There is a high unmet need for disease-modifying antifibrotic therapies in diffuse cutaneous systemic sclerosis (dcSSc) which could improve the outcome of this severe disease. Patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) are important and mandatory for randomized clinical trials (RCTs). The EULAR-endorsed ScleroID is the first comprehensive PROM specifically developed by SSc patients and experts to reflect the disease impact of SSc and showed a good performance in the clinical validation study [1]. However, most RCTs focus on dcSSc patients, hence a validated PROM to reflect the disease burden experienced by patients with dcSSc is needed and a detailed analysis of ScleroID in this subset of patients is lacking.To investigate the performance of the EULAR ScleroID in patients with dcSSc as a prerequisite for its use as a PROM in RCTs testing potentially disease-modifying drugs.This is a subanalysis of all patients with dcSSc from the large, multicentric, ScleroID validation cohort [1]. As comparators, SSc-HAQ, EQ-5D, SF-36 were included. The study had a longitudinal arm with a reliability visit at 7+/- 3 days and a 12-month follow-up visit [1]. The performance of ScleroID in dcSSc was assessed according to the OMERACT filter [1].152 dcSSc patients with a baseline visit were analyzed (44, 28.9% male, median age 54 years, median disease duration 7 years). ScleroID performed well as a PROM reflecting the disease impact of dcSSc: it showed a good construct validity with high Spearman's correlation coefficients with comparators (SSc-HAQ, 0.79, 95%CI [0.69, 0.86]; HAQ-DI, 0.72 95%CI [0.60, 0.80]; SF-36 physical score, -0.69 95%CI [-0.77, -0.60]). Furthermore, the internal consistency was strong: Cronbach's alpha was 0.87 and the split half reliability coefficient was 0.88. In the longitudinal arm, 44 patients had a test-retest reliability visit and 113 a follow-up visit, of whom 19/113 (16.8%) reported a significant change at 12 months follow-up (11 improved, 8 worsened). ScleroID showed a good consistency and discrimination ability with excellent test-retest reliability (intra-class correlation coefficient 0.89, 95%CI [0.84, 0.92]) and moderate sensitivity to change (standardized response mean 0.54), superior to the comparators (SSc-HAQ, 0.01; HAQ-DI, -0.07; SF-36 physical score, -0.43). The results are summarized in Figure 1.The EULAR ScleroID, which is a novel, brief, disease specific, patient-derived, disease impact PROM, performs well for patients with dcSSc. This supports the inclusion and further analysis of ScleroID as a PROM to reflect patients' perspective in RCTs.[1]Becker M, Dobrota R, Garaiman A, et al. Development and validation of a patient-reported outcome measure for systemic sclerosis: the EULAR Systemic Sclerosis Impact of Disease (ScleroID) questionnaire. Ann Rheum Dis. 2022 Apr;81(4):507-515.Figure 1.Performance of ScleroID in dcSSc by the OMERACT filter for truth and discrimination.We sincerely thank the patients' representatives who contributed to the ScleroID study, without whom this project would not have been possible.Rucsandra Dobrota Speakers bureau: Actelion, Consultant of: Boehringer-Ingelheim, Grant/research support from: Pfizer, Actelion, Alexandru Garaiman: None declared, Kim Fligelstone: None declared, Ann Kennedy: None declared, Annelise Roennow: None declared, Yannick Allanore Consultant of: AbbVie, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Mylan, Janssen, Medsenic, Prometheus, Sanofi, Roche, Grant/research support from: Alpine Immunosciences, Medsenic, OSE Immunotherapeutics, Patricia Carreira: None declared, László Czirják: None declared, Christopher P Denton: None declared, Roger Hesselstrand: None declared, Gunnel Sandqvist: None declared, Otylia Kowal-Bielecka: None declared, Cosimo Bruni Speakers bureau: Eli-Lilly, Consultant of: Boehringer-Ingelheim, Grant/research support from: Gruppo Italiano Lotta alla Sclerodermia (GILS), European Scleroderma Trials and Research Group (EUSTAR), Foundation for research in Rheumatology (FOREUM), Scleroderma Clinical Trials Consortium (SCTC), AbbVie, Marco Matucci Cerinic: None declared, Carina Mihai Speakers bureau: Boehringer Ingelheim, Janssen, MED Talks Switzerland, Mepha, and PlayToKnow AG, Consultant of: Boehringer Ingelheim, Janssen, MED Talks Switzerland, Mepha, and PlayToKnow AG, Ana Maria Gheorghiu: None declared, Ulf Müller-Ladner: None declared, Joe Sexton: None declared, Tore K. Kvien: None declared, Turid Heiberg: None declared, Oliver Distler Speakers bureau: Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Janssen, Medscape, Consultant of: 4P-Pharma, Abbvie, Acceleron, Alcimed, Altavant Siences, Amgen, AnaMar, Arxx, AstraZeneca, Baecon, Blade, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Corbus, CSL Behring, Galapagos, Glenmark, Horizon, Inventiva, Kymera, Lupin, Miltenyi Biotec, Mitsubishi Tanabe, MSD, Novartis, Prometheus, Redxpharna, Roivant, Sanofi and Topadur, Grant/research support from: Kymera, Mitsubishi Tanabe, Boehringer Ingelheim, Mike O. Becker Speakers bureau: Mepha, Bayer, MSD, GSK, Amgen, Novartis and Vifor, Consultant of: Mepha, Bayer, MSD, GSK, Amgen, Novartis and Vifor.


Napoleonic Wars broke out under the certain historic circumstances which were caused by various factors.This article discusses the causes of Napoleonic Wars in the view of traditional and realistic facts.In terms of tradition,the wars were affected by war ethics,political tradition and national values.These were the very background of Napoleonic Wars.In terms of reality,the domestic contradiction and social needs in France,the force of provoke from other European feudalistic countries,domestic acute class struggles and national contradiction in every country were all direct causes for the wars.


The term Bullying is related to the presence of aggressive behavior or victimization, with repeated episodes, evident between the age groups of childhood and adolescence, occurring in the form of physical or verbal abuse, related to physical, socioeconomic, or orientation-related aspects. and sexual diversity of individuals, leading to illness, stress, anxiety, exclusion or social isolation. The school presents itself as a space where this phenomenon has been recurring. Acting in the perspective of promoting holistic care, promoted by the professional nurse that allows adolescents victimized by bullying to reduce stress-related illness and its consequences, from the practice of meditation, considers it an effective resource for combining the perception of the other in its entirety. Meditation has been spreading over its benefits: physical, mental and emotional well-being with the perception of greater self-awareness and less responsiveness to stress. Holistic Nursing Care, based on the science of the unitary human being, discusses the look at the energetic phenomena, therefore, the general objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of meditation as a nursing intervention on the stress experienced by adolescents. to bullying. Multiple case study, which allowed to evaluate the effect of meditation from the capture of stress scores, vital signs records (RF, HR, SBP and DBP) and reports of participants. The research was conducted in two schools in the metropolitan region of Recife with adolescents aged 13 - 17 years, and followed three stages: the first diagnosis, with the recruitment and application of the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS); The second stage consisted of the intervention with the meditation, in eight meetings, over a 120-day period with vital signs recorded before and after its performance; The third was composed by the reapplication of the Scale (PSS), in addition to the records regarding the self-perceived benefits of meditation. The development of the study followed the guidelines of Resolution 466/2012. CAAE: 67890317.1.0000.5208. From the intervention with meditation, it can be evidenced: reduction of stress scores, reduction of vital parameters, in addition to the reports of adolescents, focused on feelings of empathy, increased self-control, self-confidence and relaxation. Therefore, prevention actions to minimize bullying situations need to be anchored in an approach focused on promoting subjective and holistic self-care. Therefore, a nursing practice, performed from the use of meditation, enables the expansion of nursing care, including the interactions that involve the subjects' fields and the environmental fields with repercussions on their behavior and quality of life. Focusing on this praxis may be a new holistic path for health promotion from the science of nursing.


In this paper, we present the results of a study carried out in the continuing formation course promoted by The National Net of English Teachers Continuing Formation - RENAFORM (Rede Nacional de Formacao Continuada de Professores de Ingles), in one of the poles of the program, located in a medium town in the southwest of the state of Goias - Brazil. Our general objective was to investigate the perception of the participant teachers as well as those of the teacher educator about RENAFORM. The specific aims were: 1. To understand the assessment made by the participant teachers concerning the course, the teacher educators and themselves (self-assessment); 2. To ascertain the conditions provided for the teachers and teacher educators in the course; 3. To verify the teacher educator's impressions regarding RENAFORM. As the basis for this study, we used concepts related to teacher formation, such as the teacher as transforming intellectual (GIROUX, 1997), the teacher's knowledge (TARDIFF, 2002) and the teacher's identity crisis (NOVOA, 1998). We used principles of the case study as central methodology. To collect the data, we made use of a questionnaire with close-ended and open-ended questions. The findings point out to a high acceptance of the course by the participants, though it lacks public policies that could magnify and potentialize its reach by foreign language teachers.


Production of ferronickel from laterites has predominantly been achieved using the Rotary Kiln-Electric Furnance(RKEF) process.This paper review the effective measures to reduce dust from rotary kiln and recycle it by researching formation mechanism of dust,according to a series of metallurgical tests of Control of Moisture Level in the Nickel Laterite Dried and Pelletizing of the dryer dust during the Rotary Kiln-Electric Furnance(RKEF) process for ferronickel from laterites.


Purpose
The disposition effect remains one of the most significant investor behavior puzzles. This study aims to consolidate the knowledge, explore current dynamics, elicit trends and offer future research directions to demystify the disposition effect.

Design/methodology/approach
This study applies the hybrid review method. It first used bibliometric analysis (212 documents), followed by content analysis (54 articles) to analyze the breadth and depth of literature on the disposition effect.

Findings
This study presents performance analysis and science mapping. It identifies five main research streams: evidence, implications and mitigation techniques; theoretical explanations; investor biases and hedonic framing; attributes, beliefs and preferences; and implications for asset pricing and market efficiency. This study further offers future research directions for disposition effect research.

Research limitations/implications
This study deploys sequential bibliometric and content analysis. A meta-analysis of quantitative articles could provide specific insights regarding the disposition effect. Besides, this study is based on Scopus-indexed journals only.

Practical implications
This study benefits investors and portfolio managers as they learn effective ways to guard against the disposition effect. Policymakers may tweak tax laws to incentivize long-term holding, and regulators can run investor education campaigns to minimize the disposition effect's consequences effectively.

Originality/value
To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is probably the first hybrid review of high-quality, contemporary articles on the disposition effect that offers science mapping, research streams, future research directions and a succinct summary of theories, contexts, characteristics and methods deployed in the field of research.


Introduction A SYMMETRIC buckling of shells of revolution using different jTm numerical methods such as finite element, integration, and finite difference techniques, has received considerable attention in the past few years. It was pointed out in Ref. 2 that the results of Navaratna et al. for cylindrical shells of variable thickness under axial compression were in serious disagreement with the results obtained by the integration method. Further, the axial tensile buckling load of a truncated hemisphere using the finite element method did not agree with the results of Yao, Wu and Cheng, and Radhamohan and Prasad. These observations prompted this reinvestigation of the buckling analysis of shells of revolution using a more refined finite element. The numerical results based on the present formulation will be limited to clarify the discrepancies existing in the work of Navaratna et al. In what follows, the salient features of the formulation are summarized.


The nozzle (1) to fill a reservoir (2) of preferably mobile devices with liquid gas, particularly to fill a reservoir (2) car with liquid gas, wherein the fuel hose nozzle (1) unboquerel base (3) and an overlay interface part disposed at the outlet end of the nozzle base (3) being connectable headpiece interface to a complementary interface to interface piezasuperpuesta interface a tank port (6) of the tank (2 ), wherein the nozzle base (3) a tubode outlet (5), an actuating handle and a valve insert (8) arranged at the front end of DeToma tube (5), wherein the valve insert (8) a valve guide (10) with outlet opening (11) for the gas liquid, being housed in the valve guide (10) a valve piston (12) and closing the valve piston (12), closed elestado the nozzle base (3), the outlet opening (11) valve guide (10), the valve pistonde (12) a piston head valve (13), head valve piston (13), in delboquerel base (3) closed state, is supported on a surface support (15) surrounding the outlet opening (11) of the valve Guiade (10) and thus closes the outlet opening (11), the head of the valve piston (13) a sealing valve ( 14) surrounding its perimeter, in the closed state of the nozzle base (3), is supported by lasuperficie support (15) of the outlet opening (11), obtaining with the aid of an additional seal (27), elestado closed nozzle base (3), a double seal, closing the one hand the valve piston (12) or sucabeza valve piston (13) the outlet opening (11) of the valve guide (10), it being provided the devalvula seal (14) surrounding the perimeter of the valve piston (12) or the perimeter of the head of the valve piston (13), is Tando provided on the other hand, in the closed state of the nozzle base (3), an additional seal (27) between the valve Guiade (10) and the intake pipe (5) or between the valve guide (10) and valve seat (9) fixed in the DeToma tube (5) which seals against the flow of liquid gas from the inlet pipe (5) into an outlet space (26) arranged in the flow direction, before an outlet opening (11) of the valve guide (10), estandoprevisto a spring element pressing the valve guide (10) towards the outlet end of the deboquerel group (1), so that the additional seal (27), in the closed state of the nozzle base (3) is dispuestaentre valve guide (10) and the intake pipe (5) or between the valve guide (10) and the valve seat (9) yrealizandose, during compression of the valve guide (10) against an abutment (16) of the tank port (6), a relative movement or displacement relativ or between the valve guide (10) and the valve piston (12) yliberandose during the relative displacement between the valve guide (10) and the valve piston (12) the depiston valve head (13) of the surface support (15), such that exposed the outlet opening (11) dela valve guide (10) and can flow liquid gas, in this open state, since the nozzle base (3) or from elgrupo of nozzle ( 1) to the outside.


Background: Globally, the patterns, prevalence and cognitive barriers to Human-Immunodeficiency-Virus and Acquired-Immune-Deficiency-Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) disclosure among individuals diagnosed with HIV have continually been a source of concern, especially in developing countries. This been widely linked to most persistent problems thwarting the effort of authorities saddled with responsibilities of curbing the menace of HIV/AIDS in Africa at large. The unabated issues have been a primary global health concern. Methods: The study was carried out in the Heart to Heart (H2H) unit of Hematology Department of the Ondo State Teaching Hospital, Akure, Ondo State. The study incorporated a blend of a quantitative method (to explore the prevalence of disclosure and its socio-demographic prevalence) and qualitative method (to explore cognitive barriers to self-disclosure of HIV positive status. The quantitative data was gathered from three hundred and ninety (n=390) PLWHA and the qualitative data was gathered from nineteen (n=19) PLHIV. Results: The prevalence of low-disclosure intention among treatment-seeking people living with HIV/AIDS was pegged at 64.6%. Approximately 70% of the males and 60% of the females are not likely to disclose their HIV positive status. 65% of the PLHIV from monogamy family structure are not likely to disclose their HIV positive status. Anticipated stigmatization, disclosure self-efficacy, mood problems, health locus of control were identified as the major cognitive barriers to disclosure of HIV positive status. Conclusion: The study further concludes that anticipated stigmatization, disclosure efficacy, manifested mood problems (anxiety and depressive symptoms), and health locus of control were the implicated cognitive barriers to disclosure among a hospital-based PLHIV. The outcome was similarly Furthermore, the study revealed that the target of disclosure was major to secondary circle i.e. parents and siblings and not towards the primary circle, such as; spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend, children. Implications and recommendations were further discussed.


China Centre for Resources Satellite Data and Application (abbreviate as CRESDA) is a core platform to store, process, analyze, and distribute land observing satellite data in China. It can provide high quality and effective services for the State Council and the relevant departments of government and local authorities. In the era of big data, the data center benefits from big data opportunities as well as suffering from big data challenges. In the paper, the big data challenges of the CRESDA are summarized. In particular, four major challenges are comprised of the 3V dimensions of big data (i.e. Volume, Variety, and Velocity) and one specific challenge (i.e., extensibility) in the data center.


This paper presents the Probabilistic Vehicle Routing and scheduling Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW-P) model which takes into account the uncertainty of travel times. Probe vehicle data of travel times were obtained from actual operation of pickup-delivery truck in Osaka-Kobe area. The optimal solution of VRPTW-P resulted in considerably reducing total cost, travel times and CO2, NOx and SPM emissions compared with expected average case based on the real operation. This is attributed to better routing of VRPTW-P to choose more reliable roads. Therefore, VRPTW-P can contribute to establish efficient an environmentally friendly delivery systems in urban area.


Confucian culture is of long standing and well established,and the central ethics thought of it has great meaning to the building of harmonious society at the present stage.Involving three respects of political goal,interpersonal relationship,practice principle of harmonious society,a series of ethics spirit of the Confucianists such as "benevolence","loyal and consideration","golden mean" can play a realistic guidance arrivesing role.


This document serves as supplementary information to the paper " State of the Nation – a snapshot of Australian institutional repositories " , (2008) M A Kennan and D A Kingsley, submitted for review in October 2008. Institution Repository Name Open Repository web address Future repository or log-in controlled web address Org. unit responsible for the repository Year repository operational (or planned)


In a seminal essay, Hidé Ishiguro argued that names in the Tractatus are 'like dummy names' and that a simple object is to be conceived of as 'an instantiation of an irreducible predicate'. In this paper, I argue that Ishiguro's view is incompatible with other claims made in the Tractatus and should be abandoned for this reason. To this end, I adopt a two-step strategy. First, I show that Ishiguro's view implies the adoption of an anti-haecceitistic position. Then I show that the Tractatus allows for the possibility of there being haecceitistic differences between two complete descriptions of the world. Since anti-haecceitism will be characterized as the doctrine that haecceitistic differences are meaningless, this provides a refutation of Ishiguro's view. In the final section, I make a few remarks on the relation between anti-haecceitism and the context principle.


Multiple charge separation has been successfully realized via a proton-coupled electron transfer reaction in an organic cocrystal. Benefiting from the adjustable electronic energy level of the electron donor and acceptor via thermal-induced proton migration, distinct optical absorption behaviors combined with color evolvements to blue or green are observed in these charge separation states. It is of interest to note that such charge separation states exhibit a longer lifetime of over a month due to the excellent coplanarity and π-π interaction of the electron acceptors. Moreover, the enhanced absorption toward longer wavelengths endows the charge separation state with near-infrared (808 nm) photothermal conversion for imaging and bacterial inhibition, of which the conversion performance can be controlled by the degree of proton migration.


Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology to evaluate the capital investments in infrastructure projects managed by private operators considering uncertainties in the operation and maintenance of the infrastructure components.Design/methodology/approach – The methodology described in this paper is based on two major sources of information: deterioration curves of the infrastructure systems obtained from Markov chain models and the value of flexibility obtained from a real options analysis.Findings – Using this methodology, it is possible to determine whether there is value if project managers adopt flexible strategies in determining capital investments. These strategies refer to the opportunities of postponing, deferring or canceling capital investments required to maintain the operation of the infrastructure systems.Research limitations/implications – The model utilizes Monte Carlo simulation and real options analysis to overcome the complexities associated with the solution of the ...


To recap, the research question of this work is: How and under which conditions are transnational social movements successful in strengthening the human rights accountability of multilateral development banks? This question is analogous to and builds on existing works on socialization with a focus on causal mechanisms (Schimmelfennig, 2005; Zürn & Checkel, 2005). According to Zürn and Checkel (2005), "A common motive for invoking 'mechanisms' is to clarify what happens between a cause and its effect, that is, to analyze in detail how (emphasis added by the author) the former relates to the latter" (p. 1048). Researchers that work with causal mechanisms also highlight the importance of scope conditions. This is the under which conditions part of the question, as "the goal here is to identify the conditions under which" actors "trigger certain mechanisms that lead to socialization" (Zürn & Checkel, 2005, p. 1055). This chapter presents the analytical framework for the analysis of my two cases. Specifically, it presents the parts necessary to construct a sound and empirically testable causal mechanism of social movement influence on MDBs. The aim of this chapter is to conceptualize each part of the mechanism and to theorize how these parts are connected. The chapter is structured along five sections. First, I elaborate on the outcome (O) of interest. This outcome is socialization, conceptualized as organizational policy and institutional reform toward comprehensive human rights accountability. I draw on the concept of "legalization" (Abbott et al., 2000) to theorize the scope and depth of such reforms. In section 3.2, I elaborate on the scope conditions under which movements may effect political and institutional change. Bridging IR and social movement scholarship, I structure these scope conditions according to properties of the actor seeking change, properties of the target organization, the issue, and the discursive opportunity structure. Among the scope conditions, one stands out: counter mobilization. I elaborate upon and differentiate counter mobilization by the MDB bureaucracy and that by MDB member states (3.3). This scope condition shares with all others that the success of TSM tactics depends on its occurrence and strength. Different from the other scope


The depth map contains abundant spatial structure cues, which makes it extensively introduced into saliency detection tasks for improving the detection accuracy. Nevertheless, the acquired depth map is often with uneven quality, due to the interference of depth sensors and external environments, posing a challenge when trying to minimize the disturbances from low-quality depth maps during the fusion process. In this article, to mitigate such issues and highlight the salient objects, we propose a progressive guided fusion network (PGFNet) with multi-modal and multi-scale attention for RGB-D salient object detection. Particularly, we first present a multi-modal and multi-scale attention fusion model (MMAFM) to fully mine and utilize the complementarity of features at different scales and modalities for achieving optimal fusion. Then, to strengthen the semantic expressiveness of the shallow-layer features, we design a multi-modal feature refinement mechanism (MFRM), which exploits the high-level fusion feature to guide the enhancement of the shallow-layer original RGB and depth features before they are fused. Moreover, a residual prediction module (RPM) is applied to further suppress background elements. Our entire network adopts a top-down strategy to progressively excavate and integrate valuable information. Compared with the state-of-the-art methods, experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method both qualitatively and quantitatively on eight challenging benchmark datasets.


The reliability of clinical measurements is critical to medical research and clinical practice. Newly proposed methods are assessed in terms of their reliability, which includes their repeatability, intraand interobserver reproducibility. In general, new methods that provide repeatable and reproducible results are compared with established methods used clinically. This paper describes common statistical methods for assessing reliability and agreement between methods, including the intraclass correlation coefficient, coefficient of variation, Bland-Altman plot, limits of agreement, percent agreement, and the kappa statistic. These methods are more appropriate for estimating reliability than hypothesis testing or simple correlation methods. However, some methods of reliability, especially unscaled ones, do not clearly define the acceptable level of error in real size and unit. The Bland-Altman plot is more useful for method comparison studies as it assesses the relationship between the differences and the magnitude of paired measurements, bias (as mean difference), and degree of agreement (as limits of agreement) between two methods or conditions (e.g., observers). Caution should be used when handling heteroscedasticity of difference between two measurements, employing the means of repeated measurements by method in methods comparison studies, and comparing reliability between different studies. Additionally, independence in the measuring processes, the combined use of different forms of estimating, clear descriptions of the calculations used to produce indices, and clinical acceptability should be emphasized when assessing reliability and method comparison studies. (Ewha Med J 2017;40(1):9-16) Received December 29, 2016 Accepted January 4, 2017


This paper deals with 3D time-harmonic eddy current analyses using the A-φ method with the continuity of the excitation current density that uses the magnetic vector potential A and the electric scalar potential φ as unknown functions. To analyze large-scale problems with over 10 million complex degrees of freedom (DOF) in parallel environments, Hierarchical Domain Decomposition Method (HDDM) is introduced, together with the data handling type "Parallel processor mode (P-mode)". Furthermore, we research the characteristics of HDDM in time-harmonic eddy current analysis and obtain the knowledge for large-scale time-harmonic eddy current analysis. To confirm the efficiency of our method, we analyze a simple model changing its DOF several times up to 44 million complex DOF. The computations are performed with a PC cluster that consists of 32 PCs. As a result, a time-harmonic eddy current problem with 44 million complex DOF is successfully solved in less than five hours.


In order to explore the effective way of greening under the situation which have a growing family but a reducing greening land in China, based on the investigations and analysis of the characteristics, forms and plant selections of space greening in cities, the paper points out that the space greening is a rapid efficient and economical form of greening. It will be one of the important ways of greening in Chinese cities. And the suggestions and measures about the development of space greening in cities are put forward.


The sintering of hardmetal in the solid state is studied. The influence of the WC particle size on the sintering kinetics, the role of the binder phase in the densification process and how sintering depends on the heating conditions are investigated. It is observed that alloys with different WC particle size show quite different structural evolution during sintering, although the densification mechanisms are the same. This is explained by the formation of agglomerates of WC and Co. Hardmetal alloys can sinter very rapidly when high heating rates are used, since rapid heating accelerates the binder spreading and the formation of WC-Co agglomerates. The binder phase (Co) spreads on the WC particles initially as a thin layer. Subsequently, more Co spreads on this layer and WC-Co agglomerates are formed.


This study is the first head‐to‐head analysis of StarClose vs. ProGlide in patients undergoing 5F or 6F percutaneous coronary catheterization or peripheral artery interventions.


Mechanisms giving rise to swing and reverse swing of a cricket ball will be identified. The paper explains how transverse force directions may be deduced from observed wake directions and explains how Reynolds number similarity can be used with low velocity smoke trails equivalent to visualise high-speed bowling.


The goal of this paper is to present The Green Forest Works for Appalachia Program established by The Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative (ARRI), created in 2004 in order to reforest mined lands in the Eastern United States. Established under ARRI's guidance and with government, patron, or corporate funding, the Program would have the aim to combine in the best way all the economic, social, environmental and ecological aspects which contribute to the development of the region. Its benefits will have a deep economic, social, ecological and environmental impact. More than 2,000 local residents from the rural coalfield communities could be involved in the re-establishment of over 175,000 acres of formerly mined lands by planting more than 125 million trees by 2014 with a deep influence upon unemployment rate, land productivity, forest fragmentation, carbon sequestration and environment quality. Scientific Papers Management, Economic Engineering in Agriculture and Rural Development Vol 10(1)/2010 ISSN 1844-5640 CONSUMATION AND COST ANALYSIS FOR SUGAR BEET PRODUCTION IN S.R.L. "DESETINCOM", R. DROCHIA Ana ANTOCI, Vitalie IGNAT The State Agrarian University from Moldova, 44, Mircesti street, 2049, Chisinau, Republic of Moldova, tel. (+373 22 212808), gsm (+373 68 714685: +373 79 571894) firstname.lastname@example.com


Carbonate-hosted zinc and lead deposits occur in two settings in the Humber Terrane of western Newfoundland: (i) associated with dolomitized units and breccias in Cambrian and Ordovician shelf-facies carbonate rocks; and (ii) as open-space, vein, and breccia fillings associated with calcite within or near the margins of Carboniferous basins. We report 11 new lead-isotope analyses from deposits of the former type on the Great Northern Peninsula (the GNP suite) and 8 new analyses from deposits of the latter type on the Port au Port Peninsula and the northern part of the Bay St. George subbasin (BSG suite).The isotopic composition of lead in galena from the GNP suite defines linear trends in which the lead-isotope ratios increase with stratigraphic height in the Cambro-Ordovician sequence. These trends are interpreted as mixing lines; samples at the non-radiogenic end have very low 207Pb/204Pb but high 208Pb/204Pb ratios relative to 206Pb/204Pb and are interpreted as representing substantial evolution in hig...


Previous studies have identified the most important prognostic factors of the likely outcomes of salvage prostate whole‐gland ablation, including initial clinical stage, biopsy Gleason score, and PSA (total and doubling time). There is potential for further optimization of candidate selection for salvage cryoablation with curative intent and nadir PSA achieved after whole‐gland cryotherapy may provide additional prognostic value. The study shows that the most important prognostic factors of biochemical progression‐free survival for patients who have undergone whole‐gland salvage prostate cryotherapy are nadir PSA achieved after therapy and pre‐therapy biopsy Gleason score. Based on these two prognostic variables, we have identified risk stratification groups (low, intermediate and high) which help predict the expected outcomes of salvage whole‐gland prostate cryotherapy in a given patient. This risk stratification constitutes a useful clinical tool in defining which patients maybe best suited for this local salvage treatment method.


In this paper, we consider the modulation instability of a quasiharmonic flexural wave propagating in a homogeneous beam fixed on a nonlinear elastic foundation. The dynamic behavior of the beam is determined by Timoshenko's theory. Timoshenko's model, refining the technical theory of rod bending, assumes that the crosssections remain flat, but not perpendicular to the deformable midline of the rod; normal stresses on sites parallel to the axis are zero; the inertial components associated with the rotation of the cross sections are taken into account. The uniqueness of the model lies in the fact that, allowing a good description of many processes occurring in real structures, it remains quite simple, accessible for analytical research. The system of equations describing the bending vibrations of the beam is reduced to one nonlinear fourthorder equation for the transverse displacements of the beam particles. The nonlinear Schrödinger equation, one of the basic equations of nonlinear wave dynamics, is obtained by the method of many scales. Regions of modulation instability are determined according to the Lighthill criterion. It is shown hot the boundaries of these areas shift when the parameters characterizing the elastic properties of the beam material and the nonlinearity of the base change. Nonlinear stationary envelope waves are considered. An equation that generalizes the Duffing equation, which contains two additional terms in negative powers (first and third), is obtained and qualitatively analyzed. Solutions of the Schr?dinger equation in the form of envelope solitons are found and the dependences of their main parameters (amplitude, width) on the parameters of the system are analyzed. The dynamics of the points of intersection of the amplitudes and widths of "light" solitons in the case of soft nonlinearity of the base is shown within the region of modulation instability.


Many scholars since Vielhauer have viewed the Lukan Paul as standing in contradiction to the epistolary Paul. This essay contends that a proper assessment of the genre, audience, and function of Romans 11 and Acts 28:16-31 enables readers to see that both Pauls agree on several points regarding Jewish response to the gospel. Where there are differences, these are complementary. Both Pauls see a mixed response among Jews, the developing of a faithful remnant, and in both texts 'provoking to jealousy' is a critical element.


ABSTRACT Reliability analysis for complex system is one of the most concerned problems in industry. On account of high cost of testing we often obtain a small size of sample, even only test data for components. In this article, an exact method for system reliability assessment will be presented generalized from the Buehler confidence limit. We give a suggestion on the choice of statistic order based on an estimate of system reliability which only relies on the true value of even for multiparameter model. In addition, we present an algorithm to solve the function with constraint set up in Buehler method. A three-component application is given to illustrate the algorithm. We also present some simulation studies to compare our proposed method with other widely applied methods.


A hands-on microfabrication project was developed and implemented for Louisiana Techpsilas integrated freshman engineering curriculum. The project involved the design and fabrication of a simple nickel resistance temperature detector. The project is part of a series of hands-on projects being developed for the freshman engineering curriculum as part of a "Living with the Lab" concept that utilizes a microcontroller-based robotics kit to increase experiential learning. The project was initially piloted in two sections of a freshman engineering course and was extended to seven sections in the current academic year. The project included the direct application of fundamental engineering topics as well as applied technical skills and additionally provided an opportunity to introduce students to some common microfabrication techniques. The sensors were fabricated using optical lithography and etching of a nickel coated microscope slide. Students interfaced the sensors with microcontrollers and calibrated the sensors. The project provided an opportunity for freshman students to gain first-hand experience in the design, fabrication and calibration of a temperature sensor as well as motivated the need for engineering tools such as spreadsheets and CAD packages. The paper presents assessment results for the projectpsilas impact on student knowledge and interest in micro and nanotechnology.


We are living in an increasingly intelligent world where countless numbers of autonomous wireless sensing devices continuously monitor, provide information on, and manipulate the environments in which we live. This trend is growing fast and will undoubtedly continue. The vision of this intelligent world has gone by many names including "wireless sensor networks," "ambient intelligence," and, more recently, "the Internet ofThings (IoT)." Regardless of the current buzzwords, this vision will continue to take shape.We are now realistically talking about a trillion or more connected sensors populating the world. Almost all of these wireless connected devices are currently powered by batteries that have to be periodically recharged or replaced. This state of affairs is simply not practical if we are to havemany hundreds of sensors per person on the planet. Alternative autonomous power supplies are becoming more and more critical. Furthermore, these power sources must be small, inexpensive, and highly reliable. This need has given rise to a new field of research, study, and engineering practice, usually referred to as Energy Harvesting. This book is intended to cover the engineering fundamentals and current state of the art associated with energy harvesting at the small scale, or Micro Energy Harvesting. The term "Energy Harvesting" usually refers to devices or systems that capture (or harvest) ambient energy in the environment and convert it into a useful form, which is usually electricity. Large-scale renewable power generation such as solar arrays, wind farms, and ocean wave generators can be considered forms of energy harvesting. However, for the purposes of this book, we define the term somewhat more narrowly. We define energy harvesting as technologies, devices, and systems that capture ambient energy to replace or augment the batteries in wireless devices.The title of this book is "Micro Energy Harvesting". In the energy harvesting literature, the word "micro" sometimes refers to different aspects of the system. The first is the power level. Micro energy harvesting systems generally produce power best described by microwatts, usually 10–100s of microwatts. Sometimes, "micro" refers to the scale of the energy harvesting device, that is,


Two women wearing soft head coverings are looking to their right while a small cage hangs behind their right shoulders. The wind appears to be blowing and the woman in the foreground holds a decorated fan.


The present invention concerns an in vitro method for detecting an enzyme or a microorganism in a biological sample, comprising the steps of: a1) concentrating the microorganisms present in the biological sample, optionally after a a0) culture step of the microorganisms; b1) placing in suspension the microorganisms concentrated at step a1) in a solution containing at least one chromogenic or fluorogenic substrate capable of releasing a chromophore or fluorophore after hydrolysis by the enzyme to be detected; c1) detecting potential release of the chromophore or fluorophore obtained at step b1); the release of the chromophore or fluorophore detected at step c1) indicating the presence of the enzyme to be detected.


Huygens metasurface (HMS) provides a flexible way to tailor the phases of fields without incurring reflection. Recently, HMS has been used in antenna scenes to convert the incident field into directional radiation. However, most design processes of the HMS antennas are based on the generalized sheet transition condition, which is usually augmented with extra operations for ensuring passivity and losslessness. Here, we propose a simple and comprehensive strategy to design and optimize the HMS antenna. The strategy builds an equivalent model of the HMS antenna and deals with the designs from the perspective of phase optimization, which is simple and straightforward. A fast and efficient algorithm is presented to solve the optimization problem under the framework of alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). The phases obtained by this strategy are naturally compatible with the passive and lossless conditions and can be directly implemented by metasurfaces. Furthermore, the strategy imposes constraints on the phase difference of adjacent meta-atoms, thus reducing the performance deterioration caused by aperiodic boundary conditions. The feasibility and superiority of the strategy are verified by full-wave simulation results and experimental measurements of exemplary designs.


By employing plasma-assisted atomic layer deposition, thin films of Al2O3 and TiN are subsequently deposited in a single reactor at a single substrate temperature with the objective of fabricating high-quality TiN/Al2O3/p-Si metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitors. Transmission electron microscopy and Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy analyses show well-defined interfaces and good Al2O3 stoichiometry, respectively. Electrical investigation of as-deposited test structures demonstrates leakage current densities as low as ∼1 nA/cm2. Current-voltage (I-V) measurements demonstrate clear Fowler–Nordheim tunneling with an average TiN/Al2O3 barrier height of 3.3 eV. Steep Weibull distributions of the breakdown electric field around 7.5 MV/cm indicate good reliability of these devices. Time-dependent dielectric breakdown measurements demonstrate that the devices can sustain high operating electric fields of 3–4 MV/cm for the 10 year lifetime criterion. From capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurements, a dielectric co...


In this study we analyse different linguistic elements in the TV series Will & Grace that
 shape the gay identity of the main characters of the show. We will base the analysis on the inclusion of the cultural turn into
 the field of audiovisual translation studies and on the technical time and space constraints that may emerge when conveying the
 message in this type of texts. Therefore, we will focus on the treatment of cultural references associated to the LGBTQI community
 that are shown on the series, as well as the linguistic variant of gayspeak and the comic elements included in the dialogues in
 order to observe whether the information that viewers of the Spanish dubbed version receive regarding gay identity is the same
 that is portrayed in the original version in English.


The beam energy spectrum monitor for the Hefei 200MeV Linac is introduced. The monitor is composed of a magnetic analyzer, a fluorescent screen, an optic system, a linear photodiode array, a signal processing circuit, an oscilloscope and a CCD camera. The measurement result is given.


Aerodynamic design of aero turbine engine is a complex process that requires diverse engineering disciplines to execute independent of each other in sequence, usually iteratively and interactively. It involves various scientific computing packages to provide a fast, accurate, and reliable approach to model engineering problems. The calculations of aerodynamics, thermodynamics and structure are repeated continuously by many kinds of engineering computation software. The characteristics require a modular design mode. Business component is introduced in integrated management system for aerodynamic design of aero turbine engine (IMS-DATE) to deal with those difficulties, which is defined as a combinational management module that comprises design object's attributes and corresponding processing logic, which can implement universal management of design resources and design data. Concepts of business component applied are defined, including its structure compositions and framework design. And several key technologies in implementation are illustrated, namely, hierarchical software registry, software encapsulation and parameter parsing.


Face Recognition system is one of an effective system which is used for the identification of a person from a video frame or a digital image. The concept of FRS is primarily used in the field of security systems and hence can be get compared to other systems which are biometric in nature such as IRIS Recognition or Fingerprint systems. Apart from these techniques, Local Binary Patterns (LBP) also plays a vital role for the image recognition as well as texture recognition purposes based on Texture Spectrum Model. But, it can only develop the feature matrix from 0 and 1 on the basis of centre pixel value only. Hence, to compute upper and lower binary codes of regions, the concept of Local Ternary patterns (LTP) is being implemented in this paper. LTP is an extension to LBP which used a threshold value for selection of upper and lower binary code. In this paper, the simulations have been carried out to achieve a better improvement in the blurred images by using Discrete Wave Transformation (DWT) and LTP techniques. DWT and LTP approach for face recognition provides better FRR, FAR and Accuracy than other approaches used for low resolution images.


Software engineers are expected to possess a variety of technical, social and personal competencies to be well prepared for real world working environments. At the German University in Cairo (GUC), we were able to guide large groups of students into becoming self managing and self learning communities whose members work together as a team to build large scale software. The students were able to experience many of the challenges in software engineering and develop a variety of related skills in a short period of time. This report describes our detailed experience in reaching such results using agile development practices in a simulated enterprise environment. With an aim to enable educators realise the same success, this report serves as a guide for educators who wish to replicate the process. The resulting successes and the concerns from this unique experience are discussed along with future recommendations.


The consequence of subsidence beneath road and railway embankments can range from a reduced serviceability to a total structural collapse. In some countries, the development of sinkholes or other forms of subsidence causes serious difficulties for roads and railways. At the beginning of the 1980s, together with the development of high strength geosynthetic reinforcements, a new art for bridging of cavities or voids was created. Some examples of this kind of realised road and railways protections in France and Germany against collapse involved by sinkholes are presented in the papers. For the covering abstract see ITRD E109917.


Focuses on the media used in the fermentation process including media types, medium Formulation preparing the bench top bioreactor for autoclaving, water quality, cell culture media, the sterilisation of media and designing media for specific functions.


This talk surveys the use of clustering for "identification" of various parameters of fuzzy systems. At issue is the use of fuzzy rule based systems for function approximation i n the context of supervised learning. Issues discussed include the proper domain for clustering, factors that might influence the clustering algorithm used, validation of the number of clusters sought, and system validation. The utility of this approach depends on finding a good match between the clustering model chosen to the data i n hand. There has not been, to my knowledge, any systematic study of any of these issues in the context discussed here. I believe that each issue deserves a careful study to ascertain what (if any) assumptions, principles and algorithms can be used as general starting points for system identification. Finally, I will discuss the assertion of Dubois and Prade about the use of fuzzy rule based systems for function approximation. What assertion? Well, you will have to attend the talk to find that out. References Pal, N. R., Pal, K., Bezdek, J. C. and Runkler, T. A. (1997). Some issues in system identification using clustering, Proc. 1997 IEEE IC", 4, lEEE press, Piscataway, NJ, 2524-2529. Bezdek, J. C., Keller, J. M., Krishnapuram, R. and Pal, N. R. (1999). Fuzzy models and algorithms for pattern recognition and image processing, Kluwer, Norwell, MA. 0-7803-5406-0/99/$10.00 '1999 IEEE 11-579


Photomask handling is significantly more challenging for 157am lithography than for any previous generation of optical lithography. First, pellicle materials are not currently available which meet the requirements for 15mm lithography. Polymeric materials used at 193nm and above are not sufficiently transmissive at 157nm, while modified fused silica materials have adequate transmission properties but introduce optical distortion. Second, the problem of molecular level contamination on the reticle must be solved. This contamination is due to the presence ofoxygen, carbon dioxide, water, and other attenuators of 157nm radiation on the mask surface. It must be removed using something other than the lithography laser due to throughput and cost of ownership considerations. Third, the problems associated with operating in an optically inert dry environment must be addressed. The lack of moisture in the environment removes one of the key electrical discharge paths off ofthe reticle, which greatly increases the risk of electro-static damage to the pattern (BSD).


A vehicle safety control apparatus using cameras includes a first camera configured to photograph light and shade of a current object during running, a second camera configured to photograph a color of the current object during the running, an image processing unit configured to perform image processing on first current object image data captured by the first camera and second current object image data captured by the second camera, a recognition unit configured to recognize the first and second current object image data on which the image processing unit has performed the image processing, a storage unit configured to cause the recognized data to match preset reference object-specific data and separately store the data matching the preset reference object-specific data; and a control unit configured to receive the recognized data and deliver a storage command to the storage unit. A control method is also disclosed.


There has been significant progress in understanding the generation mechanism of whistler-mode chorus emissions in recent years. This is partly due to the successful reproduction of chorus emissions by computer simulations and partly due to precise observations of the emissions by spacecraft. We give a brief review of the nonlinear theory and simulations on the generation mechanism of chorus emissions that have been revealed by the simulations and observations. We describe the nonlinear dynamics of resonant electrons and the formation of electromagnetic electron holes or hills that result in resonant currents generating rising-tone emissions or falling-tone emissions, respectively. We also describe the mechanism of nonlinear wave damping due to quasioblique propagation, which results in the formation of a gap at half the electron cyclotron frequency. The nonlinear wave growth theory of chorus emissions can also be applied to the generation mechanism of electromagnetic ion cyclotron (EMIC) triggered emissions recently found in spacecraft observations. Hybrid code simulations have confirmed that coherent rising-tone emissions are generated by energetic protons at frequencies below the proton cyclotron frequency. EMIC waves can also interact with relativistic electrons. Both chorus emissions and EMIC triggered emissions play important roles in controlling radiation belt particle dynamics.


At present, the commercial production of hydrogen is essentially carried out by catalytic steam reforming of hydrocarbons: natural gas and naphtha. However, the instability of the prices of natural gas makes the use of other raw materials increasingly attractive. This research focuses on the development of a technology for producing hydrogen from alternative resources, specifically from two types of waste post-consumer materials: plastics and "trap grease". The concept proposed for plastics is a two-stage process: fast pyrolysis to convert polymers to a gas/vapor stream of monomers and other low-molecular weight compounds followed by catalytic steam reforming of this gas to yield hydrogen and carbon oxides. "Trap grease", a waste material recovered from traps on sewer lines, does not require a depolymerization step and can be directly steam reformed to produce hydrogen. To prove the process concept, we employed a two-stage micro-scale reactor interfaced with a molecular-beam massspectrometer. Samples of plastics were pyrolyzed in the bottom part of the reactor then the created gases and vapors were steam reformed in a fixed bed of a commercial catalyst located in the upper part of the reactor. The product gas was analyzed by mass spectroscopy. Preliminary tests showed that at process conditions similar to those used for reforming natural gas, polymers were almost completely converted to hydrogen and carbon oxides. "Trap grease", after washing and filtering, was catalytically steam reformed in a 2"-diameter fluidized bed reactor using the same commercial nickel catalyst. At 850°C, using steam-to-carbon ratio 5, and with a space velocity of 1000 h -1 , hydrogen was produced with a yield of 25 g per 100 g of grease during 135 hours of continuous testing. This yield could be increased to over 28 g H2/100 g grease (85% of the stoichiometric potential) if CO were further converted by water-gas shift.


Abstract : The revision to an existing computer program which implements wave pattern analysis to improve a ship hull form is described. The revision allows predictions of the change in wave resistance due to adding a given ship to a basic hull form. The instructions on program usage are included. (Author)


This study presents the use of Basic Oxygen Furnace slag (BOFS) as a stabilizer for disilicated waste foundry (DWF) sand and therefore provides an opportunity for high-volume use of waste material for low-cost, low-volume building and construction material. DWF was stabilized with BOFS to 40 %. The effect of composite moisture content, BOFS content, curing time and curing temperature was studied. A 50:50 DWF: BOFS composite cured at 80 °C for 96 h had the highest unconfined compressive strength (UCS) of 7.83 MPa, a 15.5 % water absorption after a 24 h soak with a corresponding 20.5 % reduction in UCS. The green specimen (70:30) was then used to stabilize expansive soil. The formation of hydration products was responsible for the strength gain in the stabilized DWF specimens. It was concluded that BOFS was successful in stabilizing DFS. The stabilised DWF for ASTM C34-13, C129-14a and South African standards (SANS227: 2007).


In this research, some micronutrient elements and heavy metals (Al, Cd, Co, Cr, Na, Ni, Pb and Se) in the grains of totally 41 common bean genotypes consisted from; 37 common bean genotypes where they collected from Konya city and 4 commercial varieties that widely grown in Turkey were subjected to mineral analyze and all the genotypes were evaluated in terms of these properties. Chemical analyzes were made with two replications according to the "Randomized Plot" design in all the collected genotypes (Basarakavak-Horoz, Basarakavak-Sarikiz, Basarakavak-Kanada, Cumra-Şeker (Biyikli), Cumra-Kirgiz Calisi, Cumra-Horoz, Cumra-Beysehir Calisi, Cumra- Bombay, Cumra-Kanada, Altinekin-Amerikan Kollu, Altinekin-Sarnic, Altinekin-Amerikan Calisi, Altinekin-Gina, Eregli-Dermason, Eregli-Horoz, Kadinhani-Weihing, Kadinhani-Kanada, Kadinhani-Akman 98, Derbent-Amerikan (Beretta), Derbent-Şeker, Beysehir-Horoz, Seydisehir- Sira, Ilgin-Beyaz Horoz, Sarayonu-Kanada, Yunak-Uveynk, Yunak-Kanada, Cumra-Kirgiz Yuvarlak, Derbent-Yuvarlak Barbunya, Aksehir-Dermason, Aksehir-Aysekadin/1, Aksehir-Horoz, Aksehir-Dermason (Oturak), Kazim Karabekir-Kanada, Kazim Karabekir-Dermason (Kirgiz), Akman-98 cl , Eskisehir-855 cl , Elkoca-2005 cl , Kantar-2005 cl , Cumra-Amerikan Calisi, Derbent- Horoz, Aksehir-Aysekadin/2; cl : Certified line). According to the results, there were not statistically differences among the genotypes in terms of the elements. The values (ppm) of the elements were ranged as following: Al 0,00-10,99; Cd 0,00-0,28; Co 0,00-2,44; Cr 0,21-19,98; Na 74,19-2147,78; Ni 0,7-12,7; Pb 0,0-0,6; Se 0,00-2,83 respectively. Nevertheless, the values of the elements showed important correlations. There were negative correlations among Se and all of the other elements. According to the correlation analysis, all the genotypes showed significant and positive correlations which were existed between Na and Co (r=0.6272**), Na and Cr (r=0.4914**), Ni and Co (r=0.5560**), Ni and Cr (r=0.6275**), Ni and Na (r=0.6969**), Pb and Al (r=0.4362**), Cr and Co (r=0.3613*), Na and Al (r=0.3679*), Pb and Co (r=0.3186*), and significant negative correlations existed between Se and Na (r= -0.4160**), Se and Co (r= -0.3461*) while non-significant correlations were found between the other elements (*: P<0,05; **: P<0,01).


ObjectiveTo study the extent and factors of the cerebral atrophy in alcohol dependent patients. MethodsThe items of CT scanning of the head was examined on the layer of their maximum longitude .ResultsThe extents of cerebral white matter atrophy of 88 alcohol dependent patients : the normal 5.7%, the light degree 13.6%, the medium degree 52.3%, the serious degree 28.4%. The sulci of the right semisphere of the cerebrum were more than those of the left one(P 0.05). The degree of cerebral atrophy is positively correlated to the drinker's age at first compulsory abstinence from alcohol, the maximum frequency of daily alcohol consumption, the years of alcohol dependence and the consumption of alcohol during the period of alcoholic dependence. Conclusion① Alcohol dependence will cause massive cerebral cortex atrophy and white matter atrophy with more serious cortex atrophy occurring in the right semisphere of the cerebrum .The most serious atrophy occurs in the cerebral cortex of the parietal lobes;②The various factors of cerebral atrophy caused alcoholic dependence.may include the following: longer alcohol dependence period,greater consumption of alcohol, during the period of dependence higher frequency of drinking without compulsory abstinence from alcohol.


The concept of progenitors/stem cells for cells of mesenchymal origin, which led to the description of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), arose during the 1970s with Friedenstein and colleagues [1]. Since the 1990s, increasing experimental data has allowed for the definition of MSCs as multipotent adult stem cells that can differentiate into connective skeletal tissue, bone, cartilage, marrow stroma and adipocytes [2–4]. In addition, controversial data suggest that MSCs may give rise to sarcomeric muscle (skeletal and cardiac) [5–7], endothelial cells [8], and even cells of nonmesodermal origin, such as hepatocytes [9], neural cells [10] and epithelial cells [11,12]. MSCs have immunoregulatory actions and interact with all the cells involved in immune response [13], different molecules or cytokines have been shown to play a role in this immuno-regulatory action [14, 15]. However, some controversial studies argue that MSCs could be immunogenic in immuno-competent mice suggesting that these cells are not intrinsically immuno-privileged [16]. The wide range of differentiation potential of MSCs, the possibility of their engraftment [17], their immunosuppressive effect [18], and their expansion through culture led to increasing clinical interest in the use of MSCs, through intravenous infusion or site-directed administration, in numerous pathologic situations. Since the first phase-1 study that demonstrated the good tolerance and safety of MSC transplantation [19], clinical trials have investigated large bone defects [20], genetic bone disease as osteogenesis imperfecta [17,21], haematopoietic stem cell transplantation for repair of haematopoietic stroma [22], treatment or prevention of graft versus host disease [23,24]. During the repair process of damaged tissues, the effects of MSCs can be related to different mechanisms, differentiation towards tissue specific pathway, repair of microenvironment with paracrine/juxtacrine effects by growth factors and cytokines [25] or extracellular matrix reorganization [26]. To perform clinical trials billions rather than millions of MSCs, solely or linked to biomaterials, are needed. Producing MSCs for that purpose necessitates adhering to good manufacturing practices (GMP) to insure the delivery of a "cell drug" that is safe, reproducible and efficient. However, standards for the


1. Lecturer Department of Public Administration, University of Kotli Azad Jammu & Kashmir, Pakistan. 2. Assistant Professor and Chairperson Department of Public Administration, University of Kotli Azad Jammu & Kashmir, Pakistan 3. Ph. D Scholar Department of Public Administration, University of Kotli Azad Jammu & Kashmir, Pakistan PAPER INFO ABSTRACT Received: January 15, 2020 Accepted: March 15, 2020 Online: March 30, 2020 This research study examined the relationship between servant leadership and teachers' empowerment in the field of educational leadership. Servant leadership and empowerment has a potential to meet the present day demands of educational administration by seeking humanity within both the leader and follower. In order to investigate these two core elements of organizational success, a sample of 279 subjects was drawn from the academic staff of higher secondary schools on the basis of stratified random sampling technique. SPSS software version 20 was used to analyze the data by regression technique. Results of this study revealed that different dimensions of servant leadership, except the educational leaders' attitude of forgiveness, were positively correlated with teachers' empowerment. It is therefore necessary for educational administrators to comprehend the influencing power of servant leadership style for getting the teachers' positive outcomes. For this purpose, higher authorities should encourage and promote the servant leadership culture in educational institutions


Objective To study the effect of epidural block on vecuronium-induced neuromuscular block by observing the time-course of the recovery of thumb and toe under pure general anesthesia(GA)or combined general and epidural anesthesia(cGEA).Methods Forty patients of American Society of Anesthesiologists(ASA)Ⅰ-Ⅱ,who were scheduled for abdominal total hysterectomy,were assigned to Group GA and Group American Society of Anesthesio logiscs(cGEA).Patients in Group cGEA underwent epidural puncture at L1-L2;and 10 min after intubation,local anesthetics were administered.General anesthesia was induced routinely.After calibration and single twitch stimulation height(T1/Tc)was stabilized at 100%,0.1 mg/kg vecuronium was administered to facilitate tracheal intubation.Ulnar nerve and tibial nerve were stimulated separately;train-of-four ratio(TOFR)and T1/Tc were measured with the train-of-four(TOF)-Watch SX acceleromyograph simultaneously.Repeated vecuronium was given when TOFR at the thumb recovered to 0.25.The onset time and the time need to return of T1,T2,T3,T4,and the times of TOFR=0.25,0.90 were recorded.T1/Tc was recorded every 5 min.When patients were transferred to post-anesthesia care unit,Bromage scores were evaluated.Results The onset time of Group GA was significantly longer at the thumb and the toe than that of Group cGEA after first and last repeated administration(P0.01).There were no significant differences in the time period needed to return of T2,T3,T4 and duration of action(the times of TOFR recovering to 0.25)between the two groups either at the thumb or at the toe.The times to return of T2,T3,T4 and the times of TOFR recovering to 0.25 after first repeated administration were longer at the thumb in Group cGEA than in Group GA(P0.05,0.01),with no difference found at the toe.After the last administration,the times to return of T1,T2,T3,T4,and the times of TOFR recovering to 0.25 and 0.90 were longer at the thumb in Group cGEA than in Group GA(P0.05,0.01),with no significant difference found at the toe between the two muscle groups.Conclusions Epidural anesthesia can accelerate the onset of vecuronium,and delay the recovery of its neuromuscular function,but epidural anesthesia cannot change the relationship between the thumb and toe.


The invention discloses a carbon-free self-propelled trolley with a reversing function. A four-connecting-rod mechanism and a joint bearing part are used to accurately control swing of a guide wheel fork so as to realize turning of a guide wheel, small torque and abrasion and accurate swing are achieved. Four rail rods are used to limit swing of a counter weight, so that tilting of the trolley during turning and coming up and down a slope can be avoided effectively. The carbon-free self-propelled trolley is driven to move by converting gravitational potential energy into kinetic energy, no fuel or electric energy is needed, no greenhouse effect gases such as carbon dioxide are emitted, and the carbon-free self-propelled trolley is low-carbon, environmental friendly, and simple to use. An operator can reverse a trolley drive wheel to hang a heavy object, namely converting mechanical energy into gravitational potential energy. The carbon-free self-propelled trolley can be used as physics demonstration experiment equipment for primary schools and middle schools, and students are allowed to better understand experiment energy conversion and application through specific instances.


Aim/Purpose: The growing complexity of the business environment and business processes as well as the Big Data phenomenon has an impact on every area of human activity nowadays. This new reality challenges the effectiveness of traditional narrowly oriented professional education. New areas of competences emerged as a synergy of multiple knowledge areas – transdisciplines. Informing Science and Data Science are just the first two such new areas we may identify as transdisciplines. Universities are facing the challenge to educate students for those new realities.

Background: The purpose of the paper is to share the authors' experience in designing curriculum for training bachelor students in Informing Science as a concentration within an Information Brokerage major, and a master program on Data Science.

Methodology: Designing curriculum for transdisciplines requires diverse expertise obtained by both academia and industries and passed through several stages - identifying objectives, conceptualizing curriculum models, identifying content, and development pedagogical priorities.

Contribution: Sharing our experience acquired in designing transdiscipline programs will contribute to a transition from a narrow professional education towards addressing 21st-century challenges.

Findings: Analytical skills, combined with training in all categories of so-called "soft skills", are essential in preparing students for a successful career in a transdiciplinary area of activities.

Recommendations for Practitioners: Establishing a working environment encouraging not only sharing but close cooperation is essential nowadays.

Recommendations for Researchers: There are two aspects of training professionals capable of succeeding in a transdisciplinary environment: encouraging mutual respect and developing out-of-box thinking.

Impact on Society: The transition of higher education in a way to meet current challenges.

Future Research The next steps in this research are to collect feedback regarding the professional careers of students graduating in these two programs and to adjust the curriculum accordingly.


Aim: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of low dose mifepristone (200mg) followed 48 hours later by 400μg of vaginal misoprostol to terminate pregnancy up to 63 days Methods: This was a prospective study enrolling 72 healthy women, 37 with less than 49 days gestation (group A) and 35 with 50 to 63 days gestation (group B). They were given 200 mg of mifepristone orally followed by 400μg of misoprostol vaginally after 48 hours. Failure was defined as need for surgical intervention for any reason. Secondary outcome measures were side effects, complications and acceptability. Results were compared between the two groups. Results: Both the groups were comparable with respect to age, parity and hemoglobin. Complete abortion occurred in 97.3% in <49days pregnancy group and 97.1% in 50 63 days group. In 19.4% subjects, bleeding started following mifepristone alone and in rest it started within 4 hrs of receiving misoprostol and lasted for 11.5 days. Mean duration of bleeding was longer in group B (13.15 vs. 9.97 days). Mean fall in hemoglobin was minimal (0.42 gm%) though it was more in group B (0.49gm%) than in group A (0.37gm%). Moderate amount of pain was reported by 71.4% and 37.8% subjects in group B and A respectively. Analgesics were required by 13.9% of subjects. Incidence of nausea, vomiting and diarrhea was 26.4%, 9.7% and 15.3% respectively and it was similar in either groups. Conclusion: Medical abortion using low dose mifepristone and vaginal misoprostol is a safe and effective option for terminating pregnancy up to 9 weeks.


The monitoring and development of foals,
based on biometric indices, and the determination of body composition could be
important for genetic improvement and the elaboration of nutritional plans for
horses. Considering that little information was available, the aim of the
present study was to assess the growth and determine the body composition of
suckling Quarter Horse foals. Animals (n = 46) of both sexes were monitored
monthly from birth until the fifth month of age, using an ultrasound device and
the following measurements: Wither Height (WH); Chest Perimeter (CP); Cannon
Bone Circumference (CBC) Cannon Bone Girth (CG); Body Mass (BM); and Rump Fat
Thickness (RFT). These tests determined the Fat-Free Mass (FFM), BM, Fat
Percentage (FP) and Fat Thickness (FT). The data were analyzed using ANOVA and
Tukey's test, with differences considered statistically significant when P ≤
0.05. The results demonstrated that the parameters analyzed changed
significantly during the study period. The BM was ~41 at birth and ~177 kg at the
point of weaning. Conversely, the FM was ~3.8 at birth and 18.1 kg at the point
of weaning. The FFM was ~37 and ~160 kg at the time of birth and weaning,
respectively. The FP varied from 9.3 at birth to 9.54 at weaning. The mean FT
was ~1.39 and ~1.91 cm at birth and weaning, respectively. The WH measured ~91
at birth and 116 cm at weaning. In conclusion, suckling foals gain BM quickly
from the time of birth to the time of weaning. The main cause of this gain is
FFM. Therefore, due to the significant changes in the parameters studied
herein, it is important to monitor these values in order to prevent nutritional
imbalances.


The clinical manifestations of non-neuronopathic or chronic Type I Gaucher's disease result from the progressive deposition of glucocerebroside in the reticulo-endothelial cells of the bone marrow, spleen and liver. The pathological changes in both the axial and appendicular skeleton produce a spectrum of radiological features which includes osteoporosis, osteolytic lesions, osteonecrosis, osteosclerosis and modelling deformities (Amstutz & Carey, 1966; Silverstein & Kelly, 1967; Greenfield, 1970). This case report presents features in the axial skeleton that have not previously been described. Possible pathogenetic mechanisms are also discussed. A 37-year-old non-Jewish lady with histologically proven Gaucher's disease was admitted for multidisciplinary investigation prior to proposed bilateral total hip replacements. Apart from hypersplenism necessitating splenectomy and a pathological transcervical femoral fracture, the patient had remained in good health until her mid-twenties. Since that time, progre...


This paper introduces a wearable lower-limb assistive device that helps caregivers assisting transfer of an elderly or a physically challenged person between a bed and a wheelchair or between a wheelchair and a toilet. Based on our preliminary survey of the caregivers at a hospital and a nursing home, a wearable assistive device to release caregiver's physical load should have four functions: (a) to sustain the caregiver's weight at his/her hip during transferring assistance, (b) to prevent a caregiver from falling backward during transferring assistance, (c) not to interfere with caregiver's squat motion when the assistance is not needed such as when tying a care receiver's shoelaces, and (d) to be easy-to-wear and lightweight. This paper proposes the assistive device that satisfies these requirements with novel movable support mechanism and release mechanism. The movable support mechanism prevents a caregiver's falling backward while bracing the caregiver's hip part at arbitrary height. The release mechanism disables the weight support function of the device in an easy operation as needed basis. The functions are confirmed through experiments with healthy subjects and physical therapists and through subjective evaluation by therapists.


The coefficients κTA and κMG were determined individually for each subject prior to the balancing task, where we made use of the fact that αTA and αMG became almost zero, respectively, when subjects modulated the ankle joint angle to tilt their body forward and backward during standing. Let Ta(φ, φ̇) be the active torque determined by the muscles of subjects and applied to the virtual pendulum when the tilt angle of subjects was φ and the corresponding angular velocity was φ̇. Specifically, let φf and φ̇f be the tilt angle and the angular velocity of subjects when subjects tilted forward, by which αTA became (almost) zero and, at that time, αMG = α max MG . Similarly, let φb and φ̇b be the tilt angle and the angular velocity of subjects when subjects tilted backward, by which αMG became (almost) zero and, at that time, αTA = α max TA . Then, using Eq. 1, we have the following equations for the unknown parameters κTA and κMG.


Overview The project consists of a small robotic arm system that has already been partially developed to mimic a hydraulic system capable of earth-moving applications. The input/output diagram in Figure 1 shows a user command input and corresponding positioning and gripper control outputs. The system is highly non-linear creating difficulty in configuring a closed loop controller design for light, medium, and heavy loads. The small robotic arm will operate with a low frequency resonant mode. Other challenges include trade off of speed versus stability. A pulley mass spring system and a gripper control system have to be built for the robotic arm. Implementing and evaluating controller designs for the robot arm make it easier to modify for different loads with varying resonant mode frequencies.


Dams are very important for generating electricity and providing drinking water. However, they have major negative impacts on water quality, aquatic ecology, land, terrestrial wildlife, vegetation, and air quality. Mitigation measures should be put in place to reduce these negative impacts on the environment. For example, to reduce the impact on water quality, sediment control drainage should be constructed. To control chemical pollution, containers should be provided for chemical waste. With respect to climate and GHG emissions, it is critical to clear vegetation prior to reservoir filling. Overall, dams negatively affect the physical and biological environment due to the various activities, during construction, filling the reservoir and during the operation of the reservoir and dams.


The main source of inspiration for the present paper is the w ork of R. Rosebrugh and R.J. Wood on constructive complete distributive lattices where the aut hors employ elegantly the concepts of adjunction and module in their study of ordered sets. Both notions (suitably ad apted) are available in topology too, which permits us to investigate topological, metric and other kinds of space s in a similar spirit. Therefore, relative to a choice Φ of modules, we consider spaces which admit all colimits with we ight inΦ, as well as (suitably defined) Φ-distributive andΦ-algebraic spaces. We show that the category of Φ-distributive spaces and Φ-colimit preserving maps is dually equivalent to the idempotent splitting completion of a category of spaces and convergence relations between them. We explain the connection of these results to the tradi tional duality of spaces with frames, and conclude further duality theorems. Finally, we study properties and str uctures of the resulting categories, in particular monoida l (closed) structures.


The name implies scientific rigor, and opens software engineering to the charge that it is a pseudo-science flying under false colors.


1. Introduction: Medical Theory in Early Modern Europe 2. Restoration Medicine and the Dissenters 3. Populist Writing on Diseases in the Late Seventeenth Century 4. The Search for Middle Ground: Disease Theory as Natural History 5. Animalcules and Animals 6. English Contagionism and Hans Sloane's Circle 7. An English Treatise on Living Contagion: Benjamin Marten's New Theory of Consumptions, 1720 8: Smallpox Inoculation and the Royal Society, 1700-1723 9: Contagion and Plague in the Eighteenth Century


In high temperature superconducting (HTS) applications, effective and fast quench detection techniques are quite essential. Recently, an attractive combination of distributed optical fiber sensor and optical fiber encapsulated HTS tape (OF-tape) is suggested for quench detection. Before OF-tapes are applied in actual applications, their performance should be tested previously. In this paper, three types of OF-tapes, whose optical fiber diameters are 95, 170, and 250 μm, respectively, were prepared for our superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) project, and these tapes are named tape-95, tape-170, and tape-250 in sequence. The SFCL requirements show that for the used HTS tapes, the critical current, the room temperature resistance, and the bearable AC impulse current must be within 500 ± 10% A, 60 mΩ/m, and 1500 A/100 ms, respectively. The test results indicate that the critical currents of tape-95, tape-170, and tape-250 are approximately 500 A, and the room temperature resistances of these tapes are 70, 65, and 57 mΩ/m, respectively. Moreover, the AC 1500 A/100 ms short circuit current will not damage these tapes seriously. According to the SFCL project requirements and these test results, tape-170 will be used in limiter coils.


Scalable Vector Extension (SVE) is a special vector instruction set architecture recently released by ARM, which is a vector extension for A64 instruction set of ARMv8-A architecture. SVE introduces many significant features that not only take full advantage of the use of wide vector, but also enable efficient vectorization functions which can realize high performance. This paper described how to apply the main features of SVE to accelerate the Level 2 BLAS routines. We carried out the simulation on ARM Instruction Emulator (ARMIE) and Gem5 simulator. The results demonstrated that our SVE implementation reduced the number of executed instructions by 90% and achieved over 17x speedup compared with the NEON implementation.


For approaching quality security of bacon self-made by farmer,the research applied GB test facility to test the nitrite content,the acid value,peroxide value of different bacons;meanwhile,using bacon to feed mouse for four weeks,and then test the GLU(glucose);ALT(alanine transaminase);ALP(alkaline phosphatase) 12 biochemical index of the blood of mice with all automatic biochemistry analyzer.The results showed that the related index of fat and nitrite did not express GB,but some biochemical indexes,such as ALP,DB(direct bilirubin),TB(total bilirubin),existed significant difference comparing with the contrast or normal index.Conclusion: the bacons self-made by traditional method presented some unsafely facts,which was inadvisable to eat for long-time.


The experiences of teaching power electronics with the aid of simulation tools will be discussed. Basic simulation software gives a highly flexible solution for use in power electronics lectures, seminars and for self-study of students. A project approach for different courses will be introduced and some examples will be given.


Current Internet applications are still mainly bound to their transport layer connections. This prevents many features such as end-to-end security and mobility from functioning smoothly in a dynamic network. In this paper, we propose a novel architecture for decoupling communication from their supporting devices. This enforces the complete separation of devices, applications and entities such as users, services and data. Our architecture is based on a peer-topeer overlay network where each peer has a permanent name and a variable address which depends on its position in the overlay. In order to dynamically map names to addresses, our architecture provides its own distributed hash table system. After presenting the design of our architecture, we provide a scalability analysis and by performing simulations, we assess its efficiency. Simulation results show that our overlay using a name to address resolution based on a distributed hash table is scalable and has acceptable performances given the flexibility it can provide to applications.


We investigated the sequence of 2-D resonance modes of the sediment fill of Rhˆone Valley, Southern Swiss Alps, a strongly overdeepened, glacially carved basin with a sediment fill reaching a thickness of up to 900 m. From synchronous array recordings of ambient vibrations at six locations between Martigny and Sion we were able to identify several resonance modes, in particular, previously unmeasured higher modes. Data processing was performed with frequency domain decomposition of the cross-spectral density matrices of the recordings and with time-frequency dependent polarization analysis. 2-D finite element modal analysis was performed to support the interpretation of processing results and to investigate mode shapes at depth. In addition, several models of realistic bedrock geometries and velocity structures could be used to qualitatively assess the sensitivity of mode shape and particle motion dip angle to subsurface properties. The variability of modal characteristics due to subsurface properties makes an interpretation of the modes purely from surface observations challenging. We conclude that while a wealth of information on subsurface structure is contained in the modal characteristics, a careful strategy for their interpretation is needed to retrieve this information.


SUMMARY

Premature infants are frequently anemic during the first weeks of life, especially if they are born before 30 weeks of gestational age. This so-called "anemia of prematurity" has several causes; one is a transitory inadequate production of erythropoietin relative to the degree of anemia. Since 1990, several trials of erythropoietin therapy in the anemia of prematurity have been conducted. They showed a reduction of transfusion requirements in treated infants. The enhancement of erythropoiesis requires the administration of substantial quantities of iron; oral administration is sometimes difficult due to poor gastrointestinal tolerance. It is probable that in the future, the use of intravenous iron may be the solution.


The present paper describes an effective approach for the isolation of hypericin from the commercial dried extract of St.John's wort(Hypericum perforatum L.),which initially prepared by solid-phase extraction on polyamide and further separated and purificated with one-step process by high-speed counter-current chromatography(HSCCC) by using n-hexane-ethyl acetate-methanol-water(3∶5∶3∶5,v/v/v/v) as the two-phase solvent system.The experiment yielded 13.6mg of hypericin from 300mg of crude extract in one-step separation with the purity of 95% as determined by high-performance liquid chromatography(HPLC).The structures of the isolated compound was identified by 1H nuclearmagnetic resonance(NMR) and 13C NMR.


Recently, an embedding technique has been proposed to incorporate the presence of an environment in scattering problems. As an example of embedding, multiple scattering between adjacent objects is described in terms of scattering and reflection operators that account for the respective scattering from an object and its environment (the other object). The operators are constructed through repeated application of the equivalence principle to auxiliary problems involving single scatterers. The operators can subsequently be combined, providing the recipe to evaluate the scattering operator of large composite structures, consisting of building blocks that have been characterised electromagnetically at an earlier stage. The embedding concept is illustrated numerically.


Background: Ability of the students to perform a variety of functional activities leads to their participation in school-based learning activities. Therefore, it is essential to provide a reliable and credible criterion that provides information about the students' actualperformanceinschoolactivities. Thepurposeof thisstudyistoassessthereliabilityof thePersianversionof schoolfunction assessment (SFA) for Iranian students 6 to 12 years old. Methods: TheSFAwasdesignedtoassessarangeof school-specificfunctionalskillsinthethreeareasof participation,tasksupport, and activity performance. In this methodological study, 150 students were randomly selected from the public schools in Tehran. A demographic questionnaire was used to gather data. The SFA was completed by teachers. To test the reliability of the test-retest, after2weeks,thequestionnairewascompletedbythe40teachers. TheinternalconsistencywasexaminedbyusingtheCronbach's alpha and the reliability of the test-retest was examined by the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Results: Theaverageageof studentsinthisstudywas9yearsold. TheCronbach'salphacoefficientforthedifferentpartsof thistool was excellent (0.84 < alpha < 0.99). The test-retest reliability of the test was good for the subtest of this tool (0.85 < ICC < 0.99). Conclusions: The results showed that the Persian version of the SFA is a good test for the assessment of the school performance of Iranian students in terms of internal consistency and the reliability of the test-retest. Therefore, the SFA can be used as a research study to evaluate students in Iran.


A fiber optical magnetometer, SmartLIM (Laser Interferometric Magnetometer), has been developed. The SmartLIM adopts the Mach-Zehnder interferometer to detect the local disturbance of the geomagnetic field produced by a car driven nearby. Its high sensitivity enables us to install the detector at the a depth of 0.5m from under the road surface, or beneath the bottom side underside of an elevated road. . The SmartLIM was tested for over four seasons at under an elevated road after following our factory site test. The results have confirmed its excellent detection capability and usefulness as a traffic counter.


The administration supports the natural resources industry in its effort to develop oil and gas, hardrock minerals, and timber on wilderness areas despite ecological fragility. New legislative proposals could grant Congress the power to block leases outside Alaska to counteract Interior Secretary Watt's intention of opening wilderness areas to mineral development. Before taking office, Watt successfully led the Mountain States Legal Foundation lawsuit against the government that has opened a flood of new lease applications. Several test cases are bringing out development issues and triggering environmental concerns. The focus of attack is on current leasing procedures, which critics claim frustrate good land management and confuse national priorities. Wilderness advocates question why industry focuses on threee percent of land that is wilderness when they could explore elsewhere. (DCK)


Sediment plugs have occurred four times in the last 20 years near Bosque del Apache of the Middle Rio Grande, NM. For optimizing the sediment transport rate and reducing the likelihood of sediment plug formation, a sustainable channel width analysis was performed using analytical and numerical approaches. For these analyses, channel conditions in 1992 and 2002 were used; bank-full discharge (commonly 5,000cfs), channel slope (0.0007-0.00073), sediment size (0.2-0.25mm), various channel widths (131-5,183ft). Analytical relationships between width, width-depth and sediment discharge were derived by using 3 basic equations: continuity, Manning's flow resistance, and Julien's sediment discharge equation. The relationships show a maximum sediment transport capacity when the width-depth ratio equals 18, which corresponds to a channel width of 130ft. At larger channel widths, the sediment transport capacity decreases as ඃ烜 !" =ඃ烜 ! !!.! , where W r is the width ratio and ඃ烜 !" is the sediment discharge ratio. Numerical results using Yang's sediment transport equation show that the maximum sediment transport capacity occurred when the width-depth ratio is 1.5 and the width is 31ft. For channel widths ranging from 131 ~ 5,183ft and depths from 1.6 to 6.9ft (width/depth ratio 28~2,860), increasing the channel width would lead to a decrease the sediment transport capacity and induce sedimentation in this channel. In addition, numerical simulations for the 1992 and 2002 channel conditions based on the program of Leon et al. (2009) showed that wide sub-reaches have smaller sediment transport capacity, causing aggradation of the channel bed. Therefore a narrow and deep channel is expected to reduce the likelihood of sediment plug formation.


The observations of the field intensity of 472Mc, 153Mc and 60Mc waves and at the same time of the vertical distribution of the meteorological elements in the lower atmosphere were carried out to make claerer the anomalous propagation of VHF and UHF waves at the coast of Toyama Bay during a month in which mirage used to appear.On the day when mirage appeared, the field intensities of shorter waves increased considerably, especially for the 472Mc wave. On the side of meteorology, the radio ducts were observed in these days and they were so intensitive as to transmit the 472Mc wave in them. From this consideration, the mirage and the radio duct are thought to be reduced to the same meteorological conditions. The results of the present study will be available to forecasting the anomalous propagotion of ultra short wave in the neighbourhood of the coastal line.


An array structure of polystyrene micro-beads on an indium-doped tin oxide(ITO)electrode was prepared by film transfer technique.Micro-cavities of tungsten trioxide(WO3)were fabricated on an indium-doped tin oxide electrode by electrodeposition.Polyaniline was electrochemically deposited into the WO_3 cavities to form a WO_3/ polyaniline hybrid layer.In the 1 mol/LH_2SO_4 aqueous solution,the hybrid modified electrode,which may be used as the electrode for the supercapacitor,showed good charge-discharge electrochemical behaviors.


An investigation into the influence of finite amplitude distortion on narrow‐band ultrasonic attenuation measurements is described. Measurements have been made using a through‐transmission substitution technique in the nonlinear field of a 5‐MHz plane‐piston transducer driven under tone‐burst conditions. Various transducer excitation levels were used to generate a range of shock parameters σ at the position of the measuring hydrophone up to a maximum of 3. The influence of the resulting loss in amplitude at the fundamental frequency has been studied by measuring the transmission properties of reference attenuators consisting of Dow Corning‐710 fluid‐filled cells of various thickness. The presence of nonlinear distortion in the acoustic waveform produces overestimates of the measured transmission coefficients. The magnitude of the error has been shown to depend on the value of σ, the small signal transmission loss of the sample and its position in the acoustic field. In some situations, the error was as hi...


This study deals with construction in wood: its historical evolution, technology, execution, demand, future, the choice between artisan-made or series-made, etc.
Likewise, several practical examples of buildings constructed of this traditional material are described. The conclusion reached Is that in this type of construction one must necessarily take into account not only the aesthetic aspect but also the economic result.


A mass of data indicate that social network is a small-world network. The interfirm innovation network, the behavior subject of which is social man, has the common characteristics of social network. Then it introduces the small-world theory to the description and analysis of communication networks, and uses the critical path length and clustering coefficient of small-world network to describe the frequency and cluster degree of interfirm innovation network.It is expected to give bases of numerical analyses to further research the character of interfirm innovation network.


The choice of reconstruction filter used to interpolate between sample points when generating images from volumetric data sets can have an impact on image quality. There are a range of reconstruction filters as well as methods to determine the quality of these filters. While it is well documented that stereoscopy can improve the performance of spatial search tasks, it is not clear how artifacts introduced by the choice of reconstruction filter will impact the performance of these tasks. In this study we report the results of a path-tracing experiment where we assess the effectiveness of stereoscopy and three reconstruction filters in terms of accuracy and response time. Our results suggest that the reconstruction filter can have a significant effect on path-tracing tasks and that stereoscopy can significantly improve accuracy results whilst slightly increasing response time.


The multi-cations doped LiVPO4F, nominally Li0.97Cr0.01V0.95Al0.01Nb0.02PO4F0.97, is prepared by Chromium (Cr) doping on lithium site and Al–Nb co-doping on vanadium site via a conventional carbothermal reduction (CTR) route. The crystallographic lattice volume, particle size and morphology are not obviously changed comparing with un-doped LiVPO4F. However, the high rate and lifetime cycling performances are noticeably improved although the capacities at very low currents are slightly decreased. The reversible capacity at 1/10 C, 1 C, 2 C and 4 C of the pristine LiVPO4F is 143 mA h g-1, 99 mA h g-1, 86 mA h g-1 and 70 mA h g-1, respectively, while that of the doped counterpart is 138 mA h g-1, 102 mA h g-1, 95 mA h g-1 and 82 mA h g-1, respectively. The capacity retention after 100 galvanostatic cycles at 1.5 C is enhanced from 85.4% to 90.9% by such multi-cations doping. Moreover, the initial coulombic efficiency is significantly increased from 81.8% to 90.3% as well.


Instabilities In CO2 lasers and FIR lasers necessitate an automatic means of control in order to achieve stable FIR output power over a long period of time. The digital control circuit described maybe one solution to the problem,(fig. 1)