The main motivation of the present work was to fabricate novel multifunctional polymer-based nanocomposites. The nanocomposites embedded with multi-walled carbon nanotube-boehmite (MWCNT-boehmite) were prepared via hot pressure casting technique. The MWCNT coated with boehmite were synthesized by hydrothermal synthesis. Subsequently, as-prepared MWCNT-boehmite was added into the phthalonitrile-terminated polyarylene ether nitriles (PEN-t-CN) matrix in order to benefit from the synergetic effect of MWCNT and boehmite. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) were employed to confirm the existence of MWCNT-boehmite in our article. Furthermore, the structures, fracture morphologies, thermal, mechanical and dielectric properties of the nanocomposites were investigated, respectively. SEM images indicated that the MWCNT-boehmite was homogeneously dispersed in the polymer, which acted as an essential factor to ensure good physical properties. The TGA analysis showed that the incorporation of MWCNT-boehmite enhanced the thermal stability of the nanocomposites with initial degradation temperature (Tid) increasing from 458 to 492°C, while that of the pure PEN-t-CN was 439°C. The mechanical testing proved that significant enhancement of mechanical properties has been achieved. The tensile strength of PEN-t-CN/MWCNT-boehmite composites with 3 wt% MWCNT-boehmite reached the maximum (78.33 MPa), with a 41.7 % increase compared to the pure polymer. More importantly, the unique dielectric properties were systematically discussed and the results demonstrated that dielectric properties exhibited little dependency on frequency. For the incorporation of hybrid filler, the positive impact of MWCNT-boehmite hybrid material resulted in polymer-based nanocomposites with enhanced physical properties. POLYM. COMPOS., 2014. © 2014 Society of Plastics Engineers


ABSTRACT This article examines the question of teacher quality and its effects on the skills acquisition of primary school students in Spain. We use an education production function in which we incorporate teachers' fixed effects, estimated by means of a multiple regression model. Specifically, we examine the acquisition of reading skills by drawing on data from PIRLS-2011. The results obtained allow us to conclude that teachers constitute an important input in the acquisition of reading skills. Additionally, we analyse which observed teachers' characteristics can be related to teacher quality. By identifying the quality of each teacher in the sample, we are also able to determine where the "best" and "worst" teachers work. The results indicate that there is a greater probability of finding high quality teachers in privately owned schools and in schools where the students come from families with higher levels of economic and socio-cultural resources.


With China's deepening opening up and internationalization of its college education,the number of overseas students in China has increased dramatically.On the one hand,the international students provides Chinese universities an opportunity to develop;on the other hand,it also poses a more challenging demand on universities' international student management.To strengthen the management of international students,this article,based on some cases in Guangdong University of Technology,discusses several strategies to enhance China's international student management.


The aim of this third part is to analyze the structure and properties of the interfacial region between carbon fibers and PEEK as a function of different thermal conditioning treatments. First, it is shown by means of optical microscopy that the interfacial zone is not different from the bulk matrix when standard cooling conditions are used. On the contrary, a transcrystalline interphase is formed near the carbon fiber surface in systems that have been subjected to isothermal treatments. By comparison with previous results concerning the mechanical properties of the fiber–matrix interface, it appears that the interfacial shear strength decreases in the presence of a transcrystalline interphase or when the crystallization rate of PEEK increases. Moreover, it seems that the "constraint state" of the amorphous phase of PEEK near the fiber surface could also play a role in the interfacial shear strength. Secondly, a method is proposed in order to estimate the elastic modulus of crystalline interphases. It seems that this modulus is strongly dependent on the crystallization rate of the polymer. Finally, the determination of the stress-free temperature, defined as the temperature at which a longitudinal compressive stress just appears on the carbon fiber during the processing of the composites, is performed by recording the acoustic events corresponding to the fragmentation process in single-fiber composites. The results confirm that the crystallization rate and the "constraint state" of the amorphous phase of the matrix play an important role in the mechanical behavior of carbon fiber–PEEK interfaces.


Carbon nanotubes (Cnts) produced using single furnace thermal CVD method by the floating catalyst method, at low temperature condition; 650oC. Carbon nanotubes were produced from natural source of camphor oil, using Fe/Co/Al as catalyst source, yielding a thickened submicron vapor grown of multi-wall Cnts. Carbon nanotubes are observed to form by different weight composition of catalyst. For the production of carbon nanotubes, natural precursor was used as the carbon feedstock, and the catalysts were added in a precursor compound. FESEM analysis confirms that this type of stacked-cup Cnts is produced by vaporize catalyst and mixing with the hydrocarbon source. In fact, few Cnts have either a particle tip at the end or trapped metal particle inside the wide hollow core of this type of produced carbon material. Chemical properties carried out by FTIR and Raman spectroscopy.


Multi-axis ball end milling experiments of H13 die steel have been conducted with four different cutter postures, and the 3D topographies of machined surfaces are acquired by optical profiler. The multi-scale analysis is carried out on the machined surfaces based on 2D dual-tree complex wavelet transform (2D DT-CWT). The topographies are decomposed into different frequency bands, and the roughness in every frequency band is calculated. The results reveal that the roughnesses of the machined surfaces under different cutter postures are quite different, the roughness is the lowest when the lead angle is 12° and the tilt angle is-22°. The roughnesses under different cutter postures exhibit similar changing trend with the variation of frequency bands: the roughnesses in the high and low frequency bands are relatively lower, the roughnesses in the medium frequency bands are higher. The 2D DT-CWT provides an ideal comprehensive topography analysis method for performance evaluation of machined surfaces.


It is demonstrated that a proposed microscopic description of the carrier transport in dielectrics, which takes into account an interaction of the charged carriers with the lattice, allows identifying structural defects contributing to a variety of electrical measurements.


Physics-based animation of soft or rigid bodies for real-time applications often suffers from numerical instabilities. We analyse one of the most common sources of unwanted behaviour: the numerical integration strategy. To assess the impact of popular integration methods, we consider a scenario where soft and hard constraints are added to a custom designed deformable linear object. Since the goal for this class of simulation methods is to attain interactive frame-rates, we present the drawbacks of using explicit integration methods over inherently stable, implicit integrators. To help numerical solver designers better understand the impact of an integrator on a certain simulated world, we have conceived a method of benchmarking the efficiency of an integrator with respect to its speed, stability and symplecticity.


In an absolute gravimeter based on optical interferometry, the rotation of a falling body leads to inaccurate gravity measurement. By arranging the center of mass (COM) of the falling body together with its optical center (OC), the rotation error can be minimized rapidly. An optical measurement system with a two-stage pendulum structure is proposed to measure the distance between the COM and the OC of the falling body. The displacement of the OC is measured by an orthogonal interferometer while the falling body twists around the torsion wire, and the rotation angle of the falling body is measured synchronously by a photoelectric autocollimator. It is proved that a twist of the falling body by 2.4 degrees leads to a significant offset of about 0.2 nm along the direction of the laser beam. This results in a limit error of the measurement of the distance between the OC and the COM less than 1 μm. Thus, the rotation error in absolute gravity measurement is reduced to 0.07 μGal.


We have considered multiuser communication scenario with ultra wideband (UWB) communication. UWB device is transmitting the data by time hopping (TH)-based system, TH-PPM, TH-PAM and DS-UWB. The UWB device is transmitting data over multipath rich channel model recommended by IEEE 802.15.3a working group. This channel model is based on Saleh-Valenzuela model. For better performance at receiver side, adaptive equaliser is required; this increases the complexity of receiver. Here we have considered the RAKE receiver for TH-based UWB system. This RAKE receiver structure is not a conventional RAKE, but it is pre-RAKE structure. In this case, we have evaluated performance of system by considering the RAKE receiver at the transmitter side. Here we have assumed the condition that channel sounding is available before transmission for quasi static UWB channel. Based on this knowledge RAKE fingers are selected for pre-RAKE. UWB channel is multipath rich channel so full RAKE adds more complexity in receiver and hence put limitation on effective data rate. Here we have considered low branch RAKE receiver. Performance of the system model is evaluated with realistic UWB channel model.


have been cut down at a devastatingly fast rate. The number of forest fires has increased in recent years. In 2002, fires were noted on 5.6 ha of forestland, whereas in 2010, and 2011, fires were observed on 810.6 and 472.4 ha of forestland, respectively. [1] In 2017, the figure was 3000 ha. [2] Increasing numbers of fires are conditional upon factors of climate change as well as the practice of burning meadows and pastures in the autumn.


As more and more systems switch from the traditional uniprocessor architectures to multicore and multiprocessor parallel architectures, a new wave of benchmarks have to be created to mimic computational behavior of real-world problems but in a more parallel fashion. Berkeley took on this challenge two years ago and just released a technical write-up of what they believe is the basis for new parallel processor archite cture benchmarks, called the 13 dwarfs. These benchmarks stress everything from inter-processor communications to intense processor utilization. In this paper we implement two of these d warfs, MapReduces and Spectral Methods, and benchmark them on current as well as past multithreaded architectures. We sta rt out with background on the hardware we will be using for the benchmarks. We then go into some details about the benchmark s themselves, followed by our design and methodology to testi ng these benchmarks in real-world scenarios. We wrap up the pap er with some proposed future work and our conclusions.


The Conclusion interprets the narrativization of the Muslim community's past between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries as the triumph of the 'historical' moment. By the end of the seventeenth century, the consolidation of narrative pasts had successfully created a genealogical record of Muslim settlement in Gujarat connecting the history of the Muslim community under the Gujarat sultans to the period of the Mughal occupation of Gujarat. Apart from transcribing the history of migration and settlement, Sufi texts had been instrumental in the early modern conceptualization of the history of the state, the region, and finally the Mughal province.


In this study, we aim at investigating the effects of raw Herba Siegesbeckiae (HS) and honey wine-processed HS (WHS) against oxidative injury and apoptosis in MaleWistar albino rats with renal ischemia/reperfusion injury (RIRI). Rats were randomized into groups as follows: (I) sham group (n = 10); (II) RIRI group (n = 10); (III) RIRI + silymarin (SI) (100 mg/kg) group (n = 10); (IV) RIRI + HS (400 mg/kg) group (n = 10); (V) RIRI + WHS (400 mg/kg) group (n = 10). For the RIRI + HS/WHS and RIRI + SI groups, rats were orally given with HS/WHS (400 mg/kg) and SI (100 mg/kg) once daily 10 days before induction of ischemia, followed by renal IRI. For the sham group and RIRI group, rats were orally given with equal volume of saline once daily 10 days before induction of ischemia, followed by renal IRI. Our results indicated that HS and WHS pretreatment remarkably decreased the blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and serum creatinine. WHS pretreatment also significantly suppressed the MDA release. On the other hand, HS and WHS effectively increase the activities of endogenous antioxidant enzymes. Western blot analysis showed that HS and WHS also reduced the p53 and caspase-3/-9 expression possibly through regulating the Wnt/β-cantenin. In addition, WHS showed better effect than HS against RIRI in rats, which can provide new sights for RIRI treatment.


The product of Gaussian random variables appears naturally in many applications in probability theory and statistics. It has been known that the distribution of a product of N such variables can be expressed in terms of a Meijer G-function. Here, we compute a similar representation for the corresponding cumulative distribution function (CDF) and provide a power-log series expansion of the CDF based on the theory of the more general Fox H-functions. Numerical computations show that for small values of the argument the CDF of products of Gaussians is well approximated by the lowest orders of this expansion. Analogous results are also shown for the absolute value as well as the square of such products of N Gaussian random variables. For the latter two settings, we also compute the moment generating functions in terms of Meijer G-functions.


The paper concerns the inner split in Leszek Kolakowski's thought: between political participation and – usually so called – the first philosophy. Author focuses mainly on the reading of the third part of Main Currents of Marxism and recognizes this part as a crown of the philosopher's reflection on the question of political participation in that time. He makes an objection to Kolakowski that while treating Marxism as a myth, i.e., a harmful falsity, he does not only hunt – like a man of Enlightenment – his previous client, defended in The Presence of Myth , but also reveals his own helplessness against mythical powers that he refers to.


Abstract : The parameters affecting shallow water acoustic behavior at low frequencies (20 to 500 Hz) have been reviewed. The depth dependence of the sediment parameters, and stratigraphic layering in depth, form the basis of geoacoustic models for which the wave equation may be solved. There is no unique approach to geoacoustic modeling. Typically, the additional information required includes in situ refraction, dispersion, and reflection requirements. Application of the Biuot theory of sediment acoustics, which uses poroviscous parameters leads to different conclusions in the frequency range of interest from those calculated using standard viscoelastic parameters alone. The Biot acoustic theory also explains successful data fits to semiempirical compressional and shear wave results. The most important sediment property is the flow permeability, which is equal to the choice of acoustic frequency in its effect. Its range of variability is so large that it is necessary to make a specific in situ determination of its magnitude for use in modeling and prediction. The permeability controls the relaxation frequency of the sediment and thus the rate of attenuation of both compressional and shear waves, their frequency dependence, and their velocity dispersion. Next in importance are the shear properties of the sediments, their related interface waves, and the skeletal frame loss. Determination of these parameters in situ and further study in the laboratory are most important for progress.


In the early fifties, the Belgian Prof. J. de Heinzelin discovered a bone in the region of a fishermen village called Ishango, at one of the farthest sources of the Nile, on the border of Congo and Uganda. The Heinzelin's Ishango bone has notches that seem to form patterns, making it the first tool on which some logic reasoning seems to have been done. In this paper a new interpretation is proposed for these patterned notches, based on a detailed observation of their structure. It can be called the "slide rule"-reading, in contrast to former "arithmetic game" and "calendar" explanations. Additional circumstantial evidences are given to support the hypothesis that the Ishango bone is a primitive mathematical tool using the base 12 and sub-bases 3 and 4.


Slovakia's accession to the EU provided a positive impulse for further economic development, describing the main indicators of the business environment, including the analysis of the general macroeconomic environment, GDP and the labor market. The Slovak Republic focuses on current trends regarding the issue of shortages of skilled labor and employment of foreigners. The most important tasks that the Slovak Government must provide in Slovakia are sustainable economic growth combined with job creation and improving business conditions. Foreign direct investment and corporate sector are major factors that will initiate growth of the economy and employment in Slovakia. New investments also mean modernization of production, new technologies, creating new jobs and progress of the economy. This paper puts a special emphasis on the benefits of the fourth 1 University Business Academy, Faculty of Economics and Engineering Management, Cvećarska 2, 21000 Novi Sad, Republic of Serbia, e-mail: email@example.com; and Comenius University, Faculty of Management, Odbojárov 10, 82005 Bratislava, Slovakia. 2 Comenius University Faculty of Management, Bratislava, Odbojárov 10, 82005 Bratislava, Slovak Republic, e-mail: email@example.com 3 National Bank of Serbia, Nemanjina 17, 11000 Beograd, Republic of Serbia, e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com 4 University Business Academy, Faculty of Economics and Engineering Management, Cvećarska 2, 21000 Novi Sad, Republic of Serbia, e-mail: email@example.com EKONOMIJA TEORIJA I PRAKSA Godina XII • broj 3 str. 1 8–32 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE SLOVAK REPUBLIC: ACHIEVED RESULTS AND PROSPECTS FOR FUTURE DEVELOPMENT 19 industrial revolution, impersonated in the automation and digitalization of processes and continuous innovations, which resulted in the economic growth and development in Slovak Republic.


Abstract The changing nature of the public sector brings new challenges to governance and ethical decision making. A main objective of the Master's of Public Administration (MPA) program is to bring current the pedagogy of ethics, in order to reflect the evolving nature of the sector. This article reports on one such effort that was employed in an introductory MPA course, using the approach outlined by Walton, Stearns, and Crespy in 1997. It also provides details on the students' evaluations of the coursework related to the ethics module. The ethics assignment given to students was designed to illustrate the complexity of moral reasoning that is required to maintain adherence to ethical principles, when processes lead to conflicts between deeply held value systems. Students are provided with an updated administrative framework that builds upon our Constitutional values, and emphasizes the implications of decision making for a population that is broader and more diverse than those in the past.


In this theoretical paper, we propose a correlation between the notion of mechanical enslavement and the gamification phenomenon in order to present how some processes that constitute the environment of rational games reinforce the maintenance of machinic servitude, especially by making invisible the social machine's phenomenal functioning and by imparting a new layer of meaning endowed with values and meanings contrary to those experienced by the human part ar culated in this dynamic. In order to do this, we return to Huizinga and Caillois' understanding of the functioning of game structures and play. Then we approach Deleuze and Guattari's semiotic approach of abstract machine's elements and operation regarding Lazzarato's mechanical enslavement to explain how game and critical semiotics are linked in gamification. Finally, we present the proposition that paidia can help to disrupt the capitalist machine's ethics and logic.


The purpose of this study was to identify the prevalence of musculoskeletal problems in bio-pharmaceutical industry workers. A cross sectional survey was conducted on 33 bio-pharmaceutical industry workers by administering the Extended Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire to quantify the musculoskeletal pain and activity limitation in 9 body regions. The Rapid Office Strain Assessment was used to assess the work-related postures and ergonomics of the computer operators in this industry. A Self-Designed Questionnaire was administered to obtain data regarding the various musculoskeletal problems faced by Bio-pharmaceutical industrial workers, work-related risk factors and various postures attained throughout the day.
Out of the 33 workers investigated, 21 workers (63%) of the workers experienced musculoskeletal pain. Isolated spine pain was the commonest, and was reported in 8 out of 21 individuals (38%). Spine with upper and lower limb pain was the next most common, and was reported in 5 out of 21 individuals (24%). 4 out of 21 individuals had spine and lower limb pain (19%). The Rapid Office Strain Assessment scores of all the workers was above 5 indicating "high risk" which implied that immediate ergonomic change was necessary. This study concluded that there was 63% prevalence of musculoskeletal pain. The most common site of pain were the spine, followed by pain in the spine with both upper and lower extremities. All the workers were exposed to different ergonomic risk factors. The study concluded that implementation of ergonomic interventions may minimize the risks of work related musculoskeletal pain.

Key words: Work-related musculoskeletal disorders, Extended Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire, Rapid Office Strain Assessment, Ergonomic hazards.


The paper proposes information system for providing proper well known delicious restaurants as interactions with users. The system calls 'Moloke', which is an agent for recommending sensitive information on mobile environment The proposing agent differs from existing ones that guide the telephone number and the name of the restaurant. The differences are as following goals. First, the agent gets existing from users as interactive communications on mobile devices through the proper requests on each time zone such as morning, afternoon, and evening. Second, the agent also can recommend a specific restaurant for current personal states such as parties, special community meetings, bio-rhythms and so on. Among them, specially the bio-rhythm is used for recommending proper restaurants to each user. In addition to through proposal suitable design for the mobile agent design more effectively. The research used mobile environment for recommendation service and web environment for data management. Server environment for service used Apache, PHP4, Mysql and mobile page was implemented m-html for approach. Mobile Service was optimized Mozilla-1.22, KUN-1.2.3 Browser


To enhance the efficiency of an energy storage system, it is important to predict and estimate the battery state, including the state of charge (SOC) and state of health (SOH). In general, the statistical approaches for predicting the battery state depend on historical data measured via experiments. The statistical methods based on experimental data may not be suitable for practical applications. After reviewing the various methodologies for predicting the battery capacity without measured data, it is found that a joint estimator that estimates the SOC and SOH is needed to compensate for the data shortage. Therefore, this study proposes an integrated model in which the dual extended Kalman filter (DEKF) and autoregressive (AR) model are combined for predicting the SOH via a statistical model in cases where the amount of measured data is insufficient. The DEKF is advantageous for estimating the battery state in real-time and the AR model performs better for predicting the battery state using previous data. Because the DEKF has limited performance for capacity estimation, the multivariate AR model is employed and a health indicator is used to enhance the performance of the prediction model. The results of the multivariate AR model are significantly better than those obtained using a single variable. The mean absolute percentage errors are 1.45% and 0.5183%, respectively.


Distance Learning Activities (DLA) is a big challenge for teachers because they have never experienced it before. Project Based Learning Model Through Google Classroom is one of the alternatives that can be applied by teachers to Distance Learning Activities (DLA). The purpose of this study is to find out if the Project Based Learning Model through Google Classroom can be applied in learning activities in Grade IXF of SMP Negeri 2 Mirit Kebumen. The Syntax of Project Based Learning is first, fundamental questions, second, designing product planning, third, drawing up a manufacturing schedule, fourth, monitoring the activeness and development of the project, fifth, testing the results, and sixth, evaluation of the learning experience. The results showed that in general, students can make procedure text correctly. The outcome of students learning can be described that the average score is 81, the top score is 94 and the lowest score is 72. There was one student who got 94, three students got 88, seven students got 86, two students got 84, six students got 82, three students got 78, two students got 76, and there were seven students who got 72.


FIELD: agriculture. SUBSTANCE: proposed composition contains 1.5-30 of compound having formula 1, 1.5-30 of compound having formula 2, 1.0-5.0 of surface active substance, 20-40 of triethylene glycol and water. Structural formula of compound 1 and compound 2 is given in specification. EFFECT: improves quality of composition. 6 tbl


Understanding of physical rock properties is currently of great importance both for industry and fundamental science, for it allows improving interpretation and reducing risks. Digital rock physics provides us with a promising opportunity for rock analysis and quantification. Moreover it allows running simulations on rock samples unsuitable for laboratory experiments. A detailed computational rock physics workflow including 3D rock imaging, processing and simulations of physical experiments has been created and tested on different rock samples. Here we describe this workflow and demonstrate the results of elastic simulation in comparison with experimental data obtained in physical laboratory for a sandstone sample.


A " hot topic " in educational measurement is the area of computerized essay test evaluation. As essays have been incorporated into many of the standardized testing programs, and computerized testing is being implemented in more and more instances, there are many instances of where computers have evaluated the essay portion of standardized tests. In an environment where humans typically evaluate the submitted student writing, essay evaluations have been subject to variance in the level of agreement between readers and individual bias. The computer technology for essay evaluation has been made possible by the use of Naïve Bayes assumptions in text classification, that the probability of occurrence of each word in a document is independent of the probability of occurrence of other words in a document.. There are several computerized essay-scoring systems: (1) Project Essay Grade (PEG), (2) Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), (3) Electronic Essay Rater (e-rater), (4) Bayesian Essay Test Scoring sYstem BETSY), and others. This paper discusses how these different scoring methods work, where they are currently implemented, and difficulties that have b een experienced in their development and implementation. The idea for classification essays by computer has been around for over thirty years, but the models have progressed from performing surface analysis only, content specific analysis, to a combination of both. They also utilize different statistical techniques, including linear regression models and factor analysis. Further improvements could be made when considering clusters and interactions of these features. These essay grading and classification systems could also be extended for use in the generation of writing diagnostics and instructional feedback.


This paper presents a holistic framework for electric vehicles integration in electric power systems together with their charging management and control methodologies that allow minimizing the negative impacts in the grid of the charging process and maximize the benefits that charging controllability may bring to their owners, energy retailers and system operators. The performance of these management and control methods will be assessed through steady state computational simulations and then validated in a microgrid laboratory environment.


Conventionally, the 4D warping is only performed over the reservoir interval, assuming that all 4D effects are located in the reservoir. In the case of a compacting reservoir, the overburden is affected by subsidence, hence by time shifts. For this particular situation, we present a workflow in two steps to optimize separately the 4D warping of the overburden and the warping of the compacting reservoir. This two step approach has two advantages: First, the warping parameters can be optimized independently for each interval. The second advantage is to apply a time shift correction at top reservoir before the reservoir warping, to avoid any contamination of the reservoir warping by the overburden time shift. This workflow is illustrated by a case study over an offshore carbonate gas field buried under a silicilastic overburden. The 1st warping step reveals that the overburden is affected by translation but only the western part is affected by vertical stretching (geomechanical arching effect). The 2nd warping step, focused on the reservoir, reveals a tilted rise of the gas-water contact, associated to a decrease in P-wave velocity.


In order to access location-based services, mobile users have to disclose their exact location information to service providers. However, adversaries could collect the location information for purposes against mobile users' privacy, such as tracking and stalking. The most popular solutions for privacy protection are utilizing the K-anonymity model to blur user's exact location information. System architectures applying the K-anonymity principle to construct the cloaking region for the privacy preserving spatial query. Our technique, progressively increase the privacy level of the users.


Mapping Climate Justice proposed a 3-dimensional climate justice approach to share the burden of climate change right, just and fair around the globe. First, climate justice within a country should pay tribute to the fact that low- and high-income households carry the same burden proportional to their dispensable income, for instance, enabled through a progressive carbon taxation. Secondly, fair climate change change burden sharing between countries ensures those countries benefiting more from a warmer environment also bear a higher responsibility regarding climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. Thirdly, climate justice over time is proposed in an innovative bonds climate change burden sharing strategy. All these recommendations are aimed at ensuring to share the burden but also the benefits of climate change within society in an economically efficient, legally equitable and practically feasible way. Future wealth of nations is introduced by the concept of climate flexibility defined as the range of temperature variation of a country. In a changing climate, temperature range flexibility is portrayed as a future asset for international trade of commodities but also for production flexibility leading to comparative advantages of countries. A broad spectrum of climate zones has never been defined as asset and comparative edge in free trade but climate change will require territories being more flexible in terms of changing economic production. The more climate variation a nation state possesses, this paper argues, the more degrees of freedom a country has in terms of GDP production capabilities in a differing climate. These preliminary insights aid in answering what financial patterns can we expect given predictions the earth will become hotter. Already now, the degree of climate flexibility is found to be related to human migration inflow and is predicted to determine future climate wealth of nations in a climate changing world. The previously defined climate change winner and loser index will be blended with the novel insights on climate flexibility, leading to an unprecedented outlook on future climate wealth of nations. Lastly, future climate change induced market changes are pegged to scarcity of agriculture production and a prospect of commodity price spikes is given.


With the increase of urban population and the expansion of urban scale in China, the number of domestic waste of urban residents has been increasing year by year. The current main method of domestic waste disposal in China is landfill and incineration power generation. However, compared with foreign countries, there are still many problems in the treatment of municipal solid waste in China. For example, the nature and classification of domestic wastes make it more difficult to dispose of domestic waste, the overall level of municipal solid waste disposal is low, and some foreign waste disposal technologies are implemented in China. supervision and planning of the waste treatment industry in China need to be strengthened, and it is necessary to reduce the amount of household waste, pay attention to the classification of domestic waste, encourage the recycling of domestic waste, increase the use of municipal solid waste, and increase investment in research. The development of technology and the strengthening of the government departments' standard management of waste disposal companies will improve the scientific and resourceful treatment of municipal solid waste . 1


Within the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 or healthcare reform is a relatively small provision about concurrent curative care that significantly affects terminally ill children. Effective on March 23, 2010, terminally ill children, who are enrolled in a Medicaid or state Children's Health Insurance Plans hospice benefit, may concurrently receive curative care related to their terminal health condition. The purpose of this article was to conduct a policy analysis of the concurrent curative care legislation by examining the intended goals of the policy to improve access to care and enhance quality of end-of-life care for terminally ill children. In addition, the policy analysis explored the political feasibility of implementing concurrent curative care at the state level. Based on this policy analysis, the federal policy of concurrent curative care for children would generally achieve its intended goals. However, important policy omissions focus attention on the need for further federal end-of-life care legislation for children. These findings have implications nurses.


In an excellent study by Hippelainen et al' the histopathological criteria for HPV infection were evaluated. As the authors point out HPV DNA may be detected in tissue lacking histopathological HPV associated signs and so can also the opposite situation occur. Out of the HPV DNA negative biopsies (in situ hybridisation (ISH) technique) 26-7% did show koilocytosis, a sign said to be linked to a replicative HPV infection. The conclusion that koilocytosis is the strongest predictor for HPV positivity in flat genital lesions, giving a risk ratio of 3 7, is worthy of note but it would be interesting to hear the authors further discuss the finding of koilocytosis in the HPV DNA negative patients and the completely normal histology in the adjacent biopsied area. Were no pathological signs found at all? HPV are known to be latent in clinically normal tissue.2 As for the characteristic vacuolisation, also mentioned to be associated to HPV infection, maybe it should be discussed since it could be misinterpreted as koilocytosis by the pathologists not familiar with the signs of HPV infection. In the study referred to vacuolisation was more frequent in HPV negative cases than in HPV positive ones. This inverse correlation is only noticeable in table 4 but is for certain of interest. The authors conclude that HPV typing is essential for diagnosis in doubtful cases (lacking koilocytosis). We want to point out the fact that there is a diagnostic difficulty also in the case where koilocytosis is present and the rather insensitive ISH is negative. ANDERS STRAND EVA RYIANDER University Hospital, Uppsala, Sweden


This paper investigates the use of Meinu as an address form and other derivatives such as Meinu zuojia in Chinese mainland in the early 21st century.We use a sociolinguistic method to compare samples,arrange them on a historical basis and synthesize different types with the aid of computer,network,and corpus data.Then we point out that the emergence of this address form was brought by the address form vacancy and the imitation of dialectal words,but that is not without controversy.Comparing Meinu and Liangnu,we found that the latter has been delexicalized and more generalized so as to qualify for an address form.In addition,the paper has a semantic analysis and historical review about phrases,like Meinu zuojia.


Surface
gravity waves continually come to the beach but rarely go back to sea. They
bring excess mass to shore which must be returned offshore. Rip currents do
that job because there is less overall friction in the nearshore region than
there is in the only other imagined circulation, a two-layer scheme, which has
in fact never been seen. An argument is presented to support this proposal. If
correct, rip currents join a group of geophysical flow phenomena that persist, probably
because there is zero friction associated with them, which include surface
gravity waves, tornadoes and hurricanes, individually promoted recently.


An overview of the historical development of law education in modern China finds that it has been close related to the evolution of Sino-foreign relations.they both are interdependent on each otherp,roviding guarantees and conditions for each other to self develop,on the prerequisite that each has realized structural upgrading and transformation.It is concluded that modernized transformation of law education has been synchronic to the evolution of Chinas' foreign relations in modern China.


How does an organisation or entity share and celebrate its heritage with a minimal cash outlay? VicRoads had the challenging and exciting role of celebrating an important milestone of a well recognised organisation during a time of uncertainty about the future... with very little budget. This paper explains how heritage can be celebrated using innovative collaborations with the community and private sectors. It also demonstrates how to use existing social media channels to reach new audiences. Covers: - Getting a commemorative publication on no cost - Ways to use regional and metropolitan media to raise awareness of engineering heritage - How to find free/low cost software to set up an interactive historical timeline - How $70,000 was raised through private sponsorship to frame and freight historic archive images to regional museums across Victoria - How to get industry partner to host events and cover marketing, administration and catering costs - How to use social media channels like 'Pinterest' and 'HistoryPin' to share engineering heritage.


Additive manufacturing and topology optimization are complementary technologies that enable unprecedented levels of design freedom for realizing complex structures. This increasing design freedom is accompanied by increasing complexity, such that it can become difficult for either computational algorithms or human designers alone to search these expansive design spaces effectively. Our previous work laid the foundation for an interactive design framework that enables human designers to use their expertise and intuition to guide computational algorithms quickly towards promising solutions. The framework established a latent representation of a library of designs by combining classical topology optimization techniques with a conditional generative adversarial network (cGAN). Our goal is to expand on this framework by creating interactive functionalities that allow users to more efficiently visualize and search an expansive structural design space by manipulating its latent variable representation.


We present and interpret simultaneous new photometric and spectroscopic observations of the peculiar magnetic white dwarf WD 1953−011. The flux in the V-band filter and intensity of the Balmer spectral lines demonstrate variability with the rotation period of about 1.45 days. According to previous studies, this variability can be explained by the presence of a dark spot having a magnetic nature, analogous to a sunspot. Motivated by this idea, we examine possible physical relationships between the suggested dark spot and the strong-field magnetic structure (magnetic "spot" or "tube") recently identified on the surface of this star. Comparing the rotationally modulated flux with the variable spectral observables related to the magnetic "spot," we establish their correlation and therefore their physical relationship. Modeling the variable photometric flux assuming that it is associated with temperature variations in the stellar photosphere, we argue that the strong-field area and dark, low-temperature spot are comparable in size and located at the same latitudes, essentially overlapping each other with a possible slight longitudinal shift. In this paper, we also present a new, improved value of the star's rotational period and constrain the characteristics of the thermal inhomogeneity over the degenerate's surface.


Objective To explore the effects of cytokins on renal structure and function in diabetic rats.Methods Male Wistar rats which underwent unilateral nephrectomy were randomly divided into two groups:;normal control group (NC) and streptozotocin-induced diabetic group(DN),and tested about the change of their renal morphology and functions.Urinary albumin excretion rate (UAER),creatinine clearance rate (Ccr),left kidney weight/body weight ratio (KW/BW) and glomerular volume (VG) were observed.The expression of transforming growth factor-beta1 (TGF-β1),connective tissue growth factor (CTGF),fibronectin (FN) and plasminogen activator inhibitor-1(PAI-1) were tested by real-time quantitative PCR.Results UAER,Ccr,VG,and KW/BW were elevated significantly in group DN either 8 weeks or 16 weeks following the induction of diabetes.While Ccr and KW/BW were tend to decline by 16 weeks.The expressions of TGF-β 1,CTGF,PAI-1 and FN in group DN were also increased significantly as compared with group NC.Concerning TGF-β 1 mRNA,there was no difference significant between 8w and 6w phase of diabetic nephropathy.Conclusion Cytokins such as TGF-β 1,CTGF and PAI-1 could play an important role in the morphological and functional changes in early and advanced diabetic nephropathy.


Abstract We introduce high staircase infinite measure preserving transformations and prove that they are mixing under a restricted growth condition. This is used to (i) realize each subset $M\subset \Bbb N\cup \{\infty \}$ as the set of essential values of the multiplicity function for the Koopman operator of a mixing ergodic infinite measure preserving transformation, (ii) construct mixing power weakly mixing infinite measure preserving transformations, and (iii) construct mixing Poissonian automorphisms with a simple spectrum, etc.


The platinum catalysed diboration of alkynes using the diborane(4) compound 1,2-B2Cl2(NMe2)2 affords high yields of cyclic 1-azonia-2-borata-5-borole compounds, which arise from redistribution of B–Cl and B–NMe2 bonds.


This study will focus on a granulite mylonite from the Amaroni Shear Zone in the Serre Massif within the Calabria-Peloritani-terrain arc. The mylonite appears to be structurally and geometrically linked to the mean Alpine thrust contact: the Curinga-Girifalco Line, which separates the basement units from those that underwent an Alpine overprint. The researcher's aim is to identify the mylonitic shear zone. In particular, to understand if the mylonite was subject to high temperature conditions during granulite facies metamorphism in the Varisican orogeny, or whether it formed at lower temperatures associated with amphibolite to greenschist facies metamorphism during the Alpine orogeny.These uncertainties regarding emplacement conditions can be deduced quickly and effectively by studying the rock's microstructures, specifically the crystallographic preferred orientation of the minerals (CPO). The analysis of the quartz microlattice structure, using the EBSD technique and analysis of kinematic indicators, will allow us to deduce the correct P-T-t conditions operating during the mylonite's formation. From the experimental data, we assert that the mylonite formed during high temperature conditions pertaining to granulite facies metamorphism. The conditions necessary for the development and evolution of a high grade metamorphic environment were active during the extension and isothermal uplift phase, which is characteristic of the Calabria-Peloritani-terrain arc earlier than 300 Ma, but not after 252 Ma. After this time, it is known that temperatures were below the conditions necessary for granulite facies metamorphism.


Chronic total occlusion (CTO) may occur in as many as 30–40% of patients with coronary artery disease. Retrograde revascularization through a collateral channel has been described earlier. We report the first case of retrograde passage of a stent through an epicardial collateral to revascularize a right coronary artery CTO. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


This paper uses panel data techniques to examine the relationship between unemployment and a range of categories of crime in New Zealand. The data cover sixteen regions over the period 1984 to 1996. Random and fixed effects models are used to investigate the possibility of a causal relationship between unemployment and crime. Hypothesis tests show that the inclusion of random region effects and fixed time effects produces the most efficient model. The main finding of the paper is that unemployment cannot explain changes in the overall crime rate, although significant effects on crime are found for some subcategories of crime.


About Adolescents & Young Adults Brown et al. (2010) " used a struc-tured computer interview to examine the relationship between psychiatric disorders (i.e., major depres-sive disorder [MDD], mania, hypo-mania, generalized anxiety disorder [GAD], posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD], [conduct disorder] CD, [attention-deficit/hyperactivity disor-der] ADHD, and oppositional defiant disorder [ODD]) and sexual risk behaviors. Adolescents meeting criteria were compared with adolescents who did not meet criteria but who were in mental health treatment " (p. 591). " The study was conducted in three sites: Providence (Rhode Island), Atlanta (Georgia), and Chi-cago (Illinois). Participants were recruited from 10 outpatient settings (hospital, community-based, and public) and five inpatient psychiatric units from 2004 to 2007 " (p. 591) and included 840 adolescents " (56% female, 58% African American, mean age = 14.9 years) and their parents " (p. 590). The teens " completed computerized assessments of psychiatric symptoms[,]. .. reported on sexual risk behaviors (vaginal/anal sex, condom use at last sex) and completed urine screens for a sexually transmitted infection (STI) " (p. 590). Brown and colleagues found that " compared with age-and race-adjusted national data. . ., this sample of youths in mental health treatment is no different in report of condom use, but they appear to be more likely to be sexually active (54% vs. 43%), to report four or more sexual partners (15% in the last 90 days vs. 14% lifetime), and to have a[n] STI (14% via urine screen vs. 6% lifetime history) " (p. 595). Moreover, adolescents meeting criteria for mania, externalizing disorders ([ODD], [CD], and [ADHD]), or comorbid for externalizing and internalizing disorders ([MDD], [GAD], and [PTSD]) were significantly more likely to report a lifetime history of vaginal or anal sex than those who did not meet criteria for any psychiatric disorder.. .. Adolescents meeting criteria for mania were significantly more likely to have 2 or more partners in the past 90 days. .. and to test positive for a[n] STI. .. relative to adolescents who did not meet criteria for a psychiatric disorder. (p. 590) On the basis of these findings, the investigators stress that although adolescents in mental health treatment are at risk for HIV and other STIs, particular diagnoses convey additional risk. Those with externalizing disorders , even with a co-occurring internalizing disorder, are more likely to be sexually active and thus should be carefully screened for intervention to reduce their risk. Adolescents with a history …


As students increasingly make the choice to attend university for their higher education, their lives are forever shaped by their experiences inside and outside of the classroom. My paper aims to determine the state of liberal education in the context of the rise of STEM fields, online learning, and economic pressures in political society. With an analysis of works by Aristotle, John Dewey, Michael Oakeshott and Leo Strauss, this paper develops a dialogue around the basis and tensions of liberal education. Robert M. Hutchins, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly bring forth the importance of the Great Books to that conversation. A public interview with President of Wesleyan University, Michael S. Roth, extends the discussion to today's university. My paper concludes with an investigation into Boston University. Using multivariate regression, this study finds peculiarities about the influence of several goals of liberation education on feelings about future jobs. Additional content analysis reveals student understandings of liberal education, motivations for attending school as well as impactful courses and books. My ultimate hope is for administrators and faculty to preserve the vision of liberal education by demonstrating its ability to prepare students to graduate as moral citizens and professionals, as human beings moving towards their full potentials. *A start in Life (as in the all encompassing life–the universal and not particular)


Bulb onion (Allium cepa), non-bulbing Japanese bunching onion (A. fistulosum), common chives (A. schoenoprasum) and garlic chives (A. tuberosum) have markedly different harvest indices. With the onset of bulbing, leaf production ceases, photosynthates are reallocated to the bulb, lowering production of new shoots and crop canopy. Successive harvests from the same planting allow for a cumulative harvest index. In testing the influence of growing plants under different CO2 conditions, a set of volatile methyl-ketones have been identified from onion that are emitted at higher levels when plants are grown at elevated CO2 compared to controls grown at ambient CO2 levels. Sensory panel taste testing has indicated differences in flavor for some cultivars when comparisons were made between plants grown at ambient and elevated CO2 conditions. In future studies we will examine if thiosulfinates generated from the enzymatic conversion of alk(en)yl cysteine sulphoxides contribute to flavor differences detected between ambient and elevated CO2 grown plants.


This paper focuses on the recently man-land relationships inconsistency in the oases of Xinjiang. The disorder of the man-land relationships in Xinjiang can be found in almost all aspects in the nature. It is evident that the land degradation and salinization, the shortening of the river courses and the dry-up of the lakes, the enlargement of the flood-affected and the drought-affected areas, the decrease of the pasture production, and the decline of the natural forests in the river valleys, etc. are drastic. The global climate change and especially local human activities have contributed much to these. Therefore, more attention is now being paid to finding the means to allow society to adapt to the unfolding gradually impacts of climate change and human activities. The actual resources, especially water resources use situations, the eco-environmental settings and the implemented development policies in Xinjiang are also carefully analyzed in this paper. It is argued that the technological renovation and the system change should be taken as the main countermeasures to mitigate the present man-land relationship inconsistency in the oases of Xinjiang.


This research can be regarded as a "natural experiment" on political equivocation in which the language of five well-known politicians, taken from television interviews, is compared with the language of five different politicians speaking in a courtroom setting. Videotapes from both contexts were transcribed and then systematically analyzed by means of reliable category systems of questions and answers based on the literature. Italian politicians employ elaboration as their preferred answer, both in television interviews and in courtroom examinations. Differences exist between legal and political contexts in the distribution of questions, answers, and in their associations (i.e., in different contexts the same questions have a different effect on answers). The findings are discussed in terms of the "situational" theory of political equivocation, integrated with a "contextual" explanation.


Summarizes the current related technology to e-mail,studied the BREW mobile platform and component technology and component-based software development,including component model,component interfaces, component combinations.Based on the BREW platform and component technology,Designed and implemented an e-mail client,meeting the 3G technical standards,greatly enhancing the system's speed of procedures and stability.


In recent high-rise building projects, total structures with unusual layout of the stiffening structural components are calculated by modelling the base plate as well as the stiffening cores and decks with folded plate elements. Vertical composite or concrete columns are modelled with beam elements as well as the bracing steel diagonals on the surface of the structure. Dead weight, traffic and also wind loads are put onto the three-dimensional finite folded plate element model. Wind load distribution is thereby taken into account on the curved shape of the towers as a result of wind tunnel tests. Such integrated investigation on high-rise buildings leads to deeper, more intensive and more understandable discussion on the total structure behaviour than investigations on simple beam element methods can do. Simultaneously this procedure requires an increased attention to internal forces resulting from the overall behaviour of coupled structures. This paper provides links to the procedure mentioned above and discusses problems resulting from the overall calculation on three dimensional structures with finite folded plate elements.


not only concerned about the attitude of man towards active rest during holidays, but also about behaviour and above all about the interaction between attitude and behaviour, and in addition to this also in the various spheres of life, it was necessary to add a test regarding behaviour. For this purpose we had to quantify attitude and behaviour, which made it possible to compare the values of the two dimensions. We were able to establish the indices of attitude and the indices of behaviour regarding active rest during holidays, or workday and week-end leisure. In order to be able to objectify attitude, a seven-level scale of attitude in linear metrics was prepared, with the help of which could be established the average attitude of adults to active physical-culture rest in a quantified form as an average index of attitude (Ar). The index of behaviour (B,), established by us is a quantified expression for physical culture activity in the form of an average index in space and time. This index provides information about the sports or tourist activity of man during his leisure on workdays, week-ends and his holidays, or also after work (= measured in time) in the area where he lives, in rest centres in the vicinity or


To overcome prematurity of genetic algorithm, a new algorithm to solve job-shop scheduling was presented. A simple and easy operation method of coding and decoding was designed first. Then job-shop scheduling could be solved by conducting convergence and dissimilation of Mind Evolutionary Computation. In the course of convergence, make full use of information of excellent individuals the characteristics of these superior individuals memorized in information matrix, new individuals would be generated under the guidance of information matrix. Conducting overall research by dissimilation operation. Simulation experiment results have shown the effectiveness of this algorithm.


Electricity is the driving force of the economic development,and the supply of power is the cornerstone in modern life.The characteristics of power products are: sustainable supply,invisible,not packaging,production and marketing consistency and continuity.With the development of our national economy,the buyer's market of power will also appear,and electric enterprise should improve customers satisfaction by quality service.Therefore,marketing philosophy of electric power is that customers satisfaction as the core.


FIELD: electricity. SUBSTANCE: power module has a positive, a negative and an output power leads and contains the first and the second switches, each with a homonymous anti-parallel diode, and a series LC-circuit. The technical effect is achieved due to introduction of a capacitor the first and the second armatures whereof are respectively connected to the module output power lead and the positive or negative power lead of the module. EFFECT: reduction of dynamic losses and additional conductance losses in the main switches and exclusion of HF interference during their switching. 2 cl, 15 dwg


Field mills have been used for years to measure atmospheric electric fields. Inexpensive operational amplifiers have made possible an inexpensive and simple version of this device that is suitable for use in the classroom and instructional laboratory. The field mill allows new and exciting electrostatics experiments to be performed, in addition to breathing new life into many standard ones. [The apparatus described in this article was second prize winner in the College Instructional Laboratory category of the 1975 AAPT Apparatus Competition—Editor]


Dynamic partial reconfiguration (DPR) enables the design and implementation of flexible, scalable and robust adaptive systems. We present an FPGA-based DPR flow for partially reconfigurable heterogeneous SoCs that uses an incremental compilation technique to reduce the total FPGA compilation time.


Objective To understand the distribution of human resources of disease control and prevention sectors in Guangdong province (formerly health and anti-epidemic system) in 2001~2003. Methods Data concerning education background, professions, professional titles and age and years of service of the staffs in disease and prevention systems at provincial city and county levels in 2001~2003 were collected and analyzed. Results The data show that the allocation of working staffs at provincial level are insufficient and those without receiving formal schooling and without professional title exceeds the requirement; The staffs with high and middle professional titles are also insufficient. Conclusions Measures be taken to adjust the structure of human resources in three-level disease control and prevention sectors in Guangdong Province.


As the church expanded and moved into the Greek and Roman world, Christianity was, over time, quite literally transformed into a non-Jewish and somewhat anti-cosmic religion. While some modern religious scholars seem to be confused on this point, the Bible actually takes a very positive view of the physical world, at least in regard to both its origin and its ultimate future. At creation God declared His creation to be "good" (Gen. 1:31) The Old Testament view of the good life is clearly "pro" cosmic (i.e., the physical world was created for, and is adequate and suitable as an environment in which the promises and purposes of God for man can be fulfilled). The New Testament does not differ from this position, though it does see the need for a restoration, or re-creation, in order to completely ameliorate the effects of man's sin and the curse brought upon the earth because of that sin. Both the gospels and the book of Revelation picture Christ as returning to the earth to establish His kingdom; and Revelation describes the heavenly city as descending to rest upon the restored earth. Unfortunately, some students of the Bible mistake the physical world for the world powers of this present age (i.e., the world system), which are under the influence of the powers of darkness. According to the New Testament, the world is presently under the curse of man's sin, and until that curse is lifted, the world is under the strong influence (and to some degree, the control) of the powers of darkness (Rom. 8:18-23). Hence, the ways of the world are evil, but the physical world itself is not evil, it is only suffering the effects of the curse brought upon it by man's rebellion against God (an extrinsic condition). There is then a distinction to be made between "the world-physical," and "the world-moral." Confusion on this point can lead, and has led, to an anti-cosmic worldview, by seeing what is physical as intrinsically inadequate to the purpose of God for man.


Simple Summary Transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) is the most common locoregional therapy (LRT) applied to liver transplant candidates with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) before liver transplantation (LT). Complete pathologic response (CPR) after LRT may be obtained in 25% of patients, which translates into better long-term results. The aim of this study was to assess the role of AFP changes after the first TACE in the prediction of complete tumor necrosis in patients with HCC. It was a retrospective, single-center study comprising 101 patients who underwent TACE before LT. Based on the initial AFP concentration and AFP decline after the first treatment, a simple scoring system, which distinguished between groups with a high, intermediate and low probability of complete necrosis, was created. This scoring system enables early identification of the efficacy of TACE. Abstract Transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) is used as a bridging treatment in liver transplant candidates with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) is the main tumor marker used for HCC surveillance. The aim of this study was to assess the potential of using the AFP change after the first TACE in the prediction of complete tumor necrosis. The study comprised 101 patients with HCC who underwent liver transplantation (LT) after TACE in the period between January 2011 and December 2020. The ΔAFP was defined as the difference between the AFP value before the first TACE and AFP either before the second TACE or the LT. The receiver operator characteristics (ROC) curves were used to identify an optimal cut-off value. Complete tumor necrosis was found in 26.1% (18 of 69) and 6.3% (2 of 32) of patients with an initial AFP level under and over 100 ng/mL, respectively (p = 0.020). The optimal cut-off value of ΔAFP for the prediction of complete necrosis was a decline of ≥10.2 ng/mL and ≥340.5 ng/mL in the corresponding subgroups. Complete tumor necrosis rates were: 62.5% (5 of 8) in patients with an initial AFP < 100 ng/mL and decline of ≥10.2 ng/mL; 21.3% (13 of 61) in patients with an initial AFP < 100 ng/mL and decline of <10.2 ng/mL; 16.7% (2 of 12) in patients with an initial AFP > 100 ng/mL and decline of ≥340.5 ng/mL; and null in 20 patients with an initial AFP > 100 ng/mL and decline of <340.5 ng/mL, respectively (p = 0.003). The simple scoring system, based on the initial AFP and AFP decline after the first treatment, distinguished between a high, intermediate and low probability of complete necrosis, with an area under the ROC curve of 0.699 (95% confidence intervals 0.577 to 0.821, p = 0.001). Combining the initial AFP with its change after the first treatment enables early identification of the efficacy of TACE.


ABSTRACT (Ni0.5 M0.5 Fe2O4) where M = Zn and Cu doped ferrite nano-particles are synthesized by Sol-Gel Auto combustion method. The nano-sized Zn, Cu and Ni doped ferrite characterized by XRD. The lattice constant was found to be a = 8.38 A0 and 8.41 A0. It is understood that the lattice parameters increase for Cu as compared to Zn contents. The magnetic properties were determined by using VSM, the saturation magnetization was found to be 34 emu/g and 17 emu/g, respectively, and the remnant magnetization was found to be highly depended upon the cation distribution and crystallinity of the investigated ferrite.


The purpose of this paper is to evaluate an option contract within a semiconductor supply chain consisting of one semiconductor manufacturer and one customer. In an option contract the customer pays an upfront fee (option price) for an option to purchase product. A simulation model is used to compare the performance of an option contract against a standard supply contract used in a semiconductor supply chain in terms of delivery performance and costs for the supply chain partners.


We know from work on early county courts that by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was a solidly established class of professional lawyers in England,' although they were pleaders and attorneys rather than barristers and solicitors.2 By the fifteenth century there were at least six categories of lawyers that, by the eighteenth century, were consolidated into two.3 It is these two groups-barristers and solicitors-who were exported to the colonies to provide the backbone not only of their legal professions, but also of their judicial and administrative personnel.' Except in India, most emigrant lawyers were barristers. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the condition of the English bar was at best precarious, for the bar had grown dramatically in this


The coking reactions on four residue ,two heavy aromatic oil and residue with various proportion heavy aromatic oil are studyed . The influence of various residue and heavy aromatic oil blended on the coking production yield are analyzed. The test result shows that gasoline and diesel oil yield of heavy aromatic oil coking are lower,but the coker gas oil yield is higher, and blended heavy aromatic oil will reduce gasoline and diesel oil yield and increase the coker gas oil yield in evidence , and the coker gas oil can be used as FCC and hydrocrake feedstock.


Recognition of human actions using a vision based approach is a challenging task. To improve the action recognition performance, we proposed a hierarchical probabilistic model based framework which not only models the dynamics of the actions but also considers contextual constraints in terms of object/action correlation and action sequential constraints. By considering the action/object correlation, it is possible to recognize actions which are either too subtle to perceive or too hard to recognize using motion features only. On the other hand, with the action sequential constraints, the recognition accuracy can be further improved. In the proposed approach, first, the dynamics of an action is modeled using Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). Then, a Bayesian network is adopted to model the object constraints for the low-level action recognition. Finally, a high-level HMM is created to model the sequential constraints which refines the decision from the Bayesian model. Our approach was evaluated through experiments using a single RGB-D camera, which provides data of both the human gesture and manipulated objects. The experimental results show that the proposed approach can recognize human actions effectively.


Development of molecular genetics and immunological diagnostics, disclosure of pathogenesis of various forms of primary immunodeficiency (PID), improvement of therapeutic techniques contributed to the formation of a generation patients with PID older than 18 years. Experience shows that isolated replacement therapy, leading to a reduction in the frequency and severity of reactivation chronic foci of infection, is not able in some cases to fully stabilize the condition of patients, and the use of antibiotics remains inevitable. Interesting is the development and implementation of the concept of combined therapy of PID humoral therapy, the ideology of which is based on the combination of substitution therapy with exposure on the functional potential of the cellular link of the immune system. One of the perspective variants of influence on functions of cellular components of immune is the use of innate immunity receptor agonists. From the position of the specific clinical application deserves the attention medication Likopid (glucosaminilmuramyl dipeptide) - semi-synthetic analogue of muramyldipeptide, minimally biologically active substance peptidoglycan fragment of the cell wall of all known bacteria. Presented clinical case of X-linked agammaglobulinemia. The patient, despite regular replacement therapy with intravenous immunoglobulins with maintaining a pretransfusion IgG level of at least 8 g/l, continued to register episodes of exacerbation of chronic conjunctivitis up to 10 times a year. Application of licopid in addition to IVIG therapy contributed to the improvement quality of life, reducing the frequency of exacerbations, conjunctivitis and duration of use antibiotics. This example illustrates the role of cellular components innate immune response in clinical manifestation of insufficiency humoral link adaptive immunity, and confirms the possibility of additional correction of these parameters to improve the efficiency of the standard substitution therapy.


This study presents a distributed fault-tolerant cooperative control (FTCC) strategy to achieve the attitude synchronisation tracking control of networked unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the presence of actuator faults and model uncertainties. By utilising the fuzzy neural networks (FNNs), the unknown non-linear terms induced by actuator faults and model uncertainties are estimated as lumped uncertainties. A set of distributed sliding-mode estimators (DSMEs) is then employed to estimate the leader UAV's attitudes for the follower UAVs via a distributed communication network. Based on the estimated knowledge from FNNs and DSMEs, a group of distributed FTCC laws is developed for all follower UAVs by using the fractional-order calculus. It is proven that with the proposed control scheme, all follower UAVs can track the attitudes of the leader UAV and the tracking errors are uniformly ultimately bounded even when a portion of networked UAVs encounters multiple actuator faults. Comparative simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.


Abstract In this paper a new approach for design and development of robotics system referred to as Distributed Manipulation Environment (DME) has been proposed. The major drawbacks in the employment of conventional robot arms in complex tasks have been addressed and it has been shown that DME may overcome the deadlock facing the engineers and industrialists in the field of robotics. During the course of the paper, the technique is analysed and its advantages, compared to conventional robotic systems, are discussed. DME is shown to provide a more general view on manufacturing systems and can integrate robotics systems with other dedicated and semi-dedicated machines conventionally used in production. An alternative approach for parallel/distributed processing of DME based on Occam/transputer has been proposed. It has been shown that the task of software design and development based on this architecture is simpler and more systematic than conventional methods of distributed processing. In this approach the ...


Objective To study the relationship between the abnormal expression of p21~(ras) protein and FHIT protein and Cigarette smoking in no-smallcell lung cancer(NSCLC) tissue.Methods Immunohisto-chemistry(SP) was used to detect the abnormal expression of p21~(ras) protein and FHIT protein in 80 cases NSCLC and 20 cases of normal control lung tissue,studying the influences of Cigarette smoking on the abnormal expression of p21~(ras) protein and FHIT protein.Results High expression of p21~(ras) protein and low expression of FHIT protein were found in NSCLC tissue oppsite results were found in normal control lung tissue.Significant difference was found between two groups(P0.05).Expression of p21~(ras) protein in Cigarette smoking group was higher than that of no smoking groups;Expression of FHIT protein in Cigarette smoking group was lower than that of no smoking groups.Significant difference was found between two groups(P0.05).BI of NSCLC patient was related to abnormal expression of p21~(ras) protein and FHIT protein.Significant difference was found between differrent BI groups(P0.05).High expression of p21~(ras) protein had close correlatetion with Cigarette smoking in lung adenocarcinoma and large cell lung cancer.and low expression of FHIT protein had close correlatetion with Cigarette smoking in lung squamous cell carcinoma.No relevance was found betwwen high expression of p21~(ras) protein and low expression of FHIT protein in NSCLC,but Significant difference was found between them.Conclusion The abnormal expression of p21~(ras) protein and FHIT protein had close correlatetion with tumorigenic development of lung cancer,and played an important role in the process of lung cancer induced by Cigarette smoking.K-ras and FHIT became the key step and molecule target of smoke cancerigenic.Cigarette smoking was an important factor that causeed high expression of p21~(ras) protein in lung adenocarcinoma and and large cell lung cancer,that causeed FHIT protein abnormal expression in lung squamous cell carcinoma.


The dualistic system was chosen as a governance structure by many large financial groups in Europe, including a number of Italian large banks. While some highlight its advantages, others emphasize the risks due to the possible overlapping of functions and roles across different governance layers.This paper, written in Italian, is aimed at: i) discussing how the dualistic system was introduced in the Italian regulations; ii) analysing, based on its use outside Italy, how the Italian dualistic system could be enhanced and improved, especially as far as banks and insurance companies are concerned.The paper unfolds as follows: The first and second paragraphs survey the Italian regulation, highlighting its shortcomings and weaknesses; The third paragraph presents a literature review on corporate governance, focusing on the dualistic system; The fourth paragraph presents an empirical test on two samples of large European companies (including the 30 largest financial institutions in the Eurozone) and assesses how governance schemes affect their performances. Among other things, this analysis shows that the use of the dualistic system brings along an increase in the number of company directors. The fifth paragraph compares Italian banks which have adopted a dualistic governance to a sample of foreign financial institutions: the Italian dualistic systems is found to involve a larger size of corporate boards and a different structure of roles and responsibilities. The sixth paragraph concludes with some policy suggestions.


The dynamics of flexible spacecraft are not usually well known before launch. This makes it important to develop controllers for such systems that can never be destabilized by perturbations in the structural model. Virtual passive controllers, or active vibration absorbers, possess this guaranteed stability property; they mimic a fictitious flexible structure attached to the true physical one. This report analyzes the properties of such controllers, and shows that disturbance absorption behavior can be naturally described in terms of a set of virtual zeros that they introduce into the closed-loop dynamics of the system. Based on this analysis, techniques are then derived for selecting the active vibration absorber internal parameters, i.e., the gain matrices of such controllers, so as to achieve specified control objectives. Finally, the effects on closed-loop stability of small delays in the feedback loop are investigated. Such delays would typically be introduced by a digital implementation of an active vibration absorber. It is shown that these delays only affect the real parts of the eigenvalues of a lightly-damped structure. Furthermore, it is only the high-frequency modes that are destabilized by delays; low-frequency modes are actually made more heavily damped. Eigenvalue perturbation methods are used to obtain accurate predictions of the critical delay at which a given system will become unstable; these methods also determine which mode is critical.


A hydrazine derived Bis(2-hydroxybenzylidene)-[1,1'-biphenyl]-2,2'-dicarbohydrazide (sensor 1) has been synthesized and its sensing properties towards metal ions has been demonstrated using simple UV-visble spectroscopic, fluorometric technique and visible colour change. The...


9014 Background: Prognosis of patients (pts) with metastatic soft tissue sarcomas (STS) is poor even after an objective clinical response to intensive doxorubicin based chemotherapy (response rate (RR) 23-45 %, median survival 13-15 months). Whether HDCT and PBSCR improves these results is an open question. We report phase II data of response to AI-G chemotherapy regime in pts with metastatic STS and the efficacy of HDCT and PBSCT.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
From 1997 to 2003, 55 pts with metastatic STS were prospectively treated with 4 cycles of AI-G (adriamycin 75mg/m2, ifosfamide 6g/m2 with G-CSF support) as induction chemotherapy. After assessment of response pts with CR or PR received 2 further cycles AI-G with collection of peripheral blood stem cells (PBSCs). HDCT consisted of ifosfamide (12g/m2), etoposide (1,2g/m2) and carboplatin (1,2g/m2) (HD-ICE) followed by reinfusion of PBSCs.

RESULTS
Of 55 pts 20 pts (RR 36%) were assessed as responders (3CR;17PR) and all but two pts, who refused, received HDCT with PBSCR. The 18 pts receiving HD-ICE experienced grade IV hematologic toxicity while no severe infectious complications were observed and no toxic death occured. By intent to treat analysis (20 pts) the 2-year and 5-year-overall survival (OS) are 50% and 26 %, the median survival is 23 months (median follow-up 21 months). Of nine pts being alive four pts are alive with NED at 11+, 22+, 42+,79+ months and five pts are alive with disease at 11+, 14+, 17+, 31+, 37+ months. 11 pts have died.

CONCLUSION
Survival of pts with chemosensitive metastatic STS seems to be significantly prolonged by HDCT and PBSCR. No significant financial relationships to disclose.


Hot-electron effect in Si(001) MOSFET's has been studied at 4.2 K and 1.1 K by use of negative magnetoresistance as a thermometer for electron temperature. Heat transfer from electron system to phonon system is explained by use of deformation potential constants in Si bulk. Possible ultimate electron mobility in Si MOSFET's is discussed.


As is true at many colleges and universities, the Otis College of Art and Design faculty and staff are actively exploring Web 2.0 technologies, resulting in an explosion of new digital content—learning objects, video demonstrations, interviews, audio podcasts, as well as portfolios, blogs, and wikis. Although the Otis Library owns digital asset management software, it has been a challenge to routinely archive this digital content. A range of issues is explored in this case study of how one library is confronting its changing role in relation to the educational activities of the College. Questions are also raised about the role that librarians play in archiving born-digital content.


Silenced for 1,600 years, the 'heretics' speak for themselves in this account of the Priscillianist controversy that began in fourth-century Spain. In a close examination of rediscovered texts, Virginia Burrus provides an unusual opportunity to explore heresy from the point of view of the followers of Priscillian and to reevaluate the reliability of the historical record. Her analysis takes into account the concepts of gender, authority, and public and private space that informed established religion's response to this early Christian movement. Priscillian, who began his career as a lay teacher with particular influence among women, faced charges of heresy along with accusations of sorcery and sexual immorality following his ordination to the episcopacy.He was executed along with several of his followers circa 386. His purportedly 'gnostic' doctrines produced controversy and division within the churches of Spain, dissension that continued into the early decades of the fifth century. Burrus' thorough and wide-ranging study enlarges upon previous scholarship, particularly in bringing a feminist perspective to bear on the gendered constructions of religious orthodoxies, making a valuable contribution to the recent commentary that explores new ways of looking at early Christian controversies.


The using of terms «state administration» and «state regulation» were consider in the article. The scheme of state regulation of psychological component of civil protection complex mechanism was propose and its structure was disclose.


This poster presents research in progress towards the simulation of handmade painterly animation. As researches on painterly animation mostly focus on temporal coherence, the generation of an animation that could have been done by hand remains an open challenging problem. To produce an hand made painterly animation, the artist paints on a retro-lighted glass canvas. He creates successive frames one over the other. The artist erase, smears and adds paint to produce each frame.

We propose to render painterly animations with a visual aspect tending towards hand made results.
To this end, we combines two techniques: an automatic strokes generator and a paint simulator.
We observe that previous approaches could not adapt as-is to our goals for the two following reasons:
Paint appearance in painterly animation is back lighted, most of paint contrast comes from paint thickness which is usually not compute by paint simulation approaches. Automatic strokes generation make the assumption that a stroke covers underlying strokes without having thickness accumulation, in our case paint thickness quickly increase if we do not apply special treatment. We also investigate new kind of strokes that are only possible with a paint simulation approach as smear and erase strokes.


In the 1950s, fishermen working in the coastal city of Minamata, Japan noticed the cats that frequented their docks behaving strangely. For no apparent reason, otherwise normal cats were spinning themselves in circles and, on occasion, leaping into Minamata Bay. So odd was these cats' behavior, that the fishermen gave them a name, "the suicide-prone group of dancing cats." Although the fishermen had no idea why the "suicidal cats" behaved as they did, the fisherman wondered if the appearance of the cats "did not portend misfortune." The fishermen's concerns were well-founded, for about the time the "suicidal cats" appeared in Minamata, local physicians reported examining patients suffering from severe convulsions, intermittent losses of consciousness, repeated lapses into crazed states, and high fevers. While at the outset these happenings appeared to have no relation to one another, both were eventually traced to a chemical company's release of over 100 tons of mercuric wastes into Minamata Bay. There, the wastes had bio-accumulated, causing not only bizarre behavior in cats, but eventually the deaths of 41 people. Although the direct disposal of mercuric wastes into the world's waters is becoming less and less a problem, especially in developed nations, environmental exposure to mercury remains an international threat to public health. In Iraq, for example, 459 people were killed and 6,530 others were


The Bi1-xGdxNbO4 microwave dielectric ceramics were prepared by conventional solid-state reaction method.The effects of Gd doping on the sintering and microwave dielectric properties of BiNbO4 ceramics sintered under N2 atmosphere were investigated.The difference of phase structure was not significant and all the samples exhibited the same orthorhombic phase as main phase.With the increased of Gd concentrations,sintering temperature increased,apparent density and relative dielectric constant er decreased.The Q×f values also changed with different Gd content.At a sintering temperature of 900 ℃,the Bi0.992Gd0.008NbO4 ceramics exhibited good microwave dielectric properties of er =43.6(at 4.3 GHz),Q×f =14 288 GHz(at 4.3 GHz),and τf ≈0.


This paper,using monthly data from 1996 to 2009,with a SVAR approach,empirically studies the dynamic effects of exchange rate and foreign exchange reserve on internationalization of RMB.The research results show that although short-term exchange rate appreciation has a negative impact on international trade,but long-term appreciation of the RMB is not only conducive to "re-balance" of the export-oriented development pattern and the international balance of payments,but also contribute to the achievement of lower inflation and stability of the RMB value.At the same time,our empirical study also reveal that the negative impact of accumulation of huge foreign exchange reserves on the internationalization of RMB can not be ignored.


A discontinuous enrichment method (DEM) is presented for the efficient discretization of plate vibration problems in the medium‐frequency regime. This method enriches the polynomial shape functions of the classical finite element discretization with free‐space solutions of the biharmonic operator governing the elastic vibrations of an infinite Kirchhoff plate. These free‐space solutions, which represent flexural waves and decaying modes, are discontinuous across the element interfaces. For this reason, two different and carefully constructed Lagrange multiplier approximations are introduced along the element edges to enforce a weak continuity of the transversal displacement and its normal derivative, and discrete Lagrange multipliers are introduced at the element corners to enforce there a weak continuity of the transversal displacement. The proposed DEM is illustrated with the solution of sample plate vibration problems with different types of harmonic loading in the medium‐frequency regime, away from and close to resonance. In all cases, its performance is found to be significantly superior to that of the classical higher‐order finite element method. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Abstract This paper reviews animal studies of genetic differences in the consumption of alcohol. It deals with six areas: (1) field observations in nature; (2) selective breeding; (3) variation among inbred strains; (4) correlates of ethanol preference and avoidance; (5) consumption and sensitivity; and (6) a test of an ethanol intake control system. Because of space constraints it is selective rather than exhaustive. The results of experiments demonstrate that genes have a strong effect on alcohol consumption when animals are given a choice of liquids. Both preabsorptive and postabsorptive factors can modify intake. There are similarities in factors that affect alcohol consumption in animals and those believed to be operative in humans. Evidence for an ethanol intake control system is presented.


Document image binarization is one important pre-processing step, especially for data analysis. Extraction of text from images and its recognition may be challenging due to the presence of noise and degradation in document images. In this paper, seven (7) types of binarization method were discussed and tested on Handwritten Document Image Binarization Contest (H-DIBCO 2012). The aim of this paper is to provide comprehensive review methods in order to binary document images in the damaging background. The results of the numerical simulation indicate that the Gradient Based method most effective and efficient compared to other methods. Hopefully, the implications of this review give future research directions for the researchers.


A comparative pharmacokinetics between tablet and solution of acetaminophen - codeine compound (cotaining 300 mg acetaminophen and 15 mg codeine in each tablet ) was carried out in 8 male volunteers. Each man was given two tablets or the solution of combination of the same dosage of codeine and acetaminophen after an over night fasting. The samples of the plasma and urine were collected, and detected by HPLC for acetaminophen and GC - MS for codeine. The results were as follows: 1. the drug level-time of acetaminophen and codeine are fitted to two open - compartment model. The parameters of acetaminophen were: tpeak=0.74 h±s 0.43h, Cmax = 8.04 mg · L-1 ± s 3. 96 mg · L-1, t1/2β = 2.81 h±s 1.09 h, Clr = 0.39 L · h-1±s 0.12 L · h-1, Cls =30.77 L · h-1±s 9.02 h · L-1. The parameters of codeine were: tpeak=0.87 h ± s 0.15 h, Gmax= 0. 65 μug · L-1 ± s 10.17 μg · L-1, t1/2β= 3. 11 h ±s 0.49 h, Clr = 16. 12 L · h-1±s 2. 02 L · h-1, Cls = 173 L · h-1 ± s 11.40 L · h-1; 2. the drug level-time of acetaminophen and codeine of solution are also fitted to two open - compartment model. Their pharmacokinetic parameters was all similiar to those of drugs in tablet. The relative bioavailability of acetaminophen and codeine was 99.97% ±s 10.55% and 100.73% ±s 7.85% respectively.


Based on 57 samples of Chinese service firms,this research analyze the relationship among the information asymmetry,diversification and performance of service firms.Research results indicate that the diversification is more balanced in experience service firms than that of search service firms,and that diversification has a positive relationship with service performance.


In LD 4-2 oilfield, new 3D seismic data was acquired and processed after its ODP coverall development planning was approved. Based on new refined structure interpretation and reservoir inversion, an integrated technique of geologic modeling and numerical simulation was used to build a more accurate reservoir model to replace the ODP model. Furthermore, the reservoir model was updated in time by using new log data during drilling. Before and during drilling, its development program was optimized and adjusted, such as several optimizations of well type, distance between side horizontal well to oil-water boundary and distance between center horizontal well to reservoir top, and drilling branches on the main horizontal intervals. While drilling, any wellbore path can be optimized and adjusted timely to reach the best well position according to variations in the reservoir model. This has provided a basis for making a decision of the field development program, leading to the best development results.


Together with multicolor flow cytometry, quantitation of clonal immunoglobulin (IG) and T-cell receptor (TR) gene rearrangements represents the current standard for the detection of minimal / measurable residual disease (MRD) in treatment protocols for pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) patients. Despite the adoption of next generation sequencing (NGS) in the routine identification of clonal IG/TR gene rearrangements as markers for MRD detection, real-time quantitative (q)PCR is still the standard for MRD quantitation in follow-up samples. So far, no large-scale direct comparison of qPCR- and NGS-based MRD quantitation has been performed.
 We compared qPCR- and NGS-MRD evaluation in a cohort of children with B-cell precursor (BCP) ALL treated on the AIEOP-BFM ALL 2009 protocol and assessed the feasibility and relevance of this method for the stratification at day 33 (EOI).
 In total, 459 patients were diagnosed with BCP-ALL from 2010 to 2018, and 437 of them were included in our study based on the availability of residual DNA material isolated from day 33 bone marrow aspirates and having at least one IG/TR MRD marker detectable by standard qPCR with protocol-required sensitivity of 10 -4. Sequencing libraries were prepared according to the EuroClonality-NGS group SOP (Brüggemann et al, Leukemia 2019) with the total DNA input normalized to the equivalent of 150,000 nucleated cells to reach MRD sensitivity of 10 -5 and sequenced on Illumina NovaSeq and MiSeq instruments. In total of 780 IG/TR markers evaluated by both NGS and qPCR. Sequencing data were analyzed using the ARResT/Interrogate (Bystry et at, Bioinformatics 2017) pipeline and a custom bioinformatic analysis process and the NGS-MRD results were normalized to the EuroClonality-NGS central in-tube quality/quantification control (cIT-QC; Knecht et al, Leukemia 2019).
 From the total 780 IG/TR MRD markers evaluated by both methods, 629 (80.6%) were concordant with 242 markers being MRD positive and 387 negative. From 82 markers that were only positive by qPCR and not by NGS, 76 were positive below the quantitative range (positive non-quantifiable). Specificity analysis was performed for each marker by searching for the junction sequence across the dataset of all patients' NGS results. Based on these results, 22 out of 82 markers positive only by qPCR were classified as potentially unspecific (false positive) and similarly 32 unspecific markers were identified among the 69 positive only by NGS. This was also supported by unspecific amplification of the polyclonal control in 27 out of these 32 corresponding qPCR systems, in some cases leading to qPCR negative classification determined by the EuroMRD guidelines.
 Overall stratification of patients based only on day 33 MRD by qPCR or NGS was concordant in 76% of patients by both methods, while in 19% of patients, NGS-MRD quantitation led to the assignment to a lower-risk group, mainly due to the elimination of false-positive results. Furthermore, analysis of all positive markers across all patients' NGS libraries showed, that one out of 10 markers (mainly in the IGK, TRG and TRD loci) used for qPCR-MRD stratification did not provide satisfactory specificity, although they fully met EuroMRD criteria during the optimization of qPCR patient-specific assays.
 Our results show that NGS-MRD is highly concordant with traditional qPCR-based strategy and has comparable sensitivity and clinical value in the setting of a BFM-based clinical protocol, while being less laborious and providing significantly more specific results and additional information on the IG/TR repertoire (Kotrova et al, Blood 2016). Our study also emphasizes the importance of selecting MRD markers of adequate specificity at diagnosis. Currently, this selection can be assisted by these broad sequencing data on IG/TR repertoire of large number of patients. Based on these results, we propose that frontline NGS-MRD evaluation developed by the EuroClonality-NGS working group can be used as an alternative to traditional qPCR-based MRD quantitation in future MRD-based treatment protocols.
 Supported by grants NU20-03-00284 and NU20-07-00322 from the Czech Health Research Council and 534120 from Charles University. All methods were established through collaboration within the EuroClonality-NGS and EuroMRD groups.

 van der Velden: Agilent: Research Funding; Navigate: Other: Service Level Agreement; Janssen: Other: Service Level Agreement; EuroFlow: Other: Service Level Agreement, Patents & Royalties: for network, not personally; BD Biosciences: Other: Service Level Agreement. Brüggemann: Incyte: Other: Advisory Board; Janssen: Speakers Bureau; Amgen: Other: Advisory Board, Travel support, Research Funding, Speakers Bureau. Langerak: Erasmus MS, University Medical Center: Current Employment; F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd/Genentech, Inc.: Research Funding; Gilead: Research Funding; Janssen: Speakers Bureau.


Groups of sibs, sisters to bulls being bred for progeny testing, can be produced by multiple ovulation and embryo transfer (MOET). Sib tests are complete at 3 yr of age, and progeny tests when bulls are about 5.5–6 yr of age. The merit of commercial semen could be increased by using the bulls with the highest estimated breeding values from both the sib test group and the progeny test group rather than only from the latter. With current selection rates (20%) among progeny-tested bulls for commercial use, current genetic trend (0.1 SD units per year) in bulls and with the equivalent of 3–7 full sisters per bull, the relative genetic superiority of semen from the combined groups could be from 1.10 to 1.20 times that from the progeny-tested group alone. Key words: Embryo transfer, sib testing, progeny testing, commercial semen