A phenomenological theory is given for ferroelectric domain switching. It takes into account the initial size of a reversed nucleus and also the shape of domains. It is shown that the Avrami theorem can be easily derived if we utilize Kolmogorov's method. We solved the problems under two assumptions: one is the constant nucleation rate throughout the switching period and the order is the assumption of latent nuclei of a given definite number and no further nucleations, The i max t max / P s values of several ferroelectrics reported so far summarized and discussed in the light of the present theory.


This paper Introducl the design theory and process about the exper imental device about railway J 5 type carriage generator and control box.This exper imental device is fit for J 5 type carriage generator and control box's capable test.


Minnesota's harsh winter climate requires the significant use of deicing salts and chemicals to keep bridges and roadways clear. The Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT) has used low slump dense concrete (LSDC) overlays to protect bridge deck reinforcing steel for 30 years, and has attained excellent performance that has unquestionably exceeded initial expectations. However, in recent years alternative materials such as silica fume, ground granulated blast furnace slag, and other performance enhancing materials have become readily available, economical, and may prove to be even more durable than LSDC overlays. This paper describes how the advent of these low permeability materials challenge current methods, policies and specifications. This paper discusses Mn/DOT's experience with LSDC overlays, silica fume concrete, and high fly ash (30%) concrete deck mixes.


The glutenite reservoir of T2xk in District No.3 in Karamay field is characterized by complicated structure of rocks,strong heterogeneity,clear difference between layers and being difficult to interpret old log data. This paper presents the new ideas about developing fine interpretation model for well logs by different logging suites and lithologies on the basis of logs normalization. By using this model to 846 wells in studied area for second interpretation,the results indicate that this model is of high interpretation accuracy and practical significance to improve the fine interpretation precise of logs from glutenite or conglomerate reservoir.


Due to the potential value of social relations, social recommendation has attracted a lot of attention recently in the research communities.
Modelling time drifting data is a central problem in this area. Temporal changes, such as the emergence of new products or services and the changes in users' purchase behaviour pattern, bring unique challenges. The need for modelling time changes at the level of each individual significantly reduces the amount of available data for detecting such changes. Thus we should resort to more accurate techniques that suffice the dynamic nature of social recommendations.
Besides, the essence of social recommendation methods is utilizing users explicit social connections to improve recommendation results. However, explicit social connection information is not always available in real-world recommender systems. Only few Web sites have implemented the social or trust mechanisms, like Epinions and Douban. Lacking social recommendation data greatly limits the impact and utilization of social recommendation methods. Fortunately, in case that we do not have explicit social information, we can always compute a set of implicit social information to improve the recommendation performance.
To this end, we propose a new Implicit Social Recommendation(ISR) model from cascade data (a variant of time series) in Chapter 3, which makes recommendations based on the inferred latent social network. It can sufficiently mine the information contained in time by mining the cascade data and identify the dynamic changes in the users in time by using the latest updated social network to make recommendations.
Further, since the temporal information is crucial in social recommendation, we explore the temporal behaviour pattern from users' time series data in Chapter 4. Themain challenge is finding the discriminative and explainable features (shapelets) that can best represent the raw time series data. We build an economical shapelet learning model that can automatically-learn shapelets without labels. Specifically, a novel Unsupervised Discriminative Subsequence Mining (UDSM) model that automatically-learn shapelets from unlabelled time series data.
Another challenge in social recommendation is the continually appeared new users and new items. In real-world application, this problem is unavoidable. How to involve this kind of trapezoidal data streams and how to handle this problem smoothly must be considered. Most of the existing research either builds a general model in a sample scenario such as ignoring the dynamic nature of the system and the problem of new users and items, or only focuses on some specific fields, such as dynamic restaurant recommendation and timely news recommendation. We propose a new Online Learning with Streaming Features (OLSF) algorithm and its two variants OLSF-I and OLSF-II for mining trapezoidal data streams in Chapter 5. OLSF and its variants combine online learning and streaming feature (i.e. continuously appeared new items) together to handle the double-streaming data.
Finally,…


Alongside with the progressive globalization and increased competition, the labour market is exposed to high employee turnover. Particularly, organizations face the loss of highly skilled employees as well as high turnover costs. In the coming decades, the retention and development of competent employees is a critical challenge arising in human resource management. There are various reasons influencing employee turnover intention, leadership as one of the major factors because it strongly affects the relationship between employer and employee. This study's aim is to investigate the impact of leadership on employee retention and to provide essential guidelines for leaders to improve employee retention considering the cultural aspect in East Asia. Essential results reveal a comprehensive employee retention framework and identify core aspects a leader needs to regard according to the viewpoints of the participants. The findings highlight motivational factors and managerial competencies such as emotional intelligence, communication and transformational leadership style as prime concern to effectively retain employees. More importantly, a leader's role is to convey emotions, such as passion and enthusiasm and to inspire followers achieving their goals.


The healthcare team is mainly a triad of Physicians, Pharmacist & Nurses. Objective: The purpose of this paper is to help healthcare professionals understand more clearly the role of pharmacists within a health care team, especially inter-professional communication, pharmacists' responsibilities, and availability issues. A total of 200 samples were selected from 4 hospitals which include 100 samples of doctors and 100 of the nurses. Each sample is basically a questionnaire comprising of 23 questions. A total of two hundred questionnaires were distributed and one hundred and seventy-six questionnaires were returned resulting in the response rate of 88%. Pharmacists are being one of the major healthcare professional groups in the world after physicians and nurses are playing a very significant role in health care system. This understanding is a requirement for better communication and collaboration among the professions and for accomplishing the combined goal of better health care system.


Abstract Grafting polymerization is a valuable method for the modification of the chemical and physical properties of polymer surfaces. In this paper, the grafting of cationic vinyl monomer with quaternary ammonium groups, i.e., methacryloxyethyltrimethyl ammonium chloride (DMC), onto the isotactic polypropylene (iPP) granule was performed by the suspension solid-state grafting process. The technique offers new opportunities in modification of polyolefins, which has advantages of being solventless and having a lower process temperature. The grafted PP [PP-g-(St-co-DMC)] was systematically characterized by using various analytic tools including Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The FTIR spectra of the grafted iPP confirmed that DMC was successfully grafted onto the iPP backbone. The results of TGA and the hydrophilicity measurement indicated that the thermal stability of the grafted iPP was enhanced remarkably, and the hydrophilicity was also enhanced due to the addition of hydrophilic quaternary ammonium groups. Furthermore, the mechanical properties effect of PP-g-(St-co-DMC) on PP/poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) blends was investigated. The measurements of tensile strength and impact strength indicated that the PP-g-(St-co-DMC) could remarkably enhance compatibility of PP/PVC blends. The tensile strength and the impact strength of PP/PVC blends with a concentration of PP-g-(St-co-DMC) at 4% (wt) increased up to 19.15% and 74.48%, respectively.


A new crosshatching technology on polyimide flexible substrate is described using chemical etching method.The etching solution is composed of Potassium hydroxide,Sodium hydroxide,and additives.The window of demanding is crosshatched in certain conditions on polyimide flexible substrate.The technology process and mechanism of etching are also discussed in detail with examples of hollowing board process.The demerits of the pre-investment and maintenance costs too high or precision too low to traditional crosshatching process are conquered.The new crosshatching technology on polyimide flexible substrate can be applied in the small and high-density FPCB products that have high added value.


— A stochastic approach to the study of chemical systems in terms of birth and death processes is presented. Deterministic and stochastic descriptions are compared for an exactly soluble model. It is shown that when the system lies on a phase coexistence line, the macroscopic description can no longer be applied.


Terrestrial sedimentary rocks at Hope Bay, northern Graham Land are well known for their diverse but poorly-preserved fossil flora, previously assigned ages ranging from Early Jurassic-Early Cretaceous. The beds form part of the Botany Bay Group, which comprises several outcrops of terrestrial sediments in northern Graham Land and the South Orkney Islands. A latest Jurassic or earliest Cretaceous age for the Hope Bay plant bearing sequence (and by extension for the rest of the Botany Bay Group) has been adopted in most recent publications dealing with Mesozoic volcanic arc evolution and palaeogeography of the northern Antarctic Peninsula region. New evidence, based upon the study of extensive collections of previously undescribed fossil plants from Hope Bay and nearby Botany Bay, indicates that they should be assigned an Early Jurassic age. The new palaeobotanical findings, combined with recently-published radiometric data from overlying volcanic sequences, show that a Cretaceous age is no longer tenable for these floras nor, therefore, for the Botany Bay Group in Graham Land. Interpretations of Mesozoic volcanic arc evolution and palaeogeography in this region are revised accordingly.


The transition metal tungstates have attracted and gained much interest in recent years because of the excellent electrocatalytic properties. Herein, we have explored the electrochemical activity o...


An asymptotic expansion for the generalised quadratic Gauss sum $$S_N(x,\theta)=\sum_{j=1}^{N} \exp (\pi ixj^2+2\pi ij\theta),$$ where $x$, $\theta$ are real and $N$ is a positive integer, is obtained as $x\rightarrow 0$ and $N\rightarrow\infty$ such that $Nx$ is finite. The form of this expansion holds for all values of $Nx+\theta$ and, in particular, in the neighbourhood of integer values of $Nx+\theta$. A simple bound for the remainder in the expansion is derived. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the accuracy of the expansion and the sharpness of the bound.


Instructor activity recognition can certainly play its part as an important parameter in evaluating and improving the performance of an instructor. This paper presents a single-layered sequential approach for instructor activity recognition in the lecture room environment. A hidden Markov model (HMM) scheme is selected as a sequential approach for activity recognition. The proposed system incorporates the five major activities of the instructor in the lecture room, i.e. walking, writing, pointing towards the board, standing, and pointing towards presentations. Background/foreground modelling is carried out using a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) for instructor detection in the lecture room. Mesh features are selected to represent the instructor. After vector quantization, features are passed to the HMM for activity recognition. Time is tracked, and the occurrences of each activity are counted to elaborate on the activities the instructor performed during the lecture. The proposed scheme proved to be efficient owing to its high accuracy rate of over 90 percent in recognizing five different activities of an instructor as tested in a MATLAB simulation environment.


?cure or of prevention, it must always be the case that for many the treatment must be free. For the wealthy and for the poor then all is plain sailing. For the wealthy the laws of supply and demand will -at once do all, and perhaps more than all that is necessary; while for the poor the rates will almost of a certainty be called upon to provide the needful. For the very poor indeed the guardians are already responsible, but we do not think that the provision -of sanatoria, even for them, should be allowed to become a poor law affair. What we want above ?all things is to get the poor consumptive out of his foome, and to prevent him living out the remainder


Based on the analysis on the contradiction between the designing of thyristor controlled series capacitor(TCSC) and static var compensator(SVC) in same circuitry,how to coordinate control dynamic parallel capacitor compensation and series capacitor compensation in power supply system of train's traction is studied.For saving energy,an optimal control strategy about capabilitys of compensations and a qualitative-quantify control way for dynamic parallel capacitor compensation are advanced.The system can improve effectively the rate and precision of compensating,and has a fine perfermance to change the compensation when load changes,so it has great significance for making over our electrization railway.


Theoretical and experimental studies concerning the application of modern adaptive techniques for the control of continuous alcoholic fermentation of glucose by a yeast strain conducted in a multistage reactor are reported. The practical control objective was the regulation of the substrate concentration in the process effluent. Mathematical expressions for the control scheme are given, with the underlying control engineering argumentation. Suitable feeding of sugar for stage 2 was controlled to minimize the effluent sugar concentration.


The author reports on fuel cell technology development internationally and provides material useful to fuel cell researchers and to those in the energy field. Current and future fuel cell project engineering directions in the US, Japan, the European Economic Community (EEC), the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, other European countries, Canada, China, and Korea are described.<<ETX>>


Roles can be assigned to occurrences of variables in programs according to a small number of patterns of use that are both language- and algorithm-independent. Preliminary studies on explicitly teaching roles of variables to novice students have shown that roles are an excellent pedagogical tool for clarifying the structure and meaning of programs. This paper describes the results of an investigation designed to test the understandability and acceptability of the role concept and of the individual roles as seen by computer science educators. The investigation consisted of a short tutorial on roles, a brief training session on assigning roles to variables, a test evaluating the subjects' ability to assign roles, and a set of open questions concerning their opinions of roles. Roles were identified with 85 accuracy, and in typical uses of variables with 93 accuracy.


Following their near extirpation by industrial whaling of the 20th century, the population status of Southern Hemisphere fin whales (SHFW) remains unknown. Systematic surveys estimating fin whale abundance in the Southern Ocean are not yet available. Records of fin whale sightings have been collected by a variety of organisations over the past few decades, incorporating both opportunistic data and dedicated survey data. Together, these isolated data sets represent a potentially valuable source of information on the seasonality, distribution and abundance of SHFW. We compiled records across 40 years from the Antarctic Peninsula and Scotia Sea from multiple sources and used a novel approach combining ensemble learning and a maximum entropy model to estimate abundance and distribution of SHFW in this region. Our results show a seasonal distribution pattern with pronounced centres of distribution from January-March along the West Antarctic Peninsula. Our new approach allowed us to estimate abundance of SHFW for discrete areas from a mixed data set of mainly opportunistic presence only data.


After having presented the different official
texts which organise the validation of acquired
experience knowledge at a university
level (1985, 1992, 2002), the author proposes
an analysis of the way in which a new practice
engenders an organisation in the process of
change, at times a quite significant one, and to
which the participants either adhere or resist,
given their varying situations and convictions.
In other words, this article attempts to clarify,
using a concrete and contextualized example
as its support, how change is organised and
played out in the centuries-old institution that
is the University.
In order to establish his reasoning, the author
refers to a systematic approach, allowing him
to consider the validation of acquired experience
knowledge as new input (and a destabilizing
factor) in the system's equilibrium.
He offers an attempt to better understand the
manner in which this flow of new information
can have an influence on the organisation and
functioning of the university, as well as university
life in general.


Objective:To learn the satisfaction degree and its influential factors of community health service.Methods:Investigation was performed in Jiangtai community health service center and two affiliated stations of Chaoyang district in Beijing,using self-designed questionnaire.Results:671 patients were included in this study.162 of them(24.1%) was "very satisfied" with the services in general,and 172 of them(25.6%) was"quite satisfied",and 266 of them(39.6%) was "satisfied",and 14 of them(2.1%) was "dissatisfied",and 45 of them(6.7%) was "very dissatisfied".The satisfactory degree on Information Patient Education was 74.63%,which was the highest during all items.And the lowest was the satisfactory degree on Financial Acceptability(43.91).The influential factors of satisfactory degree was "duration since first visit","visit other hospitals","frequency of visiting hospital"and"method of payment".Conclusion:Generally speaking,patients were satisfied with Jiangtai community health service center.More pertinence is needed in clinical practice in order to meet patients need.


This paper is a terminological discussion of the term "mixed reality" (as used in "mixed reality environments", "mixed reality information spaces" and "mixed reality architecture"). It departs from a sociological definition of "reality" and concentrates on multiagent system interactions involving human agents and artificial agents. The conclusion is that for the agents participating in such interactions there exists only one reality (in the sociological sense of the word). The notion of "mixed reality" is therefore not applicable to such contexts, and neither is the notion of "augmented reality", focused on the perceptual integration of "real" and "virtual" space on the part of the human user. The term "hybrid multiagent environments" is introduced to describe the context in which interactions take place. What should be terminologically stressed as "mixed" (i.e. "hybrid") in the case at hand is the nature of the context of interactions (involving two environments and two types of agents) rather than the notion of reality resulting from these interactions (which is not "mixed" or "hybrid" but "one", in the sociological sense of the word.) Such a view of "one" or "shared" reality should be adopted both for the purpose of analysis and for the purpose of programming human agent-artificial agent interaction in artificial agent modelling.


This paper describes a case study of a particular form of knowledge worker; lawyers, and their efforts to achieve collective bargaining. Within self-regulated professions like law, the professional regulatory body controls much of the labour process and defines the body of professional knowledge. Apprenticeships, such as clinical locums in medicine and articles in law, play an important role in the transfer of labour process norms. However, more and more professionals seek employment in large organizations where the autonomy historically enjoyed by the self-employed worker and crafted in the confines of mentorships is increasingly subject to bureaucratic and administrative controls. In large employment settings rules and policies may interfere with workers' exercise of professional discretion and full utilization of their knowledge. The result of the erosion of traditional labour process power under bureaucratic forms of organization leads professionals to seek alternate forms of control. Many turn to collective bargaining as a mean to wrest back control over the application of discretionary judgment from large, often public sector, employers. In the case of the legal profession in Canada, a great many lawyers are employed in the public sector. The subspecialty of criminal prosecution was broadly framed as a service private sector lawyers once provided on a fee-for-service basis, but until relatively recently it was not a distinct area of practice to which one dedicated a career. The regularization of prosecution in the public sector results in a strong sense of occupational community among public prosecutors. The forces of bureaucratic control and occupational community act together to support collective bargaining among professionals who otherwise have been opposed to this strategy, claiming it is "unprofessional".


The session-based recommendation task predicts a user's next interaction based on ongoing anonymous sessions. Previous studies mainly focused on improving click-through rates, while few studies have yielded further investigation on how to increase purchase conversion rates in session-based recommendations. However, the purchase rate improvement is a crucial metric to measure the performance of recommendation systems in e-commerce scenarios, which means that the prediction of users' purchase behavior is of significant value. To this end, we build a novel model to predict what items people will be more likely to buy in the current session. The basic intuition of this paper is that within a session, the user's dwell-time on each item reflects the interest level, and collaborative information from neighbor buy-sessions ((sessions that end with a purchased item) can be leveraged to boost the recommendation accuracy. We propose a new hybrid framework that leverages dwell-time information to model users' actual interests. In addition, a memory network is employed to store and retrieve history buy-sessions as collaborative information. Finally, the representation of the current session and its neighbor sessions are combined to predict what items users are more likely to buy. Experimental results on two real e-commerce datasets show that the proposed model locates the actual demands (items to buy) more precisely than the state-of-art baselines.


(57) Abstract: A method and the system provides a spatiotemporal pattern of a wide range of electrical stimulation waveforms to be able to easily specify in each channel of the multi-channel cochlear aid. Cochlear aid includes a speech processor system (10) cochlear and (12). Speech processor system is typically connected to the speech processor (16) includes a microphone Karadagaiso only head piece containing (18) (14). Speech Processor (16) is converted into an electric signal the sound signal detected through the microphone typically includes a microprocessor for processing the electrical signal in accordance with a desired speech processing method. Definition of a simple or complex stimulation waveforms are used as part of the selected speech processing method, in the preferred embodiment, it is simplified by using the template table to be stored in the speech processor (e.g. FIG. 8) that. Rows and columns of the template table defines the stimulation time intervals channel (hence stimulation site). The individual cells of the template table, for example, using a laptop computer (17), polarity and relative size of the desired stimulation pattern and waveforms applied to a defined stimulation site at the indicated frame time to define, it is programmed to include selected alphanumeric code or characters including a null character. In addition to this, the stimulation pattern and waveforms can be specified by a list of the spatial / time event.


Brazilian bakery market is growing fast, offering new products and brands every time. Recent techniques and equipment allow better characterization of wheat products. This work considers a reevaluation of the Brazilian legislation for baked goods. Different kinds of bread and toast were evaluated in relation to crumb porosity, texture, color, specific volume, density and moisture. Characteristic values for each group of products were obtained, showing that a complementation of requirements for specific standardized bakery products is possible.


manufactured goods, sophisticated technology, and capital in the short run and supports an overgrown service sector, but when exportable resources run short, a balance of payments deficit, rising unemployment and inflation, and a falling standard of living result from the structural defects of a branch-plant economy. The balance of payments problem increases pressure for more grandiose resource development projects and further imports of capital. A detailed examination of the automobile and oil industries illustrates this analysis. The second section looks at the Trudeau response to these difficulties. Since 1944, Liberal governments pursued social welfare and regional equalization policies which enhanced individual opportunity, but which were, as Smiley has pointed out, surrogates for a genuine national economic policy. When, in the mid-1970's structural defects in the economy threatened the economic growth which had supported this expansion of individual opportunity and welfare, Trudeau turned to a variant of liberal theory much less optimistic about continued economic growth and the rewards it promised. This argument, derived from C. B. Macpherson's analysis of Hobbes and Locke, is not particularly convincing, at least to this reviewer. The final section questions the Liberal approach to French Canada. Trudeau's liberal individualism, his total rejection of Quebec nationalism, is, the argument goes, out of touch with the reality of contemporary Quebec; francophone Quebeckers are less concerned with individual language rights than with the rights and welfare of the French-Canadian nation. Trudeau's lack of sympathy for this position and refusal to consider any readjustment in Confederation which would recognize the existence and right of the French-Canadian collectivity is inexorably driving Quebec to separation. This is reinforced by the fact that the structural defects in the Canadian economy are most serious in Quebec. The Laxers offer no solutions to these problems, but it requires little imagination to see the lines along which they would lie, and they cannot be faulted for this. Indeed, as Ellul argues, an accurate diagnosis of a present predicament is in itself a genuinely revolutionary action. One would have liked some consideration of the nationalist strain in Canadian Liberalism (which has never been stronger than during Trudeau's leadership) and of the attempts to deal with economic problems which it has inspired. Present policy with respect to the aircraft and appliance industries is perhaps the best example. For, if English-Canadian support for Trudeau on the national unity issue maintains our system of de facto one-party government, as it threatens to do, a great deal may depend on this saving remnant in the Liberal party. The Liberal Idea of Canada should be compulsory reading, not least among the Cabinet!


A novel broadband THz microsensor for room temperature imaging applications is presented. The sensor's response time is optimized by tuning its structural design, using Monte-Carlo and transient FEM simulations. The optimized and robust sensor shows a 3.5 THz bandwidth (0.5–4THz) and a response time of ~40ms, suitable for real time radio visualization.


Horace's 'Callimachism' than about the Sapphic strophe per se. Chapter 4 opens with an admirable description of the battles the Greek hexameter had to wage in the second century B.C., when it replaced the native Italian Saturnian as the sublime metre of celebration and solemnity. M. focusses on Accian Saturnians celebrating Brutus Callaecus on the walls of a temple that reflected the state of the art in Hellenising architecture, as well as on the surfacing of elegiacs in one of the elogia of the Scipios, which are otherwise composed in Saturnians. The chapter then tells the story of the hexameter's continued development in two opposite directions: on the one hand, it came to be used to portray everyday life in the Satires of Lucilius or Horace; on the other, it was 'eroticised' (in its pentametric 'abbreviation') in Latin elegiac poetry. In this last chapter I would have expected to read about the somewhat parallel evolution of the Greek hexameter, which after a rather monolithic epic phase (it is difficult to consider the Margites an archaic poem) was adopted in the fourth century as the metre of gastronomic poetry by the parodic poets. I would also have expected to find greater attention paid to how rule violations in the use of caesural division of hexameters or iambs in cola express specific connotations (see, however, pp. 230, 330). But this mimetic device in Greek and Latin versification could easily be the topic of another short book; and M.'s brilliant book may pave the way to a new outburst of interest in Anglo-American philology for the 'semantics of versification'.


OBJECTIVE
To clone and construct expression vector pET32a+-tlh to acquire biologically functional thermolabile hemolysin of Vibrio parahaemolyticus.

METHODS
tlh gene was cloned and the expression vector pET32a+-tlh constructed. The tlh gene of Vibrio parahaemolyticus was expressed in DE3 in the form of inclusion body, which was resolved in 8 mol/L urea followed by purification of the fusion protein using affinity chromatography and renaturation through gradient dialysis, protein concentration reduction and oxidoreduction.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION
The purified and renatured protein possessed hemolytic and immunogenic activities.


Keyword:professional development Countermeasures;local universities;young teacher Abstract: The author found that local universities existing the professional development Countermeasures for young teacher as follows:(1)Strengthen the professional career plan, enhance professional awareness, and promote teachers' self development;(2)Improve the teaching level through self reflection and experience reflection;(3)Active participation in teaching and scientific research;(4)Establishing a reasonable evaluation system of self professional development;(5) Strengthen mutual communication and cooperation with other teachers;(6)Perfect teacher training


There are many controllers in the force control of the electro-hydraulic actuator. However they have a limitation of the performance and the application. In this study, to apply the iterative control to the force control, the iterative control strong to nonlinearity of the system was investigated. The role of the learning factor, a gain that make the iterative control strong to nonlinearity, was argued. The electro-hydraulic actuator and testing part were modeled for the force control, and virtual simulator was constructed with the model. The iterative control of the force control was simulated in virtual, then decrease of the force tracking error was shown.


The recent global outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has spread to all corners of the globe, introducing numerous social challenges. Twitter platforms have been used to identify public opinion about events at the local and global scale. In this study, we constructed a system to identify the relevant tweets related to the COVID-19 pandemic throughout January 1st, 2020 to April 30th, 2020 and explored topic modeling to identify the most discussed topics and themes during this period. Additionally, we analyzed the temporal changes in the topics with respect to the events that occurred. We found eight topics were sufficient to identify the themes in our corpus. The dominant topics were found to vary over time and align with the events related to the COVID-19 pandemic.


gLAB is an open source tool developed in gAGE group under the terms of an ESA contract. It currently processes full GPS data, being capable of doing precise point positioning.


—Based on microarray gene expression datasets, many statistical methods have been proposed to locate the significant differentially expressed genes (marker genes) among different sample groups. Although robust models for identifying marker genes more accurately is an area of intense research, effective tools for the evaluation of results is often ignored in the literature. In this paper, we propose a novel visualization method to evaluate the marker gene selection process in brain tumors. We use parallel coordinates to visualize the expression patterns of the marker genes in a way that facilitates the qualitative measure of the overall accuracy of the selection process. We exploit our proposed method to evaluate the robustness of 2 statistical tests as examples of gene selection methods. To measure the reliability of our evaluation process we exploit a brain tumor prediction mechanism based on the selected marker genes. It is anticipated that if the marker genes are precisely located, tumor prediction accuracy is improved. We check if our parallel coordinate based visual understanding about the exactness of the selected marker genes is in agreement with tumor prediction method. We surmise that the prediction results support our conclusion based on visualization. Since the advent of microarray technology, numerous statistical methods have been proposed to locate the significant differentially expressed genes (marker genes) among different sample groups. Although robust models for identifying marker genes more accurately is an area of intense research, effective tools for the evaluation of results is important to asses the supremacy of one method over the others. Furthermore, the statistical tests are sensitive to parameter tuning. For example, a tight-fisted cutoff may miss some of the important marker genes, whereas a generous threshold increases the number of false positives. Therefore, an evaluation process is important to fine tune the parameters. In this paper, we propose a novel visualization approach to qualitatively measure the performance of marker gene selection process in brain tumors. 2.0 DATASET AND PREPROCESSING The data set is DNA microarray gene expression derived from 34 patient samples with 2 types of medulloblastomas [1]: 9 samples belong to desmoplastic and the remaining samples belong to classical medulloblastoma. HuGeneFL arrays containing 5,920 known genes and 897 sequence tags were used for hybridization. Data preprocessing is done per the procedure identified in [1] and subsequent steps use log scaled values of the gene expressions. 3.0 METHODS AND IMPLEMENTATION In our proposed visualization method, average gene expression …


Clomazone is one of the most important herbicides applied in pre-emergence in cotton, even though not much is known about its selectivity to this crop. This work was carried out to evaluate the selectivity of clomazone applied alone or in tank mixtures with other herbicides applied in pre-emergence in cotton. The experiment was designed as a randomized block, with four replicates, using two-fold checks. Thirteen treatments were evaluated, constituted by different combinations of clomazone with S-metolachlor, diuron, prometryne, alachlor, oxyfluorfen, and trifluralin. After herbicide application, visual crop injury was evaluated, as well as stand, plant height, number of bolls per plant and cotton+seed yield. Clomazone alone applied at 1.00 and 1.25 kg ha-1 or associated to S-metolachlor (0.76 kg ha-1), diuron (1.50 kg ha-1), prometryne (1.50 kg ha-1), alachlor (1.44 kg ha-1), and trifluralin (1.80 kg ha-1) was selective to cotton cv. Nu-Opal. However, its association with oxyfluorfen (1.25 + 0.19 kg ha-1), with trifluralin + diuron (1.25 + 1.80 + 1.50 kg ha-1), and with trifluralin + prometryne (1.25 + 1.80 + 1.50 kg ha-1) resulted in reduced cotton yield.


This study aims to calculate the air Kerma to personal dose equivalent conversion coefficients Hp(0.07) for mono-energetic photons from 0.015 to 10 MeV for angles of incidence from 0◦ to a 75◦ in steps of 15◦ using Monte Carlo (MC). In addition to this, we propose a new equation to perform an analytical fit of our Monte Carlo calculated conversion coefficients for photons. Hp(0.07)/Kair values have been determined by two terms: in term of absorbed dose, according to the definition of this quantity, and also with the term of Kerma approximation. The results obtained are compared to those published in Joint report of ICRU and ICRP, 2017. A good agreement with reference data with a local difference less than 2% was observed.


With the computing industry trending towards multi-core processors, we study how a standard visualization algorithm, ray-casting volume rendering, can benefit from a hybrid parallelism approach. Hybrid parallelism provides the best of both worlds: using distributed-memory parallelism on a large numbers of cores increases available FLOPs and memory, and exploiting the shared memory parallelism available on each node ensures that each node performs its portion of the larger calculation as efficiently as possible. We demonstrate results from weak and strong scaling studies, at levels of concurrency ranging from 1,728 to 216,000, and with datasets as large as 12.2 trillion cells. The greatest benefit from hybrid parallelism lies in the communication portion of the algorithm, the dominant cost at higher levels of concurrency. We show that reducing the number of participants with a hybrid approach significantly improves performance.


Like other Asian and Gulf states, China's growing concern with food security has inspired a search for means of obtaining that security in the African context. The result has been, reflected in the official discourse since 2006, a Chinese commitment to greater involvement in the agriculture sector in Africa that has resulted in a number of initiatives. These include a push to acquire long-term leases of agricultural land in some African countries, an expansion of Chinese agro-industry into Africa and a deepening of the longstanding technical co-operation aimed at raising Africa's agricultural productivity. This paper will provide a survey of Chinese-African experiences in agriculture, examine the domestic sources of China's contemporary agricultural policies, and analyse the emerging policies aimed at facilitating greater co-operation in this sector.


A model for predicting temperature cracking has been developed. Temperature cracking as predicted by the model is the appropriate addition of low temperature cracking, which occurs when the thermal tensile stress exceeds the asphalt concrete tensile strength; and thermal-fatigue cracking, which occurs when the thermal-fatigue distress due to daily temperature cycling exceeds the asphalt concrete fatigue resistance. During model development, stochastic variations in material properties were considered. The model has since been computerized. Inputs to the program are the basic material properties and conventional weather variables that can be easily obtained. The major output from the program is the temperature cracking in ft/1,000 sq ft (m/1000 sq m) as a function of age from construction. Analysis of the Ontario test roads and the Ste. Anne Test Road has shown the model predictions to be reasonable. The model is in a modular form so that any change that may develop through the advancement of asphalt concrete technology can be added without major revision of the basic framework.


![Figure][1]

An annual killifish ( Austrofundulus limnaeus ) egg. Photo credit: Daniel Zajic.

Fish are usually synonymous with water. Take away the water and frankly the future is bleak. But not for annual killifish ( Austrofundulus limnaeus ). Although the adults don't fare well when


Analysis of the temperature dependence of the structural relaxation time τ(α)(T) in supercooled liquids revealed a qualitatively distinct feature-a sharp, cusplike maximum in the second derivative of logτ(α)(T)at some T(max). It suggests that the super-Arrhenius temperature dependence of τ(α)(T) in glass-forming liquids eventually crosses over to an Arrhenius behavior at T<T(max), and there is no divergence of τ(α)(T) at nonzero T. T(max) can be above or below T(g), depending on the sensitivity of τ(T) to a change in the liquid's density quantified by the exponent γ in the scaling τ(α)(T)∼exp(A/Tρ(-γ)). These results might turn the discussion of the glass transition in a different direction-toward the origin of the limiting activation energy for structural relaxation at low T.


Race walking is historically one of the f irst-foot racing specialties practiced, although it is poorly known among different disciplines of athletics. It is very popular in some countries, such as Spain, Italy, China, Japan, Mexico, Guatemala, and Russia, where there is a tradition of race walkers. The emergence of world-class athletes has increased its popularity in countries, such as Kenya and Ethiopia, which have outstanding performers in this discipline (Carter et al., 2008; Vernillo et al., 2013). Race walking differs from other athletic sports of displacement because in its execution there is no 'f light' phase; i.e., the race walker must at no time lose contact with the ground during the race. This forces the performers to develop a technique that differs with respect to the usual running technique, with several important differences. Race walking is an Olympic specialty with usual track distances of 10, 20 and 50km, being thus considered as a middleor long-distance event (Vernillo et al., 2012; Hanley, 2015). Most authors identify knee joint and lower limb kinetics during the race cycle as the primary indicators for expressing better athletic achievements (Donà et al., 2015; Hanley et al., 2013). Athletic performance is inf luenced by several factors. Body composition has shown to be one of the most determinant of them, due to the importance that anthropometric characteristics have on a specific sport, as do arm spam or muscle groups in basketball players and swimmers (Car ter and Heath, 2005; Arrese and Ostáriz, 2006; Högström et al., 2012; Buśko et al., 2017). Consequently, competitors in different disciplines present different physiques, and athletes from different categories and genders might have different body composition profiles. It is therefore relevant to determine the ideal body composition and morphological characteristics of each sport, in order to establish a reference point for future athletes and coaches (Carter and Heath, 2005). Some researchers have used the Heath-Carter method to classify individual athletes according to three essential elements, namely, endomorphy (relative adiposity), mesomorphy (the tendency for relative musculoskeletal development) and ectomorphy (the tendency to relative linearity), which results in the somatotype or biotype of the subject. This is an anthropometric method that has important relevance in the classification of athletes and non-athletes (Carter and Heath, 2005; Díaz and Espinoza-Navarro, 2012; Högström et al., 2012; Lizana et al., 2015). Understanding the somatic traits of a specific discipline that may differentiate relevant qualities for establishing an association between body dimensions and the best dynamic performance is a challenge for kinanthropometrists and spor t science researchers (Landers et al., 2000; Kandel et al., 2014) Therefore, the objective of the present study reported. For female, the mean values for BMI (20.67 ±0.55), %BF (13.94 ±3.66) and somatotype (3.11 ±1.26; 3.04 ±1.08; 2.93 ±1.24) were also determined. Males presented a significantly lower %BF. In addition, females had a significantly greater endomorphic component than males. Performance was better in males than in females (47min 53s vs 52min 34s). It is concluded that there are significant differences by sex in the body composition and somatotype of these young elite Pan American athletes. The characteristics of elite race walkers by sex provide relevant information that can be assistive to coaches or sport science professionals during the training of these athletes. SUMMARY


Cracking of steam generator feedwater piping adjacent to the feedwater nozzles has been a recurring problem since 1979 at Salem Unit 1 owned and operated by Public Service Electric and Gas Company. In addition to the cracking problem, erosion-corrosion at the leading edge of the feedwater nozzle thermal sleeve was also observed in 1992. To provide a long-term solution for the pipe cracking and thermal sleeve erosion-corrosion problems, a unique transition piece forging was specially designed, fabricated, and installed for each of the four steam generators during the 1995 outage. This paper discusses the design, fabrication, and installation of the transition piece forgings at Salem Unit 1, and the experiences gained from this project. It is believed that these experiences may help other utilities when planning similar replacements in the future.


Bankruptcy procedure is governed by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure, and the Official Bankruptcy Forms. In addition, bankruptcy courts may formulate their own rules as long as those rules are not inconsistent with the Bankruptcy Code or the Federal Bankruptcy Rules. Bankruptcy courts throughout the nation have promulgated local procedural rules. Local bankruptcy rules promote the uniformity of practice within districts and bolster the credibility and integrity of the bankruptcy courts. However, the widespread and rapid proliferation of local bankruptcy rules presents certain challenges for bankruptcy courts. Bankruptcy scholars have paid little attention to bankruptcy's procedural aspects, but members of the bankruptcy bench and bar have strongly indicated their concern with the growing prominence of local rules in bankruptcy courts. This Article examines the recent proliferation of local bankruptcy rules of procedure and explores the role that these rules play in bankruptcy law. This Article traces the origins of the federal bankruptcy rule that authorizes bankruptcy courts to promulgate local rules. Current formulations of this rule give bankruptcy courts such power. Professor Wiggins then considers in this Article whether that rulemaking power is being exercised in accordance with sound policy. This Article posits three fundamental values implicated by the local rulemaking procedure: consistency, efficiency, and fairness. Part III demonstrates how certain local bankruptcy rules might impair these core values. A recent comprehensive analysis of local rulemaking in the Ninth Circuit (for which Professor Wiggins served as the Reporter) illustrates many inherent difficulties. Finally, assuming that limited local rulemaking is inevitable and desirable, this Article offers suggestions for improving the local rulemaking process in bankruptcy courts. These suggestions include: 1)actual adherence to federal law that requires periodic review of local rules for consistency with federal rules, 2)keeping the proliferation of local rules to a minimum and thus investing judges with the discretion to fashion individualized solutions to procedural challenges, and 3)reserving the adoption of local rules to procedural problems that are both widespread and genuinely acute.


In this article, we purpose to obtain several approximation properties of Sz´asz-Mirakjan-Kantorovich operators with shape parameter λ ∈ [ − 1 , 1 ] . We compute some preliminaries results such as moments and central moments for these operators. Next, we derive the Korovkin type convergence theorem, estimate the degree of convergence with respect to the moduli of continuity, for the functions belong to Lipschitz-type class and Peetre's K -functional, respectively. Further, we investigate Voronovskaya type asymptotic theorem and give the comparison of the convergence of these newly defined operators to the certain functions with some graphics.


The article presents the technology of the railway divisions in handling the automatic registration of shipping documents for transportation of empty gondola cars in domestic traffic ("Autoagent"). Regulatory and technical documents defining the procedure for the implementation of the technology are studied in detail, and some setbacks in the registration of transportation documents based on paper medium are identified. The "Autoagent" system failures after updating the AS ETRAN program, which is in constant operation on the East Siberian Railway, are determined and analysed. Conclusion on the implementation and improvement of the experimental technologies and various programs that are in constant use are made.


Many hospital patients are referred to the dietitians for advice on how to change their diet in order to alleviate a specific ailment or to prevent it getting worse. It is self‐evident that such people will be much more strongly motivated to respond to the advice on dietary changes than the population as a whole. The object of this study was to determine the degree of difficulty encountered by patients who were recommended to reduce the fat content in their diet by using a number of different strategies. If such individuals encounter difficulties in making the changes, then it is reasonable to assume that the approach would be ineffective with those who are less motivated. By contrast, approaches which are successful could be useful for consumers as a whole. If the guidelines put forward by NACNE and largely reiterated by COMA are to be successfully implemented then the identification of easily adopted strategies is a first priority.


To the Editor: —Your editorial on the safe and sane Fourth (The Journal, Aug. 28, 1915, p. 803), is of especial interest to me, for I have followed closely the campaign begun by you in 1903. Your success has suggested that I urge you to begin another campaign which, prosecuted with the same zeal as the other, will result in saving many lives, physical suffering and property each year. I refer to automobile accidents. If you will follow the same plan, you will not be compelled to go far in gathering statistics to get appalling figures— figures that will surely arouse the public press to assist you.


In this letter we compare the effect of a radio-frequency sine, a low frequency sine, a rectangular and a pulsed dc voltage profile on the calculated electron production and power consumption in the dielectric barrier discharge. We also demonstrate using calculated potential distribution profiles of high time and space resolution how the pulsed dc discharge generates a secondary discharge pulse by deactivating the power supply.


Huge political, ideological and organisational changes are engulfing primary care, placing intense pressures on the sense of self for both patient and doctor within the consultation.

A recent Health Foundation report urges us to develop care practices rooted in a philosophy of people as ' purposeful, thinking, feeling, emotional, reflective, relational, responsive beings '.1 GPs are encouraged to work collaboratively with patients, fostering shared decision-making and promoting self-management. This assumes that patients (and doctors) have agency and capacity, the ability to make their own choices and decisions and the power to take action in a given situation. But these assumptions are problematic when you are running 15 minutes late during a morning surgery with 18 patients, most of whom are unknown to you, and your QOF screen pop-up urges you to update the patient's CVD risk assessment score and take action to reduce their HbA1c levels.

We wish to give clinicians 'permission' to do person-centred care by offering a language of self that they can use to describe and defend their practice. Our principal motivations in establishing the centrality of the self in primary care are to offer hope to those entering the field, encourage those jaded by their current experience in practice, and provide vital underpinning to the generalist cause.

Patients' sense of self can be severely affected by the suffering they experience, whether the vitiating impact of socioeconomic deprivation, the fragmenting effects of sustained domestic violence, the catastrophic consequences of …


Symptomatic mitral restenosis develops in up to 21% of patients after percutaneous balloon mitral valvotomy (PBMV), and most of these patients undergo mitral valve replacement (MVR).


This study deals with the availability assessment of software and hardware based distributed system supported by repair facility of failed components. The system is made of total N units wherein (m, M)units are required to operate the system properly. To improve reliability/availability of the system, S spare components are provided to replace the components failed due to hardware/software malfunctioning. A Markov process is developed for the performance modeling and availability prediction. To develop mathematical model,we construct the differential equations of system state probabilities. Runge-Kutta technique (RKT) is employed to establish the transient queue size distribution and evaluate various reliability metrics of the system. To examine the effects of the availability and other performance measures by changing values of descriptors, numerical experiment is performed. We compare RKT based results with the neuro-fuzzy results.


Secondary infertility indicates previous pregnancy but failure to conceive subsequently. This condition can be correlated with sapraja in Ayurveda.[i] The incidence of sapraja is keep on increasing due to lifestyle changes , irregular menstrual cycle etc which leads to bijotsarga by misbalancing the doshas during rutuchakra. This case is an ideal example of sapraja and is successfully managed with ayurveda therapy. The patient was unable to conceive for 6 years after her first baby with the complaints of early irregular menses, poor appetite & sleep disturbance, constipation. Considering clinical features vata, kapha, artava involved in pathology. Patient was treated with virechana, kala basti & uttara basti followed by Garbhapal ras, chitrakadi vati and bijadharakyoga. During treatment, the patient got relief from signs and symptoms and got fruitful pregnancy. Hence it was concluded that above therapy is highly effective in the management of secondary infertility.


We study, using functional renormalization (FRG), two copies of an elastic system pinned by mutually correlated random potentials. Short scale decorrelation depend on a non trivial boundary layer regime with (possibly multiple) chaos exponents. Large scale mutual displacement correlation behave as $|x-x'|^{2 \zeta - \mu}$, the decorrelation exponent $\mu$ proportional to the difference between Flory (or mean field) and exact roughness exponent $\zeta$. For short range disorder $\mu >0$ but small, e.g. for random bond interfaces $\mu = 5 \zeta - \epsilon$, $\epsilon=4-d$, and $\mu = \epsilon (\frac{(2 \pi)^2}{36} - 1)$ for the one component Bragg glass. Random field (i.e long range) disorder exhibits finite residual correlations (no chaos $\mu = 0$) described by new FRG fixed points. Temperature and dynamic chaos (depinning) are discussed.


In late medieval economy, failing was as much a social as an economic process. The story of the hanseatic merchant Hildebrand Veckinchusen (ca. 1365-1426) shows how his network of family members, friends, and business partners on the one hand enabled him to be successful as a merchant. On the other hand the same network deployed its social power against him once he had run into problems: As his potential new investors had to stem from the circle of his old partners, they all knew his fate, and they all informed each other about his shortcomings. So Hildebrand had to borrow the money he needed from outside his network from an external creditor. His friends would have been able to defer the return of his loans (as they knew how to keep track of him), whereas the external creditor could not and thus put him in prison as an insolvent debtor. His friends offered help only on the condition that Hildebrand did admit his faults and listened to their advice, but he refused. But Veckinchusen's network demanded control of his decisions and affairs in which the social an economic sphere were intimately linked. Hildebrand didn't perceive himself as failed, contrary to what his friends expected him to do. Thus he wasn't allowed back into the network, which, to be successful, had to exclude failures such as Hildebrand Veckinchusen.


The tea industry is one of our traditional industries,but on the whole,there is big differences in competitiveness between our tea market and that of the developed countries and regions.Through industry cluster theory,from the existing problems in tea industry and an analysis of the feasibility to develop tea industry cluster in Yunnan Province,the paper puts forward the ideas and relevant measures in developing tea industry cluster.


We study the operation of a synchronously pumped mode-locked dye laser when the pump pulse is taken as a Dirac delta function, a limit that is sometimes experimentally reasonable. We find that in this limit the model simplifies considerably and that with further assumptions the physical interpretation of synchronously pumped mode-locked operation becomes apparent. Specifically, our nonlinear dynamical model reduces to the same set of equations that govern a prepumped Q-switched laser, and from this simple picture we are able to derive approximate analytic formulas for the synchronously pumped mode-locked laser pulse width and peak intensity. Additionally, we present a closed-form solution for the output pulse in the limit of zero-cavity-length mismatch between the pump laser and the dye laser.


The corneal bed and the anterior chamber are immune-privileged sites, but despite the relative immune privilege of the cornea as a transplanted tissue, the most common cause of corneal graft failure in all reports is allogeneic rejection. In first-time graft recipients with no vascularisation of the recipient's corneal bed, 2-year survival rates exceed 90%; this decreases to 35% to 70% in recipients with high-risk factors for rejection. In one-third of all corneal grafts fail, signs of a destructive attack by the immune system have been observed. A rejection episode results in a loss of donor endothelial cells, which are critical for the maintenance of corneal transparency. As human endothelial cells do not repair by mitosis, the consequence is that donor corneal transparency is lost if cell density falls below the threshold necessary for the prevention of stromal swelling. Endothelial decompensation results either from an irreversible episode of acute graft rejection or at an interval following one or more episodes of rejection, which have been reversed by therapy. Endothelial cells are thus the critical target in the allogeneic response. While the reversal of acute graft rejection episodes does not present such challenges in the cornea as in other transplanted tissues, effective prophylaxis in corneal graft recipients identified at high risk of rejection is much less evidence-based. Thus, the impact of graft rejection continues to justify a high priority in corneal research. Although the first successful penetrating corneal graft was reported in 1906, it took another half a century before the first description of the opacification of a previously clear corneal graft was published. Paufique named this event "maladie du greffon" (disease of the graft) and suggested that sensitization of the donor by the recipient is the cause. This description followed previous experiments reported by Medawar, during which differences were observed between rabbit skin grafts of donor and recipient origin, giving rise to the term "histocompatibility." Maumenee subsequently confirmed this suggestion in a rabbit model of corneal transplantation in which he showed that donor corneas could induce an immune reaction. This development of corneal transplantation models in the rat and mouse-facilitated studies of rejection in inbred donor and recipient animals showed a wide range of investigative immunological reagents.[1][2][3][4]


This paper deals with the effects of economic crisis in the change of attitudes towards immigration, by means of a longitudinal approach via survey data. The analysis of dimensions and indicators of xenophobia corroborates the negative effect of economic turmoil and labor threat in the increase of xenophobia, in tune with Intergroup Conflict Theory. Although in 2012, rejection to immigration drew back, whereas ambivalence extended and became tenuous tolerance. In its explanation stands out the lowering of both real and perceived presence of immigrant population, confirming the effect attributed to the out-group size. Other subjects related to the framing of attitudes add themselves: the image of immigration transmitted by the mass media and political discourses, in addition to mutual knowledge (in accordance with the Theory of Intergroup Contact)


textabstractA finite-element method is developed for the two-dimensional advection-diffusion heat equation. The method features up to cubic triangular elements with Lagrange polynomial basis functions and isoparametric elements for curved boundaries. First, test problems show that the error of the method agrees with theoretical estimates. Then the method is used to compute the temperature in the flow around an internally cooled airfoil and in the airfoil itself


Painless rat bites in patients with diabetic neuropathy are very rare occurrence and may result in foot ulcers, amputations, or rat bite fever. Infective endocarditis complicating rat bites are extremely rare and almost exclusively a complication of rat bite fever caused by Streptobacillus moniliformis (a common microbial flora of the rat mouth). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of Staphylococcus aureus (another common flora of rat teeth) native valve endocarditis complicating rat bite.


The authors of this paper are focus on the research of insulation characteristics and requirements of output transformer.A prototype transformer with improved insulation characteristics is manufactured and is commissioning in the propulsion system of Shanghai maglev train.


The present invention discloses a method and system for online handwriting authentication on the basis of palm side surface information, the method comprising: handwriting feature information of a registered user; authenticating test handwriting feature information submitted by a test user; if the handwriting feature information is consistent with that of the registered user, then authenticating, otherwise, rejecting authentication; the handwriting feature information being dynamic and static information about handwriting script and the palm side surface where the writing hand makes contact with the writing surface, said information being acquired and contained in the process of writing once. In contrast to the prior art, which acquires features independent of one another to complete authentication, the present invention obtains handwriting feature information in the writing process, while also, by means of combining multiple features from the handwriting and the dynamic and static information, avoiding the problem of security in the prior art, which uses acquisition of features independent of one another to perform authentication, and improving the overall security of authentication systems.


To the Editor, Sorrentino et al recently reported their experience with surgery in 54 patients with colorectal cancer. All patients had preoperative screening based on clinical symptoms, blood tests, computed tomography scan, and nasopharyngeal swabs, and they proceeded for surgery if all tests were negative. This included patients undergoing endoscopic transanal surgery. It is noteworthy to mention that positive‐pressure transanal surgery, such as transanal endoscopic microsurgery, transanal minimally invasive surgery, and transanal/transrectal natural‐orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery are considered aerosol generating procedures. Performing these procedures during the period of coronavirus disease‐2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic may carry a potential risk of short‐range airborne transmission (ie, within 1‐m distance) to the surgical team from exposure to fecal and body fluid aerosols. This is particularly relevant to countries with high level of epidemicity such as Italy. Several lines of evidence have supported possible fecal‐oral transmission of the novel coronavirus‐2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 [SARS‐CoV‐2]). The virus has a tropism to the gastrointestinal tract and causes diarrhea in almost 13% of patients with COVID‐19. It was also shown that viral RNA is present in 27% to 83% of anal swabs and stool specimens of patients with COVID‐9. Furthermore, 70% of patients who tested positive for both respiratory and stool specimens, had persistent positive stool viral RNA for up to 33 days continuously after negative respiratory samples. More importantly, live and infectious virus was successfully isolated by independent laboratories from stool specimens of patients infected with SARS‐CoV‐2, including those who did not have diarrhea.4‐6 Considering the prolonged viral shedding in stool by patients with COVID‐19 as well as asymptomatic carriers, it would seem appropriate to perform routine preoperative fecal testing for SARS‐ CoV‐2, in addition to nasopharyngeal screening, in patients undergoing transanal surgery under positive pressure. For patients with confirmed SARS‐CoV‐2 infection, conventional open and robotic approaches, atmospheric transanal surgery with high volume smoke evacuation, and temporization with chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy may be safer alternatives.


We have entered an era of information technology. Many financial and taxation management tasks have been applied to big data technology. Through big data technology, we can efficiently collect data and Internet information, realize efficient management of information, and establish a complete set of tax database. The research results of the article show the following. (1) We analyze the application status of big data technology and put forward the problems and solutions in data processing in our country. (2) Most financial managers of small and medium-sized enterprises are rather vague about the definition of taxation. Training in this area should be strengthened. Taking the industrial chain of Chinese enterprises as the survey object, the concept of taxation compliance and influencing factors have been elaborated, and a taxation respect model has been established. The investigation method can be analyzed through the model. (3) We established the coefficient of variation model with Pilka coefficient and found that the main business income has the highest correlation with the value-added tax payable and has the strongest linear relationship; the correlation between return on assets and value-added tax payable is the weakest, and there is a weak relationship. There is a strong negative correlation between sales profit margin and VAT payable (4) Taking a pharmaceutical company in our country as the subject of investigation, the company's financial operating conditions have been studied for the past ten years, and it is concluded that the company's main business income is increasing year by year, and the corresponding tax revenue is also increasing, and the tax growth rate is relatively unstable. Among them, the financial risk coefficient of corporate income tax is the largest.


In this paper,the principles and characteristics of fiber Bragg grating sensor are presented.The research and applications of fiber Bragg grating sensor for bridge structure health monitoring at home and abroad are introduced,and some problems in the applications to be solved are discussed; finally,the prospect of fiber Bragg grating sensor in the field of bridge structure health monitoring is set forth.


The detection of transient signal has been studied recently. Friedlander and Porat presented a useful detection method based on Gabor representation, and resolve the problem about the detection of transient signal of unknown waveform and arrival time. Here, a new method by using a limited one-sided exponential function for the detection of transient signals with unknown waveforms and arrival times is proposed. We introduce a transform, which looks like wavelet transform (WT), but in fact far simpler than wavelet transform. The transform not only has some useful properties of WT, but also can simplify the detection statistic. The simulation results show that the transient signals at a very low signal-to-noise ratio can be recognized and classified in the transform domain. The detection performance is effected by the dilation and translation parameters of this transform. The structure of the proposed detector is also discussed.


The NASA/JPL Rogue Receiver is an 8-satellite, non-multiplexed, highly digital global positioning system (GPS) receiver that can obtain dual frequency data either with or without knowledge of the P-code. In addition to its applications for high accuracy geodesy and orbit determination, the Rogue uses GPS satellite signals to measure the total electron content (TEC) of the ionosphere along the lines of sight from the receiver to the satellites. These measurements are used by JPL's Deep Space Network (DSN) for calibrating radiometric data. This paper will discuss Rogue TEC measurements, emphasizing the advantages of a receiver that can use the P-code, when available, but can also obtain reliable dual frequency data when the code is encrypted.


Abstract Theoretical perspectives on the interrelation of visual and verbal art can highlight either parallels or rivalry between the arts. Ekphrasis, the description of spatial art in literature, defines a special category of word-image relations. It is a trope deeply marked with the rivalry between the arts, with writing's hopes for permanence, and with cultural premisses about various kinds of representational power. W. J. T. Mitchell's critique shows that definitions of the visual and verbal arts, and ekphrasis in particular, carry out ideological agendas. The image often serves as 'other' to literature, which fears and seeks to appropriate the visual image. Apollinaire's ekphrastic writing on art presents interesting examples of the trope: while his early writing adheres to the categories scholars have identified, the impact of Cubism on his later work requires a fresh consideration of the writer's approach to the image. Mter his own experimentation with visual poetry, which enlarged the role of the ...


VACTERL association (any three of vertebral, anal, cardiac, tracheo-esophageal, renal/radial and limb defects) and Prune belly syn- drome (complete or partial triad of abdominal muscle deficiency, bilateral cryptorchidism and dilated urinary tract) are cngenital malformations affecting many body systems. These are derivatives of causally nonspecific disruptive events of the developmental field occuring during early blastogenesis. Many of these cases are sporadic in families without much recurrence. These lesions may be associ- ated with other malformations but concurrence of VACTERL with Prune belly syndrome is extremely rare. Routine antenatal check up and ultrasonography can help in diagnosis of most of them. But, many times a detail autopsy examination is needed to detect the variety of malformations and categorise them into specific syndromes. We describe a rare combination of VCTERL with Prune belly syndrome and many associated anomalies of a 28 weeks neonate delivered vaginally by a 37 years second gravida.


Since talent competition is increasingly fierce, postgraduate examination become an important way to improve collage student 's professional technology level and employment competiveness. To improve postgraduate candidate 's learning motivation in specialized courses, the reasons of low learning interest is analyzed, and the corresponding measures of enhance learning motivation is presented. The results show that the postgraduate candidate 's learning motivation in specialized courses can be improved effectively.


A biosensing system, including immunomagnetic separation (IMS), flow injection, and a bienzyme electrode, was
developed for rapid detection of Escherichia coli O157:H7 in food samples. Samples inoculated with E. coli O157:H7 were
mixed simultaneously with magnetic beads coated with anti–E. coli antibodies and alkaline phosphatase labeled anti–E. coli
(APLAE) antibodies to form beads–E. coli–APLAE conjugates by antibody–antigen reaction. The conjugates were separated
by a magnetic field and then incubated with phenyl phosphate to produce phenol. An amperometric tyrosinase–horseradish
peroxidase biosensor in a flow injection system was used to detect the phenol concentration that is proportional to the cell
number of E. coli O157:H7. The biosensor was evaluated using samples of chicken carcass wash water, ground beef, and
fresh–cut broccoli. This biosensor was able to detect as few as 6  10 2 cells/ml of heat–killed E. coli O157:H7 under optimized
conditions (1 mM MgCl2, 0.4 g/ml APLAE, and 1 mM phenylphosphate in 25 mM tris buffer solution pH 10.0). The total
detection time from separating target bacteria with immunomagnetic beads to analyzing flow injection electrochemical
detection was approximately 2 h.


This article looks at key strategic trends, the sorts of missions in which the Canadian army is likely to take part over the next few years, and the implications for the army at the tactical/operational level.


Because of its low permeability, clays are the main material used in solid waste disposal landfills as a liner. It is exposed there to various chemical, biological and physical events, and the clay is affected by the resulting leachate. For this reason, the researchers are interested in surfactants and polymers to modify clays for improving their engineering properties. The aim of this paper is to prepare the surfactant modified clay and is also to research the effect of surfactants on the some electrokinetic properties (zeta potential, electrical conductivity, pH, cation exchange capacity) of clay. For this reason, the clay is modified by surfactants for improving their engineering properties. In this study; three different surfactants (tirimetilglisin, linear alkyl benzene sulfonic acid, sodium lauryl ether sulfate) were used to research the electrokinetic properties of clay samples. From the test results the modified clays gave the lower EC and pH values than those of natural clay and the cation exchange capacities were significantly changed as compared with those of natural clay.


SYNOPTIC ABSTRACTThis article presents explicitly the results on the asymptotic distributions of the likelihood ratio test statistic −2 log λ (= n ) when the sample is from the nonnormal populations possessing the first four moments similar to those of an elliptically contoured distribution. The statistics are obtained on the various structures of Σ for one or more populations. In all the situations, the asymptotic distributions of n are either noncentral chi–squares or those of a linear function of two noncentral chi–square variates, when the alternatives are close to the null hypotheses. For other alternatives, we get asymptotic normality of (–F0)/σ0 where E() = F0 + o (1) and V() = σ02/n + o(n−l).


Financial statements that reflect a fair and true presentation of the financial position of the company are the basis for conducting a quality analysis of financial performance. By analyzing financial statements according to: horizontal and vertical analysis, financial statement analysis indicators and added value indicators as well as indicator systems, all users of financial statements receive appropriate information on the basis of which they can make quality business decisions. Stakeholders, which can be external or internal, select the information they need to successfully determine the strategy, optimize the state of assets and capital, and decide whether to do business with or invest in a particular company. The analysis in this paper observes the consolidated financial statements of the company HUP-ZAGREB d.d. and company Maistra d.d. from year 2014 to 2018, and based on that, appropriate conclusions are made on the operations of the said companies.


In this paper, determination of medicinal plants was performed within eight
 departments in the area of the Suma Kosutnjak Natural Monument. Overall, a
 total of 101 medicinal plants were established in the whole research area.
 The identification of medicinal plants was conducted according to
 appropriate references. In addition to this, taxonomy analysis, definining
 of floral elements and finally determining of life forms for the recorded
 species were also performed. As for the taxonomy analysis, the greatest
 abundance in the whole research area was found for families Lamiaceae (12
 representatives) and Rosaceae (10 representatives), while all other families
 are not so much present. There are overall 27 floral elements in the whole
 research area and among them, most of them belong to submideuropean (18
 individuals) and european (16 individuals) floral elements, while the share
 of all other floral elements is much smaller. As for the life forms, the
 most dominant are hemicryptophytes (45 representatives), then phanerophytes
 (23 representatives) and finally therophytes (10 representatives).
 Differences between some departments have been established just in terms of
 the number of medicinal plants.


Describes briefly the basic concept about natural smoke exhaust calculation, such as thermal pressure,steady state fire, neutral level, flow coefficient, etc. and also discusses how to calculate the flow coefficient of the inletand smoke vent on the building under various conditions of natural smoke exhaust.


This article explores working conditions in charter schools with varying rates of teacher turnover. Ethnographic data with 28 racially diverse teachers explores teachers' experiences, their explanations for moving charter schools, and patterns of movement when teachers leave a charter school for another school. A brief conceptual framework was used to understand multiple dimensions of working conditions in charter schools for teachers of color. Findings indicate teachers most often made structural moves between charter types, primarily from charters managed by nonprofit organizations to standalone charter schools. Teachers of color describe tensions with sociocultural conditions that limited culturally inclusive practices. Discussion includes implications for policies that push to replicate charter schools in communities of color, particularly schools with poor working conditions associated with high turnover and weak propensities to retain teachers of color.


Abstract A postal survey of 8639 licensed firearm owners in 1989 indicated that an estimated 117 200 ± 6300 New Zealanders (3.5% of the total population) did some hunting in 1988. An estimated 33 100 former hunters did not hunt in 1988 but thought it likely that they would hunt again in future. The survey provided useful estimates of 1988 national totals for hunting effort (4.4 million hunter days), gross expenditure ($NZ100 million), and harvest (6.5 million animals). Small-game hunting dominated, involving 81% of hunters, 59% of total hunting effort, and 86% of total numerical harvest: rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) and possums (Trichosurus vulpecula) each comprised 40% of the national bag. Gamebird hunting involved 48% of hunters, 19% of effort, and 11% of total harvest: ducks comprised 73% of the gamebird harvest. Although big-game hunting attracted the fewest hunters (42%) it ranked second for hunting effort (21%). Big game formed 3% of the total numerical harvest: pigs (Sus scrofa), goats (Capra hi...


In this paper, we propose a novel method called DHSED to hide binary visual patterns in two error diffused halftone images. While one halftone image is only a regular error diffused image, stochastic error diffusion is applied to the other image to generate special stochastic characteristics with respect to the first image such that the visual pattern would appear when the two halftone images are overlaid Simulation results show that the two halftone images have good visual quality, and the hidden pattern appears with "normal 'I and "lower-than-normal" intensity when the two halftone images are overlaid. 1.1 ntroduction Image data hiding is the hiding or embedding of invisible data in an image without affecting its perceptual quality such that the hidden data can be extracted with some procedure. The study of data hiding techniques is commonly called steganography [2]. Major applications of data hiding include the embedding of secret messages and data. In particular, the embedded data can be the metadata in MPEG7 applications. In recent years, two important subclasses of data hiding methods are fragile watermarks and robust watermarks. Fragile watermarks [l] are designed to be broken easily by common image processing operations. The broken watermark serves as an indication of alteration of the original image and is useful for authentication. Major applications include tampering detection of images placed on the World Wide Web and authentication of images received from questionable sources. Robust watermarks [ l ] are required to remain in the watermarked image even after it has been attacked by attackers or processed by common image processing operations such as filtering, requantization, scaling, cropping, etc. Major applications include copyright protection, distribution and copy control, etc. In this paper, we are concem about datahiding for halftone images. Halftone images contain only 2 tones and are generated by a procedure called halftoning from multi-tone images. Although there are only 2 tones, halftone images look like the original multi-tone images when viewed from a distance. Halftone images are widely used in the printing of books, magazines, newspapers and in computer printers. It is often desirable to hide visual pattems within the printed halftone images such that the hidden pattems can be viewed when some appropriate image is overlaid. Some visual pattern examples include short messages with large font size, logos, graphics or clip arts which can be used for authentication, and conveying secret messages or product related information. However, there are still some existing techniques for halftone image data hiding. They can be divided into two classes. One class of techniques embed invisible digital data into halftone images such that the data can be read by scanning the halftone images and applying some extraction algorithms on the scanned image. Some used two different dithering matrices for the ordered dithering halftone generation [5] such that the different statistical properties due to the two dithering matrices can be detected in the future. Some embedded data in the angular orientation of circularly asymmetric halftone dot pattems that were written into the halftone cells of digital halftone images [6]. Some hid data at pseudo-random locations in ordered dithered and error difised images by self toggling or pair toggling [7, 81 of the halftone values. Some hid data in error diffused images using error diffusion to mitigate the distortion due to the data hiding, resulting in good visual quality [7, 91. In these techniques, although the hidden data can be images also, the algorithms do not provide for viewing the hidden images directly on the halftone images. A second class of halftone image watermarking techniques embed hidden visual pattems into two or more halftone images such that when the two images are overlaid, the hidden image can be viewed directly on the halftone images. The hidden data must be visual pattems and they are meant to be visually inspected on the halftone images. Some used stochastic screen pattems [ 101 and conjugate halftone screens [l 11 to embed the hidden pattems in ordered dithered halftone images. Due to the conjugate properties, when the two ordered dithered images are overlapped, the hidden visual pattems appeared as dark pattems on the halftone image. However, we are 0-7803-7041 -4/01/$10.00 02001 IEEE 1965 not aware of any existing methods for error diffused images. In section 2, we propose a novel algorithm called Data Hiding by Stochastic Error Diffusion (DHSED) to embed hidden visual patterns in two or more mor diffused halftone images such that the hidden patterns can be visually inspected when the images are overlaid. In Section 3, simulation results are shown. 2. Data Hiding by Stochastic Error Diffusion (DHSED) In this section, we propose a novel algorithm called Data Hiding by Stochastic Error Diffusion (DHSED) to hide invisible watermarking data or patterns in two related error diffused halftone images such that the hidden patterns can be visually detected when the images are overlaid. DHSED uses two M x N halftone images, Yo and Y, , to hide some binary image H which can be visually detected by overlaying Yo and Y, . Let X be the original M x N multi-tone image from which Yo and Y, are obtained. We will use x ( i , j ) and y i ( i , j ) to represent the pixels at location ( i , j ) of X and Yi respectively. In 'general, all quantities associated with Yi would have a subscript i. The hidden binary pattern H i s assumed to have the same size M x N as yo and y, . In the case that the desirable hidden patterns have size smaller than M x N , they can be enlarged and padded to M X N. The black pixels in H can carry meaningful foreground patterns such as text, logo, graphics or clip arts while the white pixels can carry the background. Neither the foreground nor background patterns should contain very fine features because DHSED tends not to be effective in retaining fine features. The first image Yo is generated by regular error diffusion with no hidden visual patterns. In other words, at each pixel location ( i , j ) , a value fo(i, j ) related to the current multi-tone pixel value x ( i , j ) is compared with a threshold T (T=128). And yo (i, j ) will be 0 if f o (i, j ) < T and 255 if fo (i, j ) 2 T . The error eo (i, j ) is fed forward or difhsed to the future pixels by a causal kernel. Note that eo (i, j ) is not the difference of x ( i , j ) and y o ( i , j ) but the difference of fo (i, j ) and yo (i, j ) . Suppose the causal kernel is the Jarvis kernel in Fig. 1. The fo (i, j ) is the sum of the current pixel value x ( i , j ) and the feed-forward error u0 (i, j ) as follows. (1) The second image Y, is generated by applymg Stochastic Error Diffusion (SED) to X with respect to Yo to hide H. In SED, the hidden binary image H is used to turn on or off the stochastic properties on a pixel-by-pixel basis. Let H , be the collection of the locations of all the black pixels in H. Similarly, let H, be the collection of all the white pixel locations in H. For ( i , j ) ~ Hw , the pixel y, ( i , j ) in Y, is forced to be identical to the colocated pixel yo (i, j ) in Yo . In other words, yI ( i , j ) =yo( i , j ) for (i, j ) ~ H, . For H, , error diffusion is applied with some special boundary condtions using the same error diffusion kernel as in Yo such that the texture and the look-and-feel of the regions in Y, are very similar to, if not the same as, the corresponding regions in Yo . The purpose of the special boundary conditions is to create a dlfkrence in the "phase" of error diffusion texture in Y, relative to that in Yo such that the collocated pixels in the Yo and Y, can be considered as statistically independent. Firstly, morphological dilation with some structuring element S is applied to H B to give C = H B @ S . If S is a ( 2 L + l ) x ( 2 L + l ) square matrix with current pixel being in the center, C is basically H , expanded outward both horizontally and vertically by L pixel. An example is shown in Fig. 2 in which H B is a single connected region. Define region D = C n H B C = C n Hw , which is the dark region outside H B in Fig. 1. In SED, the boundary condition is that the error e, ( i , j ) is assumed to be zero outside C, i.e. e, ( i , j )=O for ( i , j ) p C . For ( i , j ) ~ D , Eqns. 1 and 2 are applied to compute ul (i, j ) and fi (i, j ) using the neighboring el . Eqns. 3 and 4 are not applied. Instead of Eqn. 3, we set y , (i, j ) = y o (i, j ) because D c H , . Instead of Eqn.


the immediate and longer-lasting implications of different exit strategies to stay-at-home mandates? How can individuals, communities, and infrastructures best recover from the pandemic and understand, anticipate, and adapt to the widespread changes to personal and professional lives that will result? And how can societies learn the


Discloses a CA (carrier aggregation) method ACK / NACK signal for HARQ (Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request), the method comprising transmitting system: obtaining at least one transmitter transmitting the first and second transmission resources resources resource; composition shows a first configuration of transmission resource and at least one modulation symbol in a second transmission resources are mapped to a first relationship table ACK / NACK signal by using the ACK corresponding to the transmission target in the first table / transmission resources in transmitting NACK signal corresponding to a first modulation symbol table certain transmit ACK / NACK signals, wherein the transmission resources to the first control element indicating a first downlink control channel, the second transmission resources are transmission resources among the set, in the second table, indicated by the resource allocation indicator on the second downlink control channel transmission at least one transmission resource, the second resource allocation indicator value indicating shown and transmitted through higher layer signaling to the UE correspondence between the set of resources emission.


Of the various art forms in Japan, pottery is one of the best illustrations of Japanese individuality. In contrast, the porcelains of Japan have stereotyped shapes and patterns. The two art forms together go far in sustaining Japan's reputation as the cultural melting pot of the Orient. This guide indicates how to distinguish Japanese porcelains from Chinese and how to recognize modern reproductions of genuine old wares.


Abstract Rheometers, especially moving die rheometers (MDR), are widely used for evaluating the kinetic parameters of the cure of rubbers. Experiments are run under isothermal conditions at three temperatures and the reaction is followed by measuring the torque as a function of time. The kinetic parameters can be determined, except the enthalpy of cure. However, the total heat generated by the overall cure reaction can be obtained by calorimetry. Using numerical models and taking all the known facts into account, i.e. the heat transfer by conduction and heat evolved from the cure reaction, profiles of temperature and of state of cure developed through the samples in the MDR have been calculated. The profiles of state of cure were calculated at various times, especially at the time necessary for the torque modulus to attain the value of 95%, and thus a comparison is made between these two pieces of information. Three EPDM compounds were used, containing 2, 9, and 19% peroxide and having different cure enthalpies. The effect of a change in the thickness of the rubber sheet and in the value of the heat transfer at the die/rubber interface was also determined. Rather good correlation was obtained between the results obtained from MDR and the values of the state of cure. The thickness of the sample plays an important role on the process of cure.


Cultural facilities, the city has gone through continuous change of the cultural and social conditions of the times it has. The role of cultural institutions to form a community among the people has become important. Such as arrival of the declining birthrate, aging society and 5days a week work, while significantly increasing the demand for cultural facilities, the need for cultural facilities is further increased. Film is a cultural activities that can contact the simplest around among the various cultural activities. But today's cinima is, rater than cultural facilities have been commercially alteration in the vicinity of the consumption facility of movie. Newly proposed consumption space for the current movie, trying to plan to be able to have a role that can form a community inside the city.


With the advantages of less gas consumption, higher carrying rocks ability, lower leakage and higher penetration rate, foam drilling is widely used today in petroleum industry. In the process of foam underbalanced drilling, the mixture of gas, liquid and cuttings flows upwards through the annular, so it is a typical gas‐liquid‐solid multi‐phase flow. In order to protect the reservoir and avoid borehole wall collapsing during foam drilling, it is crucial to ensure that the bottom hole pressure is lower than the formation pressure and higher than the formation collapse pressure, and in the mean time, foam drilling fluid in the whole wellbore should be in the best foam quality stage in order to have sufficient capacity to carry cuttings. In this paper, main relations between bottom hole pressure and gas‐liquid injecting rate are analyzed with the underbalanced multiphase flow models. And in order to obtain precise flow pattern and flow pressure, the whole well bore is spatial meshed and iterative method is u...


The invention discloses a bacteriostatic composite kieselguhr ceramic membrane and a preparation method thereof. The bacteriostatic composite kieselguhr ceramic membrane comprises a base material and an antibacterial agent, wherein the base material is a multi-hole ceramic membrane which is formed by sintering kieselguhr, and the antibacterial agent is an inorganic antibacterial agent. According to the invention, the kieselguhr is utilized as a raw material and is sintered at high temperature to form the multi-hole ceramic membrane, a large number of silicon hydroxyls (-Si-OH) are distributed on the surface of the kieselguhr and on the inner surface of holes and are dissociated to form H under chemical conditions, then the surfaces of kieselguhr particles express certain surface electronegativity and nucleophilicity, the kieselguhr particles can be utilized as an excellent chelation group and a nucleophilic reaction group for fixing an inorganic metal antibacterial agent, and thus an antibacterial material has a lasting antibacterial property. The kieselguhr-based multi-hole ceramic membrane provided by the invention has the advantages that the porosity is high, the specific surface area is large, the inorganic antibacterial agent is capable of permeating in the kieselguhr ceramic membrane, and the bacteriostatic nanometer composite kieselguhr ceramic membrane can be repeatedly cleaned and used.


A 56-year-old man presented with a solitar y retinal astrocytic hamar toma in the right eye. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) showed an elevated, hyperreflective intraretinal mass with a moth-eaten appearance due to optically empty spaces together with a posterior hyporeflective shadow. The posterior vitreous membrane was adhered to the surface of the tumor. Retinal astrocytic hamartoma is a relatively static lesion, seldom requiring treatment. However, in rare instances, symptomatic alterations, such as tumor enlargement with leakage, macular edema, accumulation of lipoid exudates, serous retinal detachment, and vitreous hemorrhage, have been reported. We suggest that OCT, which can be used to visualize vitreoretinal adhesion and/or traction, might be a valuable tool to monitor secondary changes of