Leptospires are difficult to stain with the usual bacterial stains; many different stains have been proposed, most of which are designed for staining of tissue sections. Silver stains that are available for smear preparations yield variable, unreliable results. Staining of bacterial flagella is often avoided because of difficulties involved. There exists a need for a simple technique which does not greatly alter the morphology of the leptospiral cell, or which will reliably stain flagella. The silver impregnation technique described here is a modification of a technique described by D. S. Kim of the Veterinary Research Institute, Pusan, Korea (unpublished data). The modified technique is rapid, employs only two reagents which are easily applied, and requires no special fixation or heating. Alteration of the morphology of leptospires and flagella is minimal. The spiral structure of the spirochetes can often be seen in a relatively normal state. Reagent A is composed of 100 ml of distilled water containing 5 g of tannic acid, 1.5 g of ferric chloride, 2.0 ml of 1570 formalin, and 1.0 ml of 1% sodium hydroxide. Reagent B, ammoniated silver nitrate solution, is prepared by use of 100 ml of 2% silver nitrate. About 10 ml of this volume is removed and saved; to the remaining 90 ml, ammonium hydroxide is added dropwise until the heavy precipitate that is formed is dissolved. From the 10 ml previously removed, 2% silver nitrate is added dropwise until a slight clouding appears and persists. At this point, the pH is adjusted to 10.0 with the ammonium hydroxide and silver nitrate. Reagent B is relatively unstable, and must be used within 4 hr of preparation. Readjustment of the pH to 10.0 after it changes has not produced satisfactory results. Smears are prepared in a routine fashion except that extreme caution must be employed in handling bacterial suspensions for flagella stain. The slides are alcohol-cleaned and a loopful of distilled water is placed on each. A loopful of culture or suspension is placed just touching the distilled water, so that the two diffuse together to achieve a gradation of dilution of the medium. Slides are then allowed to air-dry. Fixation by heat is unnecessary. For the preparation of bacteria to produce and maintain maximal numbers of flagella, incubation at 20 C, harvesting organisms during the logarithmic or early stationary phase, preparation of a faintly cloudy suspension in distilled water, and extreme care in handling, all as described by Leifson (Atlas of Bacterial Flagellation, Academic Press, Inc., New York, 1960) are essential. Blood films from animals with leptospiremia are prepared in the fashion routine for hematological examination and are not fixed prior to the addition of reagent A. It appears, however, that leptospires are more easily found in very thin smears, and thick areas should be avoided. The cells will appear thicker, and spirals are not usually visible due to the presence of serum on the cells. (Fig. 2). Tissue impression smears have been made by adding a small drop of water to the slide and making the touch preparation through this water. The preparation is air-dried. The smears are covered by reagent A for 2 to 4 min; they are then rinsed in distilled water. Distilled water and varying concentrations of ammonium hydroxide and ethyl alcohol have been tried, both as rinses and as 10-min washes, with no apparent difference. After the water rinse, reagent B (pH 10.0) is added for about 30 see. The smears are immediately washed with distilled water, air-dried, and examined under oil immersion. Leptospires are stained dark-brown to black on a light-to-golden background. Other structures, for example, erythrocytes or other bacteria, stain dark, but the characteristic shape and hooked ends of the leptospires should be sufficient for differentiation from other cells. Also, spirals can often be observed under high-power magnification. The flagella of such organisms as Proteus vulgaris and Vibrio fetus (Fig. 3 and 4) are readily stained if care has been taken to prevent their mechanical removal in the preparation of the smear. This stain seems to be dependable and is easily


Pattern generation to generate masks after designing of a circuit is an important step in the manufacturing of integrated circuits. The input to pattern generator is a magnetic tape called PG tape and output is a reticle or full field IX mask.Pattern generation involves several issues such as economic viability of pattern generation systems as capital costs involved are very high, throughput considerations, the type of product or product mix to be manufactured eg, IX, 5X or 10X reticle, IX full field mask etc, complexity of device patterns, minimum feature size on masks, capability of pattern generation system to meet critical dimension, registration/overlay, permissible defect density- specification and process related issues. In this paper, an analysis of various pattern generation techniques has been done with respect to these issues.Criticality of the various issues with respect to a particular application has been studied. The study would help users of pattern generators to identify a pattern generat...


Mechanical Engineering Testing Technology is an important technical foundation course for mechanical engineering majors.But abstract teaching content,too many calculations,and more drafting methods make it more difficult for students to learn.MATLAB/ Simulink simulation software used in teaching the course makes the abstract content,graphics and a large number of transformations a-mong them and analysis of signal characteristics in the course easy to comprehend.The method is very easy to achieve the expansion of the teaching content.This paper introduces application of MATLAB/Simulink in the Mechanical Engineering Testing Technology through examples.It is very useful for improving teaching quality and overall quality of students.


Objective To investigate the comprehensive nursing intervention in cancer clinical value in patients after colostomy.Methods From January 2007 to January 2011 were treated in our hospital,64 patients with rectal cancer were randomly divided into control group(32 cases) and the observation group(32 cases),two groups of patients according to their specific condition to accept the appropriate surgical surgery,chemotherapy and conventional medical care,based on the observation group in the full implementation of this comprehensive individualized nursing intervention,while the control group,only give the traditional supportive care interventions.Results The group of patients,the average length of stay,average medical costs,nursing satisfaction,postoperative complications,to improve the status of mental patients and other aspects of quality of life were significantly better than the control group,P0.05,the difference was statistically significant.Conclusion The integrated care intervention can effectively use medical resources,improve quality of care,improve patient satisfaction,should be widely applied.


Mobile app development is a relatively new phenomenon that is increasing rapidly due to the ubiquity and popularity of smartphones among end-users. As with any new domain, mobile app development has its own set of new challenges. The work presented in this dissertation has focused on improving the state-of-the-art by understanding the current practices and challenges in mobile app development as well as proposing a new set of techniques and tools based on the identified challenges. To understand the current practices, real challenges and issues in mobile development, we first conducted an explorative field study, in which we interviewed 12 senior mobile developers from nine different companies, followed by a semistructured survey, with 188 respondents from the mobile development community. Next, we mined and quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed 32K nonreproducible bug reports in one industrial and five open-source bug repositories. Then, we performed a large-scale comparative study of 80K iOS and Android apppairs and 1.7M reviews by mining the Google Play and Apple app stores. Based on the identified challenges, we first proposed a reverse engineering technique that automatically analyzes a given iOS mobile app and generates a state model of the app. Finally, we proposed an automated technique for detecting inconsistencies in the same mobile app implemented for iOS and Android platforms. To measure the effectiveness of the proposed techniques, we evaluated our methods using various industrial and open-source mobile apps. The evaluation results point to the effectiveness of the proposed model generation and mapping techniques in terms of accuracy and inconsistency detection capability. ii Preface All of the work presented henceforth was conducted by the author, Mona Erfani Joorabchi. The contributions and evaluations presented in this dissertation are summarized and published in four conference papers. Additionally, the author and an ECE master student, Mohamed Ali, collaborated equally to a conference submission of Chapter 4 which is currently under review. The following list presents publications for each chapter. • Chapter 2: – "Real Challenges in Mobile App Development" [86]. M. Erfani Joorabchi, A. Mesbah and P. Kruchten. In Proceedings of the 7th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2013). ACM/IEEE. 15–24. • Chapter 3: – "Works For Me! Characterizing Non-reproducible Bug Reports" [87]. M. Erfani Joorabchi, M. Mirzaaghaei and A. Mesbah. In Proceedings of the 11th ACM Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR 2014). ACM. 62–71. • Chapter 4: – The author and an ECE master student collaborated equally to an ACM SIGSOFT conference submission of this work and it is currently under review. • Chapter 5: – "Reverse Engineering iOS Mobile Applications" [85]. M. Erfani Joorabchi and A. Mesbah. In Proceedings of the 19th IEEE Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE 2012). IEEE Computer Society. 177– 186. • Chapter 6: iii – "Detecting Inconsistencies in Multi-Platform Mobile Apps" [88]. M. Erfani Joorabchi, M. Ali and A. Mesbah. In Proceedings of the 26th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE 2015). IEEE Computer Society. 450–460. Regarding ethics approval, the following Human Ethics Certificates were obtained from UBC Behavioural Research Ethics Board: • Project Title "A Study of Cross-platform Development and Testing Practices of Mobile Applications" with Certificate Numbers H12-03058 and H1502247.


In order to realize ETL processing of unstructured data,the current situation and demands of data integration are analyzed.The popular CWM model and its application in ETL are described.The different features between structured data and unstructured data are analized to get the property of unstructured data.This work provides a foundation for meta-data of unstructured data,and meets the demands of unstructured data ETL and data integration.


A bond energy scheme has been developed and two previously existing schemes have been extended for the calculation of heats of formation of aliphatic amines using ab initio 6–31G* energies in place of experimental data. The results are in good agreement with those obtained experimentally and suggest that this method can be used to predict heats of formation of molecules of this class with an accuracy competitive with good quality experiments, and with probable errors of less than 1 kcal mol−1.


Single-phase water flow behaviors in narrow rectangular ducts were studied theoretically and experimentally.The results show that aspect ratios have significant influence on flow resistance.The frictional resistance in rectangular duct increases as the aspect ratio decreases both in laminar flow region and the smooth region of turbulent flow.The visual observation shows that critical Reynolds number for narrow rectangular ducts ranges from 2 500to 2 600, and the aspect ratio nearly has insignificant influence on flow regime transition.The single-phase flow resistance is influenced significantly by wetting perimeter and velocity distribution, which vary with the aspect ratio in laminar flow.For turbulent flow, the turbulent mean velocity in viscous sub-layer and wetting parameter become important parameters affecting the flow resistance.


Complete characterization of two-photon temporal-spectral states by joint spectral-sheering interferometry and frequency resolved measurement is presented. This technique opens the path to harnessing the time-frequency degree of freedom of light for quantum applications.


Primary repair is possible, because usually Cruciate ligment shows atrophy in about two weeks after injury, but, Posterior Cruciate injury with avulsion fracture of the tibia does not show atrophy even after several months. Primary repair of chronic posterior crusiate ligment injury leads good results.Case 1: 69 years old, maleThe patient was injured during riding on a motorcycle. He had not recieved any surgical treatment for his knee. Two moths later, he complained of continuous knee pain. Posterior drawer sign was found on his knee. Avulsion fracture of the tibia was found in X-ray film. Primary repair was done in 75 days. After the operation, pain was releaved. Stability has been gained and R. O. M. is in the normal range. We rate the result excellent according to the Solonen's criteria.Case 2: 57 years old, femaleThe patient was injured during riding on a motorcycle. She had not recieved any surgical treatment for her knee. Two months later, she complained of continuous knee pain. Posterior drawer sign was found on her knee. Avulsion fracture of the tibia was found in X-ray film. Primary repair was done in 117 days. After the operation, pain was releaved. Stability has been gained and R. O. M. is in the normal range.We rate the results excellent according to the Solonen's criteria.


Parathion is an organophosphate pesticide used in great quantities in the United States and around the world. The mechanism of toxicity for parathion in mammals has been attributed to its enzymatic desulfuration to its oxygen analog paraoxon which subsequently fonns a covalent bond with acetylcholinesterase (AChE), inhibiting the activity of that enzyme and precipitating cholinergic toxicity. The mechanism by which parathion produces its toxic effects in insects has not been completely determined, but it is believed to be due to the same mechanism. The effect parathion exposure has on fresh water invertebrates has not been investigated to any great extent, and a goal of this project was to determine the effects of parathion exposure and the relationship of this toxicity to the metabolism of parathion by the fresh water snail Viviparus malleatus and the crayfish Orconectes rusticus. The determination of the toxicity of parathion in Orconectes and Viviparus was made by exposing the organisms to different concentrations of parathion or by the direct injection of parathion. The possibility that any toxicity exhibited by parathion was produced by paraoxon was determined by observing the effect the oxygen analog of parathion would have when exposed to the species, and determining the metabolism of parath ion by the two species . The metabolism of parathion was determined in vitro and ..iI!. vivo. The efficient and specific separation and identification of parathion and its metabolites were accomplished through the use of thin layer chromatography. Parathion has been shown to be metabolized by different species by a multitude of pathways. Three of the important pathways produce £_-nitrophenol as an end product. A spectrophotometric assay was used to measure the in vitro production of £_-nitrophenol from homogenates of crayfish and snail tissues incubated with parathion. The excretion of parathion metabolites by Orconectes and Viviparus was determined by identifying the compounds extracted from water samples that had contained crayfish or snails exposed to parathion. The accumulation of parathion or metabolites in the species was determined by extracting the parathion exposed tissues of crayffsh or snails and identifying and quantifying the parathion and metabolites present. The excretation and accumulation experiments were accomplished with the use of 14c labeled parathion which was labeled either in the ring or ethyl position. The possible metabolism of parathion was also investigated by the direct determination of the formation of paraoxon, £_-nitrophenol, diethyl phosphate and diethyl phosphorothionate by the homogenates of crayfish or snail tissues incubated with parathion and appropriate cofactors. This determination was also aided by the use of labeled parathion. The snail Viviparus malleatus did not metabolize parathion or


We present a general method for tackling the related problems of pose estimation of known object instances and object categories. By representing the training images as a probability distribution over the joint appearance/pose space, the method is naturally suitable for modeling the appearance of a single instance of an object, or of diverse instances of the same category. The training data is weighted and forms a generative model, the weights being based on the informative power of each image feature for specific poses. Pose inference is performed through probabilistic voting in pose space, which is intrinsically robust to clutter and occlusions, and which we render tractable by treating separately the least interdependent dimensions. The scalability of category-level models is ensured during training by clustering the available image features in the joint appearance/pose space. Finally, we show how to first efficiently use a category-model, then possibly recognize a particular trained instance to refine the pose estimate using the corresponding instance-specific model. Our implementation uses edge points as image features, and was tested on several existing datasets. We obtain results on par with or superior to state-of-the-art methods, on both instance- and category-level problems, including for generalization to unseen instances.


Ideologies can be understood in a neutral way as systematic and elaborated sets of ideas with a relative coherence. Alternately, they can be understood critically, as ideas that involve subjectivities, which include contradictions and distortion. The Marxist conception has emphasised the notion of ideology as distorted ideas derived from economic relations of production that are functional to maintaining imbalanced relations of dominance. In this sense, ideology has a negative conception: "The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance" (Marx & Engels, 1986: 13).


Abstract : Statistical process control has been compared with two other approaches (confidence intervals and acceptance testing) to determine the potential for this technology in developing realistic sampling plans that offer equal protection for both consumer and producer. These theories were first assessed from a practical standpoint and then were subjected to experimental manipulation using a computer simulation program. Results showed that the optimal solution is to use a combination of process control (the p-chart method) and acceptance testing (Military Standard 105D) to evaluate service quality. This approach offers realistic output that protects the consumer and producer at a similar level; in addition, process control allows historical data to be used so that a contractor who has performed well in the past can be sampled less stringently. Finally, a major advantage is that overall quality of contract services should improve by implementing this approach because the contractor will receive feedback that identifies inconsistencies in services performed; the faults can then be corrected and, over time, the contractor will learn what needs to be done to provide acceptable performance. A step-by-step implementation plan has been proposed. It is recommended that the Army field- test this approach and develop an automated system for rapid evaluation.


In this paper,preparation of Al5Cu based and Cu10Sn based composite containing nanometer diamond particles has been studied The effect of blending powder on the microstructure and performance of the composite was also investigated It was shown that average particle size of the matrix notably influences the distribution of nanometer diamond aggregates in the composite With a new method developed in this paper,began with the preparation of sub micron CuO particles and then followed by reduction and hot press process,Cu10SnND composite with well dispersed nanometer diamond particles has been successfully obtained


Linkages between Emissions Trading Systems (ETSs) are crucial for ensuring cost-effectiveness in the fragmented global climate policy landscape engendered by the Paris Agreement. Research has hitherto focused on the simpler case of bilateral linkages, in part because a rigorous analysis of multilateral linkages poses significant challenges. We propose a language and a theoretical model that allow us to describe and study multilateral linkages between ETSs under uncertainty analytically. We show how every multilateral linkage can be decomposed into its internal bilateral linkages, and demonstrate that linkage is superadditive. We provide a formula for the gains from linkage coalitions of ETSs as a function of the constituent coalitions' sizes and shock characteristics. While the global market is socially efficient, we show that it may not be the most preferred outcome for individual jurisdictions, even in the absence of linkage costs. When we introduce linkage costs which are increasing in both the number and aggregate size of partnering jurisdictions we find that efficient linkage coalition structures may differ from the global market. Finally, we study several alternative cost-sharing rules to check if they render the globally efficient coalition structure a Pareto improvement with respect to autarky. We find that several intuitively appealing rules do not meet this criterion for individual jurisdictions. We demonstrate our theoretical results using a calibrated quantitative example.


Based on the definitions of the content and features of Higher Education Resources,Analyze the main problems in the rational allocation of higher education resources,and put forward the rational allocation of higher education resources and optimization.


Purpose:To discuss the value of three-phase enhanced spiral CT and MR scanning in the diagnosis of hepatic tuberculosis.Methods:Eleven cases with hepatic tuberculosis underwent plain CT and MR scanning,10 of them underwent three-phase enhanced spiral CT scanning,2 of them underwent three-phase enhanced MR scanning.All the cases were proved by biopsy.Results:(1) Serohepatic type(n=2,four lesions).The lesions were nodular or cystic.The cystic lesions were divided into two subtypes,one was exudation subtype,and the other was fibrous subtype.The former had no calcification at the cyst wall,and was with slight inflammation in the adjacent liver parenchyma,which was slight hyperintense on T2-weighted imaging.The latter had calcification at cyst wall,and was with no inflammation of adjacent parenchyma.(2) Parenchymal type(n= 9).① Miliary type(n=5).There were three kinds of granuloma,with or without caseous necrosis and with calcified nodule.Hepatomegaly with few nodules was shown on CT and MRI.② Nodular type(n=4).There were two kinds of types,hyperplastic and healing nodular.Conclusion:It can offer more accurate evidences for diagnosis of hepatic tuberculosis by using three-phase enhanced spiral CT and MRI scanning.


There has been a considerable revival of interest in the works of Isambard Kingdom Brunei, and Derrick Beckett's book sets out to develop that interest. His primary aim is to "chronicle Brunei's engineering works (especially those which exist today) and examine their technological and architectural merit." He therefore concentrates on the Great Western's main line from London (Paddington) to Bristol (Temple Meads) and Plymouth, the Thames Tunnel and the bridges at Clifton and Saltash, and Brunei's steamships, the Great Western, Great Britain, and Great Eastern. His book, which has grown out of a civil engineering course at the University of Surrey, should have a broad appeal, with its splendid illustrations and informative diagrams. However, Beckett's attempt to combine the technical and the architectural approaches has its difficulties, and specialists will feel that justice has been done to neither. Furthermore, because the book is essentially a celebration of "Brunei's Britain," there is no assessment of Brunei as a businessman, and very little on the financial implications for patrons or employers of his schemes. Bold visionary and technically competent engineer though he may have been, he cost his employers, the Great Western, a great deal of money by devising an unorthodox (and ultimately unsuccessful) method of laying the track, ordering under-powered locomotives, and designing the hilly Exeter-Plymouth line for operation with the disastrous "atmospheric system" of traction. His broad, sevenfoot, gauge was also an expensive failure in the long run. The 3,200-yard Box Tunnel may have been an impressive achievement in engineering terms, but its cost in terms of both money and men are not discussed: over 100 laborers died in its making. If, as Prince Philip suggests, we make Brunei our hero (see Preface), the implications for British industry are surely ambiguous. Brunei was also an important figure in the contraction of railways in South Wales, the subject of Derek Barrie's book. Indeed, there is some irony in the fact that Brunei recommended the narrow (4 ft. 8V2 in.) gauge for the Taff Vale Railway, a decision that did much to limit the flow of mineral traffic to the Great Western's system before the 1870s. Barrie follows the customary format of the Regional History series in concerning himself mainly with the promotion, construction, and subsequent operation of each of the railways in the area. The approach is, above all, a topographical one, and other elements, whether of economic, business, or social history, have to be subordinated to it. Barrie's task was certainly a daunting one. In 1913 there were 1,200 route-miles of line serving 600 colleries and 450 stations, and a glance at any map will show the complexity of the network and the multiplicity of companies striving to profit from one of the principal areas of growth in Britain's nineteenth-century economy. Here, the author's methodical approach is of great assistance to the reader. The text proceeds slowly


Proof of Theorem 1. Let's walk through the steps of the algorithm, bounding the error that accumulates along the way. In the first round we set ω = 0 in order to obtain an estimate for E[ω∗x]. Since ω∗ is a unit vector, the variance of ω∗x is at most λmax plus a constant (from the 1−subgaussian noise). This means that O( dλmax) samples suffice for the empirical estimator of E[ω∗x] to have no more than 4d error with failure probability Ω( 1 2d ). We call the output of this estimator μ̂ and let μ̂d be the r-dimensional vector with μ̂ in every coordinate.


In this thesis a method for the determination of material model parameters for biological soft tissues is presented. The requirement of in-vivo applicability of the method led to the development of a tissue aspiration instrument. The aspiration instrument was developed by Vladimir Vuskovic at the Institute of Robotics, whereas this work is mainly concerned with the continuum mechanical modelling of the soft tissues, the robust determination of the corresponding material model parameters, and their validity under more general loading conditions. In the first part of this thesis an explicit axisymmetric finite element formulation for the simulation of the aspiration experiment is derived and implemented. The nearly incompressible material behaviour of soft biological tissues results in very small time steps of the explicit integration and thus in computationally expensive simulations. The quasi-static character of the aspiration experiment is used advantageously to accelerate the simulations by artificially increasing the material density. The finite element code was integrated into an optimization algorithm. The optimization algorithm allows to fit unknown material parameters entering the finite element simulation to experimental reference data. Soft biological tissues are modelled as isotropic, viscoelastic, non-linear, and nearly incompressible. The continuum mechanical hyperelastic models employed are standard models in the field of biomechanics. Viscoelasticity is accounted for by a quasi-linear formulation. In view of the twodimensional data available from the experiments, the huge computational effort, that would be connected with a three-dimensional simulation, and the large increase in the number of unknown material parameters the soft tissue models are restricted to isotropic behaviour. The friction in the contact zone of the tissue with the aspiration tube proved to play an important role for the determination of the material parameters. Experiments with a simple "tribometer" for the assessment of the respective friction coefficient posed many difficulties. In numerical studies the influence of the friction coefficient on the parameter determination process was studied. As a result of these studies it is recommended to increase the friction in the aspiration experiment as much as possible to ensure sticking of the tissue to the surface of the aspiration tube. Numerical studies of the convergence properties of the optimization


In this paper I present a pedagogical method called Writing Answers to Learn (WAL) which combines Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and Exploratory Writing to address the interrelated pedagogical problems of misconceptions, resistance, retention, and transfer. I analyze the use of this combined method in a course on racial and ethnic relations and provide examples to suggest that students commonly use four ideologies to understand racial and ethnic inequality: blaming the victim, justification, naturalization, and colorblind racism. I describe how I helped students identify and unlearn these ideological misconceptions and replace them with a sociological conceptual framework. I analyze the results of a pre-test, post-test, and follow-up test showing that students' use of ideology declined on each subsequent exam while their use of sociology increased during the semester and was partially retained months later. Finally I discuss the study's limitations and the utility of students learning the falseness of ideology.


Today WSN are highly approached technology that used to interact several sensor nodes corresponding to at least common application. The WSN is affected by the problem of energy dissipation of the sensor node that collects and report the specific data to application monitoring node. The main reason to develop WSN network is to maximize the lifetime of the batteries that are constrained by the nodes during transmission. The clustering mechanism is the best and most efficient one to resolve the issue with the requirement of energy in WSN. In clustering the network is divided into smaller clusters and each cluster includes one cluster head and members. It is very much useful for reducing the energy dissiaption and enhancing


The of mechanical equipment plays an important role in its faults and maintenance. Based on ferro-graphy an optimization identifying method combining the gray correlation coefficient model with BP neural network model of debris recognition is presented in the paper. Tests and application proved that the combination model is superior to either model and enhance the predicted precision.


This study examines the determinants of economic empowerment of women in selected Arab countries (Iraq, Qatar, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Arab Republic of Egypt and Algeria) during the period (2000-2018), using the usual small squares method, and in this study we reviewed the concept and the economic determinants that affect empowerment Women, which in turn affect all other variables in these countries, the most important of which are the political and social aspects. In order to know the specific factors for women's economic empowerment, the study adopted the quantitative method to estimate these factors which are (the ratio of women's enrollment in secondary education to males, average life expectancy at birth for males and females, fertility rate, per capita GDP). The results of the study found that the most important factors affecting the economic empowerment of women in most Arab countries are health, the proportion of women's enrollment in secondary education to males, average life expectancy at birth for males and females, per capita gross domestic product that had a significant and positive impact, while the fertility rate was found. It appeared morally and negatively.


This is an empirical study that investigates the effect of firm's leverage on stock returns. We start with the explicit valuation model of Miller and Modigliani (1958) and expand the model further to test the relation between stock returns and firms' leverage. Miller and Modigliani conduct their empirical tests exclusively in the utilities and oil and gas industries. We conduct our tests in all risk classes. Miller and Modigliani conduct their tests in the cross section for one year whereas we employ a rich panel dataset. They use balance sheet definitions for return to equity while we use stock returns. Our leverage definition takes into account the cash flows generated through debt financing, following Schwartz (1959). Additionally, we control for other risk factors. We first conduct the analysis at the firm level and then at the portfolio level to include factor mimicking portfolios for size, book-to market, market risk and momentum. We find that for utilities, returns increase in leverage which is consistent with the findings of Miller and Modigliani and Bhandari (1988). But for the other sectors, the relationship is negative which is similar with the more recent work of Korteweg (2004), Dimitrov and Jain (2005) and Penman (2007). Results are robust to other risk factors and level of analysis. We conclude that the contradicting empirical results in literature are mainly due to the restrictions in the samples used. The positive relationship between leverage and stock returns is unique to utilities, a risk class that is highly regulated and has high concentration of leverage ratios.


The utility model discloses a key detection circuit of a singlechip or microprocessor with an analog-digital converter, including a key circuit, and a singlechip or microprocessor with the analog-digital converter, the key circuit is connected with a detection end of the singlechip or the microprocessor, the key circuit is composed of a plurality of resistors and a plurality of keys, wherein one resistor and one key are connected in parallel or in series to form a key circuit unit, a plurality of key circuit units are connected in parallel to form the key circuit. The key detection circuit adopts the singlechip or microprocessor with the analog-digital converter, a plurality of keys are detected and identified by only one GPIO port of the singlechip or microprocessor, a number of the GPIO ports in the key detection circuit is reduced, so as to reduce cost of hardware.


753 Background: In breast cancer serum CEA-TPA-CA15.3 tumour marker panel is a cheap tool with high accuracy for the "early" detection of relapse (A Nicolini, Br J Cancer 1997); serum MCA and CA15.3 are also reported among the most useful serum tumour markers. However the most suitable cut-off of MCA has not yet been defined. The aims were to compare the MCA-CA15.3 with the CEA-TPA-CA15.3 tumour marker panel and to assess the effect of two different MCA cut-off values on this comparison. Methods: From May 2000 to February 2003, 264 breast cancer patients every 6 or 4 months, according to whether they were at low or high risk of relapse, were monitored with serial serum MCA, CEA, CA15.3, and TPA levels besides history and routine lab examinations. Cut-off value was 4.3 ng/mL (CEA), 32 U/mL (Ca15.3), 95 U/L (TPA), 11 and 16 U/mL (MCA). Tumour marker increase was dynamically evaluated according to a previously described method (A Nicolini, Br J Cancer 2000) Bone scintigraphy, liver echography and chest x-ray...


We studied stimulated resonance Raman transitions between hyperfine sublevels of the ground electronic state X1Σ0+g (v = 0, J = 13) of I2. Resonances narrower than 10 kHz (HWHM) were obtained. A detailed theoretical and experimental analysis of the line shape is presented. The pressure broadening of Raman resonances was found to be 7±1 kHz/mTorr. The role of the beam divergence was investigated and shown to yield only a small broadening but some asymmetry of the lines. In the transit-time limit the theory predicts that the slow molecules should play a dominant role, as in saturation spectroscopy. Our experimental conditions are very close to that regime, and we discuss the improvements that should be made in order to reach it in future experiments. Finally, six hyperfine splittings of the ground state of I2 were determined with a 0.2-kHz accuracy.


PURPOSE: To provide a device which can easily give a new function to a program or update the program for an electronic device by adding a module that sets the communication with the electronic device to a memory means together with a module that sends the information to the electronic device. CONSTITUTION: A casing 7 contains the peripheral hardware which are necessary for control of a microprocessor in addition to a one-chip microprocessor serial interface. This interface is connected to a cable 8 having a connector 9 attached at its end. A client connects the easing 7 to a medical monitor 1 or puts the connector 9 into a jack 6. In such a case a 1st module included in a memory performs communication with the monitor 1 and a 2nd module sends a program code to the monitor 1. When the 1st module establishes the communication between two devices, the control is shifted to the 2nd module from the 1st module. Then the 2nd module downloads the program code to the monitor 1.


Semantic frame based spoken language understanding (frame-based SLU) is one of the most commonly applied and well studied SLU technology for human-computer interaction. It has been used in many speech language processing tasks, in particular the transactional dialog systems, where various pieces of information need to be collected from users. A frame-based SLU system is often limited to a specific domain, which has a well-defined, relatively small semantic space. The structure of the semantic space can be represented by a set of templates called semantic frames, each contains some important component variables that are often referred as slots. The goal of the frame-based SLU is to choose the correct semantic frame for an utterance, and extract from the utterance the values of its component slots.


A pilot multinozzle and duct were tested at ambient enthalpy to evaluate the suitability of such apparatus for testing thermal protection system panels mounted in the sidewalls of the duct downstream of the nozzle array. The flow field in the duct was complex: effects of wakes and shock waves from the nozzle dominated the flow field; the wakes continually mixed with the surrounding fluid; the boundary layer on the sidewalls of the duct was nonuniform; and near the exit of the duct the sidewall pressure variation was as much as 8.5 percent about the mean wall pressure. Starting loads on the duct walls were higher than those of a similar conventional nozzle and duct. It was concluded that the multinozzle-duct apparatus was not suitable for testing TPS panels, although the design and flow-field information should be of interest to designers of high-energy gasdynamic lasers.


Traumatic optic neuropathy due to missile injury typically results in unilateral visual loss.[1] We discuss an uncommon case, in which injury from retroocular passage of a single bullet resulted in bilateral orbital perforations, frozen globes, and complete blindness.


Abstract In this paper,the problems of the dynamic response of bridge structures under vehicle loadshave been studied With the utilization of the finite element method and concerned the bridges withvarious kinds of support conditions subjected to muti-axle vehicles and many vehicles.In this paper,we use super element method to present the equations of the motion for the vehicle loads;useInterpolation functions to present the equations of motion for the bridge structures and thentransform the coordinate of tile equations of motion of the bridge structures with the help ofmode-superposltlon,and use the step-by-step Integration procedure to solve the problems.


We characterize spaces W such that the W-nulliication functor P W , applied to any BGL(R), gives BGL(R) +. + the Quillen plus-construction on X with respect to the maximal perfect subgroup of 1 X. If W is a pointed CW-complex, let P W (X) denote the W-nulliication of X. (Recall that P W X is up to homotopy the initial space Y under X which is W-null in the sense that the pointed mapping space Map (W; Y) is weakly contractible.) For some time it has been known that there exist universal spaces W such that for any X, P W (X) is equivalent to X +. We will say that such a space W deenes the plus-construction. Given that the plus-construction was originally applied to spaces of the form BGL(R) in order to construct the higher algebraic K-groups of a ring R, it seems natural to consider spaces W with the property that for any discrete, associative ring R with unit, P W BGL(R) is equivalent to BGL(R) +. We will say that such a W deenes algebraic K-theory. For then one can use W to deene the algebraic K-groups of a ring R where S denotes suspension of rings. The question of characterizing such W was rst raised in 2], and solved for nite-dimensional W in 1]. Of course any W which deenes the plus-construction also deenes algebraic K-theory, but it turns out that some other spaces can deene algebraic K-theory as well. By choosing special test rings R, we are able in this note to give a complete characterization of the spaces W which deene algebraic K-theory. Recall that a space is said to be acyclic if its reduced integral homology vanishes.


FIELD: polymerization catalysts and processes. SUBSTANCE: support for olefin polymerization catalyst contains product of interaction of (A) solid inorganic oxide containing silica or alumina matrix and hydroxyl derivatives on the matrix surface functionated by a reactive silane, the latter being depicted by formula -OSiR 2 H, in which R radicals independently denote hydrogen atom or C1-C20-hydrocarbon residue, whereas inorganic oxide contains less than 1.0 mmol/g hydroxyl groups on the surface; and (B) activator, namely ammonium salt of tris(pentafluorophenyl)-4-hydroxidephenyl borate, tris(pentafluorophenyl)-4'- hydroxyphenyl)phenyl borate, or tris(pentafluorophenyl)-(6-hydroxy-2-naphtyl) borate. Olefin polymerization catalyst is also described containing said support and IV-group metal containing at least one π-bonded cyclopentadienyl or substituted cyclopentadienyl anionic ligand group and a substituent capable of interacting with activator to form catalytically-active transition metal complex. Invention also describes polymerization process involving said catalyst. EFFECT: increased catalyst activity and resistance thereof against leaching and eliminated polymer deposits on reactor walls. 8 cl, 4 tbl, 7 ex


This paper develops an attention-based view of firm growth. Most studies based on Penrose's work have focused on managerial resources or outcomes that result from applying the firm's heterogeneous ...


Prediction of HR management strategy in small business marketing after the pandemic is the purpose of this study. We believe that every business, both small and large, is very concerned with human resources in marketing all business products. Therefore, we have obtained raw data from electronic searches in several scientific publications, especially HRM and post-pandemic small business marketing governance. We have carefully reviewed the data, involving an in-depth evaluation and coding system so that it is easy for us to answer the questions of this study. Our data publications target journals such as Sagepub, Academic works, Google Books, Taylor and France, and other data sources. We reviewed hundreds of papers to get around 50 journal publications that we have thoroughly reviewed. Based on the discussion of the results, the result is that the human resources department develops rules and processes that promote a fair work environment. Additionally, they settle disputes and listen to employee problems to instill a sense of belonging. All of these factors contribute to the efficient operation of the company and enable workers to perform their best job. HR; marketing; small business; pandemic; publication review


Two phases of archaeological works were carried within the footprint of a proposed new multi-storey car park at Chequers Court car park, Huntingdon between 21st and 29th March 2011 and the 14th November 2011 and 2nd March 2012.
A total of ten discrete areas were investigated revealing a sequence of well stratified features and deposits that spanned the pre-medieval to post medieval periods.
Although no Saxon features could be confidently identified on site a number of undated but stratigraphically earlier ditches and a small assemblage of Mid to Late Saxon pottery recovered from later features, demonstrated that the site lay close to an area of Saxon habitation.
There was a marked increase in activity during the 12th to 14th century, characterised by the establishment and maintenance of a series of substantial drainage ditches. The preservation of possible bank material or a medieval cultivation layer between these ditches, in conjunction with the finds and environmental evidence, suggests that during this time the site was cultivated. The drainage of the site, in order to make it viable for agricultural purposes, clearly required a significant investment of energy and this may have been necessitated by the demand for food from the growing population of the town, which was expanding rapidly during the 'high medieval' period.
Evidence for the expansion of the town was recorded in the southern part of the site where pits, post holes and shallow gullies were found that are typical of the types of feature found in the back plots of buildings.
The decline of the town in the aftermath of the Black death was also in evidence with the abandonment of the drainage ditches and slow accumulation of layers of relatively sterile soil layers. A slight increase in activity during the 17th century was noted in the form of two brick built wall foundations that may have been associated with a path or a small ancillary structure.


Soil salinity is a major environmental constraint that limits plant growth and development. Calotropis procera is one of the plant species in vast areas of semiarid and arid regions worldwide subjected to harsh environments typically known with severe drought, high temperature and salt stress. To examine the effects of salinity on this plant species, a pot experiment was carried out in growth chamber at the Department of Biology, University of Taibah, at Al-Madina Al-Munwara, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Plants grown in plastic pots containing compost were subjected to four salt treatments; 0, 75, 150 and 300 mM NaCl. Photosynthesis and growth parameters, including plant height, number of leaves, leaf area and dry weight were evaluated. Growth was progressively declined, as salt concentration increased. Significant reductions were recorded in plant height, number of leaves and leaf area and plant biomass of all plant parts (stem, leaves and roots). NaCl significantly reduced the total fresh weight, but no effects on total dry weight were found. The photosynthetic capacity was significantly decreased under high saline condition.


We report a new upper halt for the strength of the 327 MHz absorption line of deuterium In the direction of the galactic centre. Our observations do not confirm the possible detection of this line reported by Cesarsky et al (1973) and Pasachoff and (1974). We obtain an upper limit of 5.8 × I0 -5 for the atomic D/H ratio by correlating the observed spectrum with the HI absorption spectrum of Sgr A. This limit is comparable to that of Weinreb (1962) of 8 × 10 -5 for the direction of Cas A, and with the direct measurement of the D/H ratio in nearby interstellar clouds from UV observations by the Copernicus satellIte.


Sol-gel derived (Pb,La)(Zr,Sn,Ti)O3 powders and sintered ceramics were prepared; their crystallization kinetics and dielectric properties were studied as a function of temperature. X-ray powder diffraction showed that the pyrochlore phase formed initially from an amorphous gel during low-temperature heat treatment around 200–300 °C. Further heat treatment to 600 °C resulted in the development of the perovskite phase with no significant growth of pyrochlore crystallites. At intermediate temperatures the sol-gel derived powders yielded a mixture of pyrochlore and perovskite phases. The crystallization kinetics of the perovskite phase was analyzed following the Avrami approach, which indicated that the process is diffusion limited. Those fine powders were utilized to prepare compact ceramics after sintering at various temperatures; their dielectric properties were analyzed. The electric field induced transformation from the antiferroelectric to the ferroelectric phase was clearly observed through the polariz...


Increased von Willebrand factor (vWF) and thrombo modulin (TM) levels were reported in diabetic patients and this may be associated with endothelial cell dysfunction, abnormal platelet adhesiveness and aggregation. In this study, we deter mined plasma TM and vWF concentrations in Type 2 diabetic patients with and without retinopathy and investigated the ef fects of metabolic regulation on these parameters.


Tin and nitrogen co-doped titania has been prepared by a hydrolysis precipitation method and studied by X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, diffuse reflectance UV-vis absorption spectra, and photoluminescence. The surface area has been determined by using the BET method. Tin is incorporated into the TiO2 crystal lattice in substitutional mode, while nitrogen is present as surface species. The resultant energy levels of tin doping and nitrogen surface states are located inside the bandgap, which are close to the conduction and valence bands, respectively. Hence, co-doping of tin and nitrogen can greatly enhance the absorption in the visible light region and inhibit the recombination of photogenerated charge carriers, leading to a higher photocatalytic activity for the co-doped catalyst than pure TiO2 and solely doped TiO2 with nitrogen or tin for degradation of 4-chlorophenol under both visible and UV-light irradiation. This indicates that co-doping simultaneously with two foreign elements is a feasible way to improve the photocatalytic activity of TiO2.


ABSTRACT Land-use patterns in the Eastern African drylands have changed greatly in recent decades. Ethnographic data from East Pokot, in Kenya's Baringo area, illustrate some of the major dynamics of change and point to relevant drivers. While the pastoral Pokot people managed an open, unfragmented rangeland until the 1990s, wildlife conservation, sedentarization, and land-use intensification, together with increasing contestation of borderlands, have led to a profound fragmentation and contraction of the commons, and a fundamental territorial restructuring. These dynamics are driven by economies of anticipation, fuelled by expectations of future developments such as large-scale infrastructural expansion and changing institutional frameworks, and entail massive conflicts around access to and control over land. While much attention has been paid to the role of external actors in land appropriation in East Africa, this paper directs attention to endogenous agency and compliancy in territorial restructuring.


The invasive tomato leaf miner (TLM), Tuta absoluta (Meyrick) is an invasive pest on tomatoes worldwide. The main control measure against the pest has been chemical insecticides, but the pest developed resistance to many chemical classes. So alternative methods, such as biological control agents, alone or combined to chemical compounds must be evaluated to validate their synergistic actions. In this study, both lethal (concentration-mortality response) and sublethal effects of three synthetic insecticides, the bioinsecticide spinosad, as well as the entomopathogenic fungus Metarhizium anisopliae (Metschnikoff) Sorokin were studied on Trichogramma brassicae Bezdenko within T. absoluta eggs. To assess the sublethal effects, the lethal concentration 25% (LC25) of chlorantraniliprole, spinosad, abamectin and indoxacarb and LC50 value of M. anisopliae was sprayed on eggs and then offered at three time intervals to the parasitoids. Fertility and other life table parameters of the individuals emerged from treated eggs were estimated. The results showed that indoxacarb showed the highest deleterious sublethal effects on T. brassicae. On the other hand, M. anisopliae was the safest treatment to combine to Trichogramma with no significant effect on some parameters. The lowest LC50 value for T. brassicae was obtained for chlorantraniliprole followed by spinosad. Synergistic effect was observed when M. anisopliae and T. brassicae used together. Hence, this will be a promising integration against T. absoluta.


Important differences exist in advance directives. Only some grant access to another person's medical records, and that can change with time.


Africa is currently a fragile mess. So was Europe in 1945. The USA supported Europe through security, trade and governance policies that complemented aid. Africa needs the same co-ordinated approach from Europe now.


The Huanghe River (Yellow River) is the most sediment laden river system in the world, and many efforts have been conducted to understand modern deltaic evolution in response to anthropological impacts. However, the natural background and its linkage to climatic changes are less documented in previous studies. In this work, we studied the sediments of core YDZ–3 and marine surface samples by grain-size analysis to retrieve Holocene dynamics of the Huanghe River delta in detail. The main findings are as follows: The mean value of sediment grain size of the studied core is 5.5 ± 0.9 Φ, and silt and sand contents are 5.2 ± 2.3% and 8.2 ± 5.3%, respectively, while the variance of clay particles is relatively large with an average value of 86.4 ± 8.5%. All grain-size data can be mathematically partitioned by a Weibull-based function formula, and three subgroups were identified with modal sizes of 61.1 ± 28.9 μm, 30.0 ± 23.9 μm, and 2.8 ± 1.6 μm, respectively. There are eight intervals with abrupt changes in modal size of core YDZ–3, which can be correlated to paleo-superlobe migration of the Huanghe River in the Holocene. Based on these observations, the presence of seven superlobes in the history are confirmed for the first time and their ages are well constrained in this study, including Paleo-Superlobes Lijin (6400–5280 yr BP), Huanghua (4480–4190 yr BP), Jugezhuang (3880–3660 yr BP), Shajinzi (3070–2870 yr BP), Nigu (2780–2360 yr BP), Qikou (2140–2000 yr BP), and Kenli (1940–1780 and 1700–1650 yr BP). By tuning geomorphological events to a sedimentary proxy derived from core YDZ–3 and comparing to various paleoenvironmental changes, we proposed that winter climate dominated Holocene shifts of the Huanghe River delta on millennial timescales, while summer monsoons controlled deltaic evolution on centennial timescales.


Adazzling scene unfurled in Russian political, economic and social life with theoutbreak of a multiple crisis since last March, President Boris Yeltsin changedtwice the Russian government; the financial crisis there cropped up with greaterfrequency; the national economy experienced a downturn once again; confrontationbetween the president and the State Duma intensified; and unrest has been brewing


Japanese oak silkworm (Antheraeci yamamai Guerin-lVIeneville) which is called Tensan, is a typical wild silkworm (Plate 1) native to Japan. It inhabits in mountains and plains of the whole country, feeding on leaves of oaks such as Kunugi (Que1·cus acutissimci Carruth), Konara (Quercus serratci Thunb), Kashiwa (Quercus dentcitci Thunb), Shirakashi (Quercus myrsinaefolia Blume), etc. In some areas, it is reared. Particularly, it is famous that in Ariake district, Nagano Prefecture, located on the piedmont of North Alpus, a large scale rearing of Tensan has been continued since Ten-mei era ( 17811789). The fibre spinncd from Tcnsan is called Tensan silk, which is characterized by graceful gloss, thick diameter, and large elongation rate. Textile made of this silk is strong, durable, difficult to become wrinkled, and has an extremely good touch: outstandingly excellent among wild s ilks. Therefore, it is compared to "diamond of fibre". As the Tensan s ilk mix-woven with usual silk improves textile quality as clothes, demand for it is rapidly increasing in recent years. Use of Tensan s ilk as the materials for Tensan textiles, furnitures and interior decorations is also increasing. As a result, Tensan rearing has been gradually increasing from year to year. However, its efficiency of cocoon production is extremely low in general, because a large number of the larvae die in the course of rearing: only about 2030% of the larvae produce cocoon actually. In 1979, about 240,000 larvae were used for rearing, but only about


SUMMARY IBM's Microkernel, named Workplace OS microkernel 18], was the core component of Workplace OS, a portable successor of OS/2. The basic premise of Workplace OS work was: 1) IBM would adopt and improve the CMU Mach 3.0 microkernel for use on PDAs, the desktop, workstations, and massively parallel machines, and 2) that several operating system personalities would execute on the microkernel platform concurrently. This architecture would allow users to switch between applications written for diierent operating systems while IBM would also beneet by having one common platform for all product lines. The goals of the microkernel and the technical features of design are described in this report. We also present lessons that may beneet future projects with similar goals. This technical report is a revised version of the paper published in Software Practice and Experience. In this report we use new tools to evaluate the microkernel. The evaluation section of the report uses new tools and includes updated results. SUMMARY IBM's Microkernel, named Workplace OS microkernel 18], was the core component of Workplace OS, a portable successor of OS/2. The basic premise of Workplace OS work was: 1) IBM would adopt and improve the CMU Mach 3.0 microkernel for use on PDAs, the desktop, workstations, and massively parallel machines, and 2) that several operating system personalities would execute on the microkernel platform concurrently. This architecture would allow users to switch between applications written for diierent operating systems while IBM would also beneet by having one common platform for all product lines. The goals of the microkernel and the technical features of design are described in this report. We also present lessons that may beneet future projects with similar goals.


In the paper we determine the class of diffeomorphism of three-dimensional regular common level surfaces of Hamiltonian and Casimir functions for the analog of Kovalevskaya case on Lie algebra $\textrm{so}(4)$. We start from Fomenko-Zieschang invariants of Lioville foliations on these manifolds that were calculated by the author earlier.


Distributed leadership offers a new thinking in transforming school's leadership. Professional learning community has been identified to have a strong influence on the teaching quality of teachers. This article examines the relationship of distributed leadership of secondary school administrators with professional learning community. The literatures suggest that distributed leadership perspective is a good alternative strategy to improve the quality of educational institutions, but empirical evidence shows the relationship of distributed leadership and professional learning community is limited. Data were collected from 592 teachers working in secondary schools in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. Data analysis was done based on Structural Equation Modeling using AMOS software. The study found that distributed leadership (DL) has a positive and strong correlation relationship with professional learning community (PLC), r = 0.844, p  0.001. Regression weight analysis for DL -> PLC shows that regression coefficient value, β = 1.182. This explains that when distributed leadership variable (DL) goes up by 1 unit, the professional learning community variable (PLC) will also go up by 1182 units. The distributed leadership (DL) exogenous variable in the regression model can significantly predict the change in the professional learning community (PLC) endogenous variable. The results show the value of variance in professional learning community (PLC) endogenous variable predicted by distributed leadership (DL) exogenous variable for DL -> PLC pathway. Estimated value = 0.835 (C.R. = 6.174,p  In conclusion, a strong positive relationship was revealed between distributed leadership of secondary school administrators and professional learning community. Distributed leadership of secondary school administrators was also a significant predictor of professional learning community. Therefore, the findings of the study indicate that distributed leadership practiced by school administrators is a critical factor in establishing professional learning community at school level.


The development of the Single Aperture, Single Gap 1 MV accelerator (SINGAP) is being carried out on the 1 MV test bed at the DRFC, CEA Cadarache, France. This paper reports on the latest performance achieved with the prototype, "ITER‐like" accelerator, 730 keV, 120 A/m2 D−, and of on‐going measurements of the beam "halo" fraction, ≈10%. It reviews the status and plans for future studies on D− production, and the observed "dark current", and presents the basic physics design of a system that should cope with the ≈3 MW of electrons that would be co‐accelerated out of the 1 MeV, 40 A, D− SINGAP accelerator proposed for the ITER neutral beam injectors.


The treatment of lung metastases of thyroid cancer is nearly exclusively limited to the administration of iodine-131. For patients presented with micronodular lesions, the therapeutic response is often excellent, increasing life expectancy. Because of the necessity of multiple iodine-131 treatments in the course of this therapy, and subsequently, the lack of tolerance of hormonal withdrawal, the use of recombinant human thyrotropin (rhTSH) as a method of stimulation could represent an interesting alternative. However, as in the present case, the stimulation by rhTSH can be less effective than hormonal withdrawal, as shown in the posttherapy scan to detect metastatic lesions and thus could be detrimental to the treatment efficiency.


ObjectiveTo establish HPLC fingerprint of total triterpenes of Betula Plantyphylla in order to control the quality of Betula Plantyphylla in different collection seasons.Methods HPLC method was performed on a Kromasil C18 column(4.6mm×250mm,5μm) with acetonitrile-water as mobile phase by gradient elution,the flow rate was at 1.0ml/min,column temperature was 25℃,detection wavelength was set at 280nm,sample size was 20μl and eluting period was 60min.Furthermore,similarity evaluation was used for data analysis.Results The experiment showed 9 shared peaks.Samples from different collection seasons were of high similarity.Conclusions This method with good accuracy and specificity can be used for quality control of Betula platyphylla;and the chemical compositions of total triterpenes from different harvest seasons are similar and stable.


The purpose of this study was to evaluate how conversant are the Staff and student of IIUM with the Scopus online retrieval system and also to explore some retrieval features in the system (Boolean and proximity operators), the study started by introducing the different retrieval features in Scopus with review of relevant articles on information users perspectives. The study tries to answer the questions on how competent are the staff and students of the International Islamic University, Malaysia (IIUM) utilising the Scopus online database and how conversant are they with the different retrieval tools/features in Scopus. Both questionnaires and interviews ware used respectively to gather data for the study. The findings show that the majority of the student who knows about these features are from the Kulliyya (Faculty) of Information and Communication Technology (KICT), And the study concluded with some recommendations on how to improve the utilisation of the retrieval system by both Scopus and the IIUM library management.


The utility model provides a locking device and a battery box. The locking device comprises a locking body, a spring dog, a positioning unit, a first elastic component and an unlocking operation part, wherein the spring dog is connected with the locking body in a pivoting manner and comprises a locking notch for locking a locked object as well as a locking position and an unlocking position, the positioning unit is connected with the locking body in a pivoting manner, the spring dog is locked at the locking position through the positioning unit, the first elastic component is connected with the spring dog which is restored from the locking position to the unlocking position under the effect of the first elastic component, and the unlocking operation part is connected with the positioning unit. When the locking device is used for unlocking, the positioning unit matched with the spring dog rotates by controlling the unlocking operation part so that the position of the spring dog changes, and the locking notch is opened, thus the unlocking process is finished. As the locking device is provided with the first elastic component, an acting force is supplied for the spring dog so that the spring dog can rotate from the locking position to the unlocking position in the unlocking process. The locking device has the characteristics of simple unlocking process and reliable locking.


Let X be a finitistic space having the mod-2 cohomology al- gebra of the lens space L 2m−1 p (q1, ..., qm). If 4 ∤ m, then we determine the possible mod-2 cohomology algebra of orbit space of any free involution on X using the Leray spectral sequence associated to the Borel fibration X ! XZ2 ! BZ2. As an application we show that if 4 ∤ m then for any free involution on X, there does not exist any Z2-equivariant map S n ! X for n � 2, where S n is equipped with the antipodal involution.


In multiple pre-registered experiments, we examine the effect of sequences of positive and negative experiences on altruism, trust, trustworthiness, and cooperation. For non-social experiences, we find no effect on subsequent behavior in any of these social domains. However, when experiences are social in nature we find more cooperation after gains than after losses. For neutral experiences with gains equalizing losses, we find no evidence for a differential effect of experiences irrespective of whether the experience is social or not. Our findings are in line with recent evidence on decision making under risk showing that the effect of prior experiences depends on task similarity. Beyond that, we extend these findings to various forms of social decision making. Our results suggest that the overall valence of an experience (gain or loss) matters, whereas its dynamic trend (improving or deteriorating) does not.


Designing dependable systems is complex and, whilst the state of the art goes some way towards assisting in the design process, existing approaches have some limitations. A case study is used to explore the available approaches and discuss their benefits and limitations. Based on these observations, stochastic extensions to the Event-B notation are proposed that build on the strengths of the existing approaches and aim to address some of their limitations. This new language is also trialled on the case study and shows some promise. The paper concludes with some suggestions for further work in this area.


Objective: This study aimed to detect rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis cases and assess the frequency of missing probes in different study populations in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), Pakistan.
Methodology: The study was conducted at the State TB Reference Laboratory, District Headquarters Teaching Hospital, Mirpur, AJK. A total of 2,790 specimens collected between March 2016 to August 2019 were analyzed. Pulmonary TB (PTB) accounted for 94% of the cases, while 6% were classified as extra-pulmonary cases. All respiratory and non-respiratory samples underwent fluorescence smear microscopy (AFB) and a real-time PCR test (Xpert MTB/RIF assay) to detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) and rifampicin resistance.
Results: Among the 2,790 suspected MTB patients, 734 (26%) were confirmed to have MTB using the Xpert MTB/RIF assay, while 564 (20%) tested positive by fluorescence microscopy. Of the MTB-positive patients, 720 (98%) were diagnosed with pulmonary TB, and 14 (2%) had extra-pulmonary TB. Rifampicin resistance (RR) was detected in 66 (9%) cases, with 97% of the resistant cases being pulmonary and 3% extra-pulmonary. The most frequently missing probe was E (Codon 529-533), accounting for 34% of the cases, followed by probe D (Codon 523-529) at 26%. The least frequently missing probe was C (Codon 523-529), observed in 3% of the cases. Probe B (Codon 512-518) was missing in 15.4% of cases, while probe A (Codon 518-523) was missing in 9.4% of cases.
Conclusion: The utilization of molecular diagnostic techniques, such as the Xpert MTB/RIF assay, enables rapid identification of MTB and detection of rifampicin resistance. This study provides valuable baseline data on the prevalence of 81 bp mutations in the rpoB gene, highlighting the need for further evaluation of mutation patterns in AJK.


The aim of this work was to identify sheep herds with history of reproductive failures (abortions and perinatal mortality) associated to presence of Chamydophila abortus, Brucella ovis and Leptospira spp . infections in the semiarid region of Northeastern Brazil. Blood samples were collected from 476 animals from 72 herds in 14 counties of the Sertao mesoregion, state of Paraiba. For the serological diagnosis of C. abortus , B. ovis and Leptospira spp. infections, complement fixation test (CFT), agar gel immunodiffusion test (AGID) and microscopic agglutination test (MAT) were used, respectively. Herd-level prevalence (herds with at least one seropositive animal) of C. abortus was 52.8%, followed by B. ovis (33.3%) and Leptospira spp. (27.7%); concerning seropositivity in animals there was also a higher frequency of C. abortus (19.7%), followed by B. ovis (12.1%) and Leptospira spp. (7.6%) (p < 0.05). Herds with history of abortion (31.9%; 23/72) and perinatal mortality (54.2%; 39/72) had at least one sheep seropositive to one of the infectious agentes. For abortions, herd-level prevalence of C. abortus was 60.8%, followed by B. ovis (43.4%) and Leptospira spp. (30.4%). For perinatal mortality, herd-level prevalence was 64.1% for C. abortus , 38.4% for B. ovis and 33.3% for Leptospira spp. It is suggested that these agents may be important causes of reproductive failures in the semiarid region, and, thus, it is recommended that herd owners should be informed on reasonable sanitary measures related to animal health, and advised to perform diagnosis in cases of abortion and perinatal mortality.


The utility model relates to a hollow glass unframed window which comprises a sectional material, a connecting piece and hollow glass, wherein the sectional material comprises an upper sliding track, a lower sliding track, slide supports, sealing plates and sealing strips, the connecting piece comprises an upper pulley assembly and a lower pulley assembly, wherein the upper sliding track is connected with the slide supports through the upper pulley assembly, and the lower sliding track is fixedly connected with the slide supports through the lower pulley assembly; the hollow glass is arranged between an upper slide support and a lower slide support; the sealing strips are arranged at both sides of the hollow glass; the seal plates are arranged at both ends of the upper sliding track and the lower sliding track. The utility model is suitable for the partition of balconies, inside and outside windows and rooms. Window sashes can be fitly folded at one side or both sides of a balcony by moving, so that the balcony has the advantages of permeability, better effect of day lighting and sufficient ventilation. One window sash or many window sashes can be independently opened to any angle, thereby, the flow rate and the direction of air can be freely adjusted discretionarily. The utility model also has the characteristics of convenient opening, closing, push and pull, easy cleaning and scrubbing, good effects of sound insulation, thermal insulation and dust prevention, and ametabolic seal.


We show that the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy associated with any black hole undergoes logarithmic corrections when small thermodynamic fluctuations around equilibrium are taken into account. Thus, the corrected expression for black hole entropy is given by $S= A/4 - k \ln(A)$, where $A$ is the horizon area and $k$ is a constant which depends on the specific black hole. We apply our result to BTZ black hole, for which $k=3/2$, as found earlier, as well as to anti-de Sitter-Schwarzschild and Reissner-Nordstrom black hole in arbitrary spacetime dimensions. Finally, we examine the role of conformal field theory in black hole entropy and its corrections.


Nervous system growth factor gene delivery can promote axonal growth and prevent cell death in animal models of CNS trauma and neurodegenerative diseases. The ability to regulate growth factor expression or signaling pathways downstream from growth factor receptors remains a desirable goal for in vivo gene transfer. To achieve precise pharmacological modulation of neurotrophin activity, we have generated a chimeric trkA receptor (ItrkA) by fusing the entire intracellular domain of the trkA high‐affinity NGF receptor to two intracellular, modified FK506 binding domains for the synthetic small molecule dimerization ligand AP20187. Rat PC12 cells were transduced with lentiviral vectors containing ItrkA and green fluorescent protein (GFP; via an internal ribosome entry site). Treatment of ItrkA‐expressing PC12 cells with AP20187 induced neurite outgrowth and differentiation in a time‐ and dose‐dependent fashion, with a half‐maximal response at a concentration of 1 nM AP20187. Seventy percent of cells responded to AP20187 by day 3. Western blots demonstrated that AP20187 treatment resulted in phosphorylation of Erk1/2 and Akt in ItrkA‐transduced PC12 cells but not in nontransduced, naïve cells. Phosphorylation levels were comparable to levels obtained with 50 ng/ml nerve growth factor (NGF). In addition, ItrkA lentiviral transduction of primary E15 dorsal root ganglion neurons significantly increased neurite growth three‐ to fourfold in the presence of AP20187 compared with control GFP transduced and naïve neurons. These results demonstrate that small ligand‐induced dimerization of the intracellular domain of trkA can efficiently simulate the biological activity of NGF and provide a means to regulate intracellular neurotrophin receptor signaling. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


INTRODUCTION
Our study was designed to determine pulmonary tuberculosis rate in municipality bus drivers in our dispensary region and to determine whether or not the job is a risk factor for the disease.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Micro chest X-rays were taken of municipality bus drivers working in our region. The ones who had suspicious radiology were re-invited to dispensary; their health background was questioned and advanced investigation was performed.

RESULTS
Totally 498 (97%) of 512 bus drivers working in our region came to our dispensary for the study survey. All of the attendants were male and between 19 and 57. In radiologic assessment, among 12 cases were suspected to have tuberculosis. Two of them had ARB smear positive tuberculosis and, five had inactive tuberculosis.

CONCLUSION
Tuberculosis prevalence in bus drivers in our dispensary region was 0.4% (2/498). This value corresponded to 400 in 100.000 populations. Examining the statistics tuberculosis prevalence in our region was only 20 in 100.000 in 2006. This meant that, pulmonary tuberculosis is seen 20 times greater among municipality bus drivers. Taking this conclusion into consideration, we think that being a public bus driver may be accepted as a risk factor for tuberculosis.


Traffic accidents represent important cause of morbimortality. This study evaluated the physical sequelae secondary to traffic accidents, and their social consequences to 10 to 19-year-old adolescents. A retrospective study was done on the medical reports of the adolescents who were victims of traffic accidents. Of these, 185 adolescents participated in interviews and evaluation of the sequelae from one to three years after the accident. Most of the victims were men (74.6%); motorcycle accidents were predominant (38.9%). Of these, 56 were drivers and riders and 32.1% were younger than 18; of those 18 or older, 58.8% didn't have driver's license and 72.2% of the motorcyclists and 92.3% of the car occupants didn't use safety equipment. The occurence of sequelae (p = 0.008) was positively related to the trauma severity; 34.1% had physical sequelae. The presence of sequelae interfered in aspects of social life of the adolescents. The group with sequelae presented significant differences when compared with the group without sequelae, in relation to dropping school (p = 0.025); less or no sport activities (p < 0.001); changes in leisure (p < 0.001); loss of friends (p = 0.020); family (p = 0.01) and affectionate (p = 0.033) relationships, and more feelings of unhappiness (p < 0.001) and sleep disorders (p < 0.001). The traffic accidents were an important cause of morbidity in the sample studied and they left physical sequelae in one out of three injuried adolescents.


The mechanical properties that govern endothelial cell motion remain poorly understood, especially when these cells are part of a larger cellular community. To address this gap, we have developed a toolkit to quantify wide‐ranging mechanical activities represented by cellular morphology, motion, and forces within individual cells and their neighboring region. Using this data, we generated Mechanomic Engagement Profile (MEP) maps that seek to define the functional identity of a cell type based on its degree of correlated engagement in multiple mechanical activities.


Scant knowledge of land use and transport integrated (LUTI) planning support tools such as accessibility instruments (AIs) for developing joint strategies and the implementation gap of such planning instruments are considered the main barriers for integrated spatial and mobility planning (te Brömmelstroet & Bertolini, 2008). Against this background, the research discussed in this chapter aims to ascertain whether, how, and to what extent barriers to land use and transport planning integration can be overcome through a learning process that involves practitioners and researchers from different domains. The study was conducted during the COST Action TU1002, analyzing the outcomes of joint work developed by researchers with different backgrounds (transport and land use planning) actively participating in the research. During the project 15 structured workshops were organized in different local contexts. Here AIs were applied as a platform for discussion around a given planning problem, and for defining integrated land use and transport planning solutions. The workshops involved groups of selected practitioners from academia, consultancy companies and public administrations with different expertise (transport, spatial planning, and geography). Before and after the workshop, two surveys explored the AI developers' views on accessibility concepts, accessibility instruments and the way they are used. The main results account for changed understanding and attitudes toward AIs due to new insights gained from implementing AIs in a concrete case study and from interaction with other colleagues and with practitioners. The results also discuss the impacts that the implementation of AIs in the workshop had on practitioners in terms of how accessibility concepts were received and could be used in practice.


The Suzaku X-ray satellite observed the nearby S0 galaxy NGC 1316, a merger remnant aged 3 Gyr. The total good exposure time was 48.7 ksec. The spectra were well represented by a two-temperature thermal model for the interstellar medium (ISM) plus a power-law model. The cool and hot temperatures of the thermal model were 0.48 +/- 0.03 and 0.92 +/- 0.04 keV, respectively. The excellent spectral sensitivity of Suzaku enables for the first time to measure the metal abundances of O, Ne, Mg, Si, and Fe in the ISM. The resultant abundance pattern of O, Ne, Mg, Si, and Fe is close to that of the new solar abundance determined by Lodders (2003). The measured abundance pattern is compared with those of elliptical galaxies and an S0 galaxy, observed with Suzaku. Considering the metal-enrichment from present Type Ia supernovae, the near-solar abundance pattern of the ISM in NGC~1316 indicates an enhanced {\alpha}/Fe ratio of stellar materials in the entire galaxy, like in giant elliptical galaxies.


Polycystic kidney disease (PKD) is the most common genetic cause for end-stage renal failure. Numerous fluid-filled cysts develop in the parenchyma of the kidney. They compro- mise kidney function with increasing number and size of the cysts until renal failure is in- evitable. The cysts are epithelial in origin but cysts develop in different nephron segments depending on the type of the PKD. Animal models with PKD have been used for sever- al decades to unravel the molecular mech- anisms of cystogenesis. Initially, research was dependent on the morphological analy- sis of spontaneously emerging cystic pheno- types. Nowadays, in addition to theses mod- els transgenic and knock-out models target- ing PKD genes are also available. The local- ization of "cystoproteins" in the cilia of the tu- bulus epithelia and the involvement of cil- ia-dependent pathways in cystogenesis was shown only with the help of these animal models. This article gives an overview on the currently available murine models present- ing with PKD.


Relatively recent increased computational power and extensive traffic data availability have provided a unique opportunity to re-investigate drivers' car-following (CF) behavior. Classic CF models assume drivers' behavior is only influenced by their preceding vehicle. Recent studies have indicated that considering surrounding vehicles' information (e.g., multiple preceding vehicles) could affect CF models' performance. An in-depth investigation of surrounding vehicles' contribution to CF modeling performance has not been reported in the literature. This study uses a deep-learning model with long short-term memory (LSTM) to investigate to what extent considering surrounding vehicles could improve CF models' performance. This investigation helps to select the right inputs for traffic flow modeling. Five CF models are compared in this study (i.e., classic, multi-anticipative, adjacent-lanes, following-vehicle, and all-surrounding-vehicles CF models). Performance of the CF models is compared in relation to accuracy, stability, and smoothness of traffic flow. The CF models are trained, validated, and tested by a large publicly available dataset. The average mean square errors (MSEs) for the classic, multi-anticipative, adjacent-lanes, following-vehicle, and all-surrounding-vehicles CF models are 1.58 × 10−3, 1.54 × 10−3, 1.56 × 10−3, 1.61 × 10−3, and 1.73 × 10−3, respectively. However, the results show insignificant performance differences between the classic CF model and multi-anticipative model or adjacent-lanes model in relation to accuracy, stability, or smoothness. The following-vehicle CF model shows similar performance to the multi-anticipative model. The all-surrounding-vehicles CF model has underperformed all the other models.


In this study spherical structure is considered and analyzed with full wave method. The plane wave radiates to the structure and the zero reflection condition is deduced as a closed formula. Two theorems and ideas are proofed mathematically, and finally some examples are presented for validating these theorems. eywords: ero reflection CS reduction etamaterial Theorems indicate if the double negative metamaterial sphere (DNG) with an arbitrary radius and parameters (Re(ε2) < 0, Re( 2) < 0) situate within conventional space with parameters (ε1, 1), and ε2/ε1 = 2/ 1 then backscattering radar cross section (RCS) of this metamaterial sphere equals zero whiles the same situation with cylindrical structure has noticeable backscattering. In addition, the bistatic radar cross section of this metamaterial sphere is constant by changing the angle φ. Both theorems are generalized ructu pherical structure to spherical multilayer st


The application of the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) enabled a new level of interoperability for heterogeneous IT systems. However, although XML enables separation of data definition and data content, it doesn't ensure that data exchanged is interpreted correctly by the receiving system. This motivates data management to support unambiguous definition of data elements for information exchange. Using a common reference model improves this process leading to "model based data management (MBDM)." The results can be used immediately to configure mediation layers integrating services into an overall service oriented architecture. For XML based services, the results of MBDM can be immediately applied in form of an auto-generated XSLT definition used to compose the service without additional modifications with other services. The paper uses the command and control information exchange data model (C2IEDM) $as an example for a common reference model for information exchange - and its potential use in the global information grid (GIG) - as the military example for a service oriented architecture - to integrate Web-enabled M&S applications as an example for applying this method.


It is critical to understand what permits each FcγR to function as an effective cytotoxic trigger molecule and alternatively the conditions under which these receptors may act as a route of introduction of intracellular infectious agents


The paper is devoted to the analysis of heat and moisture transfer processes in walls made from autoclaved aerated concrete blocks. The paper gives theoretical calculation of heat and moisture transfer processes in autoclaved aerated concrete walls as well as is based on practical measurements. Analyzing experimental data, the model for heat and moisture transfer processes in walls made from autoclaved aerated concrete blocks was created and tested. The influence of drying process in autoclaved aerated concrete wall on the heat transfer process of the wall was also studied in this paper. The offered model of calculations takes into account the property of autoclaved aerated concrete as a porous material to enable the most accurate description of heat and moisture transfer processes in the external walls of enclosures in various exploitation conditions. In contrast to already known calculation models of the heat engineering properties of external walls, this model takes into account material internal structural changes, which consider the irregular structure of autoclaved aerated concrete, allowing for each separate diffusion process in layers.


The substitutional fraction (${f}_{s}$) of 0.1 at.?Ce in vanadium depends on the lattice temperature during implantation and is 0.73, 0.73, and 0.15 at 5, 77, and 300 K, respectively. Increasing the implanted Ce concentration at 300 K to 3.3 at. ?eads to an increase of ${f}_{s}$ from 0.15 to 0.66. Postirradiation of VCe systems as produced at 300 K with He ions at 77 K leads to an increase of ${f}_{s}$. If the postirradiated systems are warmed up to room temperature ${f}_{s}$ decreases. It is concluded that Ce-vacancy clusters are formed within the prompt cascade regime and by trapping mobile vacancies. Pre- and postimplantation experiments proved that the increase of ${f}_{s}$ with Ce concentration is due to cluster dissolution accompanied by the formation of competing vacancy-trapping centers.


PURPOSE: A solid fuel of food waste and a manufacturing method thereof are provided to reduce a cost for drying food waste and to lower a water content of food waste effectively. CONSTITUTION: A manufacturing method of a solid fuel of food waste comprises the following steps. A step(S1) in which the first mixture having a water content of 1-10% is arranged by mixing aerobic microorganisms and sawdust; a step(S2) which forms the second mixture by adding food waste having a water content of 80-90% to the first mixture and making a water content of the first mixture and food waste to be 50-60%; a step(S3) which forms a dried material having a water content of 5-20% by heating the second mixture to 45-90°C so that aerobic microorganisms included in the second mixture and food waste are fermented; a step(S4) which forms the third mixture by adding a combustion improver to a dried material and subsequently mixing; and a step(S5) of producing a solid fuel by molding the third mixture. [Reference numerals] (AA) Re-input food waste; (BB) Use as an organic fertilizer; (S1) Step of forming a first mixture by mixing aerobic microorganisms and sawdust; (S2) Step of forming a second mixture by adding food waste to the first mixture; (S3) Step of forming a dried material by drying the second mixture; (S4) Step of forming a third mixture by adding a combustion improver to the dried material to be mixed; (S5) Step of producing a solid fuel by molding the third mixture


The formation of azo dyes by coupling the diazonium salts of aminophenyloxazolopyridines with N,N-di-ethylaniline was shown to be a suitable probe to check the stability of the oxazole ring in the course of their preparation. Depending on experimental conditions, "closed" and "opened" systems could be obtained separately.


In speech enhancement applications, the multichannel Wiener filter (MWF) is widely used to reduce noise and thus improve signal quality. The MWF performs noise reduction by estimating the desired signal component in one of the microphones, referred to as the reference microphone. However, for distributed microphones, the selection of the reference microphone has a significant impact on the broadband output SNR of the MWF, largely depending on the acoustical transfer function (ATF) between the desired source and the reference microphone. In this paper, a multichannel Wiener filtering approach using a soft combined reference is presented. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme leads to a higher broadband output SNR compared to an arbitrarily selected reference microphone, moreover achieving a partial equalization of the overall acoustic system.


This book is attempts to provide a useful background for those who care about personal mobility, and to better prepare those to become involved in shaping government policies that will affect our cars and their use. Virtually every young person in the world wants a car, and a car is what the aging tenaciously resists giving up. Many people love cars, a few may hate tem, and others take them for granted, but people will not do without them. Throughout history, people everywhere-especially the young ones-have eagerly adopted any new form of transportation that is an improvement over older ones. Having the benefits of personal mobility is not something that just happened. All governments or societies make overarching decisions about the mobility of their members. Essentially, these agencies decide how to address the very basic drive of humankind to move about and to do so in the fastest, most flexible, and most affordable mode possible. The questioned addressed in this paper is: Shall society accommodate this drive or attempt to contain it. Personal mobility has always been worrisome to those who believe they should control it.


The punching shear problem of reinforced concrete plates is studied by the use of a finite element program for nonlinear analysis of three-dimensional axisymmetric concrete structures. The importance of an accurate material model is demonstrated. Numerical results from the analyses are compared with experimental data. (Author)


We report observations of collective gap excitations of the fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states at filling factors $\ensuremath{\nu}\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}p/(2p+1)$ ( $p\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}\mathrm{integer}$), for $1/3\ensuremath{\le}\ensuremath{\nu}\ensuremath{\le}2/3$, by inelastic light scattering. The collective gap energies at $\ensuremath{\nu}\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}1/3$, 2/5, and 3/7 show a drastic decrease as the value $\ensuremath{\nu}\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}1/2$ is approached. These energies and the one at $\ensuremath{\nu}\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}3/5$ display the linear scaling with $({e}^{2}/\ensuremath{\epsilon}{l}_{0})/|2p+1|$ that is characteristic of composite fermions in Chern-Simons gauge fields. In a narrow range of $\ensuremath{\nu}$ centered at 1/2, where the FQH gaps collapse, we observe a new excitation mode which exists only at temperatures below 150 mK.


The working alliance between clients and helpers has been identified as a common factor of treatment effectiveness, yet very little research has explored variables associated with working alliance between mental health case managers and their consumers. This study explored the potential covariates of working alliance within community mental health case management. Specifically, the study explored to what degree the case manager is related to consumer perceptions of working alliance, to what degree consumers' perceived mental illness stigma is related to working alliance, and the extent to which the relationship between perceived stigma and working alliance is different for different case managers. Cross-sectional data were collected from 160 people receiving case management services and were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling. Case managers accounted for about 11% of the variance in working alliance scores, which represents a moderate effect. Perceived stigma approached a statistically significant relationship with working alliance. The interaction between case managers and stigma was significantly related to working alliance. Case managers are an important source of variance in the relationship between stigma and working alliance. Future attempts to study working alliance should include case managers and consumers' perceived stigma as independent variables. KEY WORDS: case management; mental illness; mental illness stigma; working alliance ********** Recovery in mental illness represents a real possibility for people with severe mental illness (SMI) such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Recovery can be understood as consumers' movement toward a self-defined, satisfying fife within the community and does not necessarily equate to symptom remission (Anthony, 1993). Recovery in mental illness is a paradigm shift away from past beliefs that people with SMI need help to be maintained in the community toward a belief that people with SMI can thrive in the community (Kruger, 2000). At the national level, the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (2003) has called for the provision of treatment approaches that support consumer movement toward recovery. Another shift in mental health services is a call for evidence-based practices (EBP),which are interventions that have demonstrated an empirical track record of success with regard to consumer outcomes (Gambrill, 1999). In community mental health, this means ensuring that people living with SMI are provided the most effective treatment and interventions available (Mueser, Torrey, Lynde, Singer, & Drake, 2003). Coupled with recovery, the EBP movement challenges mental health treatment providers and researchers to use and develop treatment approaches that focus on moving consumers toward recovery (Anthony, Rogers, & Farkas, 2003). The working alliance between consumers and helpers is thought to be an important ingredient in effective treatment (Howgego, Yellowlees, Owen, Meldrum, & Dark, 2003). As such, this article explores the working alliance between mental health case managers and consumers, examining factors that might be related to a strong working alliance. LITERATURE REVIEW Working Alliance Defined The working alliance--which also has been called the therapeutic alliance, therapeutic bond, and helping alliance--has been variously defined within the psychotherapy literature (Martin, Garske, & Davis, 2000). In case management research, researchers have generally used Bordin's (1979) pan-theoretical definition of the working alliance (Howgego et al., 2003). Bordin argued that his conception of the working alliance is applicable to any change-oriented activity, such as case management, and that it is the vehicle through which change-oriented activities are successful. He conceptualized the working alliance as consisting of three components: (1) the therapist's and client's agreement on the goals of therapy, (2) the therapist's and client's agreement on the tasks of therapy, and (3) the positive bond between the therapist and the client. …