This paper analyzes the characteristics of the Publish/Subscribe(Pub/Sub) system,proposes a novel Constrained number of Message Copy Pub/Sub Scheme(CMCPSS) algorithm for opportunistic networks,which can calculate the copy number of subscribe request and the response event according to the communication frequency between different nodes adaptively.Simulation results show that CMCPSS can balance well the tradeoff between the delivery ratio and network resource consumption in intermittently connected networks.CMCPSS can reduce 51% transmission times when compares with Epidemic algorithm and can reduce 45% message transmission delay when compares with Direct Transmission algorithm.


The proposed system performs the task of analysing snapshots of written text and creating fully customizable text files using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. It is known that new font styles and writing formats are introduced everyday but the existing systems find it increasingly difficult to incorporate the newly emerging font styles. The authors have already proposed a system which gives the user complete liberty to effortlessly train the system to handle new fonts using the character dictionary and user training mechanism. The present version makes the process of character recognition more accurate and effective by introducing optimization in the recognition process, a mechanism to handle noisy text images and also a background detection mechanism to differentiate the written symbol from the image background.


H ERE IS HOW Lawrence Mishel and Richard Rothstein put the core of their critique: "The New Commission report, in sum, rests on a wildly exaggerated indictment of public education: that it has left Americans unprepared for economic competition, that it is focused on overly generous benefits for teachers at the expense of student achievement, that its teaching force is of the poorest quality, and that it fails to graduate large numbers of youths. If readers accept this dire picture, they are less likely to scrutinize the report's more radical recommendations with the care they deserve." Let me take this indictment of the report apart, piece by piece. • The failure to build a first-class public education system has endangered our ability to compete. First, we certainly did say that this country's failure to build a firstclass public education system has endangered America's ability to compete. The data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Third International Mathematics and Science Study clearly show that we have one of the most expensive and least effective public education systems in the world. These critics never take issue with those findings. What they do appear to argue is that these findings don't matter. In support of that argument, Mishel and Rothstein cite Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projections concerning the numbers of jobs that will require people with some college education and with college degrees, and they say that our report provided no justification for contradicting these predictions. The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce did recommend greatly increasing the quality and quantity of well-educated high school graduates in the work force, but we said nothing about how many of them should go on to college. So, whether or not our recommendations differ from the BLS projections is hard to say. But the whole first part of the report is devoted to the presentation of an argument that the integration of the global labor market is creating a new economic environment in which workers in the United States are competing head on with other workers at the same skill levels around the world. Moreover, these foreign workers are willing to work for much less than American workers, and this competition will drive American wages (and the American standard of living) down. The only way to deal with this challenge, we argued, is to produce the most highly skilled, most creative, and most innovative work force in the world. And we showed in the report, using OECD data, that the United States, instead of improving its relative


DUKE, ROBERT MICHAEL. Phytoplankton-Oyster Trophic Dynamics in a North Carolina Estuary. (Under the direction of Dr. Astrid Schnetzer). Bogue Sound, part of the Albemarle-Pamlico system, which is the second largest estuary in the United States, represents coastal water bodies increasingly affected by urban development and population growth. Latter stressors link to excess nutrient loading (eutrophication), lowered water quality, and subsequent losses for the fisheries and tourism industry. Oysters can alleviate anthropogenic influences and provide important ecosystem services by improving water quality due to their filtration abilities and shoreline erosion control. While oyster feeding activities have been associated with declines in algal bloom formations in some coastal systems, little is still known about how top-down control may act as a primary factor in regulating prey abundance and assemblage composition. In this study, seasonal oyster grazing experiments with Crassostrea virginica showed that clearance rates varied with prey abundance, as well as prey type, during various seasons. Extrapolation of experimental results using in situ oyster abundances indicated that oysters can play an important role for water quality (i.e. chlorophyll removal) in Bogue Sound, where up to 82 % of the sound volume could be cleared per day. © Copyright 2015 by Robert Michael Duke All Rights Reserved Phytoplankton-Oyster Trophic Dynamics in a North Carolina Estuary by Robert Michael Duke A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences Raleigh, North Carolina 2015


Idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss has great impact on quality of life. Many clinical trials using Chinese herbal medicine for idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss have been conducted and reported beneficial results. However, there is no critical appraised evidence on efficacy and safety of Chinese herbal medicine for idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss to inform clinical use.


Interactive read‐alouds are a mainstay in traditional literacy classrooms because they support wide‐ranging goals in reading development As educators make the transition to virtual classrooms, it is paramount that core practices, such as the interactive read‐aloud, are intentionally adapted to ensure that their purpose remains central to their use Although the production of digital read‐alouds has flourished during the recent pandemic, many of these videos lack key components necessary to foster meaningful literacy growth Educators need to be aware of the affordances and limitations offered by digital read‐alouds to analyze and create materials for classroom use In this article, we offer resources to guide intentional planning to ensure that digital read‐aloud experiences go beyond passive student consumption In addition, specific recommendations illustrate how digital read‐alouds can be positioned within synchronous and asynchronous classroom activities to preserve and amplify the sociocultural element that can be more challenging to maintain within virtual environments [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Reading Teacher is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use This abstract may be abridged No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract (Copyright applies to all Abstracts )


Aim: To analyse the protein mass spectrometry in the peritoneal fluid of endometriosis patients. Methods:Samples were taken from the peritoneal fluid of patients( 30 cases of endometriosis,and 30 cases of non-endometriosis).Protein mass spectrometry were analysed using SELDI-TOF-MS. Results: A total of 7 protein peaks were tested with statistic significance in the peritoneal fluid between the two groups( P 0. 05). Two proteins,with M / Z of 9 022. 578 and6 516. 219 respectively,were selected for a diagnostic model of endometriosis. The sensitivity and specificity of the model were 93. 33%( 28 /30) and 83. 33%( 25 /30) respectively. The protein with M / Z of 9 022. 578 was down-regulated,and that with M / Z of 6 516. 219 was up-regulated in endometriosis patients. Conclusion: The screened 7 protein have important value in further study on etiology and pathogenesis of endometriosis.


Abstract The paper contributes to the ongoing discussion on the relation between information structure and discourse structure. It presents an account of the German conjunct adverb doch (dochCA) that is based on the observation that the interaction between the two structures determines the semantic and pragmatic properties of this conjunct adverb. The account of dochCA presented thus defends a monosemic view on which the semantic and pragmatic properties of this particular use of the German discourse particle doch can be derived from the properties of the context in which the word occurs. I argue in particular that dochCA acquires its anaphoric and concessive properties due to the following interaction between discourse structure and information structure: (i) accent on dochCA evokes as a focus alternative the proposition expressed by the negated counterpart of the dochCA-host, and (ii) prosodically induced contrast together with a mechanism I tentatively call discourse-linking lead to establishing an implicational anaphoric link of the dochCA-host to the first conjunct in a dochCA-conjunction. The analysis of dochCA is argued to account for the relation between dochCA and other uses of the word, such as the conjunction doch and the adverbial middle-field doch. It also suggests an alternative account of cases of Roothean contrast (Rooth, Natural language semantics 1: 75116, 1992) involving implicit antecedents of contrastive focus alternatives, as well as a general model of the mechanics of the concessive interpretation of contrastive conjunctions such as aber and but.


This paper takes an imperfect competition model of the economy in order to investigate for retuns to scale in Greek manufacturing and examines, through a small-scale macroeconomic model, the implication of estimates. For this purpose a price, wage and demand for output equations are estimated, using annual data for the period 1954-94. Prices come through the profits maximization process and depend on wage, capital rental, demand and a number of other variables denoing technology and market competition. Results are clearly in favour of increasing returns to scale hypothesis, although alternative explanations for the negative demand effect on prices cannot be excluded.


In this topic you can see an example of creating REST API service for student's and junior scientist's purposes. It is based on Microsoft Azure cloud services and has wide capabilities: simple installation, integration and support, flexibility and scalability


This communication describes the folding propensity of a heterofoldamer motif featuring proline (Pro) and anthranilic acid (Ant) residues in a 1:2:1 (α:β:α) constitutional ratio. Structural investigations unequivocally suggest that the hydrogen-bonding network of this foldamer motif can be switched between 9-membered and 6-membered by modulating the backbone chirality and constitutional ratio of the amino acid residues.


The Under-Fives clinic is an excellent place for immunizations to be given and family planning counseling to be carried out. The childrens weight card includes information about the number and health of the children birth intervals and the response of the mother to earlier discussions about spacing and limiting births. Delaying the next conception and extending the birth interval are important to the health care of the family. Positive advice related to the childs health can be given to the mother. It has been determined that the reduction in child mortality will be followed usually after a lag-phase by a significant fall in the birthrate. It is suggested that the principles of Under-Fives clinic be used in setting up comprehensive child care services within existing health structures in India which will be important for the success of Indias family planning program.


Cancer treatment is extremely aggressive and, in addition to causing considerable discomfort, can lead to death. Therefore, identifying aspects related to treatment assertiveness may be efficient for reducing the mortality rate of cancer patients. This paper seeks to identify the prognosis of cancer treatment survival through hybrid techniques based on the autonomous fuzzification process and artificial neural networks. The public dataset on cancer mortality is the source for conducting treatment assertiveness rating tests. The hybrid model had its results compared to other models present in the pattern classification literature with superior accuracy and identification of people likely to survive treatment (90.46%), and the fuzzy rules obtained with the execution of the model corroborate the high assertiveness of the model, even surpassing state of the art for the theme.


This study investigated the pathway underlying the antitumor activity of telomelysin, a telomerase‐dependent, replication‐selective oncolytic adenovirus, in soft tissue sarcoma cells. Treatment with telomelysin alone resulted in simultaneous induction of apoptosis and autophagy, whereas cotreatment with telomelysin and 3‐methyladenine significantly reduced cell viability and increased apoptosis and the cellular ATP level compared to treatment with telomelysin alone, indicating that telomelysin‐mediated autophagy is a death‐protective but not death‐promoting process. Cotreatment with Z‐Val‐Ala‐Asp‐CH2F significantly increased cellular ATP depletion compared to telomelysin‐alone treatment while inhibiting telomelysin‐induced apoptosis and having no significant effect on cell viability, indicating that it promotes transition from apoptotic to necrotic cell death.


Effects of drip irrigation under mulch(MG),drip irrigation without mulch(DG),furrowirrigation(GA),alternate furrow irrigation(JG) and flood irrigation(CK) on photosynthetic characteristics of potato were studied.The results showed that:(1) In the vigorous growth period of potato,net photosynthetic rate(Pn),transpiration rate(Tr),stomatal conductance(Gs) and intercellular CO_2 concentration(Ci) of potato leaf displayed MGDGJ GGACK for the different irrigation methods,meanwhile,Which values in the treatment of MG was significantly higher than those in the other treatments(p0.05).The regression analysis indicated that a significant positive correlation was observed between Pn and Ci,as well as Pn and Gs~(2) Apparent quantumyield(α),maximum net photosynthetic rate(P_(max)) and light saturation point(I_(sat)) displayed MGDGJ GGACK for the different treatments,Which values in the treatment of MG was significantly higher than those in the other treatments(p0.05).However,light compensation point(I_c) and dark respiration rate(R_d) displayed MGDGJGGACK.Overall,in the sandy area of Yulin,the photosynthetic characteristics of potato in the drip irrigation under mulch are better than that of the other irrigation methods.


This paper introduces the concept of location-based publish/subscribe (LPS), which allows mobile ad hoc applications to anonymously communicate with each other, depending on their locations. With this concept, publish/subscribe topics are typically expressed in a dynamic manner including proximity criteria, e.g., "I subscribe to all events on topic T published within some range R". We advocate that location-based publish/subscribe is a key programming paradigm for building mobile ad hoc application, and sketch our current implementation, which is based on standard APIs of the Java 2 platform, Micro Edition


ABSTRACT According to prioritarianism, an influential theory of distributive justice, we have a stronger (non-egalitarian) reason to benefit people the worse off these people are (Parfit 2012). Many authors have adopted a consequentialist version of prioritarianism. On this account, we have a consequentialist reason to benefit the worse off because the state of affairs where the worse off gains a given amount of utility is more valuable than the state of affairs where the better off gains roughly the same amount of utility. In this paper, we argue that the consequentialist approach to prioritarianism is problematic. However, it doesn't follow that the prioritarian doctrine per se is groundless. We then suggest that we can make sense of prioritarianism by appeal to a contractualist approach.


Intravenous albumin has historically been used as a plasma volume expander. In the current review, the authors summarize other potential roles of


Various aspects of the interdisciplinary design course, the BSc Product Design Technology (PDT) course, including the influences of globalisation, had been explored and reported in IEPDE04 and EPDE06. The role and importance of the design discipline in sustaining UK economic growth has prompted a vertical integration between schools and universities in the provision of design education. In spite of this vertical integration, it is still a challenging task educating and shaping future product designers to enable them to transform their innovative ideas to products for the global market through the iterative design process. Experience shows that a significant proportion of students in product design courses find it difficult to grasp and appreciate the differences between various stages of the design process, particularly the embodiment, detailed design stages and communication of the resultant design through technical drawings. PDT integrates applied sciences and applied arts, interweaving them with participative design modules and supportive taught modules. Pedagogical research specific to PDT in this university is being carried out and the resultant "learners' engagement model", which can form the basis for discipline and strategic development, is used to address some observed weakness in students' performance in design.


: Deviation of conveyor belt is the most common fault during the operation of belt conveyor. In order to study the movement regularity of the conveyor belt and the influence of various factors on it, a multi-body dynamics method is proposed to discretely process the belt drive system. According to the rigid flexible multi body coupling contact between the conveyor belt and the roller, a multi-body nonlinear contact dynamic model of belt drive system is established. The influence of the cylinder parallelism, viscoelastic characteristics, operating state and the depth of the conveyer belt to the displacement of the conveyer belt is studied, and the influence of conveyor belt deviation on the reliability of active drum is studied on this basis. The results show that the displacement of the conveyer belt is not only related to its force, but also related to the elastic deformation caused by the viscoelastic properties of the material. There is a monotonous and increasing relationship between the parallelism tolerance of the roller and the displacement of the conveyor belt. The viscoelastic properties of the conveyer belt can determine the depth of the pressure subsidence between the conveyer belt and the roller, and the displacement of the conveyer belt increases with the increase of the depth of the pressure. In addition, the higher the speed of the conveyor belt, the longer the transport distance, the greater the offset of the conveyer belt. and the deviation of the conveyor belt will lead to changes in the stress, strain and distribution of the active drum, which will reduce the service life of the active roller.


Received 06.09.2016; accepted 30.11.2016; printed 30.03.2017 Proceedings of the 3rd International Congress "Biodiversity, Mediterranean, Society", September 4th-6th 2015, NotoVendicari (Italy) The authors summarize the results of all the searches for phlebotomes in eastern Sicily, including the connected risk for humans and dogs to contract leishmaniasis, and point out the current situation with new risks, and the main goals for present and future research. Phlebotomes; Phlebotomus sergenti; Leishmania tropica; leishmaniasis; Eastern Sicily.


Bilayer-type ZTO thin films were prepared by MOCVD, metal organic chemical vapor deposition. As the films were investigated with UV spectrophotometer, XRD, SEM and other modern research methods, the optics and crystal properties of the ZTO thin films were researched. From the analysis of testing results, visible light transmittance of ZnO/SnO2-type film was superior to SnO2/ZnO-type film, and ternary compound, Zn2SnO4, was found in the two kinds of bilayer-type films. The priority of nucleation should emerged between the (100) crystal plane of ZnO and the (110) crystal plane of SnO2.


A terminology system capable of providing interpretations and classification information on a multilingual science and technology(S&T) terminology is essential to establish an integrated search environment for multilingual S&T information systems. This paper aims to build a base system to manage an integrated information system for multilingual S&T terminology search. It introduces a method to build a search system for S&T terminologies internally linked through the multilingual semantic network and a search technique on the multiple linked nodes. In order to provide a foundation for further analysis researches, it also attempts to suggest a basic approach to interpret terminology clusters generated with those two search methods.


This document presents a summary of the final report of the investigation: "illegal evidence: a comparative view with penal system state of Florida USA" this research was guided by teachers and advisers leaders diploma in adversarial criminal justice system, developed Cucuta section off with the free university in partnership with Florida international university. The aim of the research was comparated analyze the vision that has both the Colombian penal system, such as the us (Florida state), the concept of illegal evidence, in order to understand how these mechanisms help to protect the processing and mainly under their human dignity. This to the problem situation of the urgent need for comprencion that the evidence must be obtained, practiced, evacuated and accepted under the parameters established by Colombian law and thus provide the certainty that they are legal and legitimate evidence necessary for the judge decide on the application of criminal law, based on a real truth or material. This text relevantly identified the main jurisprudential differences between the participants of the criminal justice system of each of the countries in question.


A forest fire behavior space simulation system with batch processing capacity was developed to overcome the shortcoming of existing fire behavior modeling software that they can not conduct multiple simulations at one time. The system incorporates two most commonly used forest fire behavior models(the Rothermel model and the Canadian Fire Behavior Prediction Model) and can use fuel data either from the American National Fire Danger Rating System or from the Canadian Fire Behavior Prediction System. The software allows users to conduct multiple simulations with different parameters, environmental variables set by users at one time and to optimally estimate fuel parameters under constraint defined by users. The system can improve simulation efficiency and provide probability distribution of modeled forest fire behavior, which would be a useful tool for studying on fire behavior and effects of fires on ecosystem.


The 19th century rise of history as an academic discipline set new standards for acceptable methods of writing history. This greatly influenced the opinions historians held of older historical works, such as the Historia de omnibus Gothorum Sueonumque regibus (History of all the Kings of the Goths and the Swedes) by the Swedish archbishop Johannes Magnus (1488-1544). The work has been criticised for the absence of a proper critical approach to sources and for its lack of truthfulness. Johannes Magnus' work is still regarded with a degree of suspicion in this respect. Paradoxically, the very definition of the word historian in the Renaissance was an author who dealt with true things, and Johannes Magnus himself writes that his work was characterized by truth. This statement indicates that his notion of historical truth (as well as that of his contemporaries) was different from that of later historians. This article proposes a way of approaching Johannes Magnus' notion of historical truth by comparing his version of an event with that of his source and discussing the differences. (Less)


The research aimed to develop higher-order thinking skill (HOTS) based assessment instruments based on Live Worksheet applications on Creative Products and Entrepreneurship (PKWU) subjects, especially on Basic Competencies 3.2 Analyzing business opportunities and Basic Competencies 3.3 Applying business administration documents. This research used Sugiyono's development model with seven development steps. The research subject consisted of 34 students of class XI Department of Office Governance Automation SMKS Ketintang Surabaya. The development of this assessment instrument resulted in 20 questions that were declared valid with the calculation of r calculated r table (0.3291). The instrument developed was said to be reliable because the reliability value of the problem of 0.840 0.60 The results of product validation development from three expert validators obtained an average validation of 95.6% with "very strong" criteria. The average student responded to the use of the Live Worksheet application "very positively by 88%. As per results of this study trial, the average ability to think high-level students fell into the category of "less". Therefore, the learning process to improve high thinking skills in students must be further improved with a learning model or method that can encourage the improvement of students higher-order thinking skills.


About the Editors. Contributors. Acknowledgments. Foreword. Preface. 1. Central Eastern Europe, Russia and the Ukraine: Economic and Socio Demographic -V.H. Manek Kirpalani. 2. Regional Economic and Marketing Structure-V.H. Manek Kirpalani. 3. Consumer Behavior -L. Garbarski. 4. Industrial Policy -A. Nowak and V.H. Manek Kirpalani. 5. Marketing Evolution in Transition Economies - R. Glowacki and G.Karasiewicz. 6. Education Evolution: The Case of Leon Kozminski Academy of Entrepreneurship and Management - L.Garbarski. 7. Product Cases from Eastern Europe-V.H. Manek Kirpalani and Leon Kozminski Academy of Entrepreneurship and Management. 8. The Stockmann Department Store Penetration of Russia - H. Seristo. 9. NK Cables Invades Eastern Europe-Peter Gabrielsson and Mika Gabrielsson. 10. Shadow Economy: The Hungarian Case-Istvan Molnar and Pal Belyo. Notes. Index


The short distance potentials between heavy SU(3) and SU(4) sources are calculated by increasing the role of vortex fluxes piercing Wilson loops with contributions close to the trivial center element and by fluctuating the vortex core size in the model of thick center vortices. By this method, a Coulombic potential consistent with Casimir scaling is obtained. In addition, all other features of the potential, including a linear intermediate potential in agreement with Casimir scaling and a large distance potential proportional to the N-ality of the representation, are restored. Therefore, the model of thick center vortices may be used as a phenomenological model, which is able to describe the potential for all regimes.


In this paper emphasis is placed on incorporating visco‐elastic damping materials into typical aircraft panel structures to reduce resonant stress and displacement of the structure induced by extremely high sound pressure levels. The increased modal damping, by reducing the resonant stress, extends the fatigue life of the component. It is shown that a damping treatment can be used on a standard thickness panel to reduce stress and extend the fatigue life over that of the standard panel, or the damping treatment can be used on a thinner panel to obtain the same stress and fatigue life as in the standard undamped panel, but realizing a weight savings. Constrained layer damping treatments and fraying surface damping treatments are analyzed by the finite element method and compared for their effectiveness and weight savings.


Purpose : The purpose of this study is to compare the distribution of foot pressure, knee and ankle joint angle between treadmill walking and ground walking in normal person. Methods : 18 Person of subject has participated this study, let subject to walk in ground and treadmill in order to gain data of foot distribution and knee, ankle joint angle using by parotec system. and Dartfish system. Walking velocity was constrained by 2Km/h and more 10sec. Date analysis was used by paired-t test using SPSS/PC statistical programs for window. Results : Result show that total contact times has shown symmetry between both legs, and more increase of left foot pressure in treadmill walking. Foot pressure of treadmill walking was significantly decreased in right hind foot and fore foot and hallux area. The ankle joint angle of treadmill walking was significantly decreased in initial contact phase. Conclusion : Results of this study show that foot pressure of treadmill walking was more decreased than ground walking in right hind foot and fore foot, hallux area. And the ankle joint angle of treadmill walking was significantly decreased in initial contact phase.


The recorded physiological periods in Huangdi Neijing is re-built using allometric scaling laws. Physiological periods are multiples of 7 years for females while 8 years for males. The oldest findings can be used for modern health policy, education and labor agreement considering sexual difference.

 Key words: Allometric scaling, ancient Chinese medicine, ancient Chinese mathematics.


Volumes of the Year Book series continue to provide a more than valuable means of helping the busy physician keep up with fields he might not ordinarily consider very much. While the choice of items to review is selective and eclectic, it generally is wisely so. The books must represent the winnowing for nuggets through a sieve which is not so fine that the group is too large nor so gross that only the gold miner's mallet really hits. A thoughtful person has an opportunity to keep up with the sometimes agonizingly rapid and often erratic movements and advances in various fields of medicine. The same divisions and the same section editors are at work. They have been running these volumes now for some years. While the actual abstracting is often a bit erratic, particularly if one is quite familiar with the original paper or has written it, on the


Outrigger systems have been efficient in stiffening the structure against lateral loads like wind or earthquakes. So, in order to know more about their effects on the structure and their behaviour under earthquake loads, an overall seismic evaluation and comparison of 30 storey building located in zone 2 with conventional slab system having a central shear wall core with 1 and 2 outrigger levels are demonstrated in this paper. Pushover analysis was performed using ETABS 9.7.4 on the models and using the performance parameters like Base force, Displacement, Storey drift, Spectral acceleration and Spectral displacement and relevant conclusions were drawn. The outrigger struts was placed at 0.25h & 0.5h, 0.25h & 0.75h, 0.25h & 1h, 0.5h & 0.75h, 0.5h & 1h, 0.75h & 1h to check for the most beneficial location for the 2 outrigger levels in a structure. Also, the status and location of plastic hinges at the performance point obtained from static pushover results showed that performance levels for almost all the models were found to lie in between Life safety to Collapse prevention range.


Natural minerals are typically characterized by heterogeneous internal structures such as oscillatory growth zoning, sector zoning or patchy recrystallization patterns [1, 2]. The occurrence of such features may provide valuable information about the formation and alteration history of minerals and their host rocks. In this paper, the application of Raman mapping to the study of internal structures of natural minerals is discussed.


Objective: To study the time-dependent electrophysiological changes of the sciatic nerves of rats treated with acrylamide.Methods: Male Wistar rats weighing 180~220 g were given acrylamide dissolved in physiological saline(40 mg·kg-1 3 times per week) for 10 weeks.The control groups received normal saline.The gait was observed and electrophysiological indexes of rats sciatic nerves were determined at 0,2,4,6,10 weeks.Results: Compared with the control,the amplitudes of compound action potentials of 4-week-poisoned group,6-week-poisoned group and 10-week-poisoned group were decreased by 44%,70% and 89% respectively(P0.01);the latencies of 4-week-poisoned group,6-week-poisoned group and 10-week-poisoned group were increased by 15%,24% and 45% respectively(P0.05);the duration of 10-week-poisoned group was increased by 44%(P0.01);the stimulus thresholds of 6-week-poisoned group and 10-week-poisoned group were increased by 51% and 293% respectively(P0.01);the sciatic nerves conduction velocities of 4-week-poisoned group,6-week-poisoned group and 10-week-poisoned group were decreased by 15%,24% and 45% respectively(P0.01).Conclusion: The electrophysiological changes of the sciatic nerves in rats treated with acrylamide are in a time-dependent manner.The sciatic nerve conduction velocity and the amplitude of the compound action potential change the earliest.


Objective:To observe clinical effect of Qingshan Jianxin Pill which composed of Sweet Wormwood Herb and Antifeverile Dichroa Root for inhibiting heart premature beating.Methods:200 patients in experiment group took Qingshan Jianxin pill for 4 weeks,the therapeutic effect of heart premature beating,synthesis,dynamic electrocardiogram,syndrome of TCM were observed,and compared with control group which took Xinluning pill.Results:Compared with control group,the therapeutic effect in Qingshan Jianxin Pill group of heart premature beating,synthesis,dynamic electrocardiogram,syndrome of TCM were obviously better.Conclusion:Clinical effect of Qingshan Jianxin Pill was better for inhibiting heart premature beating.


A network analysis finds that the European economies with the most interconnections, like Germany, are the most vulnerable to economic crises in the absence of government intervention.


This paper introduced with emphases on steam and water balance testing process in heat power system in China Aluminium Industry Shanxi Branch. Based on analysing result, pointed out that the material flow situation and the way of making great efforts orientation and taping the latent power.


Emerging from a colonial past, Pacific island states have legal systems which are patchy and often incoherent. This article examines the role of judges in the field of family law and how, through creative use of comparative legal thinking, they contribute to the development of the law in countries where the state is slow to reform outdated and often inadequate legislation.


I have had occasion to remark before, in respect to this question, that what we need in the nomenclature of prisms is scientific accuracy, readiness and simplicity of practical application with as little innovation in established custom as possible. The prism dioptry, I believe, fulfills all these requirements. It takes as a standard prism one which causes a deflection of 1 cm. on a plane at one meter's distance, which is nearly what is now known as a one degree prism, and will thus entail no change in the present process of manufacture or in the plant of the manufacturers. It is scientific and accurate, every prism being precisely what its number indicates, and its power can be measured by any one having a centimeter rule and a meter measure. No complicated apparatus is necessary, though for the finer determinations and for certain combinations of sphero-and cylindro-prisms the elegant instrument


The analysis of nutrient compositions for Bostrychia mixta, Catenella impudica, Caloglossa leprieurii and Enteromorpha compressa that grow in Fujian mangrove areas shows that concentration of Fe or Mn in these four algae is much higher than the mean concentration of Fe or Mn in common algae; concentration of Ca is lower than mean concentration of Ca in common algae; concentration of P, K, Mg is higher or lower than mean concentration of P, K, Mg in common algae. The range of concentration of total amino acids(TAA)among 4 algae is Enteromorpha compressa (DW)265 89 mg/g Bostrychia mixta 211 96 mg/g Caloglossa leprieurii 189 53 mg/g Catenella impudica 111 10 mg/g; the range of concentration of essential amino acids(EAA)is Bostrychia mixta 87 42mg/g Enteromorpha compressa 82 92 mg/g Caloglossa leprieurii 73 62 mg/g Catenella impudica 34 41 mg/g. The TAA or EAA concentration in Caloglossa leprieurii growing on the buttress like root surface of Kandelia candel is higher than that on rocky surface near the Kandelia candel forest in March and June, respectively. Concentrations of chemical elements in Caloglossa leprieurii growing in the different habitats change with March and June.


Background & Objectives: The individuals with diabetes have 29 times higher chance of becoming blind due to diabetic retinopathy than non-diabetic of similar age and gender. The knowledge on the factors for it can help detect the disease in its early course. The study was conducted with objectives to study the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy and its risk factors in a diabetic population. Materials and Methods: A community based cross-sectional study that involved 418 subjects with type 2 diabetes, living in the Dharan municipality of Nepal was carried out using convenient sampling method. Results: The prevalence of diabetic retinopathy was 38.8%. Prevalence of mild, moderate, severe and very severe non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy was 9.1%, 16.3%, 6.2% and 17.2% respectively. Prevalence of proliferative diabetic retinopathy and clinically significant macular edema was 3.8% and 1.9% respectively. Among the risk factors studied age, hypoglycemic drug intake, family history and duration of diabetes mellitus had a significant association with the occurrence of diabetic retinopathy (p<0.05). Conclusions: The prevalence of diabetic retinopathy in patients with diabetes mellitus was 38.8% and increase risk factors for it are age, hypoglycemic drug intake, family history of diabetes, duration of diabetes. JCMS Nepal. 2015;11(1): 17-21


This study focuses on two main questions. First, do non-cohabiting relationships have an effect on mental and physical health? And second, do non-cohabiting relationships affect health in a similar way as cohabitation and marriage? To differentiate between the selection effects of healthier individuals into a couple relationship and the causal effects of couple relationships on health, we test hypotheses about the accumulation of health effects over time. We apply fixed-effects estimation techniques to data from the German Socio-economic Panel. For women, mental health improves after establishing a non-cohabiting relationship and remains similar after starting cohabitation and after getting married. For men, only marriage improves mental health status. The impacts of couple relationships on physical health primarily depend on the duration of the relationship and slowly accumulate over time. In addition, effects are stronger for younger adults.


Interoperability, power supply, and system maintenance are three important topics for field observation. Technologies associated with the Internet of Things (IOT) and 5G have great potential for field observation system improvement. In this manuscript, we discuss the architecture of field observation in the 5G era. Gateway, syntax and semantic interoperability are important aspects for system performance improvement. We developed a low-power data collector with sensing, communication, and power supply components, and we introduce our initial study on a real-world environment observation system implementation and experiment.


Prof. Sturgeon, an American academic law librarian and Chinese law specialist, reports on his May 2009 experience as a visiting professor of legal research at a prestigious mainland Chinese university.


A novel battery energy storage system (BESS) topology is proposed in this paper which is based on the combination of cascade multilevel converter (CMC) and power switch multiplexing technique. The low-frequency ripple in battery current which is pulsating at twice the output frequency can be significantly reduced. While only four power switches are required in each submodule, and no extra power decoupling circuits are needed. This topology possesses the advantages of lower number of power switches, simpler circuit structure, and higher reliability. The circuit configuration and operation principle are analyzed. The individual phase current control (IPCC) is also presented which can make BESS adapted to unbalanced conditions automatically. Finally, simulation results performed in PSCAD/EMTDC can verify the circuit performance and control strategy.


Background: Management of acute severe ulcerative colitis (UC) is a clinical challenge, with an associated mortality rate of approximately 2-3% reported early post-colectomy. Traditional management with intravenous corticosteroids has been modified by introduction of ciclosporin and more recently infliximab. Aim: To provide a detailed and comprehensive review of the medical management of acute severe UC Methods: PubMed and recent conference abstracts were searched for articles relating to treatment of acute severe UC. Results: Two thirds of patients respond to intravenous steroids in the short term. In those who fail steroids, low-dose intravenous ciclosporin at 2mg/kg/day is effective. Approximately 75% and 50% of patients treated with ciclosporin avoid colectomy in the short and long term, respectively. Long-term outcome of ciclosporin therapy is improved by introduction of azathioprine on discharge from hospital, together with oral ciclosporin as a bridging therapy. Controlled data show that infliximab is effective as rescue therapy for acute severe UC and the effect appears to be durable although longer term follow up data are needed. Conclusions: Both ciclosporin and infliximab have demonstrated efficacy as rescue medical therapies in patients with acute severe UC, but surgery needs to be considered if there is failure to improve or clinical deterioration.


In the article there is considered the practice of the application of the current legislative regulatory and procedural base for the occupational health and labor medicine (hygiene) issues. There are discussed issues of the assessment of occupational risks in enterprises of the Sverdlovsk region. There are proposed approaches to the creating the occupational risk management and assessment systems.


In general, most existing bug report studies focus only on solving a single specific issue. Considering of multiple issues at one is required for a more complete and comprehensive process of bug fixing. We took up this challenge and proposed a method to analyze two issues of bug reports based on text mining techniques. Firstly, dependent bug reports are assembled into an individual cluster and then the bug reports in each cluster are analyzed for their severity. The method of dependent bug report assembly is experimented with threshold-based similarity analysis. Cosine similarity and BM25 are compared with term frequency (tf) weighting to obtain the most appropriate method. Meanwhile, four classification algorithms namely Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machines (SVM) with the RBF kernel function, Multinomial Naïve Bayes (MNB), and k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN) are utilized to model the bug severity predictor with four term weighting schemes, i.e., tf, term frequency-inverse document frequency (tf-idf), term frequency-inverse class frequency (tf-icf), and term frequency-inverse gravity moment (tf-igm). After the experimentation process, BM25 was found to be the most appropriate for dependent bug report assemblage, while for severity prediction using tf-icf weighting on the RF method yielded the best performance value.


Based on the structural feature of the retaining wall template,we use plate and shell theory of finite element method( FEM) on the complex structure buttressed retaining wall template for the design and optimization of the related research. On the optimization model of the rod position,through the location layout optimization,we make the template deformation reduced 39%. Through calculation,we have drawn the template curves showing the relationship between the maximum deformation and the thickness of plate and the distribution of the stress component templates panel. This paper can also provide a reference for other thin-walled structure optimization design and parameter calculation. It also shows that finite element method proves to be of great value in improving the safety,reliability and reducing cost in penal desing.


In a recent paper we have studied the peculiar features of the Berry and Aharonov-Anandan geometric phases for isolated spins S{>=}1. We have assumed that they are submitted to a dipole and quadrupole coupling to external E and B fields with the mild restriction E{center_dot}B=0. This implies discrete symmetries leading to remarkable simplifications of the geometry and algebra involved. The aim of the present work is to describe realistic proposals, within the realm of atomic physics, for the verification of some of our most significant theoretical predictions. There are several challenges to be overcome. For alkali-metal atoms, most commonly used in atomic interferometers, the only practical way to generate quadrupole coupling, with a strength comparable to the dipole one, is the ac Stark effect induced by a nearly resonant light beam. One then has to face the instability of the 'dressed' atom hyperfine (hf) level, a candidate for our isolated spin. One deleterious effect is the apparition of an imaginary part in the quadrupole to dipole coupling strength ratio, {lambda}. Fortunately we have found a simple way to get rid of I({lambda}) by an appropriate detuning. We are left with an unstable isolated spin. This implies an upper bound tomore » the quantum cycle duration T{sub c}. In the case of the Berry's phase, T{sub c} has a lower bound due to the necessity of keeping the nonadiabatic corrections below a predefined level. We have found a compromise in the case of the F=2,m=0 {sup 87}Rb ground-state hf level. This is our candidate for the measurement of the somewhat ''exotic'' Berry's phase acquired by the S=2,m=0 state at the end of a quantum cycle involving a rotation of {pi} of the E field--in practice, the linear polarization of the dressing beam --about the B field direction. We have found a way to implement, in a Ramsey-type interferometric measurement, the procedures aimed at controlling the nonadiabatic corrections, as described in detail in our previous theoretical paper. A numerical simulation of our experimental proposal shows that a 0.1% accurate determination of Berry's phase, free of nonadiabatic corrections, can be achieved. Measurements could also be considered for cold {sup 52}Cr chromium atoms with S=3, where values of {lambda}{approx_equal}1 can be obtained with an instability smaller than in the {sup 87}Rb case, due to a more favorable spectroscopic structure. The F=1,m=1 hf level of the {sup 87}Rb ground state offers the opportunity to extend the measurement of Aharonov-Anandan's phases beyond the case S=(1/2). We construct, using 'light shift', the Hamiltonian H{sub ||}(t) generating a closed circuit in the density-matrix space which satisfies at any time the 'parallel transport' condition, thus making the quantum cycle free from the adiabaticity condition. We also consider the case of half-integer spins (e.g., {sup 201}Hg, {sup 135}Ba, and {sup 137}Ba), with their own specific features. We show how the difference of Berry's phases for states S=(3/2) and S=(1/2), with m=(1/2), can be exploited to achieve a holonomic maximum entanglement of three qubits.« less


DR. PHlLll' D. KERRISON presented a patient giving the following history: The man, a sailor by occupation, had fallen some seven months previously into the hold of a vessel, striking upon his head and sustaining a fracture of the skull. Following this accident he was taken unconscious to the hospital anc! his condition for two months was one of mental oblivion. An interesting feature of the fracture was a complete facial paralysis of the right side, which had resulted immediately and was apparently permanent. This suggests a complete severing of the nerve trunk. On testing the hearing, the right ear was absolutely deaf. this test being made with the Barany noise apparatus held in the left ear. The caloric test showed absolute loss of vestibular irritability in the right ear. An interesting anomaly was the apparently contradictory reaction to tile rotation test,i. e., the after nystagmus to the right was of longer duration than the after nystagmus toward the left.


Abstract We consider a statistical model of the so-called steganography, which is a new rapidly developing field of information protection. We suggest one possible variant of a hidden embedding of a secret information into nonsecret data transmitted and analyse probabilistic properties of the model.


Abstract This article examines the conflicts in writing the imperial modern history of China among various stakeholders, particularly Chinese and American historians, and their dealing with a set of personal documents of Sir Robert Hart, Inspector-General of the Chinese Maritime Customs Services (CMCS) during the Qing period. This set of documents is called "Hart Industry" and contains Hart's personal papers and seventy-seven volumes of diaries, among others. Revealing the imperial Inspector-General's view on "westernization" in modern China, the Hart Industry played a key role in the development of the history of modern China throughout the twentieth century. From around 1957 until 1995, the diaries became a source of a highly politicized academic debate between Chinese Communist historians of the People's Republic of China and western historians of the Hart Industry. By providing a "study of studies" on the historiography of the colonial modern history of China, this article argues that the Hart diaries were critical to historians' understanding of their own academic discourse.


The reversed-field pinch (RFP) EXTRAP-T2R (T2R) is a plasma physics experiment with particular relevance for magnetic confinement fusion (MCF) research. T2R is very well equipped for investigations of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities known as resistive-wall modes (RWMs), growing on a time-scale set by a surrounding non-perfectly conducting shell. The RWM instability is also subject of intense research in tokamak experiments (another MCF configuration). Recently, multiple RWMs have been stabilized in T2R using arrays of active (current-carrying) and sensor (voltage-measuring) coils equidistributed on the shell. In this paper, the MHD normal modes dynamics is probed in the required feedback operation by simultaneously, and pseudo-randomly, exciting the spectrum in the spatial sense. Spectra are then extracted by predictionerror minimization based on an observer that tracks dynamically aliased modes and the results thus obtained are related, and compared, to established linear MHD stability theory. This pioneer study at T2R is, arguably, appealling both to plasma physicists and automatic control staff.


Aiming at more and more outstanding equipment technique support problems,taking the radar countermeasure reconnaissance receiver as an example,this paper designs and develops a suit of fault information automatic acquisition system based on peripheral component interconnect extensions for instrumentation(PXI) bus.The system widely adopts the design idea of modularization,standardization,realizes the real time survey of correlative technic indexes of the receiver,which can find the fault resource fast and accurately,reduce the maintenance time of receiver obviously and improve the support efficiency of equipments.


This paper focuses on indecomposable integers in real quadratic number fields ${\mathbb Q}(\sqrt{D})$ where $D$ is a squarefree positive integer greater than 1. In 2016, Jang and Kim stated a conjecture about the norms of these elements, which was later disproved by Kala in the case $D\equiv 2\;(\text{mod }4)$. The main goal of this article is to study the remaining case $D\equiv 1\;(\text{mod }4)$ and to find a counterexample in this case, together with improved examples when $D\equiv 2,3\;(\text{mod }4)$. Moreover, we obtain precise explicit results on the norms in several special cases.


In the dynamic game we introduce, players are the members of a xed network. Everyone is initially endowed with a unique information item that he is the only player to hold. Players are next oered a nite number of periods to centralize the initially dispersed items in the hands of any one member of the network. In every period, players strategically choose whether or not to transmit the items they hold to their neighbors in the network. The sooner the items are all centralized by any individual, the better it is for the group of agents as a whole. Besides, the player who rst gathers all the items in the name of all is oered an additional reward that he keeps for himself. Individuals therefore face a social dilemma since they have a collective interest to share information items as well as an individual interest to withhold them. In this framework, we investigate how the xed communication structure aects the group's ability to centralize items in equilibrium. We provide a necessary and sucien t condition for a group to reach this collective goal in every equilibrium. The condition is independent of the network structure. On the contrary, the architecture aects the time needed before information is pooled in equilibrium. For every network, a graphical measure corresponds to the minimal time needed. An upper bound on the number of periods required for items centralization in equilibrium is provided for two special types of networks. The present work provides theoretical support to Bonacich (1990)'s experimental result stating that the outcome of such a social dilemma is aected by the architecture of the links between players.


Report presents the finite difference equations in time and finite element matrix equations in space for general linear thermovisoelastic problems. The equations are derived for a general three-dimensional body but are applicable to one- and two-dimensional configurations with minor changes.


Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI) maps present sensitive biological and human resource data used by NOAA Scientific Support Coordinators, the US Coast Guard, and other responders to identify re...


The factor for increasing the maternal mortality rate is the risk of 4 Too (too young, too close birth spacing of less than 3 years and too many more than 2 (two) children). The percentage of mothers who died giving birth under 20 years and over 35 years was 33 % of all maternal deaths, so that family planning programs can be implemented with health education, 33% of maternal deaths can be prevented through the use of contraception. Interviews were conducted at the Permata Hati clinic, several postpartum mothers did not know in detail about the types of family planning and its benefits and effectiveness. The aim is to increase mother's knowledge with training on the use of decision-making aids in family planning at the Permata Hati Clinic method with a pre post one group design. posts that experienced an increase were 24 postpartum mothers, and 1 that experienced a decrease


While the problem of predicting transcription factor binding sites in a gene's promoter region has been extensively studied, binding sites located in coding regions are also crucial for regulating gene expression but are more difficult to detect. Coding region binding sites are mostly involved in splicing regulation, but also in transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation. We consider the problem of predicting such binding sites by comparative analysis. Comparative analysis is based on the idea that functional sequences tend to evolve at slower rate than nonfunctional sequence, making unusually well conserved regions likely to be of interest. The difficulty in applying comparative analysis to the detection of binding sites located in coding sequence is that the whole sequence is under selective pressure, because it needs to code for a functional protein. We present a technique to distinguish between conservation due to constraints on the amino acid product and conservation due to constraints imposed by regulatory factors. More precisely, we show how to calculate the probability of observing a certain degree of conservation among the nucleotides of given set of orthologous codons, given a set of constraints on the amino acids they need to encode. The algorithms described are implemented in a program called Cosmo, available at http://bio.cs.washington.edu. We ran Cosmo on several genes known to contain exonic splicing enhancers and report the results.


Abstract : Practical dynamic systems constantly face unpredictable fluctuations and disturbances for which Kalman filter has been shown to be effective in estimating the states from the outputs corrupted by white noises. This is the Kalman filtering problem. On the other hand, the Linear regulator problem, which is the mathematical dual of the Kalman filtering problem, plays an important role in modern optimal control theory. Both problems can be formulated as quadratic synthesis problems. A geometric-series approach is used to approximate the exponentials of Hamiltonian matrices for the quadratic synthesis problems. The approximants of the discretized transition matrices are then used to construct piecewise-constant gains and piecewise time-varying gains for approximating time-varying optimal gains and time-varying Kalman gains. Simple and fast algorithms are developed and can be easily implemented on a low cost minicomputer or microprocessor. The proposed methods have been successfully applied to the analysis of practical control systems.


POLITICAL and analysis integrate of SOCIALIZATION political research behavior. findings AFFORDS The and A RELATIVELY first discuss systematic the NEW significance attempt APPROACH to of TO review socialTHE POLITICAL analysis of political behavior. The first systematic attempt to review nd int rate research findings nd discuss the significance of socialization for the explanation of political behavior is found in Hy man's Political Socialization.1 The subsequent reviews of the literature by Greenstein, Dawson, Wasby, Dawson and Prewitt, and Langton, attest to the proliferation of socialization research focusing on various aspects of political behavior.2 A recent effort by Dennis resulted in a 55 page bibliography of current research on political socialization.3 In this paper we will critically examine a central, though neglected, aspect of political socialization research: the learning concept. Following a discussion of the current status of the learning concept, we will propose a research strategy towards the operationalization of the concept in political socialization research and exemplify the approach with a specific learning paradigm adopted from experimental psychology.


Abstract All branches of ecology study relationships among environmental and biological variables. However, ubiquitously used approaches to studying such relationships, based on correlation and regression, provide only a small slice of the complex information contained in the relationships. Other statistical approaches exist that provide a complete description of relationships between variables, based on the concept of the copula ; they are applied in finance, neuroscience and other fields, but not in ecology. We here explore the concepts that underpin copulas and examine the potential for those concepts to improve our understanding of ecology. We find that informative copula structure in dependencies between variables is exceedingly common across all the environmental, species-trait, phenological, population, community, and ecosystem functioning datasets we considered. Many datasets exhibited asymmetric tail dependence, whereby two variables are more strongly related in their left compared to right tails, or vice versa. We describe mechanisms by which observed copula structure and tail dependence can arise in ecological data, including a Moran-like effect whereby dependence structures between environmental variables are inherited by ecological variables; and asymmetric or nonlinear influences of environments on ecological variables, such as under Liebig's law of the minimum. Copula structure and tail dependence can also reveal causal relationships between variables. We describe consequences of copula structure, including impacts on extinction risk and the stability through time of ecosystem services. By documenting the importance of a complete description of dependence, advancing conceptual frameworks, and demonstrating a powerful approach, we aim to elevate copula reasoning to widespread use in ecology.


Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors (TKIs) are chemotherapy agents that can damage cardiomyocytes resulting in cardiotoxicity and heart failure. TKIs target enzymes that control diverse biological pathways such as cell metabolism and apoptosis. Autophagy is a self‐degradative process involving the translocation of light chain 3 (LC3) proteins onto the autophagosome membrane, followed by fusion with lysosome for degradation. In cardiomyocytes, autophagy activation has been shown to be either protective or detrimental. We previously demonstrated autophagy to be cardioprotective of ischemia‐reperfusion injuries, presumably through maintaining cell homeostasis by removing damaged organelles such as mitochondria. Recent studies have shown that statins, HMG‐CoA reductase inhibitors commonly used to lower cholesterol levels, enhance cardiomyocyte autophagy. We hypothesize that TKIs disrupts cardiomyocyte autophagy, and autophagy activation protects cardiomyocytes from TKI‐induced toxicity. As a proof of concept, we chose the well‐established TKI dasatinib due to its high risk for heart failure in patients. We treated H9c2 rat myoblast cells with dasatinib either alone or in combination with commonly used statins: simvastatin, atorvastatin, pravastatin, and rosuvastatin. We performed MTT colorimetric assays on 96‐well plates to quantify H9c2 viability, and dual‐channel flow cytometry to assess autophagy levels with an autophagy detection nanoparticle (ADN) developed in‐house, and cell membrane integrity with propidium. We further confirmed autophagy protein, LC3, expression by western blot. After 24‐hour exposure, dasatinib significantly reduced H9c2 myocyte cell survival and ADN fluorescence. Atorvastatin and dasatinib co‐treatment significantly enhanced H9c2 survival. Interestingly, the reduction in cell death was associated with the restoration of H9c2 autophagy homeostasis, detected by ADN fluorescence. The autophagy increase was confirmed by western blot. Statin treatment thus causes a robust cytoprotective effect in H9c2 myocytes against dasatinib, presumably through autophagy activation.


Introduction: The measurement of the diffusion characteristics of the kidney could provide useful insights into the mechanisms of various renal diseases. The anisotropic diffusion properties in the kidneys is a result of structures like vessels, tubules and collecting ducts, which are oriented in a radial fashion. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a MR imaging technique that can be used to characterize the orientational properties of the diffusion process of water molecules (1,2), noticeably in the brain. Several studies successfully demonstrated the feasibility of DTI in kidney, which could visualize the renal microstructure (3,4). The purpose of the present study is to assess the changes in diffusion anisotropy in patients with chronic kidney diseases (CKD) using a 3 Tesla MR scanner. Materials and Methods: Six CKD patients (glomerular filtration rate range: 6–27 ml/min/1.73m) and six normal volunteers were recruited in this study, using a 3 Tesla MR scanner (Trio a TIM system, Siemens, Erlangen, Germany). Morphologic imaging included T2 and T1 weighted imaging for axial and coronal planes. DTI data were acquired using a single shot spin-echo echo-planar imaging sequence. Imaging parameters include: TR/TE =1600/78 ms, field of view = 250 mm. matrix size = 154 × 154. Nine contiguous coronal slices of 5-mm-thickness were obtained, with a b-value of 300 s/mm and diffusion gradients along 12 non-collinear directions. A belt sensor was wrapped around the abdomen for the respiration-triggering. Regions of interest (ROI) were placed above the medulla and cortex of bilateral kidneys. Diffusion indices, including axial diffusivity (λ ≡ λ1), radial diffusivity (λ ≡(λ2+λ3)/2), mean diffusivity (MD = (λ1+λ2+λ3)/3) and fractional anisotropy (FA) were compared. Two-tailed student t-tests were used (p-values < 0.05 considered as statistically significant). Results and Discussion: Fig. 1 a and b show the maps of FA from a normal volunteer and a CKD patient, respectively. Significant reduction of diffusion anisotropy in medulla was noticed in patients. Fig. 2 plots the diffusion measures at the medulla. Both the increased λ and the decreased FA were significant. The decreased FA can be attributed to an increase of radial diffusivity. A possible explanation might be the breakdown of the tubules, resulting in a dysfunction of the filtration process of water. Conclusion: DTI can detect the changes of diffusivities in patients with chronic kidney disease. The reduced anisotropy in medulla in CKD patients was attributed to the increased radial diffusivity (λ ) when compared with normal subjects. References: [1] Michaely HJ, et. al., Abdom Imaging 2007. [2] Muller MF, et.al., Radiology 1994. [3] Ries M, et.al., J Magn Reson Imaging 2001. [4] Kataoka, M., et al. J Magn Reson Imaging 2009.


ELECTRICAL countershock has been found to be a useful method of terminating ventricular fibrillation since the end of the last century. 1 However, there are still aspects related to this procedure that are not well known, 2 especially in reference to the prevention of recurrence of the original arrhythmia. AC current was originally used by Zoll and co-workers 3 primarily for the emergency treatment of ectopic ventricular rhythms. 4,5 More recently, DC current has been employed successfully by Lown et al not only for emergency ventricular fibrillation but also for abolishing susupra-ventricular arrhythmias. 6,8 Several other workers have performed elective defibrillation of the atria. 9,13 In a previous report from our department dealing with problems related to conversion of atrial fibrillation, 2 it was observed that a significant number of patients reverted to the original arrhythmia shortly after sinus rhythm was established. The number of recurrences of atrial fibrillation was decreased by premedication with quinidine sulfate.


Global economic has been decreasing in the recent years, manifested by the greater exchange rates volatility on international commodity market. This study attempts to analyze some prominent exchange rate forecasting models on Malaysian commodity trading: univariate ARIMA, ARCH and GARCH models in conjunction with stationarity test on residual diagnosis direct testing of heteroskedasticity. All forecasting models utilized the monthly data from 1990 to 2015. Given a total of 312 observations, the data used to forecast both short-term and long-term exchange rate. The forecasting power statistics suggested that the forecasting performance of ARIMA (1, 1, 1) model is more efficient than the ARCH (1) and GARCH (1, 1) models. For ex-post forecast, exchange rate was increased from RM 3.50 per USD in January 2015 to RM 4.47 per USD in December 2015 based on the baseline data. For short-term ex-ante forecast, the analysis results indicate a decrease in exchange rate on 2016 June (RM 4.27 per USD) as compared with 2...


Key Points Question How is the cost burden of antiretroviral therapy and preexposure prophylaxis for HIV treatment and prevention distributed to patients and other payers under Medicare Part D? Findings In this nationwide cross-sectional analysis of 2019 Part D plans, the median prices of antiretroviral therapy exceeded $35 000 annually, and the price of preexposure prophylaxis exceeded $20 000 annually. Patients' projected annual out-of-pocket cost surpassed $3000, and Medicare, not insurance plans or manufacturers, paid half to two-thirds of costs. Meaning It appears that ending the HIV epidemic requires addressing the high prices of antiretroviral therapy and preexposure prophylaxis and Medicare Part D cost-sharing that jeopardize affordability for patients and incur a burden to Medicare.


A geologic map of Mars has been constructed largely on the basis of photographic evidence. Four classes of units are recognized: (1) primitive cratered terrain, (2) sparsely cratered volcanic eolian plains, (3) circular radially symmetric volcanic constructs such as shield volcanoes, domes, and craters, and (4) tectonic erosional units such as chaotic and channel deposits. Grabens are the main structural features; compressional and strike slip features are almost completely absent. Most grabens are part of a set radial to the main volcanic area, Tharsis.


Inverse optimal transport (OT) refers to the problem of learning the cost function for OT from observed transport plan or its samples. In this paper, we derive an unconstrained convex optimization formulation of the inverse OT problem, which can be further augmented by any customizable regularization. We provide a comprehensive characterization of the properties of inverse OT, including uniqueness of solutions. We also develop two numerical algorithms, one is a fast matrix scaling method based on the Sinkhorn-Knopp algorithm for discrete OT, and the other one is a learning based algorithm that parameterizes the cost function as a deep neural network for continuous OT. The novel framework proposed in the work avoids repeatedly solving a forward OT in each iteration which has been a thorny computational bottleneck for the bi-level optimization in existing inverse OT approaches. Numerical results demonstrate promising efficiency and accuracy advantages of the proposed algorithms over existing state-of-the-art methods.


The detection and analysis of DNA polymorphism's become an essential aim in plant breeding, particularly for early selection of difficult phenotyping traits. As part of our citrus rootstock breeding program for tolerance to salinity, we are currently working on the search and study of homologous genes of ionic transporter of model plants. Here are presented the results concerning the diversity of the NhxI gene coding potentially for an antiport Na+/H+ identified in grapefruit fruits. 42 accessions of the Corsican citrus germplasm depository have been analysed for Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism's using EcoRI and EcoRV restriction enzyme and an amplified fragment (1500 bp) covering the 5' region of grapefruit Nhx1 gene as probe. A important diversity has been detected and the RFLP profiles are in agreement with a single gene segregation and the known evolution pattern of the accessions. To detect polymorphism inside the gene sequence, the DNA of eight genotypes was amplified with specific primers of NhxI gene. These PCR products have been cloned into the vector pGEM-T and sequenced. Sequence comparison shows that the Poncirus trifoliata, known as a sodium excluder, differs 48bp in an intronic sequence compared with all the different species of Citrus genus analyzed. The later ones known as sodium includer have very similar sequences. Studies by RTPCR and northern are going on to analyze a possible correlation between the NhxI gene expression and citrus tolerance to salinity. (Texte integral)


The aim of the work is to design a new compact microwave plasma source with a homogeneous circumferential distribution of the electric field intensity. The software for electromagnetic field simulation combined with design-of-experiments techniques was used to design and optimize the source geometry in terms of energy efficiency and field homogeneity. The basic assumption is that plasma can be described by an equivalent dielectric load. Two relatively simple microwave waveguide plasma sources have been simulated to study the effect of impedance-matching devices on the energy efficiency of the whole system. A microwave waveguide plasma source based on the WR340 waveguide geometry has been assembled to validate the model experimentally. A completely new compact plasma source, which is a toroidal waveguide and an innovative 'self-adapting' coupling slot, has been numerically simulated, designed and built. Preliminary tests confirmed the existence of a sufficiently homogeneous five-lobe distribution of the electric field.


How many of us have not had the experience of sitting in a classroom wondering idly: "Is this really going to matter out in the real world?" It's curious, and in no small amount humbling, to realize how many of those nuggets of knowledge really do matter. One cropped up recently for me: the Finite State Machine.


The national loss caused by the periodic livestock epidemic is very large. In addition, vehicle movement is the main cause of livestock epidemics in Korea. In this context, this study analyzed the relationship between the degree centrality of livestock facilities and the outbreak of infectious diseases. For this purpose, a livestock vehicle movement network was constructed using the facility entrance data provided by KAHIS. Afterwards, the centrality index was derived for each facility in the vehicle movement network and the mean centrality index of the epidemic and non-epidemic facilities were compared. The analysis results are summarized as follows. First, the degree centrality of epidemic facilities is significantly greater than non-epidemic facilities. As a result of the analysis of the entire period data and the period-based data, in most data, the degree centrality of facilities where livestock infectious diseases occurred was significantly greater than most non-occurrence facilities. Second, in the entire period data, the difference in degree centrality between the epidemic and non-epidemic facilities was smaller for HPAI than for FMD. On the other hand, no significant difference was found in the results of the analysis according to the divided period. The policy implications of the results are as follows. First, proactive management of facilities based on centrality is needed. Second, in the case of cloven-hoofed animal facilities, it is more urgent to introduce a management policy based on the degree centrality.


The Journal of Nutritional Science (JNS) was launched some 9 years ago, the first articles appearing in February 2012. The journal was jointly established by the Nutrition Society and Cambridge University Press as a pioneering Open Access forum covering the full spectrum of nutritional science. At the beginning, it was closely linked with the British Journal of Nutrition, established 74 years ago in 1947, with a common Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board. The role of Editor-in-Chief is no longer shared between the two journals, although there is still considerable overlap in the composition of the Editorial Boards. JNS has attracted a wide range of studies, and some articles have been highly cited. Indeed, a review paper on flavonoids by Panche et al. in 2016 has, at the time of writing, received >450 citations according to the Scopus and Web of Science databases (and with a high 'Altmetrics score' for those engaging with this metric). Citations are, of course, a reflection of interest and influence – of 'impact'. There are several databases which provide data on citation impact, whether for individual articles or for specific journals, particularly Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate), CiteScore (Elsevier), Google Scholar and Dimensions. CiteScore, which is one of the more recent, was launched in December 2016 as part of Scopus – itself a comprehensive database of peer-reviewed research. CiteScore has several attractions, including that it covers a window of 4 years (originally 3), the 2019 figures being based on articles published in 2016–19; a period of 3 years is considered to cover the citation peak in the majority of disciplines. A further major attraction is that a CiteScore is provided once a journal is included within the Scopus database, no special request or evaluation is required. As a consequence, it can become available soon after a new journal is successfully launched. JNS has had a CiteScore essentially since the inception of the database and the metrics for 2019 were released in June 2020, as calculated by Scopus on 31 May of this year. I am delighted to say that our journal has done extremely well – a value of 9⋅4. It should be noted that CiteScore employs only a single decimal place in order to avoid an inappropriate sense of precision. CiteScore currently lists JNS under two subject areas: 'Agricultural and Biological Sciences – Food Science', where it ranks 9th out of 299 (97th percentile), and 'Medicine – Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism', where it is ranked 20th out of 217 (91st percentile). Most other nutrition journals are listed under 'Nursing – Nutrition and Dietetics' where JNS would now rank 7th out of 120 (93rd percentile); we have requested that it is also included under this category. In each case, JNS would rank in the 1st quartile of journals in the designated subject area; indeed, it would rank in the top 10 %. Such high rankings clearly represent an exceptional performance on the part of JNS, which I very much hope that our authors – both past and future – will appreciate. I would also like to highlight that JNS is now willing to publish articles that report negative results – providing that they make a genuine contribution to nutritional knowledge (and are, of course, scientifically sound). Such articles might challenge current perspectives, for example, or demonstrate the inability to reproduce important recent findings. This adds to the type of article that we currently publish – 'Primary Research Papers', 'Brief Reports', 'Review Articles', 'Systematic Reviews', 'Perspectives in Nutritional Science', 'Workshop Reports', 'Letters to the Editor' and 'Obituaries' – although most submissions reporting negative results are likely to be 'Primary Research Papers' or 'Brief Reports'. We look forward to receiving manuscripts in this new category.


: Disaster Management, defined as a coordinated social effort to successfully prepare for and respond to disasters, can benefit greatly as an industrial process from modern Deep Learning methods. Disaster prevention organizations can benefit greatly from the processing of disaster response data. In an attempt to detect and subsequently categorise disaster-related information from tweets via tweet text analysis, a Feedforward Neural Network (FNN), a Convolutional Neural Network, a Bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory (BLSTM), as well as several Transformer-based network architectures, namely BERT, DistilBERT, Albert, RoBERTa and DeBERTa, are employed. The two defined main tasks of the work presented in this paper are: (1) distinguishing tweets into disaster related and non relevant ones, and (2) categorising already labeled disaster tweets into eight predefined natural disaster categories. These supported types of natural disasters are earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, explosions, volcano eruptions and general disasters. To achieve this goal, several accessible related datasets are collected and combined to suit the two tasks. In addition, the combination of preprocessing tasks that is most beneficial for inference is investigated. Finally, experiments have been conducted using bias mitigation techniques.


This paper examines how componentbased software can aid the development of global information systems that reflect local issues. In presenting the idealistic contribution of component-based development, the paper draws on the findings of a case study to note that there are several difficulties that need to be addressed if the approach is to be successful in practice. The conclusion drawn is that considerable attention needs to be paid to the means for understanding and representing: (a) the needs of given domains; and (b) variation in those needs across local contexts. It is proposed that these points cannot be considered as trivial, as such understanding runs against the dominant tradition in information systems development, which is enshrined in both formalism and education.


Cinchona alkaloids have always been major players in asymmetric synthesis. In line with this tradition, these natural compounds and their derivatives have been amongst the most successful and useful catalysts in the up-surging scene of asymmetric organocatalysis. This chapter highlights concisely relevant examples of Cinchona alkaloid catalysed enantioselective C–C bond-forming reactions, touching different catalyst classes and substrate activation modes. The selected examples are intended to illustrate the enormous utility of these alkaloids in asymmetric catalysis, and to indicate future directions for their full exploitation in the framework of sustainable organic synthesis.


Dipyrromethanes are useful intermediates in the synthesis of porphyrins and their analogs.
In this paper, we report the synthesis of a new bis(dipyrromethane) {(E)-1,2-bis[4-[di(1H-pyrrol-2-
yl)methyl]phenyl]ethene}, from (E)-4,4'-1,2-ethenediylbis(benzaldehyde), showing a long resonance
chain with improved UV spectrometric properties. This product has high potential in the synthesis of
new bis(porphyrins) or other related compounds.


Young modulus and toughness (K IC ) of bulk solar grade silicon (SoG-Si) obtained by directional solidification of metallurgical grade silicon were determined. The Young modulus was measured by the technique of impulse excitation of vibration and K IC was determined using the indentation method. Measurement values agree well with those available in the literature. The indentation method proved to be a reliable, relatively simple, inexpensive, and fast experimental method to measure K IC in SoG-Si.


Non-resonant low-field microwave signal in undoped Bi-Pb-Sr-Ca-Cu-O (2223) sample increases monotonously with decreasing temperature, like that in many bulk samples of high-Tc superconductors. But the signal of a Sb-doped sample shows a peak at 103 K, and declines gradually and tends to stabilise when the temperature is further reduced. A distorted 2223 phase (i.e., 130 K phase) which was an intergrowth of 2223 and insulating monoclinic phases in the Sb-doped sample, was unstable, and it might change into the stable insulating monoclinic phase and lost its superconductivity at lower temperatures.


Abstract: The time course of changes in the tissue impedance and the levels of extracellular transmitter and non‐transmitter amino acids was studied in the striatum and hippocampus of the unanesthetized rat after cardiac arrest. Electrodes were implanted for the continuous measurement of tissue impedance so that a measure of the volume of extracellular space was provided. Alternatively, bilateral dialysis probes were used for monitoring levels of extracellular amino acids in subsequent 30‐s samples using an automated precolumn derivatization technique for reversed‐phase HPLC analysis and fluorimetric detection. The impedance started to rise ∼1.2 min following cardiac arrest, increased rapidly during the first 5 min, and increased almost linearly thereafter. After 15 min, a decrease of ∼50% in the extracellular space was calculated. The impedance rose more steeply in the striatum than in the hippocampus. The extracellular levels of taurine, which increased >300% within 5 min after cardiac arrest, most closely resembled the time course of the change in impedance. Glutamate and aspartate levels did not increase until 5 min after circulatory arrest, and at 15 min they had risen to a level of 465 and 265% for the striatum and 298 and 140% for the hippocampus of the resting release, respectively. The release of γ‐aminobutyric acid (GABA) was multiphasic and did not resemble that of any of the other—putative—transmitter amino acids. Fifteen minutes after cardiac arrest, the levels of GABA were 617 and 774% of the resting release in the striatum and hippocampus, respectively. Glycine and ala‐nine efflux substantially increased (232 and 151% in striatum and 141 and 154% in hippocampus, respectively) 15 min postmortem, whereas the glutamine level was slightly increased and levels of asparagine, histidine, threonine, ethanolamine, serine, arginine, and tyrosine were inconsistently higher in the two brain regions. At this time, the extracellular levels of glutamate, GABA, and aspartate were only slightly lower, as expected from the tissue levels and from levels of the other amino acids, an observation indicating that all the amino acids may diffuse through postmortem brain tissue to a nearly similar extent. This study provides evidence that extracellular levels of taurine reflect changes in distribution of electrolytes (and in membrane potentials), that the postmortem release of transmitter amino acids is multiphasic with a delay of at least 1 min, that postmortem shrinkage in extracellular volume cannot account for the increase in the content of transmitter amino acids in the dialysate, and that the massive overflow of glutamate, aspartate, GABA, and taurine seen during ischemia is the result of both release and the failure of uptake. Possible implications of the present findings for excitotoxic damage of the brain are discussed.


Sumatra is in an active subduction zone between the indo-australian plate and the eurasian plate and is located at a fault along the sumatra fault so that sumatra is vulnerable to earthquakes. One of the ways to find out the cause of earthquake can be done by identifying the type of earthquake-causing faults based on earthquake of focal mechanism. The data used to identify the type of fault cause of earthquake is the earth tensor moment data which is sourced from global cmt period 1976-2016. The data used in this research using magnitude m ≥ 6 sr. This research uses gmt software (generic mapping tolls) to describe the form of fault. From the research result, it is found that the characteristics of fault field that formed in every region in sumatera island based on data processing and data of earthquake history of 1976-2016 period that the type of fault in sumatera fault is strike slip, fault type in mentawai fault is reverse fault (rising faults) and dip-slip, while the fault type in the subduction zone is dip-slip.


In this paper we focus on pairs consisting of the affine $N$-space and multiideals with a positive exponent. We introduce a method "lifting to characteristic 0" which is a kind of the inversion of "modulo p reduction". By making use of it, we prove that Mustata-Nakamura's conjecture and some uniform bound of divisors computing log canonical thresholds descend from characteristic 0 to certain classes of pairs in positive characteristic. We also pose a problem whose affirmative answer gives the descent of the statements to the whole set of pairs in positive characteristic.


This study measures the level of sustainability of improvements in maternal and child care and the institutionalization of continuous quality improvement (CQI) in the Ministry of Health (MINSA) of Nicaragua following ten years of technical assistance supported by USAID through its Quality Assurance Project (QAP) and Health Care Improvement Project (HCI). It summarizes the full study report in Spanish: Sandino M Gomez I y Bowser D. 2011. Sostenibilidad de las Mejoras en la Atencion Materno-Infantil e Institucionalizacion del Mejoramiento Continuo de la Calidad en Nicaragua. Informe de Investigacion. Bethesda MD: University Research Co. Health Care Improvement Project [HCI]..


The author introduces semantic fixes and then considers institutional and spatio-temporal fixes. The analysis relates the author's previous work on conjunctural analysis, cultural political economy, and social fixes directly to various forms of governance. Institutional and spatio-temporal fixes treat space and time as direct objects of governance, governing the spatio-temporal dimensions of other substantive objects of governance and compensating for the uneven spatio-temporal effects of governance. This facilitates the study of how the inherent contradictions and antagonisms of capitalism are governed through a historically variable set of semantic, institutional, and spatio-temporal fixes. It shows that state power can be analysed as 'government + governance in the shadow of hierarchy' and reveals the role of governance and multispatial metagovernance.


Canada has more than 350 remote and northern communities, most of which rely on diesel for their electric and thermal needs. This reliance is deleterious to climate, health, albedo, and energy security—all diesel must be imported. The government is working to transition these communities to climate-friendly and sustainable alternatives, but assessments of this transition are hampered by limited data availability, especially the absence of hourly thermal load profiles. Here, we develop a method for estimating the thermal load profiles of these communities; apply it to 40 communities that vary across characteristics like population, location, accessibility, and Indigenous identity; and seek to validate these profiles with the few empirical data that exist. We also develop a model to predict the thermal load of a remote and northern community using limited, available information like population and location. This paper represents the first attempt to simulate hourly thermal load profiles for these communities. We find that thermal loads are large—the hourly thermal load can be up to 23 times the hourly electrical load in winter, which has implications for investment planning. Our research helps communities, investors, and analysts develop robust transition plans as they seek to decarbonize northern communities' energy systems.


After a general survey of conventional propellants, there will follow a description of the HET propellants. HET powders are propellants of heterogeneous structure. They are characterized by the powder granules worked into powder basic masses. The powder granules may be grains of single-base, double-base or triple-base propellants. Single-base powder basic masses are suited to take up a maximum of 70% granules. Granule percentages of about 50% have found to be most efficient. In the case of HET propellants with single-base matrix, their temperature dependence can be present at discretion, i.e. with neutral of negative temperature exponent, by the type, grain size and percentage of the granules worked in. HET propellants with single-base powders as basic masses can be produced with explosion heat values of up to 4300 Joule/g. Their manufacture does not present any problems and it is easy from the technical point of view. As full-strip propellants, the HET types with single-base powders as basic masses have progressive burning characteristic. HET propellant types are suited also for the manufacture of maccaroni and strip powder. The free-flowing powder types can be surface coated as usual.


In this paper, I use a unique individual-level pre-migration labour market dataset for Poland to examine emigrant selection in two major destination countries, the United Kingdom and Germany. I compare the pre-migration observable and unobservable characteristics of emigrants with those of non-emigrants in Poland. First, I find that Polish emigrants to the UK are more similarly educated to non-emigrants while being more negatively selected on residual wages. Second, emigrants to Germany are disproportionately more likely to fall in the middle of the education distribution but they are no different than non-emigrants in terms of unobservable skills. The familiar predictions of the Borjas (1987) model allow me to partially undercover the mechanism driving the selection patterns of Polish emigrants. I contribute to the migrant selection literature by providing additional evidence on how migrants respond to differences in both labour markets and migration policies across countries.


Objective To study the effect of silence method combined with massage on comorbid anxiety and depression for patients with acute myocardial infarction.Method Divide 63 patients with acute myocardial infarction into observation group(n=31) and control group(n=32) according to hospitalization order.Patients in control group receive routine treatment and nursing care.Patients in observation group receive silence method combined with massage based on routine care for 30 days.Assess and compare the results of Self-rating Anxiety Scale(SAS),Self-rating Depression Scale(SDS) and Seatle Angina Questionnaire(SAQ) before and after intervention for two groups.Result The scores of anxiety and depression in observation groups are lower than scores in control group after intervention.Except disease cognition level,other 5 dimension scores of SAQ are all higher in observation group.Conclusion Silence method combined with massage can relieve anxiety and depression for patients with acute myocardial infarction and improve their quality of life.


In an era when massive amounts of medical data became available, researchers working in biological, biomedical and clinical domains have increasingly started to require the help of language engineers to process large quantities of biomedical and molecular biology literature, patient data or health records. With such a huge amount of reports, evaluating their impact has long seized to be a trivial task. Linking the contents of these documents to each other, as well as to specialized ontologies, could enable access to and discovery of structured clinical information and foster a major leap in natural language processing and health research


Hydrophobicity is one of important solid surface properties for the development of Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) biosensor. Hydrophobicity plays a role in the biomolecule immobilisation. Polystyrene is one of the coating materials used in the QCM biosensor, where the sensitive biomolecule material is immobilised. Hydrophobicity and surface roughness can be controlled by many methods. In this work, we investigated the effect of the polymer molecular weight and UV radiation on the surface roughness and hydrophobicity. The polystyrene with a molecular weight of 35,000 g/mol, 192,000 g/mol, and 280.000 g/mol were solved in toluene with a concentration of 3%, 5%, and 7% and coated using spin coating method on top of the QCM sensor. The coated polystyrene on QCM sensor was irradiated using UV lamp with a wavelength of 254 nm. The contact angle of water before and after UV irradiated was measured using contact angle instrument and the surface roughness is measured using non-contact optical profilometer. The result shows that the higher molecular weight of polystyrene led to more hydrophobic surface. Radiation under UV light increases the hydrophobicity of polystyrene surface. The surface roughness of the polystyrene on top of the sensor is not affected by UV irradiation.


Beginning on October 13, 1981 a two channel spectrometer aboard the Solar Mesosphere Explorer has been obtaining daily measurements of full disc solar irradiance. These observations cover the spectral interval 120 to 305nm with approx..75nm spectral resolution. The relative accuracy of the measurements from day to day over the first three solar rotations is approximately 1%. In this report we present analyses of Lyman-alpha, the integrated Schumann-Runge continuum (130-175nm), and the integrated Schumann-Runge bands (175 to 190nm). All three show a clear variability related primarily to the 27-day solar rotation period. Correlations of these three values of solar irradiance to ground-based indices of solar activity, 10.7cm flux and sunspot number, are presented.


Metal matrix composites are now being manufactured in a variety of grades and forms, but machining is usually necessary to produce finished engineering components. The abrasive reinforcing phases used in these composites make them difficult to machine, and can cause severe tool wear. This article describes machining tests on aluminium-based metal matrix composites, and compares the results obtained with PCD and carbide tooling