8512 Background: In FL, rituximab as a single agent obtains a response rate of 50-70% with an EFS of 1-3 years depending on the population studied. Some patients respond to this treatment for a prolonged time, so we investigated, in a clinical trial, the proportion of long-term responders and the characteristics predicting long-term response.

METHODS
Between 1998 and 2002, chemotherapy naïve (n = 64) or pre-treated (n = 138) FL patients received 4 weekly doses of rituximab: those responding or with stable disease were randomized to either no further treatment (observation, n = 78) or 4 additional doses of rituximab given at 2 months intervals (consolidation, n = 73).

RESULTS
At a median follow up of 8.9 years, and with all living patients having been followed for at least 5 years, the median event-free survival (EFS: time until progression, relapse, second tumor or death) is 13 months for the observation and 24 months for the consolidation arm (p=0.0012). In the observation arm 10% had no event at 5-years, the figure dropping to 4% (3/78) at 8 years, while in the consolidation arm the EFS was 26% at 5 years and remained 18% (13/73) at 8 years. The only significant prognostic factor for EFS in a multivariate Cox regression was having received consolidation rituximab (hazard ratio = 0.58, CI = 0.44-0.87, p = 0.008), whereas being chemotherapy naïve, presenting with stage < IV and showing a VV phenotype at position 158 of the Fc receptor RIIIA were not any more significantly prognostic in this long term analysis, in contrast to previous data with shorter follow-up. No long-term toxicity from treatment was observed. There were 21 cases of second malignancy: 11 on observation, 10 receiving the consolidation arm.

CONCLUSIONS
It appears that the EFS advantage of prolonged versus short course rituximab continues for many years after the end of treatment. This seems to hold true independently from previous treatment, stage or 158-phenotype of the Fc receptor. Patients treated with 8 doses of rituximab over 1 year have approximately 25% and 20% chance to remain in remission at 5 and 8 years respectively. [Table: see text].


The additional use of selective catalytic reduction has increased the amount of SO3 generated by coal-fired power plants. Accurate measurement of SO3 is of great significance for SO3 removal and boiler operation. This work focuses on development and evaluation of an automated continuous monitor designed for SO3 measurement in coal-fired flue gases. This instrument is based on selective absorption of SO3 in isopropanol and the spectrophotometry determination method with data acquired in real time. Considering that flue gas from a typical power plant could contain high levels of particulate matter (PM), moisture, and SO2, which could interfere with the accuracy of SO3 measurement, targeted modifications were made in the design of sampling, determination, and liquid circulation equipment. The accuracy and transient response of the monitor were evaluated in a pilot-scale experimental system with SO3 concentrations from 0 to 60 ppm. The interference of SO2 in the accuracy of this monitor was also evaluated, an...


Preparing the books to read every day is enjoyable for many people. However, there are still many people who also don't like reading. This is a problem. But, when you can support others to start reading, it will be better. One of the books that can be recommended for new readers is activities reality and symbol. This book is not kind of difficult book to read. It can be read and understand by the new readers.


Asymbiotic seed germination in vitro of 10 species of the genus Cypripedium L. is described. Several methods of seed sterilization and some modifications of Harvais, Chu and Mudge, Norstog, Malmgren growth media weretested. Adaptation ability in the open ground of the seedlings obtained in vitro was investigated. In addition, the results ofintroduction of 17 cypripedium species in Moscow region are listed.


The ability to selectively excite light with fixed handedness is crucial for circularly polarized light emission. It is commonly believed that the luminescent material chirality determines the emitted light handedness, regardless of the light emitting direction. In this work, we propose an anomalous circular polarized light emission (ACPLE) whose handedness actually relies on the emission direction and current direction in electroluminescence. In a solid semiconductor, the ACPLE originates in the band structure topology characterized by the optical Berry curvature dipole. ACPLE exists in inversion-symmetry breaking materials including chiral materials. We exemplify the ACPLE by estimating the high circular polarization ratio in monolayer WS$_2$. In addition, the ACPLE can be further generalized to magnetic semiconductors in which the optical Berry curvature plays a leading role instead. Our finding reveals intriguing consequences of band topology in light emission and promises optoelectric applications.


Fire usually affects birds indirectly, by altering habitat or food resources. Bird response may be positive or negative, depending on life-history characteristics and fire extent, intensity, and duration. Disruption of natural fire regimes may have far-reaching consequences for these birds and their habitat. The effects of fire on forest birds should be studied experimentally, at both species and community levels, in conjunction with efforts to restore fire as a natural process in Madrean forests. The effects of fire on important habitat components (e.g., snags, logs, and oaks) should be monitored, and the effects of salvage logging on post-fire bird communities should be carefully evaluated.


Objective To understand tuberculosis epidemic management in 8 physical examination sections of the general hospitals in Hubei province,and provide basis for improving prevention and control measures of tuberculosis.Methods Data and information were collected and analyzed by investigating tuberculosis registration,reporting and referral records in physical examination sections of 8 general hospitals from January 1 to June 30,2013.Reward-punishment system of epidemic reports were checked.Related staff of public health sections and physical examination sections in those hospitals were interviewed.Results Among the 8 hospitals,only one hospital(12.50%) included the physical examination section in the epidemic-target management system.All the eight physical examination sections found tuberculosis suspects,but only two sections had standardized registration(25.00%).The ratio of the tuberculosis suspects reported and registered by the physical examination sections of the two standardized registered hospitals in the first half year of 2013,as compared with the tuberculosis suspects reported and registered by the hospital at the same period,accounted for 33.33% and34.61% respectively.While all the referral of the suspected tuberculosis patients were finally diagnosed and confirmed.Conclusion Tuberculosis epidemic management in physical examination sections of general hospitals should be strengthened.Only in this way,early detection and treatment of tuberculosis patients would be possible,thereby reducing the spread of TB.


Based on the reconsideration of traditional criteria for assessing the efficacy of natural enemies, the screening of coccinellids for preventative control of aphids was conducted. The result suggests that there is no causation between the female size (weight) and the reproductive potential of the tested species. Considering that size does not matter in preventative releases, it is more cost-effective to produce small lady beetles. Essential and non-essential ecological knowledge for the efficacy assessment is discussed.


Legge's life: pilgrim, professor, heretic, decipherer, comparativist, translator, ancestor, and teacher. Each room lets onto a portion of the garden, where the linear rule of yang is replaced by the playful chaos of yin, and, modestly lifting the hem of our robe, we pick our way over the uneven stones of Legge's personal, social, academic, religious, and cultural context, until we find that we have circled back into the house. There we pause, take tea, and reflect on what we have seen. Often, we are led to wonder at the marvelous confluence between the life of Legge and that of Grand Master Kongzi (Confucius). Could there have been, as a Buddhist might claim, a previous life in "dark Sinim"? Finally, we come to rest in the bedchamber, as Legge passes peacefully and wordlessly, like the Grand Master, into the Beyond. Time, as Laozi would say, has returned to its origin, and we speculate about the future of the discipline. It is now up to us, and still more to the new generation of scholars in the PRC, the ROC, and the West, to work reverently in the house and garden of our ancestor, improving and expanding, but not despising or destroying. "So does the circle of knowing and translating . . . turn back on itself and go forward" (p. 536). The book is handsomely produced on good-quality paper with dignified Bibleblack covers and head and tailpieces. I did not find a single typographical error. The index is comprehensive and the various appendices are informative. One slight cavil: I kept losing track of the sequence of events and would have found it useful to have a biographical chart embedded in a historical chronology.


The executive powers of the Emperor include: (1) appointments and general administration, (2) pardons, (3) organization of the army and navy, (4) declaration of war, (5) conclusion of peace and treaty-making, and (6) establishment of martial law. Article X of the constitution defines the appointing power of the Emperor. His competence is not confined to mere selection of officials, since the constitution provides that "the Emperor determines the organization of the different branches of the administration, and the salaries of all civil and military officers, and appoints and dismisses the same." Clearly, the appointing power of the Emperor is unlimited. There is no necessity for securing the consent of any confirming body. The Emperor is thus unhampered by the restrictions that bind the president of the United States. This prerogative also extends to the power of dismissal—a potent instrument for the promotion of executive efficiency as well as autocracy.


Basics of interstitial element effects in high-purity niobium for RF cavities and control tools such as thermal conductivity and DC or AC RRR measurement systems are presented. Cases of interstitial contamination during different stages of cavity production and treatment, such as machining, EB-welding and barrel polishing are briefly summarized. Post purification for getting rid of the interstitial contamination and its influence on the properties of niobium is discussed.


: Performance appraisal (PA) is a crucial technique for improving the skills of employees and organisations. Organizations have implemented performance appraisal to monitor and supervise relationships, growth, and development of individuals and organisations to increase overall productivity and job satisfaction. The human resource department is tasked with employee recruitment, selection, and retention. Retaining personnel, particularly those who are talented and competent, has become a major challenge. Motivation initiates, guides, and maintains an individual's goal-oriented behaviour. Employee retention is mostly determined by motivation. To inspire and retain employees, PA guidelines are used to assess workers, develop their competence, improve their performance, and issue awards. The focus of this research is on a survey of several performance appraisal systems used in organisations and the need of training. This paper focuses and analyses the literature findings on methods/techniques of performance Appraisal and its results.


In this paper, a new network model is developed for better expression of the interaction of a complex electromechanical system. The developed model can reflect the current reliability fluctuation followed by system state disturbances. The Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) data and indicator data from detection and monitoring is collected and processed for the structure and parameters of this network model. Hidden Markov Model (HMM) is used for transforming indicators into the probability of fault causes. The recorded fault statistic data is considered as the prior knowledge, and the current indicator data can be used to renew the prior probability of component failure and system malfunction. With this model, the current component failure probability and system malfunction probability can be obtained.


The present invention relates to a mechanical arm type full-automatic stereo-localization system. It is characterized by that it utilizes 3-D image software to reconstruct CT or MRI 3-D stereo image. Under the realtime guidance of CT and MRI, the multidirectional and multiaspect combined mechanical arm can make automatical control to regulate localization laserbeam and make it be directed against focus to implement non-traumatic frame-free multiregion high-accuracy stereo-localization. Said invention can select the path whose injury to tissue of human body is less to feed the puncture needle and make radiology-intervened diagnosis or therapy. Besides, under the guidance of metal analog probe it can implement surgical microtraumatic operation or other physical therapy which have need to be stereo-localizad. The invention can be widely used in diagnostic and therapeutic proudure in interventional radiology practice.


From its very beginning, the governance of the Company of Jesus featured a certain number of specificities : vow of obedience to the pope, strong authority of the order's general, as well as the ignatian spirit which is transmitted through the spiritual exercises to all generations of jesuits. This article shows that the young Company's governance system played a decisive role for the order's missionary effectiveness. This is due, in great part, to its action as a cognitive and behavioral lever.


The application of mathematical analysis to the study of wireless ad hoc networks has met with limited success due to the complexity of mobility, traffic models and the dynamic topology. A scenario based UMTS TDD opportunistic cellular system with an ad hoc behavior that operates over UMTSFDD licensed cellular network is considered. In this paper, we describe how ad hoc opportunistic radio can be modeled as a game and how we apply game theory based Power Control in ad-hoc opportunistic radio.


: Rio Tinto is a leading producer of low-carbon primary aluminum due to its efficient processes and hydroelectricity. It has one of the lowest greenhouse gas (GHG) footprints in the world, which is below four tons of CO 2 per ton of primary aluminum. Nevertheless, integrating end-of-life recycling into primary aluminum products, although challenging, plays an important role in further reducing GHG emissions during aluminum production. This is why much effort has been made in recent years throughout Rio Tinto plants to find innovative solutions to overcome this challenge. In 2022, the first circular economy initiative was deployed at Laterri è re Works with the addition of a remelt furnace with an initial production capacity of 22,000 tons per year. This project has contributed to adding capacity to remelt both internal process scrap and external industrial scrap. A second initiative is the operation of a new recycling center at Arvida Works to commence in 2025 that will process 30,000 tons per year of end-of-life scrap. As a primary alloy producer, the main challenge for Rio Tinto is to integrate these materials into current and new products without affecting their quality and performance. This paper will present preliminary studies on the chemical compatibility of scrap with current alloys, and the approach used for managing their organic content.


fragmentation*specific to the particular historical and literary context which he studies by showing how these qualities were heavily invested with political and ideological significance. Gardner's extensive research would be made more accessible if supported by further documentation. It is surprising, for instance, given his engagement with Internet culture in the Conclusion, that digitized periodicals are never mentioned and nowhere does he explicitly discuss his methodology in using magazines. At other points, an interesting observation is not supplemented with further comment. For instance, he suggests that 'annotations and commentary in surviving copies show how attentive these readers were' (143), but there is no endnote to suggest what kind of annotations he has found in magazines, or whether he means to imply that the readers of the Boston Weekly Magazine (the title under discussion) were particularly attentive. Further detail at such points would be both interesting and helpful. The 'rise' and 'fall' narrative is less strongly emphasized in the book than the title would suggest. This is appropriate, as magazines (and media in general) are surely better understood as transmuting as they move forward in history. The Conclusion, however, does usefully bring in the rise and fall arc, as Gardner suggests how the notion of the 'textual commons' that early magazine culture involved no longer held sway by the ante-bellum period. Here, Gardner also considers the relationship between early magazine culture*'multi-vocal', democratic, unpaid and anonymous*and today's 'blogosphere' (174). Through this juxtaposition, Gardner prompts a reflection on the periodization of media and how the particular moments at which new media emerge are usefully thought about together, across history. In addition to offering valuable explorations of specific questions relating to early American literary culture, then, The Rise and Fall of Early American Magazine Culture prompts readers to consider why a certain medium is seen as the 'right' one to achieve particular ends at particular moments in history.


This case study evaluation explored how class size reduction (CSR) combined with other reform initiatives and contextual factors to affect student achievement. The evaluand was an elementary school that implemented Wisconsin's fortified CSR program named SAGE. Evidence was collected from existing records and purposively selected teachers via a focus group. A three-phase "cut and paste" analysis strategy was used to reduce data, display data, and draw and verify conclusions. Main and interaction effects are reported. Findings suggest smaller classes may affect student achievement by facilitating the coherence of school-level instructional programs


Today we're going to use PAUP* to generate trees using distance methods. We've discussed distance methods in class, and you have learned that they are not the most theoretically justified of methods for inferring phylogenies, although clustering methods do have some uses in other areas of statistics. For several reasons, it is important that you learn how to utilize them. First, you should use them as one of the analyses in your final project, as a comparison to other methods. They will almost always give a different tree than the other optimality criteria, since they are searching for total similarity, and not distinguishing between synapomorphy, symplesiomorphy, and homoplasy. Second, some workers people do feel that they are a good way to infer phylogenies. Finally, they are by far the fastest way to find a tree. Whereas parsimony and likelihood methods have to search through tree space and compare the optimization of the character matrix on many trees, most distance methods use an algorithm to directly generate a tree from the distance matrix. This speed makes it very useful for genomics, where it is often necessary to generate tens of thousands of trees, but getting the exact tree each time is not as important as getting the right tree the vast majority of the time. Distance analysis have two main components: the formulas used to calculate the distances (a.k.a. distance measures) and the algorithms used to compute a tree from the distances.


ABSTRACT:This article addresses the question of how human rights practitioners know about harm. In particular, what forms of torture and ill-treatment are made legible through human rights documentation? We argue human rights documentation techniques can systematically under perceive the extent of torture and ill-treatment among people living in poverty. The article is based on research in Kenya, Bangladesh, and Nepal, and sets out five key predispositions in documentation techniques that result in implicit discrimination.


Endothelial cells emerge from the atrioventricular canal (AVC) to form coronary blood vessels in juvenile zebrafish hearts. We find that pdgfrβ is first expressed in the epicardium around the AVC and later becomes localized mainly in the mural cells. Pdgfrβ mutant fish show severe defects in mural cell recruitment and coronary vessel development. Single cell RNA sequencing analyses identified Pdgfrβ+ cells as epicardium derived cells (EPDCs) and mural cells. Mural cells associated with coronary arteries also express cxcl12b and smooth muscle cell markers. Interestingly, these mural cells remain associated with coronary arteries even in the absence of Pdgfrβ, although smooth muscle gene expression is downregulated. We find that pdgfrβ expression dynamically changes in EPDCs of a regenerating heart. Differential gene expression analyses of pdgfrβ+ EPDCs and mural cells suggest that they express genes important for regeneration after heart injuries. mdka was identified as a highly upregulated gene in pdgfrβ+ cells during heart regeneration. However, pdgfrβ but not mdka mutants show defects in heart regeneration after amputation. Our results demonstrate that heterogeneous pdgfrβ+ cells are essential for coronary development and heart regeneration.


An aerosol concentrator using the virtual impaction principle has been designed, fabricated, and evaluated. Particles larger than a designed cutoff aerodynamic diameter are enriched in a bleed flow that is 5%–40% of total flow, and up to 95% of vapors, gases, or small particles in the original aerosol are extracted. The device has been used in conjunction with compressed air nebulizers to produce enriched aerosols of PuO2, polystyrene, and other particulates while removing excess water vapor or gases such as SO2 and NH3.


An early formal glimpse at a survey of results yet to be revealed bridging topics as diverse as, the extensions of Cauchy functional equation, Taylor expansion, ABC conjecture, and Fermat LP to name but a few.


The Arabian Sea is a significant hypoxic region in world's oceans, characterized by the most extensive oxygen minimum zones (OMZs). Both physical and biological processes can alter the vertical and horizontal distribution of dissolved oxygen within the upper ocean and affect the spatial and temporal distribution of hypoxia within the OMZ. To identify the key physical and biological factors influencing the boundaries of oxycline, we analyzed an extensive dataset collected from the biogeochemical-Argo (BGC-Argo) floats during the period of 2010–2022. In particular, we investigated the impact of physical subduction events on the oxycline. Our results shows that the upper boundary of the oxycline deepened in summer and winter, and seemed to be controlled by the mixed layer depth. In contrast, it was shallower during spring and autumn, mainly regulated by the deep chlorophyll maximum. The lower boundary of the oxycline in the western Arabian Sea was predominantly controlled by regional upwelling and downwelling, as well as Rossby waves in the eastern Arabian Sea. Subduction patches originated from the Arabian Sea High Salinity Water (ASHSW) were observed from the BGC-Argo data, which were found to deepen the lower boundary of the oxycline, and increase the oxygen inventory within the oxycline by 8.3%, leading to a partial decrease in hypoxia levels.


We present an upper bound on the minimum Euclidean distance d/sub Emin/(C) for block-coded PSK. The bound is an analytic expression depending on the alphabet size q, the block length n, and the number of codewords |C| of the code C. The bound is valid for all block codes with q/spl ges/4 and with medium or high rate-codes where |C|>(q/3)/sup n/. There are several well-known block codes whose d/sub Emin/(C) is equal to our upper bound. Hence these codes are the best possible in the sense that there does not exist a code with the same q, n, and |C| and with a larger d/sub Emin/(C). It also follows that for many choices of q, n, and |C|, in particular for high rates, our upper bound on d/sub Emin/(C) is optimal.


The protection problems of superconducting coils in a large tokamak device are delineated. Effects of the plasma discharge on the first wall, the induced voltage, and the temperature rise during the quench of a superconducting coil, as well as the mechanical load on coils due to their mutual interaction under normal or fault conditions, have been studied. Various design choices and protection schemes are used to ensure the integrity of the coils during quench. For the Oak Ridge Experimental Power Reactor design, a scheme of connecting symmetrically located toroidal field coils in groups isolates and discharges the fault coil only, giving satisfactory results.


Abstract Caspian terns Sterna caspia and double-crested cormorants Phalacrocorax auritus that colonize dredge-spoil islands in the Columbia River estuary prey upon millions of juvenile Pacific salmonids annually. We estimated the relative vulnerability of various salmonid stocks to these predators by using data from passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags detected on these colonies; 96,382 tags were detected from the 1998–2000 migration years. On tern colonies, detection rates were highest for tags from steelhead Oncorhynchus mykiss and lowest for tags from yearling chinook salmon O. tshawytscha. However, detection rates on cormorant colonies were similar for tags from steelhead and coho salmon O. kisutch but lower for tags from yearling chinook salmon. Analyses based on migration history showed tags of transported fish were frequently detected in lower proportions than those of their counterparts that migrated in-river, the pattern being most pronounced in steelhead. Analyses based on origin (hatchery ...


Far infrared fine structure line data from the ISO archive have been extracted for several hundred YSOs and their outflows, including molecular ( CO) outflows, optical jets and Herbig-Haro (HH) objects. Given the importance of these lines to astrophysics, their excitation and transfer ought to be investigated in detail and, at this stage, the reliability of the diagnostic power of the fine structure transitions of OI and CII has been examined. Several issues, such as the extremely small intensity ratios of the oxygen 63 mu m to 145 mu m lines, are still awaiting an explanation. It is demonstrated that, in interstellar cloud conditions, the 145 mu m line is prone to masing, but that this effect is likely an insufficient cause of the line ratio anomaly observed from cold dark clouds. Very optically thick emission could in principle also account for this, but would need similar, prohibitively high column densities and must therefore be abondoned as a viable explanation. One is left with [OI] 63 mu m self absorption by cold and tenuous foreground gas, as has been advocated for distant luminous sources. Recent observations with the submillimeter observatory Odin support this scenario also in the case of nearby dark molecular clouds. On the basis of this large statistical material we are led to conclude that in star forming regions, the [OI] and [CII] lines generally have only limited diagnostic value.


Subject
 LNG investment outlook.

 Significance
 Spot prices of liquefied natural gas (LNG) have fallen this year, as new supply has collided with a relatively warm Northern Hemisphere winter. Oil and gas companies see a supply shortfall emerging in the mid-2020s and are investing in LNG plants. The deep decarbonisation required to meet 2030 climate change targets means gas is likely to gain market share against coal in power generation and oil in transport.

 Impacts
 Low LNG prices will encourage coal-for-gas switching and embolden new importers to enter the market.
 Higher flows of LNG into Europe as a result of falling domestic gas production will solidify the price cap on pipeline import prices.
 LNG will continue to make inroads in the shipping and land transport sectors.


The invention discloses an alarm system and an alarm method for monitoring fire. The system comprises a hardware part and a software part. The fire condition is monitored by a monitor; after the monitor monitors fire information, the device of the invention sends the information to related personnel and a nearby alarm system to form a coordinated defense strategy; and after a fire information sending device is detected to fail, the coordinated alarm system bears partial function of the device of the invention to ensure that the information is transmitted in time.


This thesis argues that henges, stone circles and ring cairns form a 'spectrum' of monuments with origins in the earlier Neolithic. In that context it is suggested that some of the structures located beneath long cairns were originally free standing foci. How the monuments might reflect contemporary society is discussed and it is shown that some standing stones might have been the focus for gatherings of people as large as those suggested for henges and stone circles. Evidence is presented showing that there appears to have been a continuity of traditions and world view from the Early Neolithic into the Late Neolithic and beyond. Similarly the distribution of later monuments appears to relate to Early Neolithic core areas which continued to be important and linked to 'status'. The relationship of the monuments to particular aspects of the environment is explored and it is shown that wetland environments, including floodplains, are a major feature in the location of the early foci. It is concluded that these would have been important resource areas in the Mesolithic as well as Early Neolithic with implications for our understanding of the Mesolithic -Neolithic transition.


The primary purpose of sinus irrigation therapy is to remove purulent content of the sinus but it also improves the mucociliary transpon, reduces the amount of proteolytic enzymes and increases the quantity of local immunoglobulines. Controlled studies have shown that irrigation has an objective effect evaluated roentgenologically. Besides the usual puncture of the maxillary sinus, methods with introduction of a remaining plastic tube in the maxillary sinus are available. The irrigation fluid is usually saline and the pharmacological use of different products has usually not given any additional effect probably due to an inhibitory effect on the mucociliary transpon. Chronic exudative sinusitis has as its palhogenesis breaches in Lhe area of eLhmoid labJrinth. M.E. Wigand.1990. Local therapy of the chronic infianunation in the ethmoid labyrinlb appears a serious problem. In 1980 Prof. G.Markov brought forward an idea of a device capable 10 create controllable pressure in nasal ca\;ties and panDasal sinuses. The open.tion principle of lhe de\'ices called sinus-cathelcrs "YAMIK·]" was described earlier ( v. Kozlov. G.Mar~oy. 1991). Sinus-catbeler "YAMIK-)" makes it possible 10 remove: pathological seeretiou from paranasal sinuses through Datura I ostia of the sinuses and then to fill the sinuses v.ith a medicine; for ioslance with the solution of an antibiotic or corticosteroid depending on the pathological process. The most significanl is the fact that the medicines imroduced inlO lhe sinuses. especially into me ethmoid labyrinth ZODe have local impacl on the inflamed mucous membrane. bacterial micronora being supressed. This results in tbe reduction of Lbe mucosa swelling. restoration of the paraDa sal sinuses ostia passability and increase of the paranasal sinuses \."olume:. Restoration of the ostiapassability and increase of Ole patanasa! sinuses \'olurne are objectively registcred during the '"YAMIK" procedures. While during the first ·YAMIK" procedure it is fKlssible to introduce inlo the sinuses from 2 105011 of the solution. me silluses can accepl from 1010 IS or 2


We present a reflective-type delay line using side-coupled integrated spaced sequence of resonators (SCISSOR) terminated with a Sagnac loop reflector. With 13 microrings, group delay of ~150 ps is achieved with 170 GHz bandwidth.


A process for preparing the waste sludge using a high performance NdFeB sintered NdFeB magnets short process and belongs to the technical field using sintered NdFeB recycling waste sludge. Comprising distilling the organic matter sludge, sludge powder ultrasonic washing, the calcium reduction-diffusion, the step of ultrasonically rinsed and dried, and sintering mixed powder under a magnetic field. NdFeB waste sludge as a raw material to directly recycled high performance NdFeB sintered magnet; stepped warmed vacuum distillation method in sludge effectively remove most organic compounds. Using magnetic powder was washed with sonication sludge process, effectively removing residual organics. Nanopowder obtained by doping reproducing NdFeB sintered magnet to achieve maximum energy product 35.26MGOe. The present invention process is short, efficient and environmentally friendly, high rare earth recovery and utilization.


A new species in the family Hydrophilidae, Berosus elsae is described, in a highly polluted hydro-ecological system on the Araya Peninsula. The dorsal habitus, genital organs and other sclerites of diagnostic interest are illustrated and the anpogeno microhabitat where the described species was collected is described. Berosus elsae sp. nov., represents the first record of the genus Berosus Leach, for the northeastern region of Venezuela, being also the first species of the genus reported for the Caribbean strip of South America. Due to its habitat and geographic distribution, Berosus elsae sp. nov. would be more related to Central American and Caribbean species than to the Berosus species described for South America. Satellite images of the locality and photographs of the anpogeno microhabitat are included.


Abstruct-The theory, technology, and applications of bulk-wave acoustooptic devices are reviewed. A coupled wave analysis for the acoustooptic interaction in an anisotropic medium is presented. The bandwidth and angular aperture characteristics of acoustooptic devices are discussed in terms of simple phase mismatch considerations. The present status of acoustooptic materials and transducer technology is summarized. The characteristics and applications of acoustooptic devices, including deflectors, modulators, and optical filters, are discussed.


Objective: To observe the therapeutic effects and antioxidative effect of Tangluoning(TLN) on diabetic peripheral neuropathy(DPN).Methods: 210 DPN patients who were confirmed to the diagnostic criteria were randomly divided into the treatment group(105 patients) and control group(105 patients).On the basis of routine treatment,the patients in treatment group were given TLN.The patients in control group were given methycobal.The changes of symptoms,nerve conductive velocity and the content of malonaldehyde(MDA),the activity of superoxide dismutase(SOD) were observed in both groups.Results: The total effective rate of treatment group was 89.9%,which was obviously superior to that in control group(71.4%)(P0.05).There were significant differences in the improvement of nerve conductive velocity between two groups(P0.05).After treatment,MDA content decreased significantly and the level of SOD increased significantly in both groups(P0.05),oxidative stress reactions of patients in both two groups were significantly improved and the effect of treatment group was superior to that of control group,the difference was significant(P0.05).There were no obvious side effects during the treatment.Conclusion: TLN could obviously improve therapeutic effect on DPN by protecting against oxidative stress.


Previous research claimed that organizational stress, due to task complexity and time pressure, leads to considerably negative effects on the decision-making performance of individuals and organizations. At the same time, intellectual capital (IC), in providing intangible internal and external organizational assets has a positive effect on organizational decision-making performance. This paper develops a structural equation model to analyze the relationships among IC, task complexity, time pressure and decision-making performance. Empirical data are collected from 374 participants, who are from universities, institutes, enterprises, government, with different occupations and expertise. We present two conclusions. First, IC consisting of internal capital, human capital and external capital leads to a reduced complexity of tasks and reduced time pressure and hence reduced organizational stress. Second, reduced organizational stress results in higher levels of performance for organizational decision-making.


ABSTRACT This paper is focused on the first and second level vulnerability assessment of Surf riding/Broaching and Pure Loss of Stability Criteria according to IMO second generation intact stability criteria. The calculations are performed for the semi-displacement twin-screw round-bilge hull form model D1 of the Systematic Series D. This model has hull form and service speed representative of corvettes built in 90-ties. The considered loading condition is obtained from Italian Navy ships statistics. Both criteria are analysed for different operational characteristics to evaluate the speed limits where the ship is not vulnerable. Model D1 is found to be vulnerable to both failure modes at service speed. Performing 2nd level of both criteria 'safe' speed is around 19 knots for surf-riding and around 15, 5 knots for pure loss. The obtained results are commented and compared against similar ships from the relevant state of the art papers.


Of the many properties of the eye lens environment perhaps none has remained more controversial in clinical interpretation than tear pH.This may be in part, because so little is known about it. For example, how stable is a patients tear pH throughout the day normally (i.e.pre-fitted)? How does the introduction of a hard contact lens affect this property of the tears, and is tear pH an effective predictor of a patient's adaptability to such lenses. Finally how realistic a concept is the matching of a solution pH to a patient's tears? These are some of the questions explored in this developing study of tear ph and the hard (PMMA) contact lens patient.


Recently an additional technique was applied to investigate the properties of kHz QPOS, i.e. the analysis of the distribution of frequency ratios or frequencies themselves. I review the results of such work on the data from Sco X-1: (Abramowicz et al. 2003), which was later criticized by Belloni, Mendez & Homan (2005). I .nd that the findings of the latter paper are consistent with results presented earlier: kHz QPOs cluster around the value corresponding to the frequency ratio of 2/3. I also discuss the random walk model of kHz QPOs and possible future observations needed to verify it. (© 2005 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)


The spray formed UHCS(ultra-high carbon steel)-1.8C-1.6Al has finer uniaxed grains owing to its faster cool-speed.For this study,UHCS-1.6Al material was produced by spray forming process and superplasticity was obtained in a temperature range from 790 ℃ to 950 ℃ and in a strain-rate range from 2.5×10 -4 s -1 to 1 s -1.


The service station "El Rebollet" of Oliva (Valencia), designed by Juan de Haro Piñar in the middle of the twentieth century, is one of the hallmarks of this city. Its design, clearly influenced by the works of Felix Candela and Frank Lloyd Wright, distinguishes two areas: the administrative and commercial area of the gas station and the area dedicated to refueling. The main building stands out for its reinforced concrete structure composed of six hyperbolic paraboloids, along with which are the five fungiform canopies in the refueling area. This final grade work aims to offer a historical tour of the architecture of the 50s and 60s of the last century, to subsequently focus the research on the aforementioned service station. To do so, a geometric view of both the main building and the fungiform canopies is offered through the realization of the graphical survey, and a constructive vision through the study of the execution processes, as well as the materials used in its construction.


— Computers and other information and communication technologies (ICT) are increasingly taking over and most vital function of human activity, including public administration. A public administration provides to the citizens of crucial importance for the quality of their lives. The data and information that the public administration has always had a very great importance and therefore, at the time of the reform of public administration and its transformation to e-government (e-government), it is necessary to offer complex solutions concerning their protection and safety. This paper should contribute to improving information security in general, and particularly in public administration as well as comprehensive information security open issues in public administration.


After request completion, an I/O device must decide whether to minimize latency by immediately firing an interrupt or to optimize for throughput by delaying the interrupt, anticipating that more requests will complete soon and help amortize the interrupt cost. Devices employ adaptive interrupt coalescing heuristics that try to balance between these opposing goals. Unfortunately, because devices lack the semantic information about which I/O requests are latency-sensitive, these heuristics can sometimes lead to disastrous results. Instead, we propose addressing the root cause of the heuristics problem by allowing software to explicitly specify to the device if submitted requests are latency-sensitive. The device then "calibrates" its interrupts to completions of latency-sensitive requests. We focus on NVMe storage devices and show that it is natural to express these semantics in the kernel and the application and only requires a modest two-bit change to the device interface. Calibrated interrupts increase throughput by up to 35%, reduce CPU consumption by as much as 30%, and achieve up to 37% lower latency when interrupts are coalesced.


Abstract In an article in The Drama Review, Richard Schechner (2000b) discusses the value of theory in performance studies. He talks about the relationship of post-structuralism, in its broadest sense, with performance studies and also discusses the way in which such a relationship is currently modelled. In this article I will develop Schechner's ideas about the value of theory and practice in relation to two examples of practice in which I have been engaged with second-year drama and education undergraduate students at the Central School of Speech and Drama, London. I reform Schechner's ideas of the relationship between practice and theory by expressing the terms of his article within a relation of praxis. However, praxis need not only be seen as the relationship of theory to practice in terms of the work it produces in the studio; praxis can also be used as a means by which students can gain access to what could be described as 'high theory'. I end with a discussion of the ways in which praxis can help expose what is often disavowed in the tension between what can be described broadly as 'a theoretical approach to making performance' and 'a physical approach to making performance'. I also make a provisional list of the potentials of working with praxis in the mind and in the body.


We show that the stellar surface-brightness profiles in disc galaxies---observed to be approximately exponential---can be explained if radial migration efficiently scrambles the individual stars' angular momenta while conserving the circularity of the orbits and the total mass and angular momentum. In this case the disc's distribution of specific angular momenta $j$ should be near a maximum-entropy state and therefore approximately exponential, $dN\propto\exp(-j/\langle j\rangle)dj$. This distribution translates to a surface-density profile that is generally not an exponential function of radius: $\Sigma(R)\propto\exp[-R/R_e(R)]/(RR_e(R))(1+d\log v_c(R)/d\log R)$, for a rotation curve $v_c(R)$ and $R_e(R)\equiv\langle j\rangle/v_c(R)$. We show that such a profile matches the observed surface-brightness profiles of disc-dominated galaxies as well as the empirical exponential profile. Disc galaxies that exhibit population gradients cannot have fully reached a maximum-entropy state but appear to be close enough that their surface-brightness profiles are well-fit by this idealized model.


Abstract : Continuous study of existing experience in construction for occupancy and industrial purposes in Yakutsk was begun in 1929 by the Yakutsk Expedition of the USSR Academy of Sciences. This institution was reorganized in 1941 into the Permafrost Station of the V.A. Obruchev Institute of Permafrostology of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The importance of this accumulated experience extends far beyond Yakutsk, which is one of the largest towns of the Soviet northeast. The entire central portion of Yakutia and the districts bordering thereon have permafrost and climatic conditions similar to those of Yakutsk. This mades it possible to apply the lessons of construction in Yakutsk over that entire territory, which is largest in area than Germany and France combined. Some of these conclusions may even be applied over the entire permafrost zone, that is, over a territory of ten million square kilometers. That indicates the importance of the study of construction experience in Yakutsk and its great practical significance at the present moment, when many permafrost districts are becoming rapidly growing centers of industry. (Author)


Using a laser profile microscope, we have investigated the internal structures of porous Ni-P electrodeposits grown under fixed current densities to find some properties that characterize the structure of the electrodeposits. The statistical analysis of the digitized microscope images reveals that the porous Ni-P deposits distribute according to a Poisson distribution and have values of the fractal dimension and scaling exponent different from those of the diffusion-limited aggregation model. Another result is that the number of ions at the cathode electrode oscillates at a fundamental frequency, which fact is interpreted by the presence of an oscillatory solution of the electrochemical rate equations in the Ni-P-H system using linearized perturbation equations.


This article aims to solve positively Anderson-Badawi Conjecture of n-Absorbing and strongly n-absorbing ideals of commutative rings in the class of u-rings. The main result extends and recovers Anderson-Badawis related result on Prufer domains


: Studying on residential satisfaction of the new urban poverty space is of great significance for understanding the living condition of the urban poverty group, improving the life quality, and enriching the research of residential area. Taking the typical old enterprise communities in the central city of Xi'an as an example, this study explored residential satisfaction of enterprise communities and its influence factors based on survey data and structural equation modeling (SEM) method. Importance-performance analysis (IPA) theory was introduced to identify the priorities and sequence of enterprise community renewal, and we propose methods for the renewal of the old urban communities. The results show that: 1) Residential satisfaction of enterprise communities is at an average level, and the mean value of the 5- point Likert scale is 3.21. 2) Residential satisfaction is successively affected by the living environment, housing conditions, and supporting facilities, and has a significant negative impact on residents' willingness to move out. 3) There were significant differences in residential satisfaction among individuals with different socioeconomic attributes, such as age, educational level, household registration, occupation, monthly income, length of residence, housing property rights, and enterprise operation. 4) In order to improve the living conditions, it is necessary to give priority attention to the factors of community recreation and activity, sanitation, medical and nursing facilities suitable for the aged population, property services, public service facilities, and so on, and strengthen the sense of community belonging and cohesion of residents. It is recommended that the renewal of the old urban community in the future should be carried out from four aspects:


In the land battlefield environment, the tracking of personnel target is mainly affected by the complex environment, like smog, rain, shadows and partial shelter from the woods. These elements make the effect of kernelized correlation filters (KCF) target tracking based on visible light very unsatisfactory, because the brightness, color and rich texture information mainly included in visible light imaging are polluted. The infrared imaging system, due to its sensitivity to heat source, can be perceived in the dark and has low dependence on the surrounding environment. However, limited by its own characteristics, the single infrared imaging system loses some visible light information, such as light intensity, texture and color, and the image resolution is low. Considering the characteristics of visible light and infrared imaging are complementary, it's reasonable to fuse integral channel features (ICF) of infrared gray image into HOG features of visible light images, and adjust model update rate corresponding to the degree of occlusion of target in the infrared image, to achieve more robust tracking effect.


In the age of cloud computing, cloud users with a limited amount of storage can outsource their data to remote servers. The cloud servers, in lieu of monetary benefits, offer retrievability of their clients' data at any point of time. A client's data can be dynamic (or static) in nature depending on whether the client can (or cannot) update the uploaded data as needed. Secure cloud storage protocols enable a client to check the integrity of her outsourced data by auditing the data. In this work, we explore the possibility of constructing a secure cloud storage for dynamic data by leveraging the idea of secure network coding. Specifically, we fail to provide a general construction of an efficient secure cloud storage protocol for dynamic data from an arbitrary secure network coding protocol. However, we show that some of the secure network coding schemes can be used to construct secure cloud storage protocols for dynamic data, and we construct such a secure cloud storage protocol based on a secure network coding protocol. To the best of our knowledge, our scheme is the first secure cloud storage protocol for dynamic data that is based on a secure network coding protocol and that is secure in the standard model.
In a publicly verifiable setting, auditing task is often delegated to a third party auditor that audits the outsourced data on behalf of a client. We extend our scheme in order to provide privacy-preserving and to offer anonymity (from the server) of a user updating shared data in an enterprise setting. We compare the performance of our secure cloud storage protocol with that of other secure cloud storage schemes and discuss some limitations of our scheme. Finally, we provide another construction of a secure cloud storage protocol specific to append-only data --- that overcomes some of the limitations of our earlier scheme.


Studies on the extract of Scleria sumatrensis from Cyperaceae family have been carried oul. Analytical
TLC of crude cyclohexane showed six major component spots, five major spots for crude DCM and 6 major spots for crude EtOAc. Fractionation of crude cyclohexane and EtOAc was carried out using column chromat0r,raphy which afforded eight combined fractions and twelve combined fractions respectively. The II NMR analysis showed the possible presence of some terpene like compounds in
crude cyclohexane. 'll NMR analysis also showed the possible presence of compounds with rotamers
due to the very broad peaks observed in crude EtOAc and combined fractions F29-F35 and F36-F40 of crude EtOAc. Possible compounds with hydroxyl groups, carbonyl groups, aromatic rings and ethylenic carbons was detected in the 'II NMR experiment on crude cyclohexane, DCM, EtOAc and combined fractions of F29-F3 5 and 1"36-1"40 of crude EtOAc.


The phenomenon of students'skipping classes has become an known secret on the campus.It has also been a difficult and important aspect in the university management,become it will affect the teaching quality and the promotion of students'comprehensive qualities.Why do these students'skip classes?Many educational experts and scholars'study this problem and propose various opinions.They think there are many reasons,for example,students'own problem,the problem of school's management and teaching,social problems and so on.We also do some deep research into it.We hope that through the surface phenomenon,the real reason of students'skipping classes could be revealed.They lack the motivation to study.This text proposes the relevant suggestions and tactics.


This study was undertaken to underscore the extent the variables of school location, students' gender and school section can predict the rate of drop out of secondary school students. Ex post facto design was adopted and all data on students' enrollment, retention and completion were collected from available schools' records for two cohorts of students and covering four sessions using a researcher developed school dropout data collation sheet (SDDCS). The result of the data analyzed show about 19% dropout rates with respect to the predictor variables. However, these rates were found to be non-significant at the dichotomous levels of these variables and regression analyses also show non-significant values in the extent to which the predictor variables relatively and jointly predict the rate of school dropout in Rivers State. This implies that neither school location, gender and even school section has significant effect on the rate of school dropout in Rivers State. (2012, p.3) said that the rural dropout rate (11%) is higher than the suburban rate (9%) but lower than in cities (13%). Studies have also suggested that dropouts are different in rural areas due to the local industry structure. McGranahan (2004) found the presence of mining and manufacturing employers requiring low skill workers makes rural dropouts different. According to the UNDP (2011) , Nigeria is a country in the West of African bordered by the Gulf of Guinea between the republics of Benin and Cameroon. It has a total area of 923,768 km 2 (910,768 km 2 of land and 13,000 km 2 of water) out of which is a vast arable land of about 31.2% of the land mass is arable). With an estimated growth rate of 1.93% and fertility rate of 4.73 children born/woman, Nigeria, is already the most populous African nation which accounts for one-sixth of the African population. The National Population Commission of Nigeria census conducted in 2006, the country's population stood at 140,431,790, and by July 2011, had grown to 155,215,576. The median age has increased from 18.63 years in 2006 to 19 years in 2009. The dominant population group is 15-64 years (55.5%) followed by 0-14 years (41.5%). Rated 142 out of 169 countries on the 2011 Human Development Index (HDI), poverty remains bane to development in Nigeria with 63.5 % of her populace living in poverty. The 2008 Nigeria Demographic and Household Survey (NDHS) estimated the poverty index at 32.3%. Problem Statement Nigeria with all her resources human and material alike has no known organized programme or database for the tracking of dropouts from schools. The consequence of dropping out of school in the life of a nation is a well researched area of endeavour in developed nations and if there are any in Nigeria, such findings are yet to be accessed. Just like this phenomenon is not tracked in the country, it is equally not tracked at the least based on available literatures have not proved otherwise. The most of any literature of any study of this kind is the


Glutamine is the most commonly found free amino acid in the human body. When applied to clinical lesions, glutamine can aid in the recovery of severe presentations, reduce infections and even decrease the length of hospital stay because it causes symptom remission. For patients with severe systemic presentations, this amino acid is classified as essential because it is required by the body. Glutamine can reduce the inflammatory response, antagonize prostaglandins and regulate the activities of cytotoxic natural killer (NK) lymphocytes(1) and neutrophils;(2) reduction of its serum level is extremely harmful to the body. A 35-year-old male patient was admitted to the Intensive Care Center of the Maria Aparecida Pedrossian University Hospital, in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul (MS), Brazil, with complications of HIV. After examination, he was referred to the Infectious and Parasitic Diseases Sector, where he was treated for lymph node tuberculosis. Due to clinical manifestations caused by orotracheal tube use and worsening HIV symptoms, perioral and oral lesions with spontaneous bleeding were present on all injured extremities (Figure 1A and B), making it impossible for the patient to speak or swallow, in addition to causing pain. As an adjuvant treatment, topical glutamine was applied over the affected area, which was combined with dietary glutamine supplementation. Application was performed in the morning after aspiration of oropharyngeal contents and oral hygiene with 0.12% chlorhexidine solution. The amount used for topical application was sufficient to cover the entire lesion (Figure 1C). Treatment continued for 1 week. On the second day of application, bleeding was absent, and scab formation was observed on the lower lip and both mouth corners, giving the appearance of a decrease in lesion size, which was evident 7 days later (Figure 1D). The most relevant point was the reduction of the patient's symptomatology because the lesions to which the topical amino acid was applied showed regression and significant improvement during the subsequent applications, resulting in a higher quality of life for the patient. After improvement of the systemic condition, the patient was discharged and directed to perform home treatment. The appearance of opportunistic lesions, especially ulcers, in immunosuppressed patients may be an important clinical indication of their immunological status. In this sense, glutamine can act as adjuvant treatment because its use has been described in the literature for oral mucositis in cancer patients, with promising results.(3,4) Conflicts of interest: None.


—— Based on the Punishment Notice of the CSRC from 2013 to 2017 Hanlin Zhu and Youqing Wan School of Management, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, Hubei Abstract. Information disclosure of listed companies is the basis of investors'judgment and decision-making, as well as the basis of supervision and management of the securities market by the state regulators. Only by guaranteeing the standardization of accounting information disclosure, can we truly reflect the company's operating conditions, and obtain effective market feedback, so as to make the stock exchange market develop healthily and orderly. However, at present, in China's securities market, the information disclosure of listed companies is prohibited repeatedly. If information disclosure violations are widespread in listed companies, the stability of market order will be affected, the interests of investors will be damaged, and the securities market will not develop healthily, orderly and sustainably. This paper makes a statistical analysis of the decision on administrative penalty issued by the China Securities Regulatory Commission from 2013 to 2017, selects some valid samples, makes a comprehensive analysis and classified statistics on the information disclosure violations of listed companies, summarizes the objects involved, and puts forward some countermeasures to curb the frequent occurrence of illegal disclosure in the securities market. This has a certain reference for listed companies, so that relevant departments can play a more effective regulatory role and protect the rights of stakeholders, which is conducive to the healthy development of China's securities market.


The paper discusses durability test methods for wheel bearings. Through studying on the offset between the center line of a wheel and the center line on which the tire is forced, we get the determination method for the simulating load position on the wheel bearing . Depending on the influence study of inner circle or outer circle rotating method to the life performance of the wheel bearings, we give the test method on the bench. Based on the discussing of the bench monitoring method of wheel bearings, we give the effective and simple method to determine the failure of wheel bearings with Kur tosis.


This article concerns poverty and poverty-solutions at the community level by enhancing
the potential for people in the community to reach their own solutions based on the
integral approach and relevant to a Thai context. People Research and Development
(PR&D) is the research and development methodology derived from experience of the
Thailand Village Foundation in rural development over more than 20 years. The paradigm
of development is shifted from the developing of people by outsiders to research and
development by the people themselves; through local wisdom, social capital, and network
organizations. The essence of PR&D is to activate the learning process and knowledge
management within the community, liberating people by exchanging dependency for
self-reliance and strengthening people organizations and networks.


Many faculty members in higher education are wondering about teaching courses on the Internet since they have heard and read many things about it, both pro and con. This article covers the experiences of a university professor who has been teaching graduate courses to community college faculty in Florida via this medium. Technological change is what many are saying is the only constant in our work today. And, talk about change! I transitioned from a community college presidency to a university professorship, teaching graduate level online courses on the Internet, in one year. As president, I did not need to know the ins and outs of computer technology, because I had people who were employed to do so, and they were skilled in providing the information and services I needed. The learning curve was rather steep when one considers the need to understand the technology, and at the same time design all of the course materials required for online instruction before the first course began. I only mention this to indicate that novices can, in fact, become proficient in the design of course materials on the Web in a very short period of time. For me, it was fortuitous that I got involved with the computer-based activities I had been reading about for several years. Otherwise, I would have been left in the academic dust as learners all around me were cruising down the information highway. Online instruction on the Internet is in many ways a form of individualized instruction. It requires regular contact between the student and the instructor for maximum learning to occur. I found that students were more willing to participate in class "discussions" and other learning activities online as compared to the traditional mode of learning. There was a measure of anonymity which served as a motivator for students to get involved. Lauzon found that anonymity helps with the use of the computer.[1] People feel more empowered. They are daring and confrontational regarding the expression of ideas. When students posted materials on a Course Forum for discussion purposes, we all learned. Of course, my students may have been unique because they were experienced community college educators in Florida. They had something to contribute. They did not wait around for me to raise questions, although that certainly was an important function for me to carry out. Course Preparation I have designed and taught two, three-credit-hour online graduate courses that deal with the community college. One course, "The Community College in America" was taught for the first time during the fall semester of 1996. The second course, "The Community College Curriculum," has been taught regularly since the spring semester of 1997. Both courses are part of a doctoral program that is specifically designed for community college faculty and administrators as well as those who wish to prepare for a community college career. At the beginning of each course, students purchased textbooks, which formed the basis of the content. Students ordered them by telephone from our bookstore using their credit cards, and the books were mailed to their homes. In addition, students were provided with a set of handouts for the entire semester that supplemented the content in the texts. The handouts required a substantial amount of time to prepare. First of all, they required face validity so that students would want to read them. The copies had to be high-quality documents. It was necessary to design the sequence of handouts so they would dovetail with the readings in the books. A face-to-face orientation session provided students with a clear understanding of course expectations. For the first class, students from various parts of Florida drove to the main campus of the University of Central Florida in Orlando for a lecture/discussion session and computer/Web demonstration. We wanted to be sure that all students were competent with basic computer skills so they could interact with the instructor and each other, submit research papers, access the course resources and search the World Wide Web. …


Safe transportation of temperature sensitive medicines and vaccines require controlled temperature environment that is critical for preservation of their potency. This paper describes the design and development of automatic temperature controlled portable cooling cabinet that can be used for transportation of sensitive medicines or vaccines. A solid State device based on semiconductor junctions called peltier module is used for maintaining desired temperature. Peltier module based cooling system can be designed for any such application that require controlled temperature environment. The said module absorbs heat energy from cabinet with aid of heat exchanger and dissipates this energy on its opposite side with help of another heat exchanger. Extruded rectangular fin aluminum heat sinks were used as heat exchanger that effectively increases the surface area. Heat sinks are air cooled but to facilitate heat transfer between ambient air and heat sink, forced convection has been used. A closed loop feedback controller is also implemented to maintain the desired temperature range inside cabinet, using ON-OFF control for peltier module. Experiments were conducted for desired temperature ranges and performance of system is evaluated. To the best of their knowledge the authors feel that suggested setup is not only cost effective but also energy efficient as compared to conventional vapor compression cooling Systems.


Our objective in this paper is to explore the roles played by interorganisational trust and distrust in the empirical reality of Flemish public administration on the basis of interviews with senior civil servants in the Flemish administration. We construct a conceptual framework and use it to structure qualitative interviews according to four distinct narratives regarding the roles of administrational trust and distrust. Our conclusion is that both administrational trust and distrust have functional and dysfunctional aspects because both can be considered to lead to positive and negative consequences, both are used in different ways in interactions, and both exist under different contexts. Interorganisational trust and distrust can be functional under some circumstances, but are bound to have dysfunctional side effects if either is used as a panacea in public administration. Public managers should therefore focus on maximising the potential of both administrational trust and distrust to play a functional role, rather than focus on maximising administrational trust as such.


The design of residential streets is often criticised by planners and engineers, but this paper shows that the real stumbling block to better streets is not a lack of good design ideas, or of arguments to support them, but rather the institutional structure itself. We show that in some cases engineering practices and standards cannot be rationally justified, and that these arbitrary standards can make residential streets more expensive than they need be, as well as monotonous and, perhaps, unsafe. We show how institutions and standards should be changed to obtain better results and conclude with an example of a small subdivision which breaks practically all conventional practices, yet which is, in our view, better than the conventional approach.


Recently many prominent web sites face a new type of denial of service attack known as Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS). Organizations deploying security measures such as firewalls, and intrusion detection systems could face the traditional DoS attack. Yet there is no complete solution neither for protection from DDoS attack, nor for preserving network hosts from participating in such an attack. This paper explains how DoS/DDoS attacks are launched and discuss different proposed solutions that aimed to protect Web Servers from the attack or to minimize its effect. These solutions spreads over the organization's entire Internet infrastructure, that includes boarder routers, firewalls, active monitors, load balancer, and the target host/server.


In this study, it has been determined that totally 25 species! subspecies belonging to Dermestidae have been preserved in the collection of LEMT (Lodos Entomological Museum Turkey), Department of Plant Protection, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ege, lzmir, Turkey. Among those, Attagenus (s.str.) brunneus Faldermann, 1835, Anthrenus (s.str.) flavlpes flavlpes LeConte, 1854, A. (s.str.) plcturatus plcturatus Solsky, 1876 and Phradonoma villosulum (Duftschmid, 1825) are the first reliable records from Turkey.


commentators are often superior in many of these aspects but are fewer in number and frequently less viewed than others. Academic dermatology journals have been previously shown to lag in their embrace of social networking platforms. As more patients rely on online content as a health education resource, dermatologists must make dedicated efforts to engage patients on these platforms with high-quality information that promotes shared decision-making with in-office providers. Moreover, it will be important to educate patients on how to evaluate the growing number of online resources to identify those that are balanced and free from commercial interests.


This study extends and updates a review published in the Academy of Management Review in 1984. First the external forces that have shaped Japanese management practices are reviewed. Next a description of the practices that have traditionally been viewed as Japanese management practices is presented. This section includes a discussion of overlapping Japanese organizations, long term planning horizons, decision making and control, just-in-time manufacturing, TQC, QCs and continuous improvement, aggressive R&D, lifetime employment, generalists career paths, company unions, and women as temporaries and support groups. The last section, focusing on the future of Japanese management, critiques the effectiveness of Japanese management practices, reviews the changes taking place in Japanese management, presents a model which conceptualizes the Japanese management system of the future, and identifies eleven propositions describing projected changes in this system. Finally, the problems inherent in the research reviewed are summarized and some needs for future research are discussed.


: It is essential to incorporate moral education and promote the high-quality development of civil engineering management talent cultivation to effectively construct curriculum thinking and politics under the carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals ("dual carbon" goals). Through a comprehensive analysis of the new characteristics of the ideological and political thinking of civil engineering management courses under the "dual carbon" goals, we have identified the key elements to integrate ideological and political concepts into civil engineering management courses. In particular, we have focused on the civil engineering management course "urban ecology and urban environmental protection" as an example of how to optimize the integration of ideological and political elements in civil engineering management courses under the "dual carbon" goals. Which provides a reference to improving the quality of talent training in civil engineering management


In the first part of this study, a one-dimensional code was used to compare predictions from six different two-equation turbulence models. It is shown that the application of the traditional K-E models to the viscous-dominated region of the boundary layer can produce errors in both the calculated heat flux and surface friction. A low-Reynolds-number model does hot appear to predict similar non-physical effects. A new one-dimensional model, which includes the effect of compression, has been formulated by multiparameter fit to the numerical solution of the energy equation. This model can be used in place of the law-of-the-wall to calculate the surface heat flux. The experiments were performed in a specially-instrumented engine, allowing optical access to the clearance volume . Measurements of heat flux, swirl velocities, and momentum boundary layer thickness were made for different engine speeds. Comparison of the model predictions with the results from the experiment showed good agreement.


The main concentration of this work is to look at the forms and functions of morphological doubling in syntax and it aims at to look at the functions and roles of double questions morphemes of Urdu and to make comparative analysis of Urdu and English languages. There are different types of doublings in English language e.g. adverbs doublings, semantic doubling but question doubling does not exist in English language because it is the unique feature of Urdu language only. Qualitative analysis with purposive sampling approach, with the framework of Lexical Functional grammar (LFG).through the concept of F-Structure from (LFG) theory, double morphemes will be analyzed. For this purpose, data will be collected through document analysis, standard books, articles, published researches, dictionaries and data from common users. 100 sentences, consisting of double morpheme, will be selected and same were put into F-Structure to explore their lexical structure to show the semantic functions in both languages. Simultaneously, the sentences were also analyzed syntactically in order to find out their appropriateness. The study may provide a good level of confidence to develop Urdu National Language processing (UNLP) and enlighten the phenomena that morphological doubling in Urdu used for multiple semantic functions to explore human notions and feelings as compare to any other South Asian Language because Urdu is the only language with per gram. and study will also explore the functional and dynamic aspects of LFG. Keywords: Reduplication, LFG, syntax, Double interrogative morphemes.


A number of hydroxyphenylalkylamines have been converted into their trimethylsilyl ethers by the action of hexamethyldisilazane in pyridine. The derivatives are completely soluble in carbon tetrachloride and these solutions are suitable for nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The nmr spectra of 16 potentially biologically active phenylalkylamines have been obtained in this way. The spectral data are presented and the significance of the results discussed.


Objective: Although the literature includes many reports of the causes, pathogenesis, diagnostic criteria, treatment, and prognostic factors of sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL), few studies have examined recurrent SSNHL. This prompted us to investigate recurrent SSNHL. Study Design: Retrospective study of the hearing results of patients with recurrent SSNHL. Methodology: We reviewed retrospectively the medical charts of 809 patients with SSNHL examined between January 2000 and June 2011 for information on their history, audiometric results, and magnetic resonance imaging findings. Results: Eleven of the 809 patients had recurrent idiopathic SSNHL. In these 11 patients, the more than partial recovery of hearing after the second attack was poorer than after the first attack, and the second attack of SSNHL was ipsilateral in 10 of the 11 patients. Conclusion: The hearing outcome was poorer after a recurrent episode than after the first episode, and SSNHL almost always recurs in the same ear.


At present, the market of magazines inside our country is very wide, where there exists all kinds of magazines focused on different markets, nevertheless the city of Pedernales isn't provided with a magazine that offers information related to this market; reason for which we have generated like proposed the publication and distribution of the Magazine of Pedernales and this way we seek how to satisfy the need of the population Pedernaleña to kept informed regarding the facts briefly in this city. To achieve to evaluate our proposal is turned to tools used throughout our college career in order to establish a proper management of resources to exploit all the strengths and opportunities when you offer a quality product on the market requirements and likewise to examine which would be the best marketing strategies applied to our project capturing a major share.


In a recent study (Grainger, Dufau, Montant, Ziegler, & Fagot, 2012), we successfully trained baboons to discriminate a large number of visually presented real English words from nonsense words. However, our findings showed that baboons did not just learn words by heart: They performed well above chance on novel words they had never seen before. To explain this finding, we argued that baboons likely use an orthographic code based on frequently occurring letter combinations and their relative positions; such information could be used to distinguish the novel words from nonwords. However, it is possible that the baboons were learning visual, not orthographic, patterns and that visual rather than orthographic similarities across stimuli were driving the reported effects. Our goal in the present study was to further investigate the nature of the information used by baboons to discriminate words from nonwords. To do so, we retested the monkeys used in our previous study to see whether they would show transposed-letter effects. Transposedletter effects are considered to be the hallmark of orthographic processing (Grainger, 2008). They reflect the finding that nonwords created by transposing the letters of real words, such as caniso (derived from casino), are more likely to be misclassified as words than are nonsense control words, such as caviro (Andrews, 1996; Chambers, 1979; Perea & Lupker, 2004). State-of-the-art word-recognition models show that flexible orthographic coding is needed to account for this effect (Davis, 2010; Gomez, Ratcliff, & Perea, 2008; Whitney, 2001). Thus, in the present study, transposed-letter effects served as a marker for such flexible orthographic processing. To test a possible visual account of word/nonword discrimination performance in monkeys, we contrasted transposedletter effects with effects of visual similarity. If baboons use a truly orthographic code, they should show effects of the former but not of the latter. The data were obtained from 6 guinea baboons (Papio papio; 3 females, 3 males) who participated in the word-learning experiment used in our previous study (Grainger et al., 2012). The baboons had free access to computerized operant-conditioning test systems with touch screens (for details, see Video S1 and Supplemental Method and Results in the Supplemental Material available online). The baboons had to select an oval shape when the sample was a word and a cross shape when it was a nonword. The experiment started right after completion of the learning experiment described in Grainger et al. (2012) with no additional training between the two studies. Each test block in the present study contained 50 known words (randomly selected from the pool of words that the monkey had learned) and 50 nonwords. In each of the 10 blocks, 8 standard nonwords were replaced by 8 critical nonwords that were reinforced as nonwords. The 80 nonwords in the critical-item set consisted of 20 transposed-letter, 20 double-substitution, 20 visually similar, and 20 visually dissimilar nonwords. The test material was constructed individually for each monkey on the basis of the words it had learned. Transposed-letter nonwords were created by inverting the middle letters of words (e.g., DONE → DNOE). The control items, the socalled double-substitution nonwords (cf. Perea & Lupker, 2004), were created by replacing the two middle letters with letters from the same category (i.e., vowels or consonants; e.g., DONE → DAGE). Visually similar and visually dissimilar nonwords were created by replacing either the second or the third letter of a previously learned word with a visually similar or dissimilar letter, respectively (e.g., visually similar: DONE → DQNE; visually dissimilar: DONE → DFNE). For additional information on 474322 PSSXXX10.1177/0956797612474322Ziegler et al.Transposed-Letter Effects in Baboons research-article2013


* Foreword (Jane Honikman) * Preface * Acknowledgments * Chapter 1. Depression in New Mothers: Myths versus Reality * Myths About Postpartum Depression * Assumptions About Postpartum Depression * Symptoms of Depression * Incidence * Postpartum Psychosis * Conditions Comorbid with Postpartum Depression * Conclusion * Chapter 2. Why Depression Is Harmful for Mothers and Babies * Why Depression Is Bad for Mothers * Why Depression in Mothers Is Bad for Babies * Interaction Styles of Depressed Mothers * Infanticide and Maternal Suicide * Conclusion * Chapter 3. Physiological Influences in Postpartum Depression * Fatigue and Sleep Deprivation * Immune System Function and Depression * Pain * Hormonal Influences * Cholesterol * Conclusion * Chapter 4. Negative Childbirth Experiences * Characteristics of Negative Childbirth Experiences * Negative versus Traumatic Childbirth * The Efficacy of Debriefing * Conclusion * Chapter 5. Infant Characteristics and Depression in Their Mothers * Infant Temperament * Infant Health Issues * Conclusion * Chapter 6. Psychological Risk Factors * Attributional Style * Self-Efficacy, Self-Esteem, and Expectations * Previous Psychiatric History * Violence Against Women * Loss * Conclusion * Chapter 7. Social Risk Factors * Stressful Life Events * Maternal Age * Socioeconomic Status * Maternity Leave and Employment * Social Support * Supporting the Mother-Infant Relationship * Chapter 8. Assessment of Postpartum Depression * Challenges to Assessing Postpartum Depression * Screening for Depression * Assessment Scales * Additional Factors * Conclusion * Chapter 9. Alternatives and Complementary Therapies: Diet, Supplements, and Exercise * Diet * Supplements * Exercise * Combined Modalities and Other Techniques * Conclusion * Chapter 10. Community Interventions and Psychotherapy * Community Interventions * Psychotherapy * Trauma-Focused Treatment * Conclusion * Chapter 11. Psychoactive Substances: Herbs and Antidepressants * Herbal Antidepressants * Antidepressants * Medications for Comorbid Conditions * Phases of Depression Management with Medication * Conclusion * Chapter 12. Postpartum Depression and Psychosis: One Woman's Story * Background * The Birth Experience * The Postpartum Period * The Hospital Diary * The Psychiatric Evaluation * Analysis * Information on Past Sexual Abuse * The Road to Recovery * 2003 Update * Final Thoughts * Listen to Mothers * Let Mothers Know About Factors That Might Be Influencing Their Emotional States * Offer Specific Suggestions That Can Help * Help Mothers Mobilize Support * Conclusion * References * Index


The utility model discloses a battery charging socket for an electric vehicle. The battery charging socket for an electric vehicle comprises a three-jack socket body, a first metal contact sheet, a second contact sheet and a fuse. The live wire of the three-jack socket body is connected with the first metal contact sheet. The second metal contact sheet is connected with one end of the fuse. The other end of the fuse is connected with the anode of a storage battery. The battery charging socket for an electric vehicle helps to effectively prevent electric shock burning, combustion and other accidents caused by the short circuit inside the socket from occurring.


A two-year study was undertaken in the UK and the Republic of Ireland with the aim of investigating recent developments in services for young people who have demonstrated sexually abusive behaviour, including an examination of their policy grounding. A further aim was to explore the experiences of the young people and their families who receive these services. The research suggests that services have developed substantially in England and Wales since a benchmark report was published by NCH in 1992, with a better understanding of the problem by professional services, the community and local government than a decade ago. Similarly, data on Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Scotland provide evidence of important initiatives. However, long term funding continues to be a problem for some organizations. The research found that interventions are aimed not only at managing the young people's sexual behaviour, but also as a response to unmet interpersonal and intrapersonal need. Such an approach was experienced as helpful by young people and their families. Cognitive behavioural therapy appeared to be the most frequently used approach, followed by relapse prevention, family systems theory and psycho-educative approaches. In terms of the perspective of the young people and their families, 39 per cent described the availability of services as inadequate or worse, with 18 per cent giving a similar rating to the quality of the service provision. Of particular interest in the report was that a significant proportion of the young people in this group were described as having a learning disability. However, in spite of this, none of the local areas had policies that explicitly referred to this group or gave advice about their particular needs and difficulties. Recommendations of the report include that there is a need for a national strategy for comprehensive and tiered services and that specific services should be developed to support parents and carers, with a national helpline identified as desirable. Moreover, it is recommended that all services should obtain service user feedback. Practitioners expressed concern at the lack of adequate supervision and consultation, and consideration of the development of accredited training was recommended, as well as research and practice guidelines to be distributed to all services. An audit of placement provision should be maintained and specialist foster placements encouraged. The impact of current legislation should be under constant review, especially where counter productive.


PURPOSE: A portable device, a diagnosis service providing method, and a diagnosis system are provided to remotely offer a diagnosis service through the portable device without a network function. CONSTITUTION: A portable device generates diagnosis device information by using setting information collected from a diagnosis device(S510,S520). After the diagnosis device information is encrypted, the portable device transmits the encrypted diagnosis device information to an external server(S530,S540). The portable device receives diagnosis result information from the external server and transmits the diagnosis result information to the external server(S550). [Reference numerals] (AA) Start; (BB) End; (S510) Collecting the setting information of a diagnosis device; (S520) Generating the information of the diagnosis device using the collected setting information; (S530) Encrypting the information of the diagnosis device; (S540) Transmitting the information of the diagnosis device; (S550) Receiving diagnosis result information; (S560) Outputting the diagnosis result information;


This papaer describes the magnetic properties of wound-core type three-phasetransformer. In the analysis, magnetization characteristics are approximated by a Fourier-series, and it is assumed that the eddy current factor is proportional to the time-varying magnetic flux. Moreover harmonic balance method where the zero-phase-sequence and third harmonic components of flux density are taken into consider is used.From the results of numerical analysis, the influences of operating flux density, dimension ratio and construction of the core on the magnetic properties of wound-core type three-phase transformer are discussed. The results of the analysis were confirmed by the experiments. The results obtained will be useful in the design of wound-core type three-phase transformer.


Through contrast experiment with the standard samples,the effects are told of the distillation temperature,distillation time,air-carrying flow,etc.on the results from the analysis in determining the content of chloride irons of cement and its source materials by adopting distillation separation-mercury salt titration,and as a result,the optimum determining conditions are determined.


The problem of the frequency dependence of normal modes on applied stress is treated in the case of orthorhombic crystals. The different contributions to the frequency vs temperature at constant pressure are separated. Uniaxial stress (0-7 Kbar) along the y and = axes and hydrostatic pressure up to 10 Kbar are applied to Ba2NaNb5O15 crystals and a piezospectroscopic study of the B2(y) vibrational modes has been performed. Quantitative results on the anharmonicities are given. Besides, a non reversibility phenomenon under pressure is reported in this ferroelastic crystal.


An estimation method to predict creep performances of high temperature structural materials has been proposed. A Stress relaxation equation is obtained by fitting stress relaxation testing curves and modifying Tanaka-Ohba reloading stress relaxation constitutive equation. Based on the relationship between stress relaxation and creep, a unified prediction equation of creep is deduced. The method is to use the unified equation to derive creep strain rates or creep strain vs. time curves from stress relaxation measurements through some specified time increments. In order to validate the approach, the predicted results are compared to the experimental results of uni-axial isothermal creep tests conducted on 1Cr10NiMoW2VNbN steel. Good agreement between results of creep tests and the predicted results indicates that the developed method can be recommended in the creep behavior evaluation of high temperature materials.


Canberra's Standard Gamma Box Counter System is designed to perform accurate quantitative assays of gamma emitting nuclides for a wide range of large containers including B-25 crates and ISO shipping containers. Using a modular building-block approach, the system offers tremendous flexibility for a variety of measurement situations with wide ranges of sample activities and throughput requirements, as well as the opportunity to modify the configuration for other applications at a later date. The typical configuration consists of two opposing towers each equipped with two high purity germanium detectors, and an automated container trolley. This paper presents a modified configuration, consisting of a single tower placed inside a measurement trailer with three detector assemblies, allowing for additional vertical segmentation as well as a viewing a container outside the trailer through the trailer wall. An automatic liquid nitrogen fill system is supplied for each of the detectors. The use of a forklift to move the container for horizontal segmentation is accommodated by creating an additional operational and calibration set-up in the NDA 2000 software to allow for the operator to rotate the container and assay the opposite side, achieving the same sensitivity as a comparable two-tower system. This Segmented Gamma Box Counter more » System retains the core technologies and design features of the standard configuration. The detector assemblies are shielded to minimize interference from environmental and plant background, and are collimated to provide segmentation of the container. The assembly positions can also be modified in height and distance from the container. The ISOCS calibration software provides for a flexible approach to providing the calibrations for a variety of measurement geometries. The NDA 2000 software provides seamless operation with the current configuration, handling the data acquisition and analysis. In this paper, an overview of this system is discussed, along with the measured performance results, calibration methodology and verification, and minimum detectable activity levels. (authors) « less


An alternator is an array of interacting processes that satisfies three conditions. First, if a process executes its critical section, then no neighbor of that process can execute its critical section at the same state. Second, along any infinite sequence of system states, each process will execute its critical section, an infinite number of times. Third, along any maximally concurrent execution, the alternator will stabilize to a sequence of states in which the processes will execute their critical sections in alternation. A principal reason for interest in alternators is their ability to transform systems correct under serial execution semantics to systems that are correct under concurrent execution semantics. An earlier alternator for arbitrary topology required (2 * dependency graph circumference) states and after stabilization would wait (2 * dependency graph circumference) steps between critical section executions. This alternator requires only 2d+1 states where d is the degree of the graph of process dependencies for the system and after stabilization will require a wait of 2d+1 steps between critical section executions.


The construction of the roles of teachers in applied medical college is an important approach to promote the reform of teaching and improve the quality of teaching. This paper mainly aimed at the present situation of teaching construction in applied medical college. Based on the student-centered idea, some of recommendations were proposed to enhance the construction of roles of teachers in applied medical colleges, which is of great significance to improve the teaching quality.


PATIENT
49 year-old man.

CHIEF COMPLAINT
Dyspnea at rest and dyspnea on exertion.

HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS
Diagnosed with upper respiratory tract infection 10 days previously.

PAST MEDICAL HISTORY
Obese (BMI not available), but no significant past medical history.

SOCIAL HISTORY
Noncontributory.

FAMILY HISTORY
Noncontributory.


The general outlines for the isolation of viruses from the cerebro-spinal fluid are described. It is suggested to associate to the virus cultivation of the cerebrospinal fluid even the cultivation from other pathological materials as faringeal swabs and stools and the search for antibodies in the blood serum. Researches of viruses in cerebro-spinal fluid done by the Service of Microbiology of the Hospital of Verona have given in 55 cases examined during the year 1976 2 positive isolates; in both mumps virus has been isolated.


Charge-transfer interaction, as a reversible and rapid phenomenon, was evidenced by force microscopy. Pull-off forces were measured between a tip grafted with a trinitrofluorenone derivative and a surface functionalized with an electron-rich aromatic anthracene compound in a dodecane environment. The effect of the sweep time on the measured interaction forces is described, together with an extensive study of a competitive influence of free aromatic molecules in dodecane diluted solutions. These forces depend on the nature of the competitor and its concentration as well as on the velocity of tip/sample separation.


The report deals with the authors method of gas transportation in permafrost zone with ecologically safe of natural geosystem in permafrost areas. These problems are addressed through optimization of processes of mass and energy exchange between pipeline and surrounding medium under maximum reduction of investment costs and simplification of gas treatment before transportation.


Nowadays, with the rapid spread of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) across the globe, the necessity to develop an intelligent system for early diagnosis and detection the COVID-19 infectious disease increases. In recent researches, Chest Xray (CXR) of individual lungs became a common method to identify COVID-19 virus. Manual interpretation of the CXR images can be a lengthy process and subjective to human errors. In this paper, a hybrid Deep Learning model called ReXception is implemented, trained, and evaluated using two types of datasets; Mutliclass and Binary. The network is evaluated based on its overall accuracy, loss, precision, and recall, in addition to the running time and network size. The results show positive indications of the network's performance, especially when compared to other state-of-the-art networks.