To the Editor: The review article of Charles Wooley on Intracardiac Phonocardiography is an exhaustive overview of the results obtained by this method and of its clinical usefulness; however, the physiologic and pathophysiologic implications of some of the findings require further comments. 1) The observation that the heart sounds and murmurs have a widespread diffusion to the blood of the cardiac chambers led my co-workers and me to propose a revision of the conventional areas of auscultation.' Actually, as soon as Leatham recognized that both the aortic and the pulmonic component of the second sound were best heard at the left of the sternum,2 the obvious conclusion was that the "aortic" and the "pulmonic" areas were superimposed in the second and third left intercostal space. It is unfortunate that older, entrenched viewpoints have not been modified since 1964. 2) In regard to the first high frequency component of the first heart sound (so-called mitral component), several comments are appropriate. Echocardiography has shown that both the closure and the opening of the cardiac valves is a relatively slow phenomenon. Whether the closure of the mitral valve is completed before the first heart sound, there is no question about the fact that functionally the valve is closed, shown by the lack of a gradient across the valve and the absence of regurgitation when left ventricular pressure rises. Therefore, no violent collision of the leaflets is possible. The elegant experimental studies of Laniado are unfortunately marred by unavoidable artifacts; a flow tracing recorded by suturing sensors on the mitral ring is influenced not only by the motion of the blood flow, but also by the motion of the sensors; the latter move toward the atrium during the early part of ventricular contraction (see mitral echo) and thus give the impression that the flow continues up to and during the first sound, even up to the onset of ejection. Proponents of the old theory confronted with this usually shift their ground by saying that it is not "valve closure" but "valve tension" that causes sound. There is no doubt that the first component of the first sound grossly coincides with a slight rise in left atrial pressure which takes place during the isovolumic period. We have then to consider whether valve vibrations cause blood and myocardial vibrations or vice versa. The obvious answer is that the first cause is that connected with the power source, i.e., the ventricular wall, as the valve has no independent motion. However, in order not to discard offhand an alternate theory, I might quote a study of my co-workers, MacCanon et al.3 To create sound vibrations, a structure requires a certain motion and a certain mass; their study has shown that the mitral valve with the attached chordae accounts only for one-tenth of the energy of the first sound; the rest is proportional to the mass of the left ventricle with its blood. 3) The first sound in mitral stenosis is greatly increased and somewhat delayed. The motion of the mitral structures is obviously decreased. However, the sound is greater due to three factors: A) Valve closure occurs at a time when the entire left ventricle is under contraction and its pressure rises rapidly; B) the mitral valve and ring are altered and less compliant; C) the high left atrial pressure causes a decreased compliance of the atrioventricular (AV) septum, including the mitral valve. Thus, the pressure will rise faster than in a normal heart, and this will cause greater vibrations, similar to those of patients in AV block when there is a close AV sequence. These facts have been recently studied by us in AV block4 and in mitral stenosis.5 The reverse occurs when some structure has an increased compliance, like the noncontractile septum in left bundle branch block.6 4) The problem of the "tricuspid" component has been already discussed by us7 with a negative conclusion. We had already noted, at the time of the first study with DiBartolo,' that mitral and tricuspid closures do not always maintain the same sequence, so that a definite interval may or may not exist. In spite of this, the two largest components of the first sound maintain their sequence. The studies with echocardiography suffer from the technical shortcomings of this technique. The vector of penetration of the ultrasound beam is probably not the most desirable, due to anatomical reasons, and this has to be made even less correct when we wish to obtain the reflections from two structures moving in different directions. This shortcoming is particularly great in the case of the tricuspid valve for anatomical reasons. Moreover, studies of both Rusconi et al.9 and Prakash et al.10 showed an occasional coincidence of tricuspid closure with the "tricuspid" component, while there was a total coincidence with the aortic opening. Any sound vibration recorded within the right ventricle disappears in experiments with left ventricular bypass when the left ventricle is damaged and open while the right ventricle strongly contracts.'1 5) Similar considerations should be made in regard to the second sound. Each component of this sound is proportional to the derivative of the gradient of pressure causing closure of the valve.12 The latter slightly precedes the sound. The sound occurs after the incisura of the pressure tracing but coincides with the incisura of the velocity tracing.'3 A study on the motion and weight of the aortic valve will certainly reveal that it is inadequate to cause the loudest sound of the heart. There is no disagreement about the fact that the closed valves vibrate with the sound; but so do the bloods of the arteries and ventricles and the arterial and ventricular structures. If we take a tracing of left ventricular pressure and pass the signal through either a high pass filter or a triple derivative amplifier, we obtain a complete tracing of the heart sounds." The same result is obtained with an apex cardiogram.14 A physicist might say that this was expected because there are low and high frequency vibrations in each of these tracings. I believe that, the third derivative being the equivalent of the rate of change of acceleration of the intracardiac pressure, this reveals the part played by the acceleration and deceleration phenomena as forseen by Rushmer" and demonstrated by Piemme and Dexter,"' Laurens,'7 and us. I hope that Dr. Wooley will accept these comments in the spirit with which they are offered; that is, in order to reach a scientific truth. ALDO A. LUISADA, M.D. Oak Forest Hospital Oak Forest, Illinois 60452


We are pleased to present the second special section in Aging and Mental Health on aging in East Asia. In issue 8 of volume 17 (2013), scholars addressed different aspects of dementia in East Asia, including prevalence, caregiving, hospital care and long-term care services. We now turn to family issues and the implications of family for well-being in contemporary East Asia. Governed by traditional hierarchy and elaborate norms and customs, family has for centuries had a unique and predominant role in East Asia societies. Spurred by economic development, involvement of women in the workplace, and the aging of the population, traditional family roles and relationships have been undergoing dramatic changes. The nine articles in this special issue focus on the role of family in maintenance of psychological well-being among older adults. The common theme is that despite ongoing changes the family still has an important role in the maintenance and enhancement of psychological well-being. Among these nine papers, two focus on spousal relationships, three are related to relationships with adult children, one is on family members in general, two articles emphasize social interaction at different levels and social network types, and the last is related to the complementary role between family and formal care in long-term care. The association of spousal relationships with psychological well-being has not been systematically examined in Asian countries. To fill this research gap, two articles in this special issue address marital relationships and psychological well-being. Li and Fung examine the link between avoidant attachment and subjective well-being among Hong Kong Chinese couples. Not surprisingly, they found that avoidant attachment is negatively associated with subjective well-being, but age is found to be a moderator in the link and the direction of the moderating effect is opposite for husbands and wives. Specifically, the harmful impact of avoidant attachment on subjective well-being is weaker for older wives than younger wives and stronger for older husbands than younger ones. The second paper on marital relationships by Wang and colleagues examines the relationship between marital satisfaction and depressive symptoms in older Chinese couples. Wang and colleagues found that both older wives and husbands' self-rated marital satisfaction was not significantly associated with their own depressive symptoms, which is inconsistent with the Marital Discord Model of Depression and findings in middle-aged couples. Moreover, husbands' reported marital satisfaction predicts their wives' depressive symptoms, but not the other way round. Again, gender and age differences are found in the link between marital satisfaction and psychological wellbeing. Studies of older couples in Asian countries are rare, and future studies must be undertaken to replicate these findings with a longitudinal design and a larger sample size, as well as in other cultures. A low fertility rate might lead to greater prevalence of childless older adults in Asia in the coming decades, and it is well-established that childlessness is a risk factor contributing to poor psychological well-being in Chinese society. Therefore, it is essential to identify the mechanism underlying the link between childlessness and well-being. The paper by Guo provides an account of why childless older adults in rural areas are more likely to report poor psychological well-being. The paper finds that not receiving financial support from children mediates the impact of childlessness on psychological well-being, but adequate income buffers the harmful effect of childlessness on psychological well-being. Guo's results highlight the importance of a retirement income protection system for rural older adults, especially those who are childless. Turning to relationships between older adults and their grown offspring, Lee and colleagues used the Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing to examine the association between intergenerational financial support and psychological well-being. In line with identity theory, the provision of financial support by parent to adult children (but not receiving support), as well as both giving and receiving social support, are positively associated with psychological well-being. Consistent with equity theory, psychological well-being is better among those older adults who both provide and receive support than among those who only receive support. The work of Lee et al. contributes to the literature by testing and distinguishing theories related to intergenerational support and psychological well-being in Asian countries. Household living arrangements have been shown to be an important factor for family relations, with implications for psychological well-being in older adults. In Chinese society, co-residence with adult children is highly desirable among older parents, but recently in urban cities like Shanghai, older adults' preferences have been changing due to the fact that they are better protected financially by public pensions. One factor that may moderate the detrimental effect of not living with children for older adults is neighborhood identity. Ye and Chen examine the relationship between living arrangements and psychological wellbeing among a random sample of 939 older adults in Shanghai, China. They find that living with adult children is positively associated with older adults' psychological well-being, but neighborhood identity does not moderate the impact of living arrangements on psychological well-being. Their findings suggest implications for both


In recent years after most of the concrete mixings are executed, a concrete pump is• generally used on the construction site; but, unfortunately, as blockages happen in the pipeline, it becomes necessary to make the concrete more plastic than the required plasticity in the original construction. The reason for this is that there is not a measuring method to accurately express the concrete pumpability. The authors produced,'by some trials, a simulate model of concrete pump having two hydraulic jacks at both ends of a steel pipe. The jacks can act simultaneously keeping the pressure in the pipe at desired values as the oil pressure system is connected with both of them. The authors made sure that the model of the pumping system behaved like truckmounted pumps used in construction sites, and then investigated several causes that influence the pumpability in this testing apparatus. It was inferred that, with the model pump, loss of pressure in the pipe, segregation of fresh concrete under high pressure and influence of tapered pipe could be obtained. From the results, it was concluded that this apparatus could be used in the experiments as the pumping properties of the model concrete-pump were almost the same as the ones of a normal truck-mounted pump.


we performed allogeneic peripheral blood hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (cid:674) HSCT (cid:675) from an HLA-matched sibling. Aleukemic and tumor-forming Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia(Ph + ALL)is very rare. A 54-year-old woman with a medical history of chemo-radiotherapy for breast cancer was admitted because of the right side pleural effusion and possible malignant lymphoma of the right supraclavicular lymph node. Positron emission tomography showed the accumulation at the right pleura, mesenteric lymph nodes, and the left iliac bone. WBC and its differential counts were normal, and the anemia and thrombocytopenia were not noted. A bone marrow aspirate showed abundant blasts of immature B cell lineage, and the karyotype was a complex karyotype including t(9;22). PCR examination demonstrated minor bcr-abl transcript. In the pleural effusion, small number of blasts with the same phenotype was observed. Immunopathologic re-examination of the biopsied lymph mode revealed to be lymphoblastic lymphoma with the same phenotype of morrow blasts. A diagnosis of aleukemic and tumor-forming Ph + ALL was made. She was treated with 2courses of Hyper-CVAD with dasatinib with disappearance of minor bcr-abl transcript from the bone marrow and pleural effusion. We performed allogeneic peripheral blood hematopoietic stem cell transplantation from an HLA-matched sibling with uneventful engraftment. One year after the transplantation, she is maintaining remission with mild skin GVHD.(Journal We report the case of a 45-year-old male patient who developed human herpesvirus 6 (HHV6)-associated pleurisy after an unrelated cord blood transplantation (CBT) for acute lymphoblastic leukemia. A large amount of pleural effusion accompanied by interstitial pneumonitis was noted on the right side on day 37 post-transplantation. A real-time quantitative PCR (RQ-PCR) assay revealed that the HHV6 viral load was substantially higher in the pleural effusion than in the peripheral blood plasma at the onset of pleurisy, with 2.2 × 10 2 and 7.9 × 10 3 copies of HHV6 DNA/mL in the peripheral blood plasma and the supernatant of the pleural effusion, respectively. Moreover, HHV6 DNA was still detected in the pleural effusion after antiviral therapy. Therefore, the pleural cavity may have been the primary site of HHV6 replication in the present case. To our knowledge, the present study is the first detailed report of adult HHV6-associated pleurisy after CBT. HHV6-associated pleurisy should be considered a potential complication when pleural effusion of unknown cause is encountered after CBT, even in the absence of HHV6 DNA in the peripheral blood. (Journal of Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation 3(2): 59-63, 2014.)


Microchip, a physiological organ biomimetic system built on a microfluidic chip, is now one of the most promising technologies in the 21st century. Combined with biological science, biomaterial technology and medical engineering, the microenvironment of the microchips can mimic the mechanical stress and tissue fluid flow. This means that the microchips possess some characteristics of human tissues or organs, so it can become the best material for pathological study of some certain disease and drug test for the cure in vitro. As a result, many vivo experiments can be avoided, and the relative cost is reduced. The present paper first introduces several well-developed techniques in medical research, and makes comparisons with microchips. The structure and mechanism of microchips are further discussed. Finally, this paper will focus on the application of microchips in the various disease's treatment, protein detection, drug discovery and delivery, and some others medical problem.


Abstract Coastal communities are among the most vulnerable to climate risks. Despite the negligence of climate policy at the federal level in the United States, subnational governments have taken action to adapt to climate change impacts. Using national-level data on subnational government climate activities, this research examines three aspects of coastal community adaptation actions. First, it examines whether there are differences in climate adaptation activity between coastal and non-coastal communities. It then tests the relative importance of political partisanship, population, perception of climate risk, and awareness of state-level climate planning effort. Lastly, it examines the impact of participation within climate policy networks on the likelihood of a subnational government taking a climate adaptation action. Three types of network partners are examined: those focused on sea-level rise and coastal communities, climate change mitigation, and general environmental organizations. Concern about severe storms, awareness of state plans, and having a network partner focused either on climate mitigation or the environment were found to be statistically significant indicators of climate adaptation action. The paper discusses the importance of understanding the localized context of adaptation within nested governance structures, and how informal policy networks can facilitate learning and innovation across coastal communities.


Freshly prepared alumina get bonding of alumina has been studied. DTA of this gel dictates controlled drying at 200°C to 92.0% theoretical density. Magnesium chloride as a dopant in this gel bonding is better than magnesium nitrate.


Piezoelectric materials have recently attracted a lot of attention for ultrasonic structural health monitoring (shm) in aerospace, defence and civilian sectors, where they can act as both actuators and sensors. Incidentally, piezoelectric materials in the form of wafers (pwas‐piezoelectric wafer active sensor, approx. 5–10 mm square and 0.2–0.3 mm thickness) are inexpensive, non intrusive and non‐resonant wide band devices that can be surface‐mounted on existing structures, inserted between the layers of lap joints or embedded inside composite materials. The material of choice for piezoelectric wafers is lead zirconate titanate (PZT) of composition close to morphotropic phase boundary [pb(zr0.52 ti0.48)o3]. However, an excess pbo is normally added to pzt as a densification aid and also to make up for the lead loss during high temperature sintering. Hence, it is of paramount importance to know how the shift of the lead content from the morphotropic composition affects the piezoelectric and mechanical prope...


OF THE THESIS AN APPROACH FOR CLARIFICATION OF THE MECHANISM OF INACTIVATION OF RIBONUCLEOTIDE REDUCTASES WITH 3'["0]-LABELED 2'-AZIDO-2'-DEOXYNUCLEOTIDES by Saiful Mahmud Chowdhury Florida International University, 2001 Miami, Florida Professor Stanislaw F. Wnuk, Major Professor Inactivation of ribonucleotide reductases by 2'-azido-2'-deoxynucleotides is accompanied by appearance of new EPR signals for a nitrogen-centered radical. The structure of this elusive nitrogen-centered radical has been studied extensively and shown to be derived from azide moiety. Synthesis of 3'[ 7 0]-labeled 2'-azido-2'-deoxyuridine-5'diphosphate was targeted in this research. Such a labeled analogue should perturb the EPR spectrum in predictable fashion, and the hyperfine interaction between the free electron and the 17 nucleus should allow the choice between the recently proposed structures of this elusive radical (Van Der Donk, W. A. et al. J Am. Chem. Soc. 1995, 117, 8908-8916). The labeled 2'-azido-2'-deoxynucleotides was prepared by thermolysis of 02,3'anhydrouridine to give the more stable 2 ,2'-anhydrouridine derivatives with concomitant rearrangement of the 2'-O-benzoyl[170] group into the 3'-[ 1 7 0]-benzoyl


The invention discloses a low density parity check (LDPC) code weighting gradient descent bit flipping and decoding algorithm based on an average amplitude. The LDPC code weighting gradient descent bit flipping and decoding algorithm comprises a single-bit flipping and decoding step and a multi-bit flipping and decoding step. Each of the single-bit flipping and decoding step and the multi-bit flipping and decoding step comprises the following steps of: initializing; calculating a syndrome sk; when the sk is equal to 0, stopping iteration, and when the sk is not zero during is decoded outputting, calculating the weight wm of each check node; calculating a flipping function of each information node; and making a judgment and ending iterative detection. According to the algorithm, the average amplitude of the information nodes adjacent to the check nodes is taken as a component of the weight, and furthermore, the relevance between channel receiving values of the information nodes and hard judgment bits is combined, thereby establishing the bit flipping function with a higher efficiency; compared with a GDBF algorithm, the LDPC algorithm can obtain a lower average iteration frequency when acquiring a certain encoding gain; and furthermore, the algorithm has the characteristics of relatively simple implementation mode, low hardware implementation complexity, high decoding performance and the like.


Aqueous and organic extracts of 27 selected species from five genera (Fallopia, Oxyria, Persicaria, Polygonum and Rumex) of the family Polygonaceae occurring in the Carpathian Basin were screened in vitro for antiproliferative activity against HeLa (cervix epithelial adenocarcinoma), A431 (skin epidermoid carcinoma) and MCF7 (breast epithelial adenocarcinoma) cells, using the 3‐(4,5‐dimethylthiazol‐2‐yl)‐2,5‐diphenyltetrazolium bromide assay. A total of 196 n‐hexane, chloroform, 50% methanol or water extracts of different plant parts were investigated. It was found that extracts of Polygonum hydropiper, Rumex acetosa, Rumex alpinus, Rumex aquaticus, Rumex scutatus and Rumex thyrsiflorus at 10 or 30 µg/mL demonstrated substantial cell growth inhibitory activity (at least 50% inhibition of cell proliferation) against one or more cell lines. R. acetosa and R. thyrsiflorus proved to be the most active and are considered worthy of activity‐guided phytochemical investigations. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Purpose : Telomerase activity has been detected in a wide variety of human tumors. The present study evaluated telomerase activity in association with the acquisition of renal cell carcinoma (RCC).


With the increase in the usage of mobile technology, the rate of information is duplicated as a huge volume. Due to the volume duplication of message, the identification of spam messages leads to challenging task. The growth of mobile usage leads to instant communication only through messages. This drastically leads to hackers and unauthorized users to the spread and misuse of sending spam messages. The identification of spam messages is a research oriented problem for the mobile service providers in order to raise the number of customers and to retain them. With this overview, this paper focuses on identifying and prediction of spam and ham messages. The SMS Spam Message Detection dataset from KAGGLE machine learning Repository is used for prediction analysis. The identification of spam and ham messages is done in the following ways. Firstly, the levels of spread of target variable namely spam or ham is identified and they are depicted as a graph. Secondly, the essential tokens that are responsible for the spam and ham messages are identified and they are found by using the hashing Vectorizer and it is portrayed in the form of spam and Ham messages word cloud. Thirdly, the hash vectorized SMS Spam Message detection dataset is fitted to various classifiers like Ada Boost Classifier, Extra Tree classifier, KNN classifier, Random Forest classifier, Linear SVM classifier, Kernel SVM classifier, Logistic Regression classifier, Gaussian Naive Bayes classifier, Decision Tree classifier, Gradient Boosting classifier and Multinomial Naive Bayes classifier. The evaluation of the classifier models are done by analyzing the Performance analysis metrics like Accuracy, Recall, FScore, Precision and Recall. The implementation is done by python in Anaconda Spyder Navigator. Experimental Results shows that the Linear Support Vector Machine classifier have achieved the effective performance indicators with the precision of 0.98, recall of 0.98, FScore of 0.98 , and Accuracy of 98.71%.


Abstract: The renovation history of the Mennonite church building in Krefeld, originally constructed in 1693, provides a useful glimpse into the changing circumstances of the congregation that worshiped there. Local restrictions on Mennonites required that the first building be constructed as a "hidden church," not visible from the main street. In 1843, however, the renowned Krefeld architect Heinrich Johann Freyse oversaw a major renovation of the building which brought the church into greater conformity with the styles of contemporary Catholic and Reformed churches in the area. The inclusion of a semi-circular apse--clearly separated from the nave--and marbleized columns marked a clear shift away from an earlier emphasis on simplicity and egalitarianism. In the architecture of this church, one can read the story of Mennonite acculturation into the mainstream of Krefeld society. ********** Much has been written about the history of the Krefeld Mennonite congregation. The most comprehensive work on the topic is a collection of essays titled They Came as Strangers: The Mennonites in Krefeld from Their Beginnings to the Present which recently appeared on the occasion of the congregation's tri-cenntenary anniversary. (1) However, none of the publications on the history of the Mennonites in Krefeld includes a detailed history of the church building itself. This omission is somewhat understandable since the facts of its building history appeared to be simple and straightforward: the construction of the first church in 1693, an expansion in 1843, and the destruction of the church in 1943 because of World War II followed by a period of reconstruction until 1950. Only Klaus Eichenberg's monograph about Krefeld's city architect, Heinrich Johann Freyse, deals briefly with the remodeling of the church in the 1840s, but he overlooks critical questions. (2) The first four sections of this article will introduce the various episodes of the building history of the Krefeld Mennonite Church as well as the architect Heinrich Freyse, who oversaw its remodeling in 1843. The main section will discuss the issues and questions in connection with the remodeling of the church, and the final section will offer a summary. BUILDING THE FIRST MENNONITE CHURCH During the seventeenth century the organizational structures and sociopolitical contours of the Krefeld Mennonite congregation became firm and, toward the end of the century, found their expression in the built form of their small church. The Mennonite presence in Krefeld had led to numerous conflicts with the recently-established Reformed congregation, which perceived the Mennonites as strong competitors for their own influence in the city. After Krefeld had come under the sovereignty of the House of Orange early in the seventeenth century, the first Mennonites from Kempen and Alderkerk began to settle permanently in the city. At that time they met for their worship services more or less secretly, in several private homes. In 1633 at the Synod of Moerse a Reformed pastor complained that the Krefeld Mennonites practiced their religion freely and that they invited preachers from elsewhere. (3) Following a major wave of immigration of 1654 when the number of Krefeld Mennonites grew by at least the 200 banished from Gladbach in the Catholic Duchy of Julich, the Mennonite Wilhelm Selbach's home (located on today's Mennonitenstrasse) was rebuilt in 1666 "for the needs of the congregation." (4) In his brief 1939 history of the Krefeld Mennonite Church building, Walther Risler sees in this renovation the direct predecessor of today's church. (5) On the occasion of the Synod of Moerse in the fall of 1670 the Reformed lodged a complaint against the Mennonites stating that they had already planned to build a school (Lehrhaus) "without knowledge of the officials." (6) Because of this complaint the Mennonites were "prevented, this time yet.... from building a church. …


Soil is the foundation of agricultural and horticultural endeavors. The soil solution is a heterogeneous mixture of solids, liquids, gasses, and biological entities. The general health and nutritional status of soil determines the quantity and quality of its biological components, especially the plants that grow in it. The presence of pests and pathogens can impact soil health, leading to significant crop yield losses [1]. Various strategies are used to control pests and pathogens; however, modern agriculture has largely resorted to chemical control strategies.


A ni analysis of surface pollen samples to discover iJ'they fall naturally in1to distinct groups oJ' simiiilar samiples is an example of a classification problem. In Euclidean classification, a set of n objects can be represented as n points in Euclidean space of p dimensions. The sum oJ'squares criterion defines the optimal partition of the points in1to g disjoint groups to be the partition which mninimzizes the total within-group sumn of squared distances about the g centroids. It is not usually Jeasible to examiine all possible partitions oJ'the objects into g groups. A critical review is mnade of algorithmiis which have been proposedfor seeking optimal partitions. The problem is reformulated itn non-linear programming terms, and a new algorithm for seeking the minimum sumi1 oJ'squares is described. The performance of this algorithm in analyzing the pollen data is Jound to compare vell vith the perJormance of three oJ the existing algorithms. An efficient hybrid algorithmi is introduced.


Bacterial biofilm is a complex community of bacterial cells enclosed in a polymer matrix and attached to a biotic or abiotic substrate. In this living form the bacteria are more resistant to antimicrobial agents than in the form of planktonic cells. Biofilm is a common cause of chronic infections in humans, so due to the growing resistance to antibiotics, alternative methods for controlling infections using medicinal plants have been proposed. In this study, the antibiofilm activity of ethanol and acetone extracts of plants Lamium album, Achillea millefolium and Agrimonia eupatoria against eight clinical isolates of human pathogenic bacteria was examined. Inhibition of biofilm formation was demonstrated using the crystal violet test and the effect on metabolic activity was confirmed by the use of resazurin dye test. Ethanol extract of L. album showed the greatest activity against P. aeruginosa (PA9) at a concentration of 20 mg/ml (> 80% of inhibition), while acetone extract acted at a concentration of 5 mg/ml (≥ 18%) against Klebsiella sp. (K9). At a concentration of 10 mg/ml, the ethanol extract of A. millefolium was effective against E. coli (E16) and P. aeruginosa (PA8) (> 70%), while the acetone extract was effective at 2.5 mg/ml (> 80%) against E. coli (E16). Ethanol and acetone extracts of A. eupatoria were effective at a concentration of 10 mg/ml (> 50%) against E. coli (E16). The antibiofilm activity of the tested plant extracts on certain clinical isolates indicates their great potential in the treatment of infections caused by biofilm-producing bacteria.


Sir: Despite the marked progress in the pharmacologic treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)—espe- cially with high doses of serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRIs), alone or in combination with low doses of antipsy- chotics—a substantial proportion of patients fail to respond to it. 1 In such cases, an augmentation tactic with drugs from other chemical classes, including antiepileptic drugs, seems advisable. We report on such a case, in which the adjunction of the newer antiepileptic drug pregabalin led to a patient's marked improvement. Case report. Ms. A, a 35-year-old woman, had suffered from OCD according to DSM-IV criteria 2 since the age of 3 with an overall severity scale score of 4, whereas on the Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety (HAM-A), 4 she scored 27. Both sertraline and risperidone were maintained at the previously mentioned dosages, whereas clobazam was dis- continued. Pregabalin was added to her regimen instead and titrated up to 600 mg/day within 3 weeks. Dizziness and fatigue were the only transient side effects of pregabalin. During pregabalin treatment, Ms. A's mental and behavioral state improved progressively, and at discharge, 12 weeks later, her scores on the YBOCS and HAM-A had dropped by almost 55% and 40%, respectively. More precisely, her YBOCS score dropped to 16, with an overall severity score of 2 and an overall improvement score of 5, and her HAM-A score dropped to 15. Of note, the patient's level of improve- ment was wholly preserved at her last outpatient appoint- ment 6 months later. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case report of administration of pregabalin as an adjunctive treatment to a SRI-antipsychotic combination in OCD refractory to stan- dard pharmacotherapy. Pregabalin, a newer antiepileptic drug, binds to the α 2δ subunits of voltage-dependent calcium channels, blocking the calcium influx in presynaptic excita- tory neurotransmitters such as glutamate, thus dampening excitatory neurotransmission in various brain systems. This mechanism of action accounts for the well-established anti- epileptic and antianxiety effects of pregabalin. 5 With respect to pregabalin's specifically anti-OCD mechanism of action, we should note that increased glutamatergic neurotrans- mission is hypothesized to underlie the increased activity of the cortico-striato-thalamic system, which presumably constitutes the core pathophysiologic mechanism of OCD symptoms. 6


Abstract. Wavefront measurements from wind tunnel or flight testing of an optical system are affected by jitter sources due to the measurement platform, system vibrations, or aero-mechanical buffeting. Depending on the nature of the testing, the wavefront jitter will be a composite of several effects, one of which is the aero-optical jitter; i.e., the wavefront tilt due to random air density fluctuations. To isolate the aero-optical jitter component from recent testing, we have developed an estimation technique that uses only higher-order wavefront measurements to determine the jitter. By analogy with work done previously with free-stream turbulence, we have developed a minimum mean-square error estimator using higher-order wavefront modes to compute the current-frame tilt components through a linear operation. The estimator is determined from computational fluid dynamics evaluation of aero-optical disturbances, but does not depend on the strength of such disturbances. Applying this technique to turret flight test data, we found aero-optical jitter to be 7.7±0.8  μrad and to scale with (ρ/ρSL)M2 (∼1  μrad in the actual test cases examined). The half-power point of the aero-optical jitter variance was found to be ∼2u∞/Dt and to roll off in temporal frequency with a power law between f−11/3 and f−10/3.


Starting from the 3D Gross-Pitaevskii equation we revisit the dimensional reduction to an effective one-dimensional wave-equation that describes the longitudinal dynamics of a Bose condensate in an axially-symmetric external potential. Using a variational approach, Salasnich et al. introduced the non-polynomial Schr\"odinger equation (NPSE) which takes into account radial broadening of the wave function due to particle interactions. A closed form was derived by neglecting slow variation of the radial wave function along the longitudinal direction. We show that the full equation can efficiently be implemented using a time splitting spectral scheme coupled to a constraint equation. We confirm the validity of the approximation for experimentally relevant parameters. The corrections are found to be localized to regions of strong density gradients for which we highlight the differences through a number of numerical examples comparing the different 1D models.


A professional English course in business administration studies at the university should lay emphasis on the specific demands and interests of students studying in this programme and requirements of English language knowledge imposed by the business domain. Development of business-related competences in the professional English course is essential for future entrepreneurs who will use English in multiple business contexts to run a successful and competitive business. The aim of the study was to develop and to approbate such business-related competences as business management and personal management in a professional English course in business administration studies. The author of the article emphasizes the idea that the development of business-related competences can be enhanced if the case study method is applied. The results of the study were obtained in a pedagogical experiment involving business administration students in case study modules within a professional English course. Participating in the professional English case study-based course the students developed businessrelated competences comprising business management and personal management and the article describes the process of these competences' practical acquisition.


Almost 600 American physicists have signed an open letter calling for the reinstatement of Jeff Schmidt to his position as a staff editor on Physics Today, the monthly magazine published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP). Schmidt was fired in May last year, soon after his book Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System that Shapes Their Lives had been published by Rowman & Littlefield.


Community outdoor public spaces are indispensable to urban residents' daily lives. Analyzing community outdoor public spaces from a behavioral perspective is crucial and an effective way to support human-centered development in urban areas. Traditional behavioral analysis often relies on manually collected behavioral data, which is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and lacks data breadth. With the use of sensors, the breadth of behavioral data has greatly increased, but its accuracy is still insufficient, especially in the fine-grained differentiation of populations and behaviors. Computer vision is more efficient in distinguishing populations and recognizing behaviors. However, most existing computer vision applications face some challenges. For example, behavior recognition is limited to pedestrian trajectory recognition, and there are few that recognize the diverse behaviors of crowds. In view of these gaps, this paper proposes a more efficient approach that employs computer vision tools to examine different populations and different behaviors, obtain important statistical measures of spatial behavior, taking the Bajiao Cultural Square in Beijing as a test bed. This population and behavior recognition model presents several improvement strategies: Firstly, by leveraging an attention mechanism, which emulates the human selective cognitive mechanism, it is capable of accentuating pertinent information while disregarding extraneous data, and the ResNet backbone network can be refined by integrating channel attention. This enables the amplification of critical feature channels or the suppression of irrelevant feature channels, thereby enhancing the efficacy of population and behavior recognition. Secondly, it uses public datasets and self-made data to construct the dataset required by this model to improve the robustness of the detection model in specific scenarios. This model can distinguish five types of people and six kinds of behaviors, with an identification accuracy of 83%, achieving fine-grained behavior detection for different populations. To a certain extent, it solves the problem that traditional data face of large-scale behavioral data being difficult to refine. The population and behavior recognition model was adapted and applied in conjunction with spatial typology analysis, and we can conclude that different crowds have different behavioral preferences. There is inconsistency in the use of space by different crowds, there is inconsistency between behavioral and spatial function, and behavior is concentrated over time. This provides more comprehensive and reliable decision support for fine-grained planning and design.


Both crystalline δ-sodium disilicate (SKS-6) and amorphous spray-dried sodium disilicate can be used as the builder substance in detergents and cleansing agents. Differences in the use properties investigated here can be attributed to structural differences in the silicates. On the basis of the unequal solubility properties and the different reactivity towards alkyl-ammonium cations, it can be concluded that softening of water by the two modification takes place in different ways. While the amorphous disilicate removes the water hardening ions via a voluminous alkaline earth metal silicate precipitate, the polyvalent cations are mainly bonded by the crystalline substance via an ion exchange process. The considerably higher calcium-binding capacity of SKS-6 in soft and medium-hard water can be explained by this characteristic at the same time. Both substances can provide the wash liquor with large quantities of alkalinity. The crystalline sodium disilicate has a significantly higher buffer capacity than the amorphous product because of the higher content of active substance. Furthermore, the high structural water content in the amorphous silicate means that during storage the solid forms lumps or deliquesces after only a comparatively low uptake of water.


Robert Horwitz offers an interesting in-depth analysis of the process of democratization of the communications industry and mass media in South Africa during the 1990s. He also provides historical background, describing the country and its communications industry prior to its 1994 transition from a racist bastion of minority white power to a democracy founded on the enfranchisement of all groups and individuals. The old South Africa operated under a strict system of racial separation called apartheid, which facilitated the exploitation of black labor. The black African majority had virtually no role in the life of the nation, and were deemed "guests" and third class citizens in the land of their birth. Communications and mass media were the sole purview of whites with little interest in serving the needs of the black majority. The election of a black majority government in 1994 led to an intense debate regarding the functioning and role of communications in South Africa. The same political forces that helped to bring about the collapse of the apartheid system led the debate for communications reform. The process included consultation with community groups, trade unions, political parties, and industry and government representatives. As with all newly emerging democracies, South Africa's efforts to reform its communications system are best seen as an ongoing experiment. What is commendable about the new South Africa is its dogged determination to shape communications in its own national image and not that of the U.S. In very readable scholarship (terms and acronyms are carefully defined) Horwitz takes us into this South African experiment. The effort to reform this THE REVIEW OF COMMUNICATION 3.1 (January 2003): 31–34  2003 National Communication Association


This study intended to provide the basic material for improving the social prejudice against the makeup behavior of visually handicapped women and developing the makeup program suited to the characteristic of visual impairment. For this purpose, it investigated the actual conditions of visually handicapped women's makeup behavior. To collect data through the questionnaire research, this study employed both the quantitative research and the qualitative research through in-depth interview. The Braille-translation questionnaire was employed under the visual discomfort of the respondents, and data obtained from the questionnaire research for a total of 160 persons were statistically analyzed with the use of SPSS WIN 21.0. As a result, the following findings were obtained: First, the very high proportion of the responding visually handicapped women put on makeup. In spite of the handicap-caused discomfort, the high proportion of them put on makeup, and the reason for not putting on makeup was not visual impairment. Second, the highest proportion of the visually handicapped women responded that the purpose of makeup was 'to give a good impression on others'. Their makeup behavior is not simply the one in management terms but in psychological terms of relationship to others as the social factor. So an attempt was made to investigate the relationship between the social factor and makeup consciousness. As a result, it was found that the 'social factor had a significant effect on makeup consciousness'. Third, it was hypothesized that there would be a difference in self-esteem according to presence or absence of putting on makeup. It was tested that 'Putting on makeup had a significant effect on self-esteem'. This study emphasizes that support at the level of academic circles, organizations and nation government is needed to develop and provide the makeup program enhancing the understanding of visually handicapped women's makeup behavior, meeting their aesthetic desire and contributing to their integration into the members of society.


The invention provides a method for preparing neodymium iron boron through regenerating a waste material containing neodymium, iron and boron. The method comprises steps of (1) preprocessing the waste material; (2) correcting the components of the waste material; (3) crushing by hydrogen; (4) preparing into powder; (5) molding under a magnetic field; and (6) vacuum sintering. The method fully uses the waste material recycled in a production process, has high recovery rate of the waste material, can produce high performance product, has a simple and controllable flow, has high operability, uses no strong acid and strong base polluting the environment, is environment-friendly and energy-saving, and has high social and economic benefits.


This investigation that has a plinth of documentary type, with a bibliographical design, had as general mission to analyze the computer science and telematic use of in education being considered the technological possibilities that they facilitate the social interaction between the teaching staff and the pupils, and between the own students in addition, on the other hand it tries to induce the appropriate generation but of tools and telematic and computer science resources for the education-learning process, with the final intention to reflect and to sensitize to all the actors of the educative sector with the use of tools, that guarantees to them to go to the vanguard of the technological evolution, supporting assertively to the process education-learning


Geological–geophysical transects of active and ancient plate margins as well as structural studies of exhumed fault rocks confirm the general validity of laboratory-based strength–depth profiles for the long-term (10–10 a) rheology of the continental lithosphere. The deep structure of orogens and rifted margins requires that a relatively strong, olivine-rich upper mantle underlies a weaker granitic to dioritic crust. The continental crust itself comprises one or more viscously deforming layers that are overlain by a stronger brittle layer. This view refutes recent speculation that because the thickness of the seismogenic zone within the crust varies with the effective elastic thickness of the lithosphere, the crust must be stronger than the upper mantle. We argue that seismicity is an ambiguous indicator of strength and propose that earthquakes are more reasonably interpreted as a manifestation of transient mechanical instability within shear zones. Shear zones are often long-lived zones of weakness in which viscous mylonitic creep is punctuated by ephemeral high-stress events involving fracture, frictional melting, and a temporary, local loss of cohesion. Seismicity may therefore be used to locate current zones of episodic decoupling between and beneath crustal blocks in active interplate fault systems. D 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


Abstract:Ustilago, commonly referred to as "corn smut," rarely causes human disease. Serious clinical infections caused by Ustilago species have been sparsely reported in medical literature. In this study, a case of central line infection caused by Ustilago species is presented.


Rats* or aDVKRTISJNO: TniAdiiiir Alivanmiia iiMerteil nt the rate of .00 pf»r square (ten Hne-i million conBtiiate a a^unre), aixU 60 cents for oAeh subsequent in^ii iton. Wsihbas ADVBATissuBMrs. $10 a yCAT per square, $& per vetr for each subseqaent square. JipRCtAt Notices inserted La Local column, 16 oonts per line' FkUFKAstoNix Caidb ei fire lines or Uss.ono yaar, J5. si tt, X in.):!, th ) le»il fjn of $i. « i.-tjr. Hilf ail OjIuui A IrorlUiuiatJ. by contract. SS, AU adrertlalng due In adtaucn.


Chinese traditional paintings can be traced back to ancient times,when God Totem worship and the concept of holy garment play an important role.Their characteristics can be summed up as decoration,stereotype,and begging for good fortune.


As the flexible wearable devices are developing rapidly, the requirement for energy storage devices with high energy and power density, excellent flexibility, and high reliability is increasing. Fiber‐shaped supercapacitors offering high power density and excellent flexibility have attracted widespread attention. However, the low energy density and poor reliability limit the practical application of these fiber‐shaped supercapacitors. To overcome these problems, a new zinc‐ion hybrid fiber supercapacitor (ZHFSC) is designed and realized. As both capacitor‐type and battery‐type energy storage mechanisms can be used, the energy density of ZHFSC is expected to be improved. Furthermore, the excellent self‐healability of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA)/Zn(CF3SO3)2 aqueous gel electrolyte contributes to the high reliability of the ZHFSC. As a proof of concept, the maximum power density and energy density of the ZHFSC are, respectively, as high as 1433.2 mW cm−3 and 13.1 mWh cm−3, and the capacitance retention, respectively, has the high values of 87.8% and 70.5% under the bending degree of 150° and after the fifth self‐healing. This study offers an efficient method to realize the high‐performance supercapacitors for flexible wearable devices in the future.


Dear Editor I read with great interest the recent article by Wako et al.1 concerning methamphetamine-induced aortic dissection. It was stated in that article that such dissections have not been previously reported. However, Swalwell and Davis2,3 have indeed previously commented and reported methamphetamine as a risk factor and an associated factor for acute aortic dissection. Wako et al. have made a very important and independent observation and should be commended for their work. I hope that they continue to study this grave problem to the health of


In this thesis, we propose the use of IoT-Fog-Cloud (IFC) and Restricted Access Window (RAW) mechanism of IEEE 802.11ah standard to reduce latency in large-scale deployment of IoT devices having limited storage, computation and transmission capabilities. To achieve this end, we use a service discovery protocol to assess the
capabilities of the devices and propose a strategy to offload tasks from one layer to the other in IFC paradigm using a queuing-theoretic framework which considers the
storage, computation and transmission capabilities of the devices in each layer before actually offloading tasks to it. Moreover, we develop an efficient selection strategy
in this thesis for the acquisition of nodes in the fog layer when many candidates are offering their services in the vicinity. The results show that our proposed strategy
enhances the overall capability of fog layer by inclusion of efficient fog nodes in the network and thus reduces the latency in processing of tasks being offloaded to the
fog layer.
Finally, we develop a comprehensive framework based on Discrete Time Markov Chain (DTMC) to characterize RAW which allows nodes to be divided into groups, and permits only one group to access the shared medium within a certain duration of time (RAW slot). By the use of the proposed framework, we determine the size of group of nodes for each RAW slot by quantifying the duration of the RAW
slot required to transmit a given number of data packets when nodes in the group have only one, or more (finite or infinite) number of data packets. In this way, the number of collisions due to contention among large number of nodes in IoT is reduced significantly which results in reduction of latency of data packets in the network.


The farfield acoustic radiation amplitude of an arbitrary surface vibrating with specified periodic normal velocity is shown to satisfy an inhomogeneous integral equation similar to the quantum mechanical Lippmann–Schwinger equation.


In order that fiscal policy can be of help in dealing with the problem of poverty, it must be such that (a) it induces higher levels of growth, (b) it creates conditions such that the poor are able to significantly contribute to growth, and (c) it ensures that growth equitably reaches the poor. This suggests reforms in four areas. The first relates to nominal tax rates. As things stand today, the nominal tax rates in India are generally on the high side. Some of the signals which high nominal tax rates give are such that they cannot be regarded as good for the growth of the Indian economy. The second area in which reform is required relates to fiscal provisions which have an influence on the employment of labour in the modern factory sector in India. The link between the growth of this sector and employment appears to be quite weak. Fiscal policy is partly responsible for this. There are number of fiscal provisions which have a prima facie bias in favour of capital and which encourage the use of capital in capital – intensive ways. Spread of industrialisation can be of much help in the growth of employment if the present bias of fiscal policy in favour of capital is removed. The next area in which reform is required relates to fiscal measures taken by the central, state and union territory governments to promote employment. There is a strong case for a good look at these measures. One is not sure if all that is required has been done. One is also not sure if all that has been done has been along the right lines. Finally there is a strong case for reform in government expenditures. Indeed, the case for government expenditure reform is much stronger than the case for tax reform.


Objective: The aim of the present investigation is to develop solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs) of cilnidipine using hot homogenization followed by ultrasonication technique and to improve the dissolution characteristics of the drug.Methods: The cilnidipine-loaded SLNs were formulated using stearic acid (SA), glyceryl monostearate (GMS), and palmitic acid (PA) as lipid matrix and tween-20, tween-80, and tween-40 as an emulsifier by hot homogenization and ultrasonication method. The physicochemical characteristics of SLN were analyzed for Fourier transform infrared studies, entrapment efficiency (EE), zeta potential, in vitro drug release, particle size analysis, scanning electron microscopy, and stability.Results: The SLNs with PA showed a sustained release of drug 82%–88%, respectively, after 10 h. The SLNs of PA using tween-80 as emulsifier resulted with high EE% than SLNs of SA and GMS. The compatibility studies are done by Fourier transformed infrared for formulations which contain PA as lipid matrix and tween-80 as an emulsifier, and it showed no drug excipient incompatibility. The formulation containing PA and tween-80 shown particles of average size 152 nm having polydispersity index of. 217 with 68.7 % EE were produced. The zeta potential of the formulation was found to be – 27 mV and the order of percentage drug release was from PA>GMS>SA, and steric stabilizers retard the drug release more than ionic stabilizers.Conclusion: SLN formulations showed the best results in EE as well as in in vitro drug release and therefore confirmed that the novel drug delivery system provides an improved strategy for the treatment of hypertension.


Poland, being a post-Communist European country with a tradition of Marxists religious studies in operation till 1989, developed during the Communist Era an original way of connecting psychology of religion with the value-neutral study of religion. It is also a Catholic a country, in which psychology of religion was practiced in a bipolar milieu: religion as a "sensitive" topic was approached from either Marxist-atheist or Catholic religious perspective. Such dualistic divisions should end with the breaking of the Iron Curtain, and opening to the West, but was it so in this country of contrasts? The article forms a bird's eye look on the last three decades of the Polish psychology of religion (1989–2020), concentrating on the "concrete products of scientific inquiry" therefore main works of scholars in the field are presented, discussed and context-wise interpreted in order to provide some answers for that query.


The article in PNAS by Casey et al. (1) reports previously undescribed data from individuals who participated as preschoolers in Mischel's now-classic delay of gratification studies conducted at Stanford University's Bing Nursery School in the early 1970s. Now in their mid-40s, these individuals performed a Go–No-go task, in which they were instructed to press a key when a certain stimulus (e.g., fearful face) was presented but to refrain from responding when another stimulus (e.g., happy face) was presented. Individuals who as children had resisted eating an enticing treat, such as a marshmallow, and instead waited up to 15 min for a larger reward (and who continued to present greater self-control across childhood and into adolescence)—dubbed high delayers—performed better than those who failed to wait (i.e., low delayers) but only when required to refrain from responding to happy faces. This finding is important because it adds to a growing body of evidence that individual differences in cognitive control (also called "executive function") measured in early childhood are associated with important developmental outcomes. For example, results from another ongoing longitudinal study found that cognitive control reported between the ages of 3 and 11 y predicted (as a gradient) physical health, substance dependence, socioeconomic status, and the likelihood of a criminal conviction at the age of 32 y, even after controlling for social class of origin and intelligence quotient (2). The Bing study is especially compelling in that cognitive control has been measured in direct assessments over time in addition to verbal reports.


Reports of studies on the caries-inhibiting effect of fluoride solutions topically applied to the teeth have been made by several investigators. Both the results of such studies and the methods of treatment have varied rather


[Extract] The Australian higher education system – like comparable systems (e.g., the United Kingdom) – is stratified according to architectural and landscape materialities. The elite universities are termed 'sandstone' and rely on a combination of original Gothic architecture and manicured lawns and sporting fields; while the second - tier postwar suburban campuses originated in a wave of modernist architecture and landscaping employing native vegetation. It is the latter's landscaping, as well as their location on the urban fringes of Australian cities, that gave rise to the moniker the 'gumtree' university.


The greatest issue for the finFETs of 14-nm generation and beyond was low-resistance source/drain formation on the ultra-thin (10 nm or less) silicon fin. Lower resistance is usually obtained by ion implantation of impurities, but on the fin part, crystal defects that occur during the implantation end up increasing the resistance. Since these crystal defects are difficult to resolve, the result has been that lower resistance is difficult to realize. The heated ion implantation technology developed in the present research is capable of implanting impurity ions in the ultra-thin fin part without causing crystal defects to occur, achieving lower resistance. It has also significantly increased finFET reliability. The developed technology is contributing to the resolution of the issue of lowresistance source/drain formation in the finFETs of 14-nm generation and beyond. Details of this technology will be presented at the International Electron Device Meeting (IEDM) to be held on December 9 to 11, 2013 in Washington, D.C., USA.


It is necessary to deal with the grid data by equivalent technique for reducing the scale of calculation in electromagnetic transient simulation.After applying the Ward equivalent in power system analysis software package(PSASP),the network equivalent of electromagnetic transient simulation is achieved based on the theory of multi-potential equivalent in Thevenin theorem.And the relevant software for equivalent transformation is also developed.The equivalent system model of a provincial grid is constructed by the simulation software PSCAD/EMTDC.By comparing the power flow,bus voltage and short-circuit current before and after the equivalent treatment,the correctness and validity of the proposed algorithm are verified.


Between 2000 and 2011, Department of Defense (DOD) annual fuel expenditures were between $1 and $9 billion higher than budget estimates (excluding 2009, when DOD underestimated fuel expenditures). Fuel budget variance is generally attributed to increasing fuel prices. However, DOD fuel expenditures are driven by two parameters — the unit cost of fuel and the amount of fuel consumed. Cost variance was responsible for 80 percent of the fuel budget variance on average. Crude oil price increase drove most of this cost variance. Consumption variance was responsible for the remainder of the fuel budget variance, and was particularly important during initial wartime operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Consumption variance was driven by DOD's planned use of emergency rather than base appropriations to pay for overseas contingency operations. Both increasing fuel prices and reliance on emergency appropriations puts defense operations at risk and increases costs to taxpayers. Improvements to current planning, budgeting, and financing practices are needed to manage this risk.


A fully electronic device is described, with which the range of a luminous signal can be measured directly by photometry and with which, by means of light intensity distribution, the range curve can be directly obtained for varying limiting light intensities, transmission factors and visibility distances. Following a description of the principles of the measuring technique (illustration of the block diagram and the main elements of the construction of the apparatus) the technical details of a device are described. With this device the light intensities and the range for a red or a green traffic signal can be determined and recorded, without the need for using a red or green colour filter on the traffic lights being used in the measurement process. /TRRL/


INTRODUCTION Externally pressurized gas-lubricated thrust bearings (aerostatic bearings) keep the bearing clearance constant under a constant supply pressure. We investigated how controlling the supply pressure with an electro-pneumatic servovalve can be used to dynamically adjust the bearing gap height. As a result of our investigation, we developed an electropneumatic servo-actuator "pneumatic servo bearing actuator (PSBA)" for position control, force control, and acceleration control. This paper describes a new approach to ultraprecise positioning that uses PSBAs with multiple-layered thin bearing pads in a tandem arrangement. The wide range of potential uses of PSBAs requires the use of bearing pads with diameters ranging from small to large, or a bearing with various numbers of the layered pads. We tested the load capacity of single-pad, 3layered-pad, 10-layered-pad, and 30-layeredpad PSBAs. We also tested the dynamic response of the ten-layered-pad actuator.


The infrared spectra of gaseous PF5 and AsF5 have been obtained over the spectral range 30–2000 cm−1, and Raman spectra have been observed for the liquid state. The observed frequencies for both molecules are satisfactorily assigned on the basis of a D3h structure. A normal‐coordinate calculation is made with the help of a valence‐force system and simplifying assumptions about off‐diagonal elements in the potential‐energy matrix. An approximate potential diagram for internal exchange of axial and equatorial fluorine nuclei is evaluated from the potential constants of species E′. From the calculated exchange rates it is concluded that it is unlikely that the axial—equatorial chemical shifts in the NMR spectra of PF5 and AsF5 will be resolved at low temperatures.


Langer–Giedion syndrome results from a microdeletion at 8q24.1 encompassing the EXT1 and the adjacent TRPS1 gene. We report on a boy with an oligo array‐cgh characterized small microdeletion involving EXT1 alone but with some features of Langer–Giedion syndrome suggesting a functional disturbance of TRPS1. This boy, in addition to a mild Langer–Giedion like phenotype, also had some unusual features including prominent toe pads and fat pads on the soles of his feet similar to those described in Pierpont syndrome. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Abstract Based on a difference in shape of the left style, Episymploce sundaica australiensis new subspecies, from Australia and Papua New Guinea, is described. The nominate species, Episymploce sundaica (Hebard), is more widely distributed in Java, Kalimantan (East Borneo), Laos, Okinawa, Philippines, Sabah, Sarawak, Sumatra, Taiwan, and Thailand.


The harbour infrastructures have some structures that still need regular inspection. However, the nature of this environment presents a number of challenges when it comes to determining an accurate vehicle position and consequently performing successful image similarity detection. In addition, the underwater environment is highly dynamic, making place recognition harder because the appearance of a place can change over time. In these close-range operations, the visual sensors have a major impact. There are some factors that degrade the quality of the captured images, but image pre-processing steps are increasingly used. Therefore, in this paper, a purely visual similarity detection with enhancement technique is proposed to overcome the inherent perceptual problems in a port scenario. Considering the lack of available data in this context and to facilitate the variation of environmental parameters, a harbour scenario was simulated using the Stonefish simulator. The experiments were performed on some predefined trajectories containing the poor visibility conditions typical of these scenarios. The place recognition approach improves the performance by up to 10% compared to the results obtained with captured images. In general, it provides a good balance in coping with turbidity and light incidence at low computational cost and achieves a performance of about 80%.


One of the most noticeable recent developments in the field of local government employee relations is the proliferation of residency requirement rules and statutes. ' Many public administrators and local elected officials apparently have become convinced that requiring their employees to reside within the city or county is both good management practice and sound public policy. It is the purpose of this article to examine an additional and significant dimension of the residency issue: the effect of a statutory duty to bargain collectively upon the ability of the public employer to promulgate and enforce a residency requirement. Some 35 states have enacted public employee collective bargaining legislation.2 While these statutes vary widely in form and structure, most all impose upon the public employer the duty to bargain collectively in good faith with the union(s) representing its employees over "wages, hours, and conditions of employment." Public administrators contemplating the establishment or modification of a residency requirement who face this statutory bargaining duty must be fully aware of the nature and the extent of that obligation. I


According to the characteristics of diversity and heterogeneity of the collected data in the online authentication data network, the data set is clustered and analyzed from the aspects of network delay and data flow, and then the data features are extracted. The main problems in the school-enterprise cooperation in the newly-built application-oriented undergraduate colleges are: lack of understanding, imperfect related systems of school-enterprise cooperation, lack of school-enterprise co-led cooperation mechanism and macro management system, etc. According to the existence of the peaks and troughs of the connecting lines of the monitored pedestrians' motion trajectories in the crowd monitoring images, the clustering identification of abnormal trajectory data is realized. The simulation test results show that the proposed method can distinguish the normal behavior trajectories and abnormal behavior trajectories of pedestrians in crowd monitoring images, and the recognition accuracy is high.


The last three decades of the 20th century was a period of momentous social, economic, political and religious turmoil in many African societies. Nigeria is a prime example. Although the economic transformations of this period were perhaps bigger than other kinds of change, religious shifts probably had more remarkable social effects. One particularly noticeable development was the emergence of a new strand of Pentecostalism that serves as a source of political power and as a vehicle for economic mobilisation. Embedded in a theology of materialism and a redefinition of 'money', this new ideology found a fertile ground among local and global corporations struggling to cope with problems such as a devalued currency and political corruption and instability. Using data from ethnographic research on the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), with more than 10,000 congregations worldwide, this chapter shows how the near economic meltdown of the last decades of the 20th century precipitated a massive religious (re)engagement with economic structures and practices in Nigeria.


Organizational innovation and change are becoming more important for a company to stay competitive in knowledge economy.Literature review shows that organizational culture is regarded as a strategic resource for competitiveness.Organizational culture changes throughout the corporate lifecycle.Some studies show that organizational culture is difficult to understand because it is dynamic.Therefore,it is important to understand how organizational culture changes in a dynamic environment. From theviewpoint of diagnosing and developing organizational culture,this paper proposes a theoretical model and basic hypotheses on the relationship between three-layer culture and six main characteristics including flexibility,rigidity,sociability,solidarity,impartiality,and prompting based on the framework of four-layer organizational culture,organizational culture changes,and people of different levels in an organization representing various layers organizational culture.According to in-depth interviews and a pretest with 289 middle and senior managers,an organization culture questionnaire is developed.Data were collected from 527 persons in 5 companies.The study uses SPSS and LISREL to analyze and ensure that the measurement scale of our developed questionnaire has met the reliability and validity requirements.To prove the validity of the proposed theoretical model,LISREL was used to optimize and modify the model. Our analysis results show that various characteristics of organizational culture emerge from different layers of organizational culture.Rigidity,solidarity and prompting emerge from the perspective layer of organizational culture.Impartiality,Solidarity and Flexibility emerge from the system layer of organizational culture.Sociability,Flexibility and Prompting emerge from the personality layer of organizational culture.The result also shows that characters emerge from the same layer of organizational culture.For instance,rigidity mainly emerges from the perspective layer of organizational culture.Impartiality mainly emerges from the system layer of organizational culture.Sociability mainly emerges from the personality layer of organizational culture.It is different that the same character of organizational culture emerges from various layers of organizational culture.Prompting emerges from the perspective layer of organizational culture more strongly than from the personality layer of organizational culture.Flexibility emerges from the personality layer of organizational culture more strongly from the personality layer of organizational culture.Solidarity emerges from the perspective layer of organizational culture more strongly than from the system layer of organizational culture. In summary,although people of different levels in an organization represent different layers of organizational culture,organizational culture can be represented in a three-layer structure.The relationship among layers is organic,systematic,and concurrent.The correlation between two layers is different.This paper further analyzes the characters of six cultural situations formed from the conflict among different layers of organization culture.The findings of this study have theoretical value and practical meaning in the area of organizational culture analysis.


With the development of human computer interaction technology,the research of understanding for human's gesture has been an important task for discussion.This paper proposed a new method for recognizing of hand alphabet gestures,which based on multi-weighted neurons.The method applied Fourier-descriptors for feature extraction and combined with the classification algorithm of multi-weighted neurons for recognizing,the results showed that the method performed well.


According to monitoring data of groundwater in the last 10 years in Guiyang city,the dynamic characteristics of karst groundwater on water table,flow and water quality were studied.Through analysis,dynamic characteristics of water table were multi-peak type,single peak type and flat type.Dynamic characteristic of flow was zigzag type.On the basis of groundwater quality standards,there were three ion concentrations in excess of the quality standards.They were nitrate,nitrite and ammonia.On the other hand,according to analysis,it is found dynamic changes in relation to supply,run-off,drain,rainfall,topography and human activities.


The possible effects of violent video gameplay on adolescents are intensely debated, highlighting the difficulties in the violent media research. The current dissertation posits that media may sort effects in more subtle and less direct ways than thus far studied. It employed a novel perspective to investigate the possible effects of violent video games on adolescents' social outcomes, by looking beyond aggression and by focusing on four social-cognitive skills: emotion recognition, inhibitory control, perspective-taking, and empathy for pain. The development of these skills is particularly salient during early adolescence. If such development would be disturbed by exposure to violent video games, it may underlie antisocial behavior.

Integration of insights from media psychology, developmental psychology, and neuroscience led to an expectation that exposure to violent video games would be negatively related to and would have a negative impact on the four social-cognitive skills. To investigate how exposure to violent video games may influence these social-cognitive skills, we took a multi-level approach, by investigating possible effects on a self-report level (questionnaires), a behavioral level (reaction times), and a brain level (ERP responses). To test our hypotheses, we performed four studies employing various study designs: correlational, experimental, and quasi-experimental in different adolescent samples and in one young adult sample.

The outcomes of this project indicated that the possible impact of violent video game exposure on adolescents' social-cognitive skills is limited and may be observed only in terms of short-term effects: less accurate perspective-taking and lower empathy for pain reactions measured immediately after the game. Further, habitual exposure to violent video games was related to lower empathy for pain reactions, but only in young adults, not in adolescents. Contrary to our expectations, more frequent habitual exposure to violent video games was related to better inhibitory control over emotional expressions in adolescents. Moreover, we also tested the possible effects of exposure to antisocial content in other media, beyond video games, and found that it was related to less accurate emotion recognition and lower empathy for pain reactions in adolescents.

While this project brings new insights which could enrich scientific and public debates on violent media effects on youth, future longitudinal studies are needed to better understand possible 'traces' of violent video games in adolescent development, considering individual developmental trajectories and differences between young people.


This paper introduces the general situation, process principle and process flow of tail gas system in sulfur recovery unit,analyzes various factors which influence the safe operation of the tail gas system,and puts forward some safety countermeasures.


Abstract Objective Apathy symptoms are common in healthy older adults and may manifest independently of depressive symptoms. Perceived social support is considered a protective factor against adverse health outcomes in aging. We investigated the differential associations of apathy and depressive symptoms with perceived social support in older adults. Method The sample (n = 295) included community dwelling healthy older adults. Apathy was assessed with the Apathy Evaluation Scale, depression with the Geriatric Depression Scale, and perceived social support with the Medical Outcomes Study-Social Support Survey. Results Fully adjusted multiple linear regression revealed that, when jointly modeled as predictors, both apathy (standardized β= −0.214 p<.05) and depressive symptoms (standardized β= −0.157 p<.05) had significant negative associations with perceived social support. Discussion We provide the first evidence that apathy and depressive symptoms have independent associations with perceived social support in older adults.


The possibility of potassium fluoride microphase application as a modifier of a piezoelectric quartz crystal resonator, which is selective to vapour of based volatile organic compounds in the presence of water vapour, is studied. As an additional progressive impact on the system to increase the sensitivity of the microbalance, it is suggested to form the modifier layers of different thickness (mass). It is founded out that the increase in mass of potassium fluoride microphase changes the sensitivity of the sensor to selected analytes vapour differently. Unlike other substances investigated, amines are adsorbed by the surface of potassium fluoride coating without penetrating into the meso- and micropores. The polarity of analytes, the presence of hydrated functional groups and the residual solvent in the microphase affect the sensitivity of the microbalance in a greater degree. For detecting the vapour of alkylamines and monoethanolamine in gas environment it is preferable to use the sensor with a low-mass potassium fluoride film. In order to reduce the detection limit of the microbalance of mixed vapour of ketones and alkylacetates, a high-mass potassium fluoride film is recommended. Kinetic "visual prints" of a set of two sensors responses with different-mass potassium fluoride microphases have been built and divided into three groups. It is established that geometric form of "visual prints" of sensor responses does not depend on the concentration of substances in the mixture, but their area does. Kinetic "visual print" of sensor responces in monoethanol-amine vapour differs greatly from others. A new kinetic identification parameter A is proposed and calculated for all investigated analytes. A method of high-selective detection of monoethanolamine vapour has been proposed by a set of two sensors with different-mass coating in gas mixtures as well as in various samples containing it.


Background: Reprogramming of metabolism is illustrated in many types of cancer and is associated with the clinical outcomes of cancer patients. However, the prognostic significance of pyrimidine metabolism signaling pathway in patients with lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is unclear.Methods: Using the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) datasets, we determined the prognostic significance of pyrimidine metabolic rate limiting enzymes in patients with lung cancer. The enrichment of pyrimidine metabolism signaling pathway was analyzed by gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA). The expression profiles of pyrimidine metabolic rate limiting enzymes were identified from Affymetrix gene expression data and RNA-seq data. The Kaplan-Meier Plotter was used to identify the prognostic significance of the pyrimidine metabolic rate limiting enzymes. Spearman's correlation and multivariate cox regression were used to determine the correlation efficiency of pyrimidine metabolic rate limiting enzymes.Results: The pyrimidine metabolism signaling pathway is significantly enriched in LUAD tissues, but not in lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC) tissues. Compared with normal lung tissues, the pyrimidine metabolic rate limiting enzymes are highly expressed in lung tumor tissues. Furthermore, the high expression levels of pyrimidine metabolic rate limiting enzymes are associated with unfavorable prognosis in patients with LUAD. Moreover, we demonstrate that the hypo-DNA methylation, DNA amplification and TP53 mutation are contributing to the high expression levels of pyrimidine metabolic rate limiting enzymes in cancer cells. Finally, we reveal the significant connections between the pyrimidine metabolic rate limiting enzymes. Comprehensively, the pyrimidine metabolic rate limiting enzymes are highly expressed in patients with bladder cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, liver cancer and stomach cancer. And the high expression levels of pyrimidine metabolic rate limiting enzymes are associated with unfavorable prognosis in patients with liver cancer. Conclusions: Pyrimidine metabolism signaling pathway is associated with the development of lung adenocarcinoma. Pyrimidine metabolic rate limiting enzymes CAD, DTYMK, RRM1, RRM2, TK1, TYMS, UCK2, NR5C2 and TK2 have significant prognostic effects in patients with lung adenocarcinoma.


Social networking sites such as Orkut, Tribe, or Facebook allow millions of individuals to create online profiles and share personal information with vast networks of friends and, often, unknown numbers of strangers. Some of the information revealed inside these networks is private and it is possible that corporations could use learning algorithms on the released data to predict undisclosed private information. To find the patterns of information revelation and their security implications, we analyze the online behavior of wiki-vote data set and evaluate the amount of information they disclose and study their dimension used for reduction. In this paper we conclude that dimension reduction is one of the factors through we can achieve the security and maintain the integrity of dataset. We highlight various Non-Linear dimension reduction techniques with quantum cryptography to produce the desire result and show the comparative result with linear dimension


In this paper, some factors affecting electrical pulsing activation were analyzed, and the experimental procedure for activation was established. The results showed that one pulse was enough to activate pig oocytes. The best results could be obtained if the pulse strength was 1250~1500V/cm in electrolyte medium(0.3mol/L Mannitol+0.1mmol/L CaCl 2+0.1mmol/L MgSO4), the oocyte age was 54 h.


Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Nuclear Science and Engineering; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2008.


A new di-block glycopolymer,poly( gluconamidoethylmethacrylate)-b-poly[2-( diethylamino) ethyl methacrylate]-co-poly [2-( dimethylamino) ethyl methacrylate][PGAMA-b-P( DMAEMA-co-DEAEMA),PGME] was synthesized. The chemical composition and the molecular weight of the glycopolymer were characterized by nuclear magnetic resonance(1H NMR) and gel permeation chromatography( GPC). The interactions of PGME and proteins were investigated by monitoring the turbidity value of the mixture solutions.PGME showed the specific biomolecular recognition ability with Concanavalin A compared with bovine serum albumin( BSA) at p H = 8. 3. When the environmental p H value changed to 7. 3,the ability of PGME specific biomolecular recognition was suppressed and PGME exhibited the behavior of non-specific binding with bovine serum albumin and Concanavalin A. Dynamic light scattering and atomic force microscopy( AFM) tests were performed to investigate the properties of the PGME-protein complex aggregations,it would be a promising to design p H-sensitive drug delivery system of saccharides.


The unit comprises an ingoing roller bench with a racked pusher arm 1 which feeds the workpiece 11 to the separation unit 5 via alignment means 3. The separated workpiece is received on a wider outgoing bench 8 where its height, level and curvature are controlled. The unit may be used for separating I section beams 11 into structural tees 12 where on thicker sections the cold separation unit 5 such as a bandsaw does not affect the metallurgical properties and provides a clean 90 cut.


In this paper, we discuss ion effects relevant to future storage rings and linear colliders. We first review the conventional ion effects observed in present storage rings and then discuss how these effects will differ in the next generation of rings and linacs. These future accelerators operate in a new regime because of the high current long bunch trains and the very small transverse beam emittances. Usually, storage rings are designed with ion clearing gaps to prevent ion trapping between bunch trains or beam revolutions. Regardless, ions generated within a single bunch train can have significant effects. The same is true in transport lines and linacs, where typical vacuum pressures are relatively high. Amongst other effects, we address the tune spreads due to the ions and the resulting filamentation which can severely limit emittance correction techniques in future linear colliders, the bunch-to-bunch coupling due to the ions which can cause a multi-bunch instability with fast growth rates, and the betatron coupling and beam halo creation which limit the vertical emittance and beam lifetimes.


In September 1988, the Danish theater group, Odin Teatret, showed Talabot for the first time.' Talabot is a play about the last 40 years of world history told through the biography of a woman anthropologist born in 1948. She is Danish, with an international professional training, fieldwork experience in India and, especially, Iceland, and a relatively successful career. The dramas in her life are reflections of the historical dramas around her. All the wars, killings, and suppressions following World War II form the sonorous background of her generation's history, and of the performance. Living with women's liberation and the global oppression of the weak, her choice to become an anthropologist reflects a fundamental choice between violence and science in a world in crisis.


The utilization of information and communication technology can bring good results for the industry, particularly providers of online hotel reservation service sites in Indonesia. The use of this online site is intended to highlight the brand of a company, as is done by GoIndonesia to create brand awareness in costumers' mind. Increasing the costumers' awareness towards a brand is a way to influence costumers' buying purchase intention. The purpose of this study is to determine the brand awareness at www.goindonesia.com, knowing costumers' purchase intention to do online hotel reservation services in Indonesia, to know the effect of brand awareness on purchase intention as well as to know the brand management conducted by www.goindonesia.com. The type of research uses in this study is descriptive and causal with a sample of 385 respondents. The method uses is quantitative using the instrument as much as 17 item questionnaire statement, by using a sampling technique which is the nonprobability sampling and processes using multiple linear regression analysis technique. ISSN : 2355-9357 e-Proceeding of Management : Vol.2, No.3 Desember 2015 | Page 2611


Describes the experiences of an organization which made the decision to establish a new production facility and empower its workforce using self‐managed work teams. Elaborates on some of the selection issues surrounding this site and includes the reasoning used to select employees for this facility. Finally, relates recommendations for making selection decisions in this type of situation. Fully expects that SMWT and other flexible/adaptive structures will become more and more popular in the future, and that managers need to know how to select employees to maximize the effectiveness of this structure.


IP multicast dictates high-end routers and incurs high administrative overhead, which prevent them from being deployed in many video streaming scenarios. In this paper, we study the problem of computing the multipath multicast routes for streaming videos in Software-Defined Networks (SDNs), which adopt less expensive switches and reduce administrative overhead for lower CAPEX/OPEX. The objectives of the considered problem are robustness, load balance, SDN compatibility, and adaptiveness. We formulate this routing problem into a mathematical optimization problem, and propose two algorithms to address this problem. We implement the proposed algorithms on a popular OpenFlow controller to demonstrate its practicality, and we conduct extensive experiments to evaluate the proposed algorithms. The experiment results clearly show the merits of our algorithms over the IP multicast, e.g., we observe: (i) frame loss rate reduction between 19% and 95%, (ii) video quality improvement between 4 dB and 15 dB, (iii) sink throughput increase between 25% and 66%, and (iv) maximal link utilization reduction between 15% and 50%. We also show the tradeoff between optimality and run time of the two proposed algorithms: one of them is more suitable for smaller and more static networks, and the other one is more suitable for larger and more dynamic networks.


ICT is tools or medias that facilitate teaching and learning process in the classroom. ICT includes software application, computers, radio, television, telephony, CD ROM, audio or video clips, computer, and internet. Utilizing this technology is not improve students' achievement but also their character, especially language ethic. Students' language ethic has relationship to linguistics aspects. In semantics, the study tells about how polite language used to communicate with other people in the real context. In pragmatics, the study tells about how polite language used to communicate with older and younger people based on the situation. There were some words and expressions can be used and can be not used to communicate with other people. One way to teach semantics and pragmatics was used ICT in the calssroom. Using ICT that input islamic value can develop the students' character indirectly. Hopefully, all of the English Lecturer using ICT as English Teaching Media at Islamic University.


Julie Selwyn highlights the importance of recognising children's positive relationships and ensuring that children are connected to adults who will offer a long-term commitment.


We have searched ≈8200 deg2 for high proper motion (≈0.″5–2.″7 year−1) T dwarfs by combining first-epoch data from the Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) 3π Survey, the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) All-Sky Point Source Catalog, and the WISE Preliminary Data Release. We identified two high proper motion objects with the very red (W1 − W2) colors characteristic of T dwarfs, one being the known T7.5 dwarf GJ 570D. Near-IR spectroscopy of the other object (PSO J043.5395+02.3995 ≡ WISEP J025409.45+022359.1) reveals a spectral type of T8, leading to a photometric distance of 7.2 ± 0.7 pc. The 2.″56 year−1 proper motion of PSO J043.5+02 is the second highest among field T dwarfs, corresponding to a tangential velocity of 87 ± 8 km s−1. According to the Besançon galaxy model, this velocity indicates that its galactic membership is probably in the thin disk, with the thick disk an unlikely possibility. Such membership is in accord with the near-IR spectrum, which points to a surface gravity (age) and metallicity typical of the field population. We combine 2MASS, Sloan Digital Sky Survey, WISE, and PS1 astrometry to derive a preliminary parallax of 171 ± 45 mas (5.8+2.0− 1.2 pc), the first such measurement using PS1 data. The proximity and brightness of PSO J043.5+02 will facilitate future characterization of its atmosphere, variability, multiplicity, distance, and kinematics. The modest number of candidates from our search suggests that the immediate (∼10 pc) solar neighborhood does not contain a large reservoir of undiscovered T dwarfs earlier than about T8.


An existing gap found in current literature is whether or not prevention-oriented methods have been implemented within crime hot-spots and if these methods have been implemented, it is unknown how effective have they been. The following paper is an evaluative study conducted to examine the use and effectiveness of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) methods when implemented by police departments within crime hot-spots. This was done by distributing an on-line survey to 56 Police Chiefs and researching the websites of 136 police departments located within ten counties of the western United States. The results indicated that the use of CPTED methods within crime hot-spots is occurring, but that additional research will be needed to fully evaluate the level of effectiveness CPTED methods have when implemented within crime hot-spots.


ABSTRACT This article explores how purpose-built museums interpret the story of colonial imprisonment in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Prisons integral to the 100-year French colonial occupation, and the subsequent American War, have been re-purposed, destroyed, or obscured. In response, memorial museums have an important role presenting prison history to international tourists and local visitors alike. Our approach interprets artefacts relating to restraint and torture, the reconstruction of prison cells, and the use of photography in three museums in the city—the War Remnants Museum, the Ton Duc Thang Museum, and the Museum of Southern Vietnamese Women—each featuring recreations of the Tiger Cages from a further notorious prison site, some 200 kilometres southeast of HCMC on the Côn Đảo archipelago. Memoirs, photographs, objects, and plaques from prisons in HCMC and Côn Đảo offer domestic and international tourists narratives stories of Vietnamese resistance to imprisonment. Considering the way former prison sites and museums memorialising prisons can be taken together as a series, we use the concept of the "penalscape" to indicate the contextual links between prison, education, and political struggle in an abolitionist framework.


This study applies the Shapley value within the context of class-group based peer assessments by treating it as a cooperative game and giving fairness to each group member to cushion the effect of coalitions. Based on scenario analysis, the Shapley Value method is used to identify the fair marks which should be given/allocated to individuals with in groups where there is uneven participation. Scenarios are presented using two and three student member cases with situations under pinning the free rider problem. The Shapley value concept as applied in this study provides what may be viewed as a contribution consistent mark allocation for group assignments.