Incited by the lately proposed exciting concept of the (cid:11) -admissibility type S , in this manuscript, we come by a couple of (cid:133)xed point results involving Geraghty functions in b -metric-like context. Further, our (cid:133)ndings complement, extend and unify several known results in the existing studies and also bring forth some new theorems as consequences. Moreover, we construct suitable non-trivial numerical examples to endorse our obtained results. Finally, we claim that the notion of cyclic ( (cid:11); (cid:12) ) -admissible mappings of type S , coined by Mongkolkeha et al. [J. Nonlinear Sci. Appl., 11(9):1056-1069, 2018], is equivalent to that of cyclic ( (cid:11); (cid:12) ) -admissible mappings.


The red drum Sciaenops ocellatus meets the criteria for an excellent aquaculture species. Under ideal conditions, red drum have attained sizes from 0.45 kg to 1.36 kg in one year (Luebke and Strawn 1973; Robert L. Colura, personal communication). Red drum typically reach 450 g in one year on their natural feeding grounds (Simmons and Breuer 1962; Harrington et al. 1979). The purpose of this research was to evaluate growth equations and to calculate growth rates for red drum reared in fresh and salt water. The experiments were conducted at the Aquaculture Research Center of Texas A&M University. Red drum were cultured in three different environments: salt water containing 35 g/L total dissolved solids (TDS), dilute sea water (5 g/L TDS), and fresh water (0.9-1.9 g/L TDS) with different hardness concentrations. Experimental units (114 L tanks each maintained by an under-gravel airlift biofilter), replicated three times for each level of total dissolved solids and hardness, were stocked with 15 red drum weighing between 1-3 g each. Fish were fed daily at a rate of 5.0-6.0% of tank biomass with commercial salmon feed (48% protein). Feeding rates were adjusted biweekly after fish weights were obtained. Details of water treatment preparation and fish performance were presented by Wurts and Stickney (1989). Feasibility studies were conducted with larger fish (18-700 g). One of these experiments took place in a recirculating, dilute seawater system (5 g/L TDS) and the other in a freshwater pond (l. l g/L TDS with 123 mg/L calcium) as described by Wurts (1987). Weight data were transformed using the natural logarithm (ln weight). Linear regression analyses were performed on transformed, biweekly weight data from each experimental group of fish, weighing 1-3 g initially. This analysis was applied to determine if red drum growth was adequately described by the exponential growth function (Everhart et al. 1953):


Immune non-responders are persons with HIV infection who fail to restore their CD4 T-cell counts in spite of prolonged virologic suppression, a condition associated with higher rates of all-cause mortality. The mechanisms of immune non-response are not entirely clear. We used existing clinical and genetic data from ACTG clinical trials to ask whether an IFNL4 single nucleotide polymorphism, shown to associate with outcomes for other infectious diseases, correlated with immune non-response for HIV. Analysis of data from 426 participants with clearly defined CD4 T-cell recovery phenotypes, including 88 immune non-responders with CD4 <200 cells/mm3 after 2 years of suppressive antiretroviral therapy, did not identify an association of IFNL4 genotype with immune non-response. Thus, IFNL4 genotype is unlikely to influence immunologic recovery.


Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are being employed in high performance computing systems owing to their potential to accelerate a wide variety of long-running routines. Parallel FPGA-based designs often yield a very high speedup. Applications using these designs on reconfigurable supercomputers involve software on the system managing computation on the FPGA. To extract maximum performance from an FPGA design at the application level, it becomes necessary to minimize associated data movement costs on the system. We address this hardware/software integration challenge in the context of the all-pairs shortest-paths (APSP) problem in a directed graph. We employ a parallel FPGA-based design using a blocked algorithm to solve large instances of APSP. With appropriate design choices and optimizations, experimental results on the Cray XD1 show that the FPGA-based implementation sustains an application-level speedup of 15 over an optimized CPU-based implementation


Based on optical shaping, 10-GHz/38-Gb/s delay-division multiplexing OFDM-PON using low-bandwidth (2.5 GHz) and sub-Nyquist sampling rate (5 GS/s) ADC is demonstrated. The proposed scheme can achieve 2 dB ROP sensitivity improvement at the HD-FEC threshold.


We study the Landau-Lifshitz system associated with Maxwell equations in a bilayered ferromagnetic body when super-exchange and surface anisotropy interactions are present in the spacer in-between the layers. In the presence of these surface energies, the Neumann boundary condition becomes nonlinear. We prove, in three dimensions, the existence of global weak solutions to the Landau-Lifshitz-Maxwell system with nonlinear Neumann boundary conditions.


The traditional optimization paradigm relies on cardinality estimation techniques and cost models which are supposed to accurately estimate the result size and the cost of operators. But these estimations are not always accurate. The inaccuracy in cardinality and cost estimations grows exponentially when propagated through the plan, causing serious optimization mistakes. This failure is more acute in the XML case, where much of the progress achieved in the relational context is missing. To overcome the vulnerabilities of traditional optimizers, we propose ROX, a Run-time Optimizer for XQueries. ROX focuses on optimizing the execution order of the path steps and relational joins in an XQuery. It does not depend on any statistics nor cost model and uses sampling techniques to estimate cardinalities of operators. It consists of interleaving optimization and execution steps, where the first initiates a sampling-based search to identify the sequence of operators most efficient to execute. The execution step executes the chosen sequence of operators and materializes the result. This allows the subsequent optimization phase to analyze the newly materialized results to update the previously estimated cardinalities and to detect correlations. In this talk, the ROX algorithm will be described, along with some experimental results. We will also present a demo that illustrates the steps of ROX and compare its performance to other plans. University of Twente as a PhD student. Her promoter is Peter Apers and her supervisor is Maurice van Keulen, and she works in close cooperation with the database team in CWI. Her current research focuses on the optimization of XQueries in the context of relational database systems.


3. The objective of the session is to provide a background to the development of flexible learning within WINTEC, the mentorship roles taken on by select tutors implementing flexible learning and the evolution of these roles up to this point. As part of this journey examples of activities within certain environments and contexts will be shared with explanations around methods of development (the models we use) as well as the success. These environments will include mixed mode learning, shared spaces, web conferencing, and distance learning.
The intended audience will be for:
• educators who are looking for a model to develop activities for various environments
• Or for educators that are about to embark on a large scale change project within flexible learning environments whom may want to learn something from our journey.
There will be chances for attendees to have a go at some of our applications as well as to use a model on a learning outcome of their own.


Purpose: To describe the preliminary clinical results of selective transplantation of organ cultured donor Descemet membrane (DM) carrying autologous corneal endothelium through a 3.5 mm incision, tentatively named Descemet membrane endothelial keratoplasty (DMEK), for the management of corneal endothelial disorders.

Design: Non-randomized clinical trial.

Methods: In ten patients with Fuchs' endothelial dystrophy or pseudophakic bullous keratopathy, DMEK was performed. A 3.5 mm clear corneal tunnel incision was made, the anterior chamber was filled with air, and DM was stripped off from the posterior stroma. A 9.0 mm diameter DM roll was harvested from an organ cultured donor corneo-scleral rim, and inserted into a recipient anterior chamber. The donor tissue was gently unfolded, positioned onto the posterior stroma, and secured by completely filling the anterior chamber with air for 30 minutes.

Results: At one month, six eyes had a best corrected visual acuity of 0.5 (20/40) or better, and three eyes reached 1.0 (20/20) or better. At six months, the endothelial cell density averaged 2030 (± 373) cells/mm2 (n=7). Three eyes showed a complete detachment of the donor tissue in the early postoperative course, that was managed by removal of the transplant and a secondary Descemet stripping endothelial keratoplasty procedure.

Conclusions: DMEK may have potential to become the most preferable technique to manage corneal endothelial disorders, because it provides quick and nearly complete visual rehabilitation. Since the donor tissue required can be prepared from organ cultured corneo-scleral rims, the procedure may be readily accessable to most corneal surgeons.


Friction is very important characteristic of textile materials. Through the friction fibres are connected into yarns and the yarns into fabric or knitting. Some of the characteristics of textile products, such as touch and felt properties, softness etc., depend on friction [1]. In technological processes of textile industry yarns or fabrics are moving not only on working surfaces, but also in respect of each other. All these facts have a big influence on weaving and especially knitting technological processes (for example, when making loops in knitting machinery etc.). Interaction between the yarns, based on friction, determines different mechanical properties of the woven and tricot fabrics, such as: traction, compression, twisting and shear characteristics [1-3]. The friction is directly influencing productivity and quality of textile production. This is very important reason for the investigation of friction properties. In reprocessing of the yarn, it is frequently moving on metal, ceramic and other surfaces, so between the yarn and working surfaces there are friction forces. For that reason many experiments, investigating friction between a yarn and metal, ceramics or glass surfaces are performed by the method of friction cylinder. But it is necessary to remark, that a yarn can interact with parallel or perpendicular yarn. Not many experiments about the friction between the yarns are performed. The majority of experiments are performed on the friction between single fibres, sliding in respect of each other [4-7]. Friction experiments with the new types of yarns, from metaaramid and paraaramid fibres are also missing. Many different factors influence the yarn friction. Yarn tension force is the main factor, which influence all dynamic friction characteristics. The friction also depends on friction body bending angle, friction solid sleekness and temperature, on twist of the exploratory yarn, surface greasiness, moving speed, yarn roughness, downiness, electrify properties etc. [1, 4, 5, 8, 9]. The influence of all these factors was almost not investigated for the yarns, designed for technical protective textile materials. The objective of this work is to investigate and compare friction properties of technical and classical yarns, used for the protective knitting, when the yarn is moving on nonmoving cylinder, needle, rotating disc in parallel and perpendicular yarn directions.


In this paper we survey on results about sub-Riemannian struc- tures defined on 3-step nilpotent Lie groups which are solvable with solvability index equal to 2. We present the general Lie structure for both the Lie algebra and the Lie group and then we formulate the geodesic sub-Riemannian problem, as an optimal control problem consisting on the minimization of a quadratic functional among the solutions of a drift less control system which is affine in the control parameters. Necessary conditions for sub-Riemannian geodesics are given by the Pontryagin Maximum Principle. A general discussion for extremal curves on the cotangent bundle is carried out and then specialized to some low dimensional cases.


The irreversible cycle model of a regenerative modified complex Brayton cycle has been established for the finite heat capacities of external reservoirs. The power output and efficiency have been optimized with respect to the cycle temperatures and the optimum performance parameters are calculated for a typical set of operating condition. It is found that there are optimal values of the intercooling, reheat and cycle pressure ratios at which the cycle attains the maximum performance. The optimal performance parameters are also found to be increasing function of the effectiveness of different heat exchangers, components efficiency and the heat capacitance rates of the external fluids, while it is found to be reversed in the case of the working fluid heat capacitance rate. The optimum operating parameters, the intercooling, reheat and cycle pressure ratios etc corresponding to the different performance parameters are obtained and discussed in detail. The results obtained here are general and some of the important conclusions in the relevant references can be obtained directly from this paper.


The internal relations between wave velocity and vibration velocity were introduced theoretically and verified through correlation inspecting.A new control method of beating vibration quality process was proposed.


School administrators can make better educational decisions by applying the findings of brain research, says this author, who hopes that this article will inspire readers to investigate the growing library of neuroscience studies.


Authors discuss the use of dexamethasone, mathematical models in predicting COVID, hydroxychloroquine as a controversial treatment, immunity after contracting COVID, and association of COVID with neurological symptoms.


Energy efficiency has become a much more important concept being one of the "twin pillars" along with renewable energy and sustainable energy policy. Improvements in energy efficiency can reduce the need for investment in energy infrastructure, cut fuel costs, increase competitiveness, increase energy security by decreasing the reliance on imported fossil fuels while at the same time help save the environment by reducing greenhouse gases emissions and local air pollution. Being an energy deficient developing country whose import reliability reached almost 75% in 2008 and whose current account deficit is based primarily on energy imports, Turkey is in great need of an accurate energy efficiency strategy. The study aims to analyze economy wide energy efficiency performance and energy saving potential of Turkey by means of cross-country comparison and benchmarking with the EU countries for the period of 1995-2007. The model takes capital, labor and total R&D expenditure as non-energy inputs, oil, gas, solid fuels, nuclear energy and renewable energy consumption as energy inputs, and considers GDP in purchasing power parity as the desirable output and green house gases emissions as the undesirable output. The paper aims to trace energy efficiency changes over time by evaluating the contributing factors such as activity mix of the economy, sources of primary energy-use, share of renewables, changes in energy prices and the implemented policy and regulations across multiple entities and to determine the saving potential and illustrate its benefits to the economy if to be realized. Our results indicate an improvement in energy efficiency over the years but show that environmentally aware energy efficiency performance and its improvement pace is much lower in all countries. The more noticeable improvement in energy efficiency takes place in the last five years which coincides with accelerated energy efficiency measures and policies both in Turkey and in the EU. Beginning with the world energy crisis in 1993, energy efficiency has been brought into the policy agenda of many countries as a top priority issue. With the more recent understanding of the need to act against global warming and climate change, it has become a much more important concept. Energy efficiency is said to be one of the "twin pillars" along with renewable energy, of sustainable energy policy. Improvements in energy efficiency can reduce the need for investment in energy infrastructure, cut fuel costs, increase competitiveness, increase energy security by decreasing the reliance on imported fossil fuels while at the same time help save the environment by reducing greenhouse gases emissions and local air pollution. Energy efficiency is one of six broad focus areas of the International Energy Agency's G8 Gleneagles Programme. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has submitted 25 policy recommendations to the G8 for promoting energy efficiency that, if implemented, could


Stanis Perez, Histoire des médecins: Artisans et artistes de la santé de l'Antiquitéà nos jours For a long time, medical history was written by physicians, many of whom cast their fellow practitioners in largely hagiographical terms. In the twentieth century, historians, sociologists and philosophers also began to study medicine's past and the result was an important historiographic turn towards more critical social and cultural histories of health and disease. These new studies drew on the experiences of the diverse range of actors involved in health care, including non-professionalised healers, patients and families. In this new context, many historians, especially in Francophone countries, were less interested in the figure of the physician as an historical object. In recent decades only one book has been published on this subject in French: Histoire du médecin, a collective volume edited in 1998 by Louis Callebat, and it rapidly became a book of reference. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, a new synthesis that includes recent research results is needed. The French historian Stanis Perez, well-known for his analysis of Louis XIV's health diary, takes up this challenge in his synthetic history of the physician figure from Antiquity to today. To define 'the physician' across the ages, Perez emphasises in his short introduction, is not a straightforward task. The figure itself is changeable, as are the conditions that allow an individual to self-define as a physician. To Perez, it is more practical and, importantly, more instructive to 'identify the social and cultural contexts in which the physician is embedded' (p. 12). Historical texts about physicians are typically normative or prescriptive, swinging between satire and panegyric. To overcome this obstacle and achieve a more nuanced synthesis, Perez chooses to play with the scales of time. Aware of the difficulties of this exercise, especially of the risk of giving readers an impression of only superficial glimpses, Perez affirms his choices. While he focuses mainly on French territory, he does not ignore European and Arabic contexts. He also favours private and primary medical care, avoiding hospital medicine, which has its own history. In order to develop a critical point of view, Perez utilises human and social sciences approaches to increase the number and intersections of both references and perspectives. Finally, for the historical figure of the physician he develops a 'biohistory' (p. 15), after Jacques Léonard and Michel Foucault, consisting of five chronological parts, from antiquity …


The invention provides a bar code print wheel direct-reading gauge metering device. The metering device comprises a housing. The housing is provided with a first cavity, a print wheel shaft is installed in the first cavity in a length direction, the print wheel shaft is provided with a plurality of print wheels, the print wheels are cylinders, Arabic numbers are arranged on the side surfaces of the cylinders, the housing is provided with a second cavity, the first cavity and the second cavity are separated by use of a transparent material, the second cavity is internally provided with a linear array photoelectric sensor, the length of the linear array photoelectric sensor is distributed along the length of the print wheel shaft, the cylinder side surfaces of the print wheels are provided with bar codes, the bar codes are composed of a plurality of groups of encoding strips, each group of encoding strips are formed by axially arranging a plurality of encoding strips along the cylinder side surfaces, at least one group of encoding strips is corresponding to an Arabic number, and the Arabic numbers are circumferentially arranged with the bar codes. The bar code print wheel direct-reading gauge metering device solves the defects in the prior art.


Introduction. Comorbidity is an independent risk factor for mortality and significantly influences the prognosis and quality of life.
Purpose: to evaluate the impact of high-tone HiTOP 4 touch therapy on cognitive disorders and quality of life in the complex treatment of patients with comorbid pathology.
Methods: complex treatment of 2 groups of patients with inclusion in the basic treatment regimen of high-tone therapy was carried out - a total of 80 patients (men - 34, women - 46) aged 41 to 79 years old, group I - patients with hypertension and chronic cerebral ischemia (CСI) - 38 patients and group II - patients with hypertension, CСI and concomitant diabetes mellitus (DM) type 2 - 42 patients. The average age in group I was 61.5, in group II - 65.5. Group I received lisinopril and amlodipine in one tablet, group II received metformin in addition to the above therapy. Both groups received a course of 10 sessions of high-tone therapy using the device HiTOP 4 touch (Germany) according to the general method: 2 electrodes on the feet, 2 on the forearms and one on the neck-collar area. All the patients were assessed for their cognitive condition, degree of anxiety and depression, and estimated for quality of life before and after a course of high-tone therapy. In order to do this, we used valid assessment tests, such as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Scale (MoCA), the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), and the SF-36 Quality of Life Questionnaire. Results: the course of high-tone therapy for patients with hypertension and CCI led to improved quality of life, on all indicators of the SF-36 scale, except for pain intensity, increased cognitive functions by 3.52 points on the MoCA scale, reduced anxiety by 2.06 points and depression by 1.92 points on the HADS scale. The course of high-tone therapy for patients with CCI, hypertension and type 2 DM resulted in a significant improvement of 5 out of 8 quality of life indicators on the SF-36 scale, cognitive functions by 2.27 points on the MoCA scale and reduced anxiety by 4.3 points, and depression by 0.53 points on the HADS scale.
Conclusion: the inclusion of high-tone therapy in the complex treatment of patients with comorbid pathology improves cognitive functions, reduces anxiety and depression, improves quality of life.

Keywords: comorbid pathology, high-tone therapy, cognitive functions, anxiety, depression, quality of life,


This paper uses a formal model to study how firms evaluate and compete to acquire resources in strategic factor markets. It finds that, unlike in a typical market for goods and services, competition among resource investors to acquire strategic resources may not always benefi t resource sellers. Rather, when the level of competition passes a certain threshold, miscoordination among investors increases to the point that sellers expected pro ts decline. In fact, it may sometimes benefi t sellers for competition among investors to be muted to the point that investors earn a positive return. The paper extends the model to consider how investors organize to overcome managerial agency in resource evaluation. Two organizational designs are considered: (a) incentivization, wherein a lower-level manager is motivated by an incentive contract to make good resource acquisition decisions for an investor, and (b) supervision, wherein the acquisition decision is either handled directly or closely monitored by headquarters. The model suggests that competition among investors will be associated with a greater use of supervision, and that investors using supervision will tend to make lower offers. The paper also fi nds that supervision will be more common when valuable resources are rare.


In the rotor-tied configuration of the doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG), the rotor is connected to the grid whilst the stator of the DFIG is connected to the grid through a back-to-back converter. In this paper, the modelling and control algorithm of the stator-side converter of a custom-designed S.S-kW rotor-tied DFIG are presented. Furthermore, the performance of the proposed control algorithm is experimentally evaluated during synchronisation and in sub-synchronous operating conditions.


In the present study two-dimensional finite element analysis has been carried out on cantilever sheet pile wall using ABAQUS/Standard software to study the effect of different friction angles and its related parameters such as dilation angle, the interfacial friction coefficient between soil-wall on earth pressure distribution, and wall deformation. From the results obtained, it is found that there is a significant decrease in wall deformation with an increase in the angle of internal friction and its related parameters. The earth pressure results obtained from the finite element analysis shared a unique relationship with that of a conventional method. Both the results showed similar linear behavior up to a certain percentage of wall height and then changed drastically in lower portions of the wall. This trend of behavior is seen in both active as well as in passive earth pressure distribution for all the frictional angle. Hence, after comparing the differences that exist in the results for both methods, from the analysis a new relationship between the earth pressure coefficients from a conventional method and the finite element method has been developed for both active and passive earth pressure on either side of the sheet pile wall. This relationship so derived can be used to compute more reasonable earth pressure distributions for a sheet pile wall without carrying out a numerical analysis with a minimal time of computation. And also the earth pressure coefficient calculated from this governing equation can serve as a quick reference for any decision regarding the design of the sheet pile wall. Doi: 10.28991/cej-2021-03091638 Full Text: PDF


This article is the first in a series that develops the concept of logomachy. Logomachy is a philosophy of semantics or sense that takes into consideration the thermodynamic status of things in the world (their qumanity). In particular, this article, looks at Gilbert Simondon's claim that the laws of thought (Identity, Contradiction and the Excluded Middle) do not hold once certain thermodynamic states such as metastability (in between stability and instability) are taken into account. This article formulates, through a method I term transduction (the mutual development of concepts between domains), novel logical laws that fit more adequately the way things thermodynamically are in the world. To do this, the article turns to the presocratic philosopher Heraclitus to rethink the logos as a conflictual site of meaning where things, and their capacity to make-sense, is conditioned by energetic investment, where difference is the condition of sameness.


Sustainable development is a complex, multidimensional concept, which is becoming increasingly important in the modern business environment and one of the main topics of scientific debate. Sustainable development is based on three interrelated pillars that is, the economic, social and environmental. However, the new research trends identified some additional dimensions of sustainable development, as well as cultural and institutional dimensions. This paper discusses the institutional aspects of sustainable development, as a necessary element, which should connect and support other dimensions of sustainable development. The aim of this paper is to show the importance of having the appropriate institutional apparatus for the implementation of sustainable development policy.


The Kurdistan Region has an enormous number of different carbonate rock units, which vary widely in their geological age and sedimentary depositional environment. Limestone quarried from the exposures has a wide range of usages and applications, such as dimension stone, crushed stone, building stone and paving stones. Since antiquity, limestone was used as building materials in areas where they were naturally available and abundant. Little work has been done to indicate the physical and mechanical properties of the limestone, especially under humid environment. In this study, the physical and mechanical properties of some carbonate rocks of the Pila Spi Formation (Eocene) are investigated. samples are collected from the Pila Spi Formation in the Qara Dagh area at two sites close to each other to assess their suitability for use as dimension stone. Geological, petrographical, geochemical and geotechnical properties of the carbonate rocks in the study area are determined based on field studies and laboratory tests. The field studies indicate that the carbonate rocks of the Pila Spi Formation in the studied area are mostly well-bedded to massive, crystalline, white in color, sometimes become chalky towards the top with small oxidation signs on the surface. Petrographical study reveal that the carbonate rocks are characterized as dolomitic limestone and have a grayish and yellowish-white color after polishing. The carbonate rocks are mostly dolomites or recrystallized dolomitic limestone. Geochemical analyses of the studied samples show that CaO and MgO are the most abundant oxides and the rocks can be classified as impure limestones. According to the American Standard for Testing and Materials, ASTM C568-03 (2006) the carbonate rocks in the studied sites are acceptable for use as dimension stone.


Single-period systems: the decision is just a one-time purchasing decision where the purchase is designed to cover a fixed period of time and the item will not be reordered. e.g., the newsvendor and Cash Reserve Plan. The newsvendor tries to decide how many newspapers to stock on the newsstand before observing the demand.


Modern engineering projects in the application domain of structural design are organized in networked co-operations due to permanently enlarged competition pressure and a high degree of complexity while performing concurrent design activities. One of the major challenges of these networked co-operations constitutes the coordination of the activities of all involved participants. In the course of our common research activities, we have developed two different directions for coordinating these projects: i) a workflow-based concept regulating the activities explicitly by a global workflow model (University of Bochum) and ii) an awareness model that allows to perceive activities of other protagonists and to derive new activities mentally. This paper describes a novel integration approach of these two models: according to the global workflow model, users can be connected through awareness channels that enable them to detect potential inconsistencies during their concurrent modeling activities. Inconsistencies that would otherwise remain in the project progress can thus be discovered at a very early stage.


Recent studies [J.A. Bucaro, H.D. Dardy, and E.F. Carome, Appl. Opt. 16, 1761 (1977); J.H. Cole, R.L. Johnson, and P.G. Bhuta, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. to be published] have shown the viability of obtaining sensitive, versatile acoustic sensors utilizing long, low‐loss optical fibers. In such devices an optical beam propagating in a length of optical fiber which is immersed in a fluid is modulated by the presence of a sound field in that fluid. We have studied such effects in a variety of fiber systems and have quantified various coupling mechanisms which lead to the optical modulation. Examples include phase retardation, acoustically induced birefringence, and intermode beating effects. These results will be discussed and future directions will be indicated. [This work has been supported in part by the Office of Naval Research.]


The purpose of this study was to identify the mediating effects of emotional stability and social support in the relationship between major satisfaction and academic adjustment of college freshmen majoring in nursing and health science. Data were collected from 291 college freshmen majoring in nursing and health science using a self-reported questionnaire, which included a major satisfaction, emotional stability, social support, and academic adjustment. A Descriptive, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlation, hierarchical regression, and Sobel test were used for data analysis. The result showed that major satisfaction was positively related to emotional stability, social support, and academic adjustment. Emotional stability and social support was positively related to academic adjustment. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that emotional stability partially mediated the relationship between major satisfaction and academic adjustment. Also, social support partially mediated the relationship between major satisfaction and academic adjustment. These results suggest that emotional stability and social support can be effective variables in improving academic adjustment of freshmen majoring in nursing and health science. Overall, it is necessary to develop mental health interventions and networking system including strategies to improve emotional stability and social support in order to facilitate their academic adjustment.


A building-block layout system for large scale ASIC chip design is presented in this paper. A few advanced placement and routing algorithms of the world are adopted and some new techniques for layout optimization such as timing-driven placement, planar routing for P/G nets, optimal channel definition and ordering, dynamic module shifting and optimization of detailed routing are herewith introduced. The staisfactory results gaining from the experiments have ensured the good performance of the system.


A peculiar state observed during status epilepticus was documented by CCTV/EEG in 4 patients with severe myoclonic epilepsy in infancy (SME).l The state was characterized by slight clonic movements of the extremities and/or face accompanying bilateral, diffuse high voltage slow waves and those occasionally notched with spikes. All of the 4 cases were male ranging from 5 to 7 years of age (Table 1). Cases 1 and 2 were identical twins. Their initial attack began with clonic seizures during the first year of life and later combined with myoclonic seizures in all the cases and complex partial seizures in 2 cases. Their mentality seemed to be normal before the onset, and severe mental retardation became manifest following the onset of seizures. Despite a heavy medication, the convulsive seizures were extremely therapy resistant. They seemed to fulfill the diagnostic criteria of SME.l The peculiar state occurred after a short interval (40 sec. in case 1, 330 sec. in case 2, undetermined in case 3, 690 sec. in case 4) following generalized tonic-clonic seizures (GTCS) that had been repeating in all the 4 cases, in other words, never without antecedent GTCS. Namely, this state was observed as part of GTCS status epilepticus. Fig. 1 shows the mode of occurrence of the peculiar state in the 4 cases. The state began with eye opening and slight clonic movements of the extremities and/or face, paleness and change in the respiration rate were observed. The state lasted for 7 min. in case 1, 10 min. in case 2, about 16 min. in case 3, and 1-15 min. in case 4. The concurrent EEGs during this state showed bursts of bilateral, diffuse high voltage slow waves and those occasionally notched with small spikes (Fig. 2). This state was considered as an ictaI phenomenon based on the fact that it accompanied epileptiform discharges and occurred after an intermission following the cessation of GTCS. Namely, it apparently differed from the post-grand ma1 confusional state or posthypoxic myoclonus. The clinicoelectrographic features of this state might resemble those of "atypical absence" status which in children occurs as a repetition or prolongation of short-lived atypical absences.2 However, all the 4 cases had not shown any atypical absence as an identical seizure type. Further, it is absurd to recognize two different status epilepticus at a time. A "peculiar state" was used to denote this unusual nonconvulsive longstanding condition. Dravet et al. observed a state of disturbance of consciousness with myoclonia in cases with SME and coined the name "obtundation status."l Although the definition


A lean laboratory is one which is focused on testing products and materials to deliver results in the most efficient way in terms of cost or speed or both; primarily focused on improving measurable performance and reducing costs. The goal of a lean laboratory is to use less effort, less resources and less time to test incoming samples. Laboratories have a critical role to play in establishing and improving process capability and key performance indicator (KPI) of the organization. There are inevitably many opinions as to what a lean lab actually is; here is one version from. Quality assurance laboratories are crucial to the success of organization and this effectiveness needs to be measurable and demonstrable. To facilitate this, a method of measuring a laboratory's progress towards complete deployment has been created by lean tools. These tools allow laboratories to conduct gap analysis and identify opportunities for improvement.


In this paper a new fractal image compression algorithm is proposed in which the time of encoding process is considerably reduced. The algorithm exploits a domain pool reduction approach, along with using innovative predefined values for contrast scaling factor, S, instead of searching it across [0,1]. Only the domain blocks with entropy greater than a threshold are considered as domain pool. As a novel point, it is assumed that in each step of the encoding process, the domain block with small enough distance shall be found only for the range blocks with low activity (equivalently low entropy). This novel point is used to find reasonable estimations of S, and use them in the encoding process as predefined values, mentioned above, the remaining range blocks are split into four new smaller range blocks and the algorithm must be iterated for them, considered as the other step of encoding process. The algorithm has been examined for some of the well-known images and the results have been compared with the state-of-the-art algorithms. The experiments show that our proposed algorithm has considerably lower encoding time than the other where the encoded images are approximately the same in quality.


IntroductIon Enhanced knowledge warehouse (eKW) is an extension of the enhanced data warehouse (eDW) system (Abramowicz, 2002). eKW is a Web services-based system that allows the automatic filtering of information from the Web to the data warehouse and automatic retrieval through the data warehouse. Web services technology extends eKW beyond the organization. It makes the system open and allows utilization of external software components, thus enabling the creation of distributed applications. The enhanced knowledge warehouse is an add-in to the existing data warehouse solutions that offers a possibility of extending legacy data-based information resources with processed information acquired from Web sources of business information. eKW is characterized by transparent filtering and transparent retrieval. The system automatically acquires interesting documents from Web and internal sources and enables business users, who view data warehouse reports, to access these documents without the necessity of formulating any document retrieval queries. Instead, the system takes advantages of meta-information stored in business metadata and data warehouse reports, and builds and runs appropriate queries itself. The system also has an event-alerting capability. eKW, by design, is a part of the semantic Web. The main role of eKW in the semantic Web is mediation between the world (external information) and internal information systems utilized within the organization. One of the most popular ways of conforming to semantics is to use ontologies, which provide a means for defining the concepts of the exchanged data. eKW is a kind of data 1030 Enhanced Knowledge Warehouse mediator that employs ontologies as a conceptu-alization layer (W'cel, 2003).


Oil and Gas Journal's worldwide construction survey of pipeline projects lists gas lines in Abu Dhabi, Algeria, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Egypt, Great Britain, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Spain, Switzerland, US, USSR, West Germany, and Yugoslavia. Details are given on company, project location, size, capacity, cost, contractor, status, and completion date.


A generalized method for predicting the thermodynamic properties of natural gas fluids has been developed and tested. The results of several comparisons between thermodynamic property values predicted by the method and experimental data are presented. Comparisons of predicted and experimental vapor-liquid equilibrium are presented. These comparisons indicate that the generalized correlation can be used to predict many thermodynamic properties of natural gas and LNG. Turboexpander calculations are presented to show the utility of the generalized correlation for process design calculations.


This paper explores international bond spillovers using daily and intra-day data on yields on inflation-indexed bonds and associated inflation expectations for the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Sweden, Japan, and the United Kingdom. The analysis starts in 2002, by which point U.S. inflation-indexed markets were fully mature. Real bond yields are found to be closely linked across countries, with developments in U.S. markets determining around half of real foreign yields and no evidence of spillovers back to the United States. Spillovers in inflation expectations are smaller and the direction of causation is less clear.


In vitro metabolism of imatinib was investigated in rat and human liver microsomes. Atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) mass spectrometry (MS) was applied in differentiating hydroxyl metabolites from N-oxides of imatinib because N-oxides are known to undergo deoxygenation during APCI. In addition, the major oxidative metabolite (M9, N-oxidation on the piperazine ring) was observed to undergo in-source fragmentation by elimination of formaldehyde. This fragment ion resulted from Meisenheimer rearrangement with migration of the N-methyl group to the corresponding N-methoxyl piperazine, followed by elimination of formaldehyde due to thermal energy activation at the vaporizer of APCI source. The presence of this fragment ion distinguished not only N-oxide from isomeric hydroxylated metabolite, but also unambiguously indicated that oxidation occurred on the N-4 of the piperazine ring where the methyl group was attached.


The phenomenon that many postgraduates with a strong ability in reading comprehension are unable to use most part of the psychology words in their brains when writing and speaking is ananlyzed and studied.According to the theory of language input and output,some countermeasures are proposed.


This research investigates the performance of recycled aggregates concrete confined using either commercially Unidirectional Carbone Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Polymer or Unidirectional Flax Fibers Reinforced Bio-resourced Polymer. The concretes under study are C35/45 resistance class and are elaborated by incorporating recycled aggregates provided from demolition wastes. The main objective is to discuss than to propose design codes for recycled aggregates concretes and to evaluate the effectiveness of confining them using bio-resourced composite by comparison to traditional ones. To hit this target, the developed approaches are both experimental and analytical. The first part is experimental and aimed to characterize the mechanical behavior of the materials: the resins, the unidirectional composites used in the confining process the unconfined concretes (effect of incorporating recycled aggregates on the overall mechanical characteristics) and the confined ones. The second part is devoted to the establishment of design codes dedicated to the prediction of the mechanical properties of recycled aggregates concretes by the mean of the compressive mean strength. The third part of this work is dedicated to analytical modeling of mechanical behavior of confined concrete with composite under compression in one hand. This work outlines that EC2 should be revised and propose other relationships between the mechanical characteristics and the mean compressive strength. The incorporation of recycled aggregates from demolition wastes at ratios higher than 33% leads to a decrease of the mechanical properties of the concretes and requires taking it into account in the design codes. Confining recycled aggregate concrete by bio-resourced composite seems to be efficiency by comparison to carbon epoxy ones encouraging its application for concrete structures in civil engineering. Analytical models from the literature are discussed. A modified one based on the established design codes is proposed and applied for the prediction of the compressive behavior of confined recycled aggregates concretes.


Various images having low contrast or some other effect are generally captured in dark or over bright environments. Thus, to make the images appropriate for other image processing applications we have to do image enhancement. The histogram equalization (HE) technique is most popular technique because of its simple steps and effective output. But sometime it makes image data less by adding the noisy peaks and unwanted artifacts. This paper presents a review of different techniques that can be used for image enhancement so that image should be valuable after passing through enhancement process. KeywordsHistogram Equalization, Entropy Maximization, Histogram, PPM, GLD.


In this work we investigated the criterion by which a granivorous rodent selects food and the relationship between the diet selected and the nutrients that become assimilated. We conducted tests of food preference and nutrient assimilation in the sigmodontine Ieaf-eared mouse Phyllotis darwini, which inhabits the mediterranean and semiarid regions of Chile and lives in open scrub habitats subjected to summer drought. We found that this rodent does not select food based on a single criterion. When given a choice, individuals select food with the highest content of nutrients to satisfy a minimal assimilation of 4.34 g dry-matter/day. Thus, animals seem to use criteria in addition to energy content in choosing food.


I find a positive relation between the likelihood that a firm misreports its financial statements and its use of bank debt. I next test whether this result might obtain from the greater likelihood of the detection of misreporting, rather than misreporting per se, but my results suggest that this is not the case. Finally I find that the relations between bank debt and misreporting are stronger among larger firms, those with bond ratings, and those covered by Execu Comp. In sum, my results suggest that when firms are subjected to a greater extent of monitoring by outside agents, misreporting is more likely.


Edge computing is rapidly changing the IoT-Cloud landscape. Various testbeds are now able to run multiple Docker-like containers developed and deployed by end-users on edge devices. However, this capability may allow an attacker to deploy a malicious container on the host and compromise it. This paper presents a dataset based on the Linux Auditing System, which contains malicious and benign container activity. We developed two malicious scenarios, a denial of service and a privilege escalation attack, where an adversary uses a container to compromise the edge device. Furthermore, we deployed benign user containers to run in parallel with the malicious containers. Container activity can be captured through the host system via system calls. Our time series auditd dataset contains partial labels for the benign and malicious related system calls. Generating the dataset is largely automated using a provided AutoCES framework. We also present a semi-supervised machine learning use case with the collected data to demonstrate its utility. The dataset and framework code are open-source and publicly available.


ADAPTIVE COST-BASED POLICY MAPPING FOR IMITATION Publication No. ______ SRICHANDAN VENKAT GUDLA, M.S. The University of Texas at Arlington, 2003 Supervising Professor: Manfred Huber Imitation represents a powerful approach for programming and autonomous learning in robot and computer systems. An important aspect of imitation is the mapping of observations to an executable control strategy. This is particularly important if the behavioral capabilities of the observed and imitating agent differ significantly. In this thesis this problem has been addressed by locally optimizing a cost function representing the deviation from the observed state sequence and the cost of the actions required to perform the imitation. The result are imitation strategies that can be performed by the imitating agent and that as closely as possible resemble the v observations of the demonstrating agent. A reinforcement learning component is introduced to learn an optimal weight vector in the cost function over several trials and then improve the quality of imitation. The performance of this approach is illustrated within the context of a simulated multi-agent environment.


The article evaluates the impact of a "buried wall" barrier on the long-term safety during the long-term storage1 or in-situ disposal of nuclear legacy facilities, in particular, industrial reservoirs, as well as during the development of near-surface disposal facilities for radioactive waste (RWDF). For assessment purposes, filtration and mass transfer processes have been numerically modelled in the GeRa code based on a case study of a reference near-surface facility. The study explores in which way the available covering screen affects the dynamics of contaminant spread. It evaluates the sensitivity of the results to the dispersion parameter commonly characterized by a high degree of uncertainty.


Abstract In this paper, the boundedness of certain multilinear operator related to the multiplier operator from Lebesgue spaces to Orlicz spaces is obtained.


In the midst of the difficulty of finding new anticancer agent, returning to traditional medicine is wise choices considering traditional medicine has been clinically proven for decades. Soursop leaf (Annona muricata) is popular Indonesian traditional anticancer agent. However, the study about Soursop leaf potential as anticancer agent still required to conduct advance study of the mechanism. This study aims to obtained IC50 value of some cells which treated with Soursop leaf ethanol extract and to find out most effective fraction. The anticancer effect of soursop leaf ethanol extract and fractions was assessed by proliferation assay method to obtain cytotoxic level to reach 50% dead of cancer cells. A549 lung cancer and HeLa cervix cancer cells were used in this study. IC50 value of Soursop leaf ethanol extract on A549 cells in 48 h and 72 h were 2.28 ppm and 3.18 ppm respectively, while on HeLa cells were 5.33 ppm and 2.26 ppm. The most effective fraction of soursop leaf was ethyl acetate fraction with IC50 value on A549 cells in 48 h and 72 h were 2.13 ppm and 2.51 ppm, which on HeLa cells were 5.98 ppm and 2.51 ppm.


We derive the spectral Green's function of a multilayered structure involving bianisotropic materials. Such materials offer new degrees of freedom to improve, besides, the radiation properties of multilayered structures. We propose an analytical study in the spectral domain of bianisotropic layers that are characterized in terms of transmission matrices leading to an equivalent circuit representation of the whole multilayered structure. Finally, a numerical result is presented for the special case of the chirostrip antenna consisting of a single chiral grounded slab.


In mechanical engineering, various types of bearing units are used in moving connections and sliding pairs (sliding bearings, guides, bushings) are sufficiently widely used. This allows increasing the stiffness of the units, reducing their dimensions, improving heat dissipation, etc. But there are higher friction losses, probability in the increases of situations in which there is a jamming of friction surfaces for application of sliding friction pairs compared to the rolling bearings. These problems are even more important for application of sliding bearings in precision equipment, which typically operates under temperature and humidity stabilized conditions. The aim of the work is the development of methodological approaches to the creation and rational design and manufacture of sliding friction pairs based on the composite antifriction materials' coatings for the application in vertical precision program-controlled electrospindles for high-speed machining. Questions of development and manufacturing of friction units for precision electrospindles with high rigidity on the basis of composite materials are considered. It is shown that acceptable cutting speed (750 m/min or more) for the quality standpoint of processing with a diamond-like tool can be achieved by placing the cutting edge of the tool on diameter of 200 mm. As a result, two tasks solved: the rigidity of the electrospindle for ultra-high accuracy of mechanical blade processing is achieved; high smoothness of work is provided, which allows achieving nanometric surface roughness with a decrease of deviations to 1 µm from the middle surface line. It is extremely important for a number of special applications.


In a wide variety of sequences from various sources, from music and text to DNA and computer programs, two different but related kinds of structure can be discerned. First, some segments tend to be repeated exactly, such as motifs in music, words or phrases in text, identifiers and syntactic idioms in computer programs. Second, these segments interact with each other in variable but constrained ways. For example, in English text only certain syntactic word classes can appear after the word 'the' many parts of speech (such as verbs) are necessarily excluded. This paper shows how these kinds of structure can be inferred automatically from sequences. We begin with an example that both illustrates the utility of inferring the kinds of structure we seek and shows what our techniques can do. Next we present an efficient and non-obvious algorithm for identifying exact repetitions-including nested repetitions-in time which is linear with the length of the sequence. Then we describe a very simple algorithm for identifying interactions between sequence elements. The focus of this paper is on how these two algorithms can work together, for their combination is far more powerful than either alone. We show how they combine to generate the kind of structure sought in the original motivating example. Although the two methods work well together on many simple examples, the results frequently conflict with intuition in the inference of branching structure. The minimum description length principle seems to provide the only satisfactory general approach.


Abstract Background Cancer-related microangiopathic haemolytic anemia (MAHA) is a rare but life-threatening paraneoplastic syndrome. Only case reports or very small series ( Methods 13 centers in France were contacted for this retrospective study in patients treated for BC over the past 20 years. Presence of schistocyte and either low haptoglobin or cytopenia was mandatory to retain the diagnosis of MAHA. MAHA from other causes than BC were excluded, as well as patients treated with gemcitabine or bevacizumab prior to MAHA diagnosis. Patient characteristics, treatments and outcome were retrieved from digital medical records. Results Individual data from 54 patients with BC-MAHA were obtained from 7 centers. 23 (44%) patients had a lobular BC and most BC were of low grade (grade I/II, N = 39, 75%). 33 (69%) primary BC were ER+/HER2- whereas 7 (15%) were HER2+ and 8 (17%) triple negative. At MAHA diagnosis, all 54 patients had a stage IV cancer, 32 (59%) had ≥3 metastatic sites. Median overall survival (OS) was 28 days (range: 0-1035; Q1:10, Q3:186). In univariate logistic regression analysis performed after imputation of missing data with MICE procedure, PS >2 (OR = 6.0, CI95% [1.8; 19.8]), one or more prior lines of treatment (OR = 2.9, [0.9; 8.7]), elevated bilirubin (OR = 5.5, [1.5; 20.6]), haemoglobin 2 (OR = 6.1, [1.4; 25.9]), elevated bilirubin (OR 4.7, [1.0; 24.0]), haemoglobin Conclusions This study is the first attempt at characterizing BC-MAHA, which appears to be more frequent in the lobular subtype. In spite of a dismal median OS, a few patients experienced long-term survival and we document, for the first-time, prognostic factors that may guide therapeutic decision making. Legal entity responsible for the study Francois-Clement Bidard (Institut Curie, Paris, France). Funding Has not received any funding. Disclosure F.C. Bidard: Speaker Bureau / Expert testimony, Research grant / Funding (institution), Travel / Accommodation / Expenses: Pfizer; Advisory / Consultancy: AstraZeneca; Advisory / Consultancy, Research grant / Funding (institution): Novartis; Advisory / Consultancy: Lilly; Research grant / Funding (institution), Travel / Accommodation / Expenses: Roche; Research grant / Funding (institution), Travel / Accommodation / Expenses: Menarini Silicon Biosystems; Speaker Bureau / Expert testimony: Amgen. P. Heudel: Honoraria (self), Travel / Accommodation / Expenses: Novartis; Honoraria (self), Travel / Accommodation / Expenses: Pfizer; Travel / Accommodation / Expenses: Sandoz; Travel / Accommodation / Expenses: Roche. J. Pierga: Honoraria (institution), Research grant / Funding (self): Amgen; Honoraria (self), Research grant / Funding (self): AstraZeneca; Honoraria (self), Research grant / Funding (self), Research grant / Funding (institution): Roche; Honoraria (self), Research grant / Funding (self): illumina; Honoraria (self), Research grant / Funding (self): Genomic Health; Honoraria (self), Research grant / Funding (self): puma; Honoraria (self), Research grant / Funding (self): Celltrion; Honoraria (self), Research grant / Funding (self): sandoz; Honoraria (self), Research grant / Funding (self): Novartis; Honoraria (self), Research grant / Funding (self): Ipsen; Honoraria (self), Research grant / Funding (self), Research grant / Funding (institution): Pfizer; Research grant / Funding (institution): jansen diagnostics; Research grant / Funding (institution): menarini silicon biosystems; Research grant / Funding (institution): bms; Research grant / Funding (institution): MSD; Research grant / Funding (institution): daiichi senkyo; Research grant / Funding (institution): Servier. S. Delaloge: Advisory / Consultancy, Research grant / Funding (institution), Travel / Accommodation / Expenses: Pfizer; Advisory / Consultancy: astrazeneca; Advisory / Consultancy, Research grant / Funding (institution): Sanofi; Advisory / Consultancy, Research grant / Funding (institution): puma; Advisory / Consultancy, Research grant / Funding (institution): orion; Research grant / Funding (institution): MSD; Advisory / Consultancy, Research grant / Funding (institution), Travel / Accommodation / Expenses: Pfizer; Research grant / Funding (institution), Travel / Accommodation / Expenses: Roche; Research grant / Funding (institution): Amgen. J. Frenel: Advisory / Consultancy: Roche; Advisory / Consultancy: Pfizer; Advisory / Consultancy: bio cad; Advisory / Consultancy: astrazeneca; Advisory / Consultancy: Lilly; Honoraria (institution): Novartis. C. Levy: Advisory / Consultancy, Travel / Accommodation / Expenses: astrazeneca; Advisory / Consultancy, Travel / Accommodation / Expenses: Roche; Advisory / Consultancy: biogaran; Advisory / Consultancy: Lilly; Advisory / Consultancy: Pfizer. All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.


Damage reduction during planarization is strongly required to avoid scratch generation and the variation in the electrical properties of low-k dielectrics leading to yield loss in an integrated circuit after the implementation of an ultralow-k dielectric in Cu damascene interconnects. An optimum process condition to reduce damage on brush scrubbing in post-chemical–mechanical-planarization (post-CMP) cleaning was proposed for advanced nonporous organic ultralow-k dielectric fluorocarbon/Cu interconnects. Increasing brush rotation rate by decreasing down pressures results in the improvement in both electric properties and particle removal efficiency. The tribological effects of brush scrubbing in post-CMP cleaning on the electrical characteristics were explored. The brush scrubbing condition of a high brush rotation rate at low down pressures contributes to the suppression of damage generation.


Tungsten-doped zinc oxide(ZnO:W) films with low resistivity and high transmittance were successfully deposited on glass substrates by direct current magnetron sputtering at low temperature.The deposition pressure is varied from 12 to 21 Pa.The X-ray diffraction results show that all of the deposited films are polycrystalline and have a hexagonal structure with a preferred c-axis orientation.The crystallinity,morphologies and resistivity of ZnO:W films greatly depend on deposition pressure while the optical properties including optical transmittance, optical band gap as well as refractive index are not sensitive to deposition pressure.The deposited films with an electrical resistivity as low as 1.5×10-4Ω·cm,sheet resistance of 6.8Ω/□and an average transmittance of 91.3% in the visible range were obtained at a deposition pressure of 21 Pa and sputtering power of 130 W.


Abstract. Within the research project GLOWA Danube, a groundwater flow model was developed for the Upper Danube basin. This paper reports on a preliminary study to include the alpine part of the catchment in the model. A conceptual model structure was implemented and tested using multi-objective optimisation analysis. The performance of the model and the identifiability of the parameters were studied. A possible over-parameterisation of the model was also tested using principal component analysis.


This article reviews the potential role of dietary supplementation with coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) for the management of patients with type 2 diabetes. The rationale for supplementation with CoQ10 is based on its key roles in cellular energy metabolism and as an antioxidant, and its potential mediation of oxidative stress and inflammation, which have been implicated in the pathogenesis of diabetes. Randomised controlled clinical trials have demonstrated that supplementation with CoQ10 can significantly improve glycaemic control, as well as improving vascular dysfunction. Supplementation with CoQ10 may be of particular importance in type 2 diabetics prescribed statins and in those with fatty liver disease. Supplemental CoQ10 is usually well tolerated, with no significant adverse effects reported in long-term use. The importance of product quality and bioavailability cannot be over-emphasised, since this may be a factor in the disparity of findings from clinical trials supplementing CoQ10.


This paper introduces a base for the platform of AutoCAD2000i,computer aided method for the measurement and location in 3D space.This method can be used to solve the problem in traditional projective geometric,and applied to design crack-slide mechanism in space.


The action of Chalara paradoxa glucoamylase (raw-starch-digesting enzyme) was studied with linear and cyclic maltodextrins. Subsite affinities (Ai) of the amylase were evaluated by the subsite theory. The active site was considered to be made up of seven subsites: = 0.05 kcal/mol,,42= 4.99 kcal/mol, A3 = 1.30 kcal/mol, A4 = 0.77 kcal/mol, A5 =0.33 kcal/mol, A6 = 0.21 kcal/mol and Ay =0.21 kcal/mol. Inhibitions by alpha-, beta-, and gamma-cyclodextrins were competitive for starch digestion by C. paradoxa glucoamylase. The inhibitor constants (Ki) of α-, β-, and γ- cyclodextrin for the amylase were 8.9,1.4, and 3.9mm, respectively. The Michaelis constant (Km) of 6–O-α-maItosyl-α-cyclodextrin digestion was 0.79mm for the amylase.


Fertilization increases productivity in Eucalyptus plantations, but losses in productivity associated with soil fertility continue at operational scales. In this study, we evaluated the fertilization response (FR), light use efficiency (LUE) and growth efficiency (GE), i.e., the amount of wood biomass accumulated per unit of light absorbed (LUE) and per unit of leaf area index of Eucalyptus plantations. We used a "twin plot" approach, with 161 blocks representing 52,700 ha of planted forests that spanned a broad range of edaphoclimatic conditions in southeastern Brazil. The normal plots (NP) were part of a permanent inventory network, whereas the twin plots (TP) received extra high levels of fertilization and extra weed control after fertilization. The intensive management (twin plots) led to a large increase of 5.3 Mg·ha−1·year−1 of wood increment. The region without dry periods and with soils with high clay content was most responsive to fertilization, with a 15% increment in the LUE and 10% increase in the GE of the TPs compared with those of the NPs. Our results suggested that water availability was the primary element affecting productivity and potential response to fertilization. With this information, decisions can be made on which regions should receive priority fertilization investments. However, more research is required to determine the most limiting nutrient in each type of environment.


: Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase catalyzes the O 2 -dependent oxidation of L -tryptophan ( L -Trp) to N -formylky-nurenine (NFK) as part of the kynurenine pathway. Inhibition of enzyme activity at high L -Trp concentrations was first noted more than 30 years ago, but the mechanism of inhibition has not been established. Using a combination of kinetic and reduction potential measurements, we present evidence showing that inhibition of enzyme activity in human indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (hIDO) and a number of site-directed variants during turnover with L -tryptophan ( L -Trp) can be accounted for by the sequential, ordered binding of O 2 and L Trp. Analysis of the data shows that at low concentrations of L -Trp, O 2 binds first followed by the binding of L -Trp; at higher concentrations of L -Trp, the order of binding is reversed. In addition, we show that the heme reduction potential ( E m0 ) has a regulatory role in controlling the overall rate of catalysis (and hence the extent of inhibition) because there is a quantifiable correlation between E m0 (that increases in the presence of L -Trp) and the rate constant for O 2 binding. This means that the initial formation of ferric superoxide (Fe 3+ − O 2 (cid:129) − ) from Fe 2+ -O 2 becomes thermodynamically less favorable as substrate binds, and we propose that it is the slowing down of this oxidation step at higher concentrations of substrate that is the origin of the inhibition. In contrast, we show that regeneration of the ferrous enzyme (and formation of NFK) in the final step of the mechanism, which formally requires reduction of the heme, is facilitated by the higher reduction potential in the substrate-bound enzyme and the two constants ( k cat and E m0 ) are shown also to be correlated. Thus, the overall catalytic activity is balanced between the equal and opposite dependencies of the initial and final steps of the mechanism on the heme reduction potential. This tuning of the reduction potential provides a simple mechanism for regulation of the reactivity, which may be used more widely across this family of enzymes. the mixing event, and traces were fitted to a single exponential process to give k obs measured at different O 2 concentrations. For O 2 bind- ing experiments, reactions were initiated by mixing anaerobic solutions of enzyme (typically 2 μ M, degassed with N 2 and prereduced with dithionite) with an equal volume of fully degassed buffer containing O 2 at different concentrations (0.05 − 0.6 mM, prepared by mixing with a fully O 2 -saturated solution of the same buffer). Equilibrium binding constants, K d , for binding of L -Trp to ferrous enzyme (prepared by stoichiometric reduction with dithionite) were determined anaerobically in the presence of glucose (5 mM), glucose oxidase (50 μ g/mL), and catalase (5 μ g/mL).


Objective To investigate the clinical efficacy of Losartan combined with songling xue mai kang in the treatment of patients with hypertension and metabolic syndrome. Methods 64 patients with hypertension and metabolic syndrome were randomly divided into control group and treatment group with each group 32 cases.The control group was given Losartan and the treatment group was given Losartan combined with songling xue mai kang.The changes in blood pressure,serum glucose and lipids before and after treatment were observed. Results After eight weeks treatment,the prevalence rate of metabolic syndrome of the treatment group was 62.5%(20/32),while the control group was 87.5%(28/32),and the difference between the two groups was statistically significant(P0.05).SBP,DBP and TG of the treatment group were significantly decreased after treatment compared with those of the control group(all P0.05).HDL-C of the treatment group was significantly increased compared with that of the control group(P0.01).Fasting plasma glucose(FPG) and 2 hours postprandial blood glucose(2 hPG) of the treatment group showed no statistically significant difference compared with those of the control group(P0.05). Conclusion The combination of Losartan and songling xue mai kang can reduce blood pressure and regulate blood lipids in patients with hypertension and metabolic syndrome with few side effects.


Electric motors are in a very important position in the industry. Therefore, Motor fault diagnosis is also very important. In this paper, motor fault diagnosis is carried out using CNN and RNN, the best-known method of supervised learning. Fault diagnosis algorithm is obtained using two algorithms and learning and verification are performed using motor vibration data. As a result, the CNN and RNN algorithms showed high accuracy, although the CNN algorithm showed higher accuracy than RNN. However, RNN is an algorithm with a Recurrent Neural Network structure. Therefore, compared with CNN, it has the advantage of being robust against changes in the surrounding environment of the motor. Therefore, both CNN and RNN show usable accuracy, and it is most important to select the appropriate algorithm for the situation.


Abstract This study investigates the effect of terms of trade (TOT) on the economic growth of China over the period 1980–2013. Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model proposed by Pesaran, Shin, and Smith (2001, Journal of Applied Econometrics, 16(3), pp. 289–326) is applied for examining the short-run and long-run associations. The causality analysis between variables is analyzed by using Granger causality test and variance decomposition test. The ARDL model reveals that TOT significantly and adversely affect economic growth in the short run as well as in the long run. The results also imply positive short-run and long-run effect of labor and capital on the economic growth of China. The Granger causality results reveal significant bidirectional causal relationship between economic growth and capital, and between capital and labor force. The results show unidirectional causality from TOT to labor force. The variance decomposition results show that most of the innovation in economic growth is explained by its own innovation, while other variables have very small contributions to its innovations. The notable findings of the study suggest that TOT deterioration is relatively important for enhancing the economic growth of China.


Since 1960s, aperture patterns have been studied extensively and a variety of coded apertures have been proposed for various applications, including extended depth of field, defocus deblurring, depth from defocus, light field acquisition, etc. Researches have shown that optimal aperture patterns can be quite different due to different applications, imaging conditions, or scene contents. In addition, many coded aperture techniques require aperture patterns to be temporally changed during capturing. As a result, it is often necessary to have a programmable aperture camera whose aperture pattern can be dynamically changed as needed in order to capture more useful information.

In this paper, we propose a programmable aperture camera using a Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) device. This design affords a high brightness contrast and high resolution aperture with a relatively low light loss, and enables one change the pattern at a reasonably high frame rate. We build a prototype camera and evaluate its features and drawbacks comprehensively by experiments. We also demonstrate two coded aperture applications in light field acquisition and defocus deblurring.


In this paper we study network coding based wireless broadcast scheduling problem in real time applications under the memory model, aiming at minimizing the number of packets which miss their deadlines. In the memory model, receiver has enough memory, a receiver will buffer all received encoded packets and decode out their wanted packets when enough packets are received. We prove the coding based scheduling problem under memory model is NP-hard. According to marking colors on the vertices of the weighted graph to illustrate the needed packets can be decoded using the buffered encoded packet, effective heuristic algorithm is proposed in this paper. Simulation results show that our algorithm significantly reduce the deadline miss ratio in most cases, which is an important performance metric in real time applications.


Qiongzhuea and its species have received considerable attention concerning the validity of publication of names in different publications. However, it has apparently not been appreciated that both Qiongzhuea and a furtherbamboo genus, Dendrocalamopsis, were validly published by descriptio generico-specifico. Consequently they were validly published at an earlier date, with different types, than has been generally understood. The correct place of publication, authorship and typification is given and discussed for both genera, and a new section name, Chimonobambusa sect. Neoqiongzhuea, is published for those species of that genus with greatly swollen nodes.


The objective of the research was to increase the efficiency of treatment of patients with chronic heart failure (CHF) and post-infarction cardiosclerosis by adding potassium and magnesium salts of gluconic acid, eplerenone and rivaroxaban to the background therapy taking into account the indices of growth differentiation factor 15 (GDF-15), aldosterone and galectin-3. Materials and methods of the research. Emmunoenzymometric determination of the galectin-3, GDF-15 and aldosterone levels concentration in blood serum was conducted to achieve the stated objective. 42 patients with CHF and post-infarction cardiosclerosis after coronary artery stenting in the acute period of myocardial infarction (MI) were examined. The patients were randomized into four groups according to the peculiarities of treatment. Group I included patients with CHF and post-infarction cardiosclerosis treated with the background therapy (BT). Group II consisted of patients with CHF who were treated with BT and addition of potassium and magnesium salts of gluconic acid. Group III included patients with CHF who were prescribed eplerenone secondary to BT. Group IV consisted of patients who were treated with BT and rivaroxaban. Results. The proposed treatment regimens were proved to be effective in reduction of GDF-15, aldosterone and galectin-3 indices in 12 months of treatment. Conducted therapy with the use of rivaroxaban secondary to BT led to more intensive decrease in GDF-15 concentration in comparison with the use of potassium and magnesium salts of gluconic acid or eplerenone on the background of BT. This index constituted (2110.21±107.4) pg/ml before the treatment in these patients and significantly decreased to (1286.75±109.6) pg/ml being significantly before the therapy. The performed treatment with the use of eplerenone secondary to BT was proved to be more effective for normalization of aldosterone and galectin-3 levels in blood serum compared to other studied treatment regimens. The average value of aldosterone changed in the treatment process by 67.24%. Thus, the average level of this index constituted (139.8±7.63) pg/ml before the treatment and was equal to (45.8±5.52) pg/ml at the end of the treatment course. The average value of galectin-3 in patients with CHF and post-infarction cardiosclerosis was noted to be (34.69±1.67) ng/ml before the treatment. It constituted (22.53±0.98) ng/ml after the end of treatment being significantly lower compared to the value before the treatment. The average value of this index changed in the course of twelve-month treatment by 35.05%. Lower risk of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA), acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and stroke was observed in the patients with CHF and post-infarction cardiosclerosis with the use of rivaroxaban secondary to BT. Conclusions. Thus, the use of rivaroxaban combination therapy secondary to BT led to more intensive decrease in GDF-15 concentration in comparison with the use of potassium and magnesium salts of gluconic acid or eplerenone. Conducted therapy with the use of eplerenone on the background of BT was more effective for the normalization of galectin-3 and aldosterone levels in the blood compared to other studied treatment regimens.


Purpose: The recent advances in microsurgical techniques and their refinement over the past decade have greatly expanded the indications for digital replantations and have enabled us to salvage severed fingers more often. Many studies have reported greater than 80% viability rates in replantation surgery with functional results. However, replantation of multi-level amputations still remain a challenging problem and the decision of whether or not to replant an amputated part is difficult even for an experienced reconstructive surgeon because the ultimate functional result is unpredictable. Methods: Between January of 2002 and May of 2008, we treated 10 multi-level amputated digits of 7 patients. After brachial plexus block, meticulous replantation procedure was performed under microscopic magnification. Postoperatively, hand elevation, heat lamp, drug therapy and hyperbaric oxygen therapy were applied with careful observation of digital circulation. Early rehabilitation protocol was performed for functional improvement. Results: Among the 19 amputated segments of 10 digits, 16 segments survived completely without any complications. Overall survival rate was 84%. Complete necrosis of one finger tip segment and partial necrosis of two distal amputated segments developed and subsequent surgical interventions such as groin flap, local advancement flap and skin graft were performed. The overall result was functionally and aesthetically satisfactory. Conclusion: We experienced successful replantations of multi-level amputated digits. When we encounter a multi-level amputation, the key question is whether or not it is a contraindication to replantation. Despite the demand for skillful microsurgical technique and longer operative time, the authors' results prove it is worth attempting replantations in multi-level amputation because of the superiority in aesthetic and functional results.


The oxidative rearrangement reported for acyclic and endocyclic olefins with thallium(III) nitrate does not occur with exocyclic olefins. Allylic nitrate esters or their transformation products were isolated.


In this issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Verstraeten and colleagues [1] provide an important contribution regarding "big data" and "precision public health" with their report on estimation of norovirus gastroenteritis epidemiology using primary care and hospitalization data sets. The "gold standard" study design to assess infectious disease (and noninfectious disease/injury epidemiology) is the prospective cohort, which, if done rigorously, assures estimates of true incidence rates based on well-defined numerator and denominator data, has adequate granularity to define high-risk subgroups of interest, and considers confounding factors. However, the resources and commitment required for such studies are considerable, and for infectious diseases that may have seasonal and secular effects, the use of prospective cohorts is frequently impracticable. The use of study designs that rely on more readily accessible clinical data from large repositories (big data), which meet unique constraints based on a particular disease and population of interest, holds promise to allow for important public health implications beyond traditional surveillance and burden of disease estimation—precision public health. Verstraeten et al [1] built upon methods of time-series regression on available electronic health records (EHRs) to tackle an important problem of estimating norovirus-attributable disease at the population level. Although noroviruses have been shown to be responsible for a substantial burden of disease in developed and developing world populations [2], clinical diagnostic testing is not widely available and is rarely done, making it a challenge to estimate pathogen-specific attributable disease burden. Several studies have used a similar analytic method, taking advantage of the seasonal regularity of unspecified causes of acute gastroenteritis (eg, norovirus) to estimate norovirus-attributable incidence [3–5]. The present study used similar methods, with improvement of an adaptive population denominator over time, rather than a constant. However, most uniquely, this study could be compared with 2 large and robust prospective cohort studies in the overlapping United Kingdom population to provide further validation of methods [6, 7]. Although periods of overlap between the 2 study methods were not exact, the comparability of primary care–associated acute gastroenteritis incidence were strikingly similar (2008–2009 prospective cohort vs 2007–2013 medical database, 25.3 vs 28.8 episodes per 1000 person-years). Such similarity in estimates held true for subpopulations, such as children <5 years old. Estimates of norovirus-attributable incidence did not completely overlap with estimates from prospective cohort studies, but the relative subpopulation effects were similar (eg, higher rates in children and elderly), and precision of estimates, nonnormalization of cohort data to population structure in the database analysis, and dissimilar time frames could partially explain the differential observations of absolute pathogen-attributed incidence. Although the methods used have acknowledged limitations and cautions— including lack of case validation through specific chart review, inability to discriminate in the effects of primary diagnostic codes, and unique requirements for disease seasonality, laboratory diagnostic availability and utilization, and impact of differential diagnosis on an electronic health data approach—the potential applicability of electronic health data use for public health purposes is underscored. The public health approach is based on the sequential stepwise and iterative process of defining and monitoring the problem, identifying risk and protective factors, developing and testing prevention strategies, and assuring widespread adoption. Although the earliest references to EHRs (specifically electronic medical records) date back more than a E D I T O R I A L C O M M E N T A R Y


Presently, the catalogued GEO population of space objects numbers nearly 1500 payloads and space debris. The density of space objects continuously increases, the probability of dangerous approaches and collisions getting more and more. That means that regularly monitoring deep space with the help of optical sensors becomes more urgent every year. In this paper, the basic peculiarities of constructing the highly productive wide-angle telescope for survey of the GEO ring, detecting and getting metric measurements of space debris sized more than 25-30 cm are considered. The main attention is paid to the optical scheme of this telescope and agreement of the designed quality of a space object image and the CCD receiver parameters.


Copyright © 2 policymakers and supporting nurses themselves to lead, learn and build a global movement" (www.nursingnow.org/vision/). I outlined how the Journal of the DermatologyNurses' Association (JDNA) goals were in alignment with the efforts of this global campaign by "helping to achieve their second goal of increased and improved dissemination of effective and innovative practice in nursing" (Borger, 2018) and reviewed how the JDNA has been committed to serving as the voice of dermatology nursing practices. At that time, I let readers know that the Nursing Now Campaign would run through 2020, a year when nurses would be celebrated worldwide. Well, fast-forward to now, 2 years later, the campaign has continued, and we find ourselves in the middle of 2020, the Year of the Nurse and Midwife as designated by the World Health Organization. This designation and international campaign, in honor of the anniversary of Florence Nightingale's 200 birthday, has been planned as an end-cap to the Nursing Now Campaign. A highlight for this year is the State of the World's Nursing Report, which describes the state of the nursing workforce worldwide. This report, the first of its kind, was officially launched on April 7, 2020, World Health Day, in Geneva, Switzerland, before the 73rd World Health Assembly (https://www.who.int/hrh/nursing_midwifery/19093_ The-State-the-WorldsNursingReporStateWorldsMidwifery 2020Report.pdf?ua=1). The intention of both the Nursing


Today, outsourcing is recognized as one of the most effective strategies in the business world. In this regard, outsourcing of business processes is considered to be one of the most common forms of outsourcing. The purpose of this study is to provide In-depth and quantitative analysis of the benefits of BPO in a dairy plant in Iran and how these benefits affect the willingness of senior plant managers to increase the levels of outsourcing of business processes. Therefore, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) based on BPO Benefit Analysis is used. The population of the study consisted of 50 managers who all answered a questionnaire containing 20 questions. Responses were analyzed using the Partial Least Squares (PLS) method. The research method is a quantitative experimental one. The findings of this study show that cost planning has a higher value than real cost savings and this is one of the benefits of BPO.


Objective: To evaluate the antibacterial and potential toxicity effects of leaves extract of Guira senegalensis. Methods: The plant material was extracted with methanol and aqueous solvents using sohxlet extractor and assayed for qualitative/quantitative phytochemicals. The extracts were bioassayed against clinical isolates of selected gram negative bacterial (Echerichia coli, Salmonella typhi, Klebsiela pneumoniae and Pseudomona aeruginosa). Tetracycline and chloramphenicol were used as positive standard drugs. Acute toxicity studies were conducted by administering different doses (100, 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200 mg/kg) of the extract to eight groups (4 animals per group). A ten weeks sub acute toxicity investigation was also conducted in rats. Original Research Article Galley proof Saidu et al.; JAMPS, 9(1): 1-13, 2016; Article no.JAMPS.25815 2 Results: Analysis showed that the extracts contain alkaloids, phenols, tannins, steroids and saponins. Estimation of the phytochemicals revealed high concentration between 87.3±0.5 g/ml and 123.3±0.34 g/ml of phenols, while saponins, flavonids, tannins and alkaloids were present in less amounts and at varied concentrations. The aqueous extract shows appreciable antibacterial activity when tested at 40 mg/ml concentration against all isolates with diameters zone of inhibitions ranging 14.40±1.60 mm to 15.60±0.51 mm. Tetracycline and chloramphenicol demonstrated higher inhibitory zones than the plant extract. Low MIC (Minimum Inhibitory Concentration) and MBC (Minimum Bactericidal Concentration) values were observed for E. coli, K. pneumonia, P. aeruginosa except S. typhi. The selected safe dose was 800 mg/kg and the LD50 value was estimated to be 894.43 mg/kg. Haematological, and biochemical analysis revealed no toxic effects after weeks 1 and 5 of treatment. However, cumulative toxic effects were manifested after week 10 of treatment. The result of liver and kidney histopathology revealed mild necrosis of the hepatocytes and gross nephrotoxicity. Conclusion: Although the leaf extracts of G. senegalensis appeared to be relatively safe, potential hepatic and renal toxicity may occur with prolonged usage.


In order to identify the long span reliability of vacuum gap insulation under continuous AC voltage application, characteristics of breakdown strength versus breakdown time (long time E-t characteristics) were measured for a uniform and a non-uniform field gap. The breakdown strength of these gaps before the discharge conditioning treatments did not depend on breakdown time. However, after the discharge conditioning treatments, the breakdown strength became describable as an experimental formula E=A ・ t 1 / n. The value of drop index (life index) n in the formula was a maximum of 75 for the uniform field gap, while a maximum of 25 for the non-uniform field gap. In addition, with repeating the discharge conditioning treatment, the long time E-t characteristics of both gaps shifted to higher electric field. In particular, the value of n for the uniform field gap became larger. Breakdown modes (failure modes) of these gaps before and after the discharge conditioning treatments, evaluated by the value of shape parameter m in Weibull probability distribution function, were classified into decreasing failure rate mode and constant failure rate mode, respectively.


EUROPEAN UNION potato, sweetpotato and Andean roots and tubers. It delivers innovative science-based solutions to enhance access to affordable nutritious food, foster inclusive sustainable business and employment growth, and drive the climate resilience of root and tuber agri-food systems. Headquartered in Lima, Peru, CIP has a research presence in more than 20 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. www.cipotato.org


Abstract Brain's white matter, the network of some 100,000 miles nerve fibres, connects the different components of the mind, giving rise to everything we think, feel, and perceive. When humans or nonhuman animals are afflicted with pathogens, they react with mental and physical symptoms. The mind symptoms develop first; they are the direct reflection of the brain. Likewise, in drug proving the same procedure follows. Mind symptoms include two types: subjective and objective. The subjective symptoms are the personal feelings or opinions, so they are delusional. The objective symptoms are the facts; therefore, they are noticeable. They have actual existence. A clinician easily identifies them.


The decline of the valuable Chambo (Oreochromis species) in the southern part of Lake Malawi, where an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries is being applied, is a major economic and ecological concern. Annual Chambo fish harvests have continued to show a downward trend especially for the past two decades thereby adversely affecting the livelihoods of many fishers, processors and traders along the value chain. As part of the institutional agenda within the ecosystem approach to fisheries, a key question remains on the status of the fisheries co-management, which was introduced in the area in the mid 1990s. This article applies a fishery performance indicator framework to assess the fisheries co-management in the study area as baseline information for the development of the ecosystem approach to fisheries. The assessment is based on an expert analysis by the author and a review of previous study reports on the fisheries co-management as a governance reform. Results show weak fisheries governance with the existence of several challenges and threats that continue to impact on the ecosystem status like continued use of illegal fishing practices, climate change and unlimited entry. To improve fisheries co-management, the fishing by-laws that were formulated in 2007 need to be approved by Mangochi district authorities within the on-going decentralization process.


The feasibility of testing large space structures in 1-g environment for the purpose of verifying its performance requirement is considered. Because of the difference in test objectives as compared to the conventional structural systems, the scale modelling laws are examined. The investigation is performed on a generic structural element, a space beam. A preliminary conclusion is obtained based on the results.


A series of new aromatic poly(amide-imide)s were synthesized by the tri- phenyl phosphite-activated polycondensation of the diimide-diacid, 2,5-bis(trimellitimi- do)chlorobenzene (I) with various aromatic diamines in a medium consisting of N-meth- yl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP), pyridine, and calcium chloride. The poly(amide-imide)s had inherent viscosities of 0.76 -1.42 dL g 21 . The diimide-diacid monomer (I) was prepared from 2-chloro-p-phenylenediamine with trimellitic anhydride. Most of the resulting polymers showed an amorphous nature and were readily soluble in a variety of organic solvents, including NMP and N,N-dimethylacetamide. Transparent, flexible, and tough films of these polymers could be cast from N,N-dimethylacetamide or NMP solutions. Their cast films had tensile strengths ranging from 74 to 95 MPa, elongations at break from 7 to 11%, and initial moduli from 1.38 to 3.25 GPa. The glass transition temper- atures of these polymers were in the range of 233°-260°C, and the 10% weight loss temperatures were above 450°C in nitrogen. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 71: 1691-1701, 1999


The article discusses the development of international and national languages, their historical period and role in modern society. Since Uzbekistan is an independent country it is trying to increase the place of Uzbek language among other languages in the world. Currently, there are many foreigners from different countries who are interested in the history of Uzbekistan and its language. We hope that the Uzbek language will develop in the same way as other international languages.


To report the perioperative nurse management of total hip replacement surgery for a patient with systemic lupus erythematosus and bilateral femoral head avascular necrosis.Before the surgery,giving the patient a psychological care and doing preoperative prepare cooperated with the doctors.After the surgery,observing vital signs in general and lower limbs closely,emphasizing on basic nurse care and functional exercise.After effective treatment and careful nursing,the patient recovered well without pressure sores,venous thrombosis,joint dislocation and other complications.The patient was discharged from the hospital with the primary healing.

Key words:
Lupus erythematosus,Systemic; Femur head necrosis; Arthroplasty,Replacement,Hip; Nursing


The invention provides a service chain drainage method and device. A security port which is connected with a security device is removed from all VLANs. The functions of input and output rule checking and address learning of the security port are closed, so that flow flooding on the security device is prevented, and a forwarding path is not affected by flow output. Through a flow entrance sign, output flow is prevented from being forwarded from an original input port. According to the invention, a service chain drainage scheme is provided; the security device is in a transparent mode; and the problems of performance bottlenecks, single point faults and poor scalability of a traditional deployment manner are solved.


{open_quotes}Factory{close_quotes}-like e{sup +}-e{sup {minus}} colliders presently under design or construction achieve high luminosity by resorting to large numbers of closely-spaced bunches. The short bunch spacing implies that there are unavoidable parasitic collisions (PCs) in the neighborhood of the interaction point (IP). Since the bunch population of the beam is not uniform due to an intentional ion-clearing gap, the bunches at the head or tail of the train ({open_quotes}pacman bunches{close_quotes}) experience different beam-beam tune shifts than those away from the edges ({open_quotes}typical bunches{close_quotes}). The author presents here a method to minimize the vertical tune spread at the expense of increasing the horizontal tune spread (it is assumed that there is only one IP). Since the beam-beam dynamics for flat beams typically tolerates a significantly higher horizontal tune spread than a vertical tune spread, this method implies a net advantage. The author presents this discussion in the context of the PEP-II collider.


Over the course of 100 issues the Economic Roundup has evolved from mainly discussing recent economic statistics and reprinting budget statements to being a vehicle for placing Treasury research and policy analysis before the wider community. To keep improving the Economic Roundup, and assess the ongoing demand for paper copies when the full contents are freely available on Treasury's website, a survey is included with the paper copies of this issue.