I was attending the Computer Science Department at the University of Pisa, when I met a person who was going to have a great importance in my life: Prof. Tonina Starita. I attended two of her courses at I decided that I wanted to do research in the artificial intelligence field with her. I took my degree with a thesis on an expert system for the neurological domain, and after I spent almost other four years in research in the neural networks, hybrid systems and data mining with her. She wanted me to take also my PhD, but we both understood I had entrepreneurship ambitions. We worked on a great number European Commission funded projects (among them CAMARC, WOMAN) involving different technologies (image processing, gait analysis, web ehealth services). When I announced her I was going to create a company of my own she supported and encouraged me. I am now an entrepreneur with two companies of my own. One, named Synspsis, is in the health information systems sector and the other, named DAXO, in pervasive and mobile computing, so both have been affected by my years of research with Prof. Starita, who became my friend Tonina during those years. We made research together but we had also fun together. Everybody who knows her, appreciated her wisdom, her creativity, her love for life and her love for the research. This article is for Tonina.


Nucleation and growth of crystalline films of silicon, germanium, and cadmium sulfide on substrates of plastic and glass were investigated. Amorphous films of germanium, silicon, and cadmium sulfide on amorphous substrates of glass and plastic were converted to the crystalline condition by electron bombardment.


We often notice that different experimental results of the same algorithm were reported in the literature. Usually this is because computational experiments were performed under different settings. However, even when almost the same settings are used, similar results are not always obtained. Especially when we use our own implementation, it is very difficult to obtain similar experimental results to the reported ones in the literature. Of course, due to the stochastic nature of an evolutionary algorithm, its experimental results can be different in each run. However, its average results over many runs should be similar. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. We often encounter the situation where our own experimental results are clearly different from the reported ones in the literature. In this paper, we report our investigation results on the following question: why totally different results of MOEA/D were often reported in the literature. More specifically, we show that totally different results can be obtained when we generate random real numbers in a slightly different manner such as the normalization of integers in [0, 253 – 1] by dividing them by 253 or (253 – 1).


A comprehensive study of electroslag surfacing (ESS) of steel with Ni Alloy 625 and 70Cu-30Ni strip electrodes was conducted to establish the feasibility of replacing forged bearing sleeves on propulsion shafting with integral weld surfacing. The base material was MIL-S-23284, Class 1 steel in the form of 41--66 cm (16--26 in.) diameter shafting and 76 mm (3 in.) thick flat plate. All ESS was carried out at a heat input level of approximately 5.9kJ/mm (150 kJ/in.) using 30 x 0.5 mm (1.2 x 0.02 in.) strip electrodes. Assessments of mechanical properties and microstructure of Ni Alloy 625 surfacing and 70Cu-30Ni surfacing were conducted to establish the structure-property relationships in these complex alloy systems. In addition, a solidification cracking test was developed to determine the relative cracking susceptibilities of these strip surfacing alloys. Although the Ni Alloy 625 surfacing contained small islands of interdendritic MC type carbides and Laves phase, the mechanical properties of this surfacing were satisfactory. The 70Cu-30Ni surfacing required a buttering layer of 30Cu-70Ni or pure Ni to prevent solidification cracking. The inherent ductility-dip sensitivity of 70Cu-30Ni surfacing was overcome by the development of a suitable ESS procedure.


Ten different ecotypes of soybean varieties were selected based on the degree of drought resistance.Some physiological and biochemical indexes related to drought resistance including relative conductivity,photosynthetic rate,relative water content,etc.were measured by way of pot and field experiments.Grey system theory was used to determine the relationship between indexes and drought resistance.Then by applying grey correlative degree,comprehensive multiple target evaluation and drought resistance index as parameters,every identified index was assigned an absolute value to quantitatively evaluate soybean drought-resistance in flowering-podding period.Results show the relative degrees of "Jinda 74","Jinda 53","Jinda 75"with the reference variety to be,respectively,0.8706,0.7278 and 0.5513."Jinda 74"has the highest drought resistance,followed by"Jinda 53",while "Jinda75" is simply the weakest.In accordance with drought-resistant index theory and grey correlative degree of comprehensive multiple target evaluation,drought resistance of"Jinda 74"and"Jinda 53"are the best,which well correspond with practical situations.Correlation coefficient of the two drought resistance appraisal methods of soybean is 0.8061**,which explains the reliability of grey correlative degree in the use of comprehensive multiple target evaluation to evaluate soybean drought resistance in flowering-podding period.


Based on the characteristics of Internet education, this paper focuses on the full application of campus network as an aid to foreign languages teaching from the following three aspects: the databank of teaching recourse construction, teaching by multimedia and active learning by students.


Massively parallel computers have found significant interest from researchers in recent years. These machines have been used for complex and sophisticated simulations, such as, the brain functions simulation. Due to the increase in the power demand by massively parallel computers and it's move into the exascale computing in future, temperature and power consumption has become a major constrains, many researches aimed to address the power efficiency and temperature problems. In this work, we studied the effect of the programming languages statements on system power consumption for three control loop statements. These statements are: For Loop, While Loop, and Do-While Loop. For each of the three statements six measurements were obtained: average temperature for the control loop, average maximum reached temperature for the control loop, average percentage of execution time when the control loop reach the maximum temperature, average number of times the control loop reach the maximum temperature, average power consumption for the control loop, and average execution time for the control loop. The findings indicated that the For loop statement was the most efficient control loop statement. Also, it showed that the While loop statement was the worst in efficiency.


26 The roles played by ryanodine receptors (RyR) and inositol 1,4,5, trisphosphate 27 receptors (IP3R) in vascular smooth muscle (VSM) in the microcirculation remain 28 unclear. Therefore, the function of both RyR and IP3R in Ca signals and myogenic 29 tone in hamster cremaster muscle feed arteries and downstream arterioles were 30 assessed using confocal imaging and pressure myography. Feed artery VSM displayed 31 Ca sparks and Ca waves, which were inhibited by the RyR antagonists, ryanodine 32 (10 μM) or tetracaine (100 μM). Despite the inhibition of sparks and waves, ryanodine 33 or tetracaine increased global intracellular Ca and constricted the arteries. Blockade of 34 IP3R with xestospongin D (5 μM) or 2-aminoethoxydiphenyl borate (2-APB; 100 μM), or 35 inhibition of phospholipase C (PLC) using U73122 (10 μM) also attenuated Ca waves, 36 without affecting Ca sparks. Importantly, the IP3R and PLC antagonists decreased 37 global intracellular Ca and dilated the arteries. In contrast, cremaster arterioles 38 displayed only Ca waves: Casparks were not observed, and neither ryanodine (1039 50 μM) nor tetracaine (100 μM) affected either Ca signals or arteriolar tone, despite 40 the presence of functional RyR as assessed by responses to the RyR agonist, caffeine 41 (10 mM). As in feed arteries, arteriolar Ca waves were attenuated by xestospongin D 42 (5 μM), 2-APB (100 μM) and U73122 (10 μM), accompanied by decreased global 43 intracellular Ca and vasodilation. These findings highlight the contrasting roles played 44 by RyR and IP3R in Ca signals and myogenic tone in feed arteries, and demonstrate 45 important differences in the function of RyR between feed arteries and downstream 46 arterioles. 47 Calcium signaling in arteries and arterioles – H-00728-2010 Revision 1 3


In the United States, over 56 billion pounds of raw materials derived from animals are converted to approximately 9 and 10 billion pounds of rendered fats and protein meal, respectively. With this size and scope, quality control teams need methods that are reliable, accurate, intuitive, robust, and rapid are a necessity to keep up with the ever-growing demands to ensure finished product quality. Two primary indicators to evaluate oxidative stress of protein meals and fats are peroxide value (PV) and free fatty acid (FFA). Industry estimations due to no standardization of oxidative test methods costs the ingredient and food industries millions of dollars. Recently, leaders in various industries have come together to tackle these challenges through evaluating and validating new platforms. One such platform that was recognized is the CDR FoodLab analyzer, a pre-calibrated, easy to use photometer that can perform multiple oxidative stress analyses including PV and FFA in a variety of products. The rendering industry recognized the potential for this and industry leaders in conjunction with CDR FoodLab validated the equipment against the AOCS official methods Cd 8b-90 and Ca 5a-40, for PV and FFA, respectively.In this presentation, the innovative CDR FoodLab technology story will be presented that showcases how novel technologies can be validated and utilized by industries that need platforms that are reliable and intuitive. Included will be the data set from a major industry study where 75 mixed species protein meal samples were tested against the AOCS official method Cd 8b-90 with ether extraction as well as other rapid technologies. After that study, it was recognized that the technology could be exploited and standardized for other matrices with validations being presented.


.RITERS innumerable have expatiated, and justly too, upon the beauty of the trees-the trunk, the branches, the leaves, the shadows they cast and the shelter the branches and leaves afford to the birds. The mystery of the vast forests; even the cutting down of trees, the rafting of them down the streams to the mill, and, eventually, the singing of the saws that divide them into lumber, have been subjects for writings and poems that move and stir the soul. In this article I wish with all earnestness to comment upon the beauty of the trees when cut up into lumber. There is a charm as individualistic and as marked in the wood itself as is that of the trees in the forest. This beauty lies in the grain, or markings; the texture, or surface appearance ; the natural shades, or colors; the marvelous varieties in grain and texture; the readiness with which they yield themselves to color treatment, and the results so attained. Many a worker in wood loses much of the joy he might have in his work by not making a study of these beautiful details. Is it not evident that he who loves to look at the wood upon which he is engaged will enjoy his work far more than one who sees no beauty in it? It is to help arouse this joy-that is one of the essential conditions of artistic work-that I wish briefly to comment upon the special beauties certain woods possess, and how best in the finishing processes to bring these into prominence and retain them. And, in addition, there exists in wood a quality so satisfying that the proper use of it in the structural features of a house produces an effect of completeness which does away with the need of elaborate furnishings or decoration. I believe that one reason why so many people pile unnecessary furniture, pictures and bric-a-brac into their houses is because the nece~~avy furniture, the woodwork (or other treatment) of the walls, and the color scheme as a whole are not interesting enough. This is a point that can hardly be too strongly emphasized in its bearing upon the creation of beautiful and restful surroundings in the home. If the woodwork of your house is finished so that the natural


The utility model discloses an intelligent terminal for easy operation, which includes a terminal body. At least one of the side and the back of the terminal body is provided with an operator. Compared with the prior art, a cell phone can be operated at the side and the back by the operator. The movements of a cursor on a screen can be carried out by a thumb of a single hand at the side and by an index finger and a middle finger at the back to select procedures and files in the screen and to flip pages up and down and left and right. The operation is more flexible and convenient, and the terminal is confirmed to ergonomic principles, thus the purpose of the utility model is achieved.


Literature publications (up to September 2006) concerning the synthesis of ?-phosphinyl-?-amino acids and their development towards use as therapeutic agents are reviewed. General and asymmetric methodologies for the preparation of straight-chain examples are described, including AP3-7 modulators of glutamate-responsive excitatory amino acid (EAA) receptors (i.e. ionotropic NMDA-, and metabotropic GrpIII mGlu-receptors), and the glutamate synthetase inhibitor phosphinothricin. Focusing primarily on the development of methods for introducing phosphonate and aminocarboxylate functions to the appropriate scaffold, approaches to conformationally constrained ?-phosphinyl-?-amino acids are also investigated, along with their relevance to the development of therapeutic regimens towards neurodegenerative disorders.


We developed a grid-based carbon accounting (GCA) model for estimating carbon fluxes from contemporary forest disturbances based on an existing bookkeeping model. Utilizing fine resolution remote sensing products and available ground survey data, the GCA model is able to provide spatial and temporal details that are crucial to carbon management decisions. The model was tested over North Carolina, and annual carbon flux maps from 1986 to 2010 were produced at 30-m resolution. The results showed that without considering soil carbon as well as the legacy emissions from wood products harvested before 1986 and the emissions from wood products harvested from 1986 to 2010 that will be released after 2010, North Carolina's forest land was a net C sink of 218.1Tg over the 25-year (1986-2010) study period.


Understanding the mobility of vehicles plays a fundamental role in the design of solutions for intelligent vehicular networks. Considering that different types of vehicles have different characteristics of mobility, we are interested in investigating how bus mobility impacts the formation of these networks. In this sense, we present clear understanding the bus mobility for vehicular networks. Our analysis is based on a real mobility trace of buses from several days of Dublin, Ireland. Particularly, our study reveals key features of a vehicular network obtained from a real bus mobility trace such as the network structure over the days and how the components of the networks are arranged in the space and time. Additionally, we investigate the potential of bus mobility for urban sensing. In summary, due to network fragmentation identified in our analysis, data dissemination mechanisms that use store-carry-and-forward and street-centric routing are more indicated for intelligent vehicular networks based on bus mobility. Moreover, we show how the use of buses as sensors can compose a powerful urban sensing infrastructure.


Secondary infections are the most common cause of mortality in the immunocompromised host. A recent therapeutic approach has aimed at bolstering the host's defence mechanism to assist in eradication of infection, using naturally occurring and synthetic substances like BCG, C. parvum, muramyl dipeptide and glucans. Tinospora cordifolia (TC), Asparagus racemosus (AR) and Withania somnifera (WS) are plants prescribed in Ayurveda, the Indian traditional system of medicine, as agents to strengthen host defence mechanisms. The present article reviews the effects of TC, AR and WS in diverse experimental infections. TC, AR and WS protected rats against caecal ligation induced abdominal sepsis and mice against Escherichia coli peritonitis. This was associated with a faster bacteremia clearance. Myelosuppression induced by single and multiple doses of cyclophosphamide was reversed. Mortality due to Staphylococcus aureus sepsis in neutropenic and hemisplenectomized mice was reduced in treated animals. Candida albicans sepsis induced mortality was also reduced by the plants. The plants induced leucocytosis with predominant neutrophilia associated with stimulation of phagocytic and bactericidal capacity of neutrophils and macrophages. In view of their oral efficacy and relative lack of adverse effects, AR, TC and WS show promise as useful immunomodulators.


Perhaps one of the rarest complications of carcinoma of the colon is perforation into another hollow abdominal viscus. These perforations may occur into the stomach, small intestine, bladder, or into another portion of the large intestine. Osler 1 says: It is a peculiar fact that perforation of a carcinoma of the large intestine is more prone to occur into another portion of the large intestine than into the small intestine. The rareness of spontaneous anastomosis between the colon and other hollow abdominal organs is emphasized by the report of Korte, 2 in which he made a critical analysis of 254 cases of cancer of the cecum and colon and did not mention this condition, and by that of White, 3 who, in a review of necropsies in 3,583 cases of. cancer in the Vienna General Hospital, of which 343 were intestinal, did not record this complication. Even spontaneous benign visceral


The ground state and the first two excited state energy levels for the interaction of the type λx2/(1+gx2) have been calculated nonperturbatively as the eigenvalues of the one‐dimensional Schrodinger operator defined by Au=−u′′+x2u+λx2u/(1+gx2). The Ritz variational method in combination with the Givens–Householder algorithm has been used for numerical computations.


GSM is endowed with abundant waterpower resources which are exploited lowly.Eevery country in"GMS"develops its economy unbalantly,and it is short of funds and technologies,thus the cooperation of waterpower exploitation can reduce the unbalances of their eletrical demands.The paper analyzes the situation of waterpower resources and the degree of exploitation.Then it concludes and analyzes those external fectors on the electrical cooperation and the waterpower exploitation between"GMS"and China.And it prospects the electrical cooperation between GSM and China.


"China rising" now is a hot topic in International affairs. By most population around the world and vast territory, China is gradually increasing its influence toward the international society. Many nations have seen this and tried to intensify bilateral relationship with China. Germany did so too. Following end of the Cold War, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl issued a file called "Asian policy" to strengthen the relation between the asian partner especially China. The Successor of Kohl, Gerhard Schroder, was following the rules even much closer toward China. In his term of chancellor, he has visited China as much as three times with a lot of business. Angela Merkel replaced Schroder in 2005 to be the new german Chancellor. Her party issued "Asia as strategic challenge and chance for Germany and Europe" to regard China as competitor of trade and tactic. Merkel also gave a lot of pressure with "Human Rights" to China. This Article is for Merkel's foreign policy toward China with "Level-Analysis". Author expects to find the shift of the foreign policy toward China from Schroder to Merkel. In another part, Germany has its framework of the basic foreign policy. We should know that the german vital interest with protecting business can't be changed. But there are still slight differences between each german government. That's why author wants to find it in this thesis.


law, which alone has the power to liberate and which Satan's rebellion defies" (p. 450). The first and obvious objection to this argument is that, even if we grant the similarities between Charles i and Satan, we would still not erase the more obvious similarities, pointed out by many readers, between Milton and Satan and between God and Charles i. For, if Satan does indeed often boast of his "puissant legions," he also challenges the justice and reasonableness of God's ways. When, for example, Satan tries to convince Eve that God would punish mankind for trying to achieve "What might lead / To happier life," Satan argues that "God cannot hurt ye, and be just; / Not just, not God; not feared then, nor obeyed" (ix.700-02). When Milton questions the legitimacy of King Charles, he also argues that we should obey no power that does not represent right reason, ". . . nothing contrary to the laws of God or to reason can be considered law, any more than a tyrant can be considered a king ..." (quoted by Bennett, p. 451). But my purpose is not to identify Satan with Milton; for that would be as serious an error as Bennett's attempt to identify Satan with Charles i. Nor do I believe that Bennett, along with the scores of other Miltonists who have tried to prove that Satan is the villain of the poem, is not responsive to the heroic qualities of Satan or fails to see how much of Milton there is in him. The very fact that Bennett goes to such lengths to uncover the evil lurking behind his outward glory indicates that she too is aware of Satan's attraction. But she, again like so many other Miltonists, is disturbed by the fact that the villain seems so much more attractive than God, and, consequently, she must diminish his force to give the poem coherence. Otherwise, they believe, the poem would be divided against itself and fall apart—to be remembered only for purple passages or as a monument to dead ideas. What these critics do not realize is that the coherence they are looking for belongs to prose tracts, not to great poems or novels, and that the contradictory feelings that they try so hard to straighten out are precisely what gives the poem its power. As William Empson pointed out, "The more life Milton could put into our feelings about Satan the better" (Some Versions of Pastoral, 1935). And one of the important contributions of modern criticism, from the contextualists, to the structuralists, to the psychoanalytic critics, to the deconstructionists, is to make us aware of how the language of literature prevents us from arriving at clear meanings. "Confusion at the deep level where it is required" (Empson), irony, ambivalence, duplicity, indeterminacy, the "violence that enables [the text] to exceed the laws that a society, an ideology, a philosophy establish for themselves" (Roland Barthes), these and other terms, although used by different critics for different purposes, all are directed to that aspect of literature that disturbs our normal assumptions about language and forces us to accept our contradictory feelings. Thus, to dissolve the contradictions in our response to Satan and to God, as Bennett tries to do when she portrays Satan as a tyrant like King Charles, would reduce Paradise Lost to a political tract in blank verse. What makes Satan live as one of the great characters in our literature is that he represents Charles and Milton, that Milton's great lines prevent us from responding to Satan in the poem as we respond to him in Of Christian Doctrine or as we are invited to respond to Charles in Eikonoclastes. What Murray Krieger has said recently about all great literature has a particular relevance to Paradise Lost: "ft is not that the poem [my emphasis] engages in contradictions; instead it engages its subject with dramatic fullness . . . that keeps the arguments open and the poetic object closed. The contradictions are the critic's as he grapples with the conflicting propositions that language has imposed upon his work" (Theory of Criticism, 1976). To do justice to Milton's Satan we must, I believe, keep him open to our admiration as wefl as to our hostility.


Electromagnetic actuators are widely used for applications involving controlled motion. An important class of these devices is the moving magnet actuator. This type of actuator is gaining widespread use due to the concurrent development of high‐strength NdFeB magnetic materials. In this article, a method is presented for computing the dynamic behavior of moving magnet actuators. This method comprises a hybrid mathematical approach that includes magnetic circuit analysis, finite element analysis, and the direct computation of force and torque using integral expressions. The method is demonstrated herein using a specific actuator.


Each May, the US Army takes over its recreation center in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany, for a mammoth postgraduate course for its medical officers and nurses in Europe. The convention resembles a combination of the annual meeting of the AMA and the American College of Surgeons, only the Garmisch-Partenkirchen meeting is designed for military medical officers in Europe. The 1980 meeting was the 31st such gathering and was attended by 240 army physicians and 125 nurses. There are 450 US Army medical officers in Europe, so it is evident that a fair percentage of the doctors stationed in the theater attended. In addition to army physicians and 30 civilian physicians working for the army, there were six navy, ten air force, and 20 state department physicians taking the postgraduate courses. Some 35 physicians from other North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries also attended. Not all of the meeting was devoted to the


This paper presents a risk-based decision technique that combines the advantages of multiattribute utility theory (MAU) and the analytical hierarchial process (AHP) to prioritize decision alternatives based on a set of risk-based evaluation criteria and a formal cost/risk-benefit analysis structure. The decision maker can then select the optimal decision from the prioritized list. This approach is automated into a decision analysis tool.


Aiming at the important of quality management,it indicates that supervising work has important effect to ensure engineering quality,save investment,control working time and ensure safety,etc,detailed expatiates imperceptibility work of quality management from three stages,before event,middle event,after event,consequently to control engineering quality effectively and display supervising effect fully.


32 nicotine-degrading bacterial strains were separated and screened from tobacco and soil with selectivity culture medium,in which nicotine was the sole source of carbon and nitrogen.Among them,strain A3 was the best one with strong ability to degrade nicotine,and it could secrete protease and amylase simultaneously.This strain was inoculated in the medium with 0.1%nicotine as carbon and nitrogen source,and incubated at 30℃ for 18 h with reciprocal shaking(200 r/min),the ratio of nicotine degradation was 96.3%;and the ratio of degradation was 36.1%when the strain was inoculated in 0.2%nicotine for 48 h,meanwhile,the activities of protease and amylase were 42.6 U/mL and 16.5 U/mL respectively.According to the normal morphology,physiological,biochemical characteristics and 16S rDNA gene sequence,the strain A3 was identified as Arthrobacter nicotianae GYC103.


The matter of cadastral estimation results is one of the most topical in Russia nowadays. People do not agree to fi scal burdens, scientists are not satisfi ed with mass estimation institutions in general. The main reason for such a situation is problems with source data, namely their insuffi cient quality and quantity. As for insuffi cient quality, the only way to make source data better is proper collecting and storing process, but for quantity the way is to develop new methods of mass estimation. The research is devoted to method of market data extrapolation in time for mass assessment of land development, which is effective under conditions of a weak-developed market. This analytical statistical approach is based on implementation of time factor into multiple regression equation that enables using market data extrapolated in time. The method consists of such steps as collecting price forming factors and, sales data over the period of 10 years, making thematic maps, adequacy analysis, and constructing a valuation model. The outcome of the method implementation in cadastral estimation of individual residential development land plots in Votkinsk city showed that it is 50 % more effective than the results of the current government cadastral evaluation.


This paper,the theory of industrial structure and industry relevance theory as a guide,an analysis of state-owned forest areas Daxinganling the general situation of the industrial structure and to identify their main problems and industrial development constraints.According to leading industry benchmark choice,combined with the actual situation in the region,established a timber deep processing,mineral development industry in the region' s leading industries,forest cultivation,eco-tourism,green food development,as a potential the leading industries.Daxinganling forest structure for the existence of problem,a forest area in the new situation of the industrial structure adjustment and industry regional distribution of specific ideas,and on the implementation of industrial restructuring has made a number of policy measures.


Abstract Objectives The modified Naranjo algorithm assesses the physician assigned cause-effect relationship for homeopathic medicines. It is being adopted in homeopathy researches, but not yet validated systematically. We intended to validate the modified Naranjo algorithm by examining its psychometric properties. Methods An online survey sought agreement of 25 experts on the 10 items of the tool on 5-point agreement scale. Next, 285 responses from collected prospectively from chronic cases enrolled under the clinical verification program of the council in 2018 were subjected to testing of construct validity using exploratory principal component analysis (PCA). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA; n=150) was performed to verify the goodness-of-fit of the model. Reliability was tested using internal consistency, test–retest reliability, and inter-rater reliability by kappa statistics. Results Experts' responses mean values were 4 or higher (i.e. responses were relevant) and standard deviations were less than 1 (i.e. less heterogeneous). In PCA using varimax, all the items loaded above the pre-specified value of 0.4 and identified 4 components explaining 64.1% of variation. The goodness-of -fit of the 4-component CFA model was acceptable (chi-square 89.253, p<0.001). Internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha 0.7) was borderline; test–retest reliability was acceptable. Kappa statistics was moderate to fair, but poor for few of the items. Conclusions Statistical evaluations indicate that the modified Naranjo algorithm is useful, but needs improvement.


Despite many studies of mercury speciation in marine sediments, fish, and waters, studies on the very important aquatic plants are rare. This paper describes use of the same digestion regime to compare three reagents for their ability to quantitate inorganic mercury (Hg(II)) and monomethylmercury cation (MeHg + ) in estuarine eelgrass. The study highlights excellent results with the new hydrophobic digestion reagent alkaline tetrabutylammonium bromide (KOH/Bu 4 NBr). Because scientists must be particularly careful in evaluating new speciation methods in the absence of a certified reference material, we confirmed the accuracy of the speciation results in several ways. The confirming results include high recoveries of spiked samples, finding only traces of mercury upon redigestion of solid residue from the speciation procedure with concentrated HNO 3 , excellent agreement between sums of Hg(ll) plus MeHg + concentrations from speciation experiments and total mercury (Hg tot ) concentrations from digestions in concentrated HNO 3 , and good agreement between quantitation of MeHg + by vacuum distillation and KOH/Bu4NBr digestion. Digestions in KOH/Bu 4 NBr yielded average eelgrass concentrations (dry weight) of 39.7 ng/g for Hg(ll) and 2.78 ng/g for MeHg + . The 42.5 ng/g sum agreed well with Hg tot of 44.7 ng/g from HNO 3 digestion.


With regard to development issues, society practices a strong public awareness of risk: environmental risks, technological and natural risks, and human health and safety risks. The professional community is responding much more forcefully and knowledgeably as well, and in many instances is leading what has become a political debate. Legislative initiatives and risk assessment, climate change, El Nino, maintenance and rehabilitation, reliability of physical infrastructure, dams. water treatment plants, conservation programs, and other pertinent ecological issues are addressed.


Provided around the core of the pillow or the like (2), natural or synthetic latex, improved pillow with polyurethane foam, or comfort layer made of other resilient material (5), a mattress or the like, the comfort layer (5), it has been the along the comfort layer (5) discontinuous cut (6) mainly parallel line passing through (7), and, the comfort layer (5) is, comfort layer ( to open a passage (8) cuts (6) so as to form a through 5), stretched in the transverse direction (P) mainly perpendicular to the direction of the parallel lines (7), the core (2 ) forming at least part of the jacket around the features a, improved pillow, mattress or the like. .FIELD 1


We propose an approximate frequent pattern discovery algorithm for stream texts. Frequent pattern discovery is to discover patterns that appear more than once in texts. Frequent pattern discovery is one of the basic techniques in the field of data mining. Grammar compression is a data compression for highly repetitive texts. Additionally, grammar compression extends an approximate fast frequent pattern discovery[1]. However, the algorithm is limited to offline settings. The algorithm requires input length for discovering approximate frequent patterns and does not support appending new texts. Therefore, we propose an online and space-efficient algorithm. It uses FOLCA[2] which is an online grammar compression. It requires compressed texts space and quickly supports appending new texts.


The development of the area of freedom, security and justice poses three huge challenges for participating European countries, maybe even more so than the creation of the internal market. These challenges do not chiefly concern the identification of joint objectives, which is relatively easily done. They mostly relate to the incorporation of European law on the area of freedom, security and justice into national law, which is far from being achieved, and the development of specific and effective co-operation arrangements between Member States.


A 13.7-km water tunnel under the streets of Bangkok was completed in five drives in 12 months, using four EPBMs. It is the first section of a 45-km long system of tunnels and pumping stations. National law requires public tunnels to run only under public land, which forced it to follow a twisty path, resulting in an alignment with 61 curved sections and the minimum radius of curvature being 100 m. Shaft innovations were also required to complete the job under the tight constraints on time and space. Temporary capsule shafts enabled a smaller footprint, shared services at the surface and more efficient logistics. Detailed cross-section, plan map and drive information are included.


The mechanical behaviors around a crack tip for a system including both a crack and two tilt grain boundaries under cyclic loading are examined using a molecular dynamics simulation. The grain boundary, whose direction of the axis of misorientation angle is ‹110› and whose plane is {112}, is considered in this simulation. This grain boundary has the lowest grain boundary energy among all tilt grain boundaries. The Johnson potential for α-Fe is used in the analysis to describe interaction between atoms. Not only a structural transition from bcc to hcp but also ductile deformation occurs around the crack tip during the first loading in order to relax stress concentration. Edge dislocations emitted from the crack tip are observed and they move to the ‹111› direction on the {112} plane, which is a slip system of α-Fe. Then, two dislocation pile-ups near the grain boundaries are formed after the edge dislocations reach the grain boundaries, because they cannot move beyond the grain boundaries. Alternating slipping-off occurs at the crack tip because of the emission of the edge dislocations. During the first unloading, the edge dislocations emitted from the crack tip return to the crack tip and disappear in the system. Then, twin deformation occurs from the crack tip and expands along the slip direction until it reaches the grain boundary. We observe that not only the crack does not propagate in the cleavage plane of α-Fe but also several vacancies are generated along the slip direction from the crack tip during cyclic loading. Conclusively, we suggest the fatigue crack growth mechanism for the initial phase of the fatigue fracture. That is, the fatigue crack propagates along the slip direction due to coalescence between the crack and vacancies which are caused by the emission and absorption of the dislocations and the twin deformation around the crack tip.


Gray mold causes a sharp drop in blueberries production, the modeling and analysis of blueberry gray mold are important for the future study of blueberry related diseases and insect pests. In the introduction, the related diseases and insect pests of blueberry were summarized. The modeling method of blueberry pests and diseases was introduced. On this basis, the blueberry gray mold was modeled. And the results of the model test are in good agreement with the target.


Treatment of human serum with DEAE‐cellulose in acid conditions almost completely removed α1‐acid glycoprotein (α1‐AG) with little change in the concentration of albumin and β‐lipoprotein, while treatment with sulphosalicylic acid removed almost all the proteins except α1‐AG. The binding of various drugs to serum treated as above was measured by equilibrium dialysis and the contribution of α1‐AG to drug binding by human serum was assessed. Sulphosalicylic acid‐treated serum exhibited a saturable binding for propranolol, which was considered to be due to the binding to α1‐AG while DEAE‐cellulose‐treated serum mostly exhibited non‐saturable binding, for which albumin and β‐lipoprotein may be responsible. With this treated serum, α1‐AG was estimated to contribute approximately 40% to the binding of therapeutic concentrations of propranolol, 15% to that of imipramine and 15‐20% to that of desipramine, respectively, in serum samples pooled from healthy adults. However, no contribution of α1‐AG was observed in the binding of salicylic acid to the serum. Dissociation constants of the propranolol binding to the high affinity site in control serum, sulphosalicylic acid‐treated serum and purified α1‐AG showed similar values (3.7‐6.7 μM). These results suggest that treatment of serum with sulphosalicylic acid and DEAE cellulose is useful in assessing the contribution of α1‐AG to the serum binding of basic drugs.


We summarize recent measurements by the HRS collaboration of the topological branching fractions, the production cross section, the lifetime, and the rate into electrons of the {tau} lepton. An inconsistency with theoretical expectations persists at the level of two standard deviations. 11 refs., 2 figs., 4 tabs.


This study is based on the importance of cultural variables in all activities counseling. Cultural differences can influence the client's decision and the outcome of the counseling. Book Lontar Yusuf community owned Using in Banyuwangi contains values that are universal and that is distinctive.these values are thought to contain elements that can be utilized for the development of theoretical models of counseling.This study aims to disclose (1) the content or the content of the values of the book Lontar Yusuf, (2) the meaning of the content of the values in the book Lontar Yusuf when viewed from its contents, (3) the relationship of the content of the values in the book Lontar Yusuf with counseling theories West (existing) when viewed from the meaning of the content in the book values of Lontar Yusuf, (4) Using Community counseling model contained in the book of Lontar Yusuf.values Using tribal culture which is the study findings are based on a basic philosophy found some of the core values associated with all three of the counseling approach, namely: (a) Capable of bringing people towards a better character. (B) Being able to bring themselves to maintain heart and always doing good.(C) Capable of carrying a person aware and understand the need for patience in dealing with problems. (D) Being able to bring someone to pray and get closer to God. (E) Remind someone to be able to come back to have a zest for life with real action as maintain her physical appearance. Using Community counseling model contained in the book of Yusuf Lontar contained some truth value functionally can be used in looking at human nature and the purpose of counseling.the value of honesty can be utilized in human nature, the nature of the problem, and the purpose of counseling. The value of persistence can be utilized in human nature, the nature of the problem, and the purpose of counseling. Values of loyalty can be utilized in human nature, the nature of the problem, and the purpose of counseling. Values of courage can be utilized on the nature of human nature, the nature of the problem, and the purpose of counseling.values of justice can be utilized in human nature and goals of counseling. Values can be utilized in the decency of human nature and the purpose of counseling. Humanitarian values can be utilized on the goals of counseling. The social value can be utilized on the goals of counseling. Values can be utilized faith in human nature and goals of counseling.


Large components are needed to build up the Laser Megajoule which belongs to the future generation of fusion laser. It is essential to determine the laser damage threshold of full-size components with a large-size laser beam, and to compare this value to the threshold obtained on small samples with a small gaussian laser beam. So, we have, in the first place, tested some small samples from the same coating run on REOSC, CEA and LLNL facilities and, in a second series of experiments, we have tested three full-size optical components on the LLNL beamlet laser. Two types of optical components have been tested on the beamlet: - one polarizer: 710 X 400 nm; - two HfO2/SiO2 mirrors, from the same coating run: 620 X 440 mm. Before beamlet irradiation these components have been continued at 10 ns on the LLNL Plato facility. Concerning the mirrors, two different conditioning procedures have been applied: - on the first mirror a 5-step conditioning procedure; - on the second mirror a 2-step conditioning procedure. Then, each mirror has undergone the same test on the beamlet. In this paper we report the result obtained on the polarizer and the mirrors after beamlet irradiation.


Some of the deficiencies and anomalies in currently available methods of evaluating air conditioning loads and other associated design tasks in the area of mechanical building services design are discussed. These deficiencies and anomalies have been highlighted through a rapidly expanding use of computer programs in the mechanical building services area in Australia over past two to three years. This increased usage has been stimulated by the formation of a mechanical building services group in ACADS, the Association for Computer Aided Design, which provides technical support and training in the use and application of a range of computer programs in this area.


A method for separating a sheet glass plate, particularly a glass sheet along a predetermined parting line, wherein the line of separation has a temperature of greater than 250 K below the transformation point Tg of the glass of the thin glass pane, comprising acting the introduction of energy along the line of separation using a laser beam such that a takes place separating the thin glass pane.


The aim of this study was to investigate the properties of accumulation and distribution of mineral elements in Chinese jujube(Ziziphus jujube Mill.) and to establish a reasonable fertilization protocol.Field experiments were conducted to analyze the composition of the characteristics of biomass,mineral elements content and its accumulation in different parts of Junzao jujube and Huizao jujube trees that were about 3 years old.The total dry biomass of Junzao jujube was 2694.3 g/plant of which the vegetative organs accounted for 68.0%;these values were 27.6% and 21.9% higher,respectively,than those of Huizao jujube.The nitrogen(N) content was highest in the leaves followed by the fine roots.The phosphorus(P) and potassium(K) contents were highest in the fruit followed by the leaves,and lowest in the trunk.The calcium(Ca) and magnesium(Mg) contents were highest in the leaves followed by the fruit shoot,and was lowest in the fruit.The average N and Mg contents of Junzao jujube trees were 12.4% and 37.9% higher,respectively,than those of Huizao jujube.Total N,P,K,Ca and Mg accumulation in Junzao jujube tree were 33.91,3.43,22.20,31.25 and 5.53 g/plant,respectively,which were higher than those of Huizao jujube by 50.1%,22.5%,24.7%,51.0% and 88.7%,respectively.Nitrogen was mainly assigned to the leaves and fruits,P and K were mainly assigned to the fruits and leaves,while Ca and Mg were mainly assigned to the leaves and trunk.The N∶ P∶ K absorption ratio was 1 ∶ 0.063-0.083 ∶ 0.41-0.46 in new vegetative organs and 1 ∶ 0.19-0.20 ∶ 1.34-1.48 in fruits.The percentage distributions of N,P,K,Ca and Mg in Junzao jujube fruits were 25.4%,47.8%,52.3%,0.9% and 8.4%,respectively,which were lower than those of Huizao jujube by 24.0%,10.2%,16.5%,52.6% and 46.0%.To attain 1000 kg dry matter of fruit,Junzao jujube trees must uptake N 32.8,P 3.4,K 23.1,Ca 29.06 and Mg 5.32 kg;Huizaio jujube trees must absorb N 20.53,P 2.66,K 17.71,Ca 18.01 and Mg 2.49 kg to produce the same fruit dry weight.Thus,Junzao jujube trees need to absorb higher nutrient quantities than Huizao jujube trees to produce the same fruit dry weight biomass.The nutrient use efficiency of Junzao jujube trees was lower than that of Huizao jujube trees.The percentage nutrient distribution of Junzao jujube trees in the leaves was significantly higher than that of Huizao jujube trees,but it was significantly lower than that of Huizao jujube trees in the fruit.


The sensory transduction pathways between the transducing proteins and the switch on the flagellar motors have been investigated in Escherichia coli and Salmonella typhimurium. ATP, not GTP, is required for normal chemotaxis. A site of ATP action appears to be the conversion of an inactive form of the CheY protein to an active form, designated CheY*, that binds to the motor switch and initiates clockwise rotation. The methylation-dependent and methylation-independent pathways for chemotaxis have a common requirement for the CheA, CheW, and CheY proteins in addition to the switch and flagellar motor. It is concluded that the receptor/transducing proteins and the adaptation mechanism differ in the two types of pathway, but that other components of the transduction pathway are common to the methylation-dependent and methylation-independent pathways.


The word Qi means "breath of life", Chinese explained it as life energy in human body. It has been evolved as central concept in Chinese medicine as a life force and flow on energy which is essential to sustain human health and life. Qi,'' a person's vital energy force that circulates in the body through channels, supposed to be produced by visualization and affirmation. Due to limitations and side effects of conventional medical treatment, patients are increasingly utilizing complementary therapies. However, evidence for the safety and efficacy of qi-gong treatments is limited. The purpose of the current review was to investigate evidence for the role of Qigong in supportive care. Literature review is conducted using the search engines, Pubmed, Google scholar, Springer Link and CINHYL. Only scientific published articles were retrieved from the year 2001-2016. The effects of qigong on physical and psychosocial outcomes were examined in 28 studies and the effects on biomedical outcomes were examined in 15 studies. RCTs with larger sample sizes reflected positive results for the role of qigong in improving mood and fatigue parameters, fibromyalgia, cancer, diabetes mellitus, Arthiritis, Parkinson's disease and reducing inflammation. Moreover, qigong exercise in combination with conventional methods had significant improvement in immune function. Hence, Introduction Qigong has encouraging results in many of the progressive and poor prognosis diseases, hence, utilization of Qigong by the health care providers should be supported in quality improvisation. The term qigong is composed of two words: 'qi' means energy flow and 'gong' means skill or achievement (Li, Chen, & Mo, 2002).The history of qi-gong dates back to about 5000 years. There were many terms given to such kind of exercise before, like xing-qi (promoting the circulation of qi), fu-qi (taking qi), dao-yin (guiding the energy flow), tui-na (exhaling and inhaling), zuo-chan (sitting in meditation), yang-shen (nourishing the spirit) and jing-zuo (sitting still) (Ehling, 2001). It was not until 1953, when Liu Gui-zheng published a paper entitled "Practice On Qigong Therapy", that the term qi-gong was adopted widely as a formal name for this type of exercise (Chen, & Yeung, 2002)..Qi-gong is thought to have originated as a form of "remedy dancing" created for healing and health preservation purposes. Qigong has become a popular form of complementary and alternative medicine. Proponents of qigong recommend it for a wide range of conditions, symptoms and situations, including stress management, hypertension, chronic pain, depression, insomnia, cardiac rehabilitation, immune function and for enhancing the quality of life (QOL) of cancer patients(Astin at al.,2003; Chen et al., 2006; Chen et al., 2008; Chen, & Yeung, 2002; Li, Chen, & Mo, 2002). Qigong has been practiced for many years in the East to improve health, prevent disease and prolong life (Ernst, Pittler, Wider, & Boddy, 2008). There are numerous distinct forms of qigong which can be categorized into two main groups, internal qigong and external qigong. Internal qigong refers to a physical and mental training method for the cultivation of oneself to achieve optimal health in both mind and body. Internal qigong is similar to tai chi but its main differences are coordination of different breathing patterns and meditation (Lee, Pittler, & Ernst, 2009). External qigong refers to a treatment where qigong practitioners direct or emit their qi-energy to the patient with the intention to clear qiblockages or balance the flow of qi within that patient (Lee, Pittler, & Ernst, 2007).. Qigong has its underpinnings in Eastern medicine and philosophy. So far, it has not been explained


ZnS∶Cu nano-films and corresponding resonator with different Cu composition were synthesized by water bath method.The XRD indicates that the ZnS∶Cu nano-films has a cubic zinc-blend structure.The photoluminescence spectra of the ZnS∶Cu nano-films has a strong luminescence peak located at 2.37 eV.The luminescence intensity of the Zns∶Cu nano-films depends on the composition of Cu.The ZnS∶Cu nano-films have the strongest luminescence with the the Cu/Zn mole ratio of 0.1%.The resonate cavity is composed of the aluminum film and the ITO film and the cavity length is 3.6 μm.More than 10 luminescence interference peaks were observed for the resonator and the quality factor of the cavity is determined to be 30.3.


With the developing trend of globalization, the training of excellent internationalized students has gradually become the goal of higher educational institutionsnowadays. Meanwhile, the education of internationalized students has gradually developed into a criterion to measure whether the education level has been improved in our country. This paper focuses on the cultivation of foreign students'translation ability in different language environments and discusses other related issues.


In this issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, Gao et al report a meta-analysis on the influence of birth year on the incidence of dementia and Alzheimer disease (AD). They included 38 articles with 53 cohorts (comprising a total of 123 335 individuals) examining dementia incidence and 31 articles with 35 cohorts (comprising a total 89 376 individuals) on AD incidence. The studies were conducted between 1976 and 2012, with the bulk of studies conducted between 1990 and 2008. Most participants were born in the 1920s and early 1930s. The main finding was a decrease in the incidence of dementia both in Western and non-Western countries, but an increase in incidence of AD in the non-Western world. It needs to be emphasized that only a few studies included multiple cohorts using the same methods. Therefore, findings must be taken cautiously due to differences in methods between studies and over time. In addition, median birth year in different age groups was calculated, thus decreasing the precision of measurements. However, analyses using multiple cohorts for examination of time trends have come to similar conclusions as those of Gao et al. One important aspect of this meta-analysis is that it is based on birth year, in contrast to most other studies on time trends, which are concerned with changes in incidence or prevalence based on year of examination rather than birth year. Does this really matter? We would say yes. Differences based on birth year are a better measure of the influence of factors occurring during the life course of an individual, which is influenced by a mixture of how macro, meso, and micro (ie, individual) factors are embedded in the historical context of a certain region or place where the individual spends his or her life. The macro level refers to how societal factors influence the life of an individual, including historical periods of war, starvation, education, working and living conditions, technical innovations, cultural practices, and healthcare (Figure 1). At any given time, macro levels affect the individual at different levels and, thus, also his or her risk of adverse health outcomes, such as dementia. Time trends (ie, period and birth cohort changes) could be regarded as outcomes of macro-level influences at the meso and micro level of individuals; the meso level refers to the configurations in which the daily life is embedded (eg, family life, relations, social networks, housing and living conditions, access and quality of healthcare services, and the workplace). The micro level refers to a range of accumulated features known to affect the risk of dementia (eg, genetic predispositions, personality, somatic and mental health, sensory systems, lifestyle, cognitive functioning, neurobiology, functional capacity, physical activity, psychosocial and socioeconomic factors, and, in a broad sense, human capital factors [eg, formal and informal education, acquired work skills, earning capacity, and social capital]), often referred to as cognitive reserve. So far, most dementia research has focused on the micro level, with less emphasis on the role of various contextual conditions. However, the risk of dementia depends on all three levels. For example, the probability that an individual will develop dementia depends on the accumulation of risk and protective factors during the life course. Thus, two seemingly similar individuals can nevertheless differ in their risk due to differences at the macro level. We can thus assume that changes of macro conditions affect the risk of dementia across birth cohorts and geographical area. Individuals in various countries and historical periods are likely to present different risks, depending on macro-level characteristics. The life course perspective assumes that dementia in old age is a result of accumulated risk and protective factors across the entire life course, from before birth to old age. However, life courses cannot be evaluated without taking birth year and its historical context into consideration. Large societal changes occurred during the 20th century in areas such as perinatal care, urbanization, work and retirement conditions, housing and hygiene, dietary habits, and medical treatment. Furthermore, population studies of dementia in older ages started in the 1960s and 1970s, but most modern studies started in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Thus, knowledge of the epidemiology of dementia, its prevalence, incidence, and risk factors, is based mainly on cohorts from the Western world born in the late 19th century or the early 20th century, when living conditions were poor in large parts of the Western world. In the meta-analysis of Gao et al, most participants were born in the 1920s and early 1930s. Few studies have been concerned with the effect of birth year on dementia prevalence and incidence. In the Gothenburg H70 Birth Cohort Studies, we observed a decrease in the prevalence of dementia between 85-year-old people born in 1901 to 1902 and those born in 1923 to DOI: 10.1111/jgs.16029


This paper gives some refinements of Hölder's and Minkowski's type inequalities and their relations to pseudo-expectation and g -semiring. These inequalities are studied for any σ - ⊕ -measure with general kernels, including pseudo-expectation and pseudo-convolution integral. In special cases, our results improve and refine the previous results.


We are living in unprecedented times of migration flows. There are over 271.6 million international migrants globally, most of them women and children under the age of 19, most of whom move to cities causing fast growth in urban areas, particularly in the informal settlements and slums, places of poverty, densely populated with inadequate household water and sanitation, little or no waste management, overcrowded public transport and limited access to formal health care facilities. As they seek to establish themselves in the city, many migrants turn to religion for support. Faith communities become places where they can find 1) a source of community; 2) where resources are available to meet their needs; 3) for support in times of trouble; and 4) where praying becomes a resource for survival. As the Covid-19 pandemic began spreading throughout the world and cities were locked down, people were requested to stay in their homes, but yet they had no income or food, causing hunger, anxiety, fear and violence. But once again faith communities, already on the ground, have responded, and from these responses are lessons to be learned on how to support bottom-up approaches that build resiliency and strengthen informal communities in times of crisis. 5 principal ways that religious communities are helping to build resilient cities: data collection, developing partnerships and networks, providing information and communication, inclusive and diverse engagement, and spiritual comfort and guidance. These types of responses create resilient communities than can withstand future pandemics.


A lunar base that exploits local resources to enhance the productivity of a total SEI scenario is discussed. The goals were to emphasize lunar science and to land men on Mars in 2016 using significant amounts of lunar resources. It was assumed that propulsion was chemical and the surface power was non-nuclear. Three phases of the base build-up are outlined, the robotic emplacement of the first alements is detailed and a discussion of future options is included.


Summary. In a prospective randomized controlled study of non‐stress antepartum cardiotocography (CTG), involving 569 tracings in 300 patients, 'non‐reactive' traces showed a significant association with stillbirths and neonatal deaths, intrauterine growth retardation, admission to special care baby unit for conditions associated with intrauterine hypoxia, and low Apgar scores at 1 and 5 min. The report of the CTG was made available to the clinician in 144 patients and withheld in 156 patients. With the report available, significantly more patients were allowed to continue their antenatal care as out‐patients, and significantly more antenatal inpatients were allowed home. There were no other significant differences in management, or outcome in the two groups.


The paper at hand presents ongoing work within the autonomous ex- cavator project THOR (Terraforming Heavy Outdoor Robot). Long-term goal of this project is to develop a fully autonomous bucket excavator which is capa- ble of performing landscaping tasks like trench excavation or material movement autonomously to create a desired surface shape on a construction site. Determi- nation of the amount of excavated material is needed during excavation to adopt executed trajectories based on occurring torques. This knowledge about the sys- tem can then be used to improve trajectories to lower energy consumption and safety aspects like tip-over prevention. Furthermore, the accumulated volume is a measure for the excavated material, the amount of truck fillage and the produc- tivity of the excavation process.


Interbody height recovery device includes a body to be inserted into the interbody space. The body includes an upper surface and a lower surface to engage the vertebral surface facing defining the interbody space. Body extends along the width of the main body, relatively fully extended, and having a completely collapsed height, comprising at least two layers. The reversible expansion mechanism, the height of the layer, including a fully height completely collapsed and height extension, selectively and reversibly extended and collapsed, the height selected for interbody space to recover. .FIELD 1


Abstract Mobile instant messaging (MIM) applications have gained popularity in recent years. Their useful and effective features help users communicate more effectively. Communication technology adoption requires an understanding of cultural factors. In this study, there are four cultural dimensions evaluated: collectivism (COL), masculinity (MAS), power distance (PWR), and uncertainty avoidance (UA). These four cultural dimensions of a country were studied in order to understand their relation to two constructs of friendship development (FD) and relationship management (RM). Furthermore, this study examines the relationship between those two constructs and people's intentions to continue utilizing MIM. Three hundred and twenty-one respondents from Taiwan participated in an online survey. The PLS-SEM method was used to perform the data analysis. In the study, a significant correlation was found between collectivism and friendship development and relationship management. However, masculinity does not have a significant impact on friendship development. A high power distance does not negatively affect relationship management. A high power distance has a significant positive effect on relationship management. An increase in uncertainty avoidance does not negatively affect friendship development. However, an increase in uncertainty avoidance has a significant positive effect on friendship development. MIM apps for friendship development and relationship maintenance are impacted by four cultural dimensions. These findings provide theoretical and practical implications for insight into these factors.


In virtue of the technique of computer,we can use the signal processing method to deal with the vibrant datas in the Aero-engine flight text. In this way,the characteristic of Aero-engine can be known exactly. This can provide the backup to make more better in the making and improvement in the development of Aero-engine. Pretreatment and Time-domain analysis were studied to the vibration signal of aero-engine in this paper. It provided the sustain to deal with the vibration signal of Aero-engine.


ABSTRACT To establish systematic guidelines for accelerator decommissioning, a large-scale activation survey was conducted at representative synchrotron radiation facilities in Japan. The neutron flux during accelerator operation was measured with various dosimeters. A Monte Carlo simulation was conducted for some facilities to verify the special neutron distribution and their spectra. Beam loss points, reflected as high-dose-rate areas, were identified by a whole-beamline survey with a survey meter, and the generated radionuclides and their activity were determined with a lanthanum bromide (LaBr3) scintillation spectrometer. In all facilities, the activation level was quite low. Whole-beamline tunnels made of concrete were not activated, and no radionuclides were detected except for natural nuclides. In addition, almost all beamline components were either not or minimally activated. Although the acceleration energy is very high for radiation synchrotron facilities, the generation of radioactive waste would be very low.


Introduction In recent years, there have been a number of antitrust suits filed by registered nurses (RNs) alleging that their wages and other terms of employment have been depressed through collusion among the hospitals in their local market. In most of these cases, the issue involved collusive monopsony, which is unlawful as discussed in the Supreme Court's Mandeville Island Farms decision. There have, however, been some new wrinkles recently. In Fleischman v. Albany Medical Center, for example, the defendant hospital argued that its compensation package for RNs was determined through collective bargaining with the nurses'


In this work, we consider a graphene-like background in braneworld scenario which is one of the interesting models in cosmology and theoretical physics. Indeed, this paper is an application of holography in condense matter. We use the geometric form of potential which help to obtain field equations and solve it to obtain the energy spectrum. In that case we calculate superpotential and energy density of this model. Thermodynamical study of this model suggest that the entropy should modified due to the large-scale corrections. An important point is stability of this model in braneworld scenario. We study model stability by two separated methods. We calculate heat capacity, Gibbs and Helmholtz free energy to analyze thermodynamics stability, then consider small perturbations in graphene like metric background to investigate gravitational stability. We find that the model is completely stable unless in very low temperatures where the graphene structure may break. Hence, we confirm that our braneworld model is thermodynamically stable and also small perturbations yields to an oscillation around the equilibrium point.


The present invention discloses a method for data forwarding, the method comprising: after path switching, receiving the target base station eNB evolved delivered by the SGW user handling the user plane data packet gateway SGW; comprising the target eNB receives the transmission source eNB after the special data packet marking, to send the user equipment transmits the user data packet SGW; the end mark contains a special data packet does not carry user data; comprising said special data packet sent by the end marker SGW to the source eNB, indicating the SGW to the source eNB data packets are sent. In the present invention, the target eNB does not need to wait for timer expires before the data packet transmission port S1, improving the forwarding user data packets in the X2 handover efficiency.


A poetics of voice in motion. — Dennis Lee, "Body Music." Performing poetry and poetry that performs both call for a critical attuning to what I understand as performative listening — a concept that combines the critical contexts of both performance theory and theories of performativity, meanwhile invoking a critical context around the term audience. Rather than keeping each of these spheres separate, my thesis examines how their intersections uncover sites that test the possibilities and limitations of listening with one's whole body. George Elliott Clarke's jazz opera Quebecite and Robert Bringhurst's masque Ursa Major invite performative readings of their textual forms. These two works perform through what Dennis Lee calls "a poetics of voice in motion" that involves thinking of poetry as being in a state of motion — a return to the meaning of poiesis as making. The "voice in motion" that Lee hears as poetics gives acoustic material to this process of making. Lee's essay, "Body Music," in which he speaks of this kinetic state of poetics, appears in the collection, Thinking and Singing: Poetry and the Practice of Philosophy — a book composed of essays that inform this paper through their content and even more so through their approach to writing about poetry as listening to poetry. As Tim Lilburn characterizes the essays in his preface to the book: "all of the writing has an open ear, proceeds by this ear: a certain form of speech can be an attempt to hear" (2). In considering Clarke's Quebecite and Bringhurst's Ursa Major as forms of speech that attempt to hear, I focus on what strategies the poetry employs in order to perform; moreover, while the writing itself attempts to hear, the reading of this writing requires more than a simple scanning with one's eyes. In his introduction to the essay collection Close Listening, Charles Bernstein re-introduces the term reading to refer to the poetry reading as a performative event in need of critical attention. With this notion of reading as performance, I ask how the reading of poetry translates into an embodied, vocalized performance and how we, in turn, perform as listeners. Table of


We researched the number of heterotrophic bacterioplankton and their relationships with the environmental factors in Bohai Bay Waters during August and October in 2004.The results show that the range of bacterial abundance was 5.7~150 and 3~121(×10~6cfu/L) in August and October respectively.The bacterial abundance was higher in Haihe estuary,and the bacterial number is higher in the south of investigated area,and higher in alongshore.The number of heterotrophic bacterioplankton in August was closely correlated with DO;the number of heterotrophic bacterioplankton in October was obviously correlated with BOD and the concentration of NH_4~+-N,and had a differently obvious correlation with the concentration of DO.


Abstract Three types of representative unit cell (RUC) of [±θ/904]S composite laminates and cracked plies were created to obtain the constitutive model of the cracked plies and to compare their accuracy of the calculation. The RUCs represent the damaged laminates, cracked plies, and cracked plies with additional constraints. A correction factor was defined to improve the accuracy of transverse modulus estimation using the RUC of cracked plies with constraints. The correction factor and numerical results were discussed to illustrate the constraint effect of the adjacent plies on the cracked plies in terms of stiffness, orientation, and thickness.


With continuous advances in biotechnology, the likelihood of animal cloning being used as a livestock breeding technique has existed. The possibility for milk and meat from cloned animals entering the food supply has gotten even closer when after a long period of consideration, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2008 concluded that meat and milk from cloned animals is as safe to eat as food from conventionally bred animals. In the present study an attempt has been made to predict the willingness to pay (WTP) for these products. Primary data was collected by interviewing 200 consumers (NDRI and GADVASU milk parlor), who were the regular consumers of the milk products in the two distinct areas of northern India to find out their willingness to pay for the products. Fresh milk is generally regarded as the most important cloned and organic animal food product which will be valued by majority of the consumers. Consumers are generally willing to pay more for the organic products as compared to cloned products as they have not yet entered in the food chain value system. The findings proposed that the people are interested and willing to pay more to buy organic and cloned animal food products because of their sustainability and more nutrition levels. These products should be integrated with our food value chain for feeding the future generations.


Highly-oriented carbon nanotube (CNT) film, which is made from super-aligned CNT array, is an even, tough and soft material. This CNT film has strong anisotropy in electrical and mechanical properties. The electrical conductivity and Young's modulus of the CNT film (2.8 × 104 S m−1, 3000 MPa) along the CNT aligned direction are one magnitude larger than those (2.3 × 103 S m−1, 200 MPa) along the vertical direction. In virtue of easy preparation and good processability, it is competent as high-performance flexible electrodes for soft actuators, advanced film capacitors and batteries. Here, we use this highly-oriented CNT film as a heating electrode to make fast-response soft actuators. The actuator has a thin bilayer composite structure and is driven by current heating. It takes a typical miniaturized actuator only 0.9 s to perform fast and large-angle deformations (270° bending, curvature 4.8 cm−1), and its bending speed can reach 300° s−1 by low power driving (2.4 W). Based on this CNT film, graphical designs and fine processing were carried out to make patterned electrodes and functional actuators, such as cross-shaped and hand-shaped ones. Notably, a well-designed gripper-like actuator can even deftly grab and manipulate some tiny things, e.g. a grain of rice. Moreover, the anisotropic properties of the CNT film also effectively influence and regulate the deformation forms of the actuators. In virtue of good and unique performances in electrical, mechanical and thermal aspects, the high-oriented CNT film would have promising application prospects in various emerging soft devices.


Processes for the controlled radical polymerization of acrylic and related polymers to produce low VOC coating materials, or powder coating compositions, the polymers so produced, the catalyst systems employed, processes for application of the coatings , coatings so produced and objects coated on at least one surface with the coatings are disclosed.


Particle detectors are constantly being built and refitted with new technology to improve the spatial resolution, radiation hardness, and speed at which the detector can capture particle events. One of the most crucial components of a modern collider experiment is the hadron calorimeter. One of the proposed improvements on future hadron calorimeters is to utilize resistive plate chambers (RPCs). They provide the spatial and energy resolution as well as could provide speed and radiation hardness. RPCs depend on manufacturing electrically conductive glasses that are mechanically strong, durable, radiation resistant, and not ionically conductive. To achieve such requirements, vanadate glasses were developed as alternatives to current prototypes which use soda lime silicate glasses. The conductivity, oxidation states of vanadium, radiation hardness, as well as the prototype performance, were tested on vanadate glasses. The prototype tests show that using 0.40ZnO−0.40TeO2−0.20V2O5 can improve the RPC detector rate up to 100 times.


Provided in the present invention is a positive electrode for use in an Electric Double Layer (EDL) Hybrid Electro chemical Capacitor (HEC). Embodiments of the invention can be further adapted produce an EDL HEC with a high Specific energy value and a high maximum Voltage value. Some aspects of an embodiment of the present invention, including the aforementioned positive electrode, also coop erate to provide an EDL HEC that has a relatively high cycleability.


People proposed to use virtualization techniques to reinforce the isolation between containers. In the design, each container runs inside a lightweight virtual machine (called microVM). MicroVM-based containers benefit from both the security of microVM and the high efficiency of the container, and thus are widely used on the public cloud. However, in this paper, we demonstrate a new attack surface that can be exploited to break the isolation of the microVM-based container, called operation forwarding attacks . Our key observation is that certain operations of the microVM-based container are forwarded to host system calls and host kernel functions. The attacker can leverage the operation forwarding to exploit the host kernel's vulnerabilities and exhaust host resources. To fully understand the security risk of operation forwarding attacks, we divide the components of the microVM-based container into three layers according to their functionalities and present corresponding attacking strategies to exploit the operation forwarding of each layer. Moreover, we design eight attacks against Kata Containers and Firecracker-based containers and conduct experiments on the local environment, AWS, and Alibaba Cloud. Our results show that the attacker can trigger potential privilege escalation, downgrade 93.4% IO performance and 75.0% CPU performance of the victim container, and even crash the host. We further give security suggestions for mitigating these attacks.


Abstract : Sherlock is a computer-based supported practice environment for a complex troubleshooting job in th Air Force. This chapter describes the training problem for which Sherlock was developed, the principles behind its development, and its implementation. The training problem is severe and representative of a common problem in our high-technology society. People who will fill a position for a brief period (four years or less for many in this Air Force job) carry out a set of routine tasks which are well supported by technology. However, periodically, a breakdown occurs: a novel situation requiring sophisticated problem solving for which little support is available. In many cases, such problems must be referred to an expert, but such expertise is difficult to acquire. Semiautomated, routinized jobs do not afford sufficient opportunities for complex problem-solving skills to develop, so their incumbents lack the skill required to handle novel problems. Sherlock is an environment in which this missing skill can be acquired for a specific troubleshooting job. The job domain. Sherlock was developed to raise the level of F-15 Manual Avionics Test Station Technicians' troubleshooting knowledge. These technicians repair electronic modules that have been removed from F-15 aircraft because of suspected malfunction. In their daily work, they follow detailed written troubleshooting procedures (part of their Technical Orders) and use a test station. The test station is a large (40 ft) system of electronic equipment to which the module being diagnosed can be attached.


The introduction to this issue of AIDS Action draws attention to the importance of the magazine's entire focus on the valuable lessons learned from family planning programs on education or counseling about HIV infections and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). A broader definition of safe sex is currently being promoted; this definition allows for sex that is pleasurable and safer with regard to unwanted pregnancy, infections, and abuse. Both advice on how to talk to people about sexual activities and training activities for AIDS and family planning workers are included in the various articles. Sexual health is the goal of health and sex education efforts. Promoted are achievement of a state of physical, mental and social well-being about sex and sexuality, avoiding STDs and unwanted pregnancies, and indirectly protection the health of infants. Many family planning and AIDS workers are failing to help people with their sexual lives and need to overcome their prejudices about sexual behavior. It is important to understand what factors influence sexual health and how: contraceptive supply, availability of STD treatment, women's expectations, attitudes towards abortion, or other cultural and religious factors. Workers should be involving people from the community in the development of programs to assure that the community's needs are met. The task may involve changing people's attitudes and beliefs. The urgency of the problems of AIDS and STDs and unwanted pregnancy mandates that sexual health be promoted.


Described herein is a process for isolating the enzymatic protein ribulose 1,5-diphosphate carboxylase from the green leaves of plants. In the process, which is particu larly suited to obtaining the protein from tobacco, the leaves are ground or otherwise pulverized in the pres ence of a reducing agent, followed by heating the result ing pulp to about 50 C. A liquid portion containing the desired protein is separated from the pulp and then cooled to cause the crystallization of the ribulose 1,5diphosphate carboxylase. After separation of the crys talline material, the supernatant is acidified to yield lower molecular weight proteins.


The Lebanese political organization Hizbullah has developed its own style of commemorating ʿāshūrāʾ, the Shiʿi period of mourning in remembrance of the Battle of Karbalāʾ. Previous scholarship has analyzed Hizbullah's ʿāshūrāʾ with prevailing conceptual binaries such as politics/religion, reason/tradition, or reason/emotion. This article challenges such binaries by looking at the series of speeches given by Hizbullah's secretary general, Ḥasan Naṣrallāh, during the annual ʿāshūrāʾ rituals. Naṣrallāh's oratory skills, and most importantly the careful structuring of the ten-day mourning event, show clearly that the production of reasoned arguments through speech involves the cultivation of intense emotions and states of consciousness. These are conducive not only to collective action and identity formation but also to ethical practices.


This paper attempts to review conditions of demand and supply related to skills development in four industrial sectors that the government of Sri Lanka has ear-marked for long term development. They are the information and communication technology industry (ICT), the tourism and hospitality industry (THI), construction and light engineering. These four sectors accounted for nine per cent of [gross domestic product] GDP and 10 per cent of total employment in 2012. The [information technology] IT and tourism industries are projected to earn US $5 billion each in 2022. The two sectors have also revealed their potential for high growth in terms of value addition and employment. The growth potential of sub-sectors belonging to these two service sectors are linked to export markets, while the growth potential of the construction and light engineering sectors are largely determined by product market conditions of the domestic market. Using already available secondary data in the form of survey data, administrative data, and published reports, the present paper assesses the training gaps in these four sectors using standard skills assessment methodologies.


Pulse wave velocity (PWV), based on two-site measurement, is a well-known predictor of arterial stiffness. Interest focused increasingly on simplifying the PWV measurement results in attempts at determining it at a single site. We aimed to validate a new tonometric method (IIM-2010A) for assessment of PWV at radial artery in healthy subjects <65 years of age. PWV measurements were performed in 46 healthy adults (25 men and 21 women) aged 21–65 years (39.6 ± 15.5 years) using Complior device and IIM-2010A respectively. In a subgroup of 21 humans, the measurements were repeated after 1 week using IIM-2010A with the same protocol. There was a strong correlation between PWV obtained by IIM-2010A and PWV obtained by Complior, as well as between pulse transit time (PTT) measurements (r = 0.79 and r = 0.85, respectively, P < 0.01 for both). Although PTT was significantly lower measured by IIM-2010A, no significant difference was found in PWV. The mean difference of PWV with SD was -0.1 ± 1.2 m/s between two repeated measurements at intervals of 1 week. Bland–Altman's plot indicated no trend for the reproducibility of measurements to vary with their underlying mean value. Intraclass correlation coefficient (= 0.87) confirmed this excellent week-to-week reproducibility of PWV. The method provides a simple, easily-obtainable, and reproducible measurement of PWV in young and middle-aged subjects, and has potential to detect premature arterial aging for the management of primary prevention.


Interactive computer systems' designers emphasize the importance of considering humans, their emotions, and behaviors as first-class entities. Emotions are integral parts of human nature, and ignoring that can lead the interactive systems to failure, low quality, or discomfort. User interfaces (UIs) are increasingly becoming adaptive to users' various characteristics, intending to improve users' satisfaction, performance, and decisions. However, the previous approaches proposed for supervising such adaptations are not effectively adopted in real-life problems. This paper proposes the novel approach to adapting UIs to users' emotions using Model-Free Reinforcement Learning (MFRL). The approach aims to maximize applying the essential adaptations and minimize the unnecessary ones towards users' task completion and satisfaction. We chose emergency evacuation training as a suitable evaluation domain since people experience intense emotions in potential danger. We performed experiments with a mobile application we developed that acts as a recommender system in emergency training. By taking contextual input of the users' basic emotions from face recognition, the application intelligently adapts its UI to quickly lead people to safe areas while arousing target emotions. The research includes literature analysis, surveys, and further adopting an iterative process in implementation and experimentation. The evaluation process confirms the efficiency and effectiveness of the MFRL in iterations, as well as compared to other possible UI adaptation techniques, i.e., rule-based and sequential adaptation.


problematic in specific dermatological diseases, because of the potential for pathergy. For these reasons, much effort has been dedicated to finding exogenous graft materials such as artificial skin substitutes, cadaveric skin or xenografts; however, these materials can bring about only temporary wound coverage. Alternative wound closure technologies that reduce donor-site morbidity and that could be performed easily in an outpatient scenario would be very useful in wound care management. In this issue of BJD, Purschke et al. investigate a novel technique designed to obtain epidermal grafting for the treatment of vitiligo or difficult-to-heal wounds by using microepidermal suction blisters. The authors used two different methodological strategies (elastic surgical dressings and 'blister array') and tested these models for feasibility, ease of use, reliability, and preservation of viability of the epidermal graft. The most important finding of the study was that both strategies showed blister roof with an intact epidermis and with preserved cell viability, including epidermal basal cells, melanocytes and the underlying dermis. The second technique ('blister array') was found to be more user friendly, particularly with respect to the simultaneous steps of blister raising, blister capture onto the dressing scaffold and blister harvesting. In our opinion, this novel technique opens up a great opportunity for the practical and potential application of epidermal grafting in skin diseases such as vitiligo, difficult-toheal wounds and other disorders where a normal epidermis is lacking. The major advantages we have observed are the simple and automated harvesting procedure, a completely outpatient-based procedure not requiring anaesthesia, and rapid healing with less scarring of the donor site. Future improvements in the technique could include a different scaffold material for suction blisters in order to keep wound exudate under control.


The experience of applying the principles of orthogonal persistence to the Java programming language is described in the context of the PJama prototype implementation. The model for checkpointing the state of a computation, including live threads, is analyzed and related to a transactional approach. The problem of dealing with state that is external to the PJama environment is explained and the solutions outlined. The difficult problem of system evolution is identified as the major barrier to deploying orthogonal persistence for the Java language.


Through observation on various management practices and analysis of several representative definitions of management,this paper proposes that the behavior model,i.e.essence of management is rule making and implementation.Furthermore,the paper proposes the fundamental functions and processes and management.


The prototypes of all major classes of psychotropic drugs (the antipsychotic chlorpromazine, M A 0 inhibitors, tricyclic antidepressants, benzodiazepines) were identified in the late 50's and early 60's. Clearly, these drug discoveries had an enormous impact, not only on the therapy of psychiatric disorders, but used as pharmacological tools also on our understanding of neuronal function. Studies of the mode of action of psychotropic drugs generated simple but heuristic hypotheses on the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders and clearly helped to establish firmly biological psychiatry as a branch of medicine. While the early discoveries of the action of, for example, tricyclic antidepressants on neuronal reuptake of biogenic amines have advanced our understanding of the presynaptic function of neurons, more recent discoveries of the action of psychotropic drugs on neuronal receptor systems have switched the research emphasis to adaptive regulatory mechanisms and the cascade of single transduction (Sulser et al., 1986), with a fascinating picture of second and third messengers emerging and with protein phosphorylation most likely being the final common pathway of signal transduction. Studies involving the injection of protein kinases or protein kinase inhibitors into neurons have provided direct evidence that activation of protein kinases is an obligatory step in the sequence of events by which extracellular signals produce physiological responses in neurons (Nestler et al., 1984). Substantial progress has been made in our understanding of the highly conserved family of membrane associated G-proteins that regulate effector enzymes such as adenylate cyclase and phospholipase C in a stimulatory or inhibitory way to modify the intracellular level of second messengers (Weiss et al., 1988). G-protein coupled receptors include alpha-, and beta-adrenergic and muscarinic-cholinergic receptors, as well as receptors for dopamine, histamine, serotonin, adenosine, prostaglandin and for a large number of peptides, including enkaphalins, endorphin and substance P, to mention a few. It remains a great challenge to identify protein substrates that reflect psychotropic drug induced changes at the receptor and second or third messenger level in topographically defined areas of the brain. Studies on structure and function of such phosphoproteins will generate insight into an important link in the cascade of trans-synaptic information processing. In sharp contrast to the enormous impact of psychopharmacology in shaping the development of neuroscience during the last 30 years, little tangible progress has been made in our understanding of the aetiology and the pathophysiology of the major psychiatric disorders and, even more disappointing, is the realization that no new major classes of psychotropic drugs have been discovered in the last 30 years, though agents with greater receptor selectivity, for example selective 5HT-uptake inhibitors for the treatment of depressive illness, have reached the clinic. But these drugs are not more efficacious then their predecessors and contrary to earlier claims their onset of therapeutic action is not faster. Moreover, though many of these newer agents are more selective as pre-synaptic sites, their selectively vanishes when post-synaptic receptor mediated events are taken into consideration. For example, the selective 5HTreuptake inhibitors sertraline, fluvoxamine and fluoxetine, cause upon administration on a clinically relevant time basis a down-regulation of central beta-adrenoceptors (see review by Sulser and Sanders-Bush, 1988). Heteroreceptor regulation is widespread and the interdependence of norepinephrine and serotonin in the synaptic pharmacology of antidepressants is of particular interest. Supersensitivity to 5HT and/ or dopamine, demonstrated electrophysiologically or behaviourally following the chronic administration of antidepressants or ECT, is prevented by lesions of noradrenergic neurons (Green and Deakin, 1980; Gravel and DeMontigny, 1987). And, changes in cortical beta-adrenoceptor density have been shown to modify SHTI-mediated behaviour in a manner that is independent of changes in 5HT2receptor number (Eison et al., 1988). How mental experiences, affective and cognitive, arise from biochemical and biophysical events or, alternatively, how drug-induced alterations at the synaptic and post-synaptic level are translated into clinical symptoms and syndromes still eludes us. However, the fact that we d o not yet understand the function in brain of most of the endogenous neurohormonal substances and of their receptor-effector system does not necessarily make them 'redundancy candidates' (Carlsson, 1988). The beta-adrenoceptor system may illustrate this point. Although the study of central beta-adrenoceptor function beyond second messengers has been frustrating, Yoshikawa and Sabol at the National Institute of Health in the USA have recently added a totally new and exciting perspective to the function of these receptors at the level of gene expression. Thus, the transcription of the preproenkephalin gene in cultured C6 glioma cells is enhanced by norepinephrine, blocked by propranolol and synergistically regulated by cyclic AMP and glucocorticoids (Yoshikawa and Sabol, 1986). More recently, Dal Toso et al. (1987) reported that beta-adrenoceptor stimulation causes a marked increase in the content of mRNA encoding beta-NGF. Considering these results, it is tempting to spectulate that the antidepressant sensitive, serotonin linked and glucocorticoid responsive beta-


In August 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa May visited countries in Africa, sparking hope of increased foreign direct investments (FDI) in the continent.


Recent years has witnessed the soaring development of the global LNG market with continuously rapidly growing trading volume. Based on a detailed analysis of the current status of supply and demand in LNG markets in and outside China, this paper summarizes the developments in the international LNG production and demand and the current status of LNG production and import and its future demand in China, and analyzes the change and trend of LNG price in the international market. It is believed by the study that: 1) The international LNG market reaches a supply and demand balance on the whole; 2) Asia has become the world's largest and most potential LNG consumer market; 3) The LNG demand in China will grow at an average rate of more than 8 % in the future, and the LNG import volume also will continue to rise; 4) The market-based LNG pricing mechanism reform in China is imperative, and it is only a matter of time for the LNG price in China to be in line with the international LNG market price.


This case was unique in that it showed divergent osteogenic/ osteosarcomatous differentiation. This combination of squamous cell carcinoma and osteosarcoma has previously not been described in the literature. The tumour was also associated with osteoclast-like giant cells, the occurrence of which has been described by Acikalin et al. This is thought to be a stromal reaction to the tumour. Other cases of sarcomatoid carcinoma of the urinary tract described in literature are transitional cell carcinomas with divergent differentiation to spindled morphology. The histological differential diagnosis includes various types of sarcomas, carcinoma with or without osseous metaplasia and reactive pseudosarcomatous mesenchymal proliferations. True sarcomas do not show admixture of epithelial elements or carcinoma in situ and hence will not stain for epithelial markers by immunohistochemistry. The pseudosarcomatous tumours are mostly immunoreactive for vimentin and muscle actin and may show aberrant expression of keratins and EMA. The clinical history of recent urological or gynaecological surgery is helpful in making the diagnosis. However, in our case, the heterologous osteogenic foci clearly demonstrated features of osteosarcoma merging with the undifferentiated sarcomatoid spindle cells, excluding the possibility of the latter two differential diagnoses. Extensive sampling is emphasised, similar to different sarcomas. Presence of high-grade sarcoma is associated with worse prognosis. These tumours overall behave badly as compared to the usual type of carcinomas of the urinary tract. Metastatic disease or advanced tumour involvement of the renal parenchyma was present in all of the previously reported cases of renal pelvic SCs. In summary, we present a case of sarcomatoid carcinoma involving the renal pelvis and ureter, showing osteosarcomatous differentiation with squamous cell carcinoma, a combination not previously described in the literature.