations can be performed using site-specific data. The hypothetical site used in the calculations contains 2 mg/L DO, 5 mg/L of trichloroethene (TCE), 5 mg/L nitrate and 20 mg/L sulphate. The groundwater flow velocity at the site is assumed to be 0.10 m/day and aquifer porosity 0.25. An assumed EHC-amended zone is 6 m wide was amended with 0.5% EHC (0.2%ZVI) per soil mass. The ZVI consumption calculations are based on a unit cell with a face surface area of 1 m 2 of the EHC-amended zone or a volume of 6 m 3 of EHC-amended aquifer, containing about 22 kg of ZVI. A worse case scenario was assumed; that is the carbon electron donor in EHC was not included in the electron acceptor consumption calculations. Water corrosion (oxidation) of granular iron is an important ZVI consumption process, resulting in ferrous iron, hydrogen gas and hydroxide ion production and an increase in pH and decline in Eh: Fe 0 + 2H 2 O → Fe 2+ + H 2(aq) + 2OH-(1)


Espousing unproved myths and legends is widespread during the festive season, but some groups hold views contrary to the available evidence throughout the year. This phenomenon, known as denialism, is becoming more elaborate and widespread, and poses a danger to public health


The completion way is the key factor of horizontal well completion.About sand wells,it usually uses quality sand screen in open holes for sand control.The factors of sand production are geologic factor,mining factor and completion factor.Technology parameters of sand control are considered by grain size of sand control,screen size,screen material and so on.


Whenever aid administrators gather to discuss Basic Educational Opportunity Grants (BEaG), we concede generally that the ,program helps a lot of students, that it requires (and generates) a remarkable degree of cooperation between the financial aid community and federal officials responsible for the grants. but that the program is still burdened with too many administrative problems. We have gained enough experience since 1972-73 to justify some Changes in how we administer the program. In a spirit of cooperation in anticipation that aid officers and federal officials can do a more efficient job of distributing BEOG awards, I am formally proposing some changes in the payment and reporting procedures. I ask that these recommendations be considered for implementation in the 1981-82 award period~ This involves making some decisions very quickly, but is is impossible because the data necessary to effect my changes are already available and in usable format. The decisions involve doing away with the Student Eligibility Report (SER) as a payment device. Before getting into the proposal itself, I offer some background information which will prove useful. In January of 1974 I wrote an open letter to then Congressman James G. O'Hara, Chairman of the House SulrCommittee on PostSecondary Education, to point out several difficulties with the administration of the BEOG Program and offer some suggestions to improve the situation. Not surprisingly, most of those difficulties still exist. Limited administrative experience with the program at that time perhaps justified a wait-and-see attitude before attempting any sort of fundamental change in program operations. This is not so any longer. In the letter to Congressman O'Hara, I outlined nineteen steps involved in administering the BEaG Program. It is not necessary to repeat them all here; most people who are familiar with the program could easily duplicate the list for themselves. The list was not intended to be comprehensive at any rate. Over the last few years one or two steps may have been eliminated and one or two others have been added. For my purposes here it is sufficient to point out that they can be grouped conveniently as follows: the application process involves four steps; the award process, including counseling of students and follow-up. takes ten steps; the reporting phase covers the remaining steps.


Assuming a simple biaxial molecular interaction model in nematic liquid crystal, and using the mean field approximation, phase transitions from isotropic to uniaxial nematics, uniaxial to biaxial nematics are obtained. The result obtained shows that at certain temperatures, the biaxial phases are induced by the asymmetry of molecular shape of liquid crystal. In nuclear magnetic resonance experiment, a general relation between order parameters and spectrum frequency splitting is derived, and possible experimental measurement is discussed.


The use of reduced gaps in applications of high-current vacuum arc devices presents a number of interesting challenges. Specifically, standard contact designs have been developed over several decades to achieve controlled motion of high-current ac arcs in vacuum interrupters. For medium-voltage applications, the optimal maximum contact gap can typically range from about 6 mm to about 2 cm. However, the influence of the contact design may be gap dependent, so additional research may be appropriate if the contacts are to be used at smaller gaps. For example, the current through spiral contacts produces a magnetic field perpendicular to the arc column, but this will force the arc to move outward and run along the periphery of the petals only if a threshold separation is achieved. In this investigation, a framing camera was used to record the appearance and motion of drawn vacuum arcs between spiral-petal contacts with final gaps of 2 to 3 mm. After the rupture of the molten bridge, a high-pressure arc column formed and expanded across the width of the spiral arm. At the reduced gap, an intense anode spot formed if the peak current exceeded approximately 15 kA. Compared to results previously obtained at larger gaps, the arc motion was greatly reduced, and severe contact damage was observed at lower currents.


An integrated optimization design system for turbine tenon/mortise has been set up.In this system,contact clearance was used for parametric modeling of turbine tenon/mortise.Nonlinear contact method was used for analysis of finite element by the strong commercial software of ANSYS which could get objective and other stresses by secondary development of language.Meanwhile,multi-island genetic algorithm and sequential quadratic programming were used for optimization in specified space.As a result,the maximal first principal stress and von mises stress decreased obviously under the condition of meeting the geometry and strength requirements.The system exhibits higher stability,feasibility and efficiency for engineering applications.


Embelin, a major constituent of Embelia ribes BURM. (Myrsinaceae) was transformed into different types of compounds through dimerization during preparation of a decoction. Two of the products are proposed to have furanylidene benzofuranone and 1, 4-dibenzofurandione skeletons on the basis of spectroscopic means. The transformation of embelin in boiling water is markedly accelerated by the presence of fatty acids.


Cases of mandibular condyle fracture have been reported in patients in evolutive age. Conservative and rehabilitative treatment was carried out with excellent anatomofunctional results in the course of growth.


This paper describes the process of a team of mechanical engineering students in designing and simulating an easy to wear augmentation exoskeleton device. The goal of the project is to develop a fundamental technology associate with the design and control of an upper-body exoskeleton that augments human arm strength and endurance during lifting motion. The technology is intended to be used by military soldiers who are required to frequently lift more than 100 pounds objects, such as heavy machinery, tank ammunition, etc.
 This proof of concept design focuses on using a wearable device to provide and support both arms with considerable strength to lift more than 100 pounds objects. Some of the features of this upper body exoskeleton include easy to wear, light weight, portable, sturdy, and easy to control. The exoskeleton device mainly consists of two sections: wearable body vest and EMG sensors and Arduino control system.
 This paper also discussed the range of basic motion of the arms, how the wearable exoskeleton device is developed, and how the performance and efficiency of such device are evaluated.


List of contributors Preface 1. Phonetic and linguistic markers in speech John Laver and Peter Trudgill 2. Speech as a marker of situation Penelope Brown and Colin Fraser 3. Age markers in speech Hede Helfrich 4. Sex markers in speech Philip M. Smith 5. Personality markers in speech Klaus R. Scherer 6. Speech markers and social class W. Peter Robinson 7. Ethnicity markers in speech Howard Giles 8. Social structure, groups and interaction Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson 9. Speech markers in social interaction Howard Giles, Klaus R. Scherer and Donald M. Taylor Subject index Author index.


Anti-oxidation properties,carbon structures and related phase transition in laser quenched layer of 45~# steel and in laser clad-Ni02 alloy layers are studied by Raman spectroscopy.It is shown that laser quenching elevates the anti-oxidation capacity greatly for the surface of 45~# steel and refines the particle sizes of carbon,which appears mainly as amorphous graphite in 45~# steel.With increasing excitation laser power,the Raman spectra of the surface and sub-surface layer remain unchanged,whereas those of the uniformly phase transition layer and the substrate changes enormously. Intense Raman signals of α-Fe_2O_3 appear for the latter.These indicate that the laser quenched surface layer has unique high-temperature anti-oxidation capacity,which is much superior to that of the laser-quenched inner layer as well as the original material.It is found that a phase transition from amorphous carbon to diamond occurs around the interface between the substrate and laser cladding layer of Ni02 alloy.This is explained by the high-temperature gradient at the bottom of the melt pool and the transient pressure produced during cooling process at the interface between the clad layer and the substrate.


The superposition of different optical vortices can produce composite vortex.It makes a theoretical analysis about the superposition of two planar optical vortex beams is made through the collinear superposition of two planar vortex beams,the distribution of composite vortex center in different situations is discussed,and through the geometric analytic method the composite vortex center which is produced by two plane vortices superposed whose vortex cores are coincident is found.In the theory,the composite vortex of the circularly symmetric distribution can bg gotten through this superposition method.


Abstract: The political violence against different indigenous populations during the Brazilian dictatorship is still very unknown and little publicized. The well-known case of the Krenak Correctional Facility is a milestone in the process of overcoming this invisibility. The present article is a presentation and analysis of the psychological technical input carried out to ascertain the psychosocial effects of the political violence against the Krenak population in this episode. It was an integral part of the action of the Public Ministry from Minas Gerais, which requires that the Brazilian State recognize the extreme violations of the collective rights of these indigenous people and also the adoption of actions of historical amends. Built within indigenous land from 1969 to 1973, the Krenak Correctional Facility was a detention center intended exclusively to indigenous people who did not abide by the law. Based on the collection of interviews, field observations and bibliographical research, a report that highlighted the impacts of the political violence in individual levels as well as in collective levels in the Krenak population was carried out. Findings that suggest that there is an ongoing process of violence against the Krenak demand not only the examination of these effects but also the possibility of psychosocial collective amendments for this population.


Architectural research is increasingly driven by application needs in different domains. Research and development efforts must systematically identify the prominent properties, especially the amount of inherent parallelism and memory access/structural patterns for a wide range of emerging applications. One such application domain is recognition. Machine vision, object/scene understanding, and natural language processing belong to this domain. Recognition systems solve what is called the inverse problem. Whether it is recognizing a target from SAR or image data, recognizing speech, understanding human language, identifying a person, or tracking a computer attack, the problem centers around recognizing an event, action, or object of interest in the presence of uncertainty. Highly data-parallel preprocessing along with multigranularity task and data-parallel learning and inference are characteristic of machine recognition systems.


We present images of a rare, potentially fatal but treatable complication of abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs).

An 81-year-old man was admitted with breathlessness on mild exertion, leg swelling and a 2 week history of back pain. He had florid signs of biventricular failure and a pulsatile mass in the abdomen. There was evidence of mild renal impairment. A transthoracic echocardiography revealed global hypokinesia and dilatation of the left and right ventricle. In addition, there was tricuspid regurgitation, a dilated right atrium and evidence of moderate pulmonary hypertension. A contrast enhanced CT scan revealed a large infra-renal AAA measuring 10.3 cm and 12 cm in antero-posterior and coronal diameters respectively (figures 1 and 2). There was marked intramural thrombus formation with an extension of the aneurysm into the proximal common iliac arteries and a focal right internal …


Deep neural networks facilitate video question answering (VideoQA), but the real-world applications on video streams such as CCTV and live cast place higher demands on the solver. To address the challenges of VideoQA on long videos of unknown length, we define a new set of problems called Online Open-ended Video Question Answering (O2VQA). It requires an online state-updating mechanism for the solver to decide if the collected information is sufficient to conclude an answer. We then propose a Confidence-based Event-centric Online Video Question Answering (CEO-VQA) model to solve this problem. Furthermore, a dataset called Answer Target in Background Stream (ATBS) is constructed to evaluate this newly developed online VideoQA application. Compared to the baseline VideoQA method that watches the whole video, the experimental results show that the proposed method achieves a significant performance gain.


The purpose of a tribute to Marc Maresceau, a leading expert and commentator on EU external relations, is to examine the relative nature of the legal categories involved, including the 'non-exclusive' features of exclusive competence, on the one hand, and what sometimes appears as the 'near-exclusive' exercise of shared competence, on the other. This chapter presents observations on the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) competences, in the context of shared competences. There are codes or other arrangements agreed between the Council, the Commission and the Member States the primary function of which is to regulate their respective rights to speak, submit proposals and vote but which also are relevant for the question of competence. The chapter discusses these codes in relation to shared competences and the duty of co-operation. Union institutions and Member States cooperate and defend the Union interest, whichever category of competence is considered to apply. Keywords: Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP); EU external relations; Marc Maresceau; Union institutions


Recently, the Belle Collaboration has measured the $\Lambda_c^+ \to \eta \Lambda \pi^+$ decay and reported the $\eta\Lambda$ and $\Lambda\pi^+ $ invariant mass distributions, which show the clear signals of the resonances $\Lambda(1670)$ and $\Sigma(1385)$, respectively. Based on our previous works [Eur. Phys. J. C 76 (2016) 496 and Phys. Rev. D 95 (2017) 074024], we re-analyze this process by considering the $S$-wave $\eta\Lambda$ and $\eta\pi^+$ final state interactions within the chiral unitary approach, which dynamically generate the $\Lambda(1670)$ and $a_0(980)$, respectively. Our results are in good agreement with the Belle measurements, which supports the molecular nature of the $\Lambda(1670)$ and $a_0(980)$. In addition, the $\eta \pi^+$ invariant mass distributions are also computed and a cusp structure of $a_0(980)$ is cleary shown around the $K\bar{K}$ mass threshold.


The paper expounds systematically heavy metals wastewater treatment status and existing problems in the Baiyin Nonferrous Group Company(BNMC),and puts forward resource utilization countermeasure,proposal to strengthen the research of this respect and practice,fundamentally solve environmental problems and achieve comprehensive resources recovery.


The paper analyzes the statistics of implementing known information threats, considers new types of Internet fraud and develops recommendations for protecting against unauthorized actions of Internet scammers.

Internet fraud has long gone beyond mailing and has become widespread. Fraudsters operate in almost all spheres of human activity, and with the advent of various means of communication their activities have acquired new trends.

The most common methods of online fraud are the following: fake shops with Internet sales, phishing, fundraising for charity, dating sites, viral content.

The paper shows that the considered methods of Internet fraud are connected not so much with the Internet as directly with the user. Internet users should not only be aware of possible types and schemes of fraud, but also take care of software protection methods such as antivirus and timely updating all applications, browsers and systems. Only being up to date, constantly learning and being interested in both new threats and methods of their protection users can protect themselves and their loved ones from losses.


The shorter lifespan of electrical and electronic equipment has contributed to the generation of electrical and electronic waste. From year 2007 to 2010, the total number of electrical and electronic waste that is generated in Shah Alam has increased from 5,323 metric tonnes to 21,205 metric tonnes. The lack of proper facilities for electrical and electronic waste disposal has resulted problem in electrical and electronic waste management from households. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to evaluate the current status of electrical and electronic waste management in Shah Alam. The data for this study derived from two main activities, where the first activity is the collection of secondary data from literature reviews and document searches. Meanwhile, the second activity involved the collection of primary data through survey by using questionnaires. The result of the study shows that the disposal route practice by households in Shah Alam is storage in the house, sold as second-hand electrical and electronic equipment, and disposal with other solid waste. The major electrical and electronic equipment that contributes to the generation of electrical and electronic waste in Shah Alam is mobile phones and computers. Besides that, the disposal of electrical and electronic waste by households is rely on the electrical and electronic equipment lifespan and the way they handled the appliances before the time of disposal. Even though, the household's knowledge of electrical and electronic waste has evolved, but most of them do not know how to dispose the electrical and electronic waste properly. Hence, this study concluded that electrical and electronic waste management in Shah Alam from households not yet established, and study on the proper electrical and electronic waste disposal is necessary to overcome the negative impact in the future.


In our previous work, we proposed an intelligent architecture for mobile system, intelligent processing, querying and accessing of huge data for mobile databases. In this paper, we proposed intelligent storage devices for handling huge data on mobile databases. This is a massive storage resolves the capacity requirements of huge data storage in the networks of enterprise and organizations. The complexity and cost of storage management needs intelligence to reduce the huge overheads, and intelligent storage becomes the ideal storage solutions. In this paper, we illustrated architecture for intelligent storage, scheduling policies and key factor of intelligent devices.


ABSTRACT Dynamic growth sparked fierce competition in early twelfth-century Metz. One community vying to get ahead was the suburban Benedictine abbey of Saint-Clément. This article examines the competition the monks faced within Metz and traces how well they fared against their rivals. In particular, it shows that competition from other urban groups, both clerical and lay, was intense. It further reveals that disputes among these groups led to vandalism, forgery and legal wrangling as each party tried to win over the bishop, whose authority often decided the outcome of individual disputes. Under these circumstances, the monks of Saint-Clément did not achieve all their aims. Yet, the article argues, the monks' limited success is nevertheless significant. It reveals how stiff such intra-urban competition was, as well as the impact suburban monasteries could have on shaping the growing cities of medieval Europe.


The development of self-concept is a central concem in adolescence. The present study investigated the relationships between family life and changes at the cognitive, affective and behaviorallevels, related to self-concept. Participants were 333 males and females, with a mean age of 15.08 years at the begining of the testing procedure, and 16.38 at the second testing. The instruments applied to the participants were the Tennessee Self Concept Scale, and the Scale of Social Climate in the Family (Moos, 1987). The processess associated with psychological and physical development influenced the self-concept ofthe participants. In relation to the family environment, it was found that cohesion, expression of emotions and family organization are positively related to self-concept and self-esteem.


We present our work-in-progress efforts of designing a simple tabletop robotic assistant that supports users as they interact with tabletop reservoir visualization application. Our prototype, Spidey, is designed to assist reservoir engineers in performing simple data exploration tasks on the interactive tabletop. We present our design as well as preliminary findings from a study of Spidey involving both interaction designers and reservoir engineers.


Progress is reported on the following: interpretation of seismic data from hydraulic fracturing experiments at the Fenton Hill Hot Dry Rock Geothermal Site, interpretation of 3-D velocity anomalies in the western US with special attention to geothermal areas, theoretical and observational studies of scattering and attenuation of high-frequency seismic waves, theoretical and observational studies of volcanic tremors in relation to magma transport mechanisms, and deployment and maintenance of 9 event-recorders around Mt. St. Helens. Abstracts of papers submitted for publication are included. (MHR)


The Ecuadorian forearc is a complex region of accreted terranes with a history of largemegathrust earthquakes. Most recently, aMw7.8 megathrust earthquake ruptured the plateboundary offshore of Pedernales, Ecuador on 16 April 2016. Following this event, an inter-national collaboration arranged by the Instituto Geofisico at the Escuela Polit ecnica Nacionalmobilized a rapid deployment of 65 seismic instruments along the Ecuadorian forearc. Wecombine this new seismic data set with 14 permanent stations from the Ecuadorian nationalnetwork to better understand how variations in crustal structure relate to regional seismichazards along the margin. Here, we present receiver function adaptive common conversionpoint stacks and a shear velocity model derived from the joint inversion of receiver functionsand surface wave dispersion data obtained through ambient noise cross-correlations for theupper 50 km of the forearc. Beneath the forearc crust, we observe an eastward dipping slowvelocity anomaly we interpret as subducting oceanic crust, which shallows near the projectedcentre of the subducting Carnegie Ridge. We also observe a strong shallow positive conversionin the Ecuadorian forearc near the Borbon Basin indicating a major discontinuity at a depth of∼7 km. This conversion is not ubiquitous and may be the top of the accreted terranes. We alsoobserve significant north–south changes in shear wave velocity. The velocity changes indicatevariations in the accreted terranes and may indicate an increased amount of hydration beneaththe Manab i Basin. This change in structure also correlates geographically with the southernrupture limit of multiple high magnitude megathrust earthquakes. The earthquake record alongthe Ecuadorian trench shows that no event with aMw>7.4 has ruptured south of∼0.5◦Sinsouthern Ecuador or northern Peru. Our observations, along with previous studies, suggestthat variations in the forearc crustal structure and subducting oceanic crust may influance theoccurrence and spatial distribution of high magnitude seismicity in the region.


Due to the increasing trend towards miniaturization, various industries demand the knowledge of materials forming on microscale. Forming has many advantages above machining such as high accuracy, low costs and strengthening by cold‐working. However, a drawback of microforming is that it leads to problems caused by so‐called size effects. A lot of research has been done on this topic, but only a minor part deals with the forming of high strength materials.In this study two channels with 0.25 mm width and 4.5 mm length are formed in stainless steel sheet AISI 410 with an initial sheet thickness 0.5 mm. The channels are formed by the coining process. The experiments have been repeated in which all dimensions are scaled down by a factor two, in order to check if size effects occur. Ring compression tests are used to determine a shear friction coefficient.A finite element model was build up and solved with MSC.Marc in order to gain a better understanding of the coining process. A size dependent material model ...


Two-dimensional plane strain models were used to analyze the failure of Z-pin reinforced T-joint specimens.The cohesive zone model was used to simulate the interface failure,and the reinforcement effect of Z-pin was simulated by the inserting of nonlinear springs into the upper and lower interfaces of delamination.The mechanical properties(bridging law)of nonlinear spring were obtained by micromechanical approach.The numerical results agree well with the testing values.Based on the verified finite element method,the effects of the diameter,density and inserting angle et al of Z-pin on the pull-off carrying capacity of T-joints were studied.Results show that Z-pin reinforcement can effectively improve the pull-off carrying capacity of T-joints and delay the decrease of the load after peak loading significantly compared to the T-joints before Z-pin reinforcement.The pull-off carrying capacity of T-joint increases as the diameter and density of Z-pin increase and decreases as the inserting angle of Z-pin increases.In the angle range investigated,the pull-off carrying capacity of T-joints reaches the best when the inserting angle is60°.The effect of diameter and density of Z-pin on pull-off carrying capacity is much more significant than that of inserting angle.


The industrial application of self-compacting concrete in Holland is much broader than it is currently in Germany. The standardization and regulatory framework available are important reasons for this. Continuous information on this subject and the presentation of exemplary companies and projects should have the effect that this new construction technology will soon find a much broader application also in Germany.


Peripheral blood cells from three patients with leukemia in relapse increased in numbers in short-term suspension cultures. This increase was dependent on the presence of either feeder populations containing a high percentage of blast cells or conditioned medium derived from such populations. Aneuploid cells present in direct marrow preparations were also prevalent in the cultures after 10 days. The apparent specificity of the increase for leukemic populations may provide a new approach to the study of leukemic blast cells.


The authors discuss transportation security following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Bridging operational implementation and management with homeland security strategy in crafting a security plan is critical in engaging private sector accountability and public sector responsibility. They conclude that the Department of Homeland Security still does not have an operational concept that is private, public, integrated, and cohesive, although it has established many of the necessary elements for system wide plan execution. The authors present a systems focused approach to a National Transportation System Security Plan (NTSSP) construct. It requires creativity in creating a risk mitigation environment and an understanding of what constitutes transportation security risk, but the NTSSP discussion shows management, at the national level, of transportation security risk. Success depends on the strategic concept of operations, which is the frequently overlooked bridge between local tactical actions and national strategies. The authors argue that the leadership, practicality, sense of purpose, and vision in such a plan would energize private and public stakeholders. Compared to separate appropriation line items and disparate plans, its focused, integrated approach is likely to result in lower costs. Since it is a risk management tool for finite resource management, it can also enjoy congressional support. Finally, there is a powerful result because the NTSSP leverages each agency's contribution without displacing private stakeholder relationships while minimizing federal agency parochialism. Details of some terrorist activities in addition to the September 11 terrorist attacks are given.


This chapter describes current advances in emotion modelling for social robots. It begins by contextualising the role of emotions in social robots, considering the concept of the Affective Loop. It describes a number of elements for the synthesis and expression of emotions through robotic embodiments and provides an overview of the area of emotional adaptation and empathy in social robots.


Objective To evaluate perioperative complications of 211 patients undergone radical cystectomy.Methods The clinical data of 211 cases of radical cystectomy from January 1996 to December 2006 were reviewed retrospectively.Perioperative complications were defined as any adverse event within 30 d post-operation.Results A total of 72 patients(34.1%)developed at least one perioperative complication.The most frequent complications were subileus in 32(15.2%)patients,wound infection in 20(9.5%),and pulmonary infection in 10(4.7%).The perioperative reoperation rate was in 16(7.6%).The operative time and hospital stay were longer for patients who had undergone continent diversions or neobladder than those undergone ileal conduits(P0.01).There were no significant difference in operative time,complications and hospital stay between the elderly patients(age≥70 years,n=35)and young patients(P0.05).Conclusions It was suggested that patients undergone radical cystectomy have a certain high rate of perioperative complications.Elderly is not a contraindication for surgery.The approach of urinary diversion is an important factor that influences operative time and hospital stay.


AS ELECTRICAL SYSTEMS IN OFF-HIGHWAY AND COMMERCIAL VEHICLES BECOME MORE COMPLEX, IT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER TO SELECT THE RIGHT CONNECTORS


To talk about automation and invisibility in our digitally projected world, I argue the case for the "cancelled" or lost voices of postphenomenology such as, most notably, Günther Anders. Reflecting on Nietzsche as on the role of GPS for location and for dating services like Grindr, I take up Nietzschean humanism (all-too humanism) including the fragility of his portable brass typing ball, latterly not unlike daisy wheel printer technologies and the programmed death of ink jet printers. With a casual reflection on pocket robots and screen-intentionality, GPS, triangulating perambulation, and programmed addiction, I raise the necropolitical question of climate change as of technology and its scotosis.


We present optical spectroscopy of all 49 radio galaxies in the 7C-I and 7C-II regions of the 7C Redshift Survey (7CRS). The low-frequency (151 MHz) selected 7CRS sample contains all sources with flux-densities S151 > 0.5 Jy in three regions of the sky; 7C-I and 7C-II were chosen to overlap with the 5C 6 and 5C 7 surveys, respectively, and cover a total sky area of 0.013 sr. The sample has been completely identified and spectroscopy of the quasars and broad-lined radio galaxies has been presented previously by Willott et al. Only seven of the radio galaxies do not have redshift determinations from the spectroscopy, giving a redshift completeness for the sample of >90 per cent. The median redshift of the 7CRS is 1.1. We present a composite 0.2 < z < 0.8 7CRS radio galaxy spectrum and investigate the strengths of the 4000- ˚ A breaks in these radio galaxies. We find an anti-correlation between the 4000- ˚ A


ion (derived from Latin abstrahere "to strip off, remove forcibly") is "the process which allows people to consider what is relevant and to forget a lot of irrelevant details which would get in the way of what they are trying to do" [Giunchiglia and Walsh, 1992]. Abstractionbased processes are pervasive in human reasoning. The earliest and most common use of abstraction was in problem solving. Abstraction maps a "ground" representation of the problem onto a new "abstract" representation, which preserves certain desirable properties and is simpler to handle, since it is built by "throwing away details" of the ground representation [Holte and Choueiry, 2003]. Management science is concerned with modelling and solving managerial decision problems. Problems investigated in the literature are generally abstracted from real world cases. This process of abstraction is necessarily non-deductive: it is led by inductive and/or abductive reasoning and cannot represent nor preserve all (potentially infinite) properties of the real problem faced by a manager [Popper, 1934]. Unfortunately, non-deductive reasoning is often representation dependent: representing the same situation in two different ways may lead to different answers. For instance, Ptolemy's epicyclic solar system was more accurate predicting the positions of planets than Copernicus' view, until Kepler introduced the possibility that orbits are ellipses. Interestingly, the authors in Halpern and Koller [2004] remark that representation independence is too much to expect if one aims for nontrivial conclusions and that researchers in machine learning and statistics have long realised that representation bias is an inevitable component of effective inductive reasoning. A management science model, like any other scientific model, is essentially a hypothesis. This perspective finds its origins in the scientific method pioneered by Galileo and Bacon and reinforced by Karl Popper's explication of the hypothetico-deductive model [Popper, 1963] in which the hypothesis is considered to be just "a guess." As such, one may say that there is no single "correct" or "true" model. There are instead models that reflect, to a greater or lesser extent, certain aspects of reality that are of interest to the decision maker. This perspective on the nature of decision support models is often lost in management science, because researchers tend to mainly focus on the analytical part of the scientific method, heavily influenced by the strong tradition of Platonic realism found in mathematics [Tait, 1986], while disregarding the importance of the inductive and/or abductive aspects of modelling. In short, classical management science models focus on providing a single optimal or near-optimal solution, obtained analytically, to an abstracted problem. ∗29 Buccleuch place, EH8 9JS, Edinburgh, UK


In this paper, a new discrete-time sliding mode control (DSMC) approach is proposed based on a Rieman-Liouville (R-L) fractional-order integral (FOI) for a piezo-actuated system. An iterative discrete-time FOI is investigated by using R-L fractional definition, and a fractional-order sliding manifold based on the presented FOI is designed and the sliding manifold can fast reach the constructed stable region under bounded disturbance by the proposed discrete-time fractional-alorder sliding mode control (DFSMC) law and stay there. Also, the tracking performance is analyzed by using the DFSMC. Finally, an implementation strategy is carried out on a positioning control system based on piezoelectric actuator, and simulation and experimental results are given to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.


Some problems are more easily evaded than resolved. In the Roman law of persons this could not perhaps be truer than with regard to capitis deminutio. Over the years, this subject has generated a clutch of notorious and knotty difficulties for Romanists. Paulus (2 ad Sabinum) D. 4.5.11 famously informs us that there are three kinds of "change for the worse in civil status", namely maxima media minima, referring, respectively, to loss of freedom, of citizenship, and of membership in a familia (i.e., an agnatic kinship group). A major impediment to our understanding is that, while the first two clearly represent such a "change for the worse", this is not necessarily the case for the third, since, for example, emancipation might well benefit a former filius familias, especially where he stood to come into a windfall through receiving a testamentary bequest.1 Fully cognizant of the challenges, R. D'Alessio tackles this refractory subject head-on. In this important book he focuses on capitis deminutio minima, without doubt the most problematic of the triad. The story stretches over many centuries, beginning with the XII Tables and winding up at the end of the classical period of Roman law in the early 3rd c. A.D.


An <italic>RC</italic> -to-digital converter (RCDC) for the measurement of the <italic>RC</italic> time constant of the resistor and capacitor connected in series is presented in this article. A simple RCDC design insensitive to parasitic capacitances is based on the single-slope integration. The output voltage of the integrator is linearly changed from half the value of the reference voltage to its final value. The <italic>RC</italic> time constant is equal to the duration of the single-slope integration and is independent of any other parameter. The proposed RCDC has been prototyped using discrete off-the-shelf components mounted on a printed circuit board, with a single supply voltage of 2.7 V. Measurements have been performed for 36 different combinations of the resistors and capacitors connected in series, where the measured time constant is in the range <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$45.77 \mu \text{s} < $ </tex-math></inline-formula> <italic>RC</italic> < 2.32 ms, for three different reference voltages. The achieved relative error is smaller than 1.96% for the largest reference voltage used.


Objectives  Previous studies based on standard endocrine testing have shown a variable incidence of autonomous cortisol secretion (ACS) or autonomous aldosterone secretion (AAS) in patients with single adrenal adenomas (SAA). We tested whether the use of appropriate controls and modification of standard testing, aiming at eliminating interference from endogenous ACTH, reveals previously undetected subtle ACS and AAS by SAA.


This paper presents a design procedure for the DC-side stray inductance in a high-speed switching circuit based on a normalization procedure. It is shown that the normalization procedure can define the relationship between the inverter power rating and the upper and lower limitations of the stray inductance. It is clear that the upper limitation of the stray inductance depends on the voltage and current rating of the inverter circuit, and the acceptable over-voltage value is also determined by the voltage rating of the power device. In addition, the lower limitation of the stray inductance considering the short-circuit current is determined by the current rating of the power device. The stray inductance is shown not as the absolute value [H] but as the percent value [%], therefore, it can be designed depending on the inverter power rating. In order to verify the analysis results, experiments using a SiC-MOSFET and SiC-SBD are conducted.


Recently Balakrishnan and Iliopoulos [Ann. Inst. Statist. Math. 61 (2009)] gave sufficient conditions under which maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) is stochastically increasing. In this paper we study test plans which are not considered there and we prove that MLEs for those plans are also stochastic ordered. We also give some applications to the estimation of reliability.


LRecently, with increasing interest in ubiquitous computing, knowledge discovery method is needed with consideration of the efficiency and the effectiveness of wide range and various forms of data. Spatial Characterization which extends former characterization method with consideration of spatial and non-spatial property enables to find various form of knowledge in spatial region. The previous spatial characterization methods have the problems as follows. Firstly, former study shows the problem that the result of searched knowledge is unable to perform the multiple spatial analysis. Secondly, it is unable to secure the useful knowledge search since it searches the limited spatial region which is allocated by the user. Thus, this study suggests spatial characterization which applies to density based clustering.


This paper reviews the organisation of Victorian community health services in the context of the general direction of reform for the Australian and Victorian health systems. It notes that the emphasis has shifted to a greater focus on improving the efficiency of the relationship between needs, resources, services and outcomes. Within this context, in addition to public health measures, national reforms have advocated the creation of funding and organisational arrangements around three service functions: general care, acute care and co-ordinated care. It is argued that the organisation of community services should be driven by these functional relations, not vice versa. The efficiency of vertical and horizontal integration and the creation of community health networks is considered in relation to transaction costs, organisational scale, transition costs and distributional equity. It is concluded that community health networks offer the most efficient model for the delivery of community based public health and general, acute and co-ordinated care services.


New specimen geometries with various stress states are designed and applied for dynamic loading tests. Oscillation-free force is measured during multiaxial loading tests in the strain range of 10-4 – 103 s-1. The deformation and local strain fields of specimens have been measured using high-speed camera and evaluated by digital image correlation (DIC) techniques. It is found that the strain rate effects on fracture strain are stressstate dependent. To model the material plasticity and ductile fracture behaviour during dynamic tests, an extended damage mechanics model (eMBW model) is used. In this work, the model is enhanced and implemented into LS-DYNA. To cover the strain rate effects on plasticity at a large strain rate range, a modified Johnson–Cook-type rate-dependency and exponential temperature-dependency are used. In addition, the influences of both stress state and strain rate on fracture locus are considered. The enhanced damage mechanics model successfully predicts the deformation and fracture behaviour of the investigated steel under dynamic multiaxial loading.


Resumen en: Here we derive some further properties of starbursts; namely the amount of matter returned to the interstellar medium by means of supernova explosions f...


Due to the increasing usage of GIS applications, evaluating their quality takes on high importance and requires a flexible modelling framework that to incorporate the special characteristics of GIS applications in spatial and temporal dimensions. Transforming GIS data into information and then presenting in a meaningful way is a significant challenge, and ultimately affects the user experience. In this paper, we apply a modelling framework to evaluate the external quality for a GIS application. In our evaluation, we focus on learnability with an aim toward improving the user experience. The modelling framework, 2Q2U (internal/external Quality, Quality in use, actual Usability and User experience), is designed to flexibly evaluate software applications for usability and user experience by flexibly combining and relating the concepts of actual usability and actual UX.


African Identitiy through the Prism of Joking Relationships: A Study of Essentialism in the Long-Standing. The multiple discourses on the social practices of joking relationships are characterized by the same tendency to contribute to the reproduction of representations of Africa and Africans built by classical anthropology without questioning them. These representations are rooted in an essentialist perception of African identity as well as in an uncritical approach of the notion of tradition. Current attempts to promote joking relationships as a mechanism of conflict resolution in Africa are clearly related to this constructed vision of Africa. Discourses that define African identity in racial, geographical and cultural terms are paradoxical in that they draw on a particularistic perspective to claim the participation of Africa in humanity.


Two panel discussions presented at the Second Language Acquisition Graduate Student Symposium on 29 and 30 April 2011 at the University of Iowa.


For the great importance of measuring turbine rotor bend for both inspection and repair of turbines, an automatic measurement system, which uses a rotating mirror for scanning, double slots for scanning speed calibration, an optoelectric detector for optoelectric change-over, and a microprocessor for processing, display and printing of data, is proposed for measuring turbine rotor bend using laser scanning technology. Experimental results show that the automatic measuring system is capable of doing remote non-contact measurements of turbine rotor bends with an accuracy of ±5 μm from 4 m away.