I have been asked to discuss the long-term efficacy and safety of levodopa. Although I have used oral levodopa intermittently in some parkinsonian patients for nearly eleven years now,' I will discuss the results in the series of patients treated for more than two years (since 1968) with high daily doses of levodopa alone. We have 68 such patients under our care. Without going into the long-term efficacy of the drug, I can say that I believe it is as useful now as it was when we started using it. This I say despite the fact that some patients have required progressively higher doses over the years, while others have been able to tolerate only smaller amounts because of increasing side effects. It is to these long-term occurrences that I will address my remarks. First, I would say that I am not sure whether we should call them "side effects" of levodopa or whether they represent the unmasking of the natural history of the disease because of longer survival of our patients. Indeed, everyone of the 68 patients in our series was classified in grade 3 or above when we started (using Dr. Yahr's grading), and in most the rate of progression of the akinetic illness had been quite rapid. By now, I suspect, most would have been total invalids with little communication with the outside world. In such patients, as you know, it is extremely difficult to evaluate properly certain neurological signs and, mainly, mental symptoms. Moreover the members of this group, like all of us, are at least two years older! Despite these limitations we have become increasingly aware, over the last six months particularly, of the development of what we called in a recent paper "the long-term levo-


The objective of GISTEAMMM is to characterize the grain structure generated by laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) process at track scale: one track or single wall with several tracks, in which the grain structures will be obtained by both experiment and thermo-metallurgical-mechanical modelling. The anisotropic elastic-viscoplastic material laws at grain levels are expected to be extracted by considering the influence of inherent residual stress generated during printing process. at CEMEF and home software at LMS; Characterization of additive manufactured specimens will be performed by LMS and CEMEF.


Objective:To discuss the existing circumstances of disabled children in the 0~-6 age bracket in Henan province.Methods:The investigation was carried out according to scheme of the 2nd China National Sample Survey on-Disability.Data was analyzed with SAS v9.1.3.Results:Disability prevalence rate of children in the 0~6 age bracket in Henan province was 1.79%;57.34% of the disabled children were male infants;37.44% of the disabled children were found with second or multiple disabilities;14.79% disabled children accepted education;Main disability were intelligence disability(44.72%),language disability(23.91%),handicapped disability(13.35%);Main causes of disability were unknown origin,developmental dysphasia,asphyxia of the newborn,prematurely,birth injury and inheritance,drug and so on;83.85% of disabled children accepted no service and relief;81.68% of disabled children needed medicine service or relief.Conclusion:The existing circumstances of disabled children in Henan province are not optimized about.The corresponding interventions strategy should be taken against the causes of disability.


Human resource management outsourcing is gradually becoming a low cost and efficient management model.But because of its complex decision-making,human resource management outsourcing brings enterprises new development opportunities,it can also result in loss of core abilities and competitive advantages.In order to help enterprises make correct decisions,this paper discusses the decision-making process of human resource management outsourcing and divides the whole process into four stages: internal and external environment,outsourcing content,outsourcing ways and choice of outsourcer.


It is expected that many of the next generation large ground based telescopes will utilize a segmented design for the primary mirror and, in some cases, the secondary mirror. Corning Incorporated (Corning) presents a process to manufacture segment mirror blanks from Corning ULE titania silicate glass in segment sizes ranging from 1.0 m to 1.8 m flat to flat. This paper will review ULE properties and describe the facilities, equipment, resources, and processes required to produce a few hundred to a few thousand mirror segment blanks for extremely large telescope (ELT) applications.


Noting that hypertension is said to be an extremely rare complicatio n of contraceptive pill use the author reports this case of a 19-year-old girl given Orthonovin (norethisterone 2 mg and mestranol .1 mg). Her weight rose from 66.6 kg to 71.2 kg and her blood pressure from 115/70 to 200/100 mm of mercury in 2 years. She was changed to Norinyl-1 (norethisterone 1 mg and mestranol .05 mg) and her wieght fell to 66.6 kg and her blood pressure to 130/80. Chlorothiazide and Slow-K were given for 6 days only because of side-effects. She now takes Minovlar (norethisterone 1 mg and ethinyl estradiol .05 mg). Her weight is 66.6 kg and her blood pressure 130/75. A similar case has also been treated at Guys Hospital. The condition may be more common than hitherto expected.


Samarium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet(YAG∶Sm) phosphors were synthesized by nitrate-citrate sol-gel combustion method.The influences of heat treatment,nitrate/citrate mole ratio(MRCM) and pH value on precursor and phase formation were investigated by X-ray diffractometry(XRD).As-prepared YAG∶Sm powders and the calcination process were characterized by using differential scanning calorimetry(DSC),thermogravimetry(TG),and Fourier transform infrared(FTIR) spectroscopy.It is shown that when gelling temperature is 80℃,MRCM=1~2 and pH=1~3,the gelling time is shortened,and colloid is in good order.The precursor changed from metal complex into amorphous metal-carbonate,and then into pure YAG crystalline phase at 900℃.The photoluminescence spectra excited by 405nm showed several obvious emission bands located at the range of 550 700nm,corresponding to the()~4G_(5/2)→()~6H_J(J=5/2,7/2,9/2 and 11/2) and typical transitions of Sm3+ ions,respectively.In addition,the intensity of transition corresponding to()~4G_(5/2)→()~6H_(7/2) is the strongest.


Soundscape is an important part of the landscape resources,it is significance to increase park artistry and protect biodiversity by developing and utilizing soundscape.First the soundscape of people's park in Nanchang was investigated,and were divided into the natural soundscape and the artificial soundscape,present situation of soundscape application was scientifically analyzed.Finally,soundscape was designed from the art of standards,which had important reference value to improve the city park design of soundscape.


The review of the works on the fabrication-technology studies, patterns of structure formation, and properties of in situ composites is presented. The main advantage of in situ (natural) composites is the thermodynamic stability of their composition and the coherence (conjugation) of the lattices of the contacting phases. All these ones provide the composite with a high level of the physical and mechanical properties. As shown, composite materials of this type are formed in the process of directed phase transformations, such as eutectic crystallization, eutectoid decomposition, etc., caused by a temperature gradient, as well as a result of diffusional changes in composition. The conditions for the growth of in situ composites are formulated. The mechanisms of growth of composite structures of the eutectic type are considered. The factors influencing on the morphology of structures of the eutectic type are indicated. The considered technological methods make it possible to obtain materials with predetermined properties, in which the size, volumetric composition, and spatial arrangement of phases are characteristic of in situ composites. The paper provides a large number of examples of in situ composites: from low-melting Bi-based alloys to refractory eutectics based on Mo and W (Bi–MnBi, Cd–Zn, Al–Al3Ni, Al–Al4La, Al–Al10CaFe2, Al–Al9FeNi, Al–Al3Zr, Al–Al3Sc, Au–Co, Si–TaSi2, Cr–HfC, Cr–ZrC, Cr–NbC, Cr–NbC, Cr–TaC, Nb–Nb5Si3, Mo–ZrC, Mo–HfC, W–TiC, W–ZrC, W–HfC, etc.). Processes and aspects of structure formation are considered. The influence of additional doping on the structure and properties of composite materials of the eutectic type of binary systems, as well as the features of the structure formation of ternary colonies in the composite are considered.


Unstable laser resonators can make use of a large mode volume while retaining a single mode for the resonator thereby overcoming limitations associated with narrow aperture lasers. Our half-symmetric geometry is shown and contains an etched circular mirror and a tapered metal contact pattern to follow the desired mode. The output is taken from the cleaved facet and results in an astigmatism between the lateral and transverse beam propagation. The devices are fabricated from epitaxial material with a single quantum well.


Solid-state transformers are easy to introduce gas cavities in the manufacturing and assembly processes, which is considered to be one of the reasons for the decrease of interfacial breakdown strength of epoxy resin-polyimide (EP-PI) composite insulation. Based on the contact theory, it is pointed out that the size and shape of the cavity are related to the contact pressure and surface roughness. Combined with the finite element simulation, it is found that the gas cavity will cause electric field distortion at the interface. The effect of interfacial contact morphology on discharge characteristics was investigated by building a platform for the high-frequency interface discharge test. Experimental results show that the interfacial breakdown voltage is affected by surface roughness and contact pressure. The interface breakdown voltage increased from 12.91 kV to 19.34 kV when the contact pressure was increased from 5 bar to 20 bar after sanding with a sandpaper grit of 2000, an increase of 49.81%. The smoother the surface of the two materials, the higher the breakdown voltage at the interface. The mechanisms of surface roughness and contact pressure on the discharge characteristics of the EP-PI interface are further investigated. Surface roughness hinders the development of secondary electron avalanche by affecting the actual incident angle of electrons and reducing the kinetic energy of electron acceleration. At the same time, when the surface roughness increases, the surface resistivity decreases, and the electron avalanche current increases. The synergistic effect of the two factors promotes the development of interfacial discharge. While the contact pressure will directly affect the proportion of interface contact area and the density of contact asperity, and introduce more interfacial discharge obstacles, thereby increasing the breakdown voltage at the interface. The above research results provide a basis for the optimization design of a solid-state transformer composite insulation system.


We use active microrheology to determine the frequency dependent moduli of a linear viscoelastic fluid in terms of the polymer time constant (λ), and the polymer (μp) and solvent viscosity (μs), respectively. We measure these parameters from the response function of an optically trapped Brownian probe in the fluid under an external perturbation, and at different dilutions of the viscoelastic component in the fluid. This is an improvement over bulk microrheology measurements in viscoelastic Stokes-Oldroyd B fluids which determine the complex elastic modulus G(ω) of the fluid, but do not, however, reveal the characteristics of the polymer chains and the Newtonian solvent of the complex fluid individually. In a recent work (Paul et al 2018 J. Phys. Condens. Matter 30, 345101), we linearized the Stokes-Oldroyd B fluid model and thereby explicitly formulated the frequency dependent moduli in terms of μp, μs and λ which we now extend to account for an external sinusoidal force applied to the probe particle. We measure λ, μp, and μs experimentally, and compare with the existing λ values in the literature for the same fluid at some of the dilution levels, and obtain good agreement. Further, we use these parameters to calculate the complex elastic modulus of the fluid again at certain dilutions and verify successfully with existing data. This establishes our method as an alternate approach in the active microrheology of complex fluids which should reveal information about the composition of such fluids in significantly greater detail and high signal to noise.


In a network of organic and conventional pilot farms with dairy and/or arable production in Germany (www.pilotbetriebe.de) aspects of sustainability, resource efficiency, animal health and welfare and economic aspects are analysed. This is based on on-farm assessments and on whole farm modelling. In the first interdisciplinary
workshops on the project farms results were presented and scenarios were developed in a participatory approach by scientists, consultants and farmers to improve N, P and
land use efficiency as well as dairy health and welfare. Typical areas of action to optimize sustainability in these aspects were identified on the farms, e.g., complete
accounting of manure N (N balance), enrichment of crop rotations with clover grass and cover crops (humus balance), improving forage quality (productivity, nutritional
imbalances), improvement of housing conditions and grazing access (animal health and welfare). Systematic integration and detection of interconnectedness of environmental performance of production, animal welfare, resource efficiency and productivity result in a new quality in development of farm concepts.


The present invention includes a bisimine or corresponding heterocyclic, by reaction with a combination of a metal salt as a promoter of an alkylating agent, to a method of preparing the imidazolium salt. By the method of the invention, the previously known number of not achiral and chiral imidazolium salt, high purity, high optical purity can be prepared at a significantly high yield. Imidazolium salts formed from Toro cyclic to is a novel compound.


Today, quite a lot of attention is paid to the integration of information technology and medicine. E-health network development makes it possible. The principles of e-health networks imply the use of small-sized mobile medical devices - sensors and actuators. As a rule, sensors, and actuators are combined into a network and operate with other network devices: gateways, cloud servers, etc. The article discusses the network scheme, including a portable near-infrared spectrometer for molecular analysis of food products and its interaction with the Internet in the process of data collection and processing.


THE talcum-powder container, often a favorite plaything of small children, may be a source of tragedy in the home. The case reported below demonstrates a rapidly fatal course in a twenty-two-month-old child, who aspirated talcum powder while playing with such a container. Aspiration of baby powder containing stearate of zinc was reported relatively often in the past, and fatal cases due to aspiration pneumonia have been recorded.1 Since talcum has largely replaced zinc stearate as a dusting powder for babies it was anticipated that accidents caused by its inhalation would have been described. It was surprising, therefore, to find in . . .


The topic of the Thesis is ?The status of curator in the social and legal protection of children?. The work describes the legislative environment, social and legal protection of children and curator of youth, history of social and legal protection of children,the status of curator in the social protection of the population, legal and expertise competence of curator, working with vulnerable children and their families, the dilemmas of social work, the importance of activities of the curator and the possible solutions of social pathological phenomena in children and youth.


This study aims to determine the role of indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) in rejuvenating domestic tourism in the context of suppressed international tourism demand. The current study is premised on the thinking that COVID-19 has changed the way countries do tourism and domestic tourism is now recognised for its ability to help the recovery of the tourism industry post-COVID-19. The infusion of IKS in tourism strategies is seen as important in encouraging locals to visit destinations within their countries. The study is based on a review of the literature on the nexus between indigenous knowledge systems, domestic tourism and COVID-19. The study contributes to the existing literature on domestic tourism by suggesting possible solutions to the industry based on IKS. In light of recent COVID-19 events in the tourism industry at large, it is becoming extremely difficult to ignore the importance of domestic markets.


Processing fast updating data streams in real-time must reflect the most recent data. A number of technologies including Data Stream Management Systems have emerged to respond to this challenge. While running their queries in a continuous fashion on high-volume push-based data streams (e.g. sensor data, GPS coordinates, stock quotes), one of the most important optimization problems that these systems face is load management based on Quality of Service (QoS). In stream processing, QoS may depend on a number of factors like latency, freshness, quality and completeness of the results. In this work, we focus primarily on freshness of results while we consider data streams to have update semantics. To date, we have found no framework that defines a clean and systematic way of using update semantics for load management in push-based stream processing. This PhD proposes such a framework, called UpStream. In the face of overwhelming data rates, our solution to directly minimize the impact of overload on QoS is a storage-centric approach using update queues. This paper describes the UpStream framework with respect to its mission, architectural considerations, integration with a state-of-the-art stream processor, progress to date and research directions.


Mutations at both the receptor-binding domain (RBD) and the amino (N)-terminal domain (NTD) of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike (S) glycoprotein can alter its antigenicity and promote immune escape. We identified that SARS-CoV-2 lineages circulating in Brazil with mutations of concern in the RBD independently acquired convergent deletions and insertions in the NTD of the S protein, which altered the NTD antigenic-supersite and other predicted epitopes at this region. These findings support that the ongoing widespread transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in Brazil is generating new viral lineages that might be more resistant to neutralization than parental variants of concern.


Openning up is one of the most important decisions during China's economic transition.A few scholars try to explore China's domestic market segmentation from the perspective of economic globalization,and draw different conclusions.This paper builds up a dynamic game model under the background of economic globalization,and analyzes how the local governments with local protection motivation react to set up trade barriers in order to maximize their objective functions.The focus of this paper is to investigate the relationship between economic globalization,local government behavior,and domestic market segmentation.Some policy suggestions are put forward based on our theoretical analyses.The measures could be classified into two fundamental types.One measure is to improve the central government's regulations,and the other measure is to promote the transformation of local government behavior. This paper is greatly different from the existing literature in three important respects.Firstly,we borrow from the classical tariff models,and introduce a foreign region to describe the impacts of economic globalization on the domestic market segmentation.Secondly,we adopt appropriate objective functions to identify different behavior modes of local governments,and analyze how the local government behavior influences the domestic market segmentation.Thirdly,our conclusions differ from the existing literature,as we find that(i) the increase of the degree of economic globalization will raise the coefficient of trade barriers between different regions,(ii) the increase of the degree of economic globalization will not change trade barriers between different regions,(iii) the increase of the central government's strength of punishment and the transition of local government behavior from growth-mode to livelihood-mode will reduce trade barriers between different regions.Although there are some studies which focus on the domestic market segmentation under the framework of competition between local governments or center on the domestic market segmentation from the perspective of economic globalization,to the best of our knowledge,there is no literature which unifies economic globalization,local government behavior,and domestic market segmentation in an integrated framework.This paper tries to fill this gap. The policy implications of this paper are reflected in three respects.These three respects are mainly embodied in propositions 4 and 5 of this paper.Firstly,the central government should improve the political evaluation system,because it is a dominant strategy for each local government to choose the domestic market segmentation under the present political evaluation system.In order to change this kind of bad Nash equilibrium,the central government could incorporate the reduction of the domestic market segmentation into the new political evaluation system,which could induce the local governments to transform form growth-mode to livelihood-mode.Secondly,the central government should strengthen the construction of legal systems.For example,in order to induce the local governments to escape the dilemma of the bad Nash equilibrium,the central government should restrict the behavior of the local governments within an appropriate boundary on the basis of the enforcement of the established laws,and should punish the local governments if they overstep the boundary delineated by the established laws.Thirdly,as far as the effective regulation is concerned,the central government could take some financial measures to punish the local governments who adopt the action to segmentalize domestic market.Specifically,the central government could reduce the fiscal appropriation to the local governments who choose to protect local markets.At the same time,the central government could reward the local officials who do better at integrating the regional market with higher probilities of being promoted. Our models could be extended in the following ways.Firstly,there is only one foreign region in our model.We could loosen this assumption by introducing many heterogeneous foreign regions.Secondly,the impact of economic globalization on trade barriers between different regions is assumed as linear in this paper.We could extend the linear case to the nonlinear case.Thirdly,we ngelect the role of FDI in this paper.FDI could be placed in a suitable position in future research.


ABSTRACT Alasdair MacIntyre's latest book, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, confirms his interest in Marxism as a form of critique. MacIntyre's debt to Marx has been central to recent scholarship, strengthening his reception as a radical thinker. This article examines the relationship between politics and ethics in MacIntyre and Marx. Following Aristotle, MacIntyre sees ethics as part of political inquiry. Marx features in Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity to help confront the "ethics-of-the-market" and the "ethics-of-the-state." This renewed engagement demands a reassessment of his critique of Marx. MacIntyre argues Marx lacks a sufficient account of the human good. However, MacIntyre fails to consider the implications of his own characterisation of Marx's Aristotelianism. Marx develops an ethical understanding derived from an Aristotelian social ontology, elaborated first in the "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts," with the concept of "species-being," and, then, in the value-form theory in Capital. Marx's teleological concept of labour supplies his social theory with an ethical structure. I argue MacIntyre's critique of Marx, and in turn C. L. R. James, underplays the importance of this concept of labour in founding a collective politics of resistance, and instead, retreats to the politics of the local community.


With the help of the physical laws of flow, it is possible to describe the entire human blood circulation. However, this requires precise knowledge of the individual parameters. Within this, the determination of the flow rate included in the law of continuity is essential. Together with the data of the heart and circulation examination procedures, in order to establish the average human blood circulation, an intermediate velocity value must be selected, which is located in the middle between the two extreme velocities of the blood circulation. Another important factor from the point of view of the structure and operation of the model is the value of the earth's surface gravity. By finding the average flow speed value and using 'g', a torus-shaped circulation can be created, which can actually reflect the circulation conditions. By further refining the model, the pulmonary and systemic circulations can be separated and a 'folded figure eight' model can be formed. This realistically reflects the different sizes, flow and pressure conditions of the two blood circulations, as well as the work of the left and right sides of the heart.


Background. The aim of the research was to analyze the changing exercising frequency, the well-being, the mental health, and the social relationships before and during the curfew of the COVID-19 first wave. Material and methods. The data collection was May-June in 2020 via an online questionnaire survey amongst the sportsmen and professionals in the sports sector. The descriptive and inferential statistical methods were used with the SPSS 27.0 software (Chi-square test, Wilcoxon, Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests). Results. The respondents were 44.17% female and 55.83% male. The average age was 36.36 +/- 16.52 years. The sample was classified into four sectors: elite sportsmen (20.60%), recreational sportsmen (34.29%), sports professionals (28.21%) and multiple roles (16.90%). There was a significant difference at the exercising frequency before and during the curfew between the sectors (p<0.001). The well-being, the mental health and the social relations did not show any significant differences. Regarding physical activity, there were decreases in every category:-268.36 minutes weekly average in the elite sportsmen,-194.90 minutes weekly average in the recreational sportsmen and-250.33 minutes weekly average in the multiple roles' category (p<0.001). Conclusions. The curfew of the COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on the exercising frequency and physical activity amongst the sportsmen and professionals in the sports sector.


The Huanggangliang deposit in Inner Mongolia is a large-size Fe-Sn polymetallic deposit in the central-southern section of Da Hinggan Ling area, where Jurassic-Cretaceous volcanic-plutonic rocks are widespread. Thus the deposit is regarded as an epigenetic hydrothermal deposit genetically related to the Mesozoic magmatism. Based on a study of geochemical characteristics of this deposit combined with the deposit geology, the authors have reached the following conclusions: (1)the stratabound ore-bearing skarn associated with magnetite ore and micro-disseminated tin is a peculiar example of exhalites;(2)REE geochemical characteristics show that the stratabound skarn in this deposit is different remarkably from the typical magmatic-hydrothermal contact metasomatic skarn but is quite similar to the modern sea floor hydrothermal fluid sedex deposit and associated hydrothermal sedimentary rock, and hence it should genetically belong to the hydrothermal exhalative type;(3)the relationship between carbon and oxygen isotopes in the stratabound ore-bearing skarn is on the whole comparable with that of many sedex-type sulfide ores and associated exhalites,implying a similar genesis for these deposits.


The safety operation of pipelines is extremely important in gas and petrochemical industries due to the financial cost and the potential environmental damage. In his sense, leakage detection in pipeline usage is of great value and should draw particular attention on. Among the various methods concerning the leakage detection, model-based algorithms are gaining an increasing popularity compared with other conventional ones. In this paper, an improved numerical method of gas detection with high accuracy is proposed. A considerate number of leakage location simulations are conducted based on data generated by professional simulation software Flow Master. The comparison of results of the conventional and the improved algorithm shows that the improved one performed better under various conditions in terms of location accuracy.


Place for me takes the form of memory and language. --Ilan Stavan, "The Other Voice" The locus of truth is always extraterritorial; its diffusion is made clandestine by the barbed wire and watch-towers of national dogma. --George Steiner, "Our Homeland, The Text" Colonialism and the Holocaust have jointly conspired to create a legacy of global displacement, in which people are robbed of their homeland and the language in which their culture has been formed. Disparate diasporic communities are now faced with the shared struggle of articulating a cultural identity in which history and home reside in language, rather than nation, and in which language itself must be recreated so as to bespeak the specificity of cultural experience. The situations of Jewish and Caribbean writers seem a particularly useful source of comparison, in that the Jewish-originated term diaspora becomes a significant one for understanding Caribbean experiences, and the Caribbean idea of language as home becomes reciprocally edifying with respect to Jewish American writing. Both Caribbean and Jewish American communities strive to mold English into a language which can become a home within diaspora. For Caribbean women writers the task is doubly challenging: not only must they struggle to subvert aspects of the language which are culturally alien, but they are further left to grapple with the patriarchal assumptions in which English is rooted. Jewish American writers confront a different form of double alienation in the form of a double diaspora: first from the symbolic and biblical homeland of Palestine, and then again after the Holocaust and the death of both German-Jewish and Yiddish culture. The term diaspora was originally coined to describe the circumstances of the Jews who lived outside of Palestine after the Babylonian exile. Since then, its application has been enlarged to include any group who has been scattered far from its homeland, particularly with reference to the descendants of Africans who were torn from their native continent and brought to the "New World" as slaves beginning in the seventeenth century. The linguistic yoking of diasporic Jews and Blacks is indicative of the common problems they face in trying to create a sense of identity and cultural continuity in diaspora. Writers from both groups themselves openly acknowledge the similarity of the problem that they face. Among Caribbean women writers, Michelle Cliff seems to feel particularly keenly the parallels between the plight of the Jews and that of Caribbean peoples. In The Land of Look Behind, she begins the poem "A Visit to the Secret Annex" with a comparison between the horrors of the Holocaust and those inflicted by colonialism in the Caribbean, which results in a particular sense of resonance between herself and Anne Frank: "I was born later / not into this world. / The trees were not the same / The horrors not exact--but similar" (104). In Abeng as well, the narrator approaches her own Caribbean history through learning about the Holocaust. For her, Anne Frank becomes a symbol of both a voice which survived, in writing, the cultural annihilation of the Holocaust, and also of a female voice strong enough to contest the white, male version of history Cliff has been handed by her father. Jewish parallels resonate for Michelle Cliff not only in terms of the Holocaust but also in terms of the dilemmas posed by the ability to pass as white. In The Land of Look Behind, Cliff mentions the Maranos, the Jews in fifteenth century Spain who were forced to pretend they had converted to Christianity. In the same text, she writes of light-skinned Jamaicans like herself who "were able to pass into the white American world--saving their blackness for other Jamaicans or for trips home; in some cases, forgetting it altogether" (60). The danger of succumbing to the pressure to pass, both culturally and physically, and as a result forgetting, is what gives the urgency to Cliff's project of writing herself back into her history and culture. …


The high mortality rate from heart disease requires the development of new therapeutic approaches. Traditional treatments can provide a compensatory effect, improve the patient's quality of life, but not eliminate myocardial loss. Preclinical studies indicate that the regeneration of cardiac tissue can be stimulated through transplantation of stem and progenitor cells.The review describes clinical trials of myocardial injury therapy using regional stem cells, progenitor cells, and cells differentiated from ESC/iPSCs. The results of clinical studies have confirmed the safety and availability of cell therapy for myocardial injury. However, insufficient knowledge of the mechanisms of action of transplanted cells on the myocardium and the rapid deployment of clinical trials initiated by the success of preclinical trials made it possible to observe, at best, only a moderate therapeutic effect. In studies using regional stem cells, it was not possible to reliably confirm their ability to differentiate into cardiomyocytes and integrate into the myocardium, and the observed improvements in heart function are associated with paracrine signaling. Cardiac ESC/iPSC derivatives are more suitable for the restoration of the lost myocardium, but since the number of clinical trials with these types of cells is still small, additional studies are required to confirm their safety and efficacy.When developing the design of future clinical trials of cell therapy, it is necessary to strictly take into account the mechanism of cell action, the pathophysiology of the disease, and select the optimal set of endpoints. The experience of the conducted research leads to an understanding of the need to develop personalized cell therapy, according to which the choice of the source of cells and the route of administration should be based on the individual characteristics of the patient.The growing number of clinical trials and the active study of the mechanisms of action of transplanted cells on damaged myocardium suggest that this type of cell therapy has a chance to enter clinical practice in the near future.Received 4 October 2021. Revised 13 December 2021. Accepted 20 December 2021.Funding: The study did not have sponsorship.Conflict of interest: Authors declare no conflict of interest.Contribution of the authors: The authors contributed equally to this article.


A 22-year-old gravida 2, para 1 woman was seen in the emergency department of a community hospital at 37 weeks' gestation. She had experienced a normal antenatal course and 5 years previously had given birth to a live girl. She had taken no medications during pregnancy and had no history of alcohol or drug abuse. An hour and a half earlier she had suffered a bite on her left thumb while separating two cats that were fighting. There was a single red spot on the thumb. Because her immunization was unclear, tetanus toxoid was administered. The wound was irrigated with'chlorhexidine gluconate and cetrimide, and she was discharged. The next evening the woman presented with crampy lower abdominal pain. Her heart rate was


Let G = (V,X) be a semigraph. The concepts of adjacency domination number, end vertex adjacency domination number and consecutive adjacency domination number of a semigraph is introduced and studied in [6]. Here an attempt is made to study the concept of degree equitable domination number [8] for these three parameters and obtained characterizations for degree equitable minimal (consecutive) adjacency domination number for semigraph.


Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) tags have proven to be excellent labels for tissue bioimaging because of their low interference from biological matrices, high photostability, and possibility for using as theranostic agents. Although SERS tags are widely used for the imaging of tumors in vivo, in practice, the low contrast of the tag accumulation in the tissue and strong light scattering can significantly affect their detectability. In this work, we studied these effects by using a phantom of tumor tissue with incorporated SERS tags. The phantom is a 2 mm sphere of calcium alginate with incorporated SERS tags at a concentration of 0.625 × 108–2 × 109 cm−3. To simulate the surrounding medium with differing turbidities, the phantom was placed in a 4 mm thick agarose gel containing intralipid at a concentration of 0–1%. SERS bioimaging was carried out using standard backscattering geometry with different light focusing conditions. We found that shielding the phantom with a turbid medium led not only to a decrease in detectability but also to a decrease in the apparent size of the imaging object. Our results can help develop more accurate algorithms for processing SERS data for bioimaging.


INTRODUCTIONOne need not read The Fallacies of States' Rights and The Upside-Down Constitution1 in their entirety or with any great attention to perceive the gulf that separates the authors' views on constitutional theory and federalism. Professor Sotirios Barber thinks in terms of constitutional aspirations, derived from the Constitution's capacious Preamble.2 I am more concerned with who can do what to whom under the Constitution's operative provisions, and skeptical of Marxist-Brennanist theorizing that mows down the legal text and structure.3 Professor Barber champions a "positive constitutionalism," which holds that "constitution makers establish governments chiefly to do good things for people"4 - in contradistinction to a "negative constitutionalism" of rights and institutions, which seeks to restrain government and which is the province of nihilists, nitwits, and intellectual thugs.5 I believe that empowering and limiting purposes and mechanisms go hand-in-hand in a limited Constitution; that Madison et al. sort of got that; and that a constitutional theory that starts with an exuberant commitment "to do good things for people" - qualified by a grudging concession to some negative "functions"6 - is better suited to an autocracy than to America. Professor Barber envisions a Constitution of "leaders" and a "benighted mass" of "followers";7 I suspect that Americans are more comfortable in thinking of themselves as citizens and of politicians as their agents, and that the Constitution enshrines that model. Professor Barber hankers for (though he despairs of) a politics of "secular public reasonableness";8 to my mind, what he advocates is the dictatorship of relativism.9 I am concerned about a politics that, in "do[ing] good things for people," has left the nation's finances in ruins and future generations deep in debt. The Upside-Down Constitution engages the federalism aspects of that problem;10 Fallacies ignores it.Short of someone rising from the dead, there is no bridging this chasm. The more limited subject of this Essay is the constitutional structure of American federalism and, more briefly, its present state and utility. While that is also the ostensible ground of Fallacies, the book operates at too high a level of abstraction to have much useful to say on those subjects. What little it does have to say is mostly wrong.I. OF MARSHALL AND M'CULLOCHProfessor Barber distinguishes three forms of federalism. He makes a first- order distinction between "states' rights or dual federalism," which insists on separate, judicially cognizable federal and state "spheres"; and "nationalist" federalism, which rejects the two-spheres model.11 He then makes a second- order distinction between two forms of nationalist federalism: "Marshallian federalism," which Professor Barber invents and propounds; and "process federalism," which he rejects.12 The two hang together in their rejection of any enforceable states' right to protect enclaves of power.13 They differ in that Marshallian federalism propounds substantive national ends, whereas process federalism seeks to deny them.14 The foundational decision for Professor Barber's Marshallian federalism is M'Culloch v. Maryland15 - or rather, a highly idiosyncratic version of that celebrated opinion.In Professor Barber's view, M'Culloch stands for a "positive," "ends- oriented," instrumentalist constitutionalism, as distinct from a "negative" "constitutionalism of institutions and rights."16 "Let the end be legitimate," Chief Justice Marshall famously wrote, "let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional."17 The ends, Professor Barber says, we get from the Constitution's Preamble, at least as a first approximation.18 They are limited in number but very broad: the general welfare, justice, and the common defense. …


A wearable device (10) and a control method therefor. The wearable device (10) comprises a device body (101) and a wearing portion (102) for wearing the device body (101) on a human body. The device body (101) is internally provided with a micro-control unit for controlling the running of the wearable device (10); and the wearing portion (102) is internally provided with one or more linear motors, wherein each linear motor is connected to the micro-control unit by means of a control line, and when the linear motor receives a specified signal of the micro-control unit, the linear motor vibrates correspondingly. One or more linear motors are arranged on the wearing portion (102) of the wearable device (10), and the linear motor is controlled to vibrate when receiving the specified signal, so that a portable vibrotactile feedback scheme is provided for a user, thereby enhancing the use experience of the user of the wearable device (10).


An UPLC-MS/MS method was established for the determination of gallic acid, protocatechuic acid,quercitrin, myricitrin and hirsutrin in Relinqing granules. A Waters BEH C18column was used with the mobile phase of0.1% formic acid acetonitrile solution-0.1% formic acid aqueous solution by gradient elution. Multiple-reaction monitoring(MRM) scanning mode was employed for quantification with switching electrospray ion source polarity in positive/negative mode. The calibration curves for gallic acid, protocatechuic acid, quercitrin, myricitrin and hirsutrin were linear in the concentration ranges of 2.708- 219.355, 0.116- 9.426, 0.081- 6.581, 0.047- 3.819 and 0.055- 4.452 g/ml.Their average recoveries were 98.94%- 102.16%, with RSDs less than 3%. The total content of the five components in Relinqing granules was 30.85- 40.71 mg per package.


The paper describes a training project in the changing circumstances curently experienced in Russia. The project's purpose was to prepare librarians from the CIS to train other librarians in the tools and technologies of librarianship, in developing senior administrative cadres for the times of change, and in library management. If you want to help a hungry man do not do the fishing for him but provide him with a fishing-rod.


The utility model discloses a pipe clamp, and further discloses a pipe transport machine with the pipe clamp. The pipe clamp comprises an upper clamping block, a lower clamping block, a first connecting rod, a second connecting rod and a hydraulic cylinder hinged on the lower clamping block. A cavity used for accommodating a pipeline is formed between the upper clamping block and the lower clamping block; one end of the first connecting rod is hinged on the lower clamping block; one end of the second connecting rod is hinged on the upper clamping block; the other end of the first connecting rod and the other end of the second connecting rod are together hinged on a piston rod of the hydraulic cylinder; and when the lower clamping block and the upper clamping block are in a pipeline clamping state, the piston rod is in a state of maximum elongation. The pipe clamp can still clamp the pipeline when the hydraulic cylinder leaks air or a hydraulic lock is out of order, and therefore safety performance of the pipe clam is improved.


The interaction of oxide film with molten flux during aluminum brazing has been studied by means of X-ray powder diffraction. The following conclusions have been deduced: The swell- ing of aluminum oxide film is caused by Li~+ inserting into the vacancies of octahedral or tetrahedral structure of 0 atom skeleton in у-Al_2O_3 . The strength of oxide film decreases as the crytallinity increases by the treating of flux containing LiF.


We present a novel computationally efficient approach for investigating the effect of surface roughness on the fluid flow in discrete fracture networks at low Reynolds number. The effect of parallel and series fracture arrangements on the flow rate and hydraulic resistance was studied numerically by patching Hele-Shaw (HS) cells to represent the network. In this analysis, the impact of surface roughness was studied in different arrangements of the network. For this aim, four models with different sequences of fracture connections were studied. The validity of the models was assessed by comparing the results with solutions of the full Navier-Stokes equations (NSE). The approximate hydraulic resistance and flow rate calculated by the HS method were found to be in good agreement with the NSE (less than 7% deviation). Results suggest a quadratic relationship between the network hydraulic resistance and the joint roughness coefficient (JRC). Notably, an increase in surface roughness caused a growth in hydraulic resistance and a fall in flow rate. Further insight was provided by drawing an analogy between resistors in electrical circuits and fractures in networks.


In many assemblies of moving components, contact problems under various lubrication conditions are lifetime-limiting. There, relative motion of contacting bodies, combined with high loads transmitted via the contact surface lead to fretting fatigue failure. For a reliable prediction of in service performance load type, different damage and failure mechanisms that may be activated during operation have to be known. In this contribution selected results of a currently conducted research project are presented. The aim of this study was to examine the material behaviour of a surface stressed steel. The influence of the fretting regime on fatigue properties has been investigated.Copyright © 2012 by ASME


The purpose of this paper is to compare of optimized demand of emergency generators (EGs) for minimizing fuel consumption and EGs model with power grid frequency using a hospital load with a photovoltaic power generation system (PV). When a power failure occurs caused by disasters or utility grid trouble, EGs are installed in a large hospital, that start up within a few tens of seconds after the power failure and supply the power to the whole hospital. In previous work, we have proposed an optimum method of energy scheduling for a combination of the EGs with PV using linear programing due to minimization of fuel consumption for driving EGs as long as possible. However, especially in cloudy sky, the output fluctuation of the PV becomes large, and the influence on PV power balance in the hospital cannot be ignored. This paper presents a comparison of the optimized demand of EGs for minimizing fuel consumption using linear programming and our developed EGs model considering grid frequency with MATLAB/ Simulink using the actual hospital load for one week.


We conduct hard X-ray to radio multiwavelength spectral energy distribution (SED) decomposition for 57 local luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxies observed with the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array and/or Swift/Burst Alert Telescope in the GOALS sample. We modify the latest SED-fitting code X-CIGALE by implementing the infrared (IR) CLUMPY model, allowing us to conduct the multiwavelength study with the X-ray torus model XCLUMPY self-consistently. Adopting the torus parameters obtained by the X-ray fitting, we estimate the properties of the host galaxies, active galactic nucleus (AGN) tori, and polar dust. The star formation rates (SFRs) become larger with merger stage and most of them are above the main sequence. The SFRs are correlated with radio luminosity, indicating starburst emission is dominant in the radio band. Although polar-dust extinction is much smaller than torus extinction, the UV-to-IR (mainly IR) polar dust luminosities are ∼2 times larger than the torus ones. The polar-dust temperature decreases while the physical size, estimated by the temperature and dust sublimation radius, increases with AGN luminosity from a few tens of parsec (early mergers) to kiloparsec scales (late mergers), where the polar dust likely comes from expanding (i.e., evolving) dusty outflows. A comparison between the SFRs and intrinsic AGN luminosities suggests that starbursts occur first and AGNs arise later, and overall their growth rates follow the simultaneous coevolution local galaxy–SMBH mass relation. We confirm the coexistence of intense starbursts, AGNs, and large-scale outflows in late mergers, supporting a standard AGN feedback scenario.


It usually starts with a case report. In this issue of Veterinary Quarterly Dr Pedersen and co-workers report on ''Demonstration of non-specific colitis and increased crypt depth in colon of weaned pigs with diarrhea'' in their case report. I have read it with great pleasure and as is common with case reports, it raises various questions. For instance, did histopathology in the pigs reveal normal findings in small intestine in contrast to the increased crypt depth in colon? Not only does this work support the previous statement that the etiology and epidemiology of non-specific colitis might be associated with wheat-based diets (Thomson et al. 2007), but the possible association between wheat and the increased crypt depth in colon in their case report reminds me of potential involvement of gluten (sensitivity). Gluten is the composite of a gliadin and a glutelin, which is conjoined with starch in the endosperm of various cereals like wheat. Coeliac disease (CD) is an auto-immune inflammatory disorder in humans characterized by a partial or total villous atrophy of the proximal small intestine occurring after ingestion of gluten in genetically predisposed patients (Tack et al. 2010). Recently, the so-called gluten sensitivity (GS) has received much interest in human medicine, although the limits and possible overlap between GS and CD remain poorly defined (Troncone and Jabri 2011). However, in GS antibodies to native gliadin (the alcohol-soluble part of gluten) are more pronounced (Volta et al. 2011). In comparison, GS has not received much attention in veterinary medicine yet. The syndrome has been described both in the Irish Setter dog (Hall and Batt 1991; Daminet 1996) and the Rhesus Macaque (Bethune et al. 2008). In this issue of Veterinary Quarterly, it is also addressed in the equine species. To my surprise, information on GS in the porcine species is virtually absent, thereby illustrating the need for excellent observations in case reports to start with.


This study aims to determine : (1) The great influence of pedagogis competence, personality, social, professional teacher assessment; (2) The great influence of pedagogis competency of teachers of UKG; (3) The great influence of personality on the competence of UKG; (4) The great influence of social competence of teacher's of UKG; (5) The great influence of teacher professional competency of UKG; (6) The great influence of pedagogis compentence, professional competence and value UKG of ability connection; (7) The great influence of the competence of pedagogis connection; (8) The great influence of the ability of the teacher's professional ability connection; (9) The great influence of the teacher's ability of UKG value connectionl; (10) The great improvements workshop for the teachers of mathematics in Senior High School Binjai. This research is quasi experiment. The population of the research was the whole mathematics teacher in SMPN in Binjai. The writer take selected example from the five schools chosen at random is SMPN 2, SMPN 3, SMPN 9, SMPN 10, SMPN 11 Binjai City. The instrument used consisted of personality competency question form, social competence question form, the best of professional competence and test connection capabilities. The instrument is declared to have qualified the validity coefficient of reliability 0,932, 0,943, 0,709, dan 0,440 consecutive to the personality competence question form, social competence question form, the test of professional competence and test connection capabilities. In study, data were analyzed using descriptive statistics analysis and statistical analysis of inferensial. Statistical analysis of the data done path analysis. The result show that: (1) The great influence of pendagogis, personality, social, and math teacher's professional competencies simultaneously and siqnificantly to the value of UKG teacher is 75,86 %; (2) The great influence of pendagogis competence math teacher value of UKG is 8,35%; (3) The great influence of personality on the competence of UKG is 6,76; (4) The great influence of social competence of teacher's of UKG is 4,22%; (5) The great influence of teacher professional competency of UKG is 9,49%; (6) The great influence of pendagogis compentence and the value of UKG simultaneously and significantly to the ability of connection of 79,03%; (7) The great influence of the competence of pendagogis math teacher to the ability connection math teacher SMPN in Binjai City is 5,20%; (8) The great influence value of UKG math teacher of the ability connection is 60,68%; (9) The magnitude of the impact is not direct connection capabilities of pedagogis competence through value UKG is 22,50%'; (10) The average value of syllabus preparation of workshop participants , lesson plan, media,teori, and assessment instruments from stage 1 to stage 2 took place a fairly significant increase of 30,5.


Abstract Older adults living in subsidized housing experience health disparities including disproportionate rates of social isolation and nursing home admission. Little is known about how social relationships and social environment influence aging in place for this population. We interviewed 58 residents aged 62 or older. Qualitative thematic analyses revealed that social relationships both inside and outside the building contributed to residents' experience of aging in place. Relationships with other residents and staff members provided social support, while connections to family and friends outside the building "opened up" the residents' world and provided a sense of connection to the larger community. Social and physical environment also contributed, with residents' ability to move between private and public spaces leading to feelings of freedom and independence. Discussion focuses on expanding definitions of aging in place to encompass residents' experiences and implications for improving aging in place for this population.


In many nuclear power plants, existing storage racks are being replaced with high-density racks to accommodate the increasing inventory of spent fuel. In the hypothetical design considered here, the high-density arrangement of fuel assemblies, or consolidated fuel canisters, is accomplished through the use of borated stainless steel (BSS) plates acting as neutron absorbers. No structural benefit from the BSS is assumed. This paper describes the methods used to perform seismic analysis of high density spent fuel storage racks. The sensitivity of important parameters such as the effect of variation of coefficients of friction between the rack legs and the pool floor and fuel loading conditions (consolidated and unconsolidated) are also discussed in the paper. Results of this study are presented. The high-density fuel racks are simply supported by the pool floor with no structural connections to adjacent racks or to the pool walls or floor. Therefore, the racks are free standing and may slide and tip. Several time history, nonlinear, seismic analyses are required to account for variations in the coefficient of friction, rack loading configuration, and the type of the seismic event. This paper presents several of the mathematical models usually used. Friction cannot be precisely predicted, so amore » range of friction coefficients is assumed. The range assumed for the analysis is 0.2 to 0.8. A detailed model representing a single rack is used to evaluate the 3-D loading effects. This model is a controlling case for the stress analysis. A 2-D multi-rack model representing a row of racks between the spent fuel pool walls is used to evaluate the change in gaps between racks. The racks are normally analyzed for the fuel loading conditions of consolidated, full, empty, and half-loaded with fuel assemblies.« less


Political changes, especially profound ones with a revolutionary potential, always hold serious consequences for the entire economic system of a country in general, and the central bank and its monetary functions in particular. This is even more true in the case of emerging countries with unsettled political circumstances and structures, and with a historic legacy such as the former apartheid system in South Africa. The vexing question then naturally arises what consequences such wide-ranging and profound political changes might have for, inter alia, the central bank of a country. If the transformation takes place against the backdrop of a world-wide accepted increase in the importance of the CBI on the one hand, but involves a political grouping (the ANC) with an initial inclination towards socialism and an alliance with the Communist Party, also involving many jobless and disadvantaged stakeholders on the other, the scene is prepared for an interesting public debate. Such was the situation in South Africa during the early and middle 1990s.
The importance of central bank independence (CBI) derives from the argument that the power to create money should be separated from the power to spend it. Governments are more short term orientated, have an inflationary inclination and are tempted to spend money in order to create favourable economic and political environments just before elections. Various studies indicate lower inflation in those countries where independence of their central banks is the strongest. A prime example in this regard used to be the position and policy of Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank. Renowned for its strong stance against inflation and political intervention, this bank obtained wide recognition for its successful monetary policy leading to consistently low inflation. This, in turn, was ascribed to its persistent opposition to political interference. Many other countries around the globe have also increased the independence of their central banks, for example New Zealand, Chile, Britain, France and many South American countries.
South Africa belongs to this league because it has improved its central bank's independence both before and after democratisation. Independence for the SARB was not an explicit issue or focal point of debate with regard to monetary matters during a large part of the 1970s and 1980s. However, during the early years of the 1990s it was increasingly discussed more openly and extensively, especially after the end of the apartheid era and the establishment of the above-mentioned new political dispensation and new constitution. The question naturally arises as to the differences between the pre- and post-democratisation versions of CBI in South Africa. The CBI concept has many political connotations and implications and a move either towards or away from democratisation might influence a central bank's independence.
This article compares the pre- and post-democratisation situation regarding CBI in South Africa, not only for its own sake, but also to uncover the impact of political transformation on CBI. The discussion of the pre-democratisation phase will especially emphasise developments since 1984, when the well-known De Kock report on monetary policy was released. The post-democratisation phase, on the other hand, started in 1994 with the institution of the Government of National Unity. During 1996 the ANC established a new government and became the sole and effective governing body in the country. The impact of the new government and post-democratisation phase on the SARB became even more explicit when the first ANC-appointed governor assumed office in 1999. It is specifically this phase that the article endeavours to compare with the prior pre-democratisation phase. In pursuing this aim, Section 1 first develops criteria for assessing legal CBI. Political as well as economic yardsticks of the concept will be discussed, emanating from the flood of research on CBI since the 1980s and 1990s. Section 2 focuses on the application of the political yardsticks to the pre-and post-apartheid CBI, whereas Section 3 compares the economic criteria. The results are then presented in a tabulated form to simplify comparison. Section 4 presents a conclusion.


Existing research analyzes the effects of cross-national and temporal variation in income inequality on public opinion; however, research has failed to explore the impact of variation in inequality across citizens� local residential context. This article analyzes the impact of local inequality on citizens� belief in a core facet of the American ethos�meritocracy. We advance conditional effects hypotheses that collectively argue that the effect of residing in a high-inequality context will be moderated by individual income. Utilizing national survey data, we demonstrate that residing in more unequal counties heightens rejection of meritocracy among low-income residents and bolsters adherence among high-income residents. In relatively equal counties, we find no significant differences between high- and low-income citizens. We conclude by discussing the implications of class-based polarization found in response to local inequality with respect to current debates over the consequences of income inequality for American democracy.


ABSTRACT The Salton Trough--the northwest landward extension of the Gulf of California structural depression--is filled primarily with fine-grained sandstones and siltstones that constitute the Colorado River delta. These rocks have an aggregate thickness of approximately 20,000 feet and are all of late Cenozoic age. Detritus that makes up the delta was eroded primarily from Mesozoic sedimentary rocks of the upper Colorado River drainage basin. This detritus consists of dominant quartz and calcite, subordinate dolomite, plagioclase, K-feldspar (both monoclinic and triclinic), montmorillonite, illite and kaolinite, and minor magnetite, zircon, leucoxene, clinozoisite, biotite, and chlorite. Wide ranges in both major and minor elements can be correlated with grain size and clay content of the sa ples. Lead isotope data from the acid-insoluble fraction of Colorado River delta samples from the Salton Trough indicate that the mean age of the detritus is 1700 m.y., and strontium isotope data indicate that the mean age is greater than 500 m.y. In view of the small percentage of exposed Precambrian rock in the upper Colorado River drainage basin, the bulk of the acid-insoluble detritus probably consists of reworked detritus of Precambrian age.


In this paper, aiming at the problem of inaccurate judgment of air gap fault detection results of asynchronous motors of different models, powers and manufacturers, a coordinate parameter correction and spectrum parameter processing method in the process of motor diagnosis is designed. In the coordinate parameter correction method, three-phase current signals are used for FFT transformation, and the corresponding current efficiency is converted according to the set current sensor range. Averaging, taking the three-phase current and the average value as the data source of sector division, dividing and calculating the coordinate parameters of the three-phase current and the average value according to the sector, and obtaining four coordinate reference parameters used as the motor fault diagnosis evaluation standard; According to the different content of fault feature information in different frequency sections, the spectral parameter processing method compresses the information according to different resolutions, extracts its symmetry information and absolute value information, reprocesses the information by using different excitation functions, adds probability parameters, normalizes the spectral information in different sections, and finally obtains the maximum parameter as a dimension in fault diagnosis evaluation by using 1-norm excitation function. This method increases the evaluation dimension in the evaluation mechanism of motor air gap fault diagnosis, improves the evaluation system and improves the accuracy of diagnosis. The method solves the problems that the traditional motor air gap fault detection method has inaccurate evaluation results in different motors and is not uniform in different loads.


In this paper, we question the impact of crowdsourcing on organizational forms, aiming to provide a theoretical background for further empirical research on the topic. Firms, in their crowdsourcing...


This paper deals with the initial boundary value problem for a class of nonlinear Kirchhoff-type equations with strong dissipative and source terms in a bounded domain, where and are constants. We obtain the global existence of solutions by constructing a stable set in and show the energy exponential decay estimate by applying a lemma of V. Komornik.


Lettuce, endive (escarole), spinach, and celery are members of different plant families, but share many of the same viral problems. In New York most of these crops are produced on organic soils, but they may also be grown on mineral soils. Because these crops are often planted near one another, the viruses or other agents infecting the crops are the same, and they are transmitted by the same insect vectors. The viruses infecting lettuce or endive include lettuce mosaic virus (LMV), cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), turnip mosaic virus (TuMV), broadbean wilt virus (BBWV), Bidens mottle virus (BiMV), and beet western yellows virus (BWYV). Additional organisms infecting lettuce are lettuce big vein agent (LBV A) and aster yellows mycoplasma (AY). The viruses infecting spinach in New York include LMV, CMV, BBWV, and TuMV. The two most important virus diseases of celery are CMV and celery mosaic virus (CeMV); the occurence of aster yellows mycoplasma (A Y) depends upon the prevalence of the leafhopper vector.


This paper investigated the performance and characteristics of microstrip grid array antenna (MGAA) on three different substrates which are Rogers RT5880LZ, Taconic RF-43, and Fr-4. For this work, the proposed MGAA has been designed at 15 GHz for 5G mobile communication application. The proposed microstrip grid array antenna consists of 12 cells block with 19 radiating elements and was feed using the 50 Ω coaxial port from the ground plane. A comprehensive study on the effect of substrate on the performance of MGAA is carried out. S-parameters, gain, and efficiency of MGAA on all those substrates have been used as parameters in determining the performance of proposed antenna in order to fulfill the design criteria for 5G mobile communication application. The design and simulation process of MGAA was done in CST Microwave Studio Software


Parisian audiences of the 1830s and 1840s were well acquainted with the custom of musical borrowing. In vaudevilles, they heard melodies taken from folk-songs along with the original tunes vaudeville conductors composed for such works.' In melodramas, they heard the strains of familiar arias in the overtures and instrumental refrains.2 At the concerts given by virtuosos, they heard, buried under the arpeggios and flourishes, wellknown tunes from both operas and folk-songs.3 At the Opera, in performances of foreign operas, they heard both the music of the opera itself and a pastiche of borrowings from other works: for the Opera's staging Don Giovanni in 1834, for example, Franqois Henri J. Blaze (better known as Castil-Blaze) was charged with the task of providing music for ' . .. the dance airs, marches, final chorus, entr'actes, in short, all of the accessories necessary for producing Don Giovanni at the Paris Opera'4 he did so by borrowing from Mozart's piano sonatas, symphonies, masses, Die Zauberflite, and La Clemenza di Tito. Parisians during this era were also much taken with the opera pastiche, a genre which consisted entirely of borrowed music. Many such works were performed in the Boulevard theatres and at the Opera as well,5 though they did not always meet with the approval of critics (Hector Berlioz even calling Castil-Blaze a 'veterinarian' for his efforts in this regard). Opera audiences also encountered borrowed music in balletpantomime scores.6 Indeed, since the breaking off of ballet from opera with the first appearance of the ballet d'action at the Opera in the 1770s, Parisian ballet composers had made free use of music appropriated from other sources. So slight is the role of original music in some of the early scores, in fact, that in several cases the identity of the composer or arranger is today difficult, or impossible, to discern.7 Though composers began to contribute more original music to ballet scores around the beginning of the 19th century, they continued to make use of borrowed music well into the 1830s and 1840s.


Under the names myohaematin and histohaematin MacMunn (1884-1886) described a respiratory pigment, which he found in muscles and other tissues of representatives of almost all the orders of the animal kingdom. He found that this pigment, in the reduced state, gives a characteristic spectrum, with four absorption bands occupying the following positions: 615—593/567·5—561/554·5—546/532—511/. When oxidized, the pigment does not show absorption bands. In 1887 MacMunn described a method by which it can be extracted in a "modified form" from the muscles of birds and mammals. He found the pectoral muscle of a pigeon to be the most suitable material for the extraction of "myohaematin," in the belief that it was the sole colouring matter of the muscles in a pigeon bled to death. From this "modified myohaematin" he also obtained other derivatives, such as acid haematin and haematoporphyrin, and he finally arrived at the conclusion that myo- and histohaematin are respiratory pigments different and independent from haemoglobin and its derivatives. In 1889 Levy carefully repeated MacMunn's experiments in extracting myohaematin from muscles of birds and mammals and obtained the substance described by MacMunn as "modified myohaematin." But he regarded this substance as an ordinary haemochromogen, derived from haemoglobin.


The article is an attempt to fi nd answers to the fundamental questions of which Roman province the individual islands belonged to and from when. The literature on the subject frequently presents the opinion that some of the Aegean Islands were incorporated into the province of Asia at the moment of its creation. The status of the other islands was, in turn, regulated by Augustus. After a meticulous analysis of sources, the author shows that such an image is oversimplifi ed. The administrative affi liation of the individual islands changed depending on the political circumstances and the good or bad will of the Roman generals operating in the East. The eff orts of the islanders themselves were also not without signifi cance. The locations of the individual Aegean Islands were very diff erent, and some of them formally became part of the Roman Empire only during the Flavian rule.


Although Combs and Welch reported a trend of decreasing racial differences in abortion attitudes, Hall and Ferree used data from the 1982 General Social Survey to argue that racial differences were not declining. This paper updates this debate through the 1988 General Social Survey and concludes that racial differences have indeed declined over time. Moreover, when new religious items introduced in the 1984 survey are included in the multivariate analysis, blacks are not significantly different from whites in their support of legal abortion. This finding obscures a more interesting pattern, however, of offsetting, statistically significant racial differences among respondents of the same gender-black men are significantly less supportive of abortion than white men, and black women are significantly more supportive than white women. Social scientists have consistently reported that blacks are less supportive of legal abortion than whites, even after controls for socioeconomic status and other demographic variables, gender-role attitudes, attitudes toward sexual behavior, and religion (Combs and Welch, 1982; Hall and Ferree, 1986; Secret, 1987). These differences are surprising in light of differences in abortion rates: black women are twice as likely to have abortions as whites, a ratio which has held relatively constant for more than a decade (Henshaw and Silverman, 1988).1 Combs and Welch (1982) used data from the National Opinion Research Center's General Social Survey (GSS) and found a lessening of CLYDE WILCOX is an Assistant Professor of Government at Georgetown University. The author thanks Elizabeth Cook and Ted Jelen for helpful comments. The data were made available by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. All interpretations are the author's. 1. The rate for nonwhite women in 1988 was 5.3 per 100; for whites it was 2.3. In 1977 the figures were 5.9 and 2.1. These figures would suggest that the rate of abortion for blacks may have fallen somewhat in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Public Opinion Quarterly Volume 54 248-255 ? 1990 by the American Association for Public Opinion Research Published by The University of Chicago Press / 0033-362X/90/0054-02/$2.50 This content downloaded from 188.8.131.52 on Wed, 03 Aug 2016 06:09:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Race Differences in Abortion Attitudes 249 racial differences between 1972 and 1980. They reported that controls for demographic variables and religion substantially reduced racial differences, indicating they were largely due to differences in socioeconomic status and religious attachment. Using data from the 1982 GSS, which oversampled blacks, Hall and Ferree (1986), however, found no trend toward declining racial differences. The authors argued that in addition to demographic and religious variables, three sets of attitudes are important in understanding racial differences: attitudes toward gender roles, attitudes toward ideal family size, and attitudes toward premarital sex. The addition of these attitudinal measures to the demographic and religious variables did not reduce racial differences in abortion support, but it did result in a substantial increase in the proportion of variance explained. Since the Hall and Ferree analysis, the GSS has been conducted several times, including another oversample of blacks in 1987. New religious variables have been added to the GSS, including a measure of personal religiosity (frequency of prayer), a measure of doctrine (interpretation of the Bible), and a measure of denominational fundamentalism. This note updates the Combs and Welch and Hall and Ferree analyses through 1988 to determine trends in racial differences, assess the impact of the new religious items in explaining racial differences, and explore racial differences among respondents of the same gender.


The retuning of the muon identification procedure for the reoptimization detector design and performance is presented. The overall efficiency for the muon system only is (94.3 0.3)% with a pion mis–identification of (2.87 0.05)%. Supporting note for the LHCb TDR 9.


Whole‐cell recordings of EPSCs and G‐protein‐activated inwardly rectifying (GIRK) currents were made from cultured hippocampal neurones to determine the effect of long‐term agonist treatment on the presynaptic and postsynaptic responses mediated by GABAB receptors (GABABRs). GABABR‐mediated presynaptic inhibition was unaffected by agonist (baclofen) treatment for up to 48 h, and was desensitized by about one‐half after 96 h. In contrast, GABABR‐mediated GIRK currents were desensitized by a similar amount after only 2 h of agonist treatment. In addition, presynaptic inhibition mediated by A1 adenosine receptors (A1Rs) was unaffected by prolonged GABABR activation, whereas A1R‐mediated GIRK currents were desensitized. Desensitization of postsynaptic GABABR and A1R responses was blocked by the GABABR antagonist (1‐(S)‐3,4‐dichlorophenylethyl)amino‐2‐(S) hydroxypropyl‐p‐benzyl‐phosphonic acid (CGP 55845A), but not by the A1R antagonist cyclopentyldipropylxanthine (DPCPX). GIRK current amplitude could be partially restored after baclofen treatment by either coapplication of baclofen and adenosine, or intracellular infusion of the non‐hydrolysable GTP analog 5′‐guanylylimidodiphosphate (Gpp(NH)p). Short‐term (4‐24 h) baclofen treatment also significantly desensitized the inhibition of postsynaptic voltage‐gated calcium channels by activation of GABABRs or A1Rs. These results show that responses mediated by GABABRs and A1Rs desensitize differently in presynaptic and postsynaptic compartments, and demonstrate the heterologous desensitization of postsynaptic A1R responses.


A demodulating apparatus includes a deinterleave processing unit applying deinterleave processing to supplied data for each of parameters necessary in executing deinterleave processing in a time direction, an acquiring unit acquiring parameters with which the data should be processed, and a selecting unit selecting, from the deinterleave processing unit, the data subjected to the deinterleave processing with the parameters acquired by the acquiring unit.


A microstrip mesh array antenna (MAA) working at 60 GHz is designed on Rogers5880 of 10% free space wavelength thickness with 2.2 dielectric constant and 0.0009 loss tangent. The short side of the MAA equals 0.473λ0, where λ0 is the free space wavelength of 60 GHz, and the long side equals 0.668λ0. The MAA is fed by a coaxial cable near its center point through the ground plane. An impedance bandwidth of 32% is obtained with 14.5 dBi gain at 60 GHz. Narrow beam with low side lobes can be seen from HFSS simulation.


A repair method for the inside of a pipeline is provided to use widely for various pipelines, to increase durability of a defective pipeline and to heighten environment-friendly effect, constructability, stability and economical effect. The repair method for the inside of a pipeline comprises the steps of: removing impurities accumulated on the inside of a pipeline(10) by jetting out pressure water by high water pressure using a pressure water spray device(100) which includes a spacer extended toward an internal wall from the center of the pipeline to make a main body locate in the center of the pipeline and a pressure water spray unit supplied with pressure water through a pressure water inflow hose(130) and jetting out pressure water radially toward an internal wall from the center of the pipeline; and placing concrete on the inside of the pipeline with impurities removed using a concrete placing device.


Migration is often undertaken to improve living conditions and to increase access to welfare resources. This study aims to analyse to what extent migration from Finland to Sweden has influenced major welfare components among migrants, including employment, socio-economic status and social support. The study population consisted of 1,083 twin pairs of the Finnish Twin Cohort, where at least one twin of the pair had emigrated to Sweden. Information about welfare and other factors was obtained by a postal questionnaire survey undertaken in 1998. In the analysis, emigrants and returnees were compared to non-migrants residing in Finland. Pairwise comparisons were performed in migration-discordant twin pairs. Though we found a somewhat higher educational level among emigrants compared to those who had never migrated, the emigrants—and especially the women—were more usually engaged in manual work. Compared to their co-twins in Finland, migrants were more likely to be employed in 1998 but considered themselves more often overqualified for their job. Male emigrants were less often married or cohabitating than never migrants, and their social relations were more often characterised by a lack of attachment; the opposite was true for female emigrants. Migration from Finland to Sweden does not seem to have substantially improved the socio-economic position among emigrants. In part, this could be due to difficulties in finding a job commensurate with their level of qualification. Migration seems to have favourably influenced social support among emigrant women but not among emigrant men.


The right of the Uni¥ersiry of Cambridge to print and sdl all manner of books WO,f granted by Henry VIII in 1534. The University has printed and publisMd conlinuously sinu HM. Main entry under title: Culture, communication, and cognition. Includes index.


WHEN JURGEN HAMBRECHT of BASF and Andrew N. Livens of Dow Chemical, the heads of the world's two largest chemical companies, meet to break ground for a new chemical plant, it can be read as a strong statement of confidence that the plant's technology will work. The two chairmen were on hand in Antwerp, Belgium, late last month to launch construction of a propylene oxide facility. A joint venture between Dow and BASF, it is one of two plants—Degussa is backing the other one—that may become the world's first to use hydrogen peroxide to make propylene oxide. This technology, called HPPO, is meant to free propylene oxide from the creation of coproducts or from heavy integration with chlor-alkali production. At first glance, this liberation might seem like an easy task. For years, the chemical industry has been able to directly oxidize ethylene into ethylene oxide. But propylene has a greater ...


Egypt, J. Plast. Reconstr. Surg., Vol. 43, No. 2, July: 165-170, 2019Exaggerated Distal Medial Arm Depression after Brachioplasty:A Newly Described Post-Brachioplasty Deformity and a Modificationof Major Brachioplasty Operation to Prevent itSHERINE M. ABOUL FOTOUH, M.D. and NAHED SAMIR, M.D.The Department of Plastic, Burn and Maxillofacial Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, Cairo, EgyptABSTRACTBackground: The dramatic progress in the surgical treat-ment of obesity increases the demand for post-massive weightloss (MWL) corrective operations including brachioplasty.We describe a post-brachioplasty deformity not yet beendescribed in the literature. There is a naturally located antero-medial depression of the distal third of the arm. This depressionis exacerbated after brachioplasty resulting in contour deform-ity. A suggestive modification of major brachioplasty operationto avoid this deformity is also studied.Patients and Methods: This is a prospective study of 15MWL patients, 39-54 years old with advanced upper armsagging reaching the elbow. As a modification of majorbrachioplasty, a triangular dermofat flap is created and buriedunder the depression of the distal third of the arm aiming torestore the roundness and firmness of this part. Pre- and post-operative photographs are taken. Follow-up period rangedfrom 6-12 months.Results: No contour deformity was recorded. Complicationrate was 10% in the form of delayed healing of one axilla andhypertrophic scars of both sides in another patient.Conclusion: This modification is useful especially forthin and elderly patients who are most likely exposed to thisunacceptable deformity.


The big manoeuvres have already started for the succession of Jean-Claude Juncker as President of the European Commission. Within the centre-right European People's Party (EPP), two candidates…


Pancreatic cancer is a deadly disease, with a low five-year survival rate partly due to the difficulty in diagnosing the cancer early in its development, as it shares symptoms with more common and less lethal conditions. Using Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) microscopy and computer analysis, our knowledge of the biophysics of the pancreatic tumor microenvironment increases which may lead to the development of more effective therapies. In collaboration with Maine Medical Center Research Institute (MMCRI), we have identified 20 pancreatic cancer patients. In these 20 pancreatic cancer patients, Dr. Jones, a pathologist at MMCRI has identified normal adjacent pancreas, fibrotic pancreas tissue, and tumorous pancreas tissue. Using SHG imaging microscopy with an 890 nm excitation laser and collection via a 445/20 bandpass filter in the forward direction, we imaged the collagen primarily around pancreatic ductal structures, which studies have shown to be common tumor origin sites1. OrientationJ, a Java plugin in ImageJ, uses a structure tensor to quantify morphological changes in the collagen fibers within the extracellular matrix. In this analysis, the quantitative orientation measurement function built into OrientationJ provides orientation and average coherency values for regions of interest selected by the user. Collagen within the ECM generally has a random, basketweave pattern, but in other cancerous tissues there are studies which show a correlation between progression of cancer and the increased aligning of the collagen fibers1–3. We found that quantitative biophysical alterations that are distinct between cancerous, fibrotic, and normal adjacent tissues, but the results were inconclusive. With a larger sample size, the results might demonstrate the pattern in the data more conclusively. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to take this time to acknowledge the opportunity granted to me by the Center of Undergraduate Research in funding this research and allowing me to focus on my education. I would also like to thank my thesis advisor Karissa Tilbury and my academic advisor Michael Wittmann for their continued support and advice throughout my college career.


Exploiting operator commutativity is used in high-level synthesis for reducing interconnections. The standard heuristic is to apply a succession of pairwise operand interchanges. We present a new and general characterization of the problem in terms of graph labelling. An integer linear programming formulation that yields globally optimum results, is presented. Next, a heuristic algorithm and an optimal graph decomposition and labelling algorithm is presented. While the latter finds an optimal solution, in practice, the heuristic approach usually discovers an optimum considerably faster. Experimental results are also presented.


Supplemental Digital Content is Available in the Text. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess the potential of new lipoglycopeptides as novel topical therapies for improved treatment of recalcitrant ocular infections. We evaluated the in vitro antimicrobial activity of oritavancin, dalbavancin, and telavancin compared with vancomycin (VAN) against a large collection of ocular staphylococcal isolates and their cytotoxicity on human corneal epithelial cells (HCECs). Methods: Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed by broth microdilution against 223 Staphylococcus spp. clinical isolates. Time–kill kinetics were determined for methicillin-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) (n = 2) and Staphylococcus epidermidis (MRSE) (n = 1). In vitro cytotoxicity assays were performed with AlamarBlue and live/dead staining on HCECs. Results: All new lipoglycopeptides showed strong in vitro potency against ocular staphylococci, including multidrug-resistant MRSA strains, with dalbavancin showing a slightly higher potency overall [minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC)90 0.06 μg/mL] compared with telavancin and oritavancin (MIC90 0.12 μg/mL), whereas VAN had the lowest potency (MIC90 2 μg/mL). Oritavancin exerted rapid bactericidal activity within 1 h for MRSA and 2 h for MRSE. All other drugs were bactericidal within 24 h. At a concentration commonly used for topical preparations (25 mg/mL), cytotoxicity was observed for VAN after 5 min of incubation, whereas reduction in HCEC viability was not seen for telavancin and was less affected by oritavancin and dalbavancin. Cytotoxicity at 25 mg/mL was seen for all drugs at 30 and 60 min but was significantly reduced or undetected for lower concentrations. Conclusions: Our study demonstrates that new lipoglycopeptides have substantially better in vitro antimicrobial activity against ocular staphylococcal isolates compared with VAN, with a similar or improved toxicity profile on HCECs.


The electrical energy distribution networks need remote control systems that are centralised and integrated as far as the functions they can develop are concerned. The need for a thinking unit at the line head for managing a Supervisory Control System is unavoidable. The thinking unit (microprocessor) moreover, allows a communication network to be built up which uses the line without voltage, with a variable number of transmitter-receiver stations attached to the equipped centres, as dis cussed in this paper.
This paper considers a strstegy and the execution of a Supervisory Control System which adopts a dynamic polling structure and which is believed to be more attractive and economical than that adopted by rigid network structures.
The following paragraphs discuss the configuration of the Distribution Network , the aims that the Supervisory Control System must fulfil, the system functions and a transmission system description.


As a result of the rapid expansion in international travel and trade over the past few decades, invasive plants have become a problem of global proportions. Plant invasions threaten the existence of endangered species and the integrity of ecosystems, and their ravages cost national economies tens of billions of dollars every year. Strategies for managing the threats posed by plant invasions involve three main tactics: prevention, eradication, and control. The effectiveness of prevention, involving enactment of legislation to prohibit the entry and spread of noxious alien plants, has been questioned. Eradication of all but the smallest, most localized weed infestations generally is not regarded as economically feasible. Conventional weed control techniques, such as mechanical and chemical controls, because they are expensive, energy and labor intensive, and require repeated application, are impractical for managing widespread plant invasions in ecologically fragile conservation areas or low-value habitat, such as rangelands and many aquatic systems. In addition, mechanical means of control disturb the soil and may cause erosion; chemical herbicides have spurred the evolution of resistance in scores of weed species and, further, may pose risks to wildlife and human health. Because of drawbacks associated with conventional weed control methods, classical biological control, the introduction of selective exotic natural enemies to control exotic pests, increasingly is being considered and implemented as a safe, cost-effective alternative to address the invasive plant problem. Worldwide, biological weed control programs have had an overall success rate of 33 percent; success rates have been considerably higher for programs in individual countries. Benefits are several-fold. Biological control is permanent, energy-efficient, nonpolluting, and inexpensive relative to other methods. Economic returns on investment in biological weed control have been spectacular in some cases, and range from an estimated benefit/cost ratio of 2.3 to 4000 or more. Although the risks involved in biological control in general are considered unacceptable by some, biological weed control in particular has had an enviable safety record. Since establishment of the stringent standards and regulatory apparatus currently in place in the United States and elsewhere, there have been no reported cases of biological weed control causing significant harm to nontarget populations or to the environment at large.


We present a direct experimental observation of the correspondence between Landau-Zener transition and Kibble-Zurek mechanism with a superconducting qubit system. We develop a time-resolved approach to study quantum dynamics of the Landau-Zener transition. By using this method, we observe the key features of the correspondence between Landau-Zener transition and Kibble-Zurek mechanism, e.g., the boundary between the adiabatic and impulse regions, the freeze-out phenomenon in the impulse region. Remarkably, the scaling behavior of the population in the excited state, an analogical phenomenon originally predicted in Kibble-Zurek mechanism, is also observed in the Landau-Zener transition.


Objective:Arterial stiffness and aortic blood pressure (BP) augmentation are significantly increased in hemodialysis patients. Recent studies suggest that the prognostic significance of ambulatory recordings of arterial stiffness is high in hemodialysis. This study examines for the first time the ef


The silent films of the early 1900s had a huge audience, hearing and deaf, for public entertainment and instruction. The advent of «talkies,» however, excluded deaf people from this means of access to mainstream American culture. In response to a new need for both captioned educational and entertainment films for deaf people, Congress passed Public Law 85-905 in 1958, which established Captioned Films for the Deaf as a federal program. This article addresses the history of the Captioned Films/Videos for the Deaf program, the kinds of films and videos available, and the procedures for borrowing them through educational and theatrical captioned film/video libraries


The continuing liberalisation of secondary healthcare in the NHS is likely to challenge the roles of both hospital based specialist services and their consultants for the foreseeable future. However, this developing market for specialist services also offers considerable opportunities for consultants willing to engage with different healthcare providers.

Forming a limited liability partnership (LLP) provides a legal, financial, and professional framework for consultants prepared to work in partnerships partly or wholly outside their traditional NHS hospital roles. This article discusses the reasons for forming a consultant LLP and gives a nuts and bolts overview of how to set one up.

Over the past decade, the NHS has seen fundamental changes in the ways that specialist services are provided, from hospital based and consultant delivered to a plurality of providers with competition between NHS and foundation trusts, independent sector, and primary care organisations. The next decade is likely to see an acceleration of this trend driven by reduced funding, pressure to decommission secondary care services, and increased competition from general practitioner consortiums and healthcare companies for potentially lucrative NHS contracts.

These trends may threaten the security of tenure that consultants have expected over the duration of their working lives in the NHS. However, this new healthcare environment also offers the possibility of contractual relations with other organisations for those prepared to work in self employed partnerships (in common with GPs). This may include subcontractual work for an independent sector or primary care provider or directly commissioned contractual work, and may involve clinical sessions, education, and advisory services for healthcare delivery.

The benefits of working within a partnership undertaking contractual work include increased flexibility to negotiate salaries and hours, particularly where demand for consultant time outmatches its availability. Furthermore, it may allow consultants greater direct control over how their services are organised …


This paper reports on a small-scale inquiry into the experience of female scholars undertaking post-graduate research in a British mission research centre working primarily with students from international backgrounds. Drawing on previous research literature, survey and interview data is used to identify social, financial, gendered and theological factors that impact women in terms of their entry into academia, flourishing and advancement in that contact. It suggests that academic institutions, systemic processes and measures of achievement are currently largely 'designed by men for men' and act to exclude women who do not approach research within male structures. It suggests that measures of achievement are different for men and women and that there are systemic issues in an academic system designed by men which are restrictive for men as well as women. A healthy academic institution needs to value mutual support, accomplishment and belonging, providing mentors, role models and networks of support.


to the editor: The article recently published by Kim and coworkers ([3][1]) is very interesting and presents a new modality for the prevention of ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury in the mouse kidney. The authors have reported that whole body irradiation preconditioning (IP) of the animals with an


Utilizing nanophotonic structures for chiral light-matter interactions has recently emerged as a highly promising scientific field, enabling a variety of novel applications. Carefully designed nano...