The main feature of Pythagorean fuzzy sets is that it is characterized by five parameters, namely membership degree, nonmembership degree, hesitancy degree, strength of commitment about membership, and direction of commitment. In this paper, we first investigate four existing comparison methods for ranking Pythagorean fuzzy sets and point out by examples that the method proposed by Yager, which considers the influence fully of the five parameters, is more efficient than the other ones. Later, we propose a variety of distance measures for Pythagorean fuzzy sets and Pythagorean fuzzy numbers, which take into account the five parameters of Pythagorean fuzzy sets. Based on the proposed distance measures, we present some similarity measures of Pythagorean fuzzy sets. Furthermore, a multiple criteria Pythagorean fuzzy group decision‐making approach is proposed. Finally, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the validity and applicability of the presented group decision‐making method.


Malaria is still a major burden causing the death of nearly 655,000 people each year, mostly in children under the age of five, and affecting those living in the poorest countries [1]. Currently, the major obstacles to malaria control and elimination are the absence of a protective vaccine, the spread of parasite resistance to anti-malarial drugs and the mosquito resistance to insec‐ ticides [2]. Controlling mosquito vectors is fundamental to reduce mosquito-borne diseases by targeting vectorial capacity and hence the transmission. Vector control through the use of chemicals for mosquito bed nets and indoor residual spraying is still the cornerstone of malaria prevention [1]. Unfortunately, the extensive use of insecticides since the 1950s has led to the development of strong resistance worldwide hence representing a major public health problem where insecticidal vector control is implemented. Here, we propose to review the current level, distribution and mechanisms of insecticide resistance in malaria vectors and address their impact on the efficacy of vector control interventions. Strategies to prevent and/or delay the spread of insecticide resistance in natural mosquito populations are also discussed.


In this paper, the participation of African countries' in the information society is presented as a major challenge, and, in recent years, telecommunications have experienced a huge growth on the continent. In Cote d'Ivoire, for example, investment in this sector reached a total of almost 1.5 billion Euros over ten years. However, although the economy of the ICT-related sector is in good health, the emergence and scope of Internet scams (particularly among the younger generations) represents a real threat to the country's development.


In this paper, a new structure for multilevel voltage source inverter is introduced, which produces more number of levels at output voltage waveform with reduced number of IGBTs and gate drivers. The number of required IGBTs and drivers against voltage levels is very important factors in designing of multilevel inverter, because IGBTs and drivers define the cost, reliability, circuit size, installation area and control complexity. For proposed multilevel inverter, three methods for determination of voltage sources values are presented. A comparison is presented between proposed structure and the classical multilevel inverter structures and another structure are presented to reflect the merits of the presented structure. The validity of the proposed multilevel inverter is verified with computer simulation and experimental results. Fundamental frequency-switching method has been applied to the new topologies to trigger the power switches for controlling the voltage levels generated on the output. Cite this work as: Rasoul Shalchi Alishah, Daryoosh Nazarpour, and Seyyed Hossein Hosseini, "Design of New Multilevel Voltage Source Inverter Structure Using Fundamental Frequency-Switching Strategy," TSEST Transaction on Electrical and Electronic Circuits and Systems, Vol. 3(7), Pp. 35-41, Aug., 2013. References: [1]  M. D. Madhav, P.K. Steimer, T.A. Lipo, "Hybrid Multilevel Power Conversion System, A Competitive Solution for High-Power Applications," IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl. , vol. 36,no. 3, pp. 834-841, 2000. [2]  S. Daher, J. Schmid, F.L.M. Antunes , "Multilevel inverter topologies for stand-alone PV systems," IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron. , vol. 55, no. 7, pp. 2703–2712, 2008. [3]  M. N. A. Kadir, S. Mekhilef, H. W. Ping, "Voltage vector control of a hybrid three-stage eighteen-level inverter by vector decomposition" IET Power Electron., vol.3, no. 4, pp.601- 611, 2010. [4]  E. Babaei, M. T. Haque, S. H. Hosseini, "A novel structure for multilevel converters," proc. Int. conf. electrical machines and systems , pp. 1278–1283, 2005. [5]  E. Babaei, "A cascade multilevel converter topology with reduced number of switches," IEEE Trans. Power Electron. , vol.23, no.6, pp. 2657-2664, 2008. [6] A. Nabae, I. Takahashi, H. Akagi, "A new neutral-point-clamped PWM inverter," IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl. , vol. IA-17,no. 5, pp. 518–523, 1981. [7] T. A. Meynard, H. Foch, "Multi-level conversion: high voltage choppers and voltage-source inverters," Power Electron. Spec. Conf. , pp. 397-403, 1992. [8] F. Z. Peng, J.-S. Lai, J.W. McKeever, J. Van. Coevering "A multilevel voltage-source inverter with separate DC sources for static var generation," IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl. , vol. 32, no. 5, pp. 1130–1138, 1996. [9] M.G. Hosseini Aghdam, S.H. Fathi, G. B. Gharehpetian, "Comparison of OMTHD and OHSW harmonic optimization techniques in multi-level voltage-source inverter with non-equal DC sources", in Proc. IEEE Power Electron. Spec. Conf., pp. 587 – 591, 2007. [10] Y. Hinago, H. Koizumi, "A single phase multilevel inverter using switched series/parallel dc voltage sources', IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron. , Vol. 58, No. 8, pp. 2643–2650, 2010. [11] J. Ebrahimi, E. Babaei, G. B.Gharehpetian, "A New Multilevel Converter Topology With Reduced number of Power Electronic Components" , IEEE Trans. Ind.Electron. , vol. 59, no. 2, pp. 655-667, 2012. [12] K.K. Gupta, S. Jain, "A multilevel Voltage Source Inverter (VSI) to maximize the number of levels in output waveform", Int. Journal Electrical Power and Energy Systems , vol. 44, no. 1, pp. 25–36, 2013. [13] E. Babaei, S. H. Hosseini, G. B. Gharehpetian, M. T. Haque, M. Sabahi, "Reduction of dc voltage sources and switches in asymmetrical multilevel converters using a novel topology, " Electric Power Systems Research , vol. 77, no. 8,pp. 1073–1085, 2007. [14] W.K. Choi, F.S. Kang, "H-bridge based multilevel inverter using PWM switching functions', Telecommunications Energy Conference , pp. 1–5, 2009. [15] S. Mekhilef, A. M. Omar , N. A. Rahim, "Modeling of three-phase uniform symmetrical sampling digital PWM for power converter," IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron. , vol. 54, no. 1, pp.427-432, 2007. [16] Mekhilef S. and Abdul Kadir M. N. "Novel vector control method for three-stage hybrid cascaded multilevel inverter," IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron. , vol. 58, no. 4, pp.1339-1349, 2010. [17] Z. Du, L. M. Tolbert, and J. N. Chiasson, "Active harmonic elimination for multilevel converters," IEEE Trans. on Power Electron. , vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 459–469, 2006. [18] E. Villanueva, P. Correa, J. Rodriguez, Pacas M., "Control of a single-phase cascaded H-bridge multilevel inverter for grid-connected photo-voltaic systems," IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron. , vol. 56, no. 11, pp. 4399–4406, 2009. [19] D. C. Ludois, J. K. Reed, G. Venkataramanan, "Hierarchical control of bridge-of-bridge multilevel power converters," IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron. , vol. 57, no. 8, pp. 2679–2690, 2010.


The relaxation of the magnetization of antiferromagnetic nanoparticles owing to thermal agitation is treated via the Fokker-Planck equation describing the evolution of the distribution function of the magnetization orientations of an individual nanoparticle. By solving this equation using matrix-continued fractions, the correlation function of the longitudinal component of the magnetization, its characteristic relaxation times, and dynamic susceptibility are calculated for arbitrary dc field orientations across wide ranges of frequencies, temperatures, and damping. Furthermore, a simple analytic equation for the dynamic susceptibility at low frequencies is also proposed. It is shown that a dc field applied at an angle to the easy axis of the particle alters essentially the magnetization dynamics of the particle owing to coupling of the magnetization reversal mode with the precessional modes.


We report a giant elastocaloric effect near to room temperature in a polycrystalline NiMn-In-Ga ferromagnetic shape memory alloy. A maximum entropy change value close to 32 JK-1kg-1 was obtained by applying a 100 MPa compressive stress. Moreover, we report a value of 4.9 K for a reversible adiabatic temperature change. These values are compared with those reported for the magnetocaloric effect within a high magnetic field. The strong sensitivity in the isothermal entropy change and adiabatic temperature change to the uniaxial stress allow the alloy to present remarkable elastocaloric effect strength values of|ΔSme|/|Δσ|=320 JK-1kg-1GPa-1 and |ΔTad|/|Δσ|= 49.0 KGPa-1.


This paper presents the possibility of applying max- imum dynamic errors to establish a hierarchy of measuring systems intended for dynamic measurements. To determine max- imum errors, it is necessary to apply strictly defined calibrating signals. The shape analysis and necessary and sufficient condi- tions for such signals to exist are presented with the integral- square-error criterion as an example. Moreover, limitations im- posed on calibrating signals depending on the low-pass, high-pass, or bandpass types of calibrated systems are also discussed. The values of the maximum errors determined by means of the signals mentioned above make it possible to create accuracy classes and the resulting hierarchy of dynamic accuracy, valid regardless of the measured signal shape. The solutions presented in the paper refer to both measuring analog systems and systems with analog-to-digital (MI)) conversion. The paper presents a theory, the application of which makes working out such hierarchies possible. The theory is based on the possibility of determining maximum values of some criteria for dynamic errors. These values are a basis for determining dynamic accuracy classes, similar to a class index in static measurement, and hierarchies resulting from them. In the application of this theory, detailed solutions of determining the maximum value of the integral-square-error criterion as an example are discussed.


In an era when stock market wealth has seemed to grow on trees—and trillions have vanished as quickly as falling leaves—it's an apt time to ask ourselves, where does wealth come from? More precisely, where does the wealth of public corporations come from? Who creates it? To judge by the current arrangement in corporate America, one might suppose capital creates wealth—which is strange, because a pile of capital sitting there creates nothing. Yet capital providers—stockholders—lay claim to most wealth that public corporations generate. Corporations are believed to exist to maximize returns to shareholders. This is the law of the land, much as the divine right of kings was once the law of the land. In the dominant paradigm of business, it is not in the least controversial. Though it should be. What do shareholders contribute, to justify the extraordinary allegiance they receive? They take risk, we're told. They put their money on the line, so corporations might grow and prosper. Let's test the truth of this with a little quiz: Stockholders fund major public corporations—True or false? False. Or, actually, a tiny bit true—but for the most part, massively false. In fact, "investing" dollars don't go to AT&T but to other speculators. Equity investments reach a public corporation only when new common stock is sold—which for major corporations is a rare event. Among the Dow Jones industrials, only a handful have sold any new common stock in thirty years. Many have sold none in fifty years. The stock market works like a used car market, as former accounting professor Ralph Estes observes in Tyranny of the Bottom Line. When you buy a 1997 Ford Escort, the money goes not to Ford but to the previous owner of the car. Ford gets the buyer's money only when it sells a new car. Similarly, companies get stockholders' money only when they sell new common stock. According to figures from the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission, in any given year about one in one hundred dollars listed on public markets reaches a corporation. In other words, ninety-nine out of one hundred "invested" dollars are speculative.1 That's today. But the past wasn't much different. One accounting study of the steel


Region-based segmentation plays a fundamental role in polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) image interpretation. In this paper, an efficient and adaptive statistical superpixel merging approach with edge penalty for PolSAR image segmentation is proposed. First, we introduce a directional span-driven adaptive (DSDA) window into the edge detection and produce the superpixels using the Pol-ASLIC with edge constraint. Based on the initial superpixel partition, pixels belonging to the same superpixel should be merged immediately. Since the statistical region merging (SRM) method exhibits promising segmentation performance in solving significant noise corruption, we choose this framework to achieve statistical superpixel merging for PolSAR data in the second stage. However, the traditional SRM method starts from the pixels and cannot be directly applied to PolSAR data with multiplicative speckle noise and polarimetric information. This research proposes to define a new dissimilarity measure between the superpixels, which takes the edge penalty into consideration. Therefore, we have a reasonable and accurate merging order for the superpixel pairs. With regard to the merging predicate of superpixels, a polarimetric homogeneity measurement is used to redefine the merging threshold, making the merging predicate and the merging threshold adaptive to PolSAR image content. More importantly, the image complexity parameter of the traditional SRM method is eliminated, making the proposed approach be free of parameters and easy to use. Experimental results shows that our proposed approach can effectively improve the computation efficiency and segmentation accuracy in comparison with the state-of-the-art merging-based methods.


The decay kinetics of intermediates produced under photolysis of benzophenone ( B ) dissolved in soft rubber poly(ethylene- co -butylene) films (abbreviated as E ) was studied by ns laser flash photolysis in the temperature range of 263–313 K. We monitored decay kinetics of the triplet state of^3 B* and of benzophenone ketyl free radical BH˙ . The fast exponential decay of^3 B* (life-time τ _T ≈ 200 ns) is accompanied by hydrogen atom abstraction from E with a formation of BH˙ and a polymer free radical R˙ . Decay of^3 B* was followed by decay of BH˙ in the polymer cage (geminate recombination) with τ _c ≈ 1 μs. Cage recombination in turn was followed by a decay of BH˙ in the polymer bulk ( τ _b ≈ 100 μs). Fortunately, all three processes are separated in time. Both cage and bulk reactions were decelerated by the application of magnetic field (MF) of 0.2 T by approximately 20%. Geminate recombination was fit to the first-order kinetic law, and recombination in the solvent bulk fits well to the second-order law. Both geminate recombination and recombination in the solvent bulk are predominantly a reaction between BH˙ and R˙ . It was assumed that the reaction radius ρ _12 and a mutual diffusion coefficient D _12 of BH˙ and R˙ are the same for the cage and bulk recombination, respectively. This led to an estimation of ρ _12 = 3.3 nm and D _12 = 1 × 10^−7 cm^2 s^−1. These values are discussed. We obtained activation energy, E _act, equal to 6 kcal mol^−1 and 7 kcal mol^−1 for cage decay and for recombination in the polymer bulk, respectively. These E _act coincide with each other within experimental error of their determination (±0.5 kcal mol^−1). This indicates the same diffusion character in the cage and in the polymer bulk. It was demonstrated that an exponential model of cage effect sufficiently describes the obtained experimental data in rubber.


This article describes the electrical installations on the Pont de Normandie, the Normandy Bridge over the River Seine at Le Havre. The bridge is 2.2km long, whose 850m span between its two 215m high supporting towers makes it the world's largest cable-stayed bridge. Its appearance is especially impressive at night, when its dramatic blue and white lighting illuminates its towers and cables. The electrical installation for the bridge cost #3.85M, of which two thirds was for the power distribtuion and lighting systems. The lighting was designed by the famous French architect and lighting designer Y Kersale, who combined light sources to make the bridge look like a vast two-masted yacht at night. 730 lights below the bridge platform flash through blue filters 20 to 60 times per second at a frequency determined by the traffic flow across the bridge. The main lighting on the bridge's approach roads comes from 136 luminaires, mounted on 12m high poles, 84 luminaires near the bridge's centre are mounted on the cable stays themselves. The innovative light fittings are not only aesthetic, but also designed to survive winds up to 184kph and withstand fatigue stress caused by winds and traffic vibrations. The article also describes the bridge's power supply of up to 1600kW, of which 600kW is for lighting.


Cloud computing is a usage of very large scalable and virtualized resources in a dynamic way over the internet. Due to the rapid growth of cloud environment usage many tasks require to be executed by the available resources. At the same time it should be possible to achieve better performance, optimizing the servers, reduce migration, support green computing, better resource utilization etc. So resource allocation using virtual machine plays a most important role in cloud environment because it should allocate proper resources to various machines to get maximum benefit. Keywords—Cloud computing, skewness, Resource Management, Virtualization, Green computing.


In this article authors researched maintenance system of the multirole F-16 aircraft. For the study purposes, the F-16 maintenance system model has been created. From this model, the main analysis domain was derived, comprising F-16 fault troubleshooting process. Considering such an analysis domain, authors presented tools and procedures, how to identify hazard sources, in order to specify main hazards. The main goal of this article was to provide hazard identification process results as a hazard characteristics which include: a group of hazard sources, specified hazards and the most probable/predictable consequences and severities of the hazard activation.


Introduction CHEATING AND PLAGIARISM are endemic at many American colleges and universities (see Collison 1990; Bunn, Caudill, and Gropper 1992), despite numerous rules attempting to reduce such behavior. The central problem, of course, is the cost of stringently monitoring cheating on examinations or term papers. The role of policing, and its cost, in the setting of what may usefully be thought of as "optimal cheating limits" is an important but often overlooked feature of policies designed to reduce or eliminate cheating behavior. In a world of costly and imperfect enforcement, university policy makers need to seek methods that make compliance cost-effective. This is particularly so, given recent financial cutbacks facing American universities. Cheating is usually difficult to detect without costly monitoring and investigation costs. Class size is often large and it is difficult to detect students purchasing a paper or cheating on an exam. One solution is for the university to be less tolerant of cheating by setting tougher sanctions. With more stringent sanctions, a smaller amount of enforcement cost would be necessary to achieve a given reduction in cheating. (1) For example, a school whose ethics code presently states that an F should be given for the individual paper or exam in which plagiarism or cheating occurred might consider giving a course grade of F to a convicted cheater or an even stiffer penalty-expulsion with the cheating incident recorded on the student's permanent record. II Enforcing the Limits AS ALREADY NOTED, without stiff sanctions, many students might choose to cheat at levels that are nonoptimally large from a social perspective. Specifically, individual students will choose levels (equating marginal private benefits and marginal private costs) that are in excess of those that equate marginal social benefits and costs. This is a classic "externality" case in the jargon of economics. Even with noncurved classes there would be a grade inflation effect damaging the meaning of performance at any grade level (e.g., an A would come to mean less). But the externality is particularly evident in the case of "a curved class," in which the cheater might well impose a lower grade on one or more other students. What is the optimal "cheating" limit? It would be where the marginal social cost and benefits of cheating were equated, from an economist's perspective. (Note that this includes the benefits to the cheater as true benefits, perhaps a philosophical difficulty for some.) Suppose one takes the private benefits from cheating, properly measured (i.e., how much does the cheater really "benefit" from his or her actions?) as being small and views the social damages to other students as being large. In this case, if regulatory compliance were achievable costlessly, the optimal cheating limit would be zero, or something quite near that. The crucial feature of our model, which incorporates the fact that achieving the optimal cheating limit requires monitoring and enforcement, comes from the recognition that the average cheating level will depend on both tolerance of cheating (reflected in the penalties imposed) and on the cost of policing cheating. Formally, let the average cheating level in a classroom, C, be a function of both the tolerance for cheating, T, and the level of policing, P. (2) This function is given by C(T, P). Over relevant ranges of T and P, it is reasonable to assume that C increases at a decreasing rate with respect to T and decreases at a decreasing rate with respect to P. That is, the rate of cheating would increase at a decreasing rate with tolerance, since in this case the benefits of cheating would be declining in the number of people attempting to cheat (there would be fewer people worth cheating from as the number attempting to cheat rises, since attempting to cheat implies less study effort). Hence, as more attempt to cheat, the return to personal study rises. …


Achieving a tremendous box office success in China, Na Zha is a mythical movie with Chinese characteristics, showing the social culture of China, analyzing the current ideological situation of the modern Chinese people, but it flopped in the American market. This paper analyses the gains and losses in the translation of the film Nezha from the perspective of culture.


This article attempts to share some light on how we, as professionals can be together with people striving with substance abuse in a way that it makes sense and a possible difference. I will pause for a moment by the question as to how can we be together with people striving with substance abuse in a manner that our practice has relevance for them in their everyday lives? We are living in a fastchanging society and world, often too fast, by that meaning that we not always know what we mean by relevance, and who determines what is relevant? In working as a therapist with people battling drug- and alcohol addiction, I have witnessed many times that professionals possess the notion, that they know the answer to questions such as, what are proper codes in being together with…, and who defines what is relevant or not in treatment? As a clinician, I prefer a more collaborative approach the nature of postmodern thinking, as opposed to exercise interventions. I will shed some light on how to understand psychiatry and psychotherapy as a contrast to the postmodern collaborativeapproach. I think it is much more fruitful when we take a humbler position in working with people, realizing that people change all the time, systems comprised by people change rapidly all the time socially, culturally, economically e.g. Instead of thinking that we know it all, we rather should acquirea more curios position in which nothing is certain but everything possible.


A Piece of Heaven, a Piece of Earth. The English Catholic Novel in the Twentieth Century.

The genre of the Catholic novel emerged in the mid-nineteenth century: first in France, and soon after that in England. Since then, there has been constant literary debate on the genre, its definitions, and its meaning. Most definitions have been based on the author's denomination: it has been claimed that one has to be Catholic in order to be able to write a Catholic novel. However, (post)modern, textually orientated literary criticism fundamentally questions these author-centered definitions.

The present article argues that the ca¬tegory of the Catholic novel is meaningful and useful, provided that it is defined on the grounds of the novel´s textual, Catholic iden¬tity. This identity is regarded as a fairly stable construction, on one hand based on Catholic doctrine and on the other hand aimed at tran¬scendence and sacred (as they are understood in Catholicism). This hypothesis is applied to a well-known English novel, Evelyn Waugh´s Brideshead Revisited (1945). Through a close reading of the novel it is maintained that the novel produces a Catholic identity, primarily in the complex character of Lord Sebastian Flyte. He represents both Fall and Grace, eros and agape, sainthood and sin. In other words, analogical imagination – especially Catholic sacramentality – turns out to be central to the novel´s Catholicism.

The latter half of the study is focused on a post-conciliar novel, David Lodge´s How Far Can You Go? (1980). The novel tells a tragicomic story about several English Catholic students, who all grow up during and after the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). The famous Council modernized and diversified the Church and its practices quite radically, and the novel crystallizes this change through the characters. As a narrative Lodge´s text is postmodern, secularizing the Faith and questioning the ultimate religious authority of the Catholic Church. Consequently, it is very hard for the reader to activate a stable, faithful Catholic identity through the text. Instead, the novel problematizes both the notion of identity and the identity of Catholicism.

Some critics have argued that the Catholic novel ceased to exist after Vatican II due to the loss of homogenous Catholic culture. The latter part of the statement is true, but to sound the death knell for the genre is definitely premature. The genre of the catholic novel, which has always been under discussion, has nowadays truly divided itself into texts that do not seem to have much in common. Still, the article suggests that there is a certain Wittgensteinian family resemblance between traditional, conservative, liberal, and progressive Catholic novels. Although there is no single feature all the texts share, there are several features they may share partly (e.g. representing belief in Christ). This new post-conciliar genre of the postcatholic novel is not perhaps as "heavenly" as its predecessor used to be as it is more interested in so-called secular themes (e.g. feminist and ecological issues). Nevertheless, Catholicism has always used analogical imagination, so there is, in fact, nothing revolutionary here.


Human action recognition plays a significant role in intelligent video surveillance system, of which moving human detection and extraction are the most basic and critical parts. A novel improved optical flow and moving human extraction method are presented under the fixed camera in this paper. We improve the optical flow with inter-frame difference method and optimized gradient algorithm, which can not only increase the accuracy evidently, but also reduce computation time effectively. In order to more precisely extract the moving human, this paper also proposes a method to obtain moving human bounding box on the basis of Adjacent Region Merger (ARM). By comparison with other optical flow methods, the superiority of our algorithms is further proved.


The present invention for application to the reproduction system of, for example, the data recorder relates to a clock extraction circuit. The present invention relates to an improved clock extraction circuit for extracting a clock included in the input data sent to the self-clock system.


The contraction effect of muscles results in either dynamically moving rotational or statically stabilizing contact forces [1], depending on the joint architecture involved as well as the organization of the muscle courses in relation to the movement axes. Because of this, skeletal muscles are of elementary importance in the realization of all physical movements. Even though numerous machines are a considerable support in everyday life, muscle work is still indispensable in many areas of life today. Muscle power is the prerequisite that both one's own body and objects can experience stability as well as speed changes. However, lifting and carrying loads is also part of the professional routine of many employed persons [2]. Muscle strength also has a protective effect on health, since age-related strength loss (sarcopenia) is often associated with reduced muscle size and function [3, 4] this can manifest itself in a diminished quality of life [5, 6], reduced mobility [2, 7], and an increased risk of falling in the affected older adults [8]. Whether in sport, at work or in health promotion if an improvement is sought in one of these areas trunk strength and stability are of great importance [9]. The current interest is evident insofar as the trunk is functionally a kinetic link that can transmit torque between the upper and lower extremities [10]. In this context, a healthy and fully functional spine must meet the following requirements: On the one hand, there must be a high degree of mobility in all segments and planes of motion of the spine. On the other hand, under both dynamic and static loads, there must be optimal and balanced muscle strength and performance of the trunk and neck muscles [11]. In an adequate condition, the trunk muscles accordingly promote the proper execution of whole-body movements within the performance of sports [12], professional activities, fitness and everyday activities [13]. If, on the other hand, there is muscular insufficiency or imbalance in the trunk, this can lead to problems in the athletic, occupational or everyday performance of those affected [14, 15] or to health impairments [10, 16, 17]. Especially back problems and associated back pain are of particular importance. Already in earlier years Kraus et al. [18] has the conclusion that the majority of back pain lies in the origin of muscular weakness of the trunk musculature, which was confirmed by many subsequent studies. According to Roy et al. [19] this muscular insufficiency causes a higher load on the passive tissue structures, which causes degenerative changes, injuries and pain in the back. In order to prevent back pain and serious injuries of any kind as well as to treat them curatively, a corresponding strength training of the back muscles is indispensable. In addition to Pullock's [20], many other studies have shown that strength training of the trunk muscles over a longer period of time has led to an increase in isometric maximum strength and a further reduction in pain symptoms. As a result the determination and quantification of torso strength provides insight into the current performance and (back) health of an individual [21], as well as the ability to establish, document and evaluate intervention programs [22]. One possibility to determine force as one of the basic motor characteristics is the measurement of maximum force. Because «...the maximum force is a size which describes the force property of the muscle in a similar way to the VO2max which characterizes the endurance property» [2, p. 66]. Force dynamometers specially developed for this purpose usually try to determine the generated oneto three-axis lumbar moments of the trunk muscles and at the same time simulate the isometric, isokinetic or other muscle actions [23]. The diagnosis of trunk strength is important: astonishing is the fact that there is still no consensus in quantifying the optimal test THE RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND SPORT Volume 14 No.1 2019 5 procedures and methods to be used [22]. As a result, there are currently numerous different diagnostic apparatuses/devices. On the occasion of this diversity and lack of transparency, the present work with the following overview aims to give an overview of current diagnostic devices. For citation: Felder H.*, Bursch S., Rast T. Narrative Review: Dynamometer for measuring of torso forces. The Russian Journal of Physical Education and Sport. 2019; 14(1): 4-16. DOI 10.14526/2070-4798-201914-1-4-17 Table 1 Display of a selection of devices. Dynamometers Parameters Sources (pictorial sources: retrieved 6. November 2018) BfMC CTT Pegasus Unit Nm [1] Form of contraction isometric Planes trunk extension/flexion trunk rotation trunk lateral flexion additional:


Voice over IP (VoIP) service is emerging as a popular application in wireless local area networks (WLANs). However, the existing rate adaptation (or link adaptation) schemes for WLANs have been developed to improve the throughput of data traffic, not the quality of service (QoS) of VoIP traffic. In this paper, we investigate the characteristics of VoIP traffic and the limitations of state-of-the-art rate adaptation schemes, and then enhance the QoS of voice over WLANs (VoWLANs) by ameliorating the existing rate adaptation schemes. Specifically, we design fast decrease to control the transmission rate of retransmissions, and retry scheduling to avoid the deep fading of the wireless channel as well as hidden terminal interference. We comparatively evaluate the QoS of the revised rate adaptation schemes via ns-3 simulations and MadWiFi implementations in various communication environments, and demonstrate that the proposed scheme improves the R-score performance by up to 80% depending on the network scenarios.


In this paper an analytical solution is presented to determine the average convection heat-transfer coefficient for a partially heated flat plate. The average coefficient is determined when the flow is either completely laminar or completely turbulent. With this analytical approach a particular expression is used for each case of laminar or turbulent flow which uniquely simplifies the appropriate expression for the local heat-transfer coefficient for that case. This work results in obtaining a general equation (different for laminar and turbulent flow) for the average heat-transfer coefficient for the heated plate length, in terms of the total length of the plate.


As aggressive scaling ofCMOS circuits continues, gate oxide thickness is reduced in order to maintain control of ever shrinking channel lengths. Current cutting edge transistors are using a gate oxide thickness below 20A, approaching a regime where direct, or quantum, tunneling is the primary leakage mechanism. Below ~16A, leakage becomes too great for use in MOS transistors. There are short-term fixes in place, however the industry road map indicates the need for an alternative to Si02 within five years. Among the leading candidates is Zirconium Oxide (Z1O2). Z1O2 was investigated as a possible replacement for Si02 in MOS devices. A statistically designed experiment was utilized to optimize processing parameters. MOS capacitors were used as a test vehicle. Leakage less than 200pA, breakdown strength greater than 8MV/cm, and relative permittivity greater than 7, have been demonstrated. Zr02 gate dielectric, PMOS transistors have been fabricated with l-V characteristics comparable to transistors with a Si02 gate dielectric, as shown in the l-V plot below. An initial investigation into a damascene Copper/Titanium gate stack, utilizing Zr02 as a gate dielectric, was also been performed. Capacitors fabricated in this manner exhibited similar reliability results as capacitors fabricated using conventional processes.


In an earlier paper in this journal,* the author suggested that the processes of attitude change underlying mass communication impact are of two kinds: with low involvement to persuasive stimuli one might look for gradual shifts in perceptual structure, aided by repetition, activated by behavioral choice situations, and followed at some time by attitude change, while with high involvement one could look instead for the classic and familiar conflict of ideas at the level of conscious opinion and attitude that precedes changes in behavior. The present paper describes the development and application of a workable tool to measure this involvement, a necessary step if the study of communication impact along these lines is to proceed further. Dr. Krugman is Vice President of MARPLAN, a division of Communications Affiliates, Inc., New York City, and a member of the Editorial Board of the Quarterly.


It may implement a fine wiring pattern, to a double-sided flexible circuit board manufacturing method that can improve the reliability of the product. Such double-sided flexible circuit board manufacturing method, Preparation process for providing a film original plate formed with a conductive layer of a thin film on a base film, both surfaces of the insulation; A wiring pattern formation process for each processing the conductor layer of the base film in a predetermined circuit pattern; Drilling process drilling a through-hole in order to electrically connect to the required conductive circuit of the wiring pattern formed on each side surface of the base film; The electroless plating step of forming a conductive layer of a thin film to carry out the plating on the through-hole of the base film; Step of applying a photosensitive layer (photoresist), consisting of a photosensitive film or ink on the conductive layer; An exposure step of placing a predetermined mask pattern on a photosensitive layer applied in the process and cured by irradiation to serve as only a portion of the through-hole and the hole portion of the pad around the conductive layer resist to light; A development step for removing by dissolving the photosensitive layer of the through-holes that are not cured not exposed to ultraviolet light in the exposure step and the pad portion of the hole and around the developer; A step of forming a plating layer on the conductive layer exposed in the step in the through-hole and its vicinity of the removed portion of the photosensitive layer; Peeling process for removing the photosensitive resin remaining in the developing step; An etching step of removing the conductive layer remaining on the base film of the coating layer is formed than in the above; To provide a double-sided flexible circuit board manufacturing method comprising. A flexible circuit board, the through-holes, the conductive layer, plating layer,


Prof. José M. López-Novoa, Departamento de Fisiología y Farmacología, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Salamanca, Avenida Campo Charro s/n, E-37007 Salamanca (Spain) Dear Sir, NO is synthesized from L-arginine [1] in a reaction catalyzed by nitric oxide synthase (NOS) and is oxidized to nitrite and nitrate in a constant ratio, at a constant pH [2]. Nitrite production has been used as an index of glomerular NO production [3]. Arginine analogs, such as NG-mono-methyl-L-arginine (L-NMMA), NG, NG-di-methyl-Larginine (ADMA) and No-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME), are commonly used as 'specific' inhibitors of NO synthesis; however, their effects on NO levels are rarely measured. Some investigators have reported that incubation of arterial rings with L-NMMA causes increases in NO levels [4]. L-NAME has been widely used to investigate the effect of NO synthesis inhibition on renal function. There is no information about the effect of LNAME on glomerular NO synthesis in long-term incubations. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of L-NAME on glomerular NO synthesis, measured by nitrite production. Female Wistar rats were anesthetized with ether and after washing the kidneys with ice-cold saline through the abdominal aorta, glomeruli were isolated by mechanical sieving [5] in sterile conditions, and plated out in 4 × 6 well plates at a concentration of 7,000 glomeruli per well. Glomeruli were incubated at 37 °C in endotoxin-free RPMI 1640 culture medium (Gibco) supplemented with 10% fetal calf serum. Some wells were added L-NAME 10-4M (Sigma) and some others were used as controls. Additionally, some empty wells were added RPMI medium alone and some others L-NAME and RPMI medium, to assess the effect of RPMI on L-NAME molecule.


Recent advances of preparations of different functional factors of traditional Chinese medicines-molecular imprinted polymers (FFTCM-MIPs) including alkaloids,flavonoids,plyphenols,organic acids,coumarins,lignans and Steroids by molecular imprinting technique (MIT) were summarized.The new researchs of MIT in separating the functional factors from the crude traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) were reviewed,and the application prospect of MIT was also expected.


The invention relates to the field of application of numerical control machining and measurement equipment in order to improve the three-dimensional space resolution of a microscopic CT reestablishment result, and a measurement method is simple, practical and reliable. Thus, according to the adopted technical scheme, a microscopic CT motion error correction method for a rotating shaft includes the following steps that first, displacement sensors and a reference cylinder are additionally arranged on a rotating sample platform in a microscopic CT so as to monitor the error motion of the rotating shaft; second, the machining error and the mounting error of the reference cylinder in the sample platform with the rotating shaft error motion measurement function can be calibrated; third, in the CT scanning process, measured values of three sensors are simultaneously collected when all projected images are collected; fourth, the position errors of all the projected images caused by the motion error of the rotating shaft are solved; fifth, the position errors of all the projected images are corrected and the projected images are reestablished three-dimensionally. The microscopic CT motion error correction method for the rotating shaft is mainly applied to the numerical control machining and measurement equipment.


The present paper aims to outline the phenomena accompanying flow process and heat transfer of a 10.6% ethanol solution ice slurry during its flow in tubes. The generalized definition of the Reynolds number according to Metzner-Reed makes it possible to use the Fanning and Blasius formulas to calculate the Fanning resistance coefficient for the ice slurry. The original topic discussed in the paper is the dependence of the Nusselt number, for laminar and turbulent flow, on the generalized Reynolds number according to Metzner–Reed.


The Earth's mantle shows large‐scale geochemical heterogeneities bounded by several identifiable end‐member compositions. However, the origin of extreme mantle reservoirs, for example, high 238U/204Pb (HIMU), and their location in the Earth's interior remains poorly constrained. Clinopyroxenes from late Cenozoic Wudi lavas in eastern China have heterogeneous Pb isotopic compositions, even though the erupted lavas are isotopically homogeneous. Our new results provide, to our knowledge, the first evidence for the existence of a HIMU‐like component in the sources of late Cenozoic lavas. Analyses of olivines and their host lavas indicate that the basaltic melts are derived from partial melting of carbonated peridotite. The HIMU source is likely to be younger than 700 Ma old and related to subduction events of the Paleo‐Asian ocean. In addition to deep and ancient recycling, storage of a metasomatically produced mantle reservoir in the mantle transition zone may be an important mechanism for developing extreme isotopic signatures.


Significance The understanding of a catalytic reaction starts with understanding its first elementary step. Surprisingly, despite the large number of studies, it is unclear whether one common or two different first intermediates control the selectivity of CO2 electroreduction to formate and CO. We settle this controversy for Cu, which is best known for its unique capacity to synthesize C1+ products but is just emerging as a superior earth-abundant catalyst for CO and formate. We provide solid experimental and theoretical support of the one common first-intermediate (Hori's) model, the first intermediate being carboxylate. This outcome is an essential milestone toward accurate specification of the reaction descriptors in the growing effort to accelerate the discovery of a viable CO2 electroreduction catalyst. We resolve the long-standing controversy about the first step of the CO2 electroreduction to fuels in aqueous electrolytes by providing direct spectroscopic evidence that the first intermediate of the CO2 conversion to formate on copper is a carboxylate anion *CO2− coordinated to the surface through one of its C–O bonds. We identify this intermediate and gain insight into its formation, its chemical and electronic properties, as well as its dependence on the electrode potential by taking advantage of a cutting-edge methodology that includes operando surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) empowered by isotope exchange and electrochemical Stark effects, reaction kinetics (Tafel) analysis, and density functional theory (DFT) simulations. The SERS spectra are measured on an operating Cu surface. These results advance the mechanistic understanding of CO2 electroreduction and its selectivity to carbon monoxide and formate.


When mixtures of NaY or LaNaY zeolites with V2O5 or MoO3 are calcined in air at atmospheric pressure within given temperature and composition ranges, the oxides can migrate into the pores of the zeolite lattice. The extent of insertion is higher for LaNaY than for NaY; this is attributable to the space in the supercages left vacant by the migration of the La3+ ions into the sodalite cages or hexagonal prisms. Beyond certain temperature and oxide concentrations the NaY or LaNaY lattice is destroyed and new crystalline phases are formed. These solid-state interactions and reactions have been followed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and by 27Al and 29Si magic-angle spinning (MAS) NMR.


The surface configurations of quantifiers and scope-determiners in Chinese and English NPs show both similarities and differences which may result in acquisition bewilderment for Chinese learners of English. Various English determiners are found to play unequal cognitive roles in terms of their semantic weight. An explanatory method is suggested to address language-specific cognitive features. It may render L2 acquisition a more insightful process and minimize the L1 interference.


To look for the ideal phenotype biomaker,elucidate key functional protein in disease process,that use for early diagnosis detection and prognosis evaluation are hot topic and nodus in field of cancer research.With the human genome sequence determined,the filed of cancer research is moving beyond genomics to proteomics,and the comparative strategies involving in the cancer proteomic research have been developed,all these will accelerate the cancer proteomic research.In this review,we focused on proteomic technology application in cancer comparative research.


We extend Berenger's perfectly matched layers (PML) to conductive media. A finite-difference-time-domain (FDTD) algorithm with PML as an absorbing boundary condition is developed for solutions of Maxwell's equations in inhomogeneous, conductive media. For a perfectly matched layer in a conductive medium, an additional term involving the time-integrated electric field has to be introduced to account for the coupling between the loss from the PML and the normal conduction loss. This absorbing boundary condition is proven to be highly effective for the absorption of outgoing waves at the computational edge even when a dipping interface intersects the outer boundary. The algorithm is validated by analytical solutions, and is also compared with Liao's absorbing boundary condition. Numerical results for subsurface radar measurements are shown to demonstrate the applications of this method. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett14, 134–137, 1997


areas. The authors somehow fail to emphasize that, with one exception, the Food and Drug Administration has approved sleeping pills for short-term use only. Their summary of an important meta-analysis lists the benefits and downplays the side effects of sedative–hypnotics. In contrast, the meta-analysis refers to the size of the benefits as ''small,'' citing, as a representative example, a score of 3.7 for the treatment group and 3.8 for the placebo group (lower scores being better) on a 7-point sleep-quality scale (nothing about function); this is statistically significant but meaningless. The analysis considers the risk of adverse events as ''potentially clinically relevant''; the odds ratio with treatment for adverse cognitive effect (a functional outcome), for example, was 4.8. Table 3 claims that ''Nonbenzodiazepines and melatonin receptor agonists are the safest and most efficacious hypnotic drugs currently available.'' Britain's National Institute of Clinical Excellence says this: ''It is recommended that, because of the lack of compelling evidence to distinguish between zaleplon, zolpidem, zopiclone or the shorter acting benzodiazepine hypnotics, the drug with the lowest purchase cost (taking into account daily required dose and product price per dose) should be prescribed.'' Table 4 states that ''The older sedative-hypnotics should not be prescribed for patients with confirmed OSA [obstructive sleep apnea], and patients should be advised to avoid drinking alcohol within 2 hours of bedtime.'' Here is something delicately unspoken; might there be newer hypnotic drugs that should be prescribed for OSA? Sleep is fascinating, poorly understood, and dearly beloved. The adverse effects of sleeping pills are significant, and their legitimate clinical role would not be profitable enough to support their concerted promotion by industry through direct-to-consumer advertising, industry-sponsored research, and supplements such as these.


This paper reports on a S-,C-band LNA-PA which achieves a sub-0.2 dB noise figure over a multi-octave band and a Psat of 2 Watts at a cooled temperature of -30degC. The GaN MMIC is based on a 0.2 mum AlGaN/GaN-SiC HEMT technology with an fT ~ 75 GHz. At a cool temperature of -30degC and a power bias of 15 V-400 mA, the MMIC obtains 0.25-0.45 dB NF over a 2- 8 GHz band and a linear PldB of 32.8 dBm (~2 Watts) with 25% PAE. At a medium bias of 12 V-200 mA, the amplifier obtains 0.1- 0.2 dB NF across the same band and a PldB of 32.2 dBm (1.66 Watts) with 35% PAE. The corresponding PSAT is better than 2 Watts. At a low-noise bias of 5 V-200 mA, 0.05-0.15 dB NF is achieved with a PldB > 24 dBm and PAE~33%. These results are believed to be the lowest NF ever reported for a multi-octave fully matched MMIC amplifier capable of > 2 Watts of output power. The ultra-low noise, wide band, and high power obtained at modestly low temperature operation makes this an attractive and practical low-cost solution for applications such as WiMAX, CATV, base-stations, and broadband communication systems.


In order to determine the value of Schistosome-specific IgG4 in diagnosis and evaluation of chemotherapy efficacy of schistosomiasis, a simple field-applicable assay, dot immuno-gold filtration assay (DIGFA), was developed for rapid detection of schistosome-specific IgG4 in the sera of individuals. Soluble egg antigen (SEA) and monoclonal antibody of S. japonica against human IgG4 were used as diagnostic reagents. Total 437 sera from patients with acute or chronic schistosomiasis, other helminthiasis and healthy donors were detected by DIGFA-IgG4. The results showed that the sensitivities for acute and chronic patients were 90.9% (30/33) and 98% (98/100) respectively. All of sera from healthy donors and patients infected with other helminthiasis such as paragonimiasis, clonorchiasis, cysticercosis and intestinal nematode showed negative result. 52.0% (13/25) and 87.5% (21/24) of cases showed SEA-IgG4 negative on 6 months and 12 months post-treatment respectively, and obviously higher than those of SEA-IgG (P0.05). In conclusion, SEA-IgG4 assay has higher specificity than SEA-IgG assay with similar sensitivity. Moreover, antibody negative conversion rate of SEA-IgG4 is obviously higher than that of SEA-IgG post treatment. These results suggest that rapid detection SEA-IgG4 with DIGFA will have an important role in the diagnosis and evaluation of efficacy of therapy of schistosomiasis japonica.


Chatbots have long been used in e-commerce. Business owners worldwide intend to improve the customer experience in the businesses they will lead by enhancing their business processes with chatbots. Several previous studies have shown the advantages of using chatbots but also found problems with system quality. Therefore, this study focuses on looking at the effect of the service quality factor of the chatbot system on customer trust, loyalty, and satisfaction factors. The situation when collecting this data is during the transition after the pandemic or the new normal condition. A total of 205 respondent data were used in quantitative research using structural equation modeling and partial lease square (SEMPLS) techniques. Found seven influential factors (response time to trust, useability to customer satisfaction, reliability to trust, loyalty and satisfaction, trust to loyalty and satisfaction) and seven factors that did not affect the use of chatbots in e-commerce.


Essay on the work of Paris-based artist Esther Shalev-Gerz, published on the occasion of her solo exhibition at Jeu de Paume. Over three decades Esther Shalev-Gerz has consistently performed a process of unravelling particularities in order to reflect on the ways in which the generalities of history and memory are constructed. Working with a specific place, a certain moment in history, an urgent question, or a shared experience that resonates through history, Shalev-Gerz mines the personal in order to address and interrogate the ways in which the present is understood.


Effect of heavy metals, copper and nickel on nitrate reductase, urease and glutamine synthetase of two strains of Bradyrhizobium sp. (RA5 and M05) nodulating pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan) and mungbean (Vigna radiata), respectively was studied. On addition of 1 μg mL - 1 of copper, complete inhibition of nitrate uptake and nitrate reductase was observed. At the same level of copper, urease and glutamine synthetase activity was strongly inhibited. Contrary to this, nickel at 1μg mL - 1 , enhanced the activity of glutamine synthetase and urease but strongly inhibited nitrate uptake and nitrate reductase. This demonstrated copper as the universal inhibitor of all the enzymes tested whereas nickel at low dose was found to enhance urease and glutamine synthetase.


This study is a nice assessment of the use of remotely-sensed snow cover products with the new CHPS modeling framework for several watersheds in the interior of Alaska. This study demonstrates the improvements as well as pitfalls of using areal depletion curves vs. remotely sensed snow-covered area. The authors find that using remotely sensed snow-covered area yields modest improvements in some basins, especially the sparsely measured ones, but not in others. These findings agree with previous studies, which the authors cite. Overall, the techniques are well researched and the findings are sound, but I have a few major concerns that I would like to see addressed prior to publication:


The invention provides a false nail used for covering a nail and a method for covering the nail with the false nail. In detail, the false nail comprises a nail main body provided with one end and the other end which are formed in sequence from the tail end of the nail, wherein the one end and the other end are arc-shaped and have the same directivity, and the nail main body is shaped into a thin film with the thickness even or uneven in width direction and length direction; and therefore, the false nail not only can play a role of protecting a nail cover at the tail end of the nail, but also can beautify the appearance of nails, can not fall off or be damaged and has French colored drawing function.


Dentigerous cyst is the most common of develop mental odontogenic cysts of the jaws and it is mostly seen in young adults. A 18 year-old male patient referred to our clinic with a complaint of swelling halitozis and pus discharge from free g ingival marg in of right upper incisor. Prior to surgical procedure, endodontic therapy was completed. Cyst enucleation and removal of cyst remnants of anchoraged sites in adjacent bone were achieved. The tooth was replanted back into the alveolus bone and splinted with a semi -rigid splint for 12 weeks through orthodontic appliances. Definitive diagnosis was made interestingly as infected dentigerous cyst. At the end of 14 months of follo w-up period, the tooth and patient was uneventful. The aim of this report was to evaluate the unexpected bone healing in bone cavity after cyst removal cyst and enucleation with simultaneously performing


In this paper, network teaching system based on software engineering design C/S mode, the system includes courseware, exam and operating practices three components, the modular system design will be teaching content, divided into courseware modules, real-time interactive learning modules, exam module, resource download module and learning exchanges, the content includes text data, video data and picture information, the use of C/S structure, in the form of Web pages to show in the system foreground, the system not only enables students to learn on demand, remote real-time teach of teachers and students online interactive functions, and can provide students with the knowledge to grasp the situation online periodic evaluation, based on C/S mode software engineering network teaching system for teachers and students to create a good learning environment.


This paper quantifies the impacts of individual house price risk on the pricing of equity release products. An individual house price model is employed to explain house price variations by heterogeneous characteristics. A Vector Auto-Regression (VAR) model is adopted to project the overall house price index and risk-adjusted discount factors. Indices for houses with various characteristics are linked to the overall house price index by using a VAR Model with Exogenous Variables (VARX). The results indicate that the price of the No Negative Equity Guarantees (NNEGs) typically included in reverse mortgages is significantly undervalued without taking into account individual house price risk.


Wide range of porosity in 3090 vol% could be created into silicon carbide by employing carefully selected manufacturing methods. Two fabrication methods have been proposed and reviewed in the present paper: (1) partial sintering of submicrometersized silicon carbide particle with a suitable amount of sintering additive, acting as an inhibition of grain growth during sintering; (2) the use of ice crystals, as sacrificial pore formers, formed by freezing a silicon carbide particle dispersed gel body, leading to highly porous silicon carbide after sublimating ice crystals by vacuum drying and subsequently sintering. Depending on the processing route adopted, average pore size could be modulated in the range from 0.03 to 0.70 ̄m and 30 to 150 ̄m by partial sintering and gelation freezing, respectively. All fabrication methods proposed are simple, economical and versatile to produce macroporous body with tailored pore architecture and engineering porosity.


: Apple cider, with (0.1%) and without potassium sorbate, was packaged in 3 different materials to evaluate the effects of irradiation (2 kGy) and storage on flavor. Irradiated apple cider samples were compared with unirradiated samples stored in glass jars. Volatile flavor compounds, soluble solids, and titratable acidity were determined weekly throughout 3 wk of refrigerated storage. Oxygen permeability of the packaging materials was important in the retention of flavor during storage. Cider irradiated and stored in polystyrene containers or nylon-6 packaging materials (low oxygen permeability) had lower rates of loss of characteristic flavor compounds compared with unirradiated apple cider and cider irradiated and stored in low-density polyethylene (high oxygen permeability). The presence of sorbate, functioning as a yeast and mold inhibitor, reduced the rates of loss of the characteristic flavor compounds and the fermentation of sugars to acids. Principal component analysis resulted in several esters characteristic of apple flavor, soluble solids, and titratable acidity loading onto the 1st principal component (PC-1). Packaging material and sorbate treatment had the greatest effect on the compounds that loaded onto PC-1.


The strength of the road subgrade for, which mostly causes significant damage to structures such as buildings, roads and bridges due to their swell-shrink effect. In the area of expansive soil and scarcity of suitable construction materials, upgrading the locally available materials is one of best alternative ways. Soil stabilization by adding additives is one of the methods of upgrading substandard materials. Therefore this study assessed the suitability of gypsum and crushed waste brick mix for stabilization of expansive soil to use as a road subgrade preparation. Expansive soil sample was collected from Ilubabora zone and was investigated. Accordingly, expansive soil was stabilized with the mix of crushed waste brick and gypsum material proportion of 0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% and 0%, 2%, 4%, 6%, 8% respectively by weight of the total mix and laboratory tests such as Moisture Content, Grain size distribution, Atterberg Limit, Free Swell, Free Swell Index, Free Swell Ratio, Specific Gravity, Compaction, CBR and CBR-Swell are carried out to assess the alteration in its strength characteristics and index properties. The subgrade material quality improved from A-7-5 to A-2-4 at combination 30% of crushed waste brick and 6% of gypsum with expansive soil. By the addition of stabilizer material to expansive soil the least plasticity index value obtained was 9.030 % and the CBR increased to 10.686% from initial CBR value at the percentage of 30% brick and 6% gypsum. The OMC and MDD was increased to 29.200% and 1.480g/cm3 respectively and the free swell, free swell index, free swell ratio was decreased to 18%, 16.830%, 1.168 respectively and CBR-Swell decreased to 1.370%, from the initial untreated soil test at percentage of 40% crushed waste brick and 8% gypsum mix with expansive soil. Treating expansive soil with the mix of crushed waste brick and gypsum respond and exhibited an improvement on its engineering properties including reduction in plasticity, increased strength and compaction characteristics.


Pattern containment in permutations, as opposed to pattern avoidance, involves two aspects. The first is to contain every pattern at least once from a given set, known as superpatterns; while the second is to contain some given pattern as many times as possible, known as pattern packing. In this note we explore these two questions in circular permutations and present some interesting observations. We also raise some questions and propose directions for future study.


Recently, necessary and sufficient conditions in terms of variational inequalities have been introduced to characterize minimizers of convex set-valued functions. Similar results have been proved for a weaker concept of minimizers and weaker variational inequalities. The implications are proved using scalarization techniques that eventually provide original problems, not fully equivalent to the set-valued counterparts. Therefore, we try, in the course of this note, to close the network among the various notions proposed. More specifically, we prove that a minimizer is always a weak minimizer, and a solution to the stronger variational inequality always also a solution to the weak variational inequality of the same type. As a special case, we obtain a complete characterization of efficiency and weak efficiency in vector optimization by set-valued variational inequalities and their scalarizations. Indeed, this might eventually prove the usefulness of the set optimization approach to renew the study of vector optimization.


This paper reports findings of a study designed to test a hypothesized relationship between generalized values of loyalty and duty; individual and organization value congruency; and organizational commitment offered by Yoash Wiener. He argued that, "a fullerexplanation of individual behavior in an organization requires a consideration of effect of generalized values of loyalty and duty." These generalized values are considered to be a person's predisposition or internalized normative pressure to be committed to institutions such as family, friends, country, and work organization as a result of primary socialization with a culture that places premium on loyalty to institu‐tions or organizations (Wiener 1982).While the results show some evidence to support existence of generalized value of loyalty and duty among employees, it did not, for the most part, significantly correlate with measures of organizational commitment.Measures of value congruency, however, were found to significantly correlate with those of organizational commitment. The conclusion that primary cultural socialization should be considered in employee selection process (even though illegal) for the purpose of identifying and selecting individuals who are generally predisposed to commit to organizations, is not supported.


: The game of football is multidimensional in nature requiring huge amount technical and tactical mastery is a game where 11 different players playing at different playing positions exhibit their mastery in numerous complex skills. The present study was conducted to find out positional difference in psychological hardiness among male football players playing at different playing positions i.e. defenders, midfielders and attackers. For this 60 male football players   were purposively selected from different universities who have minimum participation in inter university competitions. The subjects were than divided equally into three groups based on their playing positions i.e. 20 attackers, 20 midfielders and 20 defenders. The statistical technique used here was ANOVA. The result was found insignificant as the p-value is greater than 0.05. This means that three groups of football players does not differs significantly in psychological hardiness.


The purpose of this survey study was to investigate the policies and procedures concerning the psychological assessment of candidates to the Catholic priesthood. Diocesan and religious vocation directors and seminary rectors identified 86 different mental health professionals they usually refer to for this type of psychological evaluation. This study used a qualitative methodology comprising focus group interviews and self-reported surveys (with open-ended questions). Most of the respondents (96%) were psychologists. Questions elicited responses on psychological assessment practices of candidates to the Catholic priesthood (e.g., areas of assessment, structure of psychological report, instruments used). The results have implications for the screening of candidates to the priesthood. Ethical and multicultural considerations are discussed, and suggestions are offered for the improvement of policies and procedures, as well as for future research.


Due to the rapid increase of internet users and computer networks these days, there is an increased need for effective security monitoring systems, such as Network Intrusion Detection Systems. Many researchers concentrate their efforts on this area using different type of approaches to build reliable detection system to protect computer networks from attacks. Flow-based intrusion detection systems are one of these approaches that rely on aggregated traffic metrics. Their main advantages are host independence and usability on high speed networks. In this paper, Neural Network anomaly intrusion detection system based on flow data is proposed for detecting attacks in the network traffic. The experimental results demonstrate that the designed models are promising in terms of accuracy and computational time, and low rates of false positive alarms.


Background: Syncope is the abrupt cessation of cerebral blood flow leading to temporary loss of consciousness. Identification of etiology is utmost important as any syncopal event may be life threatening. Aim was to correlate the clinical and etiological causes of syncope in children and to note their investigational profile.Methods: Among 40 patients presenting with syncope and presyncope were studied. History of the event, precipitating factors were noted. They were investigated with the help of blood pressure, Electrocardiogram (ECG), 2D Echocardiogram and Electroencephalogram (EEG).Results: Out of the 40 patients of syncope 65% were above the age of 10 years with male preponderance (60%). Vasovagal syncope (57%) was the most common cause of syncope followed by orthostatic hypotension (15%), neurological (15%), and cardiac etiology (6%). In the neurological etiology the EEG showed diffuse slow background with occasional sharp bursts in right frontal area in 2 patients while in 4 patients sharp bursts were present in the centero-temporal region. 17% were classified as presyncope, 60% as mild and 22% as having severe syncope. There was a significant correlation of etiology of syncope with duration of hospitalization of more than 4 days and with recurrence of syncope. There was significant correlation of Evaluation of Guidelines in Syncope (EGSYS) score >3 with cardiogenic syncope. On follow up, neurological syncope patients had significant decrease in the number of syncopal episodes as they were immediately started on antiepileptics.Conclusions: Electrocardiogram, 2D Echocardiogram and Electroencephalogram are important tools for the early management and treatment of cardiac and neurological etiology of syncope.


As a potential functional food material,the peptides has attracted considerable research interest in the field of food science.In this paper,the antioxidant activities of peptides that produced from the hydrolysis of soybean protein were studied by Quantum chemistry methods,such as the semi-empirical AM1 and density functional theory(DFT).The factors that might affect the antioxidant activity of peptides and the mechanism of the free radical scavenging were analyzed by calculating the theory indicators,for instance,atomic charges,molecular total energy,molecular system energy after supplying with hydrogen,energy of highest occupied molecular orbital(EHOMO)and energy of lower unoccupied molecular orbital(ELUMO).Our results showed that the antioxidant activities of peptides could be predicted through theoretical calculation,which were in accord with the experimental results basically.


ABSTRACT Smackover sandstones in Thomasville Field represent turbidite channel deposits. These sandstones are interbedded with a few thin beds of oolitic grainstones. 969 ft (296 m) of core from three wells were examined, of which 820 ft (252 m) were sandstone. Depths ranged from 20,100 to 20,649 ft (6131 to 6298 m). Electric logs and cores from three wells show abrupt facies changes which may be expected from a shifting channel deposition. Correlations were made between wells and labeled the lower, upper, and anhydrite zones. Environment of deposition was determined from an examination of core composition, texture, and sedimentary structures. Thick, massive bedsets and massive to laminated bedsets (A and AB units respectively) are common in all cores, although massive (A) units dominate. Quartz grain sizes decrease upwards in most bedsets. Sandstones have a mean grain size of 0.23 mm (fine grained). Carbonates exhibit similar textural trends and sedimentary structures. Porosity and permeability average 5.1 percent and 0.32 md for sandstone, and average 1.2 percent and 0.01 millidarcy for carbonates. A black, opaque residue, ubiquitous throughout the cores, represents residue of a paleo oil pool. Resistivity plotted against bulk density shows distinct groups for each rock type. A plot of resistivity versus porosity suggests a gas-water contact further down the section at a depth of about 20,500 ft (6253 m). Based on this study, the gas column is on the order 300 ft (92 m) for about 50 percent water saturation.


The present study was designed to explore experiences and constructions of fertility and fertility control among new migrant and refugee women in Sydney, Australia and Vancouver, Canada. Seventy-ei...


The question "which graphs are determined by their spectra?" is discussed.By using the properties of cospectral graphs,it is proved that some trees with special structure,such as comb,a kind of molecular graph of alkyl,trees with exactly two eigenvalue greater than 2(include double-star),et,are determined by their Laplacian spectra,respectively.


The complex [RuCl2(PPh3)3] reacts thermally with the electron-rich olefin [[graphic omitted]R′]2(R′= Ph, C6H4Me-4, C6H4OMe-4, or C6H4OMe-2), LR′2′ with elimination of PPh3 and HCl, forming the five-co-ordinate carbeneruthenium(II) complex containing an ortho-metallated N-arylcarbene ligand [[graphic omitted]″}(PPh3)2], abbreviated as [[graphic omitted]R′)(PPh3)2]. One of these complexes (R′= C6H4Me-4) is also formed from [RuCl(NO)(PPh3)2] and LR′2. The five-co-ordinate ruthenium(II) complexes readily undergo PR3 exchange [R3= Et3, Bun3, Bun2Ph, Et2Ph, Me2Ph, but not (C6H11)3]; with [[graphic omitted]Et]2(LEt2), the unusual bis-(carbene) complex [[graphic omitted]R′)(LEt)(PPh3)](R′= C6H4Me-4) is formed. Small ligands [e.g. CO, PF3, P(OMe)3, or NCMe] generally add to form six-co-ordinate complexes of variable thermal stability. The complex [RuCl3(NO)(PPh3)2] with LR′2, also affords an ortho-metallated complex [[graphic omitted]R′)(NO)(PPh3)]; this, like the other six-co-ordinate ruthenium(II) derivatives, does not undergo PR3 exchange, but with LEt2 NOCl is lost and [[graphic omitted]R′)(LEt)(PPh3)](R′= C8H4Me-4) is formed. Spectroscopic data provide information on the nature and stereochemistry of the complexes, the magnitude of 2J(13C–31P) being especially useful, with 2Jtrans2Jcis. The five- and six-co-ordinate complexes are stereochemically rigid in solution. X-Ray analyses of the two title compounds have been refined to R and R′ of 0.054 and 0.093 for [[graphic omitted]R′)(PEt3)2](R′= C6H4Me-4)(6), and 0.045 and 0.053 for [[graphic omitted]R′)(PEt3)2](R′= C6H4Me-4)(16), respectively. In overall pseudo-octahedral geometry about ruthenium, complexes (6) and (16) differ only in the replacement of a weak Ru ⋯ HC contact (2.23 A) in the former for a CO ligand in the latter. The bond lengths within the co-ordination sphere of (6) are slightly greater in (16), the smallest increase (0.011 A) being for the Ru–P bonds and the largest (0.119 A) for the Ru–C(6) bond [C(6) is the C of the metallated phenyl ring]. In complex (6) the two Ru–C(sp2) distances are 2.006(8)[Ru–C(6)] and 1.911(6)A(Ru–Ccarb.).


Gesture capture, motion tracking and 3D visualisation technologies have generated many new musical forms, often extending the mannerisms or behaviours of a given performer or discipline, providing new compositional frameworks for real time synthesis in response to action. In many cases these approaches are presented within a single domain, a live stage performance, a site specific installation, a shared networked visualisation of collaborative composition. The reality is that these 'interactivating spaces' [1] whether haptic, [5] tactile [9] or ubiquitous [11] is that they manifest new forms of interaction, between people, systems and the medium of sound. Free Sound can be understood to be an extension of the 'open work' where the base materials for a compositional process are created through a model of exchange, interaction and resynthesis. The resulting output of these activities can be broadcast and disseminated through a range of technologies to both social and private spaces. This research suggests that there are new interaction models and social compositional frameworks to be found in these cybrid spaces, a previously intangible location often dominated by the broadcast and publishing industry. A marketing model defined by revenue streams and a value chain. In the case of socially mediated composition or 'free sound' there is still a value chain, it's investors and beneficiaries are the open source community, the collaborators and participants within such mediated systems and the resulting free sound.


Risk and uncertainty are part of the everyday operating environment for all organisations. Occasionally the risks may be sufficient to generate a crisis which, if left unattended, can become a disaster. The key person in an organisation who is often charged with the responsibility of recovering the supporting services that will enable the business to start functioning again is the facility manager, in charge of all property management functions. What should facility managers be aware of in terms of the characteristics of risk and crises and organisational culture that will affect their ability to plan for disaster recovery? Describes some features and characteristics of crises that could become disasters and discusses the features of organisations (such as tight‐coupling and interdependency) that can affect their exposure to risk ‐ crisis‐prone or crisis‐prepared ‐ and suggests some crisis‐mitigating strategies that could be adopted by property managers. Concludes that organisations can become crisis‐prep...


A431 cell membranes phosphorylate a synthetic peptide (Arg-Arg-Leu-Ile-Glu-Asp-Asn-Glu-Tyr-Thr-Ala-ArgGly) in which residues 2-12 correspond to the sequence of the reported site of tyrosine phosphorylation in pp6OarC. Epidermal growth factor stimulates the phosphorylation of this peptide 2-fold over basal levels in a dose-dependent fashion. Phosphorylation is linear for approximately 3 min at 300C and occurs on the tyrosine residue. Kinetic analysis of the phosphorylation reaction indicates that epidermal growth factor increases the average Vm,, from 3.8 to 7.5 nmol/min per mg and slightly decreases the average Km from 0.53 mM to 0.28 mM. A number of other peptides analogous to this tridecapeptide are also phosphorylated by A431 membranes. The data suggest that peptides with sequences similar to the site of tyrosine phosphorylation in pp6Osrc are preferred substrates for the kinase in these membranes. Thus, the epidermal growth factor-stimulated protein kinase has the potential to interact with and phosphorylate pp6OrC. However, the A431 membranes also phosphorylate a tyrosine-containing peptide of totally unrelated sequence, suggesting that the kinase possesses a broad specificity for peptide phosphorylation that may not reflect its specificity with protein substrates. Epidermal growth factor (EGF) is a potent mitogen that stimulates the proliferation of a wide variety of cell types (1). This growth factor appears to work through a specific cell surface receptor that is found in high density in A431 cells, an epidermoid carcinoma cell line (2). Cohen and coworkers have recently shown that, in isolated A431 membrane vesicles, EGF stimulates the phosphorylation of tyrosine residues in the EGF receptor and in added proteins (3, 4). Based on the ability of highly purified preparations ofEGF receptors to carry out similar phosphorylation reactions, the tyrosine protein kinase activity has tentatively been ascribed to the EGF receptor itself (5). The tyrosine protein kinase activity associated with the EGF receptor is of particular interest because the transforming proteins from various RNA tumor viruses have been shown to be tyrosine-directed protein kinases (6-8). The Rous sarcoma virus-encoded transforming protein pp6oarc is a tyrosine kinase and is itself phosphorylated on a tyrosine residue (9-11) in what may (10) or may not (9) be an autophosphorylation reaction. Antibodies directed against pp60rc are also phosphorylated on tyrosine when the antibody-pp60src complexes are incubated with [y-32P]ATP (9-11). Chinkers and Cohen (12) and Kudlow et aL (13) recently demonstrated the phosphorylation of antipp60srC antibodies by preparations containing EGF receptors from A431 cells. This finding suggests some relationship between pp6src and the EGF receptor-associated kinase; however, the nature of this relationship is still unclear because antibodies to pp6Osrc did not precipitate the EGF-stimulated kinase (12, 13). To examine this question further, peptides containing the amino acid sequence around the site oftyrosine phosphorylation in pp60Src (14-16) were synthesized. We report here that A431 membranes phosphorylate these synthetic peptides on their tyrosine residues and that EGF stimulates this reaction. MATERIALS AND METHODS Cells and Membranes. A431 cells were grown as described (17). Membranes were isolated according to the procedure of Carpenter et al. (4) as modified by Brautigan et al. (17). Peptide Phosphorylation Assays. Assays were performed in a total volume of 30 ,ul, and the mixture contained (final concentrations): 20 mM Hepes at pH 7.5, 2 mM MnCl2, 0.2% Nonidet P-40, 10 ,uM zinc acetate, 50,M [y-2P]ATP (2000-3000 cpm/pmol), and approximately 6-8 ,ug ofA431 membrane protein. Unless otherwise noted, EGF and peptides were present at 0.3 MM and 2 mM, respectively. Assays were started by the addition of membranes and were terminated after 2 or 3 min by the addition of 50 Ml of5% trichloroacetic acid or 150 Ml of 3.3% trichloroacetic acid plus 20 Ml of bovine serum albumin (10 mg/ml). The larger volume of acid was used for peptides 4 and 5, which tended to precipitate in the smaller volume. The assay tubes were spun in a Beckman microfuge for 4 min to sediment the precipitated proteins. For peptides 2-6, 40 Ml of the small-volume supernatant or 50 Ml of the large-volume supernatant was spotted on a square of phosphocellulose paper and washed in acetic acid as described (13). The phosphocellulose squares were dried, placed in vials with 6 ml ofAquasol, and assayed in a Beckman LS9000 liquid scintillation counter. For assay of peptide 1, the trichloroacetic acid supernatants were added to 1.5 ml of 4.8% phosphate pH 3.0 buffer and analyzed by high-pressure liquid chromatography as described (18). Fractions (1 ml) of the column eluate were collected. and aliquots (100 Ml) of the fractions containing phosphopeptide were assayed in 6 ml of Aquasol. For the paper assays, nonspecific phosphorylation was corrected for by subtracting the cpm bound to phosphocellulose paper in assays performed in the absence of peptide from those bound in assays performed in the presence ofpeptide. When the highpressure liquid chromatography method was used, nonspecific phosphorylation was taken as that radioactivity eluting in the position of phosphopeptide and that was present in control assays not containing peptide. Phosphoamino Acid Analysis. The trichloroacetic acid supernatant from a peptide phosphorylation assay was mixed with 1 ml of5.7 M HCl to which was added approximately 50Mg each Abbreviations: EGF, epidermal growth factor; pp6Osrc, phosphoprotein product of the Rous sarcoma virus transforming gene. 1443 The publication costs ofthis article were defrayed in part by page charge payment. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U. S. C. §1734 solely to indicate this fact. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 79 (1982) of phosphoserine, phosphothreonine, and phosphotyrosine. The tubes were evacuated, sealed, and heated for 2 hr'at 1100C. The samples were then lyophilized and the residue was taken up to 25 yl in H20; 5 ,ul ofthis material was spotted on Whatman 3 MM paper and subjected to high-voltage paper electrophoresis (3000 V, 45 min, pH 3.6). 32P-Labeled phosphoaminoacids were located by autoradiography and identified by comparison with the position of the marker amino acids visualized with ninhydrin. Materials. Peptides were synthesized as described (18). Phosphoserine and phosphothreonine were purchased from Sigma. Phosphotyrosine was prepared according to the method of Rothberg et aL (19). EGF was purchased from Collaborative Research (Waltham, MA). ['y-32P]ATP was from New England Nuclear.


The purpose of this study was to explore people-plant interactions and discover the effects of using horticulture therapy techniques with four comprehensive development classroom (CDC) students in four high school horticulture classes. This paper discusses the social, emotional, and cognitive benefits that surfaced from this research study. The researcher utilized three instruments in her study: a General Horticulture Knowledge Test, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and an Emotions Face Test. It was found that the participants had increased levels of self-esteem, positive changes in emotional behaviors, and gains in cognitive abilities. The quantitative test results combined with qualitative interviews and observations from the researcher, two CDC teachers, and six teacher aides supported the idea that horticulture therapy techniques are beneficial to CDC students enrolled in high school horticulture classes.


To address the management of medical records report card confusion, the paper presents the architecture of clinical data center in the hospital, mainly from the overall system architecture, hierarchy and key technologies, etc to achieve a concentration of digitized archive of medical records report card based on the Ensemble integration platform, for health care workers and patients to provide various types of application services, generate report in PDF format, to provide the doctors the electronic medical record access to the medical records report card. So the information integration between the electronic medical records and each clinic information system is solved, and the quality of hospital services is improved.


At present, luxury goods become more and more popular among different groups of people. In order to attract more consumers, luxury companies came up unique way to show themselves to the whole world to gain more profit. Two well-known ways are Brand identity and Advertisement. This paper will focus on and analyze how luxury companies use brand identity and advertisement to present their specialities and make them standout in such competitive market.


We consider the use of error correction codes of rate r on top of pseudonoise (PN) sequence coding for code division multiple accessing of the spread spectrum channel. The channel is found to have a maximum throughput of 0.72 and 0.36 based on the evaluation of channel capacity and cutoff rate, respectively. More generally, these two values are derived for given bandwidth expanding n/r versus n/N where n is the length of the PN sequence and N is the number of Simultaneous users. It is found that to achieve the maximum throughput, n should be small. This implies that coding schemes with short PN sequences and low rate codes are superior in terms of throughput or antijam capability. The extreme case of n = 1 corresponds to using a very low rate code with no PN sequence coding. Convolutional codes are recommended and analyzed for their error rate and decoding complexity.


The study involved 43 servicemen in the acute period of a concussion caused by an explosion. A comprehensive clinical and neurological, neuropsychological, laboratory-instrumental examination was performed in all patients. As a result of the examination it was found that the main neurological symptoms in the acute period of a concussion resulting from an explosion are: horizontal nystagmus, autonomic dysfunction, abnormal subcortical reflexes, anisoreflexia, hand and foot pathological phenomena. It was also found that given category of patients had neuropsychological disorders: depressive (49 %) and anxiety symptoms (93 %); cognitive impairment occurred in 79 % of victims. One-third of military servicemen had changes on the electroencephalogram in the acute period of the brain concussion, which manifested by the increased signs of irritation, changes in brain activity, marked blurring of the regional differences and α-rhythm fading. In this category of patients, the changes on the electrocardiogram showed a massive physical and psychoemotional mechanisms of combined traumatic factors. One-third of the affected soldiers had a correlation between changes in the electrocardiogram, electroencephalogram and the results of neuropsychological studies.


Procedures for raising the number of female politicians in parliaments and governments have been a key focus in several European states over recent decades. Mariam Martinez-Bascunan writes that the issue should be seen not simply as a procedural one, but as a fundamental element of democracy. She argues thatthe issue of women's representation is an indicator of the degree of human development within societies, and that with less than 36.8 per cent of MEPs being women in the 2014-19 European Parliament this should also be a priority in efforts to improve EU democracy.


Traditional issues of hermeneutics on language, comprehension and interpretation are retak-en here in their relation to translation studies, under the less common philosophical perspective of the late Wittgenstein, taking into account also some aspects of linguistic pragmatics. Main target is a prophylaxis of the dogmatism that emerges when properties of the theoretical model are projected into the object under examination. Two kinds of necessity are to be distinguished: on one hand, a necessity derived from internal relations, which are the conditions of possibility for the system as a whole; on the other, a system-external necessity which is simply taken as granted. The current debate often ig-nores that any theory is organized in different layers, which leads some arguments to move off others, simply because they do not operate at the same level. To avoid conceptual confusion, one should acknowledge the different spheres in which these intertwined layers operate. As an alternative to the dichotomy between the traditional essentialist perspective and postmodern relativism, I propose a rad-ically pragmatic language conception, blending insights from the later philosophy of Wittgenstein with some central ideas of hermeneutics. The so resulting concept of translation/interpretation reverses the conventional relationship between commensurability and translation.


THIS ESSAY is a study of the movements of migrants. Deprived of their land, culture and forms of relationship with which they were familiar, they seek to find placement in the cities of the state of Sao Paulo, including Marilia. Part of these vagrants placed their hopes and entreaties in Umbanda, albeit not always becoming converts, even if they found in that religion solutions or amendments for their work, health, housing and safety problems. Others attached themselves to the Rural Laborers Union, which provided services, lodging facilities and relative adjustment. There were also those who approached the more open-minded ramifications of the Protestant Church, providing comfort, conversion and mutual aid networks. Testimonies given to the author show the pain, struggle and support these vagrants found in their wanderings.


To assist piano learners with the improvement of their skills, this study investigates techniques for automatically assessing piano performances based on timbre and pitch features. The assessment is formulated as a classification problem that classifies piano performances as "Good", "Fair", or "Poor". For timbre-based approaches, we propose timbre-based WaveNet, timbre-based MLNet, Timbre-based CNN, and Timbre-based CNN Transformers. For pitch-based approaches, we propose Pitch-based CNN and Pitch-based CNN Transformers. Our experiments indicate that both Pitch-based CNN and Pitch-based CNN Transformers are superior to the timbre-based approaches, which attained classification accuracies of 96.87% and 97.5%, respectively.


Summarry The zone of maximum stability of the milk-coagulating power of commercial rennet extract, when heated in whey to 49° C. or above, centers at pH 4.0. The pH-inactivation curves at the temperatures of 49° to 70° C. are nearly symmetrical both above and below pH 4.0. In the regions where alterations in pH accelerate inactivation, an alteration of one pH unit includes approximately the complete inactivation effect. No peptic activity could be demonstrated, using the carmine-fibrin test, in solutions in which the rennin activity had been destroyed. The data indicate that normal amounts of rennet can be inactivated by holding at 50° C. for 14 minutes at pH 6.8 to 7.0.


Economic and regulatory pressures on the global composites industry have encouraged the research and development of technology for the recycling of fiber reinforced polymer composites. Although significant advancements have been made in the recycling of carbon fiber composites, more progress is needed in the recovery of glass fibers, which make up the overwhelming volume of the composites market. In this study, wind turbine blades and automotive sheet moulding compound (SMC) were subjected to a two temperature step pyrolysis. This multistep process yielded improvements in the recovered E-glass fiber's tensile strength, by as much as 19%, and strain to failure, by as much as 43%, over a single high temperature step pyrolysis. Despite these gains, pre-pyrolysis fiber measurements indicate that pre-existing damage may inherently limit the quality of glass fiber recoverable from pyrolysis without any post processing.


Executive functions (EF) are a group of interrelated complex mental abilities that are involved in planning and initiating goals and carrying them through despite interruptions. As these functions are typically higher‐order and involved in integrating other, more basic, lower‐order functions, they are difficult to assess directly, and executive dysfunction often goes unnoticed. This is a particular problem in children, as most tests of executive function are developed for adults and have not been properly standardized in children. The aim of this article is to introduce the methods typically used to assess EF in children, and discuss the challenges associated with assessment of EF in children and adults. Issues such as ecological validity, difficulty separating individual components of EF, problems with separating EF from other cognitive abilities, implications of the degree of complexity of assessment stimuli as well as task‐dependent variables that may contribute to variability in performance will be discussed. These concerns will be discussed with implications for development of more standardized measures of EF assessment in children, as these abilities are important for maximizing potential for learning and academic achievement.


ABSTRACT Cai, J., 2020. Ship electronic information identification technology based on machine learning. In: Yang, Y.; Mi, C.; Zhao, L., and Lam, S. (eds.), Global Topics and New Trends in Coastal Research: Port, Coastal and Ocean Engineering. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 103, pp. 770–774. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. Aiming at the problem of low signal accuracy in the traditional electronic information recognition technology which is affected by noise, this paper proposes the research of ship electronic information recognition technology based on machine learning. On the basis of the designed WIFI radio frequency communication circuit, the BP neural network in machine learning technology is used to process the ship electronic information through training and learning. At the same time, the support vector classifier is trained to identify the ship electronic information. The experimental results show that: compared with the traditional ship electronic information recognition technology, the designed ship electronic information recognition technology based on machine learning has less noise in the signal and higher signal accuracy, indicating that the ship electronic information recognition technology based on machine learning is more suitable for the actual ship electronic information recognition.


The invention relates to an optically pumped semiconductor disk laser comprising a pump light source, at least one semiconductor body (2), which semiconductor body (2) has at least one window area (8), an active region (7) and a reflection device (P), which reflecting means at least one first P-reflecting element having (P1) for the pump wavelength, wherein the first P-reflecting element (P1) and is designed and arranged such that from the pumping light source (3) outgoing pumping light two passes through the active region (7) is at least be conducted. It is essential that the total thickness of the active region (7) and the window area (8) in the direction of an optical axis of the semiconductor disk laser is less than three times the laser wavelength in the active region (7).