Abstract In higher education, disabled students constitute at least 4.82% of the whole student population in the United Kingdom with 98,030 (known via self-assessment) disabled students, with the largest sub-group of 1.74% being those with dyslexia (n = 35,435; Higher Education Statistics Agency, 2001/2002). The aim of this study was to explore the emotional, cognitive and behavioural responses from student teachers in post-compulsory education to teaching this cohort. The sample groups were drawn from three different institutions in the United Kingdom (n = 40) and data was collected via five 1-hour group interviews. The findings illustrate a lack of practical and psychological preparation during teacher training for teaching diverse groups. The study suggests that if lecturers are not prepared to meet the challenges of teaching disabled students, the severity of the disabling condition presented to them determines their attitudes towards the notion of inclusion. In relation to pedagogy, this study's findings of teacher and student deficit models suggest that teachers are both perpetrators and victims of attribution. Finally, there appeared to be a general acceptance and desire for inclusion as an educational ideal, tempered by a pragmatic response, which acknowledges that educators' understanding of how to achieve inclusion is as yet limited; no more starkly illustrated than by opinion that the inclusion of disabled students can be to the detriment of their non-disabled peers.


High strength/high elongation continues to be the primary challenge and focus for medium-Mn steels. It is elucidated herein via critical experimental analysis that the cumulative contribution of transformation-induced plasticity (TRIP) and microstructural constituents governs high strength/high elongation in 0.2C–3Al–(6–8.5)Mn–Fe steels. This was enabled by an effective heat treatment involving a combination of intercritical hardening and tempering to obtain high strength/high ductility. An excellent combination of high ultimate tensile strength of 935–1112 MPa and total elongation of 35–40% was obtained when the steels were subjected to intercritical hardening in the temperature range of 700–750 ◦C and low tempering at 200 ◦C. The intercritical hardening impacted the coexistence of austenite, ferrite, and martensite, such that the deformation behavior varied with the Mn content. The excellent obtained properties of the steels are attributed to the cumulative contribution of the enhanced TRIP effect of austenite and the microstructural constituents, ferrite and martensite. The discontinuous TRIP effect during deformation involved stress relaxation, which was responsible for the high ductility. Lamellar austenite, unlike the equiaxed microstructure, is envisaged to induce stress relaxation during martensitic transformation, resulting in the discontinuous TRIP effect.


Study Objective. To compare rates of adverse events with filgrastim versus sargramostim when given prophylactically to patients receiving myelosuppressive chemotherapy.


What is the definition of plagiarism in a film that narrates a story with nonliteral language? How do you differentiate between creation and crib? This study is a search for the clues of how we approach film plagiarism by delving into the essence of the film not from the standpoint of a jurist but a film producer. Most films are centered around the narration by which many audiences are also entertained the most. When filmmakers accuse other filmmakers of committing plagiarism, it means that they claim the stories are similar to or same as theirs. Are they really similar stories? Furthermore, do similar stories mean similar films? This article searches for the planning, the development, the characteristics, the components of scenarios and the methods of storytelling in a film to comprehend the essence of a film. After that, in terms of materials, themes, stories, plots, characters and relationships, two example movies are compared and analyzed: a korean film 〈Masquerade〉(2012), hollywood film〈Dave〉(1993). Finally it analyzes the issues of the plagiarism controversy closely focusing on 〈Masquerade〉. Each film has the own creative methods and modes of expressions for storytelling. A cautious approach is needed when we discuss plagiarism.


An improved reweighted $l$1-norm optimization algorithm is proposed, which can synthesize sparse arrays at a faster rate. The proposed improvement method is also suitable for improving the computational efficiency of other sparse array synthesis algorithms. In the iterative calculation process of the reweighted $l_{1}$-norm minimization algorithm, the proposed improvement method is to reduce the amount of calculation by adaptively reducing the number of excitation variables to be solved, thereby reducing the time spent in the calculation process. Compared with the traditional $l$1-norm minimization algorithm, the improved algorithm proposed has higher computational efficiency, and the optimality of the integrated result does not decrease. This method has obvious advantages in synthesizing complex problems such as large arrays.


A diffractive optical system consisting of one single binary CGH with high numerical aperture (N.A. > 0.7) for collimating or focusing laser-diode radiation is presented. Taking into account the exact phase distribution for a certain injection current of the laser-diode all aberrations of the phase can be corrected: A theoretically circular symmetric and diffraction limited spot can be obtained without astigmatism. High diffraction efficiencies can be expected by using high frequent binary reflection holograms where higher diffraction orders become evanescent. The zero order can be minimized by selecting an adequate relief thickness. Thus local DEs of the designed CGH can achieve DEs of theoretically 100%.


Facility layout problem (FLP) is one of the most important location analysis problems in operation research and computational geometry. This paper presents a novel optimisation model-based two meta-heuristics of particle swarm optimisation (PSO) and parallel simulated annealing (SA). Then, the problem is solved using the modified algorithms to determine the total material handling cost and dead space. The results obtained from the two proposed models are then compared and analysed by referring to two well-known previous approaches to find the optimal solution for the problem. The obtained results show that the modified PSO and SA algorithms outperform the previous two methods and therefore can be effectively as an optimal solution for certain bi-objective facility layout problems.


Objective: To evaluate the internal consistency and predictive validity of the Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale applied by two unconventional methods, as well as its external validity expressed in relation to the per capita family income. Methods: The Scale was sent to the household of 488 adolescents enrolled in fifth grade of public schools of Piracicaba, Sao Paulo, Brazil, composing the initial sample of the main study. However, since some scholars' responsible did not send the filled questionnaire back, it was necessary to conduct the interview over the phone. After applying the exclusion criteria, the final sample consisted in 350 scholars, where 310 questionnaires were self-administered and 40 were responded by phone. Cronbach's alpha was used to verify internal consistency and Pearson's Chi-squared was applied to verify predictive validity. Results: Cronbach's alpha coefficients was 0.91 and 0.92 to self-administered Scale and to the Scale conduct by phone, respectively. Education level and per capita household income were higher among households in which Scale was completed by phone. The proportion of scholars whose families were beneficiaries of Cash transfer programs, was higher among the group which the Scale was self-administered. Conclusion: The prevalence of food insecurity did not differ between both groups, but it is possible to assume that the self-administered group is more vulnerable, since lower income and higher participation in Cash transfer programs were observed. Both application methods showed good internal consistency and predictive validity. Therefore, both can be used in further studies


Periprocedural analgesia or sedation for air enema reduction (AER) of intussusception is a matter of debate. We set out to review Australian periprocedural pain management in AER.


A novel simulation method is proposed to obtain the geometric parameters of target prebending plate before the operation for complete fracture.The main processing scheme consists of the following steps:Firstly the serial tomograms of fracture part from CT scan are got and denoised by Curvelet transform and 3-D reconstructing;Secondly a method based on vertex normal feature is utilized to obtain fractured bone section;Thirdly a coarse registration based on minimum bounding box and a precise registration based on non-iterative estimation are combined to align the two sections,also the two fractured bone models are aligned;Lastly,an accurate NURBS surface fitting method is used to fit the plate,and the geometric parameters are measured.The humeral fracture and rib fracture are chosen as experimental subjects.The prebended plate models produced attach to the bone hermetically,and the geometric parameters are accurate to meet the clinic need.This new method affords technical support to shorten operation time and improve operation quality.


The process of globalization and the growth of interdependence in economic, social and environmental activities by corporate entities requires greater international cooperation between countries. At the same time, the amount of economic and white-collar-crime has grown substantially. One of the most pressing global issues is the predominance of national and multinational corporations in economic transactions and their accountability.

In this context, the development of corporate criminal liability has become a problem which a growing number of prosecutors and courts have to deal with nowadays. In the common law world, following standing principles in tort law, English courts began sentencing corporations in the middle of the last century for statutory offenses. On the other hand, a large number of European continental law countries have not been able to or not been willing to incorporate the concept of corporal criminal liability into their legal systems. The fact that crime has shifted from almost solely individual perpetrators only 150 years ago, to white-collar crimes on an ever increasing scale has not yet been taken into account in many legal systems. At the same time, crime has also become increasingly international in nature.


The HIV-1causes life-threatening infection by establishing essential biochemical interactions via its IN protein with human host LEDGF/p75 protein. The crystal structure availability of LEDEF–HIV-IN complex provide essential roadmap for designing small drug-like molecule to perturb pathogen-host proteins interaction. We adopted the in-silico drug discovery approaches and scanned the TIMBAL database which hold drug-like molecule promising for protein-protein interactions perturbation. We targeted the interactive hotspot region of the complex to build a pharmacophore model. Pharmacophore based virtual screening revealed single lead compound from TIMBAL repository with reasonable pharmacophore fit score. The drug-like ability of this lead compound along with additional source anti-HIV compounds are examined through molecular docking approaches. We assumed that the putative lead compound addressed in this study will provide a template for identification of additional druglike molecules for the same purpose in future. The experimental evaluation of lead compound may important for future anti-viral drug discovery.


The various network attack by Botnet has caused serious threats to the current Internet.Botnet detection,blocking and control,and botmaster tracking and positioning have been the hop topics in netw ork security research.Classify current Botnet detection methods based on netw ork traffic features,present primary Botnet blocking and control research and summarize the main technologies on Botmaster traceback.The current related w ork show s that although detecting and traceback Botnet via netw ork traffic is a effective method,it still need to be improved in accuracy and efficiency facets.


TAMPERE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY Degree Programme in Information Technology LAHTI, SAKARI: Integration of Processor and System-on-Chip Tools Master of Science Thesis, 60 pages, 0 Appendix pages June 2014 Major Subject: Programmable platforms and devices Examiners: Prof. Timo D. Hämäläinen, Dr. Tech. Erno Salminen


Chelating agents are rarely used in large volumes, but cumulatively they are a potential source of environmental damage. A recent but now well-proven alternative is trisodium ethylenediamine disuccinate (EDDS).


Cean tidal data along the coast of China and the standard Earth model loading Green functions, the influence of the oceanic loading on the tilt tides is studied by using a technique of the Agnew integral Green( s function. The tilt loading for 8 main waves at 25 fundamental stations in crust movement observation network in China are calculated. The numerical results show that for a certain wave, the amplitude of the tilt loading is at 10-9 rad, and at 10-8 red or more for the coastal stations. The temporal variation of the tilt loading at 8 main stations as Beijing and Shanghai and so on, are constructed.


Introduction Achieving target door–needle times for ST elevation myocardial infarction remains challenging. Data on emergency department (ED) doctor-led thrombolysis in developing countries and factors causing delay are limited. Objectives To assess the effect on door–needle times by transferring responsibility for thrombolysis to the ED doctors and to identify predictors of prolonged door–needle times. Methodology Data on medical on-call team-led thrombolysis at a tertiary Asian hospital were prospectively collected from May 2007 to Aug 2008 (1st study period). In September 2008, ED doctors were empowered to perform thrombolysis. The practice change was accompanied by new guidelines, tick chart implementation, and training sessions. Data were then consecutively collected from September 2008 to May 2009 (2nd study period). Door-to-needle times for the 1st and 2nd study periods were compared. All cases were analysed for factors of delay by multiple logistic regression. Results 297 patients were thrombolysed, 169 by the medical on-call team during the 1st study period and 128 by the ED doctors during the 2nd study period. Median door–needle times were 54 and 48 min, respectively (p=0.76). Significant delays were predicted by 'incorrect initial ECG interpretation' (adjusted OR (aOR) 14.3), 'inappropriate triage' (aOR 10.4) and 'multiple referrals' (aOR 5.9). No cases of inappropriate thrombolysis were recorded. Conclusions Transfer of responsibility for thrombolysis to the ED doctors did not improve door–needle times despite measures introduced to facilitate this change. Key causative factors for this failure were identified.


We present results for the longitudinal total cross section difference {Delta}{sigma}{sub L} for polarized neutrons incident upon a polarized {sup 3}He target. The measurements were performed in the energy range 3-8 MeV, using a cryogenically polarized solid {sup 3}He target. Polarized neutrons were produced by the D(d,n) and T(p,n) reactions. The measurements complement our earlier results for the transverse cross section difference {Delta}{sigma}{sub T}. We compare the cross sections to a variety of n-{sup 3}He phase shift predictions, including a charge-independent R-matrix analysis and a recent microscopic RGM calculation.


An object of fixed angular size looks smaller when the eyes are adjusted for near vision than when they are adjusted for far vision. This fact was reported first by Wheatstone, the inventor of the stereoscope.1 Wheatstone's qualitative observations were confirmed by several later investigators,2 and quantitative studies of the phenomenon have been made by Adams, Frank, Hermans, and Swenson.3 The research lXeported below deals mainly with two questions to which the previous investigators have not given clear answers. The first is whether the changes in apparent size are related to changes in apparent distance in the manner postulated by several current theories of 'size-constancy.'4 The second is which of the oculomotor adjustments, or possibly which combination of adjustments, controls the changes in apparent size. The principal oculomotor adjustments that are made in response to a change in viewing distance are (1) changes in the angle of convergence of the visual axes, (2) changes in the power of the lens (accommodation), and (3) changes in the diameter of the pupil. Convergence and accommodation are so linked that a change in one produces a change in the other, and a change in either is usually accompanied by a change in the diameter of the pupil.


This study was conducted to examine the effects of a healthy dietary life and purchase of environmental-friendly food materials according to a mother`s lifestyles of health and sustainability (LOHAS) attitudes. The subjects consisted of 295 mothers. The findings are summarized as follows. The mother`s LOHAS attitude index averaged 3.39 points out of 5 points. High LOHAS attitude items were "I participate actively in separating the trash collection" (4.16 points), and "I recycle dresses that I do not wear by taking them to the recycling center" (4.08 points). In contrast, LOHAS attitude items for "I do community service activity on the weekend" (2.57 points), and "I try to serve in the local community" (2.63 points) scored very low. A high LOHAS behavior index occurred for mothers who were "resource saving", whereas "social welfare" scored low. Mother`s intention to purchase environmental-friendly food materials averaged 3.61 points. Mother`s health dietary life attitude score averaged 3.52 points. When age, monthly income, and the environmental-friendly food materials purchase ratio of the mother was high, the health dietary life performance was high. The LOHAS attitude index of mothers had an impact on the purchase intention of environmental-friendly food materials in resource saving and environmental-friendly oriented propensity groups. The LOHAS attitude index of mothers impacted healthy dietary life in environmental-friendly, family and health oriented propensity groups.


This report presents the conceptual framework, data and methodology, and findings of a two-year study of culture and social wellbeing in New York City by SIAP with Reinvestment Fund. Building on their work in Philadelphia, the team gathered data from City agencies, borough arts councils, and cultural practitioners to develop a 10-dimension social wellbeing framework—which included construction of a cultural asset index—for every neighborhood in the five boroughs. The research was undertaken between 2014 and 2016. The social wellbeing tool enables a variety of analyses: the distribution of opportunity across the city; identification of areas with concentrated advantage, concentrated disadvantage, as well as "diverse and struggling" neighborhoods with both strengths and challenges; and analysis of the relationship of "neighborhood cultural ecology" to other features of a healthy community. Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration | Social Policy | Urban Studies and Planning Comments The Culture and Social Wellbeing in NYC project was undertaken in collaboration with Reinvestment Fund, a community development financial institution, and with support by the Surdna Foundation, the New York City Cultural Agenda Fund in the New York Community Trust, and the University of Pennsylvania. The research was conducted between 2014 and 2016. This research report is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/siap_culture_nyc/1


The invention relates to a method and an apparatus for determining a fuel consumption of a motor vehicle. A first average fuel consumption (FC_MEAN_LONG) which is not influenced resettable by a user, is determined. A second average fuel consumption (FC_MEAN_ACT) which is influenced resettable by a user, is determined depending on a plurality of measurement values. A third average fuel consumption (FC_MEAN) is determined, and this at the start of a predetermined time period (TIME_H), which begins with a influenced by a user resetting the second average fuel consumption (FC_MEAN_ACT), equal to the first average fuel consumption (FC_MEAN_LONG) is set between the beginning and the end of the predetermined time period (TIME_H) as a weighted average of the first average fuel consumption (FC_MEAN_LONG) and the second average fuel consumption (FC_MEAN_ACT), and from one end of the predetermined time period (TIME_H) equal to the second average fuel consumption (FC_MEAN_ACT) is set. A signal for signaling the third average fuel consumption (FC_MEAN) is generated.


ABSTRACT Prior findings on promotion and product structure are more conclusive than those related to pricing, place and management processes. Further research effort is required regarding these three elements. This study is mainly designed to fill this research gap. Unlike prior studies, most of the firms examined here were small-to-medium sized manufacturing firms. The outcomes of this study revealed that both the price and place decision structures had a significant impact on the selection of standardisation. Consistent with other studies, the interaction of the place and management process structures and a number of other factors were also significantly related to the decision of place and management processes standardisation. The joint influence of the price, place and management processes structure, and internal and external factors, were associated with firms' performance. This study had added a significant amount of new information to the research concerning price, place and management processes in the areas of organisational structure, standardisation and performance.


This article argues that Machiavelli's description of reading Dante and Ovid, in his letter to Francesco Vettori of 10 December 1513, illuminates some of the most surprising and scandalous sections of The Prince. Beginning with Machiavelli's quotation of Paradiso 5 in the letter to Vettori, this study investigates how Machiavelli uses the literary works of Dante and Ovid to craft several of his most distinctive arguments on the problem of vows, value of violence, and legitimacy of deception. It argues that the reading of these literary works constitutes a crucial, but often overlooked, component of intellectual history.


The combined rapid hardening cement,water quenched slag,lightweight materials and efficient micro-bubble additive were used to prepare a new type of high-performance lightweight concrete.Through the analysis of the test results of raw materials and concrete and by comparison with ordinary light aggregate concrete and foam concrete performance,with the aid of the analysis of the micro-mechanism studies,the performance characteristics of the new type of concrete was elucidated.


This survey is the second of a series of.five surveys seeking to-determine the characteristics a d attitudes of male and female engineering students and 'the changes these areas as students proceed through their first tvo years engineering progra Fifteen of the original--1-6-stud-y--school first survey were included in this survey. A questionnaire of 60 items was administered to a sample-of students; 983 inStrunents were returned. Data are presented for the 60 items. These include such questions as reason for career choice, preferred work situation, source of personal satisfaction, problems, grades, reactions to instructors, reactions to friends, reactions to various academic work, and future plans. CUO ********************************************************************** Documents acquired by ERIC include many informal unpublished * materials not available from other sources. ERIC makes every effort * * to ,obtain the best copy available. Nevertheless, items of marginal * * -reproducibility_are often encountered and this affects the quality -* * of the microfiche and hardcopy reproductions ERIC makes available * * via the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS). EDRS is not * * responsible for the quality of the original document. Reproductions * * supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original. * ***********************************************************************


This paper investigated the solubility of carbon dioxide (CO2) in an aqueous solution of monoethanolamine (MEA) and 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium dibutylphosphate ((BMIM)(DBP)) ionic liquid (IL) hybrid solvents. Aqueous solutions of MEA-(BMIM)(DBP) hybrid solvents containing different concentrations of (BMIM)(DBP) were prepared to exploit the amine's reactive nature, combined with the IL's non-volatile nature for CO2 absorption. Response surface methodology (RSM) based on central composite design (CCD) was used to design the CO2 solubility experiments and to investigate the effects of three independent factors on the solubility of CO2 in the aqueous MEA-(BMIM)(DBP) hybrid solvent. The three independent factors were the concentration of (BMIM)(DBP) (0–20 wt.%), temperature (30 °C–60 °C) and pressure of CO2 (2–30 bar). The experimental data were fitted to a quadratic model with a coefficient of determination (R2) value of 0.9791. The accuracy of the developed model was confirmed through additional experiments where the experimental values were found to be within the 95% confidence interval. From the RSM-generated model, the optimum conditions for CO2 absorption in aqueous 30 wt% MEA-(BMIM)(DBP) were 20 wt% of (BMIM)(DBP), a temperature of 41.1 °C and a pressure of 30 bar.


Places at which N. F. S. Grundtvig stayed in Copenhagen. Up to 1821. By Steen Johansen. The essay consists exclusively of some biographical observations concerning N. F. S. Grundtvig, inasmuch as it attempts to give an exact account of the places at which Grundtvig stayed in Copenhagen from the year 1800, when he entered the University, until his death 1872. However, the section which is printed here deals only with the period from 1800 to 1821, since the period from 1821 to 1872 must await further research. By way of introduction there are some observations on the places at which Grundtvig is presumed to have stayed when he was a pupil at the Latin School in Aarhus. There is a thorough discussion of the question as to where in Copenhagen Grundtvig lived during his time as a student ( 1800- 03). In addition, special attention is paid to the period from 181 1 to 1821, which incidentally is still one of the most obscure periods of Grundtvig's life from the biographical points of view. Here an attempt is made to give the correct sequence of Grundtvig's addresses during the period. Finally, some remarks about the possible significance of this investigation for an understanding of Grundtvig. His unsettled life as a student, when he lived sometimes in Copenhagen, sometimes at home in South Sjaelland or in other places, undoubtedly reflects his inner life, which at that time was still immature and lacking in concentration. But later—and here one thinks especially of the years from 18 1 1 to 1821, which were full of ferment and very productive— Grundtvig's frequent changes of residence must certainly be an expression of utter indifference as to where and how he lived. During these years he was very dependent on his family (his own and his future wife's), and on his uncertain earnings as a writer, for his housing accommodation. Only when he was 37 years of age did he obtain his first "position" from a citizen's point of view.


Abstract The long-wavelength positive CD bands of poly[d(A) · d(T)] and poly[d(A-T) · d(A-T)] become inverted upon the addition of Hg(ClO4)2. Poly[d(A) · d(T)] requires higher levels of mercury to undergo inversion than poly[d(A-T) · d(A-T)]. Mercurated poly[d(A) d(T)] is digested more rapidly than the control by DNase I or staphylococcal nuclease at low levels of Hg(ClO4)2. Let r = [Hg(ClO4)2]added/[DNA-P]. A 4- to 5-fold rate increase occurs with DNase I at r = 0.25; a 2-fold increase with staphylococcal nuclease at r = 0.2. By contrast, digestion of poly[d(A-T )· d(A-T)] decreases immediately with increasing r. The noted rate increases appear to be due to a modification of poly[d(A)-d(T)] helix structure prior to the chiroptical conversion. The modification is interpreted as a widening of the minor groove, permitting, thus, a better binding of DNase I to its substrate. The overall changes in CD as well as enzymatic digestion rates are taken to signal mercury-induced alterations in helix screwness from rightto- left. They are totally reversible subsequent to the removal of mercury.


Colorectal cancer is one of the most common forms of gastrointestinal malignancies,and the metastatic spread of colorectal cancer is a common cause for poor prognosis.Although colorectal cancer may spread in a variety of ways,lymphatic vessel invasion and lymphatic metastasis occur commonly in the early stages.Vascular endothelial growth factor-C(VEGF-C)is a gene found in recent years which is closely related to colorectal cancer.VEGF-C and its receptor VEGFR-3play crucial roles in lymphangiogenesis and lymphatic metastasis of colorectal cancer.


Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction 1) The Emergence of the Hollywood Family Feature, 1930-1939 2) Walt Disney and the Beginnings of Feature Animation 3) The Middlebrow Family Film, 1940-1953 4) The Traditional Family Film in Decline, 1953-1968 5) The Independents: Pal, Harryhausen and Radnitz 6) The Modern Family Film and the New Hollywood, 1977-1995 7) The Family Audience and the Global Media Environment Conclusion Select Filmography Select Bibliography Notes Index


literature. But the weaknesses of the volume testify to what might be described as a loss of nerve. The recent vigour of urban historiography on early-modern Scotland contrasts with a sense of exhaustion in dealing with the industrial city despite the manifest proliferation of research. The growth of a discrete literature on the large Scottish cities may be welcomed, but not at the expense of wider perspectives.


One of the learning models that can be implemented in increasing students ability in English is to use Brainstorming. Brainstorming is a learning model that focuses on exchanging opinions with students in the learning process. Brainstorming provides opportunities for students to express their opinions and also create alternative solutions to overcome their writing skills in learning English. The purpose of this study, by using brainstorming can improve students' thinking abilities in expressing opinions in English. The method used for this research uses a qualitative / interpretative paradigm. And the learning process becomes more active after using Brainstorming. So, it can be argued that the use of brainstorming can improve students 'ability to regulate English and also can train students' ability to express opinions. one learning model that can be applied is to use problem based learning (pbl), focused on providing solutions to students' problems. In the use of problem based learning (PBL), there are several ways that can be done, one of them is by brainstorming. brainstorm makes the class more active because it is based on discussion. The participants of this research are the students of class 11, with 2 sessions in the span of one hour of teaching and learning. the result of this research is to improve students' ability in mastering aspects of English especially writing.


Quantum computing has been developed for many physical systems, and superconducting qubits are now in the integration phase. To efficiently design a many qubit system, an appropriate circuit simulator is necessary. Despite the existence of simulators for circuits including Josephson junctions, simpler circuit simulators are desirable when considering integrated qubits controlled by millions of transistors. This study examines the application of conventional Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis simulators to analyze transmission signals of the system composed of transmons in the dispersive regime. Further, the influences of device parameter variations caused by the fabrication process can be taken into the model.


110 children with growth retardation aged 7–16 (constitutional retardation of growth and puberty, familial nanism, growth hormone deficit) and 40 children with normal parameters of physical development as a control group were examined in this research. The cause and effect relations of socio-biological factors, psycho-vegetative changes and high sickness rate in children with retardation of growth established during this research indicate their deadaptation, which requires a differentiated approach to the development of rehabilitation programs.


The primary objective of the project titled ''Demonstration of an Advanced Integrated Control System for Simultaneous Emissions Reduction'' was to demonstrate at proof-of-concept scale the use of an online software package, the ''Plant Environmental and Cost Optimization System'' (PECOS), to optimize the operation of coal-fired power plants by economically controlling all emissions simultaneously. It combines physical models, neural networks, and fuzzy logic control to provide both optimal least-cost boiler setpoints to the boiler operators in the control room, as well as optimal coal blending recommendations designed to reduce fuel costs and fuel-related derates. The goal of the project was to demonstrate that use of PECOS would enable coal-fired power plants to make more economic use of U.S. coals while reducing emissions.


Abstract We study the geometric and topological features of U-statistics of order k when the k-tuples satisfying geometric and topological constraints do not occur frequently. Using appropriate scaling, we establish the convergence of U-statistics in vague topology, while the structure of a non-degenerate limit measure is also revealed. Our general result shows various limit theorems for geometric and topological statistics, including persistent Betti numbers of Čech complexes, the volume of simplices, a functional of the Morse critical points, and values of the min-type distance function. The required vague convergence can be obtained as a result of the limit theorem for point processes induced by U-statistics. The latter convergence particularly occurs in the
$\mathcal M_0$
 -topology.


The limit states design concept is employed. Relations expressing statical properties of the cross section; geometry of the system; and equilibrium, continuity, and strength-conditions are respected, goverened by a properly selected decision function; four decision functions are observed. These relations are expressed in terms of three parameters: web-slenderness, section-asymmetry, and a chord-parameter. Web-slenderness being selected, the latter two parameters represent the only unknowns. Their values follow from solving two rather involved analytical expressions, to which the mentioned numerous relations can be reduced. They are handled numerically by the use of Fibonacci's search and an iterative method. An appropriate organization of results enables the setting up of simple design formulas, with coefficients expressed through the aforementioned three parameters. A table with these sizing coefficients is prepared for a representative scope of characteristic cases.


Within the kinetic approach the stream of heat in the fl at channel with parallel infi nite walls is calculated in the presence of a gradient of pressure parallel to the walls. The generalization of ellipsoidal-statistical model of Boltzmann kinetic equation is used as the basic equation in case of taking into account rotary degrees of freedom of gas molecules, model diffusion refl ections being used as a boundary condition. Dependence of the heat stream value in the channel on the temperature of gas is shown.


Abstract : This thesis discusses the design, specification, and verification of computer operating systems. The operating system problem considered, the many process problem, is the design of an operating system that can support a large number of concurrent processes. This design problem is a vehicle to investigate the use of a design methodology, the hierarchical levels of abstraction methodology; the use of structured programming techniques in the specification of the system; and the development of techniques for the verification of concurrent programs, particularly operating system programs. A solution to the many-process problem is obtained and it is shown that the hierarchical levels of abstraction methodology simplifies the conception of the solution and helps avoid potential deadlocks in the system. A PASCAL specification of the four levels of the system is given demonstrating the usefulness of structured programming techniques for specifying operating system programs.


[Objective] The paper was to explore the adsorption behavior of pymethrozine in soils.[Method] The adsorption behavior of pesticide pymethrozine in five different types of soil was studied using bath equilibrium method,and the effect of soil physical and chemical properties on adsorption of pymethrozine in soils was also explored.[Result] The amount of pymethrozine adsorbed by soils was different in the soils with different properties.Soil pH was the main physical and chemical properties affecting adsorption of the pesticide in soil.The adsorption ability of pymethrozine in five different types of soil successively was Henan cinnamonHunan red loamYunnan clay loamShangdong cinnamonHunan alluvial soil.Freundlich equation could better fit the adsorption isotherm of pymetrozine in soil.The adsorption constant(Kf) of pymethrozine in five tested soils was varied between 6.220 1 and 69.376 0,free energy was 14.70-21.12 kJ/mol,which was manifested as physical adsorption process.[Conclusion] The study provided reference for evaluation on the damage potential of pymetrozine on soil and groundwater.


Sisters came to our hospital complaining of short fingers and toes in 1984. The elder was 8 years old and the younger was 7 years old. They exhibited short metacarpal and metatarsal bones due to early epiphyseal closure on physical examination, and normal serum calcium, phosphorus and parathyroid hormone on laboratory findings, we diagnosed pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism. But they developed hypocalcemia and hyperphosphatemia with the growth spurt. Ellsworth-Howard test recently performed using human PTH showed positive urinary cyclic AMP response and negative phosphauric response, so we diagnosed them pseudohypoparathyroidism Type II by Drezner's classification.We thought their serum calcium level had been barely within normal range with the normal level of circulating 1, 25-dihydroxyvitamin D because of a mild form of pseudohypoparathyroidism, but increased calcium requirement with the growth spurt caused hypocalcemia and hyperphosphatemia.


Although there is no standard pattern to follow because every individual presents different problems, the nurse who knows the general procedures described here can easily adapt them to the care of her own patients.


Government provision of a financial safety net for banks and other financialinstitutions has been a key element of the policy response to the current financialcrisis. In the process, the design of many safety net elements, such as depositinsurance, has been redrawn in many jurisdictions. In particular, governmentsextended existing guarantees and introduced new ones. While these measures didnot address the root causes of the lack of confidence, they were neverthelesshelpful in avoiding a further accelerated loss of confidence, thus buying valuabletime.


The utility model relates to a polyurethane composite board for automobile roof board, which contains a non-woven fabric layer, a first high density polyethylene rubber powder layer, a first glass fibre layer, a second high density polyethylene rubber powder layer, a PU plate, a third high density polyethylene rubber powder layer, a second glass fibre layer, a fourth high density polyethylene rubber powder layer, a first ethane-acrylic acid copolymer rubber powder film, and the a second ethane-acrylic acid copolymer rubber powder layer is provided between the PU plate and the second high density polyethylene rubber film layer. The second ethane-acrylic acid copolymer rubber film layer provided between the PU plate and the second high density polyethylene rubber powder layer solves the phenomenon that the PU plate and the rubber powder layer are bonded non-uniformly or unstably, thereby improving adhesion stress of the polyurethane sandwich and product quality.


This issue of Statutes and Decisions contains the English-language translation of the first 110 articles of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Subsequent issues of Statutes and Decisions will contain the rest of the translated Criminal Procedure Code. This code, which was adopted in 2014 and entered in force in January 2015, contains many innovations. Although criminal procedure remains essentially inquisitorial with a strong pro-accusation bias, the newly adopted Criminal Procedure Code abolishes the phase of preliminary investigation based on the Ukrainian model and introduces the U.S.style plea bargain and "Miranda warning"—an obligation of the police to warn suspects of their rights before arresting them. All of these greatly simplify the work of detectives and investigators by reducing the burden of paperwork. The code creates the position of an investigative judge responsible for deciding detentions, releasing on bail, and so on, based on the Latvian and Ukrainian models. Kazakhstan hired some 400 judges in 2014 to provide human resources for this function. At that time, Kazakhstan was ranked 185th in terms of the share of pretrial detainees (11.7%) in the prison population, the same figure as in Uzbekistan, which was the lowest ranking among the post-Soviet states. According to law enforcement officials, the newly introduced restriction of detention only for charges that carry longer than a five-year term of imprisonment resulted in fewer judge-ordered detentions, causing most jails to be empty at the beginning of 2015. This comes on top of modernization of court proceedings and improvements of courthouses even if they are populated by incompetent and corrupt court officers. The code has also introduced a mediation procedure in criminal


Computing model of electrostatic force acting on a free conducting particle near spacer in inhomogeneous field distributing between diverging electrodes is built. The electrostatic force on a particle is evaluated by computing the Maxwell stress tensor around the 2-D particle model surface through FEM (Finite Element Method). The tilt angle of high voltage electrode, materials and shape of spacer is varied to analyze the factors influencing on the motion of conducting particle. The results show that the upward electrostatic force and horizontal electrostatic force towards spacer on particle lying on the grounded electrode can be decrease by decreasing the tilt angle of high voltage electrode and permittivity of spacer materials and shaping the spacer outline properly. So the probability of levitation and approaching to the spacer can be debased, and the methods can be used to improve the insulation reliability of GIS.


The central argument of this paper is that the popular success of crowd psychology is in part due to its correspondence with the perspective of outgroup members. This is supported by a comparative analysis of traditional crowd psychology and lay accounts of crowd events drawn from street disturbances in St. Pauls, Bristol, in 1980. Five basic types of error are identified in crowd psychology past and present. These are: (1) the abstraction of crowd episodes from their intergroup conflicts, (2) the failure to deal with underlying dynamic processes, (3) exaggeration of the anonymity of crowd members, (4) failure to understand the motives of crowd members, and (5) an overwhelming emphasis on the negativity of crowd events. Analysis of accounts of the St. Pauls disturbance reveals the centrality of these forms of error in outgroup members' versions of events. In contrast, crowd members tended to draw upon very different accounts which stress the meaningfulness of crowd action, solidarity, and positive emotional feelings. The implication of these findings for crowd psychology, the study of everyday accounts, and the genesis of ideological explanations is discussed.


As we perused with great interest the article by Fujinaga et al., we deemed it necessary that their findings regarding the efficacy of vibegron should be considered in the treatment of refractory monosymptomatic nocturnal enuresis (rMNE). In their retrospective study that included 17 children with rMNE who had received vibegron (a single dose of 25 mg daily) as an additional second-line treatment, the median number of wet nights per 4 weeks significantly reduced from 15.4 to 6.8 days (P < 0.001), whereas the median maximum voiding volume significantly increased (25% increase, P < 0.005). Furthermore, it was concluded that vibegron could be a feasible second-line therapeutic option for rMNE. Although we concur with the findings of the study, a potential issue in the administration method needs to be considered. Based on our retrospective analysis, we would like to assess the reliability of another administration method of vibegron for rMNE. In the study, six children with MNE (five boys; median age 10 years) from our affiliated institutions (Tokyo Rinkai Hospital and Aiiku Clinic) were enrolled between April 2019 and June 2020. The inclusion criteria included thorough basic bladder advice, and patients with MNE were non-responsive to the dose of 240 μg desmopressin melt, with a median of 14 wet nights per 4 weeks (IQR 14.5–24.2). Furthermore, a 50-mg vibegron tablet (Beova; Kissei Pharmaceutical, Tokyo, Japan) was given every second day for 4 weeks as an additional therapy. Regarding the response rates after 4 weeks, five patients (83%) responded to the medication completely (n = 1) or partially (n = 4) in accordance with the International Children's Continence Society terminology without any side-effects, and the median number of wet nights was significantly reduced from 14 to 1.5 days (89% reduction, P = 0.037). In the present study, the therapeutic effect of rMNE was obtained through the administration of a 50-mg vibegron tablet every second day. According to the interview about vibegron (https://di.kissei.co.jp/dst01/pdf/if_bv04.pdf, in Japanese), the approved dose of this product, consistent with the Japanese health insurance practice, is 50 mg, and it is also not recommended to halve the dose (25 mg each). Although the elimination half-life of vibegron is approximately 70 h, it is considered that even if the drug is administered at a dose of 50 mg every second day, a sufficient effect can be expected. Furthermore, in the treatment of nocturnal enuresis, it is important to maintain a healthy lifestyle and diligently comply with medication regimen. Therefore, a simpler alternate-day administration of the 50-mg vibegron tablet should be taken into consideration, especially for children with enuresis. However, the present study was limited by its retrospective nature with a very small sample size, and having no comparison of the pharmacokinetics between the daily 25 mg and 50 mg per alternate-day administration. Therefore, further multicenter, longterm, prospective randomized controlled studies are required to evaluate the optimal administration method in addition to the efficacy and safety of vibegron for children with rMNE.


Impulse waves generated by subaerial landslides of a block model along a frictionless surface are investigated numerically based on a combination of immersed boundary method and lattice Boltzmann method. A wave propagation model is proposed through machine learning. The observed impulse waves are classified into Stokes-like waves, solitary-like waves, cnoidal-like waves, and bore-like waves. The influence of the slope angle and the slide front angle on the generation and propagation of impulse waves is investigated from the perspectives of the quantitative analyses on primary wave amplitude and energy transformation. The energy release, dissipation, and propagation of the impulsive waves are investigated based on energy conservation principles. The wave propagation model based on the random forest model is established upon a priori classification of wave types. By comparison with the available numerical results, the accuracy of the proposed wave propagation model in predicting free water surface elevations is demonstrated.


Accurate temporal measurement of cerebral hemodynamic activity requires DOT instrumentation capable of acquiring noninvasive real-time imagery with minimal temporal distortion. Since off-theshelf DOT instruments are not commercially available, most researchers either design and build their own equipment or collaborate with other laboratories which already have DOT instruments. However the ambiguities introduced by using borrowed instrumentation with nebulous performance specifications and little, if any, formal documentation leads most serious researchers in the field of photon migration imaging to pursue the design of their own equipment. But before any instrumentation can be built, the system requirements must first be understood so that the proper design trades can be made. Therefore Chapter 4 begins by introducing the spectral, temporal, and optical flux ranges over which DOT measurements are performed. Optical sources and detectors are then discussed with respect to their suitability for use in DOT instrumentation. Tomographic optical measurements, by their nature, require some form of source encoding to disambiguate the various optical sources. Thus the need for source encoding is explained and a number of popular source encoding techniques are described. An attempt at improving methods of source encoding led to the development of a new optical encoding technique, Pulse-TDM, which allows for advanced capabilities like individualized gain control while providing very high dynamic range and minimal temporal skew in the optical imagery. The concept of individualized gain control is then introduced and is validated through an in-vivo measurement. The design evolution of a variety of DOT instruments is then presented, ranging from CW1, the first tomographic system we constructed, to CW4, the flexible high-speed frequency encoded DOT system used to perform the temporal hemodynamic response measurements discussed later in this dissertation. Lessons learned from the evaluation and use of each system were applied towards the design of future systems. The results of in-vivo performance evaluations and laboratory measurements used to characterize some of these instruments are also included in Chapter 4.


This work was funded by CIEd – Research Centre on Education/Institute of Education, University of Minho (UID/CED/1661/2013 and UID/CED/1661/2016) and CIDTFF/University of Aveiro (UID/CED/00194/2013 ), through the national funds of FCT/MCTES-PT.


A distinction between Cartesian knowers (who are capable of all forms of metacognition) and ground-floor cognizers are drawn. B.B., a virtual ground-floor cognizer, is extensively described: what it knows, what it doesn't know, and what concepts can be attributed to it. The fragmented nature of iterated cognitions is described. That deduction need not require metacognitions of any sort is described: in successfully deducing q from p, an agent need not recognize or appreciate that she is using propositions, that she is using a rule (modus ponens), or that she is justified. A psychological study of deduction is described, and how it fails to illustrate metacognition is illustrated. The apparent ineffability of metacognition in nonhuman animals is discussed. A single anecdotal case of metacognition in chimpanzees is given, and an implicit knowledge generalization is attributed to the animals on the basis of this case. The use of Morgan's canon is rejected.


Acute ischemic stroke is a common disease serevely threatening the public health. The main management involves intravenous thrombolysis, intra-arterial thrombolysis and mechanical embolectomy. Recently, endovascular mechanical embolectomy is attracted more attention because it provides a good outcome for patients either ineligible not responsible for IV thrombolytic therapy. The article reviews the relative aspects with summerization in this field.


In this paper, the clustering of the GaAs-based droplet epitaxially grown self-assembled nanostructures was investigated by soft-computing methods. The properties and the operation of these devices, depend on the type, the shape, the size, and their distribution of these 0 dimensional nanostructures. Because of this, it is very important to know, how and what kind of nanostructures can form, at the given technological parameters. Our goal is the classification of these nanostructures, in order to support the research and the production of these devices. Our solution is based on the shape factor calculation of the given nanostructure. In this work, two possible classification methods of nanostructures were introduced as well. First, the classification potential of the Kohonen Self-Organizing Mapping (SOM) was investigated. Second, the fuzzy inference system based classification was studied. In this case, the shape factor was determined by geometrical sizes of the nanostructures. In this paper the clustering was introduced, which supports many kinds of technology as well.


The three-layer film, a polyimide resin film and a polyimide double-sided laminate in the imide resin film hydroxycarboxylic acids the mesogen group include a liquid crystal polymer layer, wherein the polyimide resin thickness (T1) and said hydroxide of the film the hydroxy carboxylic thickness (T2) of the liquid crystal polymer layer to an acid group mesogens, satisfies the relation (a) and (b) or less (however, the two T2 are independently of each other, may be the same or may be different ). (A) 20 ㎛≤T1≤50 ㎛ (B) 0.3≤T2 / T1≤1.5


Arabic language is still facing some difficulties in automatic processing relating to the richness, morphology,phonetic and lexicon. This paper presents a new strategy for building a morphological field dictionary for Arabiclanguage. Our strategy is divides into two parts. The first, extracts an efficient Field Association FA words for eachdomain specific. Second, generates the Part Of Speech (POS) tagging for these (FA) word and collect them in oneframe. After that, the FA words with its frame collected in alphabetic order. The method of building the automaticmorphological field dictionary using a main algorithm is discussed and studied. The advantage of our approach is tobuild an extended and updated automatic Arabic morphological field dictionary. The average of the accuracy measures(F measures) of the experimental results is up to 76 %.


The basic experiment and detailed simulations are carried out to study the aerodynamic characteristics of projectile with deflectable nose. The parameters of computation are revised on the basis of experimental data. Further simulations show that the influence of mach number and deflectable angle on drag, lift, pitching moment and flight trajectory. The drag coefficient increases firstly and then decreases with the change of mach number, while drag coefficient and pitching moment coefficient grows exponentially. It can be seen that the ratio of lift to drag increases consistently, which means the aerodynamic efficiency of projectile would be improved with the increase of deflectable angle and mach number. The range is influenced by the start time of deflection. For the projectile with deflectable angle 10, the maximum range can be obtained if the forehead deflects at 3s.


As a result of their reliability and efficiency, electric motors often tend to be forgotten when companies are thinking about energy efficiency. However, with a yearly energy bill to industry of £4 billion, even the smallest reduction in operating costs will bring a significant return. ETSU's Dr Hugh Falkner argues the case for a thorough review of electric motors and highlights the benefits of switching to new, higher efficiency models.


Substantial improvements have been made by the surgical manufacturing industry in the development of implants and by the orthopedic surgeon in the use of prosthetic appliances. In spite of these advancements, some prosthetic devices completely fail of do not provide satisfactory performance. Hostile environmental conditions of the human body are highly influential in limiting the service life of the implants, so the material selection and the design and fabrication must be made with extreme care. Examinations we have made of intramedullary pins retrieved from femurs reveal examples of fretting and/or crevice corrosion and in-service failures that nucleated in microscopic surface gouges. Self-tapping screws, essential for securing bone implants, failed due to fractures originating in the thread roots. Failures by merely exceeding the ultimate strength of the material and by the more involved process of stress corrosion cracking are shown.

An evaluation laboratory for failure analyses of prostheses is recommended.


The success of one school's app building project was not due to the software used or the way pupils were organised – but to the fact it had a real life application.


Magnesium alloys with their unique physical and chemical properties are important candi‐ dates for many modern engineering applications. Their density, being the lowest of all structural metals, makes them the primary choice in global attempts aimed at reducing the weight of transportation vehicles. However, magnesium also creates challenges at certain stages of raw alloy melting, fabrication of net-shape components and their service. The first one is caused byvery high affinity of magnesium to oxygen, which requires protective atmospheres increasing manufacturing cost and heavily contributing to greenhouse gas emissions [1] [2] [3]. While magnesium exhibits high affinity to oxygen, at temperatures corresponding to semisolid or liquid states it is also highly corrosive towards materials it contacts [4] [5] [6]. This imposes challenges to the selection of materials used to contain, transfer or process molten magnesium during manufacturing operations.


In this paper, we present a study of efficient data selection and annotation strategies for Amharic hate speech. We also build various classification models and investigate the challenges of hate speech data selection, annotation, and classification for the Amharic language. From a total of over 18 million tweets in our Twitter corpus, 15.1k tweets are annotated by two independent native speakers, and a Cohen's kappa score of 0.48 is achieved. A third annotator, a curator, is also employed to decide on the final gold labels. We employ both classical machine learning and deep learning approaches, which include fine-tuning AmFLAIR and AmRoBERTa contextual embedding models. Among all the models, AmFLAIR achieves the best performance with an F1-score of 72%. We publicly release the annotation guidelines, keywords/lexicon entries, datasets, models, and associated scripts with a permissive license.


We demonstrate, experimentally and theoretically, surface-wave solitons occurring at the interface between a dielectric medium (air) and a nonlinear material with high range of nonlocality.


The article is dedicated to the problem of improvement of the quality of engineering education. The analysis of scientific research has established the following: modern pedagogical approaches are not used to a large extent in universities, which does not allow to intensively build the competencies of future engineers. The author has developed suggestions for improving the process of higher education in the context of modern approaches to education. He argues that for the effective training of future engineers in accordance with selected innovative training tools (interactive methods and technologies) and updated content of engineering education with focus on competency-based approach, psychological and pedagogical support (selection of methods and tools) should be selected. Simultaneous formation of multiple competencies can occur in the framework of solving the problem of mastering the unit of educational content through interactive actions using a certain technological method (its content and the content of education define specific competency components).


Introduction: Letters, Soldiers and Love in Time of War. 1. Dear Mum and Dad - Bob Wilson's War: Using a series of letters between a Northland soldier and his parents this chapter traces the complexity of the relationships between soldier sons and civilian parents. Bob Wilson died in 1943 after the Italian ship on which he was being held as a prisoner of war was torpedoed and sunk. The chapter ends the story the Wilsons' war with an account of his mother's efforts to find out what happened to her son after he was taken prisoner. 2. Dear Darling - Duncan and Gay Gray's War:Letters from civilians to soldiers (as opposed to letters from soldier's to civilians) are comparatively rare because few soldiers were in a position to archive the correspondence they received. Gay Booth, the Lady Editress of Wellington's Evening Post, married her sweetheart Duncan Gary shortly after the outbreak of war. A group of Gay Gray's letters to her husband survived the war because they were returned to sender after her husband went missing. Through them we can glimpse some of the emotional trials of wartime separation from the vantage point of one of the many civilian women attempting to put their lives on hold until their loved one's return. 3. My Dears - Jack Lewis' War: Jack Lewis was a father as well as a husband. The Lewis correspondence gives some of the tenor of soldiering through the latter half of the war when volunteering had become obsolete and the novelty of war worn thin. Unlike the other correspondence we have examined, these letters have the added dimension of including children among their addressees. The gendered identity Lewis crafted in his the letters was complex he was at once a soldier, husband, father and man alone. Through these family letters we can discern some of the challenges of war from a parent's point of view: the excitement of being part of something big, the family routines giving way to new routines of troop life, the idealisation of family life in memory and in writing, and the truncated, yet still responsible relationship between a soldier father and his children. Conclusion Bibliography. Index


Adolescent pregnancy and parenting are major societal problems. The authors describe a peer-counseling model aimed at preventing repeat pregnancy and school drop-out among adolescent mothers. Well-functioning teen mothers were paid to be peer counselors to younger pregnant teens. Repeat pregnancy, school, and employment status were evaluated after the intervention, suggesting the program's positive impact.


This paper presents a digital domain foreground calibration algorithm for flash analog-to-digital converters (ADC). In deep sub-micron technologies, for low voltage and low power applications, random mismatch appearing in comparator circuits induce large offset voltages. The linearity of a flash ADC gets adversely affected by the offset voltages. In the proposed method, a lookup table (LUT) based offset calibration technique has been introduced to nullify the effect of comparator offset voltages to improve the linearity of the flash ADC. Behavioural simulation result of a 6 bit flash ADC shows that after calibration SNDR gets improved from 28.01 dB to 33.23 dB.


Using the technique of small watershed,the hydrologic factors and hydrochemistry were measured systematically from 1989 to 1993 in tropical mountain rain forest of Jianfengling,Hainan Island,China.The annual rainfall ranged from 1822mm to 3228mm and 14.3% of annual rainfall was intercepted by the canopy layer.Runoff coefficient changed between 0.31 to 0.71 per year.Except Ca,mean contents of nutrients in internal rainfall of forest increased by 1.5-12.5 times as compared with that of rainfall per year due to effect of forest canopy layer.About 5.2-11.6 (kg/hm~2.a) of input Ca by rainfall could be absorbed by the canopy layer of forest.85.4% of annual rainfall was distributed in rainy season.In rainy season,the input amount of each element by precipitation accouted for 58.1%-90.0% of annual input amount of that,and leaching amount of elements accouted for 72.2%-89.2% of the annual leaching of that.The system had good adjust function of the hydrochemistry mechanisim,annual net store amounts of N,Ca,Mg,P,Mn in system amounted to 47.3%,43.5%,40.5%,39.5%,136% of that input amounts by rainfall,respectively.So the chemical accumulation of the system was strengthened.According to the method of the Grey System Theory,GM(1,2) models of the Grey had been established between leaching amount of element and rainfall for six hydrochemistry elements.These models suited to calculate canopy leaching of the hydrochemical elements in the system.


Subject
 The prospects for manufacturing in 2020.

 Significance
 Manufacturing directly accounts for 16% of global GDP, and for a higher share of economic activity in the major emerging economies than in most advanced economies. Manufacturing growth is expected to slow or contract in all industrial economies over the next twelve months, driven by the US-China trade tensions, faltering demand, consolidation and the disruptive impact of technology.


Signal processing of acoustic signals scattered from distributed objects and in time-varying environments has become an increasing challenge. A major difficulty is to estimate or characterize the distributed scattering phenomena. Often, a spreading function or a scattering function are used to characterize the spreading that results when the signal is scattered. This article shows how wavelet processing can be used to more accurately characterize signal spreading when the transmit waveform has a large bandwidth. This wavelet processing is then used to estimate the wideband scattering function associated with scattering from distributed objects or within complex time-varying channels.


The University and its affiliated foundations are subjected to a variety of audits or reviews annually by State Auditors and Agencies, Federal Auditors and Agencies, an independent CPA firm, and Internal Auditors. The nature of these audits and reviews are different for each. The State Auditors perform a very detailed audit of the University's Financial Statements and transactions including a review of compliance with state rules and regulations. The external CPA firm also audit the University's Intercollegiate Athletic Program in accordance with NCAA audit guidelines. Reviews by State Agencies, Federal Auditors and Federal Agencies are usually very narrow in scope and focus on details of compliance in a specific area or the financial components of a specific contract or grant. The independent CPA firm audit of the University Endowment, Investment Fund, and Affiliated Foundations is a more typical financial audit in which materiality is considered in the nature and extent of work performed. The reviews performed by the Internal Auditors focus mainly on internal control and compliance with University policies and procedures, and federal and state rules and regulations.


Outrigger systems is one of the main structural systems that is adopted in resisting lateral loads effectively in the last century and still has remained one of the solutions for wind governing tall structures.


Using a new dataset on the innovation and exports of 500 South African firms, this paper asks whether exports affect rm innovation in the context of an emerging economy. We use a range of particularly attractive features of the dataset. Firms not only report whether they innovated but describe their innovation - which reduces measurement error - and provide extensive information on their other links with foreign countries or firms. We conrm that product innovation is strongly associated with exports, even though other measures of innovation are not (e.g. process innovation). Exporters typically report very different reasons to innovate than non-exporters, which suggests that exporting provides additional incentives to innovate, and that the causality runs at least partly from exporting to innovating. Instrumenting the export status of a firm using its distance from the nearest port or airport, we however do not find any statistically signicant relationship between exports and innovation in the second stage. We conclude that, even though exports seem to causally raise innovation through some channels, the quantitative effects appear too weak to be captured by an instrument that is not extremely powerful.


This essay examines the ways in which responding in the college classroom to events of social injustice may lead to a richer learning experience for students.


In the article the author makes an attempt to classify radiodiscourse in according to the existing classifications of discourses. Being a type of oral discourse of mass media it possesses its certain characteristics such as unprepared nature of official speech, tendencies to deterioration of a linguistic norm and an intimate manner of speaking. Moreover, clearly defined roles, specified place and context of communication, chronotope, certain typical discursive formulae allow to define radiodiscourse as an institutional discourse. However, extralinguistic conditions in which radiocommunication takes place bring about such peculiarities of radiodiscourse as distance and mediation, mass nature of audience, omnitude, high information rate, direct connection to time, in particular irreversibility, linearity, continuity. Though radiodiscourse has universal characteristics of both oral mediaand institutional discourses, the named peculiarities make it possible to distinguish it in discourse diversity, where it has a certain quite independent position.


whenever lal < 2[n/2] + 2 and 1,81 < [5n/4(1 p)] + 1 where 0 < p < 1. Kato, in [2], establishes L2-boundedness even if the condition is only satisfied for lal < [n/2] + 1 and 13,81 < [n/2] + 2. He was motivated by and used the method of Cordes in [3]. Cordes proved L2-boundedness if the condition is satisfied for lal < [n/2] + 1 and I,fI < [n/2] + 1, but with p = 0. That is, Cordes' symbols were bounded. We expand Kato's result, needing only a Holder continuity condition which will require slightly less smoothness for a(x, z). This, unfortunately, may be somewhat obscured by the fact that we look at a(x, z) as being a function of 2n real variables rather than 2 n-vector variables. This different point of view is used in the original paper of Calderon and Vaillancourt [4] and also in [5], which are results for bounded symbols. Our paper makes reasonably available results previously given in [6]. To state our result, we must introduce certain notations. DEFINITION. Let a be a complex-valued function on Rn. Then, the shift operator is defined by


We use character-based statistical machine translation in order to correct user search queries in the e-commerce domain. The training data is automatically extracted from event logs where users re-issue their search queries with potentially corrected spelling within the same session. We show results on a test set which was annotated by humans and compare against online autocorrection capabilities of three additional web sites. Overall, the methods presented in this paper outperform fully productized spellchecking and autocorrection services in terms of accuracy and F1 score. We also propose novel evaluation steps based on retrieved search results of the corrected queries in terms of quantity and relevance.


ST. LOUIS – Esse Health's Southside Family Practice continues to expand with the addition of Physician Assistant Emily Bira. The office recently moved up one floor from its previous location to accommodate the recent hires of Bira and family physician Dr. Payal Patel. Bira graduated in 2011 from Arcadia University Physician Assistant Program in Philadelphia with an emphasis in primary care. Her training included a clinical rotation in Belize and volunteering at a clinic in Haiti, and she looks forward to future medical mission trips abroad.


The synthesis, optoelectronic, and photovoltaic properties of novel acceptor–donor–acceptor (A–D–A) based π‐conjugated functional molecules 1–3, comprising a planar S,N‐heteropentacene as central donor substituted with various terminal acceptor units, such as 1,1‐dicyanovinylene (DCV) and 1‐(1,1‐dicyanomethylene)‐cyclohex‐2‐ene (DCC), are reported. The structural variation of the end groups provides molecules 1–3 with gradually increased π‐conjugation due to a rising number of double bonds, which comes from the DCC unit(s). From optoelectronic investigation, structure–property relationships are deduced and the novel A–D–A heteropentacenes 1–3 are implemented as photoactive donor component in solution‐processed bulk heterojunction solar cells together with [6,6]‐phenyl‐C61‐butyric acid methyl ester as acceptor. The structural variation in the S,N‐heteropentacenes leads to clear trends in the photovoltaic performance and power conversion efficiencies of up to 4.9% are achieved. Furthermore, due to extension of the double bonds a clear trade‐off between the open circuit voltage (V OC) and the short circuit current density (J SC) values is observed. The role of additives on the optimization of the nanoscale morphology and device performance is investigated. The findings presented herein demonstrate that depending on the types of materials the additive may have significantly different effects on the active layer morphology and the device performance.


In this research, pdyeghersulfone hollow fiber dialyser for separation plasma of blood compatibility was evaluated using the hemolysis test, the dynamic cruor time test, the outside body thrombosis test, and the adhesion of blood patelet test. The results showed the material had good blood compatibility and accorded with the requirements for medical biomaterial.


The inevitability of the crisis phenomenon in modern enterprises requires their proper diagnose. This create the need to identify the ways, which allows to carry out the diagnosis, which should include identification of external and internal crisis factors, but also the opportunities and strengths of enterprise, because they determine the possibilities to overcome the crisis and the recovery and development. The article presents the role of the strategic analysis in the study of the development possibility of hard coal mining enterprise in the crisis situation.


We have developed two types of innovative LCD displays: a 5‐inch FHD and a 7‐inch WQXGA. Both feature 0.96mm module thickness with 1mm narrow border, a 50% less backlight power consumption by adopting a unique RGBW display technology. They are also equipped with an in‐cell touch panel system which achieves stylus input.


n the past 10 to 15 years the oil and gas industry has invested heavily in costeffective field development solutions, with many millions of dollars spent on developing new subsea production, boosting and processing tools [1]. As an industry leader in this sector, ABB has developed new technology that can be a catalyst for the fruitful exploitation of new tools for subsea oil and gas production. In recent years, the industry has also focused on the auxiliary systems and building blocks that will be required to establish economically sound and flexible total subsea oil and gas production systems. Within this context, the market has shown a strong interest in subsea electrical power supply systems able to transmit, distribute and control electrical power in the megawatt range. It was to meet this need that ABB embarked on the development of the Subsea Electrical Power Distribution System (SEPDIS) 1 . SEPDIS is designed to transmit electrical power to every location requiring energy via a single subsea power cable, as opposed to the present-day use of individual cables to carry power separately to subsea consumers. Thus, SEPDIS brings to the market an electrical system solution more in line with those in use on-shore. Other advantages offered by the SEPDIS concept are greater flexibility, eg with respect to the step-out distance from the supply point, the number of consumers, step-wise system extensions, and solutions to fundamental electrical problems involving harmonics and load start-up phenomena.


While there have been many studies of the comprehension of different styles of black and white visual stimuli by nonliterate populations, little has been done with colored illustrations. Since the latter are becoming more accessible worldwide, it was found necessary to determine what types would be easiest for children from these groups to perceive. Paintings and photographs of familiar subjects, taken from readily available textbooks, were shown to 71 6-year-olds from six Mexican-Indian groups to determine their overall rate of comprehension (80%) and the effect of the medium on perception. There were no significant differences in comprehension between media (photographs and paintings), but there were between the sexes and between two of the ethnic groups.


Significance The human gut is populated by a dense microbial population, strongly impacting health and disease. Metagenomic sequencing has led to crucial insights into microbiota changes in response to various perturbations, but a mechanistic understanding of these changes is largely missing. As the composition of the gut microbiota is a consequence of bacterial growth, we propose an approach that focuses on bacterial growth in the human large intestine and the physiological factors influencing it. Using a combination of experimental analysis and quantitative simulations, we explain the observed variation in microbiota composition among healthy humans and the dominant role of nutrient inflow and stool consistency. Our quantitative modeling framework is a step toward a predictive understanding of microbiota dynamics in the human host. The human gut harbors a dynamic microbial community whose composition bears great importance for the health of the host. Here, we investigate how colonic physiology impacts bacterial growth, which ultimately dictates microbiota composition. Combining measurements of bacterial physiology with analysis of published data on human physiology into a quantitative, comprehensive modeling framework, we show how water flow in the colon, in concert with other physiological factors, determine the abundances of the major bacterial phyla. Mechanistically, our model shows that local pH values in the lumen, which differentially affect the growth of different bacteria, drive changes in microbiota composition. It identifies key factors influencing the delicate regulation of colonic pH, including epithelial water absorption, nutrient inflow, and luminal buffering capacity, and generates testable predictions on their effects. Our findings show that a predictive and mechanistic understanding of microbial ecology in the gut is possible. Such predictive understanding is needed for the rational design of intervention strategies to actively control the microbiota.


Effect of various environmental stresses on the fatty acid (FA) profile of benthic harpacticoid copepod (Pararobertsonia sp.) was checked In vitro. Samples were exposed to different pH (5, 7 and 9) and salinity (15, 20, 25, 30 and 35 ppt) at constant temperature 25oC for 30 days. After the treatment, different fatty acid levels were determined using Gas Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS). Results clearly indicated the positive influence of the combined effect of environmental parameter on the fatty acid content in experimental samples. The detected FAs were ranging from C5-24. Palmetic and oleic acids were in higher percentage in all the experiments. Results clearly indicated that pH7:25ppt & 35ppt at 25oC ambient water temperature would help in producing copepods (Pararobertsonia sp.) that expresses rich fatty acid profile with high EPA/DHA ratio.


Abstract Increased resolution of steroid mixtures was found in high performance liquid chromatography of steroids at subambient temperatures. With aqueous mobile phase using a reversed phase column it was not possible to decrease temperatures below −10°C due to increased viscosity. This report describes further increase in resolution at −50°C using a non-aqueous mobile phase for the separation of steroids. Retention times were shorter several fold while resolution was improved.


Introduction: Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs), PPARα, PPARγ, and PPARδ, are nuclear ligand-activated transcription factors which presumably contribute to a broad range of pathophysiological processes, such as tumorigenesis. Nevertheless, their exact role as tumor suppressors or promoters is not straightforward in colorectal cancer (CRC). Therefore, expression values of these PPARs and their relation with tumor progression and prognosis were examined in CRC patients. Methods: In this work, the relative expression values of the PPARs were measured by real-time polymerase chain reaction in 100 CRC tumor tissues paired with adjacent normal tissues. After that, the association between relative expression values of the PPARs in tumor tissues and the cancer progression-related clinicopathological characteristics as well as overall survival of patients were assessed. Results: While PPARα and PPARδ seemed to be overexpressed, PPARγ was suppressed in CRC tumor tissues compared with paired adjacent normal tissues (p = 0.0001). The relative expressions of PPARα and PPARδ were negatively associated with tumor size, tumor grade, TNM stage, metastasis, lymphatic invasion, and decreased overall survival time (p < 0.05). The same associations, but in reverse direction, were found for PPARγ. Conclusions: It was found that PPARα and PPARδ were overexpressed while PPARγ was suppressed in CRC tumor tissues, and these deregulations are associated with cancer progression and poor prognosis.


Relates the roles of measure and inspection on the hands of raw material,production quality and saving energy,and puts forward management of measure is a impartant guarantee of enterprise creating the well known brand.


Copyright: © 2014 Jones M, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Figure 1: Ultrasound image showing a large cystic lesion in close proximity to vital intra-abdominal vessels. Figure 3: Gigantic mesenteric lymphatic malformation removed in toto still attached to its origin at the third part of the duodenum. Figure 2: T2 weighted MRI coronal slice showing large multi-septated cystic, gigantic mesenteric lymphatic malformation. J o u r n a l o f M ed ical Diagostic M et h o d s


A computational model is developed for incompressible, 2-dimensional, unsteady free surface flows to study the conditions of total volume conservation. Free surface tracking methods used in the numerical simulation of unsteady free surface flows may introduce sources or sinks resulting in changes in total fluid volume in the computational domain. The model is based on finite volume discretization of the Navier-Stokes equations coupling momentum and mass conservation. Free surface position is tracked using VOF method. Possible free surface cell configurations and a solution procedure for continuity are described. Liquid sloshing in a partially filled rectangular containers are simulated. Numerical solutions preserving total volume are presented. Computed free surface profiles are verified by experimental. The Navier-Stokes equations are assumed to hold in the liquid domain and have been solved numerically in developed two-dimensional grids, while the dynamical effects in the ideal gas are disregarded. Also all of the vortexes generated in the flow have been modelled and analyzed numerically. Comparisons of the computed results with exact solutions showed that the method is capable of achieving high accuracy and efficiency with minimal computational effort.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.mech.18.4.2326


The Chinese traditional culture is the culture that the Chinese nation from ancient to present evolves the accumulation of cultural history.The history of the Chinese traditional culture is not only exhibited the universally acknowledged magnificence,but also recorded national distress.The contemporary revolution of Chinese traditional culture must synthesize own outstanding cultural essence and the world-advanced culture,and realize oneself to exceed its decayed traditional culture.The Chinese science and technique will step onto the technological revolution orbit of world when it exceeds its decayed traditional culture.


Abstract In the mid twentieth century, Los Angeles boasted a large community of German speakers. Drawing from archival research, this paper will examine the ways in which German language weekly newspapers and a German language cinema conceived of and communicated with their audiences. Through examinations of both language usage and visual imagery, this paper argues that, despite a plurality of German speakers in L.A., German language media organizations marketed to a European-based notion of Germanness. Such marketing reveals a practice of exclusion of non-typical German speakers and ultimately provides insight into the early postwar Angeleno German-speaking community.


A self-powered electric closestool water tank fitting includes a water intake valve at a water intake opening of the water tank, an electric water outlet valve at the water outlet opening of the water tank, as well as at least a small-sized waterpower generator. A turbo of the small-sized waterpower generator is installed at the water intake passage of the water opening of the water tank for the water intake pipe and water intake valve. The stress surface of a generator impeller is facing to intake water current, and an electricity output line of the small-sized waterpower generator is connected with a power supply circuit of the electric water outlet valve. The utility model uses the water current of the water intake opening of the closestool water tank for electricity supply of the electric water outlet valve, which achieves the self-powered for the electric closestool without connection with commercial power, installment and battery replacement, and takes advantages of convenient usage and saving electricity.


Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce enterprise portals and show their ability to provide integrated services in the local government domain.Design/methodology/approach – This paper describes the development and early stage deployment of enterprise portals within two country councils in the UK.Findings – In both cases the portal is seen as a key element of their e‐government activities, enabling the councils to meet Central Government targets in this area. The intention is for the portals to provide a single location for residents, businesses and council staff, wishing to access the online information and transactional services provided by the councils. The portals offer the councils a number of very significant benefits that will improve service delivery to citizens, including the ability to share information across their own directorates and also to improve working with other agencies.Research limitations/implications – This study is based on just two organizations, both based in the UK. ...


The article presents a study and a publication of two rare canons to John the Baptist. The canon with the opening words "Plodonosen tsvetets" ("A fertile flower ") is known in two versions. One of them is found in two fourteenth-century manuscripts located in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (Fonds 381, Nos. 114 and 116). The other survived in just one copy – a seventeenth-century manuscript in the Kirillo-Belozerskoe collection (No. 232/489) in the National Library of Russia. This version is peculiar in that it is a combination of the original troparia of this canon and the troparia borrowed from the canon "Molchanie starche" ("Elder's silence"), which the Studite typikon assigned to the Afterfeast of the Nativity of the Forerunner. The second canon, which according to its character can be called "rejoicing", is known from the only manuscript of a sixteenth-century psalter in the Solovetskoe collection (No. 762/872) in the National Library of Russia. It consists of common greetings – the anaphoric chairetismoi.


Background Previous studies established an association between laboratory-confirmed influenza infection (LCI) and hospitalization for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) but not causality. We aimed to explore the underlying mechanisms by adding biological mediators to an established study design used by earlier studies. Methods With data on biomarkers, we used a self-controlled case-series design to evaluate the effect of LCI on hospitalization for AMI among Veterans Health Administration (VHA) patients. We included senior Veterans (age 65 years and older) with LCI between 2010 through 2015. Patient-level data from VHA electronic medical records were used to capture laboratory results, hospitalizations, and baseline patient characteristics. We defined the "risk interval" as the first 7 days after specimen collection and the "control interval" as 1 year before and 1 year after the risk interval. More importantly, using mediation analysis, we examined the role of abnormal white blood cell (WBC) and platelet count in the relationship between LCI and AMI to explore the thrombogenic nature of this association, thus potential causality. Results We identified 391 hospitalizations for AMI that occurred within +/-1 year of a positive influenza test, of which 31 (31.1 admissions/week) occurred during the risk interval and 360 (3.5/per week) during the control interval, resulting in an incidence ratio (IR) for AMI admission of 8.89 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 6.16–12.84). In stratified analyses, AMI risk was significantly elevated among patients with high WBC count (IR, 12.43; 95% CI: 6.99–22.10) and high platelet count (IR, 15.89; 95% CI: 3.59–70.41). Conclusion We confirmed a significant association between LCI and AMI. The risk was elevated among those with high WBC or platelet count, suggesting a potential role for inflammation and platelet activation in the underlying mechanism.


Abstract : A test plan is designed to: evaluate the performance of several types of LORAN-C receivers in the vicinity of both a large metropolitan and a small rural airport; measure the electromagnetic interference in the LORAN-C band (100 + or - 50 KHZ) at various locations likely to produce radio noise; and determine the amplitude, frequency and modulation of all significant interfering signals in the LORAN-C band using as primary measurement equipment, a calibrated antenna system and a spectrum analyzer. (Author)


The second-order long period wave forces acting on a two- dimensional fixed obstacle of arbitrary shape in bichromatic waves in water of finite depth are investigated. In the evaluation, the second-order effect of a wave maker is included to satisfy the precise boundary condition in an experimental tank. The solution of the second-order diffraction problem is obtained by using a hybrid type boundary integral equation method. Using this method, the complicated second-order free surface condition can be treated easily by using the analytical form of second-order velocity potential. Computations are carried out for a half immersed circular cylinder and the calculated results are compared with the results obtained from green's second identity. These results are also compared with experimental values and the validity of the method is discussed.


The present invention relates to a route search system, a route search method, and a route search program. In determining the new departure and the case where the new destination, the departure area and extracted by the past route to a destination by region, to search for new exit point of departure of the new partial route departure side search path from the inlet past the new destination location to a new destination side portion of the path, searching sequentially through the side portion of the path of the new start, a new candidate route past the last part of the path between the exit point and the path entrance location, and a side portion of the path of the new destination , and calculates the cost of the new candidate path, the path candidate search for a new minimum cost as a new route.


A rapid quantification technique is developed and validated for nondestructively quantifying Vitamin C content of navel orange using NIR spectroscopy in conjunction with genetic algorithm (GA) and Gene expression programming (GEP) algorithm. The spectral are recorded in the NIR region using the fiber optic probe method. Four data points of the navel orange NIR are selected by genetic algorithm and GEP algorithm by cross validation. In our experiment, the correlative coefficient between predicted and measured values in the training group is 0.9206, and that of the validation group is 0.8994, the results show that the proposed method can be built to a concise easily computed model, which has feasible accuracy.


In two dimensions, topological phases of free Majorana fermions coupled to a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge field are known to be classified according to the Chern number $\nu \in \mathbb{Z}$. Its value modulo 16 specifies the type of anyonic excitations. In this work, we investigate triangular vortex configurations (and their dual) in the Kitaev honeycomb model and show that fourteen of these sixteen phases can be obtained by adding a time-reversal symmetry-breaking term. Missing phases are $\nu=\pm 7$. More generally, we prove that any periodic vortex configuration with an odd number of vortices per geometric unit cell can only host even Chern numbers whereas odd Chern numbers can be found in other cases.


Before we knew it, the world was locked down and COVID-19 was our unavoidable daily reality Because of this dynamic, the roundtable became a kind of historical chronicle of what will surely be one of the transformational moments of the twenty-first century SUSAN NANCE is professor of history and affiliated faculty with the Campbell Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada GABRIEL N ROSENBERG is associate professor of gender, sexuality, and feminist studies and history at Duke University [ ]there is a rich opportunity for scholars to give animals their due


This paper is a theoretical response to recent developments in the funds of identity literature which has seen the introduction of two interconnected concepts, 'dark funds of identity' and 'existential funds of identity'. While these recent concepts may expand the canvas from which researchers draw in developing interventionist approaches for minoritised students, they nevertheless polarise positive and negative emotions and experiences which is problematic on a conceptual level. This paper addresses this issue by first presenting how funds of identity and existential funds of identity have been theorised, arguing that there remains a tension between the distributed theory of the original conceptualisation of funds of identity and the phenomenological and subjective dimension that underpins existential funds of identity. In order to resolve this tension, I situate the funds of identity concept within a cultural historical tradition, drawing upon González Rey's work on subject sense and subjectivity in order to propose an alternative conceptualisation of funds of identity that allows researchers to transcend the dichotomy of positive and negative emotions.


Abstract D4T is one of several drugs being considered for antiretroviral therapy in the treatment of AIDS. Pharmacokinetic studies showed that d4T was well absorbed, predominantly eliminated as unchanged drug and able to penetrate the blood-brain barrier.


Tethered cord syndrome is infrequently seen in out-patient urological department as urological problems do not present as the initial signs or symptoms for this syndrome. The symptom of voiding dysfunction is frequently confused with other causes of urinary incontinence. Due to long-term complications which can result in hemodialysis, early diagnosis of tethered cord syndrome is important. The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical manifestation and severity of tethered cord syndrome. From January 1995 through April 1999, we retrospectively collected the medical records of 5 patients with tethered cord syndrome who had an aver-age age of 30 yrs. They all presented with urological symptoms as the initial call for help. Four patients had predominant symptoms of lower abdominal fullness and pain. Detrusor hyperre-flexia with detrusor-sphincteric dyssynergia were seen in 4 patients. One patient presented with detrusor hyporeflexia and poor compliance as seen on the cystometrogram. Untethering surgeries with removal of lipoma were performed in 4 patients. One patient developed hemodi-alysis during the 1-yr follow-up period. Two patients showed persistent chronic renal insufficiency. Only l patient maintains normal renal function because of early diagnosis and early treatment. This result indicates that prognosis is poor when the diagnosis is delayed. We suggest early diagnosis and early treatment as the preferred way to resolve the problem of progressively worsening renal function. Because only a small number of patients were available, more studies of tethered cord syndrome would be helpful to clarify the clinical presentations of urological problems.