Drawing on case-study research from a rural, resource-based community in Alberta, Canada, this paper explores the social and economic context of substance abuse. Specifically, the linkages between social structure, community fragmentation, and family dysfunction offer a way of understanding differential resistance and susceptibility to substance abuse. Five thematic areas were linked to susceptibility in this study: (1) an economy based on multiple divergent sectors, which gives rise to income disparity and social inequality; (2) a highly transient population, which results in social distancing and lack of social support; (3) shift work, which prevents opportunities for consistent and productive family and community relationships; (4) high incomes, which lead to material competition and financial stress; and (5) a culture of entitlement, which produces certain expectations and perceived privileges among some workers and their families. Our findings are consistent with previous research on the link between substance abuse and shift work, work environments, and the social conditions in boomtowns. But this paper also identifies novel themes, such as high incomes and a culture of entitlement, and introduces the notion of slow disasters and cumulative risk histories to help explain susceptibility to substance abuse within this rural community.


Aims The 2010 Medical Leadership Competency Framework outlines ways in which leadership can be incorporated into the undergraduate curriculum. The General Medical Council's "Tomorrow's Doctors" highlights how medical leadership and management (MLM) teaching is essential for medical students. Consequently, the Birmingham Medical Leadership Society (BMLS), a student-led society at the University of Birmingham, advocated for and helped set up the Healthcare Management and Leadership (HML) intercalated degree. Our study aimed to determine whether this intercalation has changed its student's views towards their career ambitions and their attitude towards the importance of MLM as a necessary skill for future doctors. Methods We created and distributed questionnaires to the current student cohort (n=10). These questionnaires asked students about basic demographic information and required them to mark on a Likert scale in response to questions about their attitudes to MLM and their career ambitions. Results The average percentage increase in perceived MLM knowledge after completing semester 1 was 199.07%. Moreover, all students thought that MLM training for medical students was more important after completing Semester 1, with an average percentage increase of 73.44%. Apart from one student who was equally motivated to become involved in MLM later in their career, all other students reported being more motivated after joining the HML intercalation, with an average percentage increase of 95.46%. Lastly, all students were of a stronger opinion that MLM was a necessary skill for future doctors after starting the intercalation. Conclusion The results show that the intercalation was successful in positively influencing students' attitudes and views about MLM. Moreover, our results indicate that medical schools should look to include MLM teaching on the curriculum, and engage students in this process to ensure opportunities for further development are not missed.


Spatial and temporal variations in the distribution of the grain-size characteristics of surficial sediments were studied and the areas susceptible to conta...


Sample studies on the efficiency of city commercial banks are limited. According to the corresponding data of 53 domestic city commercial banks from 2009 to 2011,this paper constructs a stochastic frontier model to calculate the operating efficiency with labor and capital inputs,and analyze the factors affecting the efficiency. It finds that in recent years,with the improvement of corporate governance and the breakthrough in cross-regional business policy,the operating performance of domestic city commercial banks has improved significantly; state-owned largest shareholder and the higher ratio of the largest shareholding are both unfavorable to the improvement of operating performance. However,the introduction of strategic investor,cross-regional business operation and the reduction of NPL ratio all generate positive effects on the operation of city commercial banks.


This paper addresses the evaluation of object detection performance for non-contact safety-related sensors in low-visibility environments due to adverse weather conditions. An evaluation metric, MOT (Minimum Object-detectable Transmittance), is proposed to quantitatively evaluate the influence of the low-visibility environments on the object detection performance. Traditionally, the Meteorological Optical Range (MOR) has been used for this purpose. However, MOR is not appropriate for the sensor evaluation because it is a meteorological metric which is optimized for human eyes to estimate the distance at which a person can see clearly through an atmosphere. On the other hand, MOT is a physical and optical measure that quantifies the relationship between the spatial transmittance and the distance at which a sensor can detect a specified object. It is specialized for the sensor evaluation and can express the sensor characteristics in the low-visibility environments at each measurement distance. The usefulness of MOT will be demonstrated by presenting the experimental results of MOT measurements for various sensor devices in a fog space reproduced with environmental simulator equipment.


In this paper,the system function of human-machine interface in metro integrated supervisory control system was planned,and the architecture of integrated supervisory control system was designed.By using technical superiority of GE Proficy / HMI SCADA-iFIX,the eight design functions in total were implemented concretely,including the user security strategy and landing interface,the main menu and main interface,PSCADA,BAS,FAS,ATS,CCTV,and the alarming summary.Moreover,a total of seven aspects of technical attempt and method innovation were performed,such as the human-machine interface design of the large-scale hierarchical distributed control system,the user security strategy,the real-time video monitoring,etc.These achievements have a certain referential meaning for relevant applications.


The relationship of the morphology of the alpha cell and the amount of glucagon present in the pancreas of dogs and rabbits treated with drugs reputed to be toxic for the alpha cell has been further investigated. A summary is given of several experiments dealing with the lack of alpha cell damage in several species following the administration of drugs reputed to be toxic for the alpha cell. It is concluded that glucagon is produced by the alpha cell of the pancreas, and that much of the confusion on this subject probably results from a failure to recognize the technical difficulties involved in obtaining accurate morphological definition of the structure of the alpha cell at the time the tissue was excised from the body.


The importance of an information about the baseline value of radionuclides in the sea of Wakatobi and Kendari to see how large the input or contamination of radionuclides in the area. This contamination can come from waste human activities such as industry and nuclear utilization activities that are biased carried by seawater currents and air gusts. Natural and anthropogenic radionuclide concentrations in the Wakatobi and Kendari seas have been measured using a Gamma spectrometer (HPGe).The monitoring results show that both 226Ra, 232Th, 40K and 137Cs indicate that they are in normal condition and do not exceed the safe limit. The data presented in this study will be very important and useful to be used as basic data in mapping the improvement of radionuclide contamination in the area.


Rabbits". Abstract Avermectins are largely used in different animal species. Ivermectin, the most popular avermectin, is used against a wide spec trum of endo and ectoparasites. Some mange mites are particularly sensitive to ivermectin. Notoedres cati var. cuniculi, the agent of rabbit mange, is particularly sensitive to ivermectin. Pharmacokinetic and residual studies of ivermectin in rabbits, however, are scarce. The objective of the present paper was to study the tissue residue profile of ivermectin (IVM) after subcutaneous (s.c.) ad ministration of a 1% w/w solution. Sixteen young healthy male rabbits received 200 μg/kg of a 1% w/w ivermectin formulation subcutaneously. Groups of four treated animals were sacrificed at 10, 20, 30 and 40 days after injection. Samples of liver, fat, kidney and muscle tissue were obtained. IVM concentrations were determined by liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection after automatic solid phase extraction with SPE C 18 cartridges. days. Muscle samples showed the lowest IVM concentrations throughout the study. The highest IVM concentrations at all sampling times were measured in liver and fat tissues. Nevertheless, IVM concentrations in all the tissues analyzed were below the accepted maximum residue limits recommended by the European Union at 27 days post treatment.


We investigate the effect of local Coulomb correlations on electronic transport through a variety of coupled quantum dot systems connected to Fermi liquid leads. We use a newly developed functional renormalization group scheme to compute the gate voltage dependence of the linear conductance, the transmission phase, and the dot occupancies. A detailed derivation of the flow equations for the dot level positions, the inter-dot hybridizations, and the effective interaction is presented. For specific setups and parameter sets we compare the results to existing accurate numerical renormalization group data. This shows that our approach covers the essential physics and is quantitatively correct up to fairly large Coulomb interactions while being much faster, very flexible, and simple to implement. We then demonstrate the power of our method to uncover interesting new physics. In several dots coupled in series the combined effect of correlations and asymmetry leads to a vanishing of transmission resonances. In contrast, for a parallel double-dot we find parameter regimes in which the two-particle interaction generates additional resonances.


Developed and patented extruder with vacuum chamber. The aim of the work is theoretical research of working process of the vacuum chamber of the upgraded extruder. During the implementation of the objectives of the study were considered models of functioning of the vacuum chamber at "idle" speed (in the absence in the chamber of the extrudate) and during thermal vacuum treatment of the product during its dehydration. Analytical methods determined the time dependence of the output of the vacuum system of the extruder for a given mode of operation from the volume of the chamber, the working pressure in the vacuum system and the cross-sectional area of the vacuum hoses. The dependence of the pressure in the vacuum chamber of the extruder the moisture content in the processed raw materials and finished product, the horse of the cross section of the vacuum hoses, volume and pressure in the vacuum system of the extruder. The results of these theoretical studies to predict basic performance parameters of the vacuum system of the upgraded extruder and to compare them with the experimental results.


The partition theory of the establishment and the execution of contract omits the distinguished stage of the validity of contract,which leads to paradoxical problems.The validity of contract is different from the execution of contract.Nor they include,absorb or substitute for each other.The validity of contract refers to the contract accordant with three elements of valid legal act,and the validity is affirmed by the law.The execution of contract means a contract in operation in fact.The valid contract is not equal to a contract in operation,while a contract in operation is unnecessary valid.The example of the former situation is the contract with the operational condition,and the latter example is the revocable contract.


Based on geology and geochemical characteristics of ore trace elements,rare earth elements and Pb,S isotopes in Dehelongwa gold-copper deposit,such as(ΣREE)14.22×10-6~176.54×10-6;LREE/HREE 2.37~12.19,LREE concentration and HREE depletion and Eu positive anomaly,trace elements Ba,Sr,Ti depletion,low field strength elements,the highest Zr among high field strength elements Sc,Th,U,Zr,Hf,Nb,Ta,the highest concentration of V among siderophile elements,highly homogenized S isotopes(δ(34S)=+2.2×10-3~+7.0×10-3,the average,+4.98×10-3) and falling of S isotopic data between the upper mantle Pb and orogenic belt Pb the authors have reached the conclusion that the Dehelongwa gold-copper deposit derived its ore-forming materials from crust-mantle mixation.


This study focuses not only on the institutional mechanisms to control the bureaucracy in the US but also on the controversies around their efficiency. Stressing the limits of parliamentary control, the paper establishes a comparison with Brazil and analyses some proposals to enhance the accountability of


OBJECTIVE To study the clinical importance of HBcAg detection. METHODS HBeAg and HBV DNA detection results were compared with that of ELISA method routinely tested HBsAg/HBsAb/HBeAg/HBeAb/HBcAb. RESULTS A total of 113 blood samples were tested. The positive rate of HBcAg in patients with HBsAg+ HBeAg+ HBcAb was 88.7%, and in patients with HBsAg+ HBeAg 100%. When HBV DNA was positive, 88% HBcAg and 100% HBeAg were positive, respectively. CONCLUSIONS HBcAg detection will make much help to find the situation of HBV infection and replication. HBcAg plus HBeAg almost can substitute for PCR HBV DNA test for diagnosing HBV infection.


To the Editor.— John Stoeckle, MD, and his colleagues ( 219 :603, 1972) are thoughtful and kindly physicians as well as lucid essayists. However, I fear these virtues are apt to be detrimental if they serve to strengthen in any way the advocacy of free medical clinics which are supplied with equipment left over from doctors' offices, a haphazard system of collecting drugs at no cost, and laboratory tests "written off at no charge when sent to generous directors of private or hospital laboratories." I have personally never met any laboratory directors willing to do tests at no charge except in rare and single instances. This is certainly not a system to recommend for the provision of ambulatory medical care. That it has succeeded in some instances is laudable but irrelevant to the large problem of providing medical care to those who cannot afford it. These so-called clinics may well serve


Aims: Hemodialysis uses a semi-permeable membrane and electrochemical gradient to balance fluid and essential nutrient levels in the body. The kidneys perform this function in healthy individuals. The study aims to analyze the biochemical parameters of patients undergoing hemodialysis.
Study Design: Cross-sectional study.
Place and Duration of Study: The study enrolled 130 patients with chronic renal failure undergoing hemodialysis in King Khalid Hospital Tabuk, Saudi Arabia between January 2023 and February 2023.
Methodology: The study applied correlation analysis to determine the nature of the relationships between the biochemical parameters during hemodialysis. Descriptive statistics were also used to determine the mean concentrations for the parameters during hemodialysis.
Results: The concentrations of urea dropped from 45.12mmol/l from week one to 5.74mmol/l in week four. While the concentration of creatinine dropped from 761.53umol/l from week one to 160.60umol/l in week four. The study used correlation analysis to establish that there was a statistically significant strong positive correlation between urea and creatinine, calcium, iron, total iron binding capacity (TIBC), and albumin had their concentrations vary during dialysis weeks, with their concentrations increasing during some weeks and decreasing during others. It was also determined that there was a significant negative correlation between urea and TIBC.
Conclusion: The study established that there was a significant reduction in the concentration of urea and creatinine during the fourth week of dialysis compared to the first week of dialysis. Therefore, dialysis helps to remove toxic waste products from the bloodstream.


Abstract This article proposes a new family of multifrequency-band tests for the white noise hypothesis by using the maximum overlap discrete wavelet packet transform. At each scale, the proposed multifrequency-band test has the chi-square asymptotic null distribution under mild conditions, which allow the data to be heteroscedastic. Moreover, an automatic multifrequency-band test is further proposed by using a data-driven method to select the scale, and its asymptotic null distribution is chi-square with one degree of freedom. Both multifrequency-band and automatic multifrequency-band tests are shown to have the desirable size and power performance by simulation studies, and their usefulness is further illustrated by two applications. As an extension, similar tests are given to check the adequacy of linear time series regression models, based on the unobserved model residuals.


development that is versioning, which is done through version control systems, is being presented. The current methodologies used in distributed version management, some aspects needed in the working of Version Control Systems, the prior work that is done in this field of technology are discussed. A proposed algorithmic approach for knowing the dependency of linkages of classes, interfaces and methods in object-oriented technology amid versions of a program is also presented. The aim of this approach is to decrease errors and inaccuracies during the phase of software development in distributed version control systems.


Grain output plays a key role in China's agriculture and national economy.By using the neural network model that is of convergence property and generalization ability and taking 2010-2011 grain output data as a sample,the authors examine the grain output of Shaanxi province with software Matlab7.0.The accuracy of the result is great,having lower average relative errors and huge referential value to the government with respect to the decision making of the macro economy.


In this paper a new method for automatic segmentation and classification of fundus eye images (fei) into normal and glaucomatous ones is proposed. The segmentation of the cup region from the fei makes use of a morphological watershed transformation with markers imposed. New features for quantitative cup evaluation are found based on genetic algorithms with the proposed new fitness function. The computed features are then used in a classification procedure which is based on a multilayer perceptron. The mean sensitivity is 90%, while the mean specificity reaches 85%. The results obtained are encouraging.


Background and Purpose. Admission to a Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) program has traditionally required a determined cognitive level with less emphasis being placed on noncognitive attributes. It is now appreciated that many noncognitive factors such as coping self-efficacy, resilience, and emotional intelligence can factor into students' ability to successfully complete a graduate program that presents with increased workload and other demands that can invoke stress. To maximize success, students must be able to effectively cope with these stresses. The first purpose of this study was to determine if a cohort of students enter a DPT program with similar perceptions of their abilities to cope with stress. The second purpose was to determine if perceived coping abilities and specific coping strategies of this cohort changed over the first year of the program. Subjects. Physical therapy students enrolled in the first year of a 3-year DPT program at a Midwestern university were invited to participate. Of this cohort, 29 (60%) responded to the first survey, 23 (79%) of the initial participants completed the second survey, and 19 (65%) completed the third survey. Methods. An electronic survey was sent to these students at the beginning of their first, second, and third semesters. Students completed the survey anonymously. The Coping Self-Efficacy Scale (CSE) was used along with open-ended prompts about students' coping strategies and sources of stress. Repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) and post hoc paired t tests with Bonferroni correction were used to compare mean CSE scores between each semester. Qualitative content analysis of the responses from the open-ended questions was completed. Results. The mean CSE score from the initial survey was 6.35 (SD ± 0.32). Of the 26 questions in the CSE survey, 19 questions had a variance in score of eight points or more on a 10-point scale. There was a statistically significant difference between CSE scores over the three testing periods as determined by a repeated-measures ANOVA, F(2,50) = 79.19, P < .001). A Bonferroni post hoc test revealed that the differences between CSE scores occurred between all levels of testing (P < .001). Five themes describing active coping strategies and one theme of avoidance strategy emerged in the first round of data collection. In the second and third rounds of data collection, the avoidance strategy theme disappeared and only active strategies were mentioned. Discussion. The ability to cope with stress is an important factor affecting a student's success in an academic program. In this study, there was wide variability in students' perceived ability to cope with stress as determined from the CSE score when entering a DPT program. Statistically significant increases in CSE scores over each subsequent semester indicated improved confidence in coping ability after succeeding despite stressful situations typical of the first year of a DPT program. Qualitative themes from open-ended prompts about coping strategies also supported this conclusion. Findings suggest that planned intervention on the part of academic faculty to further facilitate this growth in coping ability should be considered to increase student success.


Improving the speed and reliability of high-volume urban bus service is an important transit planning objective. One means of increasing travel speed is to provide a limited-stop bus service component on heavily patronized local bus routes. This paper explores the characteristics of limited-stop bus service and the experiences of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA)/New York City (NYC) Transit with this type of service. It also describes the key issues, factors, and customer response associated with this service strategy. Based on changing ridership patterns, customer perceptions, traffic conditions, and scheduling efficiency, limited-stop service has been a very effective tool for NYC Transit in offering better service from the perspective of customers and operations. Over the coming years, NYC Transit expects to increase the presence of limited-stop service where it makes sense, both in terms of the span and frequency of existing limited-stop service, as well as its expansion to routes that currently offer local service only.


Germanium whiskers with gallium concentration $2\times 10^{17}\mathrm {c}\mathrm {m}^{-3}$ were chosen to investigate magnetoconductance in the range 0-14 T at 4.2 K under compressive strain up to - $2\times 10^{-3}$ rel.un. Strain influence on spin-orbital splitting on the valence band spectrum was studied. As result, the splitting of light and heavy hole branches was found under compressive strain according to kp-method. The spin splitting energy $\Delta \mathrm {s}\mathrm {o}$ as well as Rashba cubic parameter $\beta \mathrm{so}$ was found due to studying the longitudinal magnetoconductance of Ge whiskers at low temperatures.


Hybrid coronary revascularization involves any planned combination of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) in patients with multi-vessel and/or left main disease. In clinical practice a more restricted definition is used in which placement of a left internal mammary artery (LIMA) graft to the left anterior descending (LAD) coronary artery is combined with stents for non-LAD lesions. This approach is referred to as "best-of-both-worlds" principle, based on the rationale that the long-term performance of drug-eluting stents for non-LAD disease may surpass those seen when using non-arterial grafts, while the long-term patency of the LIMA graft may be superior to stenting of the LAD. Additionally, when using minimally invasive surgical techniques, a hybrid approach may offer an additional benefit over CABG in reducing peri-procedural complications and faster in-hospital recovery. In this thesis we show that while hybrid coronary revascularization is currently not a widely adapted revascularization strategy, a more prominent role is expected, as technology advances and operator familiarity, interdisciplinary relations and commitment improve. Registry studies and meta-analytic data show that hybrid coronary revascularization is associated with faster recovery, fewer complications, lower cardiac troponin release, and comparable clinical results compared with CABG. These findings are irrespective of the approach used (concurrent or staged), and are consistent among various high-risk patient populations, including those with diabetes and of advanced age. Adequate patient selection, based on local expertise and data from large registries and well-designed randomized clinical studies, are of key importance to determine its future success.


Educational technology is a subject which is built on the basis of practical application,and the Professional practical ability is the top priority in personnel training.So the author discussed the connotation,characteristic of practical capabilities,based on the combination of years practice in our college,propose the cultivation orientation of 'the unity of knowledge and practice',building content and associated with the theory and practice and layered curriculum,improve internal and external training base,the use of flexible and appropriate teaching strategy selection principle,the practice of building conditions suitable form of organization,to establish 'the development of students' evaluation mechanism,such as new strategies to enhance practical ability for students to do a new try.


ARTISTIC DRAWING AS A MNEMONIC DEVICE Leslie Baker Antioch University Seattle Seattle, WA Despite art-based learning being widely used, existing data are primarily qualitative, and most research has not isolated particular variables such as memory for empirical study. The few experiments that have been conducted demonstrated that drawing improves free recall of unpaired words, and retention improves after lessons integrated with drawing, drama, and narrative exercises. To help fill the gap in the current literature, the present study compared the effectiveness of encoding and the rate of memory decay between a drawing mnemonic and note taking on a paired associates task. Using a within-subjects experimental design, participants were presented with word pairs and asked to complete either a drawing mnemonic (DM) or note taking (NT) to assist memorization. Participants were tested immediately after the word pair presentation and after a 20-minute delay. Results supported the hypothesis that the DM condition would produce superior encoding, as evidenced by greater retention on the immediate test. However, no memory decay was observed in the experiment, and therefore results on the delayed test were inconclusive. In fact, scores for the NT condition improved over time whereas the scores for the DM condition did not, which might imply that note taking results in a different consolidation process than drawing. Findings from this study suggested that arts integration can be an effective method to support memory for learned information. Future studies that examine the effect of rehearsal and the long-term effectiveness of a drawing mnemonic are warranted. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA, http://aura.antioch.edu/ and Ohio Link ETD Center, https://etd.ohiolink.edu/etd


Using the ferroin-catalyzed Belosov−Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction with the addition of an activating reactant in a reaction−diffusion system, we experimentally studied the competition between target waves and spiral waves when the system was in an oscillatory state. We found that when the period of background oscillation is smaller than that of spiral waves, target waves automatically appear in the reaction medium despite of the presence of spiral waves. The target waves compete with spiral waves and eventually win over the spirals, driving them out of the reaction medium. We also carried out numerical simulations using a modified Oregonator model. Our simulation results qualitatively agree with the experimental observations.


The mammary gland cell growth and differentiation are under the control of both systemic hormones and locally produced growth factors. Among all these important hormones and growth factors, estrogen plays a central role in mammary gland development. The biological function of estrogen is mediated by estrogen receptor α (ERα) and estrogen receptor β (ERβ). Both ERα and ERβ are expressed in the mammary gland, but with distinct expression patterns. In the mammary gland, ERα has been proved to be the estrogen receptor that mediates the mitogenic function of estrogen. However the function of ERβ in mammary cell proliferation is less understood and there remains some controversy. Accumulating evidence indicates that ERβ, unlike ERα, is a negative regulator of mammary epithelial cell proliferation. In this dissertation, ERα and ERβ were evaluated for their expression patterns in the mammary gland. In the proestrus phase, ERα was detected in about 20% of mammary epithelial cells; in the diestrus phase, no ERα staining was detected in the mammary gland. ERβ was expressed in more than 50% of mammary epithelial cells and ERβ staining was detected in some stromal cells in the proestrus phase. In the diestrus phase, ERβ staining cells were very limited and the staining intensity was very weak. These data suggest that the expression levels of both ERα and ERβ undergo dynamic changes during the estrous cycle. In the ovariectomised (OVX) rats, both ERα and ERβ were detected in more than 50% of mammary epithelial cells. Compared with the ovary-intact rats, the mammary gland of the OVX rats showed more cells with ER expression, but the staining intensity was weaker. Taken together, the expression of ERα and ERβ is regulated by estrogen in normal mammary gland, while without estrogen stimulation in the OVX rats, more mammary cells showed ER expression, but at a lower level in these cells. The effects of ERα and ERβ on mammary cell proliferation were studied by two different approaches, activation of endogenous ERα and ERβ via selective agonists, and overexpression of ERα and ERβ via lentiviral infection. In the first approach, we used ERα and ERβ selective agonists, propylpyrazole-triol (PPT) and diarylpropionitrile (DPN) respectively, to activate endogenous ERα and ERβ in the OVX rats. We found that ERβ selective agonist DPN counteracts the proliferative effect of ERα selective agonist PPT in the mammary gland. In the second approach, ERα and ERβ were ectopically overexpressed in the mammary gland of mature virgin rats by lentivirus infection. We found that ERβ overexpression significantly decreased mammary cell proliferation rate in both the proestrus and diestrus phases, indicating that ERβ, unlike ERα, is a negative regulator for mammary cell proliferation. Collectively, these data supports that in contrast to ERα, ERβ activation or overexpression is able to inhibit mammary cell proliferation.


Graduate education is the highest level of academic education in China,is the most important form to train senior specialized talents with innovative spirit and practical ability of education.Moral education as a graduate of such a special group inevitably has its particularity.From the law of the growth of talent,the establishment of graduate political beliefs,the choice of the value of life and the formation of good character to go through to know,believing,repeated practice.Political and ideological quality of the instructors personal level of moral qualities and academic realm to a large extent affect the quality of students' accomplishment.Graduate student mentor relationship with the students construction and innovative talent cultivation mode compatible mode,is to improve the quality of graduate education,and create the reality of political and ideological consciousness,personalized health,high moral character and innovative talent needs.


The present study aimed at evaluating the anxiety of adolescent students in relation to their intelligence and family climate. Participants were 200 adolescent students from government schools of Amritsar city who completed the SCAT, GGTI & FCS tools used in the study. The findings of the study reveal a significant positive relationship between anxiety and intelligence of adolescent students. The study also indicated that there is a negative relationship between  anxiety and family climate of adolescent students.


Contextualized embeddings such as BERT and GPT have been shown to give significant improvement in NLP tasks. On the other hand, static embeddings such as skip-gram and GloVe still have desirable characteristics such as low computational cost, easy deployment and freedom from severe contextualized variation in representation. There has been some recent attempt enhancing the skip-gram model by adding syntactic information of context using GCN. We investigate the use of BERT embeddings instead for stronger context representation, which contains not only syntactic and surface features, but also rich knowledge from large-scale pre-training. Results show that BERT-enhanced skip-gram embeddings outperform GCN-enhanced embeddings on a range of tasks. Such embeddings also outperform recent effort distilling BERT embeddings into context-independent vectors.


The recovery of data that were stored on magnetic media normally poses no problems if the same hardware is used to recover the data that was used to store it on the medium. This is not the case if the magnetic information or the storage media itself have been damaged. If the hardware or software system used to store the data on the media is unknown, then this must be determined by initial analysis. Once the storage format has been analysed and is known, the storage media can then be read using the appropriate equipment. If it is unknown or the storage media is damaged, one can try to recover the data using laboratory measures. The paper describes the possibilities for analysis and recovery. The main emphasis is laid on the technical problem of making the magnetically stored information available as digital data.


Electronic commerce is reliant on technology; has a goal of adding value; and offers potential global linkage of stakeholders. These three characteristics mean that e-commerce will be vulnerable to the effects of diverse infrastructure, culture and demography of different countries. Understanding the likely impact of e-commerce and the barriers to its widespread adoption, therefore, requires understanding of the effects of complex cross-cultural issues intertwined with underlying macro issues. These issues are explored in the context of three perspectives: technical, legal and regulatory, and socio-economic. It is argued that the future of e-commerce depends on the way the macro challenges are met. Moreover, at the micro-level, effective decision-making by firms about their participation in e-commerce has to take account of the resulting macro environmental constraints.


The main objective of the present study include preventing the mental related problems, monitoring of uncertainty between class hours, identifying and minimizing dizziness related problems, improving student safety initiatives, providing better therapy to the large number of students, improving the student health related outcomes [1,2]. Abstract Pharmaceutical apex body has shown extraordinary diversity as evidenced by AICTE, PCI, DTE circulating norms and innumerable unique combination norms. Pharmacy teacher has provided student care that optimizes the use of knowledge, promote health, wellness, and bad habit prevention. Teacher care for students in all health care settings but the subject pharmacy teacher movement initially began inside class and institute occasionally been reported. Pharmacy teacher has worked in collaboration with colleagues, non-teaching and other institution professionals. We report here characterization of novel parameter for identification and analysing of other effects in pharmaceutical institution while classes begin 9 am instead of 11 am and tertiary care teaching pharmacy institution.


Abstract Six Sigma as a quality improvement framework has gained considerable popularity in the past two decades. Its extension Lean Six Sigma has also been embraced by many organizations for improvement of quality and business competitiveness. One important factor for the popularity of Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma is their potential for improving service systems, in contrast to the conventional perceptions that only manufacturing systems can benefit from statistics-based methodologies. There are however a number of issues related to the nature of service systems that must be resolved before the full benefits of Lean Six Sigma can be realized. In this paper, these issues are discussed from a practical point of view from three angles: analytical, organizational, and personal. Awareness of the existence of such issues, if not the answers to all of them, is a pre-requisite to effective adoption of Lean Six Sigma tools.


Gamma interferon (IFNy) is an extremely important immunoregulatory lymphokine. It plays a pivotal role in the regulation of a variety of essential immune functions (reviewed in reference 1). Among these are: (a) modulation of expression of products of the major histocompatibility complex on the cell membrane, particularly the enhancement of Ia antigen expression on macrophages; (b) priming/activation of macrophages for tumor cell killing; (c) enhancement of cytotoxicity of lymphocytes, including that of antigen-stimulated T lymphocytes and that of natural killer cells against tumor cells; and (d) maturation of B cells for immunoglobulin production and secretion that, depending on the stage of clonal expansion of the cells, is manifested as either enhancement or suppression of antibody production. IFNy production is regulated by a dynamic interaction between macrophages and various T cell subsets, involving helper cells, suppressor cells, and IFNy-producing cells. A positive regulatory loop for production of IFNy, as well as for other lymphokines and cytokines, is summarized in FIGURE 1. This loop is based on data generated in several laboratories that show that: (a) helper cells are required for IFNy production and provide the helper signal via interleukin-2 (IL-2);* (b) IFNy alone or with lipopolysaccharide induces macrophages to produce interleukin1 (ILand a cytolytic factor(s) for tumor cells;5 (c) macrophages are required for IFNy production6 and the macrophage requirement is thought to be mediated through IL-1; and (d) IL-1 stimulates helper cells to produce IL-2,' thereby completing the loop. Interestingly, the IL-2 requirement for I F N y production can be replaced by the neuroendocrine hormone, arginine vasopressin (AVP), and structurally related n e u r o p e p t i d e ~ , ~ ~ ~ as well as by the growth factors, platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF), epidermal growth factor (EGF), and fibroblast growth factor (FGF).'' Therefore, IFNy production can involve the interaction of the immune system with several important hormonal or hormonal-like systems.


Among the events taking place at the annual meeting of the Association for Science Education Scotland, being held in Dundee in March 1996, is a lecture on Colour by Arthur Tarrant which is being sponsored by The Institute of Physics. Other sessions will include: Higher still; 5 - 14 Environmental studies; Cancer research; New textbooks; Speaking with machines; Latest equipment; Forensic science. Details of the meeting (from the evening of 22 March to lunch-time on 24 March) will be sent to all schools in January. It represents an excellent form of in-service training, and the organizers encourage potential attendees to talk to their Advisers or Staff Development Coordinators about possible funding.


This book and accompanying video provide an ethnographic study of a Russian Eastern Orthodox sect, the Old Believers, who live in isolated areas of Alberta. Based on Sheffel's Ph.D. dissertation at McMaster University, they offer a detailed examination of life in a community whose explicit goal is to be isolated from Canadian society. Instead of accessing the media, Old Believers "learn about their place in the world predominantly through history, and the past serves as the preferred method for reducing the burden of voluntary isolation" (p. 3). Consequently, the author's aim is to "lift the cloak of obscurity to which the Old Believers seem to have been condemned by history and modern scholarship ... [and to] provide inspiration and perhaps justification for the study of other seemingly insignificant societies and communities" (p. 9). To that end, Sheffel offers thick ethnographic description of the culture of this small community, and makes explicit the significance of ritual and adherence to the past, which form the basis for the Old Believers' world view.A historical synopsis outlines Old Believers' Byzantine and Russian origins; the "Raskol," or schism of the Russian Orthodox church in the mid-17th century; their persecution in the 18th century; and their subsequent migration to China and then to North America. This is followed by five ethnographic chapters on the community, Berezovka, detailing beliefs, community organization, economy, foodways and the symbols of orthodoxy in home and community. The final chapter addresses the relevancy of this ethnography for the study of society and culture, puritanism, tradition and modernity.Sheffel provides the reader with a sense of the significance of material culture and belief to the Old Believers. Every aspect of their material culture is suffused with spiritual meaning connecting this people to its past. Their icons, their clothing and their food utensils are imbued with meaning. Whenever a meal is prepared and eaten, the food, drink, plates and spoons are sanctified by ritual. Outsiders to the community are not permitted to sit at table and share food, since they are considered pagan and unclean. Old Believers situate their homes close to the source of spiritual purity, the river. Their sacred images are washed in river water, which is returned to the river, charged with the power of the icons. Before drinking, Old Believers make a sign of the cross to drive evil spirits out of the drink and swallow it in one gulp, before the spirits have a chance to slip back into it. As the narrator in the video states, for Old Believers "life is a perpetual act of worship."Both book and video lead us to a better understanding of the significance of ritual in the transmission of culture. The many rituals of this people function not only as communication devices, but as links between them and their past, providing a "dialogue between past and present Christians," between those who cannot interact directly" (p. …


According to microscopic anomalies collected after two strong shocks,this paper introduced foundation,operation and current situation of microscopic observation network in Xinjiang,they found appearances of anomalies increasing with magnitude before the earthquake.The proportion of anomalies before earthquakes mainly is animal anomalies while anomaly confirmation has significant effect on judgment of seismic situation.Through operation within four years,they also give reasonable suggestion on observation points distribution,personnel training,anomaly confirmation and team construction.


Civil architecture energy conservation efficiency evaluation is a kind of multi-factors, multi-hierarchies and multi-criteria synthetic evaluation. Perfect civil architecture energy conservation efficiency evaluation indicators system and reasonably effective synthetic evaluation methodology are keys to do energy conservation efficiency synthetic evaluation. This paper is based on framing civil architecture energy conservation efficiency evaluation system, and uses fuzzy synthetic evaluation methodology to frame civil architecture energy conservation efficiency fuzzy synthetic evaluation model, in order to make the result of evaluation more objective and reasonable.


s music educators' familiarity with computers increases, their interest in helping students use computers as music learning tools has grown. In spite of steadily increasing numbers of computers in schools, however, regular access for music education has been difficult to achieve. There are few computers in music classrooms, and music software and specialized hardware like MIDI keyboards and CD-ROM drives may be unavailable. Fortunately, a growing number of schools are installing general computer labs with computers equipped for students to use notation, accompaniment, and sequencing software independent of MIDI keyboards. These general labs allow students to use music-learning software and provide music teachers a resource that they can use in the way that writing teachers use word processing software. By using this software, students can become actively engaged in working towards the National Standards for Music Education related to composing and arranging music, reading and notating


Background— Surgery provides the best chance for cure and long-term survival in non-small cell cancer (NSCLC). Persistent symptoms following surgery are common, and they can negatively impact health-related quality of life (HRQOL). The purpose of this study was to examine the long-term effect of an interdisciplinary supportive care intervention to improve HRQOL, psychological distress, and symptoms in lung cancer survivors who were treated surgically. Methods— Patients undergoing curative intent resection for NSCLC were enrolled in a prospective sequential design whereby the control group was accrued first followed by the intervention group. Patients in the intervention group were assessed and presented by nurses at weekly interdisciplinary care meetings prior to surgery, and received four educational sessions (physical, psychological, social, spiritual well-being) following surgery. Appropriate symptom management, social work, rehabilitation, and spiritual support interventions were coordinated by the study nurse. In both groups, HRQOL, psychological distress, and symptom severity were assessed at baseline and at 6, 12, 24, 36, and 52 weeks using surveys which included the validated FACT-L, Lung Cancer Subscale (LCS), and Distress Thermometer. Mean survey scores were analyzed using factorial Analysis of Covariance at 12 months. Results— A total of 71 survivors (33=control, 38=intervention) were accrued. There was no difference in age, baseline performance status, or stage of disease between groups. Patients in the intervention group had significantly less distress (mean 1.0 vs 4.0, p<0.001, favorable mean FACT-L scores (126.1 vs 98.7, p<0.001, range 0–140) and LCS scores (29.4 vs 23.6, p<0.001, range 0–32) at 12 months. The mean scores of all categories of questions in FACT-L (physical, social/family, emotional, and functional well-being) were significantly more favorable in the intervention group at 12 months. Conclusions— An interdisciplinary supportive care intervention improves psychological distress and HRQOL at 12 months after lung cancer surgery. This study has important implications in improving HRQOL of lung cancer survivors after surgery. Further study is warranted on incorporating the interdisciplinary personalized interventions used in this study into clinical practice for lung cancer survivors.


Step-indexed separation logic has proven to be a powerful tool for modular reasoning about higher-order stateful programs. However, it has only been used to reason about safety properties, never liveness properties. In this paper, we observe that the inability of step-indexed separation logic to support liveness properties stems fundamentally from its failure to validate the existential property, connecting the meaning of existential quantification inside and outside the logic. We show how to validate the existential property—and thus enable liveness reasoning—by moving from finite step-indices (natural numbers) to transfinite step-indices (ordinals). Concretely, we transform the Coq-based step-indexed logic Iris to Transfinite Iris, and demonstrate its effectiveness in proving termination and termination-preserving refinement for higher-order stateful programs.


Constructivism in classrooms, teams, learning communities, blocks, schools, administrators and supervision how to make it work even better assessment issues.


Situation assessment in crisis management applications can be supported by automated information fusion systems, such as Distributed Perception Networks. DPNs are self-organizing fusion systems that can infer hidden events through interpretation of huge amounts of heterogeneous and noisy observations. DPNs are a logical layer on top of existing communication, sensing, processing and data storage infrastructure. They can reliably and efficiently process information of various quality obtained from humans and sensors through the existing communication systems, such as mobile phone networks or internet. In addition, modularity of DPNs supports efficient design and maintenance of very complex fusion systems. In this paper, a fully functional prototype of a DPN system is presented that fuses information from gas sensors and human observations. The task of the system is to compute probability values for the hypothesis that a particular gas is present in the environment. It is discussed how such a system could be used for crisis management.


Polynyas are areas of open water in ice-covered seas, characterized by high biological productivity. The NEW (Northeast Water) and NOW (North Water) polynyas, located off the east and west coasts of Greenland, were extensively sampled in 1993 and 1998, respectively. We used principal component analysis to explore the seasonal covariations among physical, chemical, and ecological characteristics in these polynyas. In both polynyas, the most explanatory eigenvector revealed the expected seasonal development of the bloom (nutrient consumption and biomass increases) associated with declining ice cover, warming, and mixed-layer shallowing. This seasonal pattern, however, was much weaker in NEW than in NOW. No connections between the structure of the food web and recycling processes were apparent in either polynya. The analysis points to much stronger and richer interactions between the mesoplankton (i.e., diatoms–zooplankton) and microbial food webs in NOW than in NEW. The differences between the polynyas may ...


Big Data processing has become crucial in many domains because the amount of the produced data has enormously increased almost everywhere. The effective selection of the right Big Data processing tool is hard due to the high number and large variety of the available state-of-the-art tools. Many research results agree that there is no one best Big Data solution for all needs and requirements. It is therefore essential to be able to navigate more efficiently in the world of Big Data processing tools. In this paper, we present a map of current Big Data processing tools, recommended according to their capabilities and advantageous properties identified in previously published academic benchmarks. This map—as a navigation diagram—is aimed at helping researchers and practitioners to filter a large amount of available Big Data processing tools according to the requirements and properties of their tasks. Additionally, we provide recommendations for future experiments comparing Big Data processing tools, to improve the navigation diagram.


This article is based on the keynote address presented to the European Meetings on Cybernetics and Systems Research (EMCSR) in 2012, on the occasion of Edgar Morin receiving the Bertalanffy Prize in Complexity Thinking , awarded by the Bertalanffy Centre for the Study of Systems Science (BCSSS). The following theses will be elaborated on: (a) The whole is at the same time more and less than its parts; (b) We must abandon the term "object" for systems because all the objects are systems and parts of systems; (c) System and organization are the two faces of the same reality; (d) Eco-systems illustrate self-organization.


Exact-diagonalization and quantum Monte Carlo methods are used to study the occurrence of a metal-insulator transition and the distribution of charges and magnetic moments in the ground state of a one- and two-dimensional half-filled system of correlated electrons, described by a one-band simplified Hubbard model extended with bond-charge-site-charge interactions. Numerical results for the electrical conductivity, the density of states, and the spin- and charge-density correlation functions strongly suggest that the bond-charge-site-charge interaction plays a fundamental role in the occurrence of a metal-insulator transition and of ferromagnetic order.


Wave propagation in a lossy vocal-tract with yielding walls is studied. Simulation method of this vocal-tract is described. The method adopted allowed us to calculate the transfer function, the formant frequencies and the formant bandwidths of the vocal-tract. The results obtained permit the determination of the differential contribution of the different loss sources for formant frequencies and formant bandwidths.


Abstract We present a non-equilibrium analysis and control approach for the Active Queue Management (AQM) problem in communication networks. Using simplified fluid models we carry out a bifurcation study of the complex dynamic queue behavior to show that non-equilibrium methods are essential for analysis and optimization in the AQM problem. We investigate an ergodic theoretic framework for stochastic modeling of the non-equilibrium behavior in deterministic models and use it to identify parameters of a fluid model from packet level simulations. For computational tractability, we use set-oriented numerical methods to construct finite-dimensional Markov models. Subsequently, we develop and analyze an example AQM algorithm using a Markov Decision Process (MDP) based control framework. The control scheme developed is optimal with respect to a reward function defined over the queue size and aggregate flow rate. We implement and simulate our illustrative AQM algorithm in the ns-2 network simulator. The initial results obtained confirm the theoretical analysis and exhibit promising performance when compared with well-known alternative schemes under persistent non-equilibrium queue behavior.


The symposium brought together leading researchers to update our understanding of milk and dairy products as functional foods for protecting health and reducing the risk of disease, including obesity, diarrhea, and colon cancer. The typical focus on "calcium for bone health," important as it may be, is too limited according to these researchers. The meeting was co-sponsored by the Dairy Council of California, the Dairy Foods Division and the Functional Foods Divisions of the Institute of Food Technology, with support from Kraft, Nestle, Rhodia, and C. Hansen, as part of the comprehensive annual scientific meeting of food specialists, representing industries and universities, in the U.S. and abroad.


Background: Superiority of paclitaxel-eluting stents over bare metal stents in angiographic and clinical outcomes have been shown in many trials . Eucatax stents is a newly developed paclitaxel eluting stent using biodegradable polymer matrix. To our knowledge there have been no studies directly comparing Eucatax paclitaxel eluting stents with EucaSTSflex bare metal stents. The aim of this study is to evaluate short-term benefits of Eucatax in comparison with EucaSTSflex in patients undergoing denovo coronary stenting. Methods: A retrospective comparison of Eucatax versus EucaSTSflex was conducted among 89 consecutive patients (44 Eucatax, 45 EucaSTSflex) in Kowsar heart institute, with at least one successfully deployed stent in de novo lesions over a 6-month period. Outcomes included death ,nonfatal MI, CABG, late stent thrombosis at six month, as well as functional evidence of ischemia evaluated by exercise treadmill test(ETT) or cardiac scan( SPECT). Results: From April to July 2008, a total of 89 patients (44 Eucatax, 45 EucaSTSflex) were evaluated after PCI for de novo coronary lesions. After six month follow up no difference was observed in term of death ,MI,CABG and late stent thrombosis between Eucatax compared with EucaSTSflex. Also a non-statistically significant lower rate of positive ETT (or SPECT) was found in Eucatax group after six month. Conclusion: Paclitaxel eluting stents(Eucatax)are not superior to bare metal stents(EucaSTSflex) in regard to short-term clinical outcome.


Larvae of the primary screwworm, Cochliomyia hominivorax (Coquerel), were collected near Aldama in Tamaulipas, Mexico. 3rd-instar, crawl-off larvae from 19 single-egg masses were obtained from cattle hosts, and from 8 other single-egg masses off sheep. Of the six chromosome pairs in this species, the sex, II, V, and VI pairs were polymorphic. The small X and Y sex chromosomes had five and four variants, respectively. F1 and F2 larval samples from cattle and sheep differed markedly. There were more fluorescently spotted X chromosomes in cattle screwworms than in sheep, and chromosome VI was polymorphic in cattle screwworms but monomorphic in sheep. Both cattle and sheep material showed significant heterozygote deficiency from expected values and a striking pattern of X chromosome-based homotypic mating.


If no noise is present, energy parameter does well in speech detection. However, in the car noise environmnt where the sign 이 to noise ratio is nearly OdB, the speech detection is almost impossible. In this paper


A 3D dynamic model of a high-speed train coupled with a flexible ballast track is developed and is presented in this study. In this model, each vehicle is modeled as a 42 degrees of freedom multi-body system, which takes into consideration the nonlinear dynamic characteristics of the suspensions. A detailed inter-vehicle connection model including nonlinear couplers and inter-vehicle dampers, and the linear tight-lock vestibule diaphragm is established to simulate the effect of the end connections of neighboring vehicles on dynamic behavior. The track is modeled as a traditional three-layer discrete elastic support model. The rails are assumed to be Timoshenko beams supported by discrete sleepers. Each sleeper is treated as an Euler beam and the ballast bed is replaced by equivalent rigid ballast bodies. The reliability of the present model is then validated through a detailed numerical simulation comparison with the commercial software SIMPACK, with the effect of the track flexibility on the train/track interaction being analyzed simultaneously. The proposed model is finally applied to investigate the difference between dynamic performances obtained using the entire-train/track model (TTM) and the single-vehicle/track model (VTM). Several key dynamic performances, including vibration frequency response, ride comfort, and curving performance, calculated by the two types of dynamic models are compared and discussed. The numerical results show that there is a significant difference between the dynamic behaviors obtained by VTM and TTM, and that inter-vehicle connections have an important influence on the dynamic behavior of high-speed vehicles.概要研究目的基于车辆-轨道耦合动力学理论分析方法, 建立一种高速列车-轨道三维耦合动力学模型, 并明确列车-轨道耦合模型与单节车辆-轨道耦合模型在高速列车-轨道耦合动力学性能分析中的差异。创新要点建立一种高速列车-轨道三维耦合动力学模型, 模型中考虑列车的纵向动力学行为以及车间连接装置对列车中不同车辆动态响应的影响, 并基本明确完善的列车-轨道耦合模型在高速列车-轨道耦合动力学性能分析中的重要性。重要结论单节车辆-轨道耦合模型会过高地估计高速列车在运营过程中的振动响应和动力学性能指标, 而完善的列车-轨道耦合动力学模型的计算结果则更加接近实际情况。


We read with a great interest the recent papers by Mahoney et al (1998) and Borradori et al (1998) We report the results of our studies that confirm that both envoplakin and periplakin are components of paraneoplastic pemphigus (PNP) antigen complex


On 26 January 2011, the Home Secretary unveiled the outcome of the much-anticipated Counter-Terrorism Review, which straddled a political fault line between Conservative and Liberal Democrat policies. This article considers the impact of that review on the treatment of terrorist suspects. It is suggested that the review was both over-inclusive and under-inclusive in scope. While welcome reform and rebalancing has been instigated in some areas, the review represents missed opportunities in others, and on occasion offers little more than modest rebranding of pre-existing powers. It is argued that the review falls short of its target in three main areas: consideration should have been given to the use of a wide range of commonly charged terrorism offences; diplomatic assurances that individuals will not be subjected to ill-treatment following their deportation still need to be meaningfully assessed and reformed; and the regime which is set to replace control orders requires careful scrutiny. More welcome advances are clear in relation to the use of pre-charge detention and powers of stop and search. It is contended that the current political momentum needs to be seized if further advances are to be made in restoring the balance of civil liberties in these areas.


Metabolic reprogramming mediated by hypoxia-inducible factors play a crucial role in many human cancers. HIF-1α is activated under hypoxic conditions and is considered a key regulator of oxygen homoeostasis during tumor proliferation under hypoxia. Aim of this research was to analyze the immunohistochemical expression of HIF-1α, VEGF-A, Glut-1, MCT4, and CAIX in atypical fibroxanthoma (AFX) and pleomorphic dermal sarcoma (PDS). 21 paraffin-embedded AFX and 22 PDS were analysed by immunohistochemistry, namely HIF-1α, VEGF-A (referred to as VEGF throughout the manuscript), Glut-1, MCT4, and CAIX. To quantify the protein expression, we considered the percentage of positive tumor cells (0: 0%, 1: up to 1%, 2: 2-10%, 3: 11-50%, 4: >50%) in relation to the staining intensity (0: negative, 1: low, 2: medium, 3: strong). HIF-1α expression (mean ± SD) in AFX (9.33±2.92) was significantly stronger than that in PDS (5.90±4.38; P= 0.007), whereas the expression of VEGF, Glut-1, MCT4, and CAIX did not show differences between AFX and PDS. When comparing all tumors without subgroup stratification, the expression of HIF-1α (P= 0.044) and MCT4 (P= 0.036) was significantly stronger in ulcerated tumors than in tumors without ulceration. Our findings provide the first evidence that HIF-1α-induced metabolic reprogramming may contribute to the pathogenesis of AFX and PDS. HIF-1α expression seems to be higher in AFX than in PDS, and ulcerated tumors show higher expression levels of HIF-1α and MCT4 irrespective of the diagnosis.


seeks to end the book on an uplifting note. For construction workers, their only way of getting back their delayed wages was nao, or "creating a disturbance" (p. 143). Disturbances that disrupt builders' operations, such as destroying buildings, yield results, while taking legal action or petitioning the government achieved little. Moral outrage, not class consciousness, compels these workers' actions. In contrast, Pun finds that the actions and language of Foxconn workers most closely resemble conventional expressions of workingclass resistance, citing examples of Foxconn workers' riots, strikes, and even poetry that articulated their awareness of common interests. In the Foxconn workers, Pun detects the makings of China's new working-class radicalism. This chapter makes a weak capstone to the book's bold argument. First, the evidence of construction workers' experiences and resistance does not consistently square with this assertion. For instance, as noted on page 148, disgruntled constructionworkers often used "the language of justice and law" instead of "class". However, the contention that "the accusation of the principle of injustice lies squarely at the core of the capital-labor relation" is an insight of the author, not her informants (pp. 148–149). Second, the elevation of the dormitory "as a battlefield for fighting against capital" and "as a space of contestation for articulating a new class consciousness" lacks persuasiveness (pp. 168–169). Two chapters earlier, we were told that the dormitory is a transitory space for transient labour. It is indisputable that the dormitory facilitates exchange of information and experiences of collective resistance, but it is questionable how a transitory space can foster longer-term solidarities. These issues notwithstanding, this book should be compulsory reading for all those interested in the contemporary Chinese economy, the politics of development, and labour studies.


The scale inhibition performance of HPMA-EDTMPS compound scale inhibitor was studied. The effects of dosage of scale inhibitor, temperature, mass concentration of Ca2+、HCO3-and pH, constant temperature time on scale inhibition rate were investigated. The optimal mass proportion for the compound was 3∶1, when the total dosage of HPMA and EDTMPS was 10 mg/L, the scale inhibitionrate reached 98%.Time and mass concentration of HCO3-have little influence on the scale inhibition performance of the compound, however, the influence of mass concentration of Ca2+ was bigger.


Human research is accepted in our society because it is seen as generating valuable new knowledge that may alleviate suffering and bring benefit to ill persons now and in the future (Brody 1998; Faden 1996; National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects 1979). Performing research that involves human participants is ethically complex, however, and ethical and scientific considerations in human research historically have been viewed as being in tension (Freedman 1987; Michels 1999). Some have asserted that ethical restrictions, while necessary, directly impede scientific progress (Woodward 1999). Controversies in human research ethics have centered on ethical safeguards as burdensome, disproportionate, and distorting of scientific findings (Brody 1998; Edlund et al. 1985; Faden 1996; Gray 1975; Katz 1972). The past half-century, furthermore, provides many tragic examples of disregard for ethical principles and practices in the search for scientific progress (Beecher 1966; Katz 1996). Ethics and human research thus have been seen as uncompanionable and opposing forces (Faden 1996). A new view appears to be emerging in which ethics and human research are understood as significant coexisting commitments (Roberts 2002). Engaging in human research is itself seen as an ethical duty in this paradigm, and optimal scientific approaches may be reliant on the adoption of optimal ethical practices (Fried 2001). This new model of the relationship between science and ethics reinvigorates interest in recurring questions related to the ethical role of scientific design, the value of human research safeguards, whether ethical considerations are seen as detracting from scientific endeavors, under what circumstances ethically problematic research would be tolerated if the results were scientifically valuable, and the fundamental legitimacy of ethical controversies in human research (Brody 1998). These issues have been articulated over several decades in the published literature, but few data exist regarding the attitudes of stakeholders in the research process toward the relationship between science and ethics (Sung et al. 2003). Attitudes regarding the importance of ethics in the professions also have evolved in recent years and it is unknown how physicians-in-training perceive scientific and ethical considerations in human research (Wenger et al. 1997). The perspectives of these early career health professionals are important, however, as they will serve as investigators who conduct human studies, will facilitate protocols in diverse roles as clinicians, academic physicians, and reviewers of human research projects, or will provide care that is informed by evidence derived from human research (Braxton et al. 2001). Empirical ethics studies involving medical students have revealed their sensitivity to nuanced ethical issues in clinical training and practice and suggest strong levels of interest in ethics, especially among women physicians-intraining (Green et al. 1995; Hayward et al. 1985; Roberts et al. 1996). A survey of 2,010 clinical and basic science trainers in 1990 found that 11% had had formal preparation on research ethics (Kalichman and Friedman 1992). To our knowledge, however, no published studies have specifically examined attitudes of early career health professionals toward the relationship of scientific and ethical considerations in human research. For this reason, we performed a preliminary study of medical students' perspectives on this topic area as part of a sequence of studies that examined ethically important issues in human research from the perspectives of key stakeholders, including clinical research participants, clinical investigators, clinicians, and physicians-in-training.


Ancient China and Ryukyu had a special origin relation.With the support and help of Chinese government,the Kingdom of Ryukyu became an important tansfer station of Southeast Asia in 15th century and then entered thriving ages.The neighboring country Japan coveted after Ryukyu for a long time,infiltrating its influence into Ryukyu in various ways,then placing Ryukyu under its control through wars.Thus China and Japan launched a special contest.So introspecting the contest contributes to understanding more deeply the international situation of East Asia at that time and further recognizing the emergence and development of Japanese militarism.


Objective To develop quality criteria of flu tea.Methods TLC method was used to identify cortex magnoliae officinalis,betelnut and pogostemon cablin in the prescription of flu tea.Results Cortex magnoliae officinalis,betelum,pogostemon cablincan be detected by TLC.Conclusion The method is convenient,reproducible and it can be used for the quality control of flu tea.


This paper gives a literature review of detection theory and information theory in the Poisson regime, where the channel model is a Poisson point process whose instantaneous rate is controlled by the input. I. Communication under the Poisson Regime In the semi-classical model of photodetection, the output of the photodetector (e.g. a p-i-n diode) is the superposition of two independent Poisson point processes: one with constant rate λ0 ("dark current noise") and another whose instantaneous rate λ(t) is proportional to the instantaneous squared magnitude of the impinging optical field integrated over the receiving aperture. This simple model is representative of the direct-detection photon-limited optical communication channel. In 1969, Israel Bar-David discovered the "Poisson matched filter" in his paper [1] entitled Communication under the Poisson Regime. The Poisson matched filter (matched to rate λ1(·)) processes a point process realization t1, . . . , tn by


Researchers have published clinical and sequencing details of a unique variant of HIV in a patient who is resistant to several classes of antiretroviral drugs and who rapidly developed AIDS, after media reports of a possible new "super-strain" of the virus (Lancet 2005;365:1031-8).

The patient, a man in his 40s from New York, was given a diagnosis of HIV-1 infection in December 2004 after he had had fever, pharyngitis, weakness, and fatigue the previous month. Earlier he had tested negative for HIV-1 antibodies on several occasions between September 2000 and May 2003. His illness progressed to AIDS within 20 months—and perhaps as little as four months—of infection. The case was first publicised at a press conference in New York last month because of the possible public health …


Introduction Of all the pollutants entering the sea, oil very often appears to be the substance that attracts most attention. Similarly, of all sources of marine pollution, oil-tanker accidents very often appear to be the single most important source of marine pollution. This as such is a major problem. Oil may not be the most hazardous pollutant to be introduced into the marine environment, oil-tanker accidents definitely are not the most important source of marine pollution in general nor for oil pollution in particular. The problem associated with the high profile of oil in the league of pollutants could well be that far too much attention is given to oil pollution at the cost of the attention that should also be given to other substances seriously polluting the marine environment. This article will nevertheless focus its attention on marine oil pollution; it is, after all, a serious problem in its own right. As a result of the attention oil pollution has had over the past decades, in particular in reaction to a long list of serious oil-tanker accidents, many measures have been taken against it. Consequently, this is an area where it is possible to assess how far the international community has come in solving specific environmental problems, what the main obstacles are to effective international solutions, and what should be done to overcome these problems. The Nature of the Problem: The Amounts of Oil Spilled into the Marine Environment Every year over 1,500 million tonnes of oil are transported over the world's seas by ships as cargo (some 1,480 million tonnes in 1989), as fuel oil (an estimated 110,000 tonnes in 1989), or for other uses. A relatively small but in absolute numbers substantial amount of oil never reaches its destination as cargo or is effectively used in the ships' engines: it ends up in the marine environment either as a result of operational discharges or as a result of accidents with ships. Various estimates have been made to assess the total amount of oil entering the world's seas and oceans. Table 1 summarizes some of these estimates from different years; the estimates included are for the years 1973, 1981, 1990, and 1992. The estimate for the year 1981 provides an indication of the importance of shipping as a source of marine oil pollution. From an estimated total of 3.28 million tonnes of oil entering the marine environment, some 1.5 million tonnes (46 per cent) were generated by shipping, from which some 410,000 tonnes (13 per cent) were the result of (tanker)-accidents.


The Texas Education Agency (TEA) today announced the launch of a new web video series, "HB3 in 30," to help inform school districts and the public about how to implement the transformative measures in House Bill 3, passed during the 86th legislative session.


It is an urgent problem for art design departments to improve the teaching of interaction design and make the trained talents meet the realistic needs of cultural and creative industry. At present, interaction design major is faced with such difficulties as unreasonable course structure, single teaching mode, disordered course sequence arrangement and lack of learning atmosphere of art design. In this paper, it is pointed out that art design departments should strengthen curriculum construction, promote close cooperation between interaction design major and other majors, expand schoolenterprise cooperation and absorb advanced teaching experience extensively.


A time-space tradeoff is established in the branching program model for the problem of computing the product of two n*n matrices over a certain semiring. It is assumed that each element of each n*n input matrix is chosen independently to be 1 with probability n/sup -1/2/ and to be 0 with probability 1-n/sup -1/2/. Letting S and T denote expected space and time of a deterministic algorithm, the tradeoff is ST= Omega (n/sup 3.5/) for T<c/sub 1/n/sup 2.5 /and ST Omega (n/sup 3/) for T<c/sub 2/n/sup 2.5/, where c/sub 1/,/sub /c/sub 2/ >0. The lower bounds are matched to within a logarithmic factor by upper bounds in the branching program model. Thus, the tradeoff possesses a sharp break at T= Theta (n/sup 2.5/). These expected case lower bounds are also the best known lower bounds for the worst case.<<ETX>>


Phase behavior data and FTIR spectra along with solubilities and solvatochromic shifts of ionic indicator dyes are reported for binary, ternary and quaternary systems composed of pentaethylene glycol n-octyl ether (C 8 E 5 ), CO 2 , water, and n-pentanol as a function of temperature, pressure and composition. With the addition of n-pentanol as a cosurfactant, the water to surfactant ratio, W 0 , reaches values as high as 12. As water is added further, a surfactant-rich phase precipitates due to micelle-micelle interactions. Ionic dyes are soluble at levels of 0.03 mM, far in excess of the negligible solubility in pure CO 2


We present a genome assembly from an individual male Odontocerum albicorne (the Grey Sedge caddis fly; Arthropoda; Insecta; Trichoptera; Odontoceridae). The genome sequence is 1,287.3 megabases in span. Most of the assembly is scaffolded into 31 chromosomal pseudomolecules, including the Z sex chromosome. The mitochondrial genome has also been assembled and is 16.57 kilobases in length.


Impossibility of performance, an important concept in the law of obligation in the Continent Law System, is one of core questions in contract law. This article has made some deeply discusses on the categories, effect and compensation for damage of impossibility of performance.


Magnetorelaxometry and thermal magnetic noise spectroscopy are two magnetic characterization techniques enabling one to estimate the magnetic nanoparticle hydrodynamic size distribution. Both techniques are based on the same physical principle, i.e. the thermal fluctuations of the magnetic moment. In the case of magnetorelaxometry these fluctuations give rise to a relaxing magnetic moment after an externally applied magnetic field is switched off, whereas thermal magnetic noise spectra are measured in the absence of any external excitation. Hence, thermal magnetic noise spectroscopy is an equilibrium measurement technique. Here, we compare the similarity and complementarity of both methods and conclude that, for particles within both methods' sensitivity range, they give the same estimate for the size distribution. For small particles (or samples with low viscosities), the used setup is not sufficiently sensitive to accurately estimate the size distribution from the relaxometry signal whereas this is still possible with thermal magnetic noise spectroscopy. For larger particles, however, magnetorelaxometry is the preferred method because of its higher signal to noise ratio and faster measurement time.


In order to recognize the situation and to provide robot services based on big data, it is necessary to implement a machine learning model capable of analyzing big data and a method for providing this data to the analysis model for learning. Previous researches have focused on the implementation of various data analysis models to analyze the collected big data. However, in these researches, it is difficult to recognize the new data which is not learned by the analysis model, and further research is needed to solve it. In this paper, we propose a data processing method to provide context-aware information in context-aware system based on big data to provide intelligent robot services. The proposed data processing method can convert the data generated in the domain in which the robot is running to learn data of the machine learning model and provide it, thereby continuously improving the accuracy of the machine learning model. In the experiment, the context-aware information is provided through the prototype of the context-aware system with the proposed method.


Objective: Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a common respiratory infection, and diagnosis is frequently performed using a chest radiography (CXR). Sonography is an available method with less radiation exposure, but has not been confirmed for diagnosis of CAP. The objective was to compare the diagnostic accuracy of sonography. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 90 adult patients (aged >18 years) were admitted to the emergency department of two university-affiliated hospitals in Southwest Iran, from July to December 2019, with a confirmed diagnosis of CAP. The patient symptoms and CXR results were included as part of this study. Within 24 hours after obtaining a CXR, a lung ultrasonogram (LUS) was performed. The diagnostic accuracy of semiquantitative LUS (SQLUS) was compared with CXR results using the Pearson chi-square test and Fisher's exact test. Results: The mean age of participants was 52.98 ± 16.77 years. 51 were men (56.7%). 28 patients (31.1%), who had abnormal SQLUS results, were not associated with CXR findings (P = .296). SQLUS showed poor diagnostic accuracy for LUS (31.11%). Conclusion: This study results could not confirm LUS as an accurate method for diagnosing CAP in adult patients; although due to the convenient sample of adults and clinical-based diagnosis of CAP, any generalization of the results should be made with caution.


Abstract The 13C n.m.r. spectra of a series of 1-methyl-2-quinolone derivatives are presented. The N-CH3 and 8-CH3 carbons each exhibit a characteristic peri deshielding effect. The substituent effects caused by a peri-methyl group have been discussed and compared with effects previously observed in the naphthalene series.


In this paper, inspired from the notion of impossible differentials, we present a model to use differentials that are less probable than a random permutation. We introduce such a distinguisher for 2 rounds of Crypton, and present an attack on 6 rounds of this predecessor AES candidate. As a special case of this idea, we embed parts of the additional rounds around the impossible differential into the distinguisher to make a probabilistic distinguisher with more rounds. We show that with this change, the data complexity is increased but the time complexity may be reduced or increased. Then we discuss that this change in the impossible differential cryptanalysis is commodious and rational when the data complexity is low and time complexity is marginal.


Abstract : A linear list merging algorithm and its analysis is presented. Starting with n lists, each containing a single element, the algorithm executes an arbitary sequence of requests to merge lists and finds the name of the list currently containing a given element. If the length of the sequence of requests is bounded by a constant times n, then the execution time of the algorithm on a random access computer is bounded by a constant times n. (Author)


The properties of glycogenolytic enzyme and α-glucosidase were examined by using the crude extracts from the ordinary muscle of five species of fish. Highest activities of both enzymes were detected in the extract from black sea bream. Optimum pH values of glycogenolytic enzyme from five species of fish ranged from 6.8 to 7.6, whereas those of α-glucosidase showed species-specificity, that is, pH 4.2-4.4 for Pacific mackerel, ayu and Japanese eel, pH 5.5 for black sea bream, and pH 6.2 for frog flounder.Maximal activities of black sea bream enzymes were observed at 35°C for glycogenolytic enzyme and 40°C for α-glucosidase. Glycogenolytic activity fell by 50% during incubation at 20°C for 10min, whereas α-glucosidase activity retained 90% of its activity when incubated at 40°C for 10min. Km values for glycogen and ρ-nitrophenyl α-D-glucoside were 1.8% (pH 6.9) and 7.0×10-4 M (pH 6.0), respectively. The Elution profile of glycogenolytic enzyme on Sephacryl S-200 revealed a single peak and its molecular weight was estimated to be 70, 000. On the other hand, two active peaks of α-glucosidase were observed on the gel filtration, and their molecular weights were estimated to be 100, 000 and 40, 000, respectively. Glycogenolytic activity from the black sea bream muscle was not activated by NaCl, while the enzyme was activated by 50% by 0.1mM CaC12.


Barnyard manure, N fertilizer, corn stovers, and sugar beet tops were incorporated into the soil singly and in combination in an irrigated four-course rotation (sweet corn, soft spring wheat, sugar beets, and sugar beets) that completed four cycles. The application of manure at 27 t/ha every 4 yr increased the organic matter (OM), N, P, and K of the soil and increased yields of 1st-yr sugar beets by 31% in the last cycle. When 66 kg N/ha was combined with the manure, yields of 1st-yr sugar beets increased by 53%. The responses by the 2nd-yr sugar beets were smaller. Manure, and manure plus N fertilizer, increased yields of sweet corn by 11 and 28%, but wheat yields were unaffected. The benefits of manure and N fertilizer became apparent during the second cycle and increased with advancing years. The effects of the crop residue treatments were less pronounced than those of the fertility treatments and took longer to become manifest. Incorporating sugar beet tops or corn stovers into the soil increased beet...


The traditional leakage detection technologies of crude oil pipeline are introduced in the paper. These technologies include flow-rate difference analysis, acoustic wave analysis and dynamic simulation analysis. At present the assessment of leakage detection technology of crude oil pipeline is qualitative and subjective. In the paper the fuzzy assessment of leakage detection technology on crude oil pipelines is presented, it is quantitative and provides some scientific basis for the selection of the leakage detection technology for crude oil pipeline.


Enabled by the advancement of data acquisition and data analysis technologies such as sensor networks and machine learning, recently data-driven event detection has shown its advantage in dealing with complex systems especially those with significant stochastic and dynamic behavior. However, existing methods usually adopt supervised learning framework and depend on explicit expert labeling in the learning phase, which is expensive even impractical in many situations. In this work, we propose a new data-driven event detection method, namely Hidden Structure Semi-Supervised Machine (HS3M), that only requires partial expert knowledge. The key idea is to combine unlabeled data and partly labeled data in a large margin learning objective to bridge the gap between supervised, semi-supervised learning and learning with hidden structures. Difficulties do arise as the incorporation of extra learning terms makes the problem non-convex. To optimize the learning objective we establish a novel global optimization algorithm, namely Parametric Dual Optimization Procedure (PDOP), by showing that the parametrized dual problem has local explicit solutions and the corresponding optimality is convex in hidden variables. The proposed approach is applied to power distribution network event detection, and the result justifies the effectiveness of both HS3M and the new global optimization algorithm.


The basic principles of equity,protection for rights and honesty in civil law are very significant for the establishment of police's law-enforcing concepts and maintenance of their personal legal benefits.Since the progressive application of knowledge of civil commercial law in public security's concrete work,the status of science of civil commercial law in the system of course in public security universities and colleges should not be neglected.Therefore,we should change the traditional concepts of attaching importance to criminal punishment but paying no attention to human,conduct reforms on teaching pattern,make a mechanic combination between concepts of civil commercial law,knowledge with public security work,adopt flexible,various teaching methods to improve the practical qualities and abilities of the teachers.


Under a flexible exchange rate regime international reserves contribute to reducing the risk of a financial crisis, and allow the monetary authority to exceptionally intervene in the exchange market. However, holding reserves is costly. In this paper, we analyze several issues concerning the adequate level of Chilean international reserves. In the first place, we compare the level of Chile's international reserves with those of different sets of countries using various indicators. We then analyze empirically some of the benefits and costs of holding reserves. Our results show that Chile's international reserves are high when measured with respect to GDP or M2, but they are in line with those of countries of similar characteristics when measured as a fraction of short-term residual debt. On the other hand, given the low risk of the Chilean economy, marginal changes in reserves have a very low impact on both the probability of a financial crisis and the sovereign spread of the country. Finally, as the sovereign spread has decreased over the last years, so too has the cost of reserves. In fact, by the end of 2002, and despite having a high reserves-to-GDP ratio, the cost of reserves as a fraction of GDP was considerably lower than the cost of other emerging economies.


ABSTRACT In a previous retrospective study, thyroid function tests were used to classify 38 fibromyalgia patients according to thyroid status. Results were consistent with euthyroidism (nonnal thyroid status) in 14 patients (36.8%), primary (thyroidal) hypothyroidism in 4 patients (10.5%), and central (hypothalamic or pituitary) hypothyroidism in 20 patients (52.6%). In this prospective study, an additional 54 patients were tested. Results were consistent with euthyroidism in 26 patients (48.1%), primary hypothyroidism in 8 patients (14.8%), and central hypothyroidism in 20 patients (37.0%). All patients from both studies were combined into a group of 92 to obtain the total percentage in each classification. Results were consistent with euthyroidism in 40 patients (43.5%), primary hypothyroidism in 12 patients (13.0%), and central hypothyroidism in 40 patients (43.5%). There was no statistical difference in either study for the mean intensity of fibromyalgia symptoms (measured by visual analog scales) or ...


In this paper, we focus on composite shadows between skyscrapers and other buildings and quantita-tively evaluate the multiple effects on the sunshine environment of city-blocks. We consider not only the increase of the shadow time but also the additional superpositions of shadow to analyze sunshine environ-ments in detail. Since these two factors have complementary relationships, so they enable us to divide the effects of composite shadow. Main results of this paper are as follows: (i) the superposition of shadows have a stronger impact to congested building area than the increase of shadow time does; (ii) the effect of shadow superpositions is almost as same as that of shadow-increasing in throughout the day.


This article presents an experimental investigation of thermally induced residual stresses in fabricated 3CR12 (DIN 1.4003) T-sections. 3CR12 is a weldable utility stainless steel developed to provide a superior alternative to coated carbon steels and other alloys which have a poor corrosion/abrasion resistance. Because of the difficulty and costs involved in hot-rolling stainless steel structural sections, they are usually fabricated by welding. In this investigation, full-penetration laser- and manual metal arc (MMA) joints were considered along with partial-penetrated MMA- and metal inert gas (MIG) welded joints. The residual stresses induced during welding were measured by neutron diffraction. All the sections displayed a largely tensile residual stress field around the weld that subsequently implied a compressive residual stress field in the flange regions. This was most pronounced for the MMA and MIG welds. The laser-welded sections displayed a more localized tensile residual stress field in the heat-affected zone that translated to lower average stresses in the flanges. In the latter part of this article, the effect of the weld-induced residual stress fields on the structural performance of appropriate T-section-based columns are assessed and compared. A significant difference in structural performance between the different weld techniques is predicted with the laser-welded sections displaying the highest predicted strength.


The role of the anterior tibial, posterior tibial and peroneal muscules upon the recurrence of the club-foot is well known. We have tried to reveal by EMG studies, that the flexor muscules of the toes of the foot especially, long flexor of the-big toe which were not developed sufficientiy may be responsible tor varus recurrence. This study, have been performed on, in Gulhane Military Medical Academy between the years of 1971-1973. Of the 41 feet 12 were normal, 16 were congenital club;foot and 13 treated club-foot, operated on, by ours own modifications. Subseauentiy, we are advised that the two muscules should be lenghtened by Z plast in the surgical procedures of the congenital club-foot.


As a fundamental equipment for studying blood flow in microcirculation, the inclined centrifuge microscope enables us to measure frictional characteristics of cells moving on a plate in a medium under the effect of inclined centrifugal force. Specifically, this paper deals with measurement for red blood cells moving on a glass plate in plasma. First, accuracy of the manual measurement of cell velocity through the microscope was confirmed in comparison with the image processing method. Measurement was then performed confirming frictional characteristics of red blood cells were properly modeled as the sum of the Coulomb friction with friction coefficient of 0.206 and the linear viscous friction applied on a simplified circular disk with a plasma layer of thickness of 0.176 μm in the present condition.


A 39-year-old woman developed a leak from the cardia following a sleeve gastrectomy. She underwent placement of an 18-cm Niti-S covered esophageal self-expandable metal stent (SEMS; TaeWoong Medical, Gimpo, Korea) at the gastroesophageal junction (●" Fig.1a). The patient returned to undergo stent removal 4 weeks after its placement. During this procedure the lasso stitch at the distal endwas graspedwith endoscopic foreignbody forceps and was pulled (●" Fig.1b). The stent began to invaginate fromwithin but soon shrank into a tangled ball of metal wires (●" Fig.1c and●" Fig.2). The distal lasso stitch slipped out of the forceps, leaving the now compacted SEMS lying in the mid-esophagus and completely obstructing the lumen. The SEMS was gradually eased away from the esophageal mucosa using the proximal lasso stitch. The disjointed mesh wires were slowly pulled off the mucosa, and thereby the whole of the stent was successfully removed under fluoroscopic guidance (●" Fig.3). Endoscopy confirmed the absence of any esophageal injury, but persistence of the original leak was noted. An over-the-scope clip (OTSC) was used to obliterate the leak (●" Fig.4). Fracture of an esophageal SEMS has been previously described, during positioning because of defectivematerial and as a consequence of laser therapy that caused a late spontaneous fracture during palliative treatment [1]. It appears that corrosion is the principal cause of fracture because, once in place and fully expanded, SEMS are not subject to any great mechanical Fig.1 Radiographic views showing: a the 18-cm covered self-expandable metal stent (SEMS) in position at the esophagogastric junction; b a foreign-body forceps being used to grasp the distal lasso stitch of the SEMS during its removal; c the SEMS shriveled up into a tangle of metal wire in the mid-esophagus.


There has been a debate about the possibility of a link between silicone breast implants and the onset of systemic connective tissue diseases (eg, scleroderma, systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis) and other inflammatory pathologies, such as silicone implant associated syndrome and adult Still disease. We report a case of adult Still disease in a patient with a silicone gel breast implant. The disease regressed with steroidal treatment, and the patient is now no longer steroid-dependent, although the implant is still in place.


The presence of the broadband electrostatic noise, observed in the distant geomagnetic tail by Imp 8, is appropriately incorporated in investigating the hydromagnetic stability of the magnetotail boundary. The observed level of turbulence is sufficient to quench the instability which may be there in the absence of the turbulence. The period of oscillation is in very good agreement with the observed period.


"The more you drink the less chance you have of getting a hangover," says one of the Department of Transport's advertisements, over a picture of a policeman covering up the dead victim of a car accident. If heeded, the concluding exhortation, "Think before you drink before you drive" could save some 1200 lives a year. While the drinking and driving legislation of 1967 probably prevented about 42 000 casualties in its first year its effect has steadily dwindled.' According to surveys, before the Act one in three drivers killed in accidents had a blood alcohol concentration of over 80 mg/100 ml; after the Act the proportion was one in five, but the latest figures suggest nearly two in five-and nearly three out of four on a Saturday night.