Preface. Acknowledgments. 1. Networking Overview. Network Links, Networks and Internetworks. Protocol Stacks. Network Interfaces. The TCP/IP Protocol Suite. Computer Names and Add1resses. Network Services. An Example. Road Map for Reading this Book. 2. Introduction to Windows Sockets. The Significance of the Windows Sockets Specification. The History and Status of WinSock. The WinSock Group. Obtaining WinSock Information. Guiding Goals for Windows Sockets Version 1.1. The Relationship of Window Sockets to Other Network Components. Developing Programs with Windows Sockets. A Brief Summary of Windows Sockets Commands. 3. Introduction to Using Stream Sockets. The socket Command. Addressing and Address Data Structures. Stream Socket Connection Establishment. Synchronization of Commands/Blocking Modes. Data Transfer for Stream Sockets. Closing Stream Sockets. Byte Order. 4. Programming with the Windows Sockets Extensions. Summary of New Commands in Windows Sockets. Mandatory Commands. Command Failure and Error Processing. Asynchronous Notification/WSAAsyncSelect(). Overview of Sample Application. Server Application. Client Application. Additional Comments on the Sample Client and Server Applications. Extending the Server Application to Handle Multiple Clients. 5. Using Blocking and Polling Socket Calls. Implications of Blocking in Windows. Commands That May Block. DefaultBlockingHook() and the Blocking Loop. Handling Reentrancy. Sample Blocking Application. Modifying the Blocking Hook Procedure. Polling for Event Completion. Sample Polling Application. Summary of Polling Methods by Event Type. 6. Using the Database Functions. Introduction to the Database Functions. Using gethostbyname() and gethostbyaddr(). Dynamic Name/Address Resolution Methods. Using WSAAsyncGetHostByName(). Service Information Functions. Protocol Information Functions. Getting the Address of the Local Machine. 7. Using Datagram Sockets. Characteristics of Datagram Communication. Creating, Binding, and Closing Datagram Sockets. Sending and Receiving Data. Overview of Sample Disk Space Information Datagram Application. Disk Space Information Server Program Disk Space Information Client Program. Typical Sequence of Events for the Server and Client Applications. Using Broadcast Functionality. Optional "Connect" Functionality. Summary of Windows Sockets Commands as Used for Datagrams. A Description of TFTP. 8. Developing Stream Socket Applications. Network Interface Considerations. Protocols. Connection State Records. Network State Transition Graphs and State/Event Matrices. Error Processing. Sample PC to PC File Transfer Program. Sample Program Interface. Sample Program Protocol. Sample Program Connection State Records. Server Program States. Client Program States. Sample Program Error Processing. More on Sample Server Program Code. More on Sample Client Program Code. Description of FTP. 9. Using Windows Sockets from a DLL. Accessing Windows Sockets from an Intermediate DLL. Issues Specific to Using Windows Sockets from a DLL. Model 1 - App/Intermediate DLL/WINSOCK DLL Architecture. Model 2 App/Intermediate DLL/WINSOCK DLL Architecture. More Complex App/DLL/WINSOCK DLL Environments. Introduction to the TELNET DLL. Summary of the TELNET Protocol. TELNET DLL Interface. The Connection State Record. State Transition Graph and State/Event Matrix. Error Processing/Resource Management. The Model 1 TELNET DLL Implemention. The Model 2 TELNET DLL Implementation. 10. Analyzing LAN Traces. Using a LAN Analyzer. TCP Message Types and Sequences. An Individual Message Format. Sample LAN Trace. More on TCP Header Fields. Appendix A. Differences Between Windows Sockets and BSD Sockets. Appendix B. Examples of Dynamic Runtime Import of WINSOCK.DLL. Appendix C. Summary of FTP. Appendix D. Summary of the TELNET Protocol. Index.


This Report gives a detailed account of the development of a machine for reproducing aircraft motions on a flight simulator cockpit. The four freedoms of the machine are actuated by hydraulic servos. The equipment is part of the piloted flight simulator facility used for research and development studies in the Aerodynamics Department of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Bedford. The information presented concerns the engineering design and servo drive considerations involved. A description is given of the control and safety procedures used when operating the machine within the simulator facility. The limitations of the performance achieved are discussed both with a view to finding ways to improve the existing machine, and to point out those particular aspects of design which need careful attention and uncompromising implementation on any future project.


Intangible capital is an important growth driver in the modern knowledge‐based and innovation‐driven economy. While there seems to be sufficient support for the role of intangible capital from developed economies, evidence from fast‐growing developing countries is much more limited. This paper explores the heterogeneous pattern and potential determinants of firm‐level intangible capital investment in Vietnam. We found that firm size, human capital, and information and communication technology increase the likelihood to invest in intangible capital. Additionally, an inverted‐U shaped relation is identified between market competition and intangible capital investment: Moderate levels of market competition induce firms in Vietnam to invest more in innovative activities, but the effect of stronger competition diminishes.


06–515Dudley, Albert (Aichi Prefectural U, Japan), Multiple dichotomous-scored items in second language testing: investigating the multiple true–false item type under norm-referenced conditions. Language Testing (Hodder Arnold) 23.2 (2006), 198–228. 06–516Lee, Yong-Won (Educational Testing Service, China), Dependability of scores for a new ESL speaking assessment consisting of integrated and independent tasks. Language Testing (Hodder Arnold) 23.2 (2006), 131–166. 06–517Mcnamara, Tim (U Melbourne, Australia; email@example.com), 21st Century shibboleth: Language tests, identity and intergroup conflict. Language Policy (Springer) 4.4 (2005), 351–370. 06–518Roever, Carsten (U Melbourne, Australia), Validation of a web-based test of ESL pragmalinguistics. Language Testing (Hodder Arnold) 23.2 (2006), 229–256. 06–519Vincent, John (U Melbourne, Australia; firstname.lastname@example.com), Children writing: Multimodality and assessment in the writing classroom. Literacy (Blackwell) 40.1 (2006), 51–57. 06–520Weir, Cyril J. & Wu, Jessica R. W. (U Luton, UK & Testing Center, Taiwan), Establishing test form and individual task comparability: a case study of a semi-direct speaking test. Language Testing (Hodder Arnold) 23.2 (2006), 167–197.


Contact resonance force microscopy (CRFM) is an atomic force microscopy (AFM) method that evolved from a curiosity about the detection of ultrasonic vibrations with an AFM cantilever and an unaddressed need to characterize the mechanical properties of stiffer materials (elastic modulus >50 GPa). The method has matured to allow near-surface and subsurface elastic property measurements of single crystals, thin films, nanomaterials, composites, and other advanced materials. More recently, CRFM has been extended to viscoelastic property measurements, where the CR frequency and CR quality factor are utilized to quantitatively assess properties such as storage modulus, loss modulus, and loss tangent. In this Perspective, we trace the evolution of CRFM from initial discovery to elastic property measurements to viscoelastic property measurements. The techniques for extending single-point property measurements to two-dimensional property maps are then described in terms of their operational characteristics, demons...


raditionally, in both antiquity and modern scholarship, the historiography of ancient Sicily has been considered apart from that of the Greek mainland, and where any direct influence has been recognised, it has generally been only from east to west. The almost complete loss of Sicilian historical texts prior to Diodorus Siculus (whose narrative is heavily influenced by his contemporary context in Augustan Rome) further complicates the situation. Nevertheless, the complex and tumultuous history of Sicily provides a critical object lesson in the process through which the narrative of warfare became polarised in the historiographical tradition. As dynastic autocrats branded their territorial expansion as a defence against external enemies, upon their expulsion these same campaigns were rebranded as imperialistic and tyrannical by their successors as a means of legitimising the transfer of power. A parallel polarity can be seen in the Sicilian historiographic tradition's fraught dialogue with the mainland historiographic tradition on the construction of Greek identity


There is a dearth of information on the extent of irrigation development in the country. As a result, there has been a great deal of confusion over the statistics on the state of irrigation development. The NIA defines an irrigation service area as an area with irrigation facilities. In reality, the actual area served is much less than the service area. The disturbing implication is that we are very inefficient in the planning and implementation of irrigation projects. This very low actual over design irrigated area ratio is mainly due to design mistakes, unrealistic assumptions during project preparation stage, overlaps in the service areas of various modes of irrigation and inefficiency in the operation and maintenance of irrigation systems. The bulk of the available information presented in this paper show that the country is realizing less than half of potential benefits from irrigation development. There are very alarming indications of decreasing efficiency in the planning and implementation of national irrigation systems (NIS) and communal irrigation systems (CIS) as attractive schemes get fewer and fewer and vital watersheds are increasingly subject to exploitation by an ever increasing population.


In this work, the magnetodielectric response have been studied in a series of single crystals of Fe2-xMnxGe2Pb2O9 with substitution x from 0 to 0.43. The research results showed that an increase in x leads to a change in the orientation of the antiferromagnetism vector in a zero magnetic field. The application of an external magnetic field leads to spin-flop and spin-reorientation magnetic transitions, which are accompanied by anomalies in the behavior of the permittivity.When Fe3+ ions are replaced by Mn3+ ions, the response of the magnetic subsystem to an external magnetic field changes, which is naturally reflected in the change in the magnetodielectric response.
The permittivity changes stepwise when the magnetic subsystem passes into a state with a nonzero vector of the weakly ferromagnetic moment, or when its magnitude and orientation change due to a spin-flop transition. The latter indicates that a sharp change in polarizability is a consequence of a change in the contribution of the exchange energy, as well as the contribution of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya term, due to a change in the skew angle between two interacting magnetic moments.


In the present work, we discuss the evaluation and optimization of a stand-off laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (ST-LIBS) system, developed indigenously for remote analysis of heavy elements in soil. A compact Q-switched Nd:YAG laser operating at fundamental wavelength 1064 nm was used for plasma generation at distances up to 6 meters. Techniques for optimal experimental results were evaluated for detection of Cd, Cr, Pb, Mo and Ni in soil. The system was evaluated with two NIST certified soil samples. The effect of working distance on the LIBS signal is also discussed briefly. Results confirm the capabilities of the system for remote monitoring.


Summary Liberals, from Mill to Rawls see personal autonomy as paramount in civil society. They see human dignity to consist essentially in personal autonomy, that is, 'in the ability of each person to determine for himself or herself a view of the good life' (Taylor, C. (1992) p. 27). Multiculturalism and "The Politics of Recognition" p. 57 (Princeton, Princeton University Press). This emphasis on personal autonomy underlies much of liberal emphasis on freedom of conscience, justice, rights and fairness. Its core thesis is that a just society seeks not to promote any particular view of the good life, but enables its citizens to pursue their own ends consistent with a similar liberty for all others. Yet, when some citizens in America attempted to pursue their own view of the good life, they came up against head‐on conflict with the liberal state. These groups saw civic education with its emphasis on individual choice, on reflecting and weighing of alternative viewpoints and on personal autonomy, as threate...


The complexity of the issues in climate change and trade presents challenges not faced by other global problems. This paper examines the problem from the perspective of trade officials. It begins with a brief review of some of the overlapping challenges faced by trade policy specialists in the WTO and climate change negotiators. It then turns attention to the basic problems of definitions, particularly those arising from the classification of environmental goods and services (EGS). Ultimately, despite the amount of time spent thus far on thinking about tariff reductions in goods, non-tariff barriers like standards and labeling laws may make a bigger contribution to the use or non-use of environmental friendly products. Finally, the paper considers some of the issues stemming from border adjustment measures, especially from the perspective of developing states.


In-vitro antioxidant activity of various extracts of the leaves of Capparis grandiflora Wall.Ex
Hook was determined by DPPH free radical scavenging assay. The Reducing power of extracts
was also determined. Ascorbic acid was used as standard and positive control for both the
analysis. The chloroform and ethanolic extracts of Capparis grandiflora showed very
significant DPPH (1,1-diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazyl) radical scavenging activity compared to that
of standard antioxidant. The DPPH radical scavenging activity of the extract was increased with
the increasing concentration. In DPPH free radical scavenging assay, IC50 value of chloroform
and ethanol leaf extracts was found to be 39.2 I¼g/mL and 30.7 I¼g/mL respectively. The results
concluded that the extracts have a potential source of antioxidants of natural origin.


The health of our body is maintained by the equilibrium of Oxidation and Reduction. As long as a balance exists between oxidative stress and our antioxidant system, our body is maintained in a healthy state. However, excessive oxidative stress or inadequacy in a normal cell's antioxidant defense system (or both) can cause the cell to experience oxidative stress. Tumor cells usually have an imbalanced redox status resulting in the damage to DNA, proteins and lipids. Higher levels of DNA damage and deficient DNA repair may predispose individuals to cancer. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are involved in a variety of different cellular processes ranging from apoptosis and necrosis to cell proliferation and carcinogenesis. Molecular events, such as induction of cell proliferation, decreased apoptosis and oxidative DNA damage have been proposed to be critically involved in carcinogenesis. Carcinogenicity and aging are characterized by a set of complex end points, which appear as a series of molecular reactions. ROS can modify many intracellular signaling pathways including protein phosphatases, protein kinases and transcription factors suggesting that the majority of effect of ROS are through their actions on signaling pathways rather than via non- specific damage of macromolecules; however exact mechanism by which redox status induces cells to proliferate or to die, and how oxidative stress can lead to evoking tumor formation are still not clear. Our environment is oxidizing because of the prevalence of ambient Oxygen. The normal process of cellular metabolism, which requires oxygen from the air we breathe, leads to the production of free radicals- unstable, highly reactive molecules that lack an electron. Free radicals seek stability by stealing electrons from other stable molecules, creating a chain reaction of free radical formation that can cause damage to body cells, proteins and DNA. Aging and/or environmental stress may enhance this oxidative stress and may also lead to chronic inflammation, which can further exacerbate damage and increase cancer risk.


An efficient method for the quantitative conversion of 1-substituted alkenyl(phenyl)silanes into the corresponding alkenylsilanols has been developed and used in their palladium(0)-catalyzed, tetrabutylammonium fluoride-promoted cross-coupling reaction with aryl iodides. Copper(I) chloride


Promoting the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure is the important guarantee to maintain the smooth and quick development of industry and improve the increase quality and efficiency and it is an important task that affects the whole situation of industrial development.We should take scientific development philosophy as the ideological spirit,the construction of conservation-conscious society as the basis,scientific and technological progress as the motivity,the organization structure adjustment as the cut-in point,deepen the reform of industrial system and develop strategic industrial industries,reform the traditional industry with high-tech,realize smoothly the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure and strengthen the international competitive power of industry.


P A T H 0 LOG I CAL changes in the basal ganglia are found both in Parkinsonism and Huntington's chorea. However, no biochemical lesion analogous to that found in Parkinson's disease has been demonstrated in the latter condition. The urinary excretion of dopamine (Barbeau et al., 1961)and its metabolite homovanillic acid (HVA) (Williams et ai., 1961) and of 5-hydroxyindole-3-acetic acid (5-HIAA) Sourkes et ai., 1964) has been shown to be normal and the brain level of dopamine and noradrenaline has also been found to be within the normal range (Ehringer & Hornykiewicz, 1960). No abnormality has been found in the ability of patients with this disease to metabolise L-tryptophan (Oliphant et ai., 1960) or L-dopa (Sourkes et al., 1965). Indirect evidence which suggests that there may be a disturbance of amine metabolism in this disease is provided by the following: drugs effecting clinical improvement of the choreiform movements are reserpine, some phenothiazines and a-methyldopa (Oliphant et al., 1960; Markham et al., 1963; Sourkes et al., 1965; Cotzias et ai., 1969); one of the side effectsof treatment with L-dopa in Parkinson's disease is the development of choreiform movements (Calne et ai., 1969; Cotzias et al., 1969; Yahr et al., 1969); and administration of 5-hydroxytryptophan (Lee et al., 1967) or L-tryptophan (Barbeau, 1969) to choreatic patients exacerbates these symptoms. Thus the malfunctioning of the extrapyramidal system in Huntington's chorea may be due to disturbance of the balance between the excitatory and inhibitory effects of neurohumoural substances. Acetylcholine and histamine have been suggested as possible excitatory substances and serotonin and catecholamines as possible inhibitory substances in the extrapyramidal system (McGeer et al., 1961; Barbeau, 1962). While catecholamine and * Present address: Department of Psychiatry, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. indole metabolism have frequently been investigated, no study has been made of histamine metabolism in this condition. In the present study the urinary excretion of histamine and its major imetabolite l,4-methylimidazoleacetic acid (1,4-MeImAA) and the isomeric 1,5-methylimidazoleacetic acid (1,5MeImAA) as well as the excretion of noradrenaline, adrenaline, 3-methoxy-4-hydroxymandelic acid (VMA) and 5-hydroxyindole3-acetic acid (5-HIAA) has been measured.


When Fritz Ringer published The Decline of the German Mandarins in 1969, the history of education and of the professions occupied a very modest position in the historiography of modern Germany. In the Federal Republic, the reprinting in the mid-1960s of Friedrich Paulsen's History of Scholarly Instruction in the German Schools and Universities and German Universities and University Study, both dating from the turn of the century, highlighted the lack of more recent scholarship, although it also heralded a major revival of interest in the field. In the United States, the experience of the two world wars had almost completely eroded the older admiration for aspects of German education ranging from the kindergarten to the research seminar. The search for the roots of National Socialism had led many historians to criticize German schools and universities for their teaching of authoritarian, militaristic, nationalistic, and even völkisch values. Yet during the two decades after World War II, a brief condemnation of the universities by the German exile Frederic Lilge was the only book-length study on any area of German educational history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to appear in the United States.


Based on the dynamic winkler-foundation beam model and interfacial transfer matrix scheme,the explicit expressions indicating force-displacement relationship of piles are derived under combinative axial and lateral loads in layered-soil.In terms of the improved Gazetas's three-step procedure for pile-soil-pile interaction in homogenous media,a new method for calculating dynamic interaction factors for strata-soil is suggested under harmonic excitation.A relatively concise scheme to horizontal dynamic effect on pile-group considering the influence of axial load is expatiated.The vibration characteristic including frequency-dependent displacements and internal forces of pile-group could be also roundly revealed by the presented method.


The light backscattered by different types of textured crystalline silicon samples was investigated with the aim to find a correlation between light collection and light backscattering properties. Different families of texture geometry were considered: inverted pyramids, hemispherical wells, and porous silicon. For each texture family, different samples were prepared with a different amount of texture surface coverage. Textured samples were analyzed by measuring the light intensity angular distribution, the total reflectance and the diffused component of reflectance, by using optical apparatus specifically devoted to these measurements. Unpolarized laser beams at 543 nm, 633 nm and 1064 nm, incident orthogonally to the silicon surface, were used in the experiments. In order to make a quantitative investigation of the light backscattering properties, simple models of scattered light angular distribution were considered, corresponding to ellipsoids of revolution characterized by a single parameter, the ratio between minor and major axes (aspect ratio). The total light collection, corresponding to each specific texture geometry, shows a simple linear behavior respect to a parameter obtained from the product of the aspect ratio with the diffused component of reflectance. The found correlation is considered an interesting empirical result even though a clear understanding of the optical phenomena underneath has not been achieved yet.


John Kveton, Lahey Clinic Medical Center, Burlington, Mass, described two patients who experienced delayed spontaneous return of hearing after acoustic tumor surgery. His findings were reported at the January 1988 Eastern Section meeting of the Triological Society held in New York. In this series of patients undergoing acoustic tumor surgery with preservation of the cochlear nerve, 29% retained usable hearing postoperatively. Hearing loss may be secondary to direct mechanical trauma or vascular compromise of the cochlear nerve. Two patients with small tumors resected via the suboccipital approach regained significant hearing during the first year postoperatively. However, speech discrimination in these patients was low. These results point toward the possibility of a conduction block or neuropraxia of the cochlear nerve with potentially reversible hearing loss. The site of lesion for the conduction block is speculated to be at the transition zone between the peripheral and central segments of the cochlear nerve.


Purpose: To evaluate the association between the side of the spontaneous intracranial hemorrhage (sICH) and the jugular and sigmoid notch areas.
Methods: A total of 265 patients (111 women and 154 men) with a mean age of 68.8±11.7 years (range between 50 to 90 years) and with sICH, were retrospectively enrolled. Control group harbored 45 patients (19 women and 26 men) with a mean age of 68.3±11.9 years (range between 50 to 90 years). Jugular and sigmoid notch areas were measured on axial plane CT images, for both the right and left side in the study and control groups. The association between ICH and sigmoid/jugular notch areas were assessed by student t test. The correlation between right/left sigmoid and right/left jugular notch areas were assessed by Pearson correlation.
Results: There was a significant difference between right and left sigmoid/jugular notch areas in patients with right sided ICH (P


Different definitions of Technological Surveillance are given – including objective, scheme and stages of the process – they all coincide in the fact that it is a systematic effort by the organizations to monitor relevant facts of their scientific, technological and business setting. This continuous activity makes it possible to detect essential information sources; relevant information on inventions, novelties, technological trends, competitors, potential partners, etc. is extracted; and information is timely disseminated upon decision makers. Joomla! content management system is shown as a professional, flexible and free tool making it possible to have an information system to support the stage of disseminating Technological Surveillance results. Finally, a Joomla!-based Technological Surveillance service, including a Website and a subscription and bulleting-emailing system, is presented as a specific solution.


Abstract The third harmonic (355 nm) of a pulsed, Nd-YAG laser has been used to induce pyrene fluorescence in cyclohexane solution. The rate constants of fluorescence quenching of pyrene by alkyl and aryl bromides have been measured. The increase of kq with increasing the electron affinity of the quencher is attributed to CT interactions between the fluorophore and the heavy atom quencher involving a CT encounter complex, in which the quencher acts as an electron acceptor.


The growing demand for more efficient and effective healthcare services, coupled with an implicit requirement for supporting citizen mobility and continuity of care, is currently setting the stage for the exploitation of information and communications technologies, also known as information society technologies, in the healthcare sector. The current vision comprises affordable access to healthcare resources and services for all citizens, thus making medical expertise a shared resource wherever and whenever needed. Important areas in which information society technologies are likely to have a significant impact include those of pre-hospital health emergencies, remote monitoring of patients with chronic conditions and medical collaboration through sharing of health-related information resources. Accessibility to these and other media-rich, user-oriented services, in the context of the emerging global information society, will be supported by a healthcare information infrastructure (HII) which can achieve effective horizontal integration of networked information sources.


A cyclonic gas-liquid separator for automatic oil and gas discharge is applied for the separation of crude oil and gas. The separator comprises a tank body. A drainage outlet is arranged in the bottom of the tank body and an inlet is arranged in the middle of the tank body. A cyclone and a gas phase intake are arranged inside the tank body. The separator is characterized in that an automatic gas phase discharge device is fixed on the top of the tank body and is connected with a gas phase discharge pipeline which is connected with a gas phase outlet pressure-setting and flow-control valve. The bottom of the tank body is connected with a liquid-phase discharge pipeline which is connected with an automatic liquid phase discharge device. The automatic liquid phase discharge device is connected with a liquid phase outlet pressure-setting and flow-control valve. The effect of the separator is that the gas and the liquid are thoroughly separated and are discharged automatically without any external force, the structure dimension is small and the operating cost is low. The separator achieves both the function of improving the gas and liquid separation effect and the function of automatic discharge. Moreover, the automatic discharge devices are dismountable and adjustable. The separator is applicable for the separation of liquid and gas with the different density differences and in particular applicable in the natural gas production.


The article reconstructs a process of twenty years of investigation arguing about the empirical evidences of democratic schools and popular schools that today develop their experiences in the country and through them a political perspective co nstruction is coming on, to be sustained through multiple actors. In this sense, it presents the opt ions and convictions of the different objects of st udy that were elected and supported - always related to the education of the excluded sectors. More over, it tells about the decisions and methodological strate gies assumed in each project according to the problems stated and the emergent topics of the work in the field. On the whole, it tries to share the results, achievements and conclusions that have bee n obtained through the light of empirical work in each stage. The intention here is to open a debate and an interchange with other colleagues about the necessity and the viability of the political constr uction above mentioned.


The characteristics of Flash was introduced,web-based CAI courseware of hydraulic transmission was designed with Flash,students' studying interest was excited with mutual animation of the CAI and teaching quality was improved.


This paper will discuss some of the considerations involved with the design and development of a premium radio system for today's automotive market. By premium, we are referring to a top-of-the-line system that includes capabilities for the reception of AM and FM signals along with either an 8-track or cassette tape deck option. The paper emphasizes the developmental considerations involved for O.E.M. or factory installed systems rather than those that may be part of a dealer or aftermarket system installation. It will also primarily be directed towards our experience at Delco Electronics in the development of entertainment systems for various General Motors' vehicles over the past several years.


Financial transactions are a part of daily life regardless of whether done through a bank office or by method of other online channels. Banks perform services such as: including fund transfers between accounts both within the bank and different banks, bill payment, credit card payment, utilities payment and also configuring the initial set up for access to such services. So, the study focuses on the commercial banking sector. This study is an attempt to explore the interrelationship between service quality and customer satisfaction. As and evaluation the importance of customer satisfaction in receiving banking services. Quality customer service and satisfaction are recognized as the most important factors for bank customer acquisition and retention (Jamal, 2004; Armstrong and Seng, 2000; Lassar et al., 2000). Satisfied customers rarely file complaints and are overall more loyal to the bank. This will be a real contribution for the banks because in this way, banks can seek guidance to improve their service quality in order to retain their customers. Previous results show that service quality has a positive and significant effect on banking services and shows that customer satisfaction has a positive and signicant effect on financial performance.


There is currently a lack of research aimed at determining the boredom level experienced by sixth grade students participating in an accelerated math class, as well as suitable strategies aimed at helping students avoid it. This quantitative quasi-experimental static-group comparison study investigated boredom levels with the implementation of Contract Activity Packages (CAPs), a strategy specifically related to combatting boredom for gifted and talented students, into a sixth-grade accelerated math class. Data were collected from 138 sixth-grade students participating in an accelerated math class via the boredom scale of the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire – Mathematics (AEQ-M) and analyzed using a two-way analysis of variance and a one-way analysis of variance. Results showed that there were no statistically significant differences in the boredom levels of sixth-grade students participating in an accelerated math class who received and did not receive CAPs, regardless of gender or giftedness. These results imply that the use of CAPs might not be a suitable strategy to use in order to prevent the presence of boredom in the classroom setting, or that the CAPs were not effectively designed. Thus, more research in this particular field of education is recommended.


Objective In order to raise the efficiency of general single gene
amplification in detecting ETEC.Methods Three gene PCR method had been set up with three
standard bacteria of ETEC44815(STp +), ETEC19449(STh +) and ETEC44813(LT +).Results
H10907(STp +),PSLM004(STh +) and PMM030(LT +) had been hybrided with the probes
labeled by the polymerase chain reaction. The hybridization results of all strains were positive,
which demonstrated the speciality of the multiplex PCR method. Fifty four ETEC had been
detected by this three gene amplificatin system and divided into LT(8),
STp(2),STh(7),LT+STP(10),LT+STh(10),STp+STh(4) and LT+STp+STh(13).Conclusion The results
suggests that mutiplex PCR is more rapid and economical than single gene one in the
detection and identification of ETEC.


Natural amino acids were converted to the corresponding allylic alcohols A, from which key precursors C were obtained bia a three-step sequence [(a)Ac 2 O/Py or CbzOSu/Et 3 N/DMAP; (b) NMO/NaIO 4 /OsO 4 (cat.); (c) Ph 3 P=CR 2 CO 2 Bn]. The allylic alcohols D were further transformed to the desired pseudodipeptides I through the corresponding bromo derivatives E via a reductive deconjugation process


Ag nanoparticles(NPs) were uniformly immobilized in hierarchically porous monolithic silica using γ-(aminopropyl)triethoxysilane(APTES) as a modifier and ethanol as a reductant, where the silica monolith was pre- prepared via the sol- gel accompanied by phase separation. Ag NPs embedded in the hierarchically porous silica monoliths were characterized by scanning electron microscopy(SEM),transmission electron microscopy(TEM), X-ray diffraction(XRD), mercury porosimetry, nitrogen adsorption/desorption analysis, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy(XPS). The mechanism of the modification by APTES, the reduction using ethanol, and pore structure changes of the silica monolith after immobilization of Ag NPs are discussed. The results show that APTES modifies the monolith by incorporating amino groups onto the surface of the meso-macroporous skeletons, and then amino groups react with silver ions to form a silver-amine complex. Ethanol used as an effective reductant is adopted to promote the reduction process of the silver- amine complex. Ag NPs with an average size of approximately 16 nm were homogeneously supported on both the macroporous skeletons and in the mesopores of the silica monolith with good dispersion. The embedding of Ag NPs did not spoil the macroporous skeleton of the monolithic silica, and the surface area decreased from 418 to 254 m2·g- 1after introducing Ag NPs into its macromesopores. It was also found that the loading amount of Ag NPs increased with repeated modification and reduction treatments.


The rates of reaction of N2CHSiMe3 with HMo(CO)3Cp (Cp = η5-C5H5) in heptane obey the rate law −d[HMo(CO)3Cp]/dt = k[HMo(CO)3Cp][N2CHSiMe3] (k = 0.035 ± 0.01 M−1 s−1 at 0 °C; ΔH⧧ = 11.7 ± 2.0 kcal/mol and ΔS⧧ = −22.0 ± 3.0 cal/(mol K)). Isotopic scrambling between DMo(CO)3Cp and N2CHSiMe3 occurs at a rate faster than the overall reaction. Reversible 1,2-addition to form the tightly bound intermediate [Me3SiCH2Nβ═Nαδ+][δ−Mo(CO)3Cp] is proposed as the first step of the reaction. Spectroscopic and computational data support this formulation. The contact ion pairs can undergo heterolytic cleavage to ions or homolytic cleavage to radicals, and the solvent influence on kobs (THF > toluene > heptane) is interpreted in terms of this model. The enthalpy of this reaction has been measured by solution calorimetry at 272 K in THF: ΔH = −11.6 ± 1.2 kcal/mol. These data, together with computed organic reaction energies allow estimation of the bond strength between the three-electron donors·N2CHSiMe3 and ·Mo(CO)2Cp to b...


: Massive infrastructure construction has generated a boom in cement consumption, and the world uses 30 billion tonnes of cement concrete year to meet it. Academics from all around the world are coming up with new carbon-neutral building solutions to recycle industrial pollution, and they are sharing their findings online. Ash from sugarcane bagasse has a high percentage of amorphous silica and may be used in the production of concrete. This study investigates the chemical and physical characteristics of ash derived from sugarcane bagasse. The effect that the processing of sugarcane bagasse ash has on the performance of concrete is investigated. In this study, the fresh and hardened properties of concrete are investigated after being treated with varying concentrations of sugarcane bagasse ash (SCBA). A more environmentally conscious era might be ushered in by recycling agricultural and industrial waste in concrete. As potential partial replacements for river sand, Sugarcane Bagasse Ash (SCBA) and Granite Waste (GW) were investigated and tested in this research. Particle packing determines % substitution. The utilisation of bagasse ash and granite waste as a partial replacement for river sand is investigated. The tests that are performed on the concrete include compression, splitting tensile, flexural, modulus of elasticity, water absorption, sorptivity, and quick chlorine penetration. According to the results of many tests, bagasse ash-granite waste concrete is much more robust than conventional concrete. Bagasse ash-granite waste concrete offers greater strength qualities and lower permeability than standard concrete, they say.


Tarone, and G. Yule. 1989. Focus on the Language Learner. New York: Oxford University Press. Van Ek, 1. A. 1975. Threshold-level English. Oxford: Pergamon Press. White, R. V. 1988. The ELT Curriculum: Design Innovation and Management. Oxford: Blackwell. Wilkins, D. A. 1976. Notional Syllabuses. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 3 Designing workplace ESOL courses for Chinese health-care workers at a Boston nursing home


Subjective: To identify the practicability and clinical values of acupuncture in the treatment of child cerebral paralysis, try to provide visualized evidence and mechanisms for acupuncture treatment of this disease. Methods: 13 cerebral palsy children including 9 cases of spasmodic type, 2 cases of ataxia type and 2 cases of mixed type, 9 males and 4 females were subjected into this study. Acupoints used were Hegu (LI 4), Quchi (LI 11 ), Zusanli (ST 36) and Sanyinjiao (SP 6) that were punctured and stimulated electrically with parameters of frequency 2/15 Hz, electric current 5 mA, and duration of stimulation 30 min. Under monitoring of Siemens ECAM/ICON SPECT System, blood flow volumes of different brain regions were observed before, during and after elctroacupuncture (EA) stimulation of the above-mentioned acupoints. Results: SPECT revealed that in these 13 infantile patients, 18 regions of the brain in-cluding 12 in the frontal lobe and 6 in the temporal lobe presented insufficiency of blood perfusion and hypofunction; during EA, these cerebral regions and parietal lobe, visual cortex, thalamus, basal ganglion and cerebellum showed improvement in blood perfusion and function in different degrees. Results of the quantitative analysis on blood flow function changing rate (BFCR)% showed a significant increase in 83.3 % of the focal regions during EA. Conclusion: Acupuncture therapy can effectively improve cerebral blood perfusion of the focus and is of clinical value in treatment of infantile cerebral paralysis.


We give explicit formulas for the ranks of the third and fourth homotopy groups of all oriented closed simply connected four-manifolds in terms of their second Betti numbers. We also show that the rational homotopy type of these manifolds is classified by their rank and signature.


In this article the subject of enhancement of operating efficiency of the central coal-preparation plant of OOO "MMK-UGOL" is encompassed. Modern trends in the development of technologies and equipment for coal beneficiation are due to the following requirements: improving competitiveness of coal products, improvement of quality of marketable products, reduction of coal production cost, environmental requirements: polluting emission abatement, prepared coal saving, improvement of the effectiveness of resource conservation; complex mechanization and beneficiation process automation. In the article the contemporary problems of raw coal benefication under current conditions of the increased dilution of withdrawable coals with rock fractions are considered. Comparative analysis of efficiency of application of modern concentrating equipment under the conditions of the CCPP of OOO "MMK-UGOL" is carried out on the basis of research works. Particular attention is paid to dehydration of produced coal concentrate with content of volatile agents of more than 35.0% and content of fine-dispersed particles in flotation concentrate of more than 50.0%. Comparative analysis of the coal concentrate dehydration technologies is conducted.


The study was conducted with two objectives: Firstly, to understand the situation of reading habits of students through surveyed data from 383 students in Da Lat City. Secondly, the research builds a theoretical model that integrates the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Motivational Theory to explain the intention of maintaining students' reading habits. SEM structure model is implemented on a sample of 252 students. The results showed that internal and external motivations have a positive impact on reading attitudes. Attitudes, norms and perceived behavior control have contributed to explaining students' reading intention.


Advance in recent applications of new chromatographic technique including CSPME (chromatography- solid-phase microextraction) ,CMS (chromatography-mass spectrometry) ,SFC (supercritical fluid chromatography ), CE ( capillary electrophoresis ), MBC ( molecular biochro-matography) ,and CC (chiral chromatography) in biopharmaceutical analysis and future prospect of these technique were reviewed in this paper.


In this paper, a methodology is developed to overbound the error in position estimation for carrier phase navigation systems subject to multipath error mis-modeling. In high accuracy and high integrity applications, carrier phase positioning systems with cycle resolution usually rely on time-filtering, in many cases using Kalman filters. Naturally, for a computed integrity risk to be meaningful, it must be guaranteed that the predicted state estimation error covariance always bounds the true covariance. The Kalman filter ensures state error covariance bounding provided that the measurement errors and system dynamics are accurately modeled. However, uncertainties in the dynamic model of the multipath error states always exist. In response, the focus of this work is to quantify and bound position estimate errors subject to uncertainties associated with the time correlation of multipath error.


Linearly polarized photoluminescence measurements in pulsed magnetic fields to ~ 50 T were made from an MBE grown InP-GaP short period superlattice which shows lateral composition modulation.(1) At B=0 T, two distinguished emission peaks emerged which are identified as transitions from In-rich-well and Ga-rich-barrier regions. Both transitions not only are strongly linear polarized parallel to the (110) crystal direction but also show blue- and red-spectral shifts while changing the probe polarizer direction from (110) to (1-10). In the presence of magnetic field, two peaks exhibit different diamagnetic energy shifts. The difference of the diamagnetic energy shift is due to the formation of effective-mass modulation along the lateral direction within the modulation of the In-rich and Ga-rich regions. Our experimental results agree well with theoretically calculated parameters of InP-GaP effective-mass superlattice.(2) It was only theoretically discussed and our experimental results exhibit experimental realization of the effective-mass superlattice.


The characteristics of heavy metal biosorption on the seaweeds were investigated to develop a biological treatment technology for wastewater polluted with heavy metals. The heavy metal biosorption on seaweeds ranked in the tallowing order: U. pinnatifidaE. stoloniferaLaminaria sp.>G. amansii. The Pb was biosorbed in the range of , and the Cu and Cd were biosorbed in the range of at the concentration of the heavy metal of respectively. The seaweed which was pretreated with solution improved the biosorption of the heavy metals. The temperature and pH didn't affect the biosorption of heavy metals. The Langmuir isotherm reasonably fit the data of heavy metal biosorption compared to the Freundlich isotherm. The affinity of metals on the biosorption ranked in the following order: Pb>Zn>Cu>Cd. The biosorption efficiency of the heavy metals on the U. pinnatifida decreased in the multi-component rather than the single component. The heavy metals adsorbed on the U. pinnatifida were recovered using 0.3%-NTA. U. pinnatifida among the seaweed used in this work showed the best performance for the biosorption of the heavy metals.


Ferdinand Kroon In the 70ties deforestation in developing countries was mainly attributed to the use of firewood in domestic energy supply. In many developing countries the majority of the population cooks on firewood. In response, many (Western) organisations developed new technology like improved versions of traditional cook stoves, biogas plants and solar cookers. While in urban areas the commercial market for wood and charcoal is directly linked to deforestation in these regions, household firewood use is no longer seen as a major cause for deforestation in rural areas. This, and the failure of many solar cooking projects have resulted in reduction of subsidies by local governments (like India who has the largest number of solar cookers), international donors and NGO's. However, many (small) Western NGO's are still very dedicated to the goal of introducing solar cookers in developing countries.


Obesity has generated much interest within the cardiovascular community within the past 2 decades.1 It is now recognized that obesity is an important contributor to cardiac and all-cause mortality,1,2 independent of its association with other cardiovascular risk factors and increases the risk for cardiovascular morbidity, including heart failure (Figure 1).2–4 The malefic consequences of obesity are due both to the associated structural and functional cardiac alterations as well as the high prevalence of coexisting conditions, such as coronary artery disease, hypertension, sleep–disordered breathing (SDB), and diabetes mellitus.1–7 To better understand the relationship between obesity and heart failure, we will review what is known about cardiac structural remodeling in obesity as well as the evidence for preclinical abnormalities in left-ventricular (LV) systolic and diastolic functions. We will place particular emphasis on newer concepts and findings suggested by contemporary imaging methods.

Figure 1.
The population attributable risk of heart failure because of overweight is 14% in women and 8.8% in men. In obesity, the corresponding population attributable risks in women and men are 13.9 and 10.9%, respectively. From Kenchaiah et al,4 used with permission.

By National Institutes of Health criteria, obesity is defined as a body mass index (BMI) ≥30 kg/m2 and severe obesity as a BMI≥40 kg/m2.8 Obesity involves the growth of both lean body mass and adipose tissue and is characterized by a disproportionate growth of adipose tissue in relationship to lean body mass.9 It is now recognized that adipose tissue is not a homogeneous organ, but is differentiated in relation to its metabolic activity. Whereas fat accumulating in the subcutaneous region does not require substantial blood supply,10 fat surrounding organs (abdominal, epicardial) is metabolically active, requires energy, and produces a number of compounds …


Graph summarization via node grouping is a popular method to build concise graph representations by grouping nodes from the original graph into supernodes and encoding edges into superedges such that the loss of adjacency information is minimized. Such summaries have immense applications in large-scale graph analytics due to their small size and high query processing efficiency. In this paper, we reformulate the loss minimization problem for summarization into an equivalent integer maximization problem. By initially allowing relaxed (fractional) solutions for integer maximization, we analytically expose the underlying connections to the spectral properties of the adjacency matrix. Consequently, we design an algorithm called SpecSumm that consists of two phases. In the first phase, motivated by spectral graph theory, we apply k-means clustering on the k largest (in magnitude) eigenvectors of the adjacency matrix to assign nodes to supernodes. In the second phase, we propose a greedy heuristic that updates the initial assignment to further improve summary quality. Finally, via extensive experiments on 11 datasets, we show that SpecSumm efficiently produces high-quality summaries compared to state-of-the-art summarization algorithms and scales to graphs with millions of nodes.


ABSTRACT This paper explores consumers' connections to their domestic objects. Focusing on two particular objects (televisions and vacuum cleaners), the paper reflects upon why consumers desire particular domestic objects and how they assemble, arrange and use things in the home. It reveals how functionality is intimately infused with form, how design informs the consumption of everyday domestic objects and how both function and form can fail, deceive and trick. The mundane movements and moments that comprise homemaking encompass a whole suite of entanglements between object, subject, agency and space. In all sorts of ways this opens up exciting—but also difficult and perplexing—possibilities for consumer agency in the production of home. New kinds of temporality, the rapidity of fashion and design shifts, transformative technologies and new modes of fabrication require new forms of consumption knowledge, competence and skill.


Let X be a complex torus of dimension 3 and L an ample line bundle of type (2,2ί/2,2fl?3) on X. In this paper we study when L is normally generated.


Three novel Cu(I)-C2H4 adducts bearing 4-(2-pyridyl)pyrimidine were self-assembled, and the roles of anion and solvent were proved in the formation process.


Primary amine catalysts derived from cinchona alkaloids have emerged as readily available, highly versatile and extremely powerful catalysts in asymmetric synthesis. In particular, they exhibit superior catalytic efficacy for successfully tackling major challenges in a variety of sterically hindered carbonyl compounds, which traditional approaches have not been able to address. This review aims to once again draw attention to this relatively underutilised process by highlighting the recent developments in the application of cinchona-based primary amine catalysts in asymmetric organocatalytic reactions.


The methods for controlling the migrations of sand from unconsolidated formations are sometimes (arbitrarily) divided into 2 classifications. Mechanical includes screens (or liners), gravel packs, and combinations of the 2. Chemical or consolidation encompasses locking or agglomerating the formation in place by means of resins with acceptable loss of permeability. Packing and consolidating simultaneously is not being done in some wells. Formation sand may be mechanically controlled by a screen or a combination of a screen and gravel or sand pack or a pack alone in some cases. The screen, if used, should span the entire productive interval. The term gravel pack is not really appropriate in most cases since a closely graded sand is used. Some operators arbitrarily select gravel or near-gravel without regard to the size of the formation sand. The most commonly used techniques for applying screens and/or packs are described. Combination packing and consolidation has been successfully applied and commercially available for about 4 yr. There are at least 3 processes or variations available. These are identified and described by trade names and with the companies supplying the service.


Background Turning the head while walking (an action often required during daily living) is particularly challenging to maintain balance. It can therefore potentially reveal subtle impairments in early-stage people with multiple sclerosis who still show normal locomotion (NW-PwMS). This would help in identifying those subjects who can benefit from early preventive exercise aimed at slowing the MS-related functional decline. Objectives To analyze if the assessment of walking with horizontal head turns (WHHT) through inertial sensors can discriminate between healthy subjects (HS) and NW-PwMS and between NW-PwMS subgroups. To assess if the discriminant ability of the instrumented WHHT is higher compared to clinical scores. To assess the concurrent validity of the sensor-based metrics. Methods In this multicenter study, 40 HS and 59 NW-PwMS [Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) ≤ 2.5, disease duration ≤ 5 years] were tested. Participants executed Item-6 of the Fullerton Advanced Balance scale-short (FAB-s) wearing three inertial sensors on the trunk and ankles. The item required to horizontally turn the head at a beat of the metronome (100 bpm) while walking. Signals of the sensors were processed to compute spatiotemporal, regularity, symmetry, dynamic stability, and trunk sway metrics descriptive of WHHT. Results Mediolateral regularity, anteroposterior symmetry, and mediolateral stability were reduced in NW-PwMS vs. HS (p ≤ 0.001), and showed moderate discriminant ability (area under the receiver operator characteristic curve [AUC]: 0.71–0.73). AP symmetry and ML stability were reduced (p ≤ 0.026) in EDSS: 2–2.5 vs. EDSS: 0–1.5 subgroup (AUC: 0.69–0.70). The number of NW-PwMS showing at least one abnormal instrumented metric (68%) was larger (p ≤ 0.002) than the number of participants showing abnormal FAB-s-Item6 (32%) and FAB-s clinical scores (39%). EDSS: 2–2.5 subgroup included more individuals showing abnormal instrumented metrics (86%) compared to EDSS: 0–1.5 subgroup (57%). The instrumented metrics significantly correlated with FAB-s-Item6 and FAB-s scores (|Spearman's rs| ≥ 0.37, p < 0.001), thus demonstrating their concurrent validity. Conclusion The instrumented assessment of WHHT provided valid objective metrics that discriminated, with higher sensitivity than clinical scores, between HS and NW-PwMS and between EDSS subgroups. The method is a promising tool to complement clinical evaluation, and reveal subclinical impairments in persons who can benefit from early preventive rehabilitative interventions.


Automatic differentiation (AD) is a methodology for developing reliable sensitivity-enhanced versions of arbitrary computer programs with little human effort. As such, it can vastly accelerate the use of advanced simulation codes in a multidisciplinary design optimization context because the time for generating and verifying derivative codes is greatly reduced. The application of the recently developed automatic differentiation of C programs (ADIC) prototype tool for ANSI-C programs on the coordinate and sensitivity calculator for multidisciplinary design optimization multiblock three-dimensional volume grid generator are reported. The ADIC-generated code can easily be interfaced with Fortran derivative codes generated with the ADIFOR AD tool for Fortran 77 programs; thus providing efficient sensitivity-enhancement techniques for multilanguage, multidiscipline problems


This contribution seeks to articulate the issue of urban ecosystems with some aspects of psychology. It is a descriptive approach to the problem, based on a...


The analysis of algebraic equations for the dependence of the initial velocities of inhibited (seven equations) and activated (seven equations) enzymatic reactions on concentrations of inhibitors (i) and activators (a) is intended to take into account the sources of errors (Corrections 1 – 8) in using Dixon plots for calculation of constants of inhibition and characteristics of types of inhibition (and activation) of the enzymes.


In article possibilities of use of humanistic potential of additional education content in economics and management are opened. The discipline "Management" is chosen for acknowledgement of the basic pedagogical principles and approaches. The discipline content "Management" possesses high potential for formation of humanistic qualities of the expert-manager, promoting their organic interaction with culture administrative activity of the manager-professional. Possibility of use of the maintenance special disciplines for formation of humanistic qualities of experts on a studying example special discipline "Human resource management", and also in the course of discipline studying for choice students «Ethics of business dialogue» and discipline of a regional component of the working plan «Psychological features of interaction of the person and collective» is shown.


This paper describes an initial investigation into models that might be useful to describe and compare computational design creativity systems. An existing approach to comparison is critiqued, and an alternative more design-oriented approach is proposed that describes design systems in terms of design activities.


A full-term 10-week-old male presented with persistent hema- tochezia. Physical examination revealed hepatomegaly. Growth was normal, without episodes of hypoglycemia nor signs of cardiac anomaly. Laboratory evaluation showed slight eleva-tion of alanine transaminase (ALT) and aspartate transaminase (AST) with normal direct bilirubin and gamma-glutamyl trans-ferase. Cytomegalovirus (CMV) was detected in urine and stools by PCR. The abdominal ultrasound showed echogenic particles flowing through portal veins, demonstrating portal venous gas (Video 1). The abdominal computed tomography was normal with no features of intestinal pneumatosis. Flexible sigmoidoscopy revealed multiple oozing ulcerations in the rectosigmoid colon (Fig. 1); histology showed nonspecific inflammatory cell infiltration without mucosal features of chronic ischemia. The biopsy samples were positive for CMV on PCR. He was treated with long-term oral ganciclovir for congenital CMV colitis, and hematochezia and portal venous gas resolved in 2 weeks. He is currently well at 18 months old. Portal gas in infants is rare and often reflects severe damage to the intestinal mucosa. The most common cause of portal venous gas in children is necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), with intestinal pneumatosis in premature newborns (1). Severe CMV colitis in immunocompromised adults can cause pneumatosis and portal venous gas. However, congenital CMV colitis has not been associ- ated with portal venous gas (2,3). In a previous report, congenital CMV enterocolitis was diagnosed in 24.7% of cases with invasive congenital CMV infection among presumably immunocompe-tent newborns (4). Food protein-induced enterocolitis syndrome (FPIES) is an important differential diagnosis, because it can cause


IFN-κ belongs to a recently identified subclass of type I IFNs. In this study, we report the cloning and preliminary characterization of the murine homologue of IFN-κ. The gene encodes a 200-aa protein which is 38.5% homologous to human IFN-κ. Murine IFN-κ contains four cysteines in analogous positions to those observed in the IFN-α and an additional fifth unique cysteine, C174. The murine gene is located on chromosome 4, where other type I murine IFN genes, IFN-α and IFN-β, are clustered. This region is syntenic with human chromosome 9 where the gene encoding IFN-κ and the type I IFN gene cluster are found. Mouse IFN-κ is expressed at low levels in peritoneal macrophages and its expression is up-regulated by dsRNA and IFN-γ. Similar to previously reported transgenic mice carrying type I and type II IFNs, transgenic mice overexpressing murine IFN-κ in the β cells of the pancreas develop overt diabetes with hyperglycemia. Histological characterization of pancreatic islets from these transgenic mice showed inflammatory infiltrates with corresponding destruction of β cells.


Intellectual property rights are essential in today's technology-driven age. A strong intellectual property protection strategy is crucial in the bioinformatic space as monetary and temporal resources are tremendous in finding a blockbuster drug or gene therapy. Current problems and intellectual property practice in the genomic space are presented and analysed. Various strategy and solutions are proposed to guide bioinformatic companies in forming an aggressive strategy to protect one's intellectual property and competitive positioning.


Inthis paper, wepropose thestreaming server Prior tosoftware streaming technology, there exists Remote architecture formassive users andverify itbyasmall scaleExecution whichprovides auseronaclient access toremote simulation withvirtual users. Software streaming isoneofthe applications (3)(4). Indetail, theapplications arestored ona ASP solution thatallows theexecution ofstream-enabled different machine andthelocal machine doesnotstore or software, evenwhile thetransmission oftheprogrammaystill be cache theapplications. Microsoft's Terminal Service isoneof inprogress. theASPsolution based onthin client concept (5). Clients just Inthispaper,we analyze workloadcharacteristics ofthe software stream, andextract fourrequirements thatsoftwarereceivesmoving pictres ofexeuting applications,uand mostof streaming system havetosatisfy. Basedonthese requirements, theprocessing isdoneonaremote server. Kuacharoen etal.(1) we design thesoftware streaming server architecture. The presented thestreaming architecture andmethod based onrich verification ofthedesigned server isperformed byvirtual user client that mostoftheprocessing isdoneontheclient. simulation. Theresult tells usthecapacity ofeachserver and Researches onworkload characteristics ofsoftware stream helps ustocalculate thescale ofthesystem formassive users. anditsinfluence ontheperformance oftheserver areatthe initial stage. Because analyzing characteristics oftraffic helps Keywords - Software Streaming, Application Serviceustounderstand theamount ofoverloads onstreaming server, Providing, Software On-demand, Workload Characteristics, itisimportant todeal withthat. Kuacharoen etal.(1) defined Server Design, Virtual UserSimulation someperformance metrics, Application LoadTime(ALT) and Application Suspension Time(AST), butthey didn't deal with


How, within a given budget, can we design a sensor network that would provide us with the largest amount of useful information? There are two important aspects to this question: (a) how to best distribute the sensors over the large area, i.e. how to best divide the area of interest into zones corresponding to different sensors, and (b) what is the best location of each sensor in the corresponding zone. There is some research on the first aspect to the problem. In this paper, we show that the second aspect can be naturally formalised as a particular case of a general problem of scale-invariant multi-criterion optimisation under uncertainty, and we provide a solution to this general problem. As an illustrative case study, we consider the selection of locations for the Eddy towers, an important micrometeorological instrument.


Stuck in the ever-revolving wheel of birth and death, all are dead and born again; but he alone is really born, because of whose birth the nation attains a height' – Bhartṛhari. There have been many lives on earth who are born to transform society and uplift the source of humanity. In that stream was Jagadguru Ādi Śhankarāchārya and his successors. This thesis is a Comparative study of Contributions of Śrī Saccidānanda Śivābhinava Nṛsimha Bhārati Mahāswāmiji with that of Ādi Śhankarāchārya. Śrī Saccidānanda Śivābhinava Nṛsimha Bhārati Mahāswāmiji`s contribution towards spiritual attainment through stotras, along with which he pursues his life discovering places of devoutness related to Ādi Śhankarāchārya and elevates Veda Jñāna into a knowledge seeking centre. The study explores more in detail encompassing all his devotion and purposefulness in various facets of endowment.


The invention relates to a method for preparing precipitated silica, consisting in: (i) forming a starter having a pH of between 2 and 5; (ii) simultaneously adding silicate and acid, such that the pH of the reaction medium is between 2 and 5; (iii) adding silicate until the pH is between 7 and 10; (iv) simultaneously adding silicate and acid, such that the pH is between 7 and 10; (v) adding acid until the pH is between 2.5 and 5.3; (vi) bringing the reaction medium into contact with the acid and the silicate, such that the pH is between 2.5 and 5.3; and (vii) adding silicate, such as to increase the pH to a value between 4.7 and 6.3.


In the 1950s, the Sierra Club emerged as a leader of the nascent environmental movement. In challenging a proposal to build two dams within the boundaries of Dinosaur National Monument, the Club found its voice as a public advocate for the preservation of wilderness and in the process introduced a new type of politics to old conflicts over conservation. Born out of the Dinosaur dam conflict was a new environmentalism characterized by confrontation with state authorities and emotion-laden appeals to the public for political support. The Sierra Club's success in pioneering these strategies launched it to the forefront of the new movement, elevated its executive director David Brower to icon status among environmentalists, and affirmed the philosophy of Aldo Leopold as the moral compass of the movement. In this essay, I argue that interest group entrepreneurs ought to be considered alongside institutional actors as agents of change within processes of political development. As the case of the Sierra Club demonstrates, the internal organizational politics of a group can be just as important in establishing a trajectory of political development as are processes of policy feedback.


Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of several modern-day solutions impacting many aspects of our lives. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that AIpowered applications are fair and unbiased. In this work, we propose a domain knowledge infused AI-based system for public funding allocation in the transportation sector by keeping potential fairness-related pitfalls in mind. In the transportation sector, in general, the funding allocation in a particular geographic area corresponds to the population in that area. However, we found that areas with high diversity index have a higher public transit ridership, and this is a crucial piece of information to consider for an equitable distribution of funding. Therefore, in our proposed approach, we use the above fact as domain knowledge to guide the developed model to detect and mitigate the hidden bias in funding distribution. Our intervention has the potential to improve the declining rate of public transit ridership which has decreased by 3% in the last decade. An increase in public transit ridership has the potential to reduce the use of personal vehicles as well as to reduce the carbon footprint.


A favorable review—and this book indeed deserves a very favorable one—is, I imagine, written with those in mind whom one expects will read the book in any case, at least after reading the review, and preferably after buying the book! Recently it has become rather fashionable for certain pundits to decry the use of such descriptive diagnostic labels as "minimal brain dysfunction" (MBD), let alone "minimal brain damage," as applied to certain children with various types of developmental, behavioral, and learning problems. They claim these terms lack scientific justification. Frankly, as a practicing pediatrician, specializing in neurodevelopment, I could not care less. While I absolutely agree that our knowledge of the basic neurophysiologic and neuropathologic mechanisms underlying these disorders is woefully meager, these children are with us now, and demand our care—now. This exhaustive monograph tells us how we may go about the business of identifying such children and having


We have modified a Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) hydrothermal pretreatment pilot plant for batch operation and blowdown of the treated batch to low pressure. We have also assembled a slurry shearing pilot plant for particle size reduction. Waste paper and a mixture of waste paper/polyethylene plastic have been run in the pilot plant with a treatment temperature of 275{degrees}C. The pilot-plant products have been used for laboratory studies at LLNL. The hydrothermal/shearing pilot plants have produced acceptable slurries for gasification tests from a waste paper feedstock. Work is currently underway with combined paper/plastic feedstocks. When the assembly of the Research Gasification Unit at Texaco (feed capacity approximately 3/4-ton/day) is complete (4th quarter of FY96), gasification test runs will commence. Laboratory work on slurry samples during FY96 has provided correlations between slurry viscosity and hydrothermal treatment temperature, degree of shearing, and the presence of surfactants and admixed plastics. To date, pumpable slurries obtained from an MSW surrogate mixture of treated paper and plastic have shown heating values in the range 13-15 MJ/kg. Our process modeling has quantified the relationship between slurry heating value and hydrogen yield. LLNL has also performed a preliminary cost analysis of the process with the slurry heatingmore » value and the MSW tipping fee as parameters. This analysis has shown that the overall process with a 15 MJ/kg slurry gasifier feed can compete with coal-derived hydrogen with the assumption that the tipping fee is of the order $50/ton.« less


Cryptocurrencies are systems which facilitate the execution of payments, contracts, and other types of transactions over the internet in secure and robust ways. There is a rich early history of cryptocurrencies, ranging from Digi-Cash[2] to Peppercoin[7]. These systems require trusted third parties, however, and ultimately were not successful. Bitcoin[6] solved the problem of reliance on trusted third parties through its Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus mechanism — a proof of work[1] based blockchain. Proof of work is a very costly and energy inefficient means to reaching consensus. It requires solving difficult problems which wastes computational resources. Furthermore, transactions take a long time to confirm and the consistency of the transactional history is vulnerable if a single group at any point accounts for more than 50% of the computing power. The Stellar Consensus Protocol[5] is a design of a Federated Byzantine Agreement System, a consensus protocol which relies on reputation-based majority agreement for security rather than proof-of-work. If Stellar's assumptions hold it is a much more efficient means of reaching consensus than Bitcoin. For our 6.824 MIT Distributed Systems class final project, we wrote our own implementation of the Stellar Consensus Protocol, working from the whitepaper[5] and not the existing implementation. Our implementation of the Stellar protocol is modularized. As a result, it was simple for us to build two distinct key-value store applications on top of it.


In her early poetry Yocheved Bat-Miriam explores issues of religious experience. The religious poems published in the early 1920s, which have much in common with her love poems of that period, reflect the poet's attempt to draw upon biblical imagery in order to create an unorthodox personal mythology that expresses her relationship to the divine. In poems published in the late 1920s and early 1930s the poet writes of her difficulty in relating to the traditional God of Israel. Using traditional Jewish language, she portrays her relationship to a divine being who is revealed to her from beyond this world. During both periods the divine being is portrayed as masculine, but in some poems as feminine. The poet's relationship to the divine arises from her attempt to respond, on the one hand, to her anxiety aroused by unrequited love, feelings of guilt and loneliness, and fear of death, and on the other hand, to her belief in the worthwhileness of her existence. When the Hebrew poet Yocheved Bat-Miriam (1901-1980) was considering the publication of her collected works, she intended at first not to include any selections from her first collection of poetry, Mera~oq (From Afar, 1932). In a conversation with the critic Dan Miron (1980, pp. 7-12) she reportedly justified the rejection of her early poetry by saying, "That is another poet, that is not I." In the end she agreed to include only a very limited selection of her earliest work in the volume of collected poems published in 1963 under the title Sirim (Poems). In excluding from Sirim such a large number of poems from the Mera~oq collection, Bat-Miriam sacrificed many poems which explored issues of religious experience that had been of central concern to her at the • This article is based on a paper presented at the Tenth Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies ( 1978). My interest in and understanding of the poetry of Yoeheved Bat-Miriam began with my participation in a graduate seminar under the direction of Professor Arnold J. Band at the University of California, Los Angeles.


MS. Bodley 764 from the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, is a wondrous beast of a bestiary, containing information on 134 animals, along with some fine illuminations of the same. The animals range from lions, antelope, elephants and bears, through to satyrs, sirens, manticores and unicorns, and smaller creatures - hoopoes, bats, ducks, and even a worm. The information is based, not on scientific observation of course (the MS. dates from the thirteenth century), but on a centuries old textual tradition that drew on ancient sources and travellers' tales, painstakingly copied by scribes whose chief concern was being true to the auctores of the past, not to nature.


Applied in testing and control of the velocity of a simulation system of road, studied the velocity signal in velocity field and methods of data processing, The computer control for scanning track of infrared scanner by visual graphic interface is realized, the velocity signal is treated into an set of isograms and displayed in pseudocolor.


Irrigation water quality often determines the
success of irrigated agriculture in many areas
of the world. In the Western U. S. many farmers
experience crop failures or low yields as a result
of irrigating with moderately saline (moderately
salty) water. Many of these crop failures
could be prevented and yields often could be increased
through proper planning and proper irrigation
practices.
Approximately 1/5 of the irrigation wells in
some sections of Idaho yield moderately saline
water. In addition the water in some streams is
moderately saline. Using these waters for irrigation
may result in low yields and, in some cases,
crop failures.


We present a connected digit recognition system with low storage and computational complexity which achieves good performance in car noise. Our system uses the TI-DIGITS database with additive car noise for training whole-word digit and background models. A digit accuracy of 96.1% is obtained on a 15-speaker database collected in a car using an open microphone with an average SNR of approximately 2 dB. There is a further error reduction of almost 35% if the top two candidate strings are considered using a traceback based N-best algorithm. The system can be implemented on a currently available fixed-point DSP chip. We show that significant performance improvements are obtained by using two-level cepstral mean subtraction (CMS), gender-dependent models and a decoding grammar constraining the possible lengths of digit strings.


Based on the characteristics and operation condition of Xian pulsed reactor, a sub-channel model program-PRTHA has been developed in this paper. The program can be used in XAPR thermal- hydraulic calculation. The experiment to measure the temperature field distribution in XAPR core has been carried out. Comparison of the calculation results and the experiment results has shown that this program is with a good calculation precision, and it can be used in thermal-hydraulic calculation for XAPR.


This paper concentrates on three parts to discuss the properties of taboos in Chinese and English language in the hope of arousing the learners and users' interests,developing their communicative competence and helping them in cross-cultural communication.


A variety of phase conjugators have been recently demonstrated that require two incident beams which are usually mutually incoherent.1-3 The two beams interact via shared self-organized holograms in a photorefractive crystal to generate the phase-conjugate replicas of each of the two beams. The main distinguishing feature of these various conjugators is the number of internal reflections of the beams at the crystal faces (either zero,1, one,2 or two3). We demonstrate a new conjugator which uses three internal reflections to generate the phase-conjugate beams. This conjugator uses two mutually incoherent beams incident on opposite a-faces of an xyz-cut crystal of cerium-doped Sr0.75Ba0.25Nb2O6 (SBN). Both incident beams have extraordinary polarization and propagate in directions ~66° off the c axis inside the crystal, with the beams fanning toward the negative c face of the SBN crystal. A similar configuration is used to make a mutually pumped phase conjugator in BaTiO3 using one reflection,2 except there the beam fanning is in the direction of the positive c face due to the opposite sign of the dominant charge carrier in that crystal. In the case of BaTiO3, r42 is the largest electrooptic coefficient, and the most efficient self-induced photorefractive gratings sharply bend (i.e., diffract) the light toward the +c face. In SBN, r33 is the largest electrooptic coefficient, so that the preferred grating wave vectors are directed almost parallel to the c axis. Consequently, the angles of the self-diffacted beams differ between the two crystals, with the resulting angles being less steep in SBN, so that both incident beams are photorefractively channeled not to the c face but to opposite a faces where they are reflected again and continue to be channeled to a common point of reflection at the –c face. Cross readout of the photorefractive gratings along this complicated common beam path, which resembles a pair of frog legs, produces the phase-conjugate beams.


Background RASSF1A promoter methylation is consistent with clinicopathological data and has good accuracy in distinguishing tumors. However, the diagnostic parameters vary among previous studies. A systematic review was conducted to explore the diagnostic value of RASSF1A promoter methylation in prostate cancer. Methods A comprehensive search of the literature in the PubMed, Medline, Cochrane Library, Embase and ISI Web of Science databases up to May 21, 2020 was performed. STATA software version 12.0 and Meta-disc version 1.4 were used to analyze the data. Results The pooled sensitivity was 0.64 (95% CI 0.61–0.66), the pooled specificity was 0.80 (95% CI 0.77–0.83), the PLR was 3.82 (95% CI 1.96–7.44), and the NLR was 0.29 (95% CI 0.16–0.52). Furthermore, the pooled DOR of RASSF1A promoter methylation for prostate cancer was 13.08 (95% CI: 6.56–26.08). The area under the summary ROC curve was 0.87 (95% CI: 0.84–0.90). The results of the meta-regression suggested that heterogeneity was mainly derived from publication year. Fagan's nomogram showed that the predictive accuracy was increased significantly by detecting RASSF1A promoter methylation for diagnosing prostate cancer. Conclusion This meta-analysis suggests that detection of the RASSF1A promoter methylation status can be used for the diagnosis of PCa. In the future, further analyses and studies of larger sample sizes in large centers are needed to confirm our conclusion.


With a graduation rate of 29.7% and a dropout rate of 59.8% reported in 2005, the Canton Public School District qualified as one of the most low-performing school districts in the United States. Recently, though, the district has experienced significant improvement in these areas, reporting a graduation rate of 72.2% and a dropout rate of 17.8% in 2013. In this thesis, I analyze Canton, Mississippi's dropout prevention methods and conclude that their success is attributed to the combination of a community-wide effort and desire to be worthy of honor and respect alongside Canton Public School District's extensive Dropout Prevention Plan. In order to arrive at this conclusion, I present a literature review which contains information regarding the current state of educational inequality, the role of honor and shame in society, causes of dropping out, methods of dropout prevention, and Mississippi's Dropout Prevention Plan. Furthermore, I present an analysis of Canton, Mississippi's history, the district's Dropout Prevention Plan and Action Plan, the dropout prevention methods implemented in the Canton Public School District, and the role that honor and respect had in Canton, Mississippi.


This paper proposes some methods of increasing the robustness and accuracy of lane detection in bad weather, such as light rain or after a rain. First, a reflection model of road surface water is presented. The model can efficiently fit the real reflection phenomenon on a rainy road with strong specular reflection of sky light on the surface water or road, and it can efficiently reduce specular reflection and enhance lane markings in the same situation. Second, the paper proposes some methods of extracting lane markings based the symmetry feature. They include the methods of detecting vanishing point and fitting the shape model of the parallel lanes using the symmetry features. Finally, by combining some prior knowledge, such as restriction of slope of the parallel lane lines and symmetry features, the methods can effectively increase the stability, robustness and accuracy of lane detecting in different complex environments.


This study aims to analyze whether the social skill levels of four and five year old preschool children change according to their mother' attitudes. This research was conducted among 104 children (58 girls and 46 boys) who attended preschools in central Kayseri and their mothers. The preschools were selected using the simple random sampling method among all preschools affiliated with the Ministry of National Education in central Kayseri. Data were collected using the "Parental Attitude Research Instrument (PARI)" and "Social Skill Scale (SSS)". KolmogorovSmirnov and Kruskal Wallis H-tests were used to analyze the data. According to these analyses, children whose mothers adopt moderately protective attitudes, are moderately democratic, reject homemaker roles, do not have marital conflicts, get along well and impose moderate discipline show higher levels of social skills (p>0.05).


We have performed temperature-dependent resistivity measurements of silicon after doping with sulfur via femtosecond laser irradiation. Results are consistent with a theoretically predicted binding energy for sulfur donors of 100 meV below the conduction-band edge.


The founding Editor of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology continues to publish immensely important papers on the early life origins of allergy. His latest work with Rosaura Casas has conclusively demonstrated that allergens are actively transported from maternal circulation to fetus complexed with immunoglobulin G (IgG), this being a normal phenomenon unrelated to maternal atopy. While there was some degree of association between level of exposure and the presence of complexes, this was not consistently so. This may relate to the fact that the allergen studied, Fel d 1 from cat, is ubiquitous in the environment. Obviously at this stage it is not possible to establish whether this transplacental delivery of allergen to the fetus has an impact on later allergic sensitization or disease. Recent studies suggest high allergen exposure antenatally may facilitate the development of tolerance (1. ). Furthermore, children of mothers who had undergone rye grass immunotherapy during pregnancy, consequently having high IgG antibody levels and presumably complexes compared with children born to rye-grass-allergic mothers who had not been treated with immunotherapy, showed lower sensitization rates to rye grass 3–12 years later (2. ). One might therefore propose that IgG/allergen complexes are protective. Bronchoalveolar lavage is being used increasingly frequently to investigate infants and young children with respiratory illnesses. Indeed, it is considered to have diagnostic value in the management of infants and young children with chronic cough, wheeze and even sometimes established asthma (3. ). We publish two papers on components within the lavage from childhood wheezers. The paper from Paris, a study of a large number of wheezing infants, shows raised bronchoalveolar lavage fluid and eosinophil cationic protein (ECP) levels, despite apparently normal eosinophil counts. Interestingly, the ECP levels correlated well with neutrophils but not eosinophils. The paper from Padova studied similar indices in somewhat older asthmatic children and again highlighted raised neutrophil counts and also, indeed, ECP and myeloperoxidase from neutrophils in asthmatics compared with controls. There is clearly increasing speculation as to the role of neutrophils in the early origins of asthma (4. ). Why there should be raised ECP levels in the absence of eosinophils is intriguing. There is, of course, the possibility that eosinophils have degranulated and are therefore unrecognizable. Alternatively, small quantities of ECP or at least immunoreactively similar molecules could be generated by the neutrophils themselves. So-called hypoallergenic formulae are an important therapeutic tool in the prevention and management of food allergy/intolerance. We have two papers investigating the role of such formulae in infants with cow's milk allergy/ intolerance. In a collaboration between Berlin, Paris and Turku, Finland, an amino-acid-based formula was shown to be as effective as an extensively hydrolyzed whey formula in improving atopic dermatitis, while the amino-acid formula was associated with improved growth. However, the differences in growth were relatively small. Nevertheless, it is clear that an amino-acid-based formula is an appropriate alternative to extensively hydrolyzed milk formulae and will be needed in the small percentage of infants who are unable to tolerate even the extensive hydrolysates. The second paper is the outcome of work originally masterminded by the late Professor Luisa Businco, one of our most distinguished members of the Editorial Board, who was particularly concerned with defining the allergenicity of hydrolysates. This study confirms again that a small number of children will react to extensively hydrolyzed formulae and that the introduction of such products must be done under careful experienced supervision. It is disappointing that skin-prick testing with the different formulae did not have a particularly high predictive value. Many years ago, one of my research fellows carried out a study of viable fungi in mattress dust. He identified 183 different isolates from 54 samples with Penicillium, Hyphomycetes, and Aspergillus species predominating. However, he found no association between their presence in mattress dust and skin test sensitivity in the asthmatic children occupying these beds. This work only ever appeared in his higher degree thesis [Reiser J. Studies and trials on childhood asthma. MD thesis. University of London, 1992]. It is interesting to see in a study from Finland that Pediatr Allergy Immunol 2001: 12: 57–58


This chapter, by Takashi Iida, focuses on the role of personal relationships between the demesne lords and their subjects in early modern Prussia in securing people's everyday lives. It examines the protection owed by the lords to their tenants and how extraordinary assistance was provided through lord-tenant negotiations. As the number of lodgers not integrated into the lord's protection increased after the eighteenth century, poverty became a political and public problem, which brought the role of state and village into focus. This chapter also discusses the reaction shown by the villagers, which indicates the type of micro-politics engaged in at the communal level in Prussia.


In this paper, the performance of heterojunction interdigitated back contact solar cell with passivation layer is studied. Moreover, the impact of the passivation layer on preventing from recombining photogenerated carriers is investigated as well. According to the simulation results, the Voc and Isc of the proposed solar cell are 0.619 V and 0. 447nA, respectively. This solar cell has 20.8% efficiency and 74.62 fill factor as the most important parameters for solar cells. The results show the combination of IBC silicon solar cell with IIIAs compound semiconductor cells and a surface passivation layer has a significant enhancement in solar cell performance and it is a unique structure for high-efficiency solar cell.


We investigate the appropriateness of using a technique based on support vector machines for identifying thematic structure of text streams. The thematic segmentation task is modeled as a binary-classification problem, where the different classes correspond to the presence or the absence of a thematic boundary. Experiments are conducted with this approach by using features based on word distributions through text. We provide empirical evidence that our approach is robust, by showing good performance on three different data sets. In particular, substantial improvement is obtained over previously published results of word-distribution based systems when evaluation is done on a corpus of recorded and transcribed multi-party dialogs.


arthroscopic repair of rotator cuff tears in patients and to evaluate the influence of a variety of factors on the outcome of rotator cuff repairs, including the age and sex of the patient, side affected, dominant shoulder and duration of symptoms. Method: 30 cases of Rotator Cuff tear between the age of 18 and 70 years were primarily treated with arthroscopic repair from February 2009 to June 2011. Data was collected by direct observations as per the proforma prepared accordingly. Patient was assessed for UCLA score at pre- operative and post-operative 3, 6, 12, 18 and 24 months. Assessment of the final outcome was done at 24 months. Inclusion criteria : Presence of tear in any of the rotator cuff tendons,Patient between 18 and 70 years of age, Cuff repair performed solely with the use of arthroscopic techniques. We excluded Patients having associated shoulder lesions like SLAP etc, revision rotator cuff repair patients, irreparable tears, patients with associated symptomatic acromioclavicular arthritis and Patients with cuff tear arthropathy. Pre-operative and post-operative UCLA scores were compared using paired t-test. One way ANOVA was also used to compare more than two variables. Results : There were 14 males(46.67% ) and 16 females(53.33%) with average age was 52.43(30- 68) years. 27(90%) were right hand dominant and 3(10%) were left hand dominant. There was involvement of right rotator cuff in 18(60%) and left in 12(40%). Average duration of symptoms was 8.4 months (3- 24 months). 22(73.33%) patients had symptoms for less than 1 year and 8(26.67%) had symptoms for more than 1 year. All patients were treated with arthroscopic debridement and repair with bone suture anchor. Subacromial decompression was done as and when required. Average pre- operative UCLA score was 14.60(5- 25) and post- operative was 30.83(28- 35). There was a 100% satisfaction in this study at the end of 24 months according to UCLA score with 25(83.33%) patients having good and 5(16.67%) having excellent scores. There were no complications in this study. Conclusion: Arthroscopic rotator cuff repair offered good results and enabled the same reconstruction as with open technique and avoided the latter's complications. Advantages of arthroscopic rotator cuff repair include, a small cosmetic scar, the ability to perform the procedure on an outpatient basis, reduced early postoperative pain, availability to diagnose any intraarticular pathology that can affect the end results and deltoid muscle preservation that allows earlier and easy


Mithun (Bos frontalis), a pride animal of north eastern states of India, belongs to Family Bovidae. Infestation of helminth parasite is one of the important causes for reduction of productivity in mithun both in terms of meat and milk. Different genera of helminth parasites are known to infect mithun. Among nematodes in mithun Trichostrongylus spp, Oesophagostomum spp, Haemonchus spp, Bunostomum spp, Trichuris spp, Mecistocirrus spp, Toxocara vitulorum and Strongyloid papillosus are most important. Among tape worm infestations, Moniezia expansa and M.benedeni are the common tapeworms in both adult and young animals.


Mikhail Bakhtin' s notions of a positioned voice and the polyphonic novel have significantly influenced the concept of the dialogical self. It is argued that introducing the idea of semiotic mediation can further develop the concept. Shotter's conceptualization of semiotic positions is used as a means by which this integrative attempt is carried out. The importance of `the life of the sign' in and for dialogical relationships is obvious in psychotherapy with its collaborative effort to create semiotic tools of self-reflection and self-understanding. Two excerpts from psychotherapeutic work are presented in order to illustrate how signs and dialogical relationships may be integrated into a single unit of analysis.


Investigations and analysis on occurrence and control of Dendrolimus punctatus in Yongkang City, Zhejiang province demonstrated that the occurrence period prolonged, damaged area decreased, outbreak period shortened there. Analysis was made on the causes.


....................................................................................................V Acknowledgments.......................................................................................VII Table of contents..........................................................................................IX Tables.....................................................................................................XII List of acronyms........................................................................................XIII 1.INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................1 1.1 Background ...........................................................................................1 1.2 Main objectives.......................................................................................2 1.3 Thesis structure.......................................................................................2 2. DESCRIPTION OF THE SYSTEM.................................................................5 2.1 Norwegian Pharmaceutical system................................................................5 2.1.1 The Norwegian Medicines Agency.............................................................5 2.1.2 Supply chain......................................................................................5 2.2 Pricing of pharmaceuticals in Norway............................................................6 2.2.1 Pharmacy margin................................................................................7 2.3 Reimbursement regulation..........................................................................8 2.3.1 General reimbursement regulations..........................................................8 2.3.2 Preferred pharmaceutical model..............................................................9 2.4 Generic substitution................................................................................10 2.4.1 Generic medicines..............................................................................10 2.4.2 Substitution scheme............................................................................11


This thesis considers the intersection of international investment law and international human rights law in ICSID arbitration by reference to the 'fragmentation' of public international law. More specifically, it argues that it is possible to establish a procedural basis for a host state human rights defence in ICSID arbitration. Utilising a systemic conception of public international law driven by state consent, it is posited that regime conflict between international investment law and international human rights law in ICSID arbitration justifies the introduction of a host state human rights defence. By reference to the ICSID Arbitral Rules, this thesis establishes a viable basis for the introduction of international human rights law into ICSID arbitration by a host state. Finally, it is argued that a procedural basis for a host state human rights defence in ICSID arbitration has the ability to 'de-fragment' international investment law and international human rights law.