Disturbing both stylistically and thematically, refusing ever to do what is expected of him though sometimes infiltrating traditional cinematic genres . . . as a visionary film-maker bringing his most personal obsessions to life on the screen of his fantasy, [Kubrick] has been able to apprehend the underlying tensions of his period and tap its collective unconscious. Michel Ciment (43) Receiving Stanley Kubrick- however one chooses to define him- has never been a simple task. Jason Sperb ("Their Eyes" 125) IN SPITE OF KUBRICK'S REPUTATION AS AN important- albeit reclusive and eccentricauteur and his death on 7 March 1999, a few months before the film's release, reviewers did not handle Eyes Wide Shut (1999) with kid gloves. Indeed, it has since become commonplace to assert that critics overwhelmingly panned the film (D. Johnson 55; Kreider 280; Sperb, "Their Eyes" 125). Clearly, Eyes Wide Shut was widely misunderstood, but it elicited a somewhat more ambivalent response than subsequent analyses have suggested. Although some labeled it puerile, pompous, unrealistic, risible, unsexy, and anachronistic, the film nonetheless caught viewers' attention with its dreamlike camera work, paranoid protagonist, and "extraordinary orgy sequence" (Ebert). More recent assessments, such as Michel Chion's monograph devoted to what he considers one of Kubrick's top three films (9), suggest the need for a revaluation of the initial critical reaction to Eyes Wide Shut and the reasons for it. Although some scholars have peripherally discussed post-release responses to Eyes Wide Shut (EWS], none has made the argument outlined in this article: that the perceived "failure" of Kubrick's last film can be attributed not to its flaws as a work of art but rather to critics' misplaced expectations about the film's genre and its conventions. Throughout his career, the director worked with non-canonical film genres such as horror (The Shining, 1980), science fiction (2001: A Space Odyssey, 1964; A Clockwork Orange, 1971), and social satire (Dr. Strangelove, 1964). Most of his film projects developed out of existing literary works, and even the most canonical of these, such as the film version of Nabokov's Lolita (1962), explored the edges of the socially acceptable. Such is the case, as well, with his final film, an adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle (1926), literally a "Dream Novel." EWS explores the dangers of sexual fantasy and marital infidelity, using the tropes and narrative structure of Gothic horror. The growing body of literature devoted to Eyes Wide Shut in the ten years since its release most frequently offers the hypothesis of a misleading publicity campaign to explain a somewhat general sense of disappointment among the film's initial critics and audience (e.g., Sperb, "Their Eyes" 126-27; Kreider 280). Lindiwe Dovey's recent analysis links EWS's failed reception not only to its mis-marketing by Warner Brothers as "the sexiest movie ever" (qtd. in Rasmussen 333) but also to genre expectations set up by that campaign: "Audiences who were expecting an erotic thriller from the film were sorely disappointed; they received, instead, a kind of horror thriller" (174). In terms of stock Hollywood genres, a handful of contemporary and more recent critics, including Dovey, identify the film as a "thriller" (Ebert; Naremore 23). A conventional thriller, though, tends to provide an explanation for the unsettling events it portrays, something that EWS, as many reviewers have observed, does not do. Indeed, Richard Schickel observed in 1999 of Kubrick's career prior to EWS that "[mjost of his pictures, whatever their genre roots, disappointed genre expectations, not to mention critical anticipation and occasionally the studio's box-office ambitions" (69). As I argue here, Eyes Wide Shut proved to be no exception. For its status as a failed or successful adaptation of its literary source, Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle (1926) represents another focal point for commentary on EWS, both in mass media reviews and academic analyses (e. …


The experimental results of investigations of the influence of the discharge current value and composition of the gas phase with a relatively low content of argon on the kinetics of the synthesis process in glow discharge plasma of nitrogen-doped nanostructured diamond coatings have been discussed. It was shown that under feeding of nitrogen into the gas phase by a corresponding decrease of hydrogen concentration the growth rate of nanostructured diamond coatings can increase or decrease depending on the relative concentrations of the gas phase components. The analysis and comparison of the experimental data with the available literature data of the gas phase composition, the discharge power (temperature) on the kinetics of diamond coating synthesis have been performed.


Abstract This paper presents a combined experimental and computational study of annular cavities on a semi-angle cone in a Mach 8·9 flow. A range of cavity length-to-depth ratios has been considered, and a parameter has been determined that distinguishes between 'weak oscillations' and 'strong oscillations' of the cavity flow. Essentially the work identifies the transition from the case where the flow can be regarded as 'pure cavity flow' to that where the flow behaviour is tending towards that of a 'spiked blunt body'. The CFD simulations also suggest that, for a certain range of cavity scale, the limiting cavity flow state depends upon the flow initialisation process; it may be weak or strongly oscillating.


To the Editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association Sir: In sending you the stenographic report of the Transactions of the American Electro-Therapeutic Association at its meeting in September, I presumed its value to you as news would be impaired by undue delay, hence the several speakers were not given an opportunity to correct the notes of their remarks. The discussions are therefore verbatim, and allowing for the possible existence of slight errors in notes that fill more than four hundred pages of manuscript, are an exact reproduction of what the speakers actually said. I well know that few physicians speak in public with the same directness and brevity with which they write, but if the reports of the discussions that occur at these great annual meetings are to be published immediately, as they should be, it becomes impossible to submit the separate notes of five different sessions


The stabilization energy Δ e ( n ) and four typical properties of hydrogen bond F—H…F in chain-like and cyclic (HF) n clusters ( n = 1—5) have been calculated using MP2 and three DF levels of theory with the Gaussian 98 program, and 6-31++G** bases set. The results demonstrate that the extra-additive or cooperative behavior in (HF) n clusters is very obvious. In addition, we studied much larger chain-like (HF) n ( n = 6, 9, 12, 18, 24) clusters using one of these DF methods.


Enabling new applications for mobile devices often requires the use of specialized hardware to reduce power consumption. Because of time-to-market pressure, current design methodologies for embedded applications require an early partitioning of the design, allowing the hardware and software to be developed simultaneously, each adhering to a rigid interface contract. This approach is problematic for two reasons: (1) a detailed hardware-software interface is difficult to specify until one is deep into the design process, and (2) it prevents the later migration of functionality across the interface motivated by efficiency concerns or the addition of features. We address this problem using the Bluespec Codesign Language~(BCL) which permits the designer to specify the hardware-software partition in the source code, allowing the compiler to synthesize efficient software and hardware along with transactors for communication between the partitions. The movement of functionality across the hardware-software boundary is accomplished by simply specifying a new partitioning, and since the compiler automatically generates the desired interface specifications, it eliminates yet another error-prone design task. In this paper we present BCL, an extension of a commercially available hardware design language (Bluespec SystemVerilog), a new software compiling scheme, and preliminary results generated using our compiler for various hardware-software decompositions of an Ogg Vorbis audio decoder, and a ray-tracing application.


This study examines the role of families' child rearing styles and culture in fostering and managing bullying in school setting from the perspectives of school principals and counseling teachers. During 2006-2007 academic year, some selected school principals and counseling teachers of the schools in Erzurum, Malatya and Van, the biggest three Provinces of Eastern Anatolia, were interviewed. In each province, three high schools from different socioeconomic levels were selected by help of Province National Education Directorate. The school principals and the counseling teachers were interviewed using a semi-structured interview form. All subjects were assured of the confidentiality of their responses.


The method for the gas flow visualizing on the surface of bodies of different shapes was tested. The proposed method provides a fixed flow pattern at an arbitrary location of the investigated models in space. Obtained flow patterns are in good accordance with the earlier studies


This paper presents a novel, versatile process for the fabrication of wide and deep cavities for silicon MEMS devices without the need for wafer bonding. Instead of filling large trenches with sacrificial materials before encapsulation or directly using wafer bonding, we present a method that utilizes isotropic etching with XeF2 gas through a thin silicon dioxide film prior to the deposition of encapsulation materials to create and encapsulate large cavities. The process is demonstrated to be robust and can be easily incorporated into the fabrication of a variety of MEMS structures, including pressure sensors, ultrasonic devices, microfluidics chips, hermetically encapsulated silicon resonators, inertial sensors, and more.


Detailed description and analysis are made on the icing condition of Pingtong Line and its No.84 monitoring point in north Guangdong power grid in mid-February 2010.Four steps of icing process determined by the icing monitoring network,i.e.formation,rapid growing,maintaining and melting,coincided with the weather changes in that period;the icing condition of the icing monitoring network reported also coincided with manual observation.It is proved that the icing monitoring network can reflect icing condition on-site and judge icing accidents of lines timely,accurately and reliably,thereby providing dependable information for deicing and ice melting of transmission lines.


Since the advent of catheter-based coronary intervention three decades ago, steady technological progress has led to the development and refinement of intracoronary devices [1]. Despite technological advances, the fundamental workflow of coronary procedures remains unchanged. Interventionalists still wear heavy protective lead aprons, stand at the bedside for long hours and manually manipulate catheters and intra vascular devices under direct fluoroscopic guidance. As the field has matured, greater attention has been paid to the long-term occupational hazards of this antiquated interventional approach [2]. A striking prevalence of orthopedic injuries and spinal disc disease has been reported following hours of standing under heavy lead aprons [3,4]. Although radiation badges worn by inter ventional personnel can help track and limit exposure, any radiation exposure may be harmful, and risks of solid or hematologic malignancy continue to be a significant concern [5,6]. A high prevalence of posterior lens radiation injuries leads to earlier cataracts among interventionalists and provides additional incentive to minimize ionizing radiation exposure [7]. Given the clear risks of modern practice, remotecontrol robotic catheter-based systems were first proposed to mitigate occupational hazards in percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs). Beyar et al. developed the first-generation 'Remote Navigation System' for PCI (Remote Navigation System, NaviCath, Haifa, Israel), consisting of a joystick controlled operator module and motorized drive to advance and retrieve intravascular devices mounted on the procedure table. A small clinical pilot study demonstrated the feasibility and safety of this robotic system for single-vessel PCI [8,9]. Following this early study, the Robotic Navigation System was redesigned as the CorPath System (Corindus Vascular Robotics, MA, USA).


AbstractSpectral wave parameters from 11 platforms, measured during the recent Impact of Typhoons on the Ocean in the Pacific (ITOP) experiment, are intercompared. Two moorings, separated by ~180 km, were deployed in a section of "typhoon alley" off the coast of Taiwan for 4 months. Each mooring consisted of an Air–Sea Interaction Spar (ASIS) buoy that was tethered to a moored Extreme Air–Sea Interaction (EASI) buoy. EASI, the design of which is based on the hull of a 6-m Navy Oceanographic Meteorological Automatic Device (NOMAD) buoy, is validated as a 1D wave sensor against the established ASIS. Also, during this time three drifting miniature wave buoys, a wave-measuring marine radar on the Research Vessel Roger Revelle, and several overpasses of Jason-1 (C and Ku bands) and Jason-2 (Ku band) satellite altimeters were within 100 km of either the northern or southern mooring site. These additional measurements were compared against both EASI buoys. Findings are in-line with previous wave parameter interc...


The field of everyday information behavior addresses how individuals interact with information in their daily lives. Previous research in the field has largely ignored the banal and quotidian portions of everyday life, such as grocery shopping, which represents a gap the current project fills. Through two empirical studies using qualitative methods, the present work presents the prevalence and variety of information sources used by grocery shoppers. Findings indicate that grocery shoppers rely on close human sources, domain‐specific sources, and on surprisingly few online sources throughout the process of their grocery shopping. The findings demonstrate the information‐richness of grocery shopping and suggest that other everyday spaces may be fruitful areas for information behavior research.


For a non-negative finite countably additive measure μ defined on the σ-field Σ of subsets of Ω, it is well known that a certain quotient of Σ can be turned into a complete metric space Σ (Ω), known as the Nikodym-Saks space, which yields such important results in Measure Theory and Functional Analysis as Vitali-Hahn-Saks and Nikodym's theorems. Here we study some topological properties of Σ (Ω) regarded as a quasi-pseudometric space.


The importance of the climate of a school has been shown to be correlated to several key factors in education including youth development, academic achievement, and teacher retention. Lee et al. (2017) developed a dual scale which measures both school climate and school identity simultaneously (SCASIM-St). The purpose of this study is to both adapt for and provide preliminary results on its application in the Turkish context. Data was obtained from 351 high school students. The confirmatory factor analysis showed an acceptable fit (X2 (460, N = 351) = 1306.15, p<.001, RMSEA=.07, CFI= .89, TLI= .88). Also, the criterion validity studies of TSCASIM-St showed that school climate and identification were positively correlated with grade point average.


This study was conducted in a fragment of semideciduous seasonal forest (SSF), located in Sorocaba (SP, Brazil), in order to verify its successional stage and infer from the future composition. Our hypothesis was that the fragment would present regeneration with low diversity of species; with predominance of pioneer species of canopy and absence of resident species in the understory and predominance of anemochoric and autochoric species. We used the parcels method, considering the individuals in three size classes, two of them referring to rhe understory and one to the canopy (1 - 100 cm and circumference at soil height 15cm. We sampled 146 species, and class 2 understory species presented the highest diversity levels. The similarity between the three classes was low. Considering the species with the highest importance values, five are pioneer and five are non pioneer. Contesting the initial hypothesis, these characteristics, plus the predominance of the zoochorich species in the three species, indicate that the fragment is in an intermediate stage of succession and has microclimatic conditions that allow the entrance and presence


Briony's findings indicate that gaining excess weight during pregnancy can be influenced by depressive symptoms, body image, confidence, and motivation. Prevention of excessive pregnancy weight gain needs to be addressed by identifying women at risk and incorporating psychological and behaviour change intervention into broader health system and prevention programs.


Coherent development of all kinds of special networks is the basic direction of communication construction.This article researched the problem of multiwavelength optical network resource allocation between two special networks,built a mathematic model of multiwavelength optical network node agility,and put forward the optimized wavelength domain allocation by mathematic calculation.Current resource allocation only depends on the number of fibers,while optimized recourse allocation will depend on "waves number×fibers number",and it will improve both functions of the two special networks.During the development of multiwavelength optical network,optical network organization's advantage should be made good use of,the harmony of special networks be reinforced and the best allocation of network resource be pursued.


We analyze here the energy spectra of 50-keV to 20-MeV protons accelerated at corotating shocks observed at Ulysses in the southern heliosphere during 1992 and 1993. In general, our results are inconsistent with the predictions of two models based on diffusive shock acceleration theory (Fisk and Lee (1980) and Jones and Ellison (1991)). The main results are the following: (1) The relationships between the spectral indices and the shock compression ratio show significant departures from those predicted by the two models; the observed spectra are substantially harder than predicted; (2) the spectral indices at the reverse shocks depend strongly on the heliographic latitude of Ulysses; the hardest spectra are associated with strong quasi-perpendicular shocks observed between 208S and 308S; (3) the spectral indices at the reverse shocks are anticorrelated with the upstream plasma velocity V9 in the de Hoffman-Teller frame of the shock; and (4) the spectral indices at the forward shocks show no dependence on either the shock parameters or the heliographic latitude. The latitudinal dependence of the reverse shock spectra is probably related to the tilt (;258) of the heliospheric current sheet with respect to the solar equatorial plane during 1992 and 1993. The negative correlation between the spectral indices at the reverse shocks and V9 u indicates that the gradient drift mechanism plays a crucial role in accelerating particles at corotating interaction regions (CIRs). The differences in our observations at the forward and reverse shocks may be due to the presence of a more energetic seed population and an enhancement in the level of magnetic field fluctuations upstream of the trailing edges of the CIRs.


This article presents an environmental remote sensing application using a UAV that is specifically aimed at reducing the data gap between field scale and satellite scale in soil erosion monitoring in Morocco. A fixed-wing aircraft type Sirius I (MAVinci, Germany) equipped with a digital system camera (Panasonic) is employed. UAV surveys are conducted over different study sites with varying extents and flying heights in order to provide both very high resolution site-specific data and lower-resolution overviews, thus fully exploiting the large potential of the chosen UAV for multi-scale mapping purposes. Depending on the scale and area coverage, two different approaches for georeferencing are used, based on high-precision GCPs or the UAV's log file with exterior orientation values respectively. The photogrammetric image processing enables the creation of Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) and ortho-image mosaics with very high resolution on a sub-decimetre level. The created data products were used for quantifying gully and badland erosion in 2D and 3D as well as for the analysis of the surrounding areas and landscape development for larger extents.


The solution conformation of alamethicin, a 20-residue antibiotic peptide, has been investigated using two-dimensional n.m.r. spectroscopy. Complete proton resonance assignments of this peptide have been carried out using COSY, SUPERCOSY, RELAY COSY and NOESY two-dimensional spectroscopies. Observation of a large number of nuclear Overhauser effects between sequential backbone amide protons, between backbone amide protons and CβH protons of preceding residues and extensive intramolecular hydrogen bonding patterns of NH protons has established that this polypeptide is in a largely helical conformation. This result is in conformity with earlier reported solid state X-ray results and a recent n.m.r. study in methanol solution (Esposito et al. (1987) Biochemistry26, 1043-1050) but is at variance with an earlier study which favored an extended conformation for the C-terminal half of alamethicin (Bannerjee et al.


Irreversible hydrogen abstraction reactions have been observed in dihydrophenazine doped single crystals of fluorene after photoexcitation of the guest molecules. Additional hydrogen abstraction from one fluorene host molecule in any of several inequivalent nearest‐neighbor sites leads to the production of stable phenazinyl–fluorenyl radical pairs in the triplet state. Their electron paramagnetic resonance spectra have been analyzed for the different reaction geometries. There are indications that the abstracted hydrogen atoms remain in the crystal as an integral part of the radical pair geometry.


The transcendental aesthetics of Yang Chunshi is a main representative of the debates between practical aesthetics and post-practical aesthetics.In the opinion of Yang Chunshi,practical aesthetics is an enlightened subjectivity aesthetics,which can't resolve the problem,that is,how,aesthetic appreciation,as a free activity and experience of truth,is achieved.So he has created the inter-subjectivity aesthetics.Specifically,Yang Chunshi substitutes the transcendental modernity for the enlightened modernity,the existence of ontology for the practical ontology and inter-subjectivity for subjectivity,by which he constructs his aesthetic theory in an all-round way.So these notions(such as transcendental modernity,existence of ontology,inter-subjectivity)are the key to understanding his aesthetic theory.However,the logical connection of these concepts is vague and confusing,which brings about the internal contradiction in Yang Chunshi's aesthetic theory,and thus eliminates its value.


Chronic endometritis is a persistent inflammation of the inner lining of the uterine cavity. Several studies have demonstrated that it is a condition frequently associated with repeat‐ ed unexplained implantation failure at in vitro fertilization, recurrent miscarriage, as well as poor obstetric outcomes such as preterm labor. The aim of this paper is to provide information about diagnosis and treatment of this condi‐ tion to improve reproductive outcome. In fact, significantly higher rate of successful preg‐ nancies was achieved in those patients in whom antibiotic treatment was able to normalize both hysteroscopic and histologic endometrial pattern compared with women who were not treated or with persistent disease. Hysteroscopy with endometrial biopsy is assumed to be the best method for the detection of chronic endometritis. So, we support the impor‐ tance of hysteroscopy as a part of the diagnostic workup of infertile women.


Machine learning-based anomaly detection approaches have attracted increasing attention in the intrusion detection community because of their intrinsic capabilities in discovering novel attacks. This paper introduces a dynamic normal profiling for anomaly detection system. It focuses on three specific contributions: (i) It continuously updates the normal profile by keeping the dynamic window size. (ii) The dynamic window adjustment through a concept drift learning algorithm which helps to keep relevant patterns and get rid of the outdated patterns. (iii) The dynamical normal profiling approach makes it a possible way for real-time anomaly detection. Experimental results show that our anomaly detection schemes are successful in automatically detecting the anomaly.


Football as the most popular and most interesting sport in the world has applied the technology to obtain more match data easily. Data analysis in football matches can be used to find out how the match is going and even to predict the winner of a match. This paper proposes the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method to predict the winners of soccer matches that can finally predict the champion of a tournament. For one team, six factors and 13 alternative values are applied to AHP method to get the final score that can be compared to the opponent's final score in a match. To evaluate the proposal, matches in UEFA Champions League 2018 are simulated. Based on the results, the method can give correct predictions on 13 matches, which means the effectiveness of the applied method is 86.67%. The team with the highest final score can be predicted as the champion of the tournament.


Atmosphere pressure chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is one of the most powerful methods of synthesizing high quality and large area MoS2 films with a reasonable cost. In our work, the large-scale and high crystalline quality monolayer MoS2 nanosheets were synthesized on Silicon substrate with a 300 nm oxide layer using MoO3 and S powders as precursors by an atmosphere pressure CVD. The results suggest that the surface morphology, crystalline quality and luminescence of CVD-grown MoS2 nanosheets can be tunable by controlling the precursor ratio (the effective Mo: S ratio). Excessive S-rich atmosphere is favor to synthesize large-size and high crystalline quality monolayer MoS2 nanosheets with sharp corners and straight edges. This study may provide insight into the synthesis of large-scale and high crystalline quality MoS2 films.


A hybrid cryptosystem is proposed, in which one image is encrypted to two interferograms with the aid of double random-phase encoding (DRPE) and two-step phase-shifting interferometry (2-PSI), then three pairs of public–private keys are utilized to encode and decode the session keys (geometrical parameters, the second random-phase mask) and interferograms. In the stage of decryption, the ciphered image can be decrypted by wavefront reconstruction, inverse Fresnel diffraction, and real amplitude normalization. This approach can successfully solve the problem of key management and dispatch, resulting in increased security strength. The feasibility of the proposed cryptosystem and its robustness against some types of attack are verified and analyzed by computer simulations.


We consider the problem of global external stochastic stabilization for linear plants with saturating actuators, driven by a stochastic external disturbance, and having random Gaussian-distributed initial conditions. The objective is to control such plants by a possibly nonlinear static state feedback law that achieves global asymptotic stability in the absence of disturbances, while guaranteeing a bounded variance of the state vector for all time in the presence of disturbances and Gaussian distributed initial conditions. Results for continuous-time open-loop critically stable plants as well as for a chain of integrators have been obtained before. The goal of this technical note is to extend this result to critically unstable plants. We view our contribution in this technical note as a critical step in solving the LQG control problem for linear systems subject to saturated inputs which is a research problem with a long history in our field.


While calculating vapor pressure using relative humidity and temperature of L-band radar sounding,the water saturation vapor pressure formula must be used,since the relative humidity is based on water surface.There may be an error in using the ice saturation vapor pressure formula.The comparison of vapor pressure bias between water and ice saturation vapor pressure formulas is discussed.Taking -45℃ and 0℃ as a threshold,vapor pressure values are analyzed when using the ice and water saturation vapor pressure formulas,respectively.Results show that the absolute deviation produced by ice and water saturation vapor pressure formulas is not very great,but the relative deviation may be up to 50%,which has climatic effects on upper troposphere for actual water vapor pressure.


The transfer of spin angular momentum from photons to small particles is a key experiment of quantum physics. The particles rotate clockwise or counterclockwise depending on the polarization of the light beam which holds them in an optical trap. We show that even perfectly disk shaped particles will in general not rotate with a constant angular speed. The particles will periodically accelerate and decelerate their rotational motion due to a varying spin angular momentum transfer from the light. Using the Poincar\'e sphere we derive the equation of motion of a birefringent plate and verify the results by measuring the time dependent rotation of small crystals of $\text{Hg}(\text{I})$ iodide and 3,4,9,10-perylene-tetracarboxylic-dianhydride (PTCDA) in the trap of polarized optical tweezers. For small ellipticities of the polarized light in the tweezers the plate stops in a fixed orientation relative to the axes of the light ellipse. We discuss the origin of this halt and propose an application of small birefringent plates as self-adjusting optical retarders in micro-optics.


exercise in a painful manner. Their feelings refer wholly to their health, the condition of which lays claim to all their attention, and by which morbid feelings are produced in the organism either through vividly intense conceptions, or sensations occurring in the organism are interpreted erroneously. These morbid sensations, which may be produced centrally by conceptions, the hypochondriac may, to a certain extent, transfer wherever he will, as according to the idea he adopts he turns his attention to this or that part of the body. Even, however, in the cases where an actual sensation, arising peripherically, does not produce a corresponding conception, the cause of this imperfect perception must be transferred to the brain. From these considerations, as well as that hypochondriasis may be produced by the perusal of medical writings, through intercourse with hypochondriacs, through fear and anxiety during epidemics, or after an individual has exposed himself to contagious diseases, it follows that hypochondriasis may arise from peripherical or central causes, may depend upon a morbid condition of the brain, and that even in those cases where, with the most careful investigation, no organic disease


With the continuous development of China's clean energy industry, the consumption of high proportion of new energy after being connected to the grid has become the focus of attention of the industry. Flexible resources can effectively restrain the fluctuation of new energy generation and improve the stability of power grid. Therefore, in order to fully mobilize the enthusiasm of flexible resources, give full play to the market advantages, guide the market participants of generation side, power consumption side and energy storage side to participate in the Generation Grid Load Storage interaction, this paper establishes a market-oriented energy storage interaction mechanism to promote new energy consumption and form a win-win market system.


*These authors contributed equally to this work Background: Programmed cell death 4 (PDCD4) as a tumor suppressor gene inhibits growth and metastasis of cancer cells, which involved with eIF4A1, the inhibitor of translation initiation. Although the prognosis of early-stage oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is generally better, but many patients occur recurrence after surgery. Understanding the clinical expression pattern of PDCD4/eIF4A1 signal would provide diagnostic biomarker and target therapy premise for early-stage OSCC patients. Methods: Immunohistochemical analysis was performed on 69 early-stage (T1/2N0M0) OSCC samples to evaluate temporal expression and prognostic value of eIF4A1 and PDCD4 in early-stage OSCC according to cell types and microlocalization. The correlations between PDCD4/eIF4A1 signal and Ki-67, postoperative recurrence and metastasis were determined. Results: We found that PDCD4 was presented in tumor cells (TCs) and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) but absent in fibroblast-like cells (FLCs). eIF4A1 was only presented in TCs. PDCD4 was negative associated with eIF4A1 in tumor center, and patients with low PDCD4 or high eIF4A1 had poorer differentiation. Moreover, aberrant PDCD4/ eIF4A1 signal led to higher Ki-67 level. Interestingly, patients with low expressed PDCD4 had better prognosis, indicating the function heterogeneity of PDCD4 in different cell types. Furthermore, low PDCD4 TCs and high eIF4A1 predicted higher postoperative recurrence rate and are significant independent risk factors for early-stage OSCC. Conclusion: Patients with low PDCD4 and high eIF4A1 have higher recurrence rate and poor clinical outcome. Of note, PDCD4 exerts contradictory function. Thus, PDCD4/ eIF4A1 targeting therapeutics should consider the function heterogeneity of PDCD4.


Density functional theory in the LDA$+U$ approximation is used to calculate the electronic structure of germanium $\ensuremath{\delta}$ doped with phosphorus and arsenic. We characterize the principal band minima of the two-dimensional electron gas created by $\ensuremath{\delta}$ doping and their dependence on the dopant concentration. Populated first at low concentrations is a set of band minima at the perpendicular projection of the bulk conduction band minima at $L$ into the ($k$${}_{x}$,$k$${}_{y}$) plane. At higher concentrations, band minima at $\ensuremath{\Gamma}$ and $\ensuremath{\Delta}$ become involved. Valley splittings and effective masses are computed using an explicit-atom approach, taking into account the effects of disorder in the arrangement of dopant atoms in the $\ensuremath{\delta}$ plane.


Trans Jogja is one of the government programs to create connectivity in Yogyakarta and the existence of the bus shelter greatly influences the range of passengers which can be optimized if it is located near the housing or public area. This study aims to (a) Identify the existing locations of Trans Jogja Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) shelters in the city, (b) Identify the range of Trans Jogja Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) passengers to the existence of bus stops, and (c) Identify the realization of the Trans Jogja Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) shelters' development in Yogyakarta. The bus shelters' level of density is different for each distribution area. The highest level is in the residential areas and places of activity with a percentage of 46%, followed by education areas (25.5%), government (13.4%), health (7.9%), trade (3.3%), tourism (2.9%), and the developed area (0.8%). 75% of Trans Jogja BRT users come from within the range of 0-300 meters buffer of the bus stops. The bus shelters at the center of the activity will be much easier to reach and have high accessibility, in that case the distance between bus stops is closer and the density is higher. The connection between bus stops and bus stops' planning has a degree of interconnection of 100%. It indicates that all the bus stops planned to be developed in 2017 have been built in 2019.


This study assessed the different geriatric nursing home facilities in the Philippines in terms of their organizational management, health services, financial management and human resource management. Out of twenty-two (22) institutions in Region 4a and NCR that were sent letters for the conduct, only three institutions ultimately agreed. These are: 1) SinagKalinga Foundation Inc. in Lucban, Quezon; 2) Kiwanis Foundation Home for the Indigent Aged in Lucena City, Quezon and; 3) Nazareth 'BahayPag-ibig' Foundation in San Pablo City, Laguna. Descriptive analysis was employed in order to analyze scores from the survey. Measures of central tendencies were used in order to provide a picture of an average patient, employee and management personnel. Based on the data collected from thirty-four (34) patients and employees residing/working in three different geriatric institutions, SinagKalinga Foundation Inc. garnered the highest mean scores compared to Kiwanis and Nazareth Foundations, across the key areas from both the perspectives of patients and employees. The analysis of the four (4) areas revealed that these aspects are actually interrelated. This means that a good management practices in one aspect impact the quality of the others. The results of this study found that SinagKalinga Foundation Inc.'s organizational structure and nature of operations are the main reasons for its predominance among the four (4) aspects in general.


Automatic machine vision-based defect detection has been successfully applied to many industrial visual inspection applications. However, automatic steel surface defect detection is still a challenging task due to diverse defect categories, low-contrast between defect and complex texture background. To address these challenges, a chained atrous spatial pyramid pooling network (CASPPNet) is proposed for steel surface defect detection. In CASPPNet, chained atrous spatial pyramid pooling is designed to enlarge receptive field and obtain enrich semantic information. An improved global attention feature fusion module is introduced to achieve feature interaction and salience. Moreover, residual boundary refinement block is introduced to get more complete defect boundary. Comparative experimental results verify that our method is superior to the state-of-the-art segmentation methods on public accessible SD-saliency-900 datasets and can meet the requirement of real-time online detection (the detection efficiency is at over 47 FPS on a single GPU).


Having reviewed the infrastructure network, this paper proposes that monopoliztion can be broken through by introducing competition mechanism and a competitive market structure can be resulted in. Comparative analysis is made between the economic efficiency of monopoliztion and limited competition by means of a simplified model. It is proposed that limited competition can improve its Pareto efficiency under certain conditions.


The number of testes characteristic for males of Schistosoma mansoni has been described by various authors. Manson-Bahr & Fairley (1920) studying material from Egypt, reported that the males had 8 testes. Price (1929), Faust (1930), Neveu-Lemaire (1936) and Berghe (1939) reported that the number of testes varied from 8–9. Da Silva (1908), Lutz (1919) and Pinto & Almeida (1948) working on Brazilian material, gave the number of testes as 7, about 8 and C-9 respectively. Leiper (1918) studying material from Egypt reported that the number of testes varied from 7–9.


Universality, integrality and the equity of attention to health care are the main guidelines of the Unified Health Care System (SUS). These principles fundamentals are expressed in the 1988 Constitution and regulated by the law 8080/1990. Access to the free treatment of chronic hepatitis caused by virus C and the relevance of socioeconomic factors were evaluated in the study. The initial assumption was that a higher socioeconomic level tends to favor access to free treatment which is in disagreement with the fundamental principles of universality of access services at all levels and the equality of health attendance without prejudices or privileges of any type. Socioeconomic data and the treatment of 117 patients attended in the state of Bahia 2005 receiving free medication from the pharmacy of high cost at the Manoel Victorino Hospital were evaluated. The economic profile of patients who received treatment, an estimate of total costs for the public sector with medication, the analysis of the structure of cost and origin of treated patients and the level of income were also established. In the analysis, the level of schooling showed that the group of patients who had at least finished high school corresponded to more than 63% and those without schooling corresponded to only 0.85%. In the evaluation of monthly family income the income class that presented the highest number of patients was the class that received between 5 and 10 minimum salaries corresponding to 26.50%, next the class that received between 3 and 5 minimum salaries with 22.22% of those patients treated. In health cover, there was a predominance of patients with health plans, 60% in relation to those without plans 40%. In the analysis of public expenses with the treatment of hepatitis C the patients whose income was between 5 and 10 minimum salaries were those who received the highest spending corresponding to 23.45% followed by patients who received between 3 and 5 minimum salaries with 23.00% far from the 8.95% spent on patients who earn up to 1 minimum salary and the 15.98% spent on patients who earn between 1 and 2 minimum salaries. The conclusion of the study shows that iniquity in the access to the treatment of chronic hepatitis virus C reflects in public spending on this treatment.


Electricity markets are trading center on behalf of the state power grid to the main power generation companies by the service,the service is a response to reform the power plant after the network between the number of new cases initiated,its main purpose is to plant a harmonious gateway system,More power to achieve national harmony.In order to better carry out the electricity market,electricity market must clear the connotation and extension services,as the establishment of the electricity market based on the service system.


Under the industrial background of dual-channel, volatility in demand of consumers, we use the theory of bifurcations and numerical simulation tools to investigate the dynamic pricing game in a dual-channel supply chain with risk-averse behavior and incomplete information. Due to volatility of demand of consumers, we consider all the players in the supply chain are risk-averse. We assume there exist Bertrand game and Manufacturers' Stackelberg in the chain which are closer to reality. The main objective of the paper is to investigate the complex influence of the decision parameters such as wholesale price adjustment speed, risk preference and service value on stability of the risk-averse supply chain and average utilities of all the players. We lay emphasis on the influence of chaos on average utilities of all the players which did not appear in previous studies. The dynamic phenomena, such as the bifurcation, chaos and sensitivity to initial values are analyzed by 2D bifurcation phase portraits, Double Largest Lyapunov exponent, basins of attraction and so on. The study shows that the manufacturers should slow down their wholesale price adjustment speed to get more utilities, if the manufacturers are willing to take on more risk, they will get more profits, but they must keep their wholesale prices in a certain range in order to maintain the market stability.


The Guizhou ISPS project with suitable technical models and measures,good demonstration effects,fast extension and higher technological content based on Sino-New Zealand ISPS technology,has the better economical,social and ecological benefits.


in this study, an ultra-compact mid-infrared band-pass filter is proposed. Three piece of Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) are placed in between of two input-output GNRs to form a classic Fabry-Perot-like resonator with two side arms at its upper and lower ends. The GNR material acts as the surface wave guiding tool and enhances the surface plasmon propagation length, and the GNRs are designed to support edge propagating surface plasmon. Modulation of charge carrier density of surface occurs by simple gate biasing which in turn alters the transmission characteristics of band pass filter, thus a room temperature tunable filter is achieved. It is found that by increasing the Fermi level, the transmission spectra blue-shifts toward smaller wavelengths. In contrast, by increasing the FP-resonator GNR and its upper and lower arm's length or width, the transmission spectrum redshifts toward longer wavelengths.


Policy *Please see amendment for Pennsylvania Medicaid at the end of this CPB. Aetna considers low-dose or high-dose radiation (superficial or interstitial) medically necessary as an adjunctive therapy immediately following excisional surgery (within 7 days) in the treatment of keloids where medical necessity criteria for keloid removal are met. See CPB 0031 Cosmetic Surgery (../1_99/0031.html) for medically necessary indications for keloid removal.


There are many reports on earthquake-related ULF geomagnetic anomalies but there are active debates on the reliability about the anomalies and on the generation mechanism. Therefore, we investigated relation between local seismic activity and magnetic activity statistically in this study. The vertical intensities of the geomagnetic fields at 1 Hz sampling are examined at Kakioka and Kanoya (as a reference station) from 2000 to 2010. The wavelet filter is performed and the data around 0.01 Hz are focused. Nighttime data from 2:30 to 4:00 are used in the analysis to reduce contamination of artificial effects. The daily energy over the nighttime period analyzed is computed and correlation between Kakioka and Kanoya is investigated. It is found that the correlation between them is high (0.94). This is highly suggestive of the relative similarity of the underground electrical structures between Kakioka and Kanoya and enables to model computation using the Kanoya (reference station) data. The ratio between the original data at Kakioka and the idealized data at Kakioka derived from those at Kanoya is computed. An invalid assumption on the electrical structures beneath both stations gives a constant value of the ratio and it is possible to remove global changes such as magnetic storms due to upper atmospheric sources. An anomalous change in the ratio expects a local change of the underground structure or additional noise. We investigate the relationship between the anomalous changes and local seismicity. We define the criterion on the anomaly of the ratio as median+1.5IQR (IQR: inter-quantile range). Earthquakes which satisfy Es > 10ˆ8 are selected within 100 km of epicentral distance from Kakioka and within 60 km depth from earth surface. Then we perform Superposed Epoch Analysis. The results show that 5-15 days before the earthquake, geomagnetic anomaly appears significantly and there is the Es dependence. These epidemiological results show the relation between local seismicity and geomagnetic anomaly.


We proposed the general concept of quantum antenna in the strong coupling regime. It is based on the theory of open quantum systems. The antenna emission to the space is considered as an interaction with the thermal photonic reservoir. For modeling of the antenna dynamics is formulated a master equation with the correspondent Lindblad super-operators as the radiation terms. It is shown that strong coupling dramatically changes the radiation pattern of antenna. The total power pattern splits to three partial components; each corresponds to the spectral line of Mollow triplet. We analyzed the dependence of splitting from the length of antenna, shift of the phase, and Rabi-frequency. The predicted effect opens a way for implementation of multi-beam electrically tunable antennas, potentially useful in different nano-devices.


Increasing the working frequency can reduce the size of the magnetic component, however, the high frequency eddy effects including skin and proximity effects raise the winding losses. Based on one-dimensional model for windings of magnetic components, the eddy effects in planar magnetic components are analyzed. By utilizing orthogonality between skin effect and proximity effect under one-dimensional condition, the tendency of the losses caused by skin effect and proximity effect individually under different winding thickness and frequency is concluded. The conclusion that simply paralleling the thin windings divided from the original thick winding can not decrease the winding losses is given. Meanwhile the principle is analyzed by using interleaving techniques to decrease winding losses in transformer. The effectiveness of the analysis is verified by the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and experiments.


Focused on the lack of proper organization for patterns in the development of pattern based software, a POMSDP model with layered tree structure for organizing patterns during the process of development was put forward. The model and its interrelated concepts were strictly defined and introduced by applying the theory of set, symbolic logic and pattern, which ensures the correctness, maturity and expansibility of the model. The expansibility of the model was discussed mainly. The basic realization and the application in the automatic query system were presented. Based on the existing software development methods, the POMSDP model resolves the problem of chaos in the application of patterns, strengthens the controllability of the system, and facilitates the improvement, maintenance, expansion, and especially the reengineering of the software system.


The structure of nanoscale metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (NANO MOSFET) is introduced.Its source and drain regions are made of metal and the channel is made of intrinsic silicon.Such structure can effectively avoid short channel effects.Through solving a set of device equations,we simulate and then analyze the basic characteristics of NANO MOSFET.The results show that the source drain conductance of NANO MOSFET changes dramatically when the gate voltage changes.The characteristics is desirable for digital applications,including memory cells.Simulation results also show that NANO MOSFET can be applied as small signal analog amplifier if properly biased.


The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) E-Metrics project sought to understand how academic libraries might specify, produce, and assess institutional outcomes. This paper reviews the findings from a discussion forum, site visits, an analysis and review of accreditation standards, and a survey of ARL member directors, and offers a framework for approaching the outcomes assessment process. The paper concludes by suggesting that much work remains to integrate outcomes assessment successfully in a university setting. Moreover, multiple approaches to assessment, of which outcomes assessment is but one, are still needed for a comprehensive assessment of libraries in the broader university and societal context.


Aiming at the concrete crack hazard,the concrete bridge beam and slab crack classification and generating reasons were analyzed,the concrete bridge crack treating method was introduced,and the concrete bridge beam and slab control measure was generalized,therefore guaranteed concrete bridge engineering quality.


This case study report describes the various treatments implemented over a 3-year period in an effort to reduce and eliminate multiple and severe self-injurious behaviors in a 45-year-old man who had been institutionalized and had exhibited these behaviors for the majority of his life. After baseline, an aversive procedure (contingent mechanical restraint) had been implemented and judged a failure by institution personnel. Subsequent intervention phases introducing community involvement and performance goals that emphasized functional activities in criterion environments and situations were associated with increasingly positive behaviors. Multiple outcome data are reported, including meaningful changes in targeted self-injurious behaviors, maintenance and generalization of those changes to integrated community environments at follow-up using available staff and resources, acquisition of new alternative skills, and placement in a supported apartment in the community with full-time work in a community job site. The procedures and the results demonstrate possible outcomes when nonaversive intervention procedures and community resources are utilized comprehensively as alternatives to aversive procedures focused upon only the immediate reduction of a single target behavior.


This book covers almost every topic imaginable on radiofrequency integrated circuits (RFIC), provides examples as well as problems for students, and has a consistency of presentation that teachers, students, and researchers alike will appreciate. Almost all the examples and derivations originate from the author and based on fundamentals. The work of other researchers is cited to give the book a broad foundation, but this is not a collection of examples from the literature, which makes this book all the more useful for teachers. In 16 chapters and one appendix, Dr. Nguyen covers everything from the fundamentals of electromagnetics to systems. This book methodically goes through almost all aspects of RFICs in a way that is well thought out and easy to read. The lengthiest chapters are on transmission lines and amplifiers, while the shortest are on electromagnetics and stability. It is easier to point out what the book does not include than to itemize what it does. The book is primarily about complementary metal-oxide semiconductors (CMOSs) although GaAs circuits are mentioned. The chapter on stability discusses load pull and K factors but does not mention newer stability criteria such as the normalized determinant function, which is more relevant to multitransistor circuits. Any quibbles aside, this book covers a huge amount of ground in a well-developed manner and so is a very useful reference and textbook.


Utilization of water and light resources by annual crops under semi-arid conditions when planted between Leucaena leucocephala (Lam.) de Wit hedgerows


The Bethe lattice and the Husimi cactus, traditionally viewed as graphs embedded in infinite-dimensional spaces, have been used to model a variety of problems. However, only their topological and connectivity properties are used in such models where the idea of metric distance between vertices and bond angles is meaningless. By following the indication of Mosseri and Sadoc that such lattices can be embedded in two-dimensional hyperbolic spaces, we obtain meuic properties for those structures and discuss further applications.


We perform an experimental analysis of two-phase stratified wavy pipe flow, with the aim to detect and quantify the effect of small scale wave breaking. Particle image velocimetry is employed to analyze the velocity fields below individual waves, and a threshold for the vorticity on the leeward side of the crest is used to assess active wave breaking. Keeping the liquid flow rate constant, we analyze five experimental cases with increasing gas flow rates. The cases span the flow map from when first interfacial waves are observed, to the "amplitude saturation" regime, where the rms interface elevation is independent of the gas flow rate. While some wave breaking events are observed also in the wave-growth regime, wave breaking is found to be much more frequent when the gas flow rate is increased into the amplitude saturation regime, and 35%-40% of the waves passing the measurement section are assessed to be in a state of active breaking in this regime. A conditional averaging of the flow field is performed, and the turbulent dissipation rate below breaking and non-breaking waves is estimated. The effect of microscale breaking is observed down to a depth of 10 mm below the water surface. Below the crest of microscale breaking waves, the turbulent dissipation rate is increased by a factor 2.5 to 4 compared with non-breaking waves. This fraction increases with Usg, implying that the breaking events become more energetic as the gas flow rate is increased.We perform an experimental analysis of two-phase stratified wavy pipe flow, with the aim to detect and quantify the effect of small scale wave breaking. Particle image velocimetry is employed to analyze the velocity fields below individual waves, and a threshold for the vorticity on the leeward side of the crest is used to assess active wave breaking. Keeping the liquid flow rate constant, we analyze five experimental cases with increasing gas flow rates. The cases span the flow map from when first interfacial waves are observed, to the "amplitude saturation" regime, where the rms interface elevation is independent of the gas flow rate. While some wave breaking events are observed also in the wave-growth regime, wave breaking is found to be much more frequent when the gas flow rate is increased into the amplitude saturation regime, and 35%-40% of the waves passing the measurement section are assessed to be in a state of active breaking in this regime. A conditional averaging of the flow field is performed...


A newly discovered asteroid 2016 HO3 has coorbital type of retrograde (or quasi) satellite with respect to Earth. The discovery enlarges number of known retrograde satellites of Earth. In this work numerical studies have been performed to investigate orbital dynamics of the asteroid by including all planets and the Moon as perturbers. Hypothetical asteroids were also generated to assess its general dynamics. Results show that since several hundreds thousands years ago the asteroid has been trapped in alternating coorbital types of retrograde satellite (RS) and horseshoe (HS). The RS and HS types, respectively, have taken place for some hundreds and some thousands years, and so those for the future. Long term orbital evolution for one million years predicts that about a few hundreds thousands years from the epoch the asteroid will completely escape its coorbital configuration with Earth. Orbit of the asteroid does not follow Kozai resonance state, and by this study it is found that asteroid 2016 HO3 may behave a coorbital pair with asteroid 2000 WN10.


Given a connected graph G = (N, E) with node weights s∈ℝ  N+ and nonnegative edge lengths, we study the following embedding problem related to an eigenvalue optimization problem over the second smallest eigenvalue of the (scaled) Laplacian of G: Find vi∈ℝ|N|, i∈N so that distances between adjacent nodes do not exceed prescribed edge lengths, the weighted barycenter of all points is at the origin, and is maximized. In the case of a two‐dimensional optimal solution this corresponds to the equilibrium position of a quickly rotating net consisting of weighted mass points that are linked by massless cables of given lengths. We define the rotational dimension of G to be the minimal dimension k so that for all choices of lengths and weights an optimal solution can be found in ℝk and show that this is a minor monotone graph parameter. We give forbidden minor characterizations up to rotational dimension 2 and prove that the rotational dimension is always bounded above by the tree‐width of G plus one. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 66:283‐302, 2011


Stratification causes turbulence spectra to deviate from Kolmogorov's isotropic -5/3 power-law scaling in the universal equilibrium range at high Reynolds number. However, a consensus has not been reached with regard to the exact shape of the spectra. Here we propose a theoretically-derived shape of the TKE and temperature spectra that consists of three regimes at small Froude number: the buoyancy subrange, a transition region and isotropic inertial subrange separated by the buoyancy scale and Ozmidov scale through derivation. These regimes are confirmed by various observations in the atmospheric boundary layer. We also show that DNS may not apply in the study of very stable boundary layers as they cannot correctly represent the observed spectral regimes because of the lack of scale separation. In addition, the spectrum in the transition regime explains why Monin-Obukhov similarity theory cannot entirely describe the behavior of the stable atmospheric boundary.


In this paper, a least square estimate of the covariance matrices Σ, Γ and their linear function tr(CΣ+DΓ) of the growth curve model with random regression (coefficient) structure has been given respectively by using the projective theory and the spectrum decomposition of matrix. Finally, it gives some optimal properties of tr(CΣ\+*+DΓ\+*).


The antitumor potential of a new original compound T1097 to realize a complex antineoblastic effect - NOS-inhibiting anti-angiogenic and HK2-inhibiting hypoxia-oriented cytotoxic - was investigated on the model of transplantable Ehrlich carcinoma in vivo. During the entire observation period, T1097 showed pronounced dose-dependent antitumor properties: statistically significant inhibitory effect of T1097 on the growth of tumor nodes exceeded the effect of original compound - HK2-inhibitor 3-bromopyruvate in an equimolar dose. The maximum antineoblastic effect (61%) of T1097 was obtained with its subchronic parenteral administration at a dose of 17 mg/kg and was not accompanied by the development of tumor resistance. Our findings confirm the prospects of this direction in the search for new drugs.


The new teachers'preservice training is an important phase of the development of teachers'specialization,success had been made by Japan in such training.Combining with Chinese current situation,it affords us more beneficial enlightenment for amplifying the system of preservice training of primary and middle school teachers in China to make a comparison between Japan and China in the preservice training.


Progress toward durable and energy-dense lithium-ion batteries has been hindered by instabilities at electrolyte–electrode interfaces, leading to poor cycling stability, and by safety concerns associated with energy-dense lithium metal anodes. Solid polymeric electrolytes (SPEs) can help mitigate these issues; however, the SPE conductivity is limited by sluggish polymer segmental dynamics. We overcome this limitation via zwitterionic SPEs that self-assemble into superionically conductive domains, permitting decoupling of ion motion and polymer segmental rearrangement. Although crystalline domains are conventionally detrimental to ion conduction in SPEs, we demonstrate that semicrystalline polymer electrolytes with labile ion–ion interactions and tailored ion sizes exhibit excellent lithium conductivity (1.6 mS/cm) and selectivity (t+ ≈ 0.6–0.8). This new design paradigm for SPEs allows for simultaneous optimization of previously orthogonal properties, including conductivity, Li selectivity, mechanics, and processability.


The present study was conducted to determine the effect of Lactobacillus casei spp. casei in induced oxidative stress in rats. L. casei spp. casei was evaluated for probiotic attributes like acid and bile tolerance, surface hydrophobicity, antimicrobial activity etc. The probiotic culture was fed to rats in lyophilized and fermented milk form. Male Wistar rats were distributed into six groups, GroupFC(Fresh soybean oil control); Group-FF (Fresh soybean oil- fermented milk); Group-FL (Fresh soybean oil- probiotic culture); Group-OC (Oxidised soybean oil control); Group-OF (Oxidised soybean oil- fermented milk), Group-OL (Oxidised soybean oil- probiotic culture) and were fed for 90 days. Blood samples were collected at 0, 30, 60 and 90 days of feeding and checked for activity of oxidative markers like catalase, superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and lipid peroxidation. At the end of 90 th day all rats were sacrificed, blood and liver were collected, and catalase, SOD, GPx activity, lipid peroxidation was estimated in liver. Feeding lyophilized culture or fermented milk to rats significantly (P<0.05) increased the activity of antioxidative enzymes. Similarly, lipid peroxidation in RBC and liver was also found to be significantly (P<0.05) high in rats which were fed with oxidized soybean oil and this increase was significantly (P<0.05) decreased after L. casei ssp. casei feeding to the rats. The results suggested that probiotic strain of L.casei ssp. casei can improve the antioxidant status and minimize the effects of oxidative stress in liver and RBC of rats.


Other highlights showing the diversity of WFEO's work are shown here, such as our participation in the World Summit on Information Society, the International Students Conference on Artificial Intelligence, and reflections by our members on the future of civil engineering and on the importance of an inclusive vision in engineering to achieve sustainable development. CDRM Side event @ UN STI Forum - Enineering Resilience in Disaster Risk Management for Sustainable Development is a new measurement tool with sub indicators about corruption. webinar CGGI and how their indicators are constructed, what they measure, and how to identify a reliable measurement instrument? The 13th Meeting of Professional Associations of Civil Engineers of Portuguese and Spanish Speaking Countries (CECPC) will be held from 15 to 16 June, 2022, in the city of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. This Meeting will contribute to strengthening the connections between professionals from the various communities of civil engineering, as well as between professionals from associations .


The article describes the main components of the process of future technicians' and electricians' self-educational competence formation in the study of electrical engineering disciplines; the model of educative process, experts in the field of electrical and electronics engineering, and various technical specialists were considered, aspects of these models are generalized, an integrated model of methodological system of teaching electrical engineering disciplines, which focuses on the formation of self-educational competence of future technicians and electricians is created. Constructed structural-functional model of the defined process integrates three blocks: methodologically-target, technological, diagnostic-corrective; methodological approaches: competence, system, active; structural components: knowledge, reflection, activity and research. The formation of self-educational competence is seen as a set of  basic principles: professional direction, continuity, awareness, activity and independence. The competence approach is considered in the article as a new educational concept which provides the orientation of educative process on interdisciplinarity and the integration of disciplines and at the same time knowledge and skills are considered as a set of competences that are formed and manifested in the student's activity during the process of self-training.Four levels of self-educational competence formation are presented: reproductive, productive, search and research.


Demonstrate a simple model for the voltage-induced alteration of emission color from the organic light emitting diodes (OLED) based on 4-(dicyanomethylene)-2-t-butyl-6-(1,1,7,7-tetramethyljulolidyl-9-enyl)-4H-pyran (DCJTB) doped into 2,9-dimethyl-4,7-diphenyl-1,10-phenanthroline(BCP).The device displays a continuous change of color from orange to purple depending on the applied bias. The emitting characteristics can be rationalized by the potential energy barriers at the interface between different layers.


A general introduction to resources related to the research areas of the English department. Resources on Medieval & Early Modern Literature


Two species of the Elaeis genus are cultivated for oil production: the African oil palm Elaeis guineensis Jacq. (West African origin) and the American oil palm, Elaeis oleifera (Kunth) Cortés (South or Central America). Elaeis guineensis is the most productive species (5-7 vs. 0.5 t oil/ha/year) and the one generally used for oil production, though interspecific hybrids have been developed for this purpose (Prabhakaran Nair, 2010; Teoh Cheng Hai, 2002).


Abstract : Small (<15A) CdSe clusters have been synthesized within the cage system of zeolite-Y. Cluster size and connectivity patterns are controlled by cadmium ion concentration, selenium source and residual water. Analysis of Cd-edge EXAFS and power synchrotron X-ray diffraction data, in addition to model calculations reveal the presence of Cd4(O, Se)4 cubes within the sodalite units of the zeolite structure. Cadmium selenides.


The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic demonstrates the importance of generating safe and efficacious vaccines that can be rapidly deployed against emerging pathogens. Subunit vaccines are considered among the safest, but proteins used in these typically lack strong immunogenicity, leading to poor immune responses. Here, a biomaterial COVID‐19 vaccine based on a mesoporous silica rods (MSRs) platform is described. MSRs loaded with granulocyte‐macrophage colony‐stimulating factor (GM‐CSF), the toll‐like receptor 4 (TLR‐4) agonist monophosphoryl lipid A (MPLA), and SARS‐CoV‐2 viral protein antigens slowly release their cargo and form subcutaneous scaffolds that locally recruit and activate antigen‐presenting cells (APCs) for the generation of adaptive immunity. MSR‐based vaccines generate robust and durable cellular and humoral responses against SARS‐CoV‐2 antigens, including the poorly immunogenic receptor binding domain (RBD) of the spike (S) protein. Persistent antibodies over the course of 8 months are found in all vaccine configurations tested and robust in vitro viral neutralization is observed both in a prime‐boost and a single‐dose regimen. These vaccines can be fully formulated ahead of time or stored lyophilized and reconstituted with an antigen mixture moments before injection, which can facilitate its rapid deployment against emerging SARS‐CoV‐2 variants or new pathogens. Together, the data show a promising COVID‐19 vaccine candidate and a generally adaptable vaccine platform against infectious pathogens.


Maximum-Loss was introduced recently [4] as a valuation functional, related to stress testing. The article gives an overview over its properties, analyzes the relation to some other risk and acceptability measures and explores the possibilities of minimizing the maximum loss: An analytic result for the case of multivariate normal distributed risk factors and linear portfolios is derived. Furthermore an algorithm, based on successive convex programming is proposed for the case of nite probability spaces, e.g. for scenario based optimization. 1. Stress Testing and the Maximum-Loss Functional The following valuation functional for random variables was introduced by T. Breuer and I. Cziszar [4] in the context of stress testing: Stress test procedures should allow a decision maker who uses a certain model to identify most dangerous scenarios and account for possible modeling errors. In addition, they may give directions for risk-reducing actions. As the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision requires banks to perform stress tests, the issue of implementation especially of how to de ne the scenarios is an important issue. While in practice stress testing is done mostly by using certain pre-de ned scenarios, some e orts have been taken to develop more systematical approaches. The key idea in [4] is not only to test bad scenarios of a given distribution, but allow the whole distribution to vary in a certain neighborhood around a given referencedistribution. One could interprete the given measure as an estimated distribution. If the possibility of estimation error and even misspeci cation of the model is considered, it might be of interest, what happens if the real distribution is located in a certain neighborhood around the estimated distribution. The neighborhood proposed by Breuer and Cziszar is based on the KullbackLeibler divergence, while the outcome is measured by the expectation of a loss function with respect to an unknown probability measure, located in a given KullbackLeibler sphere . Other kinds of distances between measures can be considered as well. Therefore, on the one hand the usage of the Kullback-Leibler divergence can be seen sceptically: it is not a full distance and does not metricize the weak topology. Nevertheless, we will see that Kullback-Leibler divergence is a reasonable alternative and can be handled in very straightforward manner. Furthermore, it is closely related to the comparison of models in the context of maximum-likelihood estimation [5]. In the following, X denotes a random vector of driving (risk) factors. L(·), a real valued function applied to the random vector. L(X) is interpreted as the loss implied by the random vector X. In the context of classical portfolio management


Objective To explore the association between the XPD polymorphism and hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC)in Chinese population.Methods Electronic searches of CBM,VIP,CNKI,Pubmed,EMBASE and Ovid were systematically conducted to select studies.Case-control studies containing available geotype frequencies of XPD Lys751Gln were chosen,and odds ratio(OR)was used to assess the strength of this association.Results Five studies including 1 658 cases and 1 652 controls were identified.This meta-analysis showed significant effect of XPD Lys751Gln on HCC risk and protection[Lys/Lys vs Gln/Gln+Lys/Gln:OR was 0.64(95% CI 0.36-1.14,P=0.13,I2=88%);Gln/Gln vs Lys/Lys+Lys/Gln:OR was 2.32(95% CI 1.71-3.15,P0.001,I2 =49%)].Conclusion The XPD 751Lys allele is a possible protective factor of HCC,and the XPD 751Gln allele is a risk factor of HCC in Chinese population.


Methods for estimating net N mineralization in semiarid grasslands are not well tested. We compared three in situ incubation methods to evaluate (i) effects of root density and length of incubations on methodological artifacts involving N immobilization, (ii) effects of sieving on estimates of net N mineralization, and (iii) effects of containment on soil water dynamics. We incubated intact soils and sieved soils with or without roots for 15 to 90 d in uncovered tubes and determined changes in NO₃ and NH₄. Net N mineralization was transient and usually declined after 15 to 30 d. Nitrogen immobilization may have contributed to decreases in extractable N, but root abundance was not a dominant control of net N mineralization. Greater root mass under blue grama grass [Bouteloua gracilis (Willd. ex Kunth) Lagasca ex Griffiths] plants was expected to promote immobilization, but net N mineralization was higher under plants than in bare areas. Removing roots from sieved soil enhanced net mineralization, but not consistently. Sieving soil caused problematic changes in N dynamics. Under plants, for example, N concentrations were higher in sieved than intact soil after 15 d, but lower after 60 d. Effects of sieving may reflect accelerated depletion of a small, biologically active organic matter pool during prolonged incubations. Soil in tubes was slightly wetter than bulk soil during moist periods, but water content in tubes tracked ambient conditions well. We recommend 15- to 30-d incubations of intact cores to avoid artificially high rates of net mineralization caused by soil disturbance and to capture effects of environmental variation. Research was performed at Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO 80523.


This article employs participant definitional analysis, sensitized with feminist poststructuralism and critical ethnography, to understand three identity construction processes that members of childfree LiveJournal communities participate in: (a) naming childfreedom, (b) negotiating childfreedom, and (c) enacting childfreedom. I argue that childfree identities are contested and sometimes activist. Ultimately, I call for scholars to reconsider the definition of childfree to account for the complex and nuanced identities constructed by individuals who identify as such.


This thesis makes a textual research and analysis of deeds and legends about Sun Zhong,Sun Quan's grandfather,and of the relationship between Sun Zhong Sun Jian and Sun Quan to distinguish truth from falseness.


Optimal power allocation problem for decentralized detection in a wireless sensor network (WSN) is presented. Our goal is to find a numerical solution for the optimal power allocation scheme that minimizes the total power spent by the wireless sensor network so that the detection error probability is below a desired value. We evaluate and compare the performance of two emerging nature inspired algorithms like the Cat Swarm Optimization (CSO), and the Cuckoo Search (CS). Both are also compared with the popular Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm. The results show that PSO provides slightly better solutions when the network consists of a small number of sensors, while CSO outperforms the other algorithms as the number of sensors increases.


During the last decade, large-scale federated distributed infrastructures have been continually developed and expanded. One of the crucial components of a cyber-infrastructure is an accounting service that collects data related to resource utilization and identity of users using resources. The accounting service is important for verifying pledged resource allocation per particular groups and users, providing reports for funding agencies and resource providers, and understanding hardware provisioning requirements. It can also be used for end-to-end troubleshooting as well as billing purposes. In this work we describe Gratia, a federated accounting service jointly developed at Fermilab and Holland Computing Center at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The Open Science Grid, Fermilab, HCC, and several other institutions have used Gratia in production for several years. The current development activities include expanding Virtual Machines provisioning information, XSEDE allocation usage accounting, and Campus Grids resource utilization. We also identify the direction of future work: improvement and expansion of Cloud accounting, persistent and elastic storage space allocation, and the incorporation of WAN and LAN network metrics.


There is progressing communication whether the cellular phone radiation creates any health impacts. The impact of cellular phones radiation on human health is the subject of current awareness and as a consequence of the tremendous increment in telephone utilization all through the world. Cell phones use electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range. Other computerized isolated frameworks, for example, information correspondence systems, produce comparable radiation. For the most part the issue of wireless utilization for 50 minutes, cerebrum tissues on the same side of the head as the mobile phones radio wire metabolized more glucose than did tissues on the inverse side of the brain. In this research work, we focus the causes of brain tumor (cancer) due to the cell phone from this increase in glucose metabolism are still unknown. There are several types of brain tumor psyche (glioma and meningioma), acoustic nerve (schwannoma) and parotid organ. Our research area focuses the glioma and acoustic. The aim of study is to address the aforementioned problems associated with cell phone. Our research area focus, how reduce the effect of cancer with the help of MRI and/or a CT scan and increase the life of human being with the help of chemo therapy. In this research work we do work on brain tumor and apply statistical model for the testing and discuss the images of brain tumor which is created the usage of cell phone. It then goes on describe the solution in the medical terms & implementation and also give some prediction about the future generated by modified technology. ABSTRACT Journal of Information & Communication Technology Vol. 9, No. 1, (Spring2015) 23-32


Global biodiversity and ecosystems are highly impacted by anthropogenic activities, such as climate change and introduction of non‐indigenous species. As numerous species from the Ponto‐Caspian region have established in the North and Baltic Seas, as well as in the Laurentian Great Lakes, there have been large number of studies examining environmental tolerance of these species to determine their future potential to spread. However, many of those studies were conducted only on adult stages, while neglecting the possibility that early life history stages might not be equally resilient.


The following article addresses one of the main concerns of the profession: maximizing efficiency of teaching for oral proficiency. The main goal of this article is to explore yet untapped potential of the Cognitive Perspective in SLA -an interdisciplinary approach to language and language learning. In this article, we report on how Cognitive Perspective has completely transformed our conceptualization of the ways language can be taught to foster students' ability to use the language. The article delineates pedagogical principles of Usage-Based Instruction (UBI), an innovative approach to teaching oral communication in foreign languages and provides description of the UBI instructional sequence.


In the last decade, the economic crisis has been in rapid rhythm spikes, with a frequency never like before. The future foresight even found to carry more sudden and unpredictable spikes for both the economy and the socio-economy. Such foresight of socio-economic crisis unless mitigated it would cause catastrophic deterioration to the quality of life, where areas of education, health and stability would be negatively affected. The objective of the paper is to investigate the types of socio-economic crisis that can be foresighted. The researchers try to approach this through qualitatively monitoring the developments of the socio-economic models and define specific areas of how to turn 'challenges into opportunities'. The framework proposed in this paper target to bring-in sustained outcomes that can change how we deal with the coming socio-economic challenges. The conclusion has clear implications on the way many communities and countries are addressing the sustainable development goals (SGDs).


We present BeThere, a proof-of-concept system designed to explore 3D input for mobile collaborative interactions. With BeThere, we explore 3D gestures and spatial input which allow remote users to perform a variety of virtual interactions in a local user's physical environment. Our system is completely self-contained and uses depth sensors to track the location of a user's fingers as well as to capture the 3D shape of objects in front of the sensor. We illustrate the unique capabilities of our system through a series of interactions that allow users to control and manipulate 3D virtual content. We also provide qualitative feedback from a preliminary user study which confirmed that users can complete a shared collaborative task using our system.


This qualitative study explores the factors that influence how mixed-gender groups collaborate on digital filmmaking projects at the CEGEP level. Prior research indicates that girls are often disadvantaged when working in mixed-sex groups within technology-rich learning environments, where boys have the tendency to choose more publicly acknowledged roles and dominate the equipment. The present study attempts to shed light on the social negotiations among teammates and the factors that contribute to the choice of production roles taken by girls and boys in mixed-gender collaborative video work. The study employs an action research design and involves my own final-year film/video production class comprised of 21 students at a CEGEP in the greater Montreal area. Results suggest that students' gendered content preferences and classroom reactions to these preferences, the process of negotiating film content as a collective, the level of confidence with the production equipment, academic motivation, as well as gender and identity performances were among the factors that influenced girls and boys to make certain choices regarding the roles they would occupy on a film crew. The study explores these various factors at play, and attempts to create more equal learning opportunities for girls and boys in the classroom.


Characterizing the molecular genetics and defining the clinical phenotypes of the lamin A/C-related disorders, collectively referred to as "laminopathies," has been one of the most intriguing chapters in human genetics (1). Lamins are intermediate filament proteins that reside normally on the inside of the nuclear envelope and perform numerous biological functions including maintenance of structural integrity, organization of chromatin, governing division of nuclear contents during mitosis and meiosis, and regulation of access of transcription factors to the nucleus (2). In the last 10 yr, mutations in the genes encoding these proteins have been shown to underlie a breathtaking array of human illnesses, including inherited muscular dystrophies, peripheral neuropathies, cardiomyopathies with conduction disturbances, and disorders of accelerated aging (1). However, for endocrinologists, the subgroup of laminopathies that has held the greatest fascination has been those with a primary metabolic phenotype, specifically Dunnigantype familial partial lipodystrophy subtype 2 (FPLD2; MIM 151660), which results from heterozygous mutations in LMNA encoding lamin A/C (3). The partial lipodystrophy syndromes are associated with insulin resistance, multiple quantitative metabolic disturbances, and ultimately diabetes. FPLD2, which although very rare is still probably the most prevalent of the inherited lipodystrophies, is characterized by sc lipoatrophy of arms, legs, gluteal region, and abdomen, with lipohypertrophy of visceral fat stores, upper truncal fat, and neck and facial fat (4). The identification of LMNA as the causative gene for FPLD2 required classical linkage analysis studies which showed that genetic markers on chromosome 1q21 perfectly segregated with the FPLD2 phenotype (5). This statistically implicated this region of the genome as harboring the causative gene for FPLD2 (5). Subsequent detailed analysis of genes residing within 1q21 was performed using automated sequencing of genomic DNA of members of a Canadian FPLD2 family. These studies revealed a novel heterozygous missense mutation in exon 8 of LMNA, namely p.R482Q (6). The list of causative mutations in FPLD2 was rapidly expanded soon thereafter, but the overwhelming majority of FPLD2 mutations were found in LMNA exon 8, especially codon 482, with missense mutations p.R482Q, p.R482W, and p.R482L (7). Presently, most newly diagnosed North American patients with FPLD2 have one of these codon 482 mutations. Virtually all FPLD2 subjects with codon 482 mutations had a pure "classical" FPLD2 phenotype, with minimal involvement of other tissues, such as skeletal or cardiac muscle. We have since noted that the FPLD2 phenotype seemed milder in carriers from pedigree branches that were remote from the proband and her immediate nuclear family. Partial lipodystrophies have been closely scrutinized using a wide range of technologies. A key approach has been "phenomic" analysis of molecularly characterized individuals. Phenomics has been defined as systematic application of clinical, biochemical, and imaging methodologies—tools that are familiar to practicing clinicians and clinician investigators (8). But while a practicing clinician might have incentives to minimize the amount of technology expended to make the correct diagnosis, a human genetics investigator, even with constrained research funding, sometimes has the luxury to apply diagnostic technologies more extensively, albeit strategically, to identify subtle clinical phenotypic differences. These "deep phenotypes" are often quantitative, so that differences between individuals with well-characterized genotypes can be evaluated statistically. Characterizing phenotype-genotype correlations in patients can be more technically challenging, resource-intensive, and artifact-prone than studying them in animal models. But there are also advantages when studying phenotypic consequences of mutations in patients, including the fact that the landscape of background genetic and environmental factors—compared with, say, transgenic mouse models—can be more appropriate when attempting to translate experimental findings of potential relevance to human disease. For instance, careful phenomic evaluation of FPLD2 kindreds showed the initial metabolic insult to be insulin resistance followed closely by dyslipidemia, then hypertension, then diabetes, and finally vascular disease (3). The clarified progression of abnormal phenotypes in FPLD suggested a rational, staged treatment regimen to possibly modulate the natural history and development of disease end points (3). Furthermore, understanding the stages of disease progression might not only have value for rare FPLD2 patients, but could also help in understanding the metabolic evolution of common insulin resistance or metabolic syndrome (MetS). More recent investigations of LMNA and lipodystrophy have followed three experimental paths. First, powerful molecular genetic technologies have continued to define new laminopathies resulting from new LMNA mutations. Some recently characterized multisystem laminopathies, such as Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome, atypical progeroid syndromes, and mandibuloacral dysplasia, also had partial lipodystrophy as a component phenotype (1). In retrospect, it is not surprising that certain LMNA mutations lead to complex syndromes that include partial lipodystrophy as one of the elements. Second, genomic DNA sequencing experiments expanded to allow evaluation of other candidate genes, particularly in patients with a suggestive phenotype but no germline LMNA mutations. Such experiments uncovered heterozygous dominant negative and haploinsufficiency mutations in PPARG (3, 4) encoding peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor . Abbreviations: FPLD2, Familial partial lipodystrophy subtype 2; MetS, metabolic syndrome; MLP, metabolic laminopathy.


Macroscale turbulent coherent flow structures in a natural fast‐flowing river were examined with a combination of a novel 2 MHz Acoustic Doppler Beam (ADB) and a Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE) to characterize the streamwise horizontal length scales and persistence of coherent flow structures by measuring the frequency (f)‐streamwise‐wavenumber (ks) energy density velocity spectrum, E(f, ks), for the first time in natural rivers. The ADB was deployed under a range of Froude numbers (0.1–0.6) at high Reynolds numbers (∼106) based on depth and velocity conditions within a gravel bed reach of the Kootenai River, Idaho. The MLE employed on the ADB data increased our ability to describe river motions with relatively long (>10 m) length scales in ∼1 m water depths. The E(f, ks) spectra fell along a ridge described by V = f/ks, where Vis the mean velocity over depth, consistent with Taylor's hypothesis. New, consistent length scale measures are defined based on averaged wavelengths of the low‐frequencyE(f, ks) and coherence spectra. Energetic (∼50% of the total spectral energy), low‐frequency (f < 0.05 Hz) streamwise motions were found. Mean length scales,Lm, compared with the depth, h, are significantly larger than previously suggested for macroturbulence with Lm/h∼ 28–118. Although the energy appears as low‐pass white noise, it is streamwise coherent along the length of the array. In fast flows with velocities > 1 m/s,Lmwere found to be significantly longer than their corresponding coherence lengths, suggesting that the turbulent structures evolve rapidly under these conditions. This is attributed to the stretching and concomitant deformation of preexisting macroturbulent motions by the ubiquitous bathymetry‐induced spatial flow accelerations present in a natural gravel bed river.


The invention concerns an earthquake-proof device for buildings and engineered constructions characterised in that it comprises pre-stressed cables (A1, A2, B ...) fixed at one of their ends to a ground structure (22) supporting the building or construction and at their other end to a high storey structure (24) of the building or construction, said cables (A1, A2, B ...) being stretched along an optimised curve by calculation based on the structural features of the building or construction, the cable being stretched in a plane passing through the horizontal displacement direction which needs to be limited.


A convenient and economical method for the production of cavitation damage is described. Cavitation is generated in the region of the maximum pressure amplitude of an acoustic field in a resonant cylindrical container. The specimen surface to be damaged is a stationary boundary in the system and is therefore not subject to accelerations such as occur in conventional magnetostriction devices for cavitation damage study. The absence of these accelerations eliminates any possibility of premature material removal from cavitation weakened surfaces. Mathematical analysis of the dynamics of cavitation should also be facilitated. It is shown that simple assumptions lead to an acoustical theory agreeing with experiment to within the accuracy required. Examples are given of the application of this technique to the study of both easily damaged and highly resistant materials. Relatively uniform damage is achieved which is particularly suitable for x‐ray diffraction study of the surface. Alternatively, perturbation of the acoustic field to permit concentrated damage is obtained by forming the specimen surface as the end of a small cylinder. Photomicrographic studies of damage to both monocrystalline and polycrystalline materials have been initiated with the aid of this apparatus. Cavitation experiments have been done in water with an air atmosphere and in toluene with a helium atmosphere. These experiments show that severe damage can result even if a chemically inert environment is employed.


This article examines how hip hop heads in marginalized, Black, low-income neighbourhoods in a town in South Africa make use of 'grey' pirate internet infrastructure from the Global South to create distribution platforms for their music. In this ethnographic study, hip hop heads from the town of Makhanda, who cannot afford the bandwidth to use graphic-intensive sites such as ReverbNation or SoundCloud, come up with innovative ways to hack and extend the limitations of their own low-bandwidth internet distribution infrastructure. To do so they not only move media offline onto various digital devices in innovative ways but also use online solutions from the Global South developed for less-connected users like themselves. This includes the file-drop platform DataFileHost, the 'Wap' platform Wapka and various forms of translocal pavement internet involving WhatsApp distribution. As digital pioneers in their communities, these hip hop heads showcase innovation from below by cobbling together translocal digital spaces that incorporate grey pirate platforms. Since they exist outside of the public, algorithmically monitored channels of the internet, these spaces remain outside of the mainstream centralized global media flows and exemplify 'pirate modernity' in the Global South. They point to the deep infrastructural inequalities between and inside countries and the need for building a more inclusive internet where no-one is exiled to the low-bandwidth, mostly off internet outposts of the less-connected. While pirate platforms form part of an interim innovative solution to help connect communities, their ephemeral nature means that the music archives created by these hip hop communities remain precarious and under constant threat of being lost forever.


We study the convexity of mutual information along the evolution of the heat equation. We prove that if the initial distribution is log-concave, then mutual information is always a convex function of time. We also prove that if the initial distribution is either bounded, or has finite fourth moment and Fisher information, then mutual information is eventually convex, i.e., convex for all large time. Finally, we provide counterexamples to show that mutual information can be nonconvex at small time.


Purpose: Although the augmented sympathetic nerve activity (SNA) is a salient feature of heart failure, while vagal nerve stimulation (VNS) benefits patients with heart failure. How the VNS impacts on SNA remains unknown. Since the vagal trunk has both efferent and afferent fibers, we hypothesized that the vagal afferent stimulation (AVNS) impacts on baroreflex control of SNA.

Methods and results: In 6 anesthetized, ventilated rats, we controlled the pressure of isolated, bilateral carotid sinuses (CSP) and measured celiac SNA and arterial pressure (AP). Under a constant CSP at 100 mmHg, increasing the voltage of AVNS captured the vagal afferent nerves at 2-4 volts and dose dependently decreased SNA and AP. The averaged maximal inhibition of SNA were -27.3±5.3% (Fig. 1). To examine the impact of AVNS on the baroreflex system, we changed CSP stepwise and measured the response of SNA and AP with/without AVNS. AVNS reset the sigmoidal CSP-SNA relation (neural arc) downward, whereas unaffected the linear SNA-AP relation (peripheral arc) (Fig. 2). To evaluate the dynamic impacts of AVNS on SNA, we randomly stimulated AVNS with binary white noise sequences, and identified the transfer function from AVNS to SNA and that from SNA to AP. We also identified transfer function of native baroreflex from CSP to SNA and from SNA to AP. The transfer functions from AVNS to SNA strikingly resembled that from CSP to SNA. The transfer functions from SNA to AP were indistinguishable whether we perturbed CSP or AVNS indicating that they share the common central and peripheral neural mechanism.

![Figure][1]

Conclusions: AVNS resets the baroreflex neural arc and induces sympathoinhibition just like the native baroreflex. The AVNS induced sympathoinhibition may in part attribute to the beneficial impacts of VNS on heart failure.

 [1]: pending:yes