A simulated environmental condition for a closed loop copper piping system that involve temperature and flow changing was investigated for the character of corrosion products. Two identical copper closed-loop piping system were constructed in this work. Both systems were filled with 3% sodium chloride solution and run for about eleven months. Both systems were heated to a temperature of 80°C for eight hours a day and for 5 days a week and the rest of the time the temperature kept at room temperature of 23± 2°C. During the heating process, the solution in one pipe system was in stagnation condition while the other was flowing at input velocity of 0.27 m/s. The corrosion products created in both piping systems were evaluated by pourbaix diagrams, visual observation, light and Scanning Electron Microscopes. The experiment confirmed the essential contribution of flow on corrosion product behavior.


Both prostaglandin E2 (PGE2)‐dependent (indomethacin‐sensitive) and PGE2‐independent (indo‐ methacin‐insensitive) suppressor cell activities that inhibited mitogenic T cell blastogenesis appeared in the bone marrow and spleen of mice on days 20 to 30 following transplantation of NFSA fibrosarcoma molecularly expressing mRNA for both macrophage (M) and granulocyte‐macrophage (GM) colony‐stimulating factors (CSFs). The present study was done to characterize the two different suppressor cells isolated from NFSA tumor‐bearing mice and to verify a role of CSFs in the induction of suppressor cells in vitro. Whereas PGE2‐releasing suppressor cells were found in bone marrow and spleen cells isolated from tumor‐bearing mice, indomethacin‐insensitive suppressor cells in both tissues were localized predominantly in adherent cell fractions. An increase in Mac‐1+ and Mac‐2+ spleen cell populations with two to three times larger cell volumes was observed, and both showed strong PGE2‐releasing capacity and indomethacin‐sensitive suppressor cell activity. However, after elimination of Mac‐1+ or Mac‐2+ cells, bone marrow cells still showed higher PGE2‐releasing capacity and indomethacin‐sensitive suppressor activity. The in vitro cultures of normal bone marrow and spleen cells with NFSA cell conditioned medium (NFSA‐CM) induced heterogeneous mixtures of indomethacin‐sensitive and ‐ insensitive suppressor cells like those observed in cultures with the combination of M‐CSF and GM‐CSF. However, cultures with either GM‐CSF or M‐CSF resulted in the induction of indomethacin‐sensitive suppressor cells by GM‐CSF and of indomethacin‐insensitive suppressor cells by M‐CSF. In addition, NFSA‐CM pretreated with anti‐GM‐CSF antibody induced indomethacin‐ insensitive suppressor cells in in vitro cultures of bone marrow and spleen cells. These results suggest that two distinctly different suppressor cells developed under hemopoiesis of myelomonocytic lineage cells are regulated differentially by the two macrophage growth factors, M‐CSF and GM‐CSF


The new Anti-Semitism is a term that came into use to describe attacks on Jews across the world that erupted in the aftermath of the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian fighting in September 2000 after the collapse of the Camp David peace talks. The conflict unleashed a wave of suicide bombings in Israel and led to Israel reoccupying Palestinian areas. This fighting triggered an outburst of antiSemitism not seen since the end of the World War II. Nearly 100 synagogues were attacked across the world in the four weeks from the end of September to October 2000; more were burnt down at any time since Kristallnacht, when Nazis attacked Jewish institutions in Germany in 1938.


A brief description of the 4 Ss (situation, self, supports, strategies) System for coping with transitions is provided, with examples of each of the categories.


Along with the demands of an autonomous environment, it has an impact on the condition of schools that are increasingly competitive. Good management of education costs optimizes school functions to be more efficient and effective so as to improve school performance, quality and competitiveness. The results of the author's observations by observing several complaints from educators in designing activity programs to improve the quality of education require critical educational activities for educators and principals about education finance management. By using the workshop method, it is hoped that the objectives of this PKM activity are (1) providing knowledge to educators in preparing programs according to the education budget and (2) Providing skills in managing education budgets. This activity is designed offline whenever possible in the Meeting Hall at SDN 004 Bontang City and online if participants from outside Bontang City are not possible (during the COVID-19 Pandemic) to be carried out using the Zoom application.  The methods used are explanatory methods, demonstrations and practices by means of seeding and questioning. The implementation of activities is carried out by providing material on strategic management of program preparation. The expected result in this training is that all skilled educators develop a program of activities with the preparation of the right budget


The shift towards competitive examinations within the public service in nineteenth century Ireland must be viewed against the background of Ireland's colonial status and the thrust for national independence. Although the introduction of competitive examinations undoubtedly increased Catholic and nationalist access to government positions, the transition was limited by inequalities of access in the Irish educational system and by the Northcote‐Trevelyan civil service structure with its emphasis on an elite first division. The latter was a source of considerable resentment to many second division Irish civil servants. As a result, while political independence in 1922 resulted in considerable continuity of personnel and procedure from the British‐controlled civil service, there was a substantially greater emphasis on promotion from within the lower ranks of the civil service and a consequential division between the civil service elite of the new Irish state and the university sector.


For as long as there has been a scientiŽ c literature, scientists have complained about it. Reasons for complaint are easy to Ž nd; not only is the literature, as John Maddox, a former Editor of Nature, described it, 'impenetrable, often to its users',1 it has increased steadily in specialisation2 and grown overwhelmingly in volume3 and in its demands on users.4 Yet despite the regular cycle of complaints, the problems persist, which, as well as frustrating, is puzzling. If the literature is so obviously broken, why don't we Ž x it?


Effectiveness of Health Promotion Program among Diabetes Mellitus Type II Patients in Powai Primary Care Unit, Surathani Hospital was a pre-experiment research. The objective aimed to investigate an effects of health promotion program on exercise knowledges , behavioral change and blood sugar control among diabetes patients. A study was conducted in Powai Primary Care Unit ,Surathani Hospital during April 1, 2016 to December 31, 2016. Subjects were asked to complete interview questionnaires consisted of general basic informations, exercise knowledges and exercise behavioral likert scales. A cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient of exercise knowleges was 0.6 and the data was analyzed using various statistical analyses including frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, Wilcoxon and Paired t-test. The results of exercise knowledges were statistical significantly increasing after using the program immediately and at one month. The exercise behaviors were increasing after using the program one month ( X =30.7, X =31.5, respectively), and the patients had better blood sugar control after using the program. Health promotion program was related to have better outcomes such as exercise knowledges, behaviors and blood sugar control, therefore health care providers should promote the effective program ,appropriate exercises that fit to each patients to increase their interests and maintenence behavior modification. Keywords : Health promotion program


Our theoretical results have demonstrated the usefulness of diamond films for improving the survivability of thin film metal mirrors against intense x-ray. Essentially, the low-Z, high thermal conductivity diamond film acts as an efficient heat sink, thus reducing the temperature in the metal film. Specifically, for an aluminum/fused silica mirror, our analysis has shown that interposing a 1-μm thick diamond film between the thin film aluminum and SiO2 substrate increases the aluminum melt fluence--from a 1 KeV black body, 10 ns x-ray pulse--by a factor of 6. In addition, we have found that for pulse widths on the order of about 10 ns, a diamond film thickness of about 1 μm appears to be most effective in reducing the aluminum temperature.


The invention relates to a technique for synthesizing high-purity electronic grade barium titanate by a liquid phase method, which includes the following steps: oxalic acid is dissolved in deionized water, and barium chloride accounting for 2% of molar weight of oxalic acid is added in; the barium-titanium mixed solution is added into oxalic acid solution at the flow speed of 1.3-1.5m /h for reaction; the obtained solid is put in a kiln for constant temperature calcination which lasts for 2-4 hours, then is taken out and processed by jet milling, placed in the kiln once more for secondary constant temperature calcination which lasts for 1-3 hours, and taken out for secondary jet milling and barium titanate powder is obtained finally. The barium titanate prepared by the invention has high purity, good dispersibility, uniform powder particle appearance and reasonable particle size. Therefore, the technique of the invention can solve the problem that the barium titanate powder prepared by the traditional method; more particularly, the existing coprecipitation method has sulphate impurities, severe glomeration, and the like, and can completely meet the requirements of the production of high-performance electronic components like base metal porcelain capacitors, etc.


We predict the presence of gapped electronic structures in an artificial superlattice of graphene embedded in (111)-oriented BiFeO3 layers based on first-principles calculations. Due to the electron transfer and the proximity effect at the BiFeO3/graphene interface, we find that magnetic moments of Fe atoms near a graphene layer were slightly less than that of bulk Fe atoms. Regarding the ferromagnetic moment orientation of Fe atoms in perovskite BiFeO3, we reveal that the in-plane magnetization gives the ground state. The bandgap depends on the magnetization direction and the separation between the graphene layer and the perovskite BiFeO3 slab, which might be adjusted by applying external uniaxial stress in an experiment. Our results provide a route for designing hybrid 2D materials with emerging properties that are not available in single materials alone.


The principle and design of an L-band omni-directional mobile communication antenna are discussed. The antenna is a circular wave guide aperture with hybrid circuits attached to higher order mode excitation. It produces polarized and symmetric two split beams in elevation. The circular waveguide is fed by eight probes with a 90 degree phase shift between their inputs. Radiation pattern characteristics are controlled by adjusting the aperture diameter and mode excitation. This antenna satisfies gain requirements as well as withstanding the harsh environment.


This is Volume 2 of the Engineered Materials Characterization Report which presents the design data for candidate materials needed in fabricating different components for both large and medium multi-purpose canister (MPC) disposal containers, waste packages for containing uncanistered spent fuel (UCF), and defense high-level waste (HLW) glass disposal containers. The UCF waste package consists of a disposal container with a basket therein. It is assumed that the waste packages will incorporate all-metallic multibarrier disposal containers to accommodate medium and large MPCs, ULCF, and HLW glass canisters. Unless otherwise specified, the disposal container designs incorporate an outer corrosion-allowance metal barrier over an inner corrosion-resistant metal barrier. The corrosion-allowance barrier, which will be thicker than the inner corrosion-resistant barrier, is designed to undergo corrosion-induced degradation at a very low rate, thus providing the inner barrier protection from the near-field environment for a prolonged service period.


Objective To explore the mechanism of polymorphonuclear neutrophil (PMN)
infiltration in lung after acute hemorrhagic and necrotizing pancreatitis. Methods Adopting a
model of rat ANPinduced acute lung injury (ALI), We observed the dynamical changes of ICAM1
expression in lung tissue and CD11b/CD18 expression on PMN and PMN infiltration in lung
tissue. Results The ICAM1 expression in lung gradually increased, which significantly
correlated with the PMN accumulation after ANP. PMN expressed CD11b/CD18, which quickly
occurred and achieved the peak at 1 hour and later maintained high expression within 24 hours.
Conclusion PMN infiltration in lung is based on increased expression of ICAM1 in lung tissue
and CD11b/CD18 on PMN after ANP. Furthermore, ICAM1 may be a principal factor in the
changes of the PMN infiltration in lung tissue and adhesion between PMN and VEC after ANP.


The complex Ph 3SnS 2CN(C 4H 6) has been synthesized by the reaction of triphenyltin chloride with dithiotetrahydropyrrolocarbamate and characterized by elemental analysis, UV, IR and 1H NMR. The crystal structure has been determined by X ray single crystal diffraction, showing a distorted trigonal bipyramidal configuration with five coordination for the central tin atom.


With the advancement of synthetic nanostructures, more attention has been directed toward probing low-dimensional transport phenomena. Recently, multiple techniques have been established for thermal transport measurements at the nanoscale domain. Sensitivity analysis however remains an experimental challenge for both high and low conductance materials. Achieving precise thermometry remains an obstacle due to influence of thermal contact resistance particularly at cryogenic temperatures where boundary scattering is more dominant. The contribution of radiation heat exchange is also a concern which is more critical at higher temperatures exceeding 800 K. Here we report the limitations of thermal conductance measurements in silicon nanowires and other common nanostructures by evaluating the thermal conductance limit according to the geometrical characteristics and temperature. This study will illustrate experimental results of thermal conductivity measurements using a suspended micro-device with built-in resistive thermometers and report the measurement limitations computationally for probing thermal transport in 1-D and 2-D nanostructures


Because Hebei Province is a traffic hub,its expressway maintenance faces the rapid transit under macro traffic.The situation requests higher standard on expressway maintenance engineering.Therefore corresponding measures should be adopted to solve the problems existing in maintenance engineering construction in Hebei Province.


Taking the meteorological observation data of eight weather stations from 1955 to 2003 as a foundation,the trends and jumps of temperature are studied, Using the Mann-Kendall sudden change inspection method,the marquis changed gradualness and sudden change characteristic are analyzed.The result shows that,At the begin of the 80's intermediate stages,Yellow River irrigation area of Ningxia region has experienced a process of slow and stable warming,it is extremely remarkable that the average temperature in the winter has the sudden change in particular;The evaporation started from 1955 to appear has continued and stable depression,and the reduced tendency is obvious in the nearly three years;The precipitation of the irrigation area has changed from fall to rise;The ET0 has the obvious ascension tendency in 1990.


Techniques for collaborating on a spreadsheet file by client computers in real time are disclosed herein. In particular, a revision manager module is preferably provided with a host machine which receives updates from the client computers, processes such updates, and then applies them to the spreadsheet file. Additionally, a technique is described for handling updates sent to the revision manager by clients simultaneously or near simultaneously. In this case, the revision manager determines whether the updates to the spreadsheet file are transformable or able to be merged. If so, the updates are combined into the spreadsheet file and applied thereto. If the updates are not transformable, the revision manager confirms that all clients have received all previous updates before applying the non-transformable update to the spreadsheet file.


Quantum chemical electronic energy of a molecular system depends on the level of the employed basis functions. The inverse power laws describing the convergences of the calculated Hartree–Fock (HF) and electronic correlation energies of water molecules have been determined by fitting the energies predicted by the CCSD(T) theory with various levels of correlation consistent basis functions. The law was applied to calculate the energies of a few simple water clusters by varying the OH bond distance of a molecule in order to understand how the two parts of the potential energy subject to the stretching motion of water molecules depend on the variation of local environments. It is found that the HF energy strongly depends on the environments of a local OH bond while the correlation energy is almost insensitive to the neighboring molecules. This suggests that the HF theory may have a great advantage in saving computation time for efficient calculations of vibrational frequencies widely distributed due to the inhomogeneity in the local environments of water molecules in the condensed phases.


High-resistance connection (HRC) fault can result in increased copper loss, thus possibly causing damage to the electric machine drive system. Therefore, a fault-tolerant control strategy is proposed for a five-phase permanent magnet synchronous machine drive system with HRC to minimize the copper loss. The fault-tolerant control strategy is realized based on the magnetomotive force invariance principle and copper loss minimization principle. The simulation and experiment are carried out to quantitatively validate the effectiveness of the proposed fault-tolerant control strategy. Both the simulation and experimental results show that the proposed strategy can effectively reduce the copper loss caused by the HRC fault.


Summary

The abundance of Ceriodaphnia reticulata (Jurine) in Lake Kinneret is restricted every year to the period March to June with a peak in May. The most constant parameter accompanying the peak is temperature with a range of 20–22° C. An attempt was made to clarify whether the estival high average temperatures observed in the epilimnion of this lake (27–28° C) could explain the decrease of the Ceriodaphnia population.

Three physiological parameters: food intake, ammonia excretion and respiration rates, were measured experimentally at three temperatures (15, 22 and 27° C). The dry weight of individuals of the winter and summer populations were measured, and the percentages of egg-bearing females in the populations were calculated.

It was found that temperature increase accelerates the rates of ammonia excretion and food ingestion. The acceleration was greater in the lower temperature range (15–22° C) than in the higher one (22–27° C). Conversely, the enhancing of respiration rate is higher in the upper temperature range. The resulting deficit of energy at high temperatures causes a reduction in body size and a significant diminution of egg production, which leads to a progressive decline of the population.


Abstract Objective: Assess urgent care (UC) clinician prescribing practices and factors associated with first-line antibiotic selection and recommended duration of therapy for sinusitis, acute otitis media (AOM), and pharyngitis. Design: Retrospective cohort study. Participants: All respiratory UC encounters and clinicians in the Intermountain Health (IH) network, July 1st, 2019–June 30th, 2020. Methods: Descriptive statistics were used to characterize first-line antibiotic selection rates and the duration of antibiotic prescriptions during pharyngitis, sinusitis, and AOM UC encounters. Patient and clinician characteristics were evaluated. System-specific guidelines recommended 5–10 days of penicillin, amoxicillin, or amoxicillin-clavulanate as first-line. Alternative therapies were recommended for penicillin allergy. Generalized estimating equation modeling was used to assess predictors of first-line antibiotic selection, prescription duration, and first-line antibiotic prescriptions for an appropriate duration. Results: Among encounters in which an antibiotic was prescribed, the rate of first-line antibiotic selection was 75%, the recommended duration was 70%, and the rate of first-line antibiotic selection for the recommended duration was 53%. AOM was associated with the highest rate of first-line prescriptions (83%); sinusitis the lowest (69%). Pharyngitis was associated with the highest rate of prescriptions for the recommended duration (91%); AOM the lowest (51%). Penicillin allergy was the strongest predictor of non–first-line selection (OR = 0.02, 95% CI [0.02, 0.02]) and was also associated with extended duration prescriptions (OR = 0.87 [0.80, 0.95]). Conclusions: First-line antibiotic selection and duration for respiratory UC encounters varied by diagnosis and patient characteristics. These areas can serve as a focus for ongoing stewardship efforts.


The current COVID-19 pandemic gave rise to an unprecedented response from clinicians and the scientific community in all relevant biomedical fields. This created an incredible multidimensional data-rich framework in which deep learning proved instrumental to make sense of the data and build models used in prediction-validation workflows that in a matter of months have already produced results in assessing the spread of the outbreak, its taxonomy, population susceptibility, in diagnostics or drug discovery and repurposing. More is expected to come in the near future from using such advanced machine learning techniques in combating this pandemic. This review is aimed to uncover just a small fraction of this large global endeavor by focusing on the research performed on the main COVID-19 targets, on the computational weaponry used in identifying drugs to combat the disease, and on some of the most important directions found in confronting COVID-19 or alleviating its symptoms in the absence of vaccines or specific medication.


ABSTRACT This study aims to determine the extent of the effect of the interaction of learning and student interest and learning and interaction influences student interest together the results of an integrated social studies students of SMP N 2 Lembah Melintang Kabupaten West Pasaman . This research is descriptive Associative . The population in this study were all students of SMP N 2 Valley Crossing West Pasaman , with a sample of 84 respondents . The sampling technique is simple random sampling . The type of data used , namely primary and secondary data . To determine the effect of the interaction of learning and student interest toward learning outcomes students integrated IPS SMP N 2 Lembah Melintang Kabupaten West Pasaman used the t test and F test. That Describe First Results : Variable Interaction Learning significant and positive impact on learning outcomes Integrated Social eighth grade students of SMP N 2 Lembah Melintang Kabupaten West Pasaman . This is evidenced by the coefficient value of 0.692 and the value of t ( 8.958 ) > t table ( 1.663 ) . That is when the learning interaction is increased by 1 % and keep student interest , then the results of an integrated social studies students of SMP N 2 Lembah Melintang Kabupaten West Pasaman will increase by 0.692 % . Second : Variable student interest and a positive significant effect on the results of an integrated social studies eighth grade students of SMP N 2 Lembah Melintang Kabupaten West Pasaman . This is evidenced by the coefficient value of 0.674 and the value of t ( 9.301 ) > t table ( 1.663 ) . This means that if student interest is increased by 1 % and still learning interaction , the results of an integrated social studies eighth grade students of SMP N 2 Valley Crossing West Pasaman will increase by 0.674 % . Third : Variable interaction of learning and student interest has a significant and positive influence on the results of the integrated IPS Learning Eighth Grade Students of SMP N 2 Valley Crossing West Pasaman the value of F ( 329.126 ) > Ftable ( 3,960 ) and Sig ( 0.000 ) < Alpha ( 0.05 ) . Percentage of interaction variables influence learning and student interest to the integrated IPS Learning Outcomes Eighth Grade Students of SMP N 2 Lembah Melintang Kabupaten West Pasaman that is equal to 89 % , while the remaining 11 % is explained by other causes that are outside the study .


Insufficient visible-light power conversion has been a great challenge for nanotitania photocatalysts in solar energy utilization.Recently,a new material—black Ti O2 has attracted enormous attention due to its greatly enhanced solar absorption and photocatalytic activity. Our group has made tremendous contributions to the researches of black Ti O2 via developing many effective preparation methods harvesting the extremely efficient black titania. Herein lie our recent progresses in researching black nanotitania,and a special emphasis on the fabrication methods,the chemical /physical properties and solar application.


In recent years, cloud computing is becoming popular that can provide an open, flexible, and reconfigurable platform for several monitoring and controlling applications. In this paper, we implement a real time alert system on top of a cloud computing platform. Our system recognizes a variety of events that occur in the monitored space and notifies them a control center in real time. Through implementation of the system, we show the functionality and feasibility of our system.


1513 Introduction: In addition to colorectal cancer (CRC), Lynch syndrome (LS) patients are at increased risk of extracolonic malignancies including endometrial (EC), ovarian (OC), upper gastrointestinal and urothelial tract cancers. Although the efficacy of extracolonic cancer screening in LS has not been clearly demonstrated, multi-organ screening is routinely recommended for LS patients (Lindor et al., JAMA 2006). Anecdotal evidence suggests that adherence to such screening may be inferior to CRC screening.

METHODS
35 adults, identified in the context of genetic counseling and testing (GCT) as being from LS kindreds, were given recommendations for multi-organ screening and enrolled on a prospective follow-up study. For participants with relevant organs at risk, these included colonoscopy, urine cytology, transvaginal ultrasound (TVUS), CA-125 level and endometrial sampling all to be performed at least annually. Adherence with screening, perceived risk of cancer subtype and future intentions regarding screening were evaluated at least 12 months after GCT.

RESULTS
Median age at time of GCT was 44, 66% were female and 69% were diagnosed with a LS- related cancer prior to GCT (15 CRC; 9 EC). At time of follow-up, 89% of patients without CRC had a colonoscopy within the year. Among women at-risk for OC, 25% had TVUS and 38% had CA-125 level within the year. Among women at risk for EC, 22% had TVUS and 22% had endometrial sampling within the year. Of all participants, 40% had urine cytology within the year. Of participants with relevant organs at-risk, 72%, 33%, 75% and 12% reported their risk of developing CRC, EC, OC, and urothelial tract cancer, respectively, as "moderately", "very" or "extremely" high. Of patients with previous colonoscopy, 93% had definitive intentions to continue on schedule screening. However, only 68%, 50%, 60% and 50% of patients who underwent previous urine cytology, TVUS, CA-125 or endometrial sampling, respectively, had definitive intentions of continuing on schedule screening.

CONCLUSIONS
Adherence with extracolonic cancer screening in LS kindreds is poor and patients persistently underestimate their extracolonic risk despite GCT. Possible interventions should be aimed at better educating patients about extracolonic cancer risk and importance of on-going surveillance. No significant financial relationships to disclose.


Modeling and simulation of the double armatures motor speed control system for 2030 tandem cold rolling mill are predigested to that of a single armature motor speed control system equivalently, so the rapidity and real-time performance of the simulation for tandem cold rolling mill are improved to some extent. Through the detailed analysis and calculation, the model structure and parameters of each tache of the dc motor speed control system with field weakening and speed self-adjusting are obtained for 2030 tandem cold rolling mill. The simulation results show that output response of the established speed control system is consistent with the one from real spot, so it is demonstrated that the established model for speed control system is accurate. The model structure of the speed control system is complete and it has great universality.


Objective: To screen DNA-binding proteins specifically recognizing pre-S1 promoter of hepatitis B virus (HBV-SPI ) sequence for further investigating the molecular mechanisms of them.Methods: Yeast one-hybrid system was employed in screening of a human liver cDNA library using 3 copies of SP I core sequence as a bait. And the results were analyzed by sequencing and BLAST.Results: Twelve dual positive clones were obtained.They encode 10 proteins, three of which have unknown functions, the other include orosomucoid 2 (ORM2), serine dehydratase (SDS), and human hepatocyte growth factor-like protein. Conclusion: These results suggested that these proteins can bind to SP I core sequence, and probably are the trans-action factors of SP I .But whether these proteins regulate the transcription of 2.4 kb mRNA will need further study.


In recent years a number of countries have adopted policies aimed at giving a greater role to private ownership in the natural resource sector. For example, in Britain the regional water companies have been privatized and have been given a considerable degree of control over the exploitation of the nation's regional water resources; similar policies have been followed in France and other European countries. Typically such privatization is accompanied by a whole range of new regulatory instruments such as technological standards on water treatment plants, minimum standards on drinking water quality, price controls and maximum withdrawal quotas. While some of these instruments address problems of monopolistic behaviour and other forms of imperfect competition, the bulk of regulatory measures is concerned with establishing 'good practices' aimed at maintaining the quality of the newly privatized resources; as a shorthand, we may refer to these measures as 'technological norms' imposed on water producers. The present paper provides a novel theoretical justification for the need to impose regulatory measures on the privatized water industry. We argue that technological norms are a necessary response to a certain type of inflationary pressure that emerges in connection with privately owned water resources. This inflationary pressure is not due to any form of market failure but is a natural consequence of entrepreneurial arbitrage behaviour expressed in a price condition that is similar to the Hotelling Rule familiar from the case of exhaustible resources; we refer to this condition as the Modified Hotelling Rule. If a nation's water resources are transferred into private ownership, society has to keep the inflationary pressure associated with the Modified Hotelling Rule in check; we show that the only way to do this is by imposing technological norms on water producers.


Due to the advantages of flexible configuration, bistatic synthetic aperture radar (BiSAR) has the ability to effectively observe from various visual angles, such as forward view area and squint area, and has good anti-jamming characteristics. It can be applied to the surveillance of ship targets on the sea and is gradually gaining an increasing amount of attention. However, for ship targets with complex motions on the sea surface, such as maneuvering targets or ship targets under high sea conditions, the high-order Doppler frequency of the scattering points is always spatial variation (related to the spatial position of scattering points), which poses a considerable challenge for the imaging of maritime ship targets in BiSAR. To resolve this problem, a BiSAR maritime ship target imaging algorithm based on cubic phase time-scaled transformation is proposed in this paper. First, through pre-processing of echo such as Doppler prefiltering and keystone transform, the translation compensation of the BiSAR maritime ship target is completed, and the scattering point energy is corrected to within one range unit. Then, the azimuth signal is modeled as a multi-component cubic phase signal. Based on the proposed cubic phase time-scaled transformation, the Doppler centroid, frequency rate, and third-order frequency of scattering points are estimated. Eventually, the BiSAR imaging of maritime ship targets is realized. This algorithm has excellent noise immunity and low cross-terms. The simulation leads to the verification of the validity of the proposed algorithm.


We present an auction-based method for the allocation of tasks to a group of robots. The robots operate in a 2D environment for which they have a map. Tasks are locations in the map that have to be visited by the robots. Unexpected obstacles and other delays may prevent a robot from being able to complete its allocated tasks. Therefore tasks not yet achieved are rebid every time a robot accomplishes a task. This provides an opportunity to improve the allocation of the remaining tasks and to reduce the overall task completion time. We present experimental results that we have obtained in simulation using Player/Stage with this task allocation mechanism


Features of dormancy and germination of interspecific hybrid seeds of Sorbus sibirica, S. aucuparia and S. sambucifolia in comparison with parent species have been studied. The research was performed at the Central Siberian Botanical Garden, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, using the facilities of the Food Plants Introduction Laboratory. Seeds were produced by artificial hybridization. The intact (fresh, not dried up) seeds were germinated by the technique of continuous stratification at temperature of 1-3°C (34-37°F). Hybridity of seeds was detected by SDS-PAGE and ISSR-PCR. Influence of pollinator on dormancy feature in hybrid seeds of Sorbus sibirica Hedl., S. aucuparia and S. sambucifolia was detected. The hybrid seeds of S. sibirica × S. aucuparia and S. aucuparia × S. sambucifolia inherit depth of dormancy and germination time heterogeneity typical of S. sibirica. Seed germination dynamics of S. sambucifolia ´ S. aucuparia and S. sambucifolia × S. sibirica was similar to S. aucuparia, but dormancy depth and heterogeneity were much lesser than those in seeds of parent species. The hybrid seeds of S. sambucifolia × S. aucuparia, S. sambucifolia × S. sibirica, S. sibirica × S. sambucifolia and S. aucuparia × S. sambucifolia almost completely lose dormancy features, which have been inherited from maternal genotypes. The results obtained are significative of the need to monitor the effect of pollinator in experiments on studying features of seed germination and dormancy in mountain ash as well as in other (introduction, breeding, recreation, etc.) studies, where seed germination is an important stage.


This film represents an appeal for donations to the Newark, N.J. area Community Service Association. Presents the stories of individuals with health or social problems who need assistance and then suggests community programs that could help.


Al-based hybrid composite reinforced by ultra-dispersed tungsten and B4C, was produced by mechanical alloying and hot extrusion. Structure of obtained composites was studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The compressive and tensile properties of these materials were investigated. Tribological tests showed high antifriction properties and wear resistance of composite containing B4C and tungsten. The dilatometric measurements showed that thermal expansion coefficient remains approximately constant up to 500 °C.


The invention relates to a clarifying chamber-free continuous extracting device of a large-phase ratio easy emulsifying system and an operating method, which belong to the technical field of chemical liquid-liquid solvent extraction. The device comprises a tower body, a liquid phase disperser, a main shaft, a lifting mechanism, a motor, and the like, wherein the liquid phase disperser comprises a series of hollow concentric cylinders, and spiral type flow guide plates are arranged on the inner walls of the cylinders; and the liquid phase disperser can be used for uniformly dispersing one liquid phase in the other liquid phase by tiny particles at lower rotating speed. Because the shearing force is small when the liquid phase disperser rotates and is difficult to cause the larger turbulence of two phases of liquid flow, phenomena of unbalanced shearing force and easy emulsifying generation in the stirring process of a common stirrer are effectively avoided. The two-phase clarifying speed is high, and the phase continuity is easy for control. The spiral type flow guide plates can assist the self-absorbing type stirring and pumping process, and solves the problems of difficult full dispersion of a small-volume liquid phase and difficult large-phase ratio operation of the traditional stirring way. The device has simple structure, easy amplification and multistage series connection and realizes continuous countercurrent extracting operation.


As part of the Collection on Monitoring Universal Health Coverage, Ties Boerma and colleagues discuss the key findings from the country case studies and technical reviews included in the Collection and, also, how these papers will help with the development of a global framework for monitoring progress towards Universal Health Coverage. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary


Background: Currently, there is an increasing trend in skin cancer incidence, especially non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC), including basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), also malignant melanoma (MM), causing an increase in morbidity and mortality rates. The high treatment cost causes an economic burden of disease in the country and negatively impacts public health issues. This study aimed to determine the profile of NMSC and MM regarding the sex, age, occupation, location of the lesion, clinicohistopathological diagnosis of skin cancer in Dr. Mohammad Hoesin General Hospital Palembang January 2017-December 2019. Methods: A retrospective analytical observational study obtained from medical records of NMSC and MM patients in Dr. Mohammad Hoesin General Hospital Palembang from January 2017-December 2019 as confirmed using histopathological results from the Pathology Department. Results: There were 324 new cases of NMSC and MM, including BCC 162 cases (50%) and SCC 130 cases (40.1%), whereas MM 32 cases (9.9%). Women had a higher probability of developing skin cancer with a ratio of 1.13:1. The average age of skin cancer was between 55-64 years old (33.6%), with a mean age of 57 years old. There was a statistically significant relationship between gender, age, occupation, and areas of skin cancer against skin cancer. Furthermore, overexposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation is related to high-risk occupations, including farmers (50%), while the most frequent location of skin cancer was the face (67.3%). Conclusion: Our study implicated a 1.5-fold increase in new cases of skin cancer between 2017 to 2019. BCC cases were more prevalent than SCC and MM cases. There was also a significant association between skin cancer and occupation also the location of skin cancer as the risk factor for UV exposure. Nevertheless, further research involving larger samples or a multicenter approach is needed.


Mental disorders are among the most disabling health conditions globally. However, there remains a lack of valid, reliable, noninvasive, and inexpensive biomarkers to identify (at an early age) people who are at the greatest risk of experiencing a future mental health condition. Exfoliated primary teeth, when used in combination with established and emerging tools (e.g., family history, imaging, genetics, epigenetics), may provide important additional insights about vulnerability to mental illness. Teeth are especially promising because they develop in parallel with the brain and maintain a permanent record of environmental insults occurring during prenatal and perinatal development. Despite their potential, few empirical studies have investigated features of exfoliated teeth in relation to mental health. Here, we used micro-CT imaging to test the hypothesis that measures derived from exfoliated primary incisors associated with psychopathology symptoms in a community-based sample of children (n = 37). We found that enamel volume (β = −0.77, 95% CI, −1.35 to −0.18, P = 0.01) had large negative associations with internalizing symptoms, and enamel mineral density (β = 0.77, 95% CI, 0.18–1.35, P = 0.01) had large positive associations with internalizing behavioral symptoms, even after stringent control for multiple testing. Pulp volume (β = −0.50, 95% CI, −0.90 to −0.09, P = 0.02) had a moderately-large negative association with externalizing behavioral symptoms, though these associations did not survive multiple testing correction. These results support the ongoing investigation of teeth as potential novel biomarkers of mental health risk.


Some infinite families of connected vertex-transitive graphs which are not chromatically unique are given in this paper.They are kKq kKq for any positive integers k≥2 and q≥2,kCn kCn for any positive integers k≥2 and n≥3,and kRn kRn for any positive integers k≥2 and n ∈{3,4,6,12},where Rn is the maximal regular-planar graph and is the operation of two graphs given by Zykov.


Sympathetic nerves may modify various aspects of renal function including renal haemodynamics, renin secretion and sodium output. In a series of experiments we found that within the human kidney α2-adrenoceptors are of greater importance than α1-receptors in mediating the adrenergic effects. For instance, intrarenal infusion of an α1-antagonist has a small effect on renal perfusion, whereas blockade of α2-receptors increases renal flow profoundly. There is evidence that the relevant receptors are located at a postjunctional site. Alpha2-receptors also play an inhibitory role in renin secretion. Recent data suggest that the α2-receptor, which reduces renin release, is located presynaptically. Thus, stimulation of this receptor reduces noradrenaline over-flow, and hence diminishes β-adrenoceptor mediated increases in renin.


Abstract From July to December 2000, ambient methane concentrations were continuously monitored at one sampling site 92 m above ground in Beijing city. Together with meteorological data measured at 22 municipal stations, a backward trajectory inversion model was developed to calculate methane emissions in the city. Model results were compared with a methane emission inventory established with updated emission factors and intensive survey of sources. From the source inventory, the total methane emissions were estimated to be 296.4Gg/yr, while municipal solid waste and fossil fuel account for 54.5% and 32.4% of total emissions. This showed that methane emissions in Beijing were dominated by anthropogenic sources. The inversion model described real-time methane emitted into the mixing layer along a backward trajectory path and also the exchange between reservoir layer and mixing layer. The Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) matrix inversion technique was used to calculate the methane emissions in each grid in the simulated region. The source distribution and quantitative results from model agreed well with the emission inventory, and the largest uncertainty in it was the distribution of methane emission from coal mines due to lack of trajectories covering coal mine areas.


On the afternoon of March 15, 1781, American and British forces clashed for several hours near Guilford Courthouse. The battle was the culmination of several months of hard campaigning by the armies of Nathanael Greene and Charles Cornwallis. British strategy centered on conquering the South by destroying Greene's army. Completely aware of the plan, Greene and other American leaders refused to give Cornwallis a stand-up traditional fight, and instead engaged the British in several violent skirmishes [2] and strategic retreats. Prior to Guilford Courthouse, the American strategy had resulted in the defeat of two detachments of Cornwallis's main army at King's Mountain in October 1780 and at Cowpens the following January.


Since January 1st, 2008, the coal power plants are subject to new stricter European Environmental Regulations. To fulfil these new stakes, new and existing units were equipped with air pollution control devices such as denitrification system (for example Selective Catalytic Reduction processes) in addition to the electrostatic precipitators (ESP) and wet-flue gas desulphurization (wet-FGD). The electrostatic filter particle collection process performances mainly depend on: the residence time of dust inside the ESP, the physico-chemical properties of dust (size, chemical composition, resistivity), the voltage applied to the dust collector. Only this last point is linked to the ESP itself while the other two depend on other external parameters. This article focuses on these external parameters and makes the analyses of their impacts on the collection performances. In particular, we describe and analyse the impact of : (1) coal characteristics through more than 500 reliable coal chemical analyses (from South Africa, Australia, China, Poland, Indonesia, Norway, Poland, Russia, USA coal supplies), (2) residence time, resistivity and collection performances of the 500 coals analysed through software simulation, and (3) SCR process impacts on the resistivity and the particle size through SO2 oxidation into SO3 as well as the possible production of ammonia sulphate and bi-sulphate species. Keywords—Coal characteristics, ESP efficiency, SCR, electrostatic precipitators, resistivity, combustion, dust, PM10, back-corona Corresponding authors: Glanluca Bacchiega and Véronique Arrondel e-mail address: firstname.lastname@example.com, firstname.lastname@example.com Presented at the 12th International Conference on Electrostatic Precipitation, in May 2011 Arrondel et al. 25


Berube, Michael. 1997. The Employment of English: Theory, Jobs, and the Future of Literary Study. New York: New York University Press. $55.00 hc. $19.50 sc. x + 259 pp. Kernan, Alvin, ed. 1997. What's Happened to the Humanities? Princeton: Princeton University Press. $35.00 hc. viii + 267 pp. Scholes, Robert. 1998. The Rise and Fall of English. New Haven: Yale University Press. $25.00 hc. $10.95 sc. xiv + 203 pp. Reading these three books juxtaposed with each other-rather than reading any one of them alone-can help us to envision what the profession of English could do to redefine itself to a public with varying degrees of hostility, nostalgia, misinformation, disinterest, and hope. All the books are united in their desire to redefine, not only for the academy, but for the larger public, the content, methods, and boundaries of the discipline of English. It would be expected that they would differ somewhat markedly in their understanding of the problems within the discipline and their sense of possible solutions. But what is perhaps most revealing of the tensions within the humanities today are the differences in the ways these three books represent both the discipline and their proposals for it. It is, therefore, on the rhetoric of their representations that much of this review will focus since, I believe, such a form of textual analysis will help to render most vividly the power struggles and the politics of the profession that are inhibiting it from taking a stronger leadership role in both higher education and in the schools. Michael Berube's The Employment of English: Theory,Jobs, and the Future of Literary Studies brings together some loosely connected essays: he argues passionately, though not particularly originally, for ending the tensions between literary and cultural studies; he analyzes employment in the academy, from the exploitation of graduate and part time teachers to the self-destructive excess of Ph.D.s the profession is producing; in the second half of the book he explores various potential relationships that could develop between the literary and the political sphere, including advocacy in the classroom, and the role of the "public intellectual" both writing and speaking in academic and non-academic forums. While The Employment of English has been highly touted for its wit and passion, I have to admit to finding somewhat glib its asserting, particularly in the first half, a variety of undeveloped suggestions on such admittedly important topics as making cultural studies central in introductory courses and in non-elite institutions (21), proposing that the MLA "investigate deceptive hiring practices" (71), and advocating that faculty create "meaningful forms of internal faculty review" in order to "prune departments of genuine deadwood" (77). All of these ideas address significant issues, but for any of them to work seriously would require a significant overhauling of many institutional relationships, including those among elite and non-elite institutions, the MLA and English departments across the country, and relationships between department members, chairs, and deans. That Berube addresses none of the necessary particulars of implementation is disappointing, because it is only in material details that change can genuinely occur. And I would have liked to see this book more directly work to inspire the changes it so obviously wants to occur. But beyond the glibness, there is another more serious problem in The Employment of English which Berube does not resolve, or perhaps even acknowledge. The book moves in two contradictory directions. On the one hand, Berube is willing to envisage fairly radical revisions of the way English is practiced today, particularly in prestigious research institutions. The example I will use to illustrate this is what I think is his book's most important idea: his suggestion that English faculty at the university level develop a much closer relationship with teachers in the schools and that they encourage their students to become school teachers. …


Objective To approach the relationship between situation of coronary intima after intracoronary iuntervention and the method of intracoronary intervention Methods Coronary angioscopy was performed in 31 patients with coronary artery disease 14 cases were therapied by percutaneous transluminal coronary recanalization (PTCR), 10 cases by percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA), and 15 cases by stents (in which 8 cases were done after PTCA) We observed coronary conditions (thrombus′s morphocology and color) immediately and one month after therapy Results Lining thrombi were observed in all the patients (15/15, 100%) in the stenting group and protruding thrombi were found in 86% (12/14) and 90% (9/10) of the patients in PTCR and PTCA group respectively The difference was statistically significant ( P 0 001) Conclusion In intracoronary intervention of coronary artery disease, stent lowers morbility of acute coronary occlusion and late restenosis


When we say that dissent has an 'agenda' and a 'legacy', we mean two distinct things. 'Agenda' suggests applicability going forward, whereas 'legacy' suggests a revisiting of the past – not only looking the past as past (how we viewed it then) but, just as importantly, how we have changed our narratives of the past through the lens of the present. Some of the themes presented here suggest relevance and applicability not only to eastern Europe but invite us all to think about the 'gift' of democratic dissent for global civil society as well as other transnational contexts.


Androcentrism is a value system that views the male perspective as superior to the female perspective. Some theorists maintain that androcentric bias explains why, compared to their numbers in education, women continue to be underrepresented in administrative positions. This article reports the findings of a study examining teacher reactions to job descriptions depicting attributes of the principalship purported to influence men and women differently. Contrary to our expectations, both men and women preferred the job descriptions depicting the collaborative style of leadership previously ascribed to women. Does this finding portend the demise of the gender-based value system found in educational administration?


A previous study showed that creative high school girls, as compared with their peers, exhibit more elements of primary process thinking in their thematic literary productions. The present study examined the incidence of several such elements in the graphic productions (Draw-A-Person protocols) by the same Ss. Results disclosed that the creative girls reveal more primary process elements of a strange, bizarre nature than their peers. No significant differences between the two groups were found in the incidence of drive-dominated aspects of primary process, i.e., sex and aggression.


Impressionism is a result of scientific and social developments' influence on art and cultural movements during 1870's. Impressionism, as being the brand new and the most important development in art during 19th century, has represented the modern painting with a strict separation from former understanding of art. While other art movements of 19th century have been maintained the relations or bore trace from classical understanding, impressionists severed all these ties. Instead of observing the nature in a realistic manner, they used impressions of observing it on art. Fashion in the most general sense, is representing the change. Whereas, fashion has been seen as the synonym of dressing, it involves all the aspects of human life. The Belle Epoque Era (1890-1914) that comprised a coy eroticism in fashion overlaps with the Impressionism period. It was a period characterized by an extensive freedom, economic growth and scientific development in Europe. New daily sport clothes and expensive night dresses were the source of inspiration in fashion. Trains and cars made it possible to spend time at the outside for everybody and new fashion styles adopted for social activities. This study is intended to analyze Impressionism Period's impact on fashion designers. The clothes of the period are going to be investigated from the view point of their color, style, models and accessories.


The intrinsic porosity in the periodic structures of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) endows them with a great potential for membrane separation. However, facile fabrication of crystalline MOF membranes has been challenging and limited to few materials for economic and environmental considerations. Herein, a continuous Zr‐MOF thin film with a thickness of ≈180 nm has been fabricated via in situ recrystallization of MOF nanoparticles on the porous support under formic acid vapor. Owing to the inherent microporosity and the well‐established hydrophilicity during membrane fabrication, the MOF thin films exhibit excellent pervaporation performance with separation factors of 2630, 501 and fluxes of 1.45, 1.41 kg m−2 h−1) for n‐butanol dehydration and methanol/methyl tert‐butyl ether (MeOH/MTBE) separation, respectively. The structural stability of the film has been further confirmed by its steady performance in the 10‐day pervaporation test. This in situ recrystallization method induced by a trace amount of acid vapor with no extra ingredients opens a new avenue for the facile membrane fabrication of various MOF materials to feasibly realize their versatile potential as membrane materials.


Use Topsis law on aviation anti-submarine aircraft maneuvering performance evaluation for assessment, evaluation index set to establish anti-submarine aircraft maneuverability, the establishment of a data matrix samples to be evaluated, the results consistent with the actual situation. This method effectively reflects the comprehensive and objective maneuverability of the aircraft, aviation anti-submarine aircraft performance evaluation provides a new way.


One of the major attribute of the Smart home automation and energy management systems integrate IOT and renewable energy resources at the consumption premises. With advancement of Automation technology, today's world prefers Automatic systems over manual systems. This paper presents the design, implementation and testing of an embedded system using arduino that integrates solar energy resources and energy management to a smart home incorporated with IOT. The proposed system provides and manages a smart home energy requirement by installing renewable energy and scheduling the power flow during peak and off-peak period. IOT (Internet of things) is the latest and emerging internet technology. Internet of things is a growing network of everyday object-from industrial machine to consumer goods that can share the sensors information to the Automation system using WIFI communication. IoT is a system that uses computers or mobile devices to control all home functions and features automatically through internet. In addition to that, a two-ways is developed to enable the home owner and the utility provider to better optimization of the energy flow and the consumption efficiency. A prototype for the proposed system was designed, implemented and tested using a controlled load bank to simulate a scaled random real house consumption behavior.


A method and system are disclosed for providing an estimate of a location of a user receiver device. The method involves emitting, from at least one vehicle, at least one spot beam on Earth; and receiving, with the user receiver device, at least one spot beam. The method further involves calculating, with the user receiver device, the estimate of the location of the user receiver device according to the user receiver device's location within at least one spot beam. Each spot beam contains at least one acquisition signal, which may comprise at least one ring channel. Each ring channel comprises a frame count; a space vehicle identification (SVID); a spot beam identification (ID); and/or X, Y, Z coordinates of the vehicle emitting the spot beam relative to an Earth coordinate system. In one or more embodiments, at least one vehicle may be a satellite and/or a pseudolite.


since 1975 in faculty and student administration, secretariat and institutional planning. He is currently head of quality and strategy at Victoria University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, which is one of five Australian universities which have significant student load in both higher education and vocational education and training. Address for correspondence: 245 Geelong Road, Kingsville, Vic. 3012, Australia. Tel: +61 3 9284 8947; Fax: +61 3 9284 8778: E-mail: email@example.com perspective


This paper will fi rst attempt to show: 1) that the meaning of what people say depends on the interactional nature of the enunciative framework and cannot thus be explained solely through the analysis of verbal structures; 2) that there is a logic pertaining to the enunciative framework, made up by specifi c rules, norms and constraints; 3) that this particular logic is constitutive of sociability. Secondly, the paper will try to highlight the importance of both the verbal and the prosodic and non-verbal components of verbal interactions, as well as the specifi city of their different conversational, institutional and mediatic modalities.


The growing need of mobile power sources with high energy density and the robustness to operate also in the harshest environmental surroundings lead to the idea of downscaling gas turbines to i-scale. Classified as PowerMEMS devices, a couple of design attempts have emerged in the last decade. One of these attempts was the Belgian "PowerMEMS" design started back in 2003 and aiming towards a i-scale gas turbine rated at 1 kW of electrical power output.This PhD thesis presents the scientific evaluation and development history of different combustion chamber designs based upon the "PowerMEMS" design parameters. With hydrogen as chosen fuel, the non-premixed diffusive "micromix" concept was selected as combustion principle. Originally designed for full scale gas turbine applications in two different variants, consequently the microcombustor development had to start with the downscaling of these two principles towards i-scale. Both principles have the advantage to be inherently safe against flashback, due to the non-premixed concept, which is an important issue even in this small scale application when burning hydrogen. By means of water analogy and CFD simulations the hydrogen injection system and the chamber geometry could be validated and optimized. Besides the specific design topics that emerged during the downscaling process of the chosen combustion concepts, the general difficulties of microcombustor design like e.g. high power density, low Reynolds numbers, short residence time, and manufacturing restrictions had to be tackled as well.As full scale experimental test campaigns are still mandatory in the field of combustion research, extensive experimental testing of the different prototypes was performed. All test campaigns were conducted with a newly designed test rig in a combustion lab modified for microcombustion investigations, allowing testing of miniaturized combustors according to full engine requirements with regard to mass flow, inlet temperature, and chamber pressure. The main results regarding efficiency, equivalence ratio, and combustion temperature were obtained by evaluating the measured exhaust gas composition. Together with the performed ignition and extinction trials, the evaluation and analysis of the obtained test results leads to a full characterization of each tested prototype and delivered vital information about the possible operating regime in a later UMGT application. In addition to the stability and efficiency characteristics, another critical parameter in combustor research, the NOx emissions, was investigated and analyzed for the different combustor prototypes.As an advancement of the initial downscaled micromix prototypes, the following microcombustor prototype was not only a combustion demonstrator any more, but already aimed for easy module integration into the real UMGT. With a further optimized combustion efficiency, it also featured an innovative recuperative cooling of the chamber walls and thus allowing an cost effective all stainless steel design.Finally, a statement about the pros and cons of the different micromix combustion concepts and their correspondent combustor designs towards a possible i-scale application could be given.


In order to reveal the character of shape features of gastropod shells, specimens of "Buccinum undatum" L. are examined. In gastropods, found empty so often in sediments, shape features are most important. ...Zie: Samenvatting


Usucracry right is an over the property of another about real estate ( the land and its things) in traditional real right. It has significance for the existence and development of society. This article probes into different opinions about building usucracry right system in our academic field, main factors be thought and how to perfect usucracry right system. Then, it studies the main content of usucracry right system. Finally, it states the names and range of some concrete forms, such as, superficies, contract right of agricultural land, pawning right, living right, servitude, and special permit real right.


BINNER, L., et al.: Autocapture Enhancements: Unipolar and Bipolar Lead Compatibility and Bipolar Pacing Capability on Bipolar Leads. Beat‐by‐beat Autocapture maximizes device longevity by minimizing stimulus amplitude while assuring patient safety. Currently, Autocapture permits use of only bipolar leads. The authors have devised a detection method that operates with unipolar and bipolar leads and covers all pacing and sensing combinations (but bipolar pace and sense simultaneously). This new detection method for unipolar sensing uses the integral of the negative portion of the unipolar evoked response as a robust capture detection feature. When using bipolar leads, the method provides the flexibility of bipolar or unipolar pacing. In this study, unipolar ventricular intracardiac electrograms (EGMs) were recorded in 71 patients, 73.7 ± 9.9 years of age; 9 with high polarization, 62 with low polarization. High polarization had polished platinum or activated carbon electrodes. Low polarization had TiN, platinized platinum, or IrOx electrodes. The intracardiac EGMs were recorded 544 ± 796 days after implant. The pacemakers performed an automatic capture threshold test while the intracardiac EGM signals were recorded in a programmer. These digitized signals were saved for off‐line analysis. The unipolar evoked response was calculated at up to six (depending on capture threshold) pacing voltages and the polarization integral at 4.5 V and at loss of capture. An automatic calibration algorithm determined if the signal‐to‐noise ratio was adequate for Autocapture operation. Autocapture was possible with 60 of 62 of the low polarizations, and with 6 of 9 of the high polarizations. The average values from the data collected were: average unipolar evoked response ‐ 4.1 ± 2.1  mV , average peak negative voltage ‐ 10.0 ± 3.7  mV , average polarization 0.3 ± 0.34 mV, and average signal‐to‐noise ratio (unipolar evoked response/polarization) 38 ± 71. In all cases the algorithm correctly determined the appropriateness of using Autocapture with the electrodes tested and the unipolar evoked response threshold to be used. (PACE 2003; 26[Pt. II]:221–224)


Plasma glucose, insulin levels and hepatic glucose production rates were studied after an overnight fast in six Addisonian patients in three different conditions: off replacement treatment, on substitution therapy and on high‐dose glucocorti‐coid treatment. For comparison eight normal subjects were evaluated in basal conditions. Fasting plasma glucose and hepatic glucose production did not change significantly with either level of glucocorticoid treatment when compared to the untreated state and the normal controls, but there was a significant increase in plasma glucose levels in the high‐dose cortisone‐treated Addisonian patients when compared to the untreated state. Insulin levels were significantly lower in the untreated state and significantly higher in the high dose‐treated patients when compared to the normal controls. It is suggested that in these experimental conditions the peripheral actions of glucocorticoids are predominant over the hepatic effects by virtue of their ability to produce secondary changes in insulin levels, keeping the hepatic glucose production constant.


This article deals with interviewing reluctant respondents. The analysis is used to construct a process-oriented model of respondent rapport and empathy. By assessing respondent rapport in a reflective way, the article contributes to the sociology of knowledge generation and the construction of respondent reality of complex social phenomena. Using the authors' reflective experiences of a particular interview episode, the stages of rapport building in the researcher— respondent relationship are assessed, providing guidance and lessons for future researchers. The limitations of the approach are considered and suggestions for future research are made.


We show that an interesting open asymmetric XXZ quantum spin chain with surface fields is invariant under a two-parametric generalization of the slq(2) algebra with deformation parameters being a particular root of unit.


The aim of this paper is to evaluate the e↵ects of political alignment on public health conditions in Brazil. We adopt a regression discontinuity design, both in its parametric and non-parametric versions. Our source of exogeneous discontinuity is based on the results of the municipal executive elections in the years 2004 and 2008, in which the winner and runner-up belonged to opposing coalitions. This study is a step forward in the related literature since the existing empirical work has only explored the e↵ect on public spending. Public health condition is measured by health indicators taken from DATASUS, including infant mortality due to diarrhea, general infant and maternal mortality rate. The variables related to the elections were taken from the Brazilian Superior Electoral Court (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral, TSE). The main findings point that : i) the discontinuity observed in the federal transfers and heath indicators varies across political cycles; ii) the e↵ects of political alignment are more sensitive to the first two years after the elections; iii) the absence of discontinuities in health care indicators may mean that decision-makers are sensitive to these indicators, avoiding opportunistic choices.


Exploiting a common language as an auxiliary for better translation has a long tradition in machine translation and lets supervised learning-based machine translation enjoy the enhancement delivered by the well-used pivot language in the absence of a source language to target language parallel corpus. The rise of unsupervised neural machine translation (UNMT) almost completely relieves the parallel corpus curse, though UNMT is still subject to unsatisfactory performance due to the vagueness of the clues available for its core back-translation training. Further enriching the idea of pivot translation by extending the use of parallel corpora beyond the source-target paradigm, we propose a new reference language-based framework for UNMT, RUNMT, in which the reference language only shares a parallel corpus with the source, but this corpus still indicates a signal clear enough to help the reconstruction training of UNMT through a proposed reference agreement mechanism. Experimental results show that our methods improve the quality of UNMT over that of a strong baseline that uses only one auxiliary language, demonstrating the usefulness of the proposed reference language-based UNMT and establishing a good start for the community.


Amongst the diversified applications of Internet of Vehicles (IoV), vision-based localization has raised increasing concern for its extraordinary performance in terms of accuracy and flexibility. The ultra-reliability and low-latency requirements of IoV have posed urgent demand for the provision of precise relative network geometry and efficient data transmission. In this paper, we propose a vision-based relative localization scheme in the presence of communication constraints. First, we derive the Fisher information matrix and obtain the relative squared position error bound (SPEB) via subspace projection. Next, we determine the local convexity of the relative SPEB with respect to bit allocation vectors and propose two bit allocation algorithms. Furthermore, we exploit the vision-based relative geometry and develop two localization algorithms based on Euclidean distance matrix completion and the property of the vision-based relative geometry. The simulation results validate that the proposed vision-based localization algorithms achieve near-optimal performance in terms of the relative SPEB within the bandwidth-constrained localization network, and they also demonstrate the superiority of the cooperation among agents.


This study aimed to investigate the effect of melatonin supplementation at different levels, in culture medium, on rabbit embryo development. Embryos were recovered from nulliparous Red Baladi rabbit does by laparotomy technique 72 hours post-insemination. Normal morulae were cultured till the stage of hatched blastocysts in the following four culture media; (i) control (TCM-199 + 20% fetal bovine serum), (ii) control + 10M melatonin, (iii) control + 10M melatonin and (iv) control + 10M melatonin. The high level of melatonin at 10M significantly increased the in vitro development of embryos (92% for 10M vs. 84% for 10M and 76% for 10M and control, P<0.05). However, the addition of melatonin with different levels did not improve the hatchability rate of these embryos (1630% vs. 52% for melatonin groups vs. control, P<0.05). Results show that adding melatonin at 10M to morula rabbit embryos enhances their development, while 10M melatonin slightly increased blastocyst rate and 10M had no effect on embryo development. This effect strongly suggests a physiological role of melatonin in embryo protection.


Intensive use of computers leads to an increase in the light load on the human body. The purpose of this research was to study the impact of the differential illumination of matrices of computer monitors (CM) on a melatonine-forming function, in which healthy male volunteers (average age 22.8 ± 2.09 years) took part. The light exposure was carried out by series for seven days with the help of CM, from which volunteers in the evening (from 9 pm to 11 pm) read standard text. CM had various backlit devices: Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp (CCFL) and White Light Emitting Diode (WLED), different color temperatures (CT). After each series, the excretion of 6-sulfatoxymelatonin (6-SOM) with urine was investigated. The peak intensity (PI) and the dominant wavelength (DW) in the WLED series, the parameters turned out to be within High Energy Visible Light (HEVL). The study revealed reliable differences in 6-SOM concentrations in different series of studies with indicators in the series with wised and CT 5512-5903 K. The research also detected correlations between the indicators 6-SOM, the values of PI (R = 0.692, p = 0.05) and the DW (R = 0.587, p = 0.01), which are in the HEVL range.


Necrotizing pneumonia (NP) is a rare and severe complication of bacterial community-acquired pneumonia associated with high morbidity and mortality rate. We present a case series admitted in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) of our tertiary care hospital for 6 months. Five cases (positive blood culture) were selected based on the features of pneumonia with moderate-to-severe respiratory distress at admission. All cases are treated with antibiotics (piperacillin/tazobactam and vancomycin) as per blood culture and sensitivity results and oxygen therapy by high-flow nasal cannula/mechanical ventilation based on the decision of the treating physicians. Intercostal drainage tube was inserted for all empyema/pneumothorax cases. Decortication was done in two cases. Out of five cases, three cases were recovered after prolonged treatment in PICU and two cases succumbed to death in the 2nd week of hospitalization. Treatment of necrotizing pneumonia should be initiated early with broad-spectrum antibiotics along with staphylococcal cover till culture reports are awaited.


In speed skating, the conventional skate has been replaced by the klapskate, in which the shoe can rotate around a hinge between shoe and blade. It has been hypothesized that the improved performance with klapskates vs. conventional skates can be attributed to the difference in the anterior/posterior position of the foot's center of rotation relative to the ice. This study investigated the effect of the position of the foot's center of rotation on push-off mechanics in speed skating. Eight elite speed skaters skated four 2000-m trials on instrumented klapskates at a fixed velocity. In each trial the hinge was placed at a different position between the 5th metatarso-phalangeal joint and the tip of the toes. 3-D kinematics and pushoff forces were measured to analyze push-off kinematics and kinetics. Shifting the hinge from the most posterior to the more anterior positions resulted in a delayed onset of foot rotation and longer duration of push-off. This delay coincided with an increase in angular displaceme...


An experimental work of continuous normal suction from the wing upper surface effects on the aerodynamic forces is carried out, as well as, the effect of normal suction slot channels location and the mass flow rate sucked strength are involved in this study. The wing model with NACA-0015 has been made to achieve normal suction from the wing upper surface by means of four slot channels. The satisfaction of the suction is done by using vacuum pump. The tests are to be done for incompressible flow over wing with and without a continuous normal suction for three different angle of attack 8, 12 and 16 Deg., and for three different Reynolds numbers 13.6×10 4 , 20.4×10 4 and 24.5×10 4 . The results showed that the continuous normal suction can significantly increase the lift to drag force ratio, and this ratio is increasing more as the strength of the suction increases.


Among the fundamental observations and concepts on which the science of immunology was founded in the beginning of the 20th century was the recognition that animals do not as a rule make antibodies...


This paper analyzes the business cycle properties of the Hong Kong economy during the 1982-2004 period, which includes the financial crisis experienced in Hong Kong in 1997-98. We show that output, output growth rate and real interest rates volatilities in Hong Kong are higher than their respective average volatilities among developed economies. In this paper, we build a stochastic neoclassical small open economy model that seeks to replicate the main business cycle characteristics of Hong Kong, and through which we try to quantify the role played by exogenous Total Factor Productivity and real interest rates shocks. The main finding is that, in order to explain the Hong Kong business cycle characteristics, the trend volatility has to be higher than the volatility of the transitory fluctuations around the trend, and that the country risk spread is the responsible for both the high variability and its countercyclicality.


Three kinds of crystals of two phenothiazine derivatives transformed into similar amorphous powders, in which the short-range π-stacking can be deduced by single-crystal structure.


This application is measured with the help close action to perform when related to a routine exercise machine and the routine training methods, the routine training method according to an embodiment of the present invention, help close detection device, the user and kicking (kicking) a ball to close the measuring step helps to create a close assistance information; Locus detection device, the trajectory measuring step of measuring the user exercise of kicking a ball, generating the sign information of said ball; And routine analysis device, by using the close assistance information and sign information, and may include a training routine derived deriving the training routine in help close corresponding to the user.


Background Predicting the potential risk factors of High blood pressure(HBP) among children and adolescents is still a knowledge gap. Our study aimed to establish and validate a nomogram-based model for identifying children and adolescents at risk of 31 developing HBP based on a population-based prospective study. Methods Hypertension was defined as systolic blood pressure or diastolic blood pressure above 95 th percentile, using age, gender and height-specific cut-points. Penalized regression with Lasso was used to identify the strongest predictors of 35 hypertension. Internal validation was conducted by 5-fold cross-validation and 36 bootstrapping approach. The predictive variables were identified along with the advanced nomogram plot by conducting univariate and multivariate logistic regression 38 analyses.


Objectives: To determine the sources of work-stress among the MOH hospital staff working in Riyadh City, Saudi Arabia, to examine the relationship between the socio-demographic variables and the level of work stress, and to studies the relationship between work-stress and the anticipated outcomes. Methods: This study applies the descriptive analytical research design. Doctors, nurses, technicians, administrators, and therapists working at five MOH hospitals were screened using a self-administe red questionnaire developed to serve the objectives of this study. 700 questionnaires were distributed and 414 were returned and valid for analysis. Frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations were used to present the descriptive analysis. Inferential analysis included two independent samples t-test, One way ANOVA, Pearson correlation, and stepwise multiple regression. The significance level used for the inferential statistics was 0.05. Results: The multiple regression analysis indicated that insufficient technical facilities, absence of appreciation, long working hours, and short breaks were significantly able to explain the variance in the level of work-stress among hospital staff. Pearson correlation showed that both age and experience showed significant negative relationship with work-stress level. Results also revealed that Saudi participants showed significantly higher level of work-stress than the non-Saudis. The rest of the socio- demographic and job variables showed no significant relationship with the level of work- stress. Occurrence of health problems, changing the hospital, changing the job, quitting the practice, and undesired relationship with coworkers were found to be correlated with work-stress. Conclusion: The level of work-stress among the MOH hospital staff seems to be high. This was due to insufficient technical facilities, absence of appreciation, long working hours, and short breaks. In addition, the older the employee and the more experience he/she has the less work-stress is experienced.


Osteoblast cells exhibit nanomechanical changes of after exposure to titanium, cobalt and PMMA particles simulating joint devices replacements wear debris.


1. Address list 2. Preface 3. Introduction: New perspectives on grammaticalization (by Lopez-Couso, Maria Jose) 4. Grammaticalization and the areal factor: The perspective of East and mainland Southeast Asian languages (by Bisang, Walter) 5. On the grammaticalization of 'come' and 'go' into markers of textual connectivity (by Bourdin, Philippe) 6. Grammaticalization, typology and semantics: Expanding the agenda (by Frajzyngier, Zygmunt) 7. Mismatch: Grammar distortion and grammaticalization (by Gaeta, Livio) 8. Areal convergence in grammaticalization processes (by Giacalone Ramat, Anna) 9. The grammaticalization of nominalizers in Japanese and Korean: A contrastive study (by Horie, Kaoru) 10. On the frills of grammaticalization (by Kuteva, Tania) 11. Nominalizations in Bodic languages (by Noonan, Michael) 12. On the rise and fall of Korean nominalizers (by Rhee, Seongha) 13. The grammaticalization of clausal nominalizers in Burmese (by Simpson, Andrew) 14. The grammaticalization cline of cardinal numerals and numeral systems (by von Mengden, Ferdinand) 15. The development of nominalizers in East Asian and Tibeto-Burman languages (by Yap, Foong Ha) 16. Index of names 17. Index of languages 18. Index of subjects


We examine different cases of heterostructures consisting of WS2 monolayers grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) as the optically active material. We show that the degree of valley polarization of WS2 is considerably influenced by the material type used to form the heterostructure. Our results suggest the interaction between WS2 and graphene (WS2/Gr) has a strong effect on the temperature dependent depolarization (i.e. decrease of polarization with increasing temperature), with polarization degrees reaching 24% at room temperature under near-resonant excitation. This contrasts to hBN- encapsulated WS2, which exhibits a room temperature polarization degree of only 11%. The observed low depolarization rate in WS2/Gr heterostructure is attributed to the nearly temperature independent scattering rate due to phonons and fast charge and energy transfer processes from WS2 to graphene. Significant variations in the degree of polarization are also observed at 4K between the different heterostructure configurations. Intervalley hole scattering in the valence band proximity between the K and {\Gamma} points of WS2 is sensitive to the immediate environment, leading to the observed variations.


Abstract Multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) are familiar well owing to their capability of finding wide-reaching applications based on their fascinating properties. Kinetics of thermally activated processes in MWCNTs can help in understanding and controlling those processes which might eventually lead to develop materials with optimized efficiencies. Even though, inadequate information on the kinetics of thermal decomposition of WMCNTs has been reported in the literature, and its thermodynamics is yet to be addressed. In this regard, the present study deals with a detailed kinetic investigation on the thermo-oxidative decomposition of MWCNTs by employing advanced kinetic approaches. Kinetic analysis of MWCNTs decomposition reveals that although the kinetic triplets remain comparable, reaction model under isothermal condition is not the same as under non-isothermal conditions. It alters from contracting cylinder (non-isothermal) to random nucleation followed by isotropic growth of particles (isothermal). Thermodynamics of MWCNTs thermal decomposition points out that the process is non-spontaneous with enhanced endothermicity. In addition, the structure of activated complex is found to be relatively more organized in comparison with the reactant. An account of the interpretations of the obtained kinetic and thermodynamic parameters is also given and discussed in this study.


607 Background: The number of cases of cancers originating from the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and from other associated GI organs has increased 28% between the years 2004-2014. The incidence and overall survival for GI tract related cancers shows systematic racial disparity. Our goal was evaluate racial disparity for overall survival and mortality among patients with GI tract cancers. Methods: We used the national cancer database to evaluate data from 12 types of GI tract cancers (esophagus, stomach, gallbladder, intrahepatic bile duct, extrahepatic bile duct, liver, pancreas, small intestine, colon, rectosigmoid, rectum, and anal) between the years 2004-2014. The racial categories included non-Hispanic white (NHW), non-Hispanic black (NHB), Hispanic, and Other (All other races were combined into an 'Other' category). We used Kaplan-Meier estimator with log-rank test for comparing the survival probability among the four race categories. We also used Cox regression to find out the hazard ratio for mortality adjusting for the age, sex, and Charlson index. Results: The study population included a total of 2,044,565 patients diagnosed with one of the GI tract cancers. Of the total 55% were male, 72% NHW 12% NHB, 0.4% Hispanic, and the rest were classified as 'other' race (16%) which includes majority of white or black Hispanic and Asian (82%), The mean age at diagnosis of the patients was 66.8 ± 11.3 years. Overall survival was better for the Hispanic group, followed by the 'Other' group, NHW and NHB (P < 0.001). Adjusted for age, sex, and for Charlson index, the hazards ratio was 0.93 (95% CI, 0.90-096, p < 0.001) for Hispanic vs other, 1.15 (95% CI, 1.14-1.16, p < 0.001) for NHB vs other, 0.98 (95% CI, 0.97-0.98, p < 0.001) for NHW vs others. Mortality rate among Hispanic, NHW, NHB, and other was 46.4%, 59.4%, 59.6%, 56.7%. Conclusions: With a very large study population the survival for Hispanic patient population as well as the 'Other' (majority of patients were Asian) category had higher overall survival probability and low rate mortality compared to other race categories. Possible hypotheses include dietary preferences, underlying genetic profile and environmental factors. Further studies are needed to confirm the hypotheses.


Transesterification of methyl esters of aromatic and α,β-unsaturated acids with bulky alcohols: (−)-menthyl cinnamate and (−)-menthyl nicotinate

product: (1R)-(−)-Menthyl cinnamate

product: (1R)-(−)-Menthyl nicotinate

Keywords:

transesterification;
tetrahydrofuran;
mercaptans, stench;
apparatus, for maintaining an inert atmosphere


Following the return of Hong Kong to Chinese jurisdiction in 1997, there has been concern about the potential marginalization of Hong Kong within China's development. We argue that far from being marginalized, Hong Kong together with the Pearl River Delta is becoming the most dynamic region within China.


This paper derives the Law Of Error Propagation and explores its uses in determining the outcome and distribution of a process in the presence of variations. The explicit purpose of this paper is tutorial in nature, specifically to fill a void in the existing literature on the origins of this important result. In starting from first principles, significant insight can be gleaned on the wide applicability and utility of this powerful Law.


Numerical simulations of spray formed by high pressure fuel injectors are usually modelled by Eulerian-Lagrangian method, where motion and transport of the droplet parcels are tracked through the flow field using Lagrangian formulation. The computational effort for this method increases drastically with increasing parcels number, leaving its main use for sufficiently diluted spray where the volume fraction of the dispersed phase is low enough to allow numerical simulation. In the dense spray region where the volume fraction of dispersed phase is high this method is not applicable and another method, Eulerian multiphase, has been used. The Eulerian multiphase method provides stronger physical coupling of the gas and the liquid phase in the near nozzle dense spray region. This modelling approach treats all phases, gas and liquids, as interpenetrating multi-fluids represented by their volume fractions. The gas phase is treated as the primary phase, while the spray droplets are treated as the secondary phases. The droplets are classified into different size classes by volume fractions and diameters. A separate set of complete conservation equations with some additional source terms accounting for droplet dynamics is solved for each phase with the same discretization and similar numerical techniques. The interactions between the phases are calculated using empirical closure relations by interfacial exchange terms. The interfacial mass exchange between the gaseous phase and the liquid phase includes droplet evaporation, primary break-up and secondary break-up, while the interfacial momentum exchange includes drag forces and turbulent dispersion force. Several numerical simulations of high pressures diesel injections combined with different chamber pressure were calculated and compared with the results of measurement data. The results show good agreement compared with the measurements and yield the correct trends for both the liquid and the vapor penetration for different operating condition.


The fluctuations in the number of aligned and unaligned hard-squares deposited on a subvolume of a finite fiat surface through a random sequential adsorption process are analyzed from Monte Carlo computer simulations. Approximate expressions for the coverage dependence of the relative fluctuation are obtained from a fit to simulation data. The influence of both the size of the subvolume and the size of the total adsorbing surface on the relative fluctuation is also examined. Two theoretical probability distributions, binomial and hypergeometric, are tested by comparing them with simulation distributions. A hypergeometric model where the effects of mutual exclusion between squares are incorporated by a coverage dependent effective volume per square is shown to give an excellent agreement with simulation distributions, even at coverages close to the jamming limit.


Summary The effects of 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG) were studied on postnatal rat heart cultures in Hanks' balanced salt solution. In this medium, the cardiac cells maintained a stable rhythm for a prolonged period of time. When glucose was the substrate, 2-DG depressed the rate of beating; this depression was reversed by ATP or pyruvate. ATP also stimulated the rate in cells without 2-DG, whereas pyruvate had no effect. Intracellular ATP levels were decreased by 2-DG, and incubation with pyruvate increased the ATP levels both in treated and untreated cultures. In the absence of glucose, the rate of beating remained unchanged, but addition of 2-DG stopped the beating, whereas glucose was only partially effective in counteracting the 2-DG depression. However, pyruvate and glucose, whatever the order of addition, restored the rate. Electrical stimulation induced beating in cultures treated with 2-DG and pyruvate or ATP in glucose-free medium. These findings indicate that, although the energy derived from the Krebs cycle is of importance for supporting contractility, adequate glucose utilization is needed for automatism in cardiac cells.


Smoothing selected cepstral coefficients over time has been recently shown to be a powerful method in the enhancement of noisy speech signals. A difficulty that arises in this context is that averaging a random variable in the log-domain changes its mean in the linear domain. The knowledge of this bias is indispensable for most temporal cepstrum smoothing applications. To date, the bias is known only for Gaussian distributed signals and infinite averaging length. This contribution presents an analytic solution for signals that are recursively smoothed in the cepstral domain with arbitrary effective averaging lengths. Additionally, the correct bias is computed also for a quefrency dependent setting of the recursive averaging parameters.


Objective: To describe the market share of importers, manufacturers and countries of origin of prescribed drugs in Lebanon; and to examine the effects of the price reductions enforced by the ministry of health on highly prescribed drugs.
Methods: 1326 medical prescriptions were collected from 3 different pharmacies in Mount Lebanon during the period July 2015 and February 2017. Costs were analyzed using 16 lists of drug prices from November 2014 to March 2017 provided by the ministry of public health. We also included the composition and therapeutic class of each medication. We used a one-tailed Z-test in order to check the validity of the claim that the reduction in prices enforced by the ministry of health affected highly prescribed drugs more than others on the total population of drugs prescribed.
Results: Out of 4265 drugs in our prescriptions, 19.5% were manufactured in Lebanon and 61.9% imported from European countries whose manufacturers dominated the top 10 manufacturers count. Mersaco topped the importers list July with 18.9% market share followed by Phenicia (10.8%). The most commonly prescribed drug classes in the sample were anti-infectives (24% of all drugs), followed by pain and inflammation agents (17.6%).
The mean drop in prices between November 2, 2014 and March 21, 2017 is larger for highly prescribed drugs than for others (p-value<0.00001), with a 99.8% confidence interval of (17.6%, 19.3%).
Conclusion: The cost of medication decreased in the last 2.5 years, however we still need to investigate the effects of this change on community pharmacists and the patients.


In this paper, we introduce a Darboux helix to be a curve in 3-space whose Darboux vector makes a constant angle with a fixed straight line. We completely characterize Darboux helices in terms of and thus prove that the class of Darboux helices coincide with the class of slant helices. In special, if we take = constant, the curves are curve of constant precession.


Abstract Robert A. Wijsman made fundamental contributions to the field of sequential analysis, especially in the area of invariant sequential tests and exponential boundedness of stopping times. This article provides an overview of the main themes and ideas of this impressive body of work, along with some personal remembrances from family members and colleagues.


The invention discloses a preparation method for a cadmium sulfide/graphene composite material. The preparation method comprises the steps of (1) adding cadmium sulfide and thiourea into deionized water, and stirring to obtain a clarified solution A; (2) adding oxidized graphene into the solution A, performing ultrasonic dispersion until the oxidized graphene is uniformly dispersed, heating to evaporate the mixture until the mixture is colloid, continuing to heat and combust the mixture to discharge a large amount of gas, wherein the obtained product is the cadmium sulfide/graphene composite material. According to the preparation method disclosed by the invention, the required temperature is low, the process is simple, the operation is easy, the yield is high, and preparation method can be used for large-batch production. The composite material prepared by the method has excellent photocatalysis performance.


Diamanes are 2D diamond-like films that are nanometers in thickness. Diamanes can exist as bilayer or multilayer graphene with various modes of stacking and interlayer covalent sp3 bonds. The term "diamane" is used broadly for a variety of diamond-like materials at the nanoscale, from individual diamond clusters to nanocrystal films. A short overview of recent progress in the investigation of diamanes, starting from the first theoretical predictions to practical realization, is presented. The results of both theoretical and experimental studies on diamanes with various atomic structures and types of functionalization are considered. It is shown that diamanes are stronger than graphene and graphane and have wide bandgaps ranging from 3.1 to 4.5 eV depending on the structure. Diamane-like structures have been obtained using different experimental techniques, and their structures have been determined by Raman spectroscopy. The potential applications of these carbon nanostructures are briefly reviewed.