The «antiglobalization» movement has been expressing its global discon-tent through numerous demonstrations around the world. Sen has seen in this the evidence of a strong sense of global identity and concern about global ethics. In fact, these groups do not operate against Globalization, but their arguments focus mainly on unequal and unfair arrangements which affect helpless; they are looking for a better distribution of the opportunities in a global organization which urges to be modified. Basing strategies of poverty eradication on political principles, in lieu of on moral standards carries important risks with it. Global poverty is horrifying and it is vastly extended, this is why it should be a priority to tackle this problem from its heart. On the other hand, On the other hand, Sen worries about the actual obstinacy from many non-Western societies in thinking their own ideals of life should deny all the West represents, because this «reactive self-perfection» can bring with it an increase in fundamentalism and violence.


Background: ITP is a rare disorder characterized by low platelet counts and a tendency toward increased bleeding and bruising. Several studies have shown that ITP incidence increases with age. Elderly ITP patients may have a higher risk of bleeding and their disease management can be challenging due to increased burden of other health problems. However, little information is available regarding rates of BREs in elderly ITP patients. As the population ages, understanding the frequency of bleeding events and/or use of ITP therapy to treat or prevent bleeding in routine clinical practice could provide insights into the real-world burden of this disease in elderly patients. Methods: Using Medicare 20% sample data 2007-2012, we identified elderly Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) enrollees newly diagnosed with primary ITP (ICD-9-CM diagnosis code 287.31) at age ≥67 years (to ensure ≥2 years of Medicare FFS enrollment before their first claim with an ITP code to determine study eligibility), between January 1, 2009, and September 30, 2012. BREs were defined as ≥1 bleeding event (of any severity) and/or use of ITP therapies commonly considered for rescue or emergency therapy (platelet transfusion, intravenous immunoglobulin [IVIg], anti-D, or IV steroids). Claims with relevant codes with dates of service separated by ≤3 days were considered a single BRE. The rate of BREs (per person-year) was calculated for all BREs and by event type incorporated into BREs for the ITP cohort overall and stratified on ITP phase (newly diagnosed: 0 to 12 months). ITP phase was defined based on ITP disease duration, which was calculated as the time between initial ITP diagnosis and last ITP claim. Patients were followed from ITP diagnosis until the last ITP claim (end of ITP duration), death, disenrollment from FFS coverage, or December 31, 2012, whichever came first. Results: We identified 3007 elderly patients with primary ITP (mean [SD] age: 79.6 [7.5] years; 55% female) in the database of 12.8 million enrollees. The median (IQR) ITP duration was 6 (1, 17) months; 37%, 30%, and 34% of patients had ITP duration 12 months, respectively. During 2687 person years follow-up, 1806 patients (60%) experienced at least one BRE for a total of 6305 BREs; 42% were bleeding events only, 50% were therapy only, and 8% were both. BRE rates (95% CI) per person year were 2.35 (2.29-2.41) for any BREs and 0.99 (0.95-1.03), 1.18 (1.14-1.22), and 0.18 (0.16-0.20) for BREs with bleeding only, therapy only, and both, respectively. The most common bleeding types were gastrointestinal hemorrhage, hematuria, epistaxis, and ecchymoses. Intracranial hemorrhage was reported in 107 patients (3.6%). Newly diagnosed patients had higher BRE rates (Table). Conclusion: We provided current real-world estimates of BRE rates in elderly patients with ITP. About 60% of ITP patients experienced at least one BRE, and half of all BREs were defined by therapy use alone. This demonstrates the importance of examining both bleeding and use of rescue or emergency ITP therapy in the assessment of disease burden in elderly patients with ITP. Disclosures Cetin:Amgen, Inc: Employment, Equity Ownership. Wasser:Amgen, Inc: Consultancy, Membership on an entity9s Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding. Altomare:Amgen Inc.: Consultancy, Honoraria.


Electrochemical studies carried out in conjunction with 31P NMR spectroscopy on the palladium(II)/palladium(0) halogeno complexes of the tetraphosphine 1,1′,2,2′-tetrakis(diphenylphosphino)-4,4′-di-tert-butylferrocene, termed Fc(P4)tBu, are reported. Fc(P4)tBu was chosen with regard to its good performances in pallado-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions, which resulted in catalytic turnover numbers (TONs) up to 1 000 000 [Organometallics 2003, 22, 4490–4499]. The complexes [PdX2{Fc(P)4tBu}] (X = Cl, Br, I) are described with their X-ray molecular characterization in the solid state and multinuclear NMR in solution. The electrochemical behavior of Fc(P4)tBu and [PdX2{Fc(P)4tBu}] complexes was investigated by cyclic voltammetry and electrolysis: a formulation of the corresponding electro-generated Pd0 species formed is proposed on the basis of their NMR characterization. The oxidative addition reaction of phenyl iodide on these zerovalent palladium/ferrocenyltetraphosphine complexes was also studied by combi...


It is my pleasure and privilege to nominate Roger David Keen Thomas for the Pojeta Award of the Paleontological Society. I have known Roger for more than 30 years, in many different connections. The Pojeta Award was established by the Society "to recognize exceptional professional or public service by individuals or groups in the field of paleontology above and beyond that of existing formal roles or responsibilities." This description fits Roger so very well. In addition his excellence in his "formal roles" as a researcher and especially undergraduate teacher, Roger has been a tireless servant of not just the Paleontological Society (for which he served as a member of Council from 1979– 1986, Associate Editor of Paleobiology from 1982–1987, and —most notably—as Secretary from 2003–2009), but also to many other societies and journals in our field, including the International Palaeontological Association (Secretary-General, 2010–2014); AAAS (Section E, CommitteeMember, representing the PS, 1976–1987); AGI (Governing Board member 1981– 1986); GSA (History of Geology Division, Chair, 2002–2003, Vice-chair, 2001–2002); SEPM (Associate Editor of Palaios, 1985–1996); Historical Biology (Associate Editor, 1994; Co-Editor, 1995–1999; Editor, 2000–2003); Paleontological Research (Editorial Board, 1995–2000); and the Paleontological Research Institution (Trustee, 2015–present). Roger is, in short, belongs to that small group of people without whom our profession would not function as it does. For decades, he has given selflessly of his time and energy to the entities that promote research, publication, cooperation, and collaboration across the discipline nationally and internationally. And he has done this with a graciousness and good humor that have been indispensable to his success. All paleontologists, and particularly those in the Paleontological Society, owe him a great debt of gratitude, which the Pojeta Award would go far to repaying. September 22, 2019 Journal of Paleontology, 94(5), 2020, p. 1008–1008 Copyright © 2020, The Paleontological Society 0022-3360/20/1937-2337 doi: 10.1017/jpa.2020.49


In a programmable Josephson voltage standard device which contains multiple branches of Josephson junction (JJ) array, the microwave reflection in arrays may result in a decrease in the Shapiro step margin. According to most of the previous designs, 90° phase shifter is used to cancel microwave reflection from branches to improve the performance of the device. This paper reports our study of the phase shifter in JJ array device with a 2-stage Wilkinson power divider. At first we designed and fabricated JJ array circuits with the phase shifters. Measurement results indicate that unequal powers have been reached to arrays. We then deleted the phase shifters in another design. Identical Shapiro step margins for 4 JJ array branches are achieved.


In order to continue to meet the RC delay requirements of future technology nodes for logic Backend-of-Line (BEOL) interconnect schemes, the successful integration of dual damascene Cu metallization and ultralow k (ULK) dielectric materials with a dielectric constant below 2.7, is projected to be of key importance [1]. Porosity can enable a reduction of dielectric constant values for several classes of low k dielectric materials, into the range of interest for ULK, and hence a variety of porous ULK dielectrics is being evaluated for their performance in BEOL technology [2]. In the area of physical vapor deposition (PVD) Ta(N) barrier technology, tool and process innovations are continually being made to enable barrier scaling for future interconnect dimensions. In this regard, beyond the feature coverage limitations of PVD barriers in general, an additional constraint is starting to present challenges for PVD: deposition rate control. While allowing the formation of highly pure Ta or TaN barrier films, the deposition rates of advanced PVD Ta(N) processes are typically on the order of 1nm/s. For barrier thickness targets in the 1-3nm regime, deposition rate control limitations in PVD may therefore pose considerable reproducibility problems. Alternative process technologies such as chemical vapor deposition (CVD) or atomic layer deposition (ALD) can provide key benefits in terms of deposition rate control and conformality, however, their compatibility with various porous ULK dielectric materials is in doubt [3]. Due to the highly conformal nature of ALD and plasma enhanced ALD (PEALD) processes, nanoscale features can be uniformly coated with ALD films, as demonstrated for PEALD TaN in a trench structure in oxide displayed in Figure 1. The PEALD TaN processes employed in this study are based on the reduction of pentakis(dimethylamino)tantalum (PDMAT) with either a hydrogen plasma or an ammonia plasma. Both these PEALD processes exhibit similar TaN conformality on nanoscale trench structures in oxide, however, the reduction of PDMAT with hydrogen radicals typically leads to the growth of TaN with a lower resistivity. The interaction of hydrogen plasma-based PEALD TaN with patterned dense ULK as well as patterned porous ULK was investigated for organosilicate-based ULK dielectric materials with a dielectric constant of 2.55 (ULK2.55). As observed by scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) imaging and energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDX) analysis, no TaN was detected inside the patterned dense ULK2.55 material (Figure 2), while the porous ULK2.55 material exhibited penetration of TaN. It is anticipated that in the latter case, PDMAT diffusion into the pores present in the ULK matrix occurred, and, after adsorption of PDMAT on the inner pore walls, reaction with hydrogen radicals during the plasma exposure steps in the PEALD process lead to the formation of TaN inside the ULK dielectric (Figure 3). Various plasma species can interact differently with the surfaces of porous dielectric materials [4], and therefore the impact of hydrogen plasma-based TaN and ammonia plasma-based TaN on patterned ULK sidewalls was studied for ULK substrates with a dielectric constant of 2.2 (ULK2.2). Moreover, the effect of pore-sealing layers, applied to patterned porous ULK prior to TaN deposition, was evaluated in terms of their ability to reduce TaN penetration into ULK.


...........................................................................................................................................................vii LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................................................................ viii LIST OF FIGURES.................................................................................................................................................. ix LIST OF ABBREVIATION ..................................................................................................................................... x DEFINITIONS OF TERMS .................................................................................................................................... xi


This action research study examines the learning experiences of Year 8 students and their teacher as they negotiate aspects of their English classes.


In this brief note, we discuss the homogenization of a 1D elliptic operator with a random coefficient function. As is generally well-known, under assumptions of stationarity and ergodicity, there is a closed form expression for the homogenized coefficient in 1D. We provide a simple derivation of this result and also discuss the connections to the general theoretical framework in [4]. We also discuss the method of periodization in the 1D case and provide some numerical examples.


This paper discusses of the integrated geophysical survey method used in peripheral concealed ore bodies.The IP sweep is efficient,delineating abnormal.Transient electromagnetic and controlled source method can be quickly determine the position,depth,and tendency of anomalous bodies.Integrated geophysical combining with geological data can solve the problem of multi-interpretations in geophysics,providing the useful area for next geological work.Practice shows that the research achievement is in good agreement to borehole data and known ore bodies.Based on the analysis of the experiment,the authors give some target region in the east and west sides of DE'ERNI,indicating that using these geophysical exploration methods in low impedance to search for abnormal copper cobalt ore is effective.


Le tt er For patients with a low risk for squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines (version 1.0, 2020) recommend excising the area with a 4to 6-mm margin; however, decisions for high-risk cases should be based on the clinical characteristics of the tumor and the patient's condition. Similarly, the NCCN guidelines for cutaneous melanoma state that "margins may be modified to accommodate individual anatomic or functional consideration and consider histologic margin assessment prior to reconstruction and closure" [1]. Extensive subclinical spreading was found in 14% to 15% of primary SCCs and 23% to 50% of recurrent SCCs. In addition, patients who undergo Mohs microsurgery and have recurrent tumors have a higher risk of recurrence than those treated with wide excision [2]. The probability of spreading is high in cases of recurrent cancer, so freely achieving the maximum possible margin with subsequent aesthetic reconstruction may be the most effective approach for treating skin cancer. When recurrence takes place due to insufficient margins at the time of primary resection, it is important to consider the patient's discomfort resulting from periodic visits due to positive results along the resection margin, the costs of reoperation and diagnosis, and the invasiveness of the procedure. The least amount of secondary wound contraction occurs with LETTER


Abstract The pseudospectra of a linear time-invariant system are the sets in the complex plane consisting of all the roots of the characteristic equation when the system matrices are subjected to all possible perturbations with a given upper bound. The pseudospectral abscissa are defined as the maximum real part of the characteristic roots in the pseudospectra and, therefore, they are for instance important from a robust stability point of view. In this paper we present a numerical method for the computation of the pseudospectral abscissa of retarded delay differential equations with discrete pointwise delays. Our approach is based on the connections between the pseudospectra and the level sets of an appropriately defined complex function. These connections lead us to a bisection algorithm for the computation of the pseudospectral abscissa, where each step relies on checking the presence of imaginary axis eigenvalues of an appropriately defined operator. Because this operator is infinite-dimensional a predictor-corrector approach is taken. In the predictor step the bisection algorithm is applied where the operator is discretized into a matrix, yielding approximations for the pseudospectral abscissa. The effect of the discretization is fully characterized in the paper. In the corrector step, the approximate pseudospectral abscissa are corrected to any given accuracy, by solving a set of nonlinear equations that characterize extreme points in the pseudospectra contours.


A recently commissioned mid-infrared synchrotron beamline (IRENI) at the Synchrotron Radiation Center (SRC) in Stoughton, WI, provides wide-field illumination for an FTIR microscope equipped with a focal plane array (FPA) detector by bundling and collimating 12 beams extracted from the synchrotron source. This unique design enables Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) imaging applications that require the brightness of a synchrotron and allows the collection of high signal-tonoise FTIR hyperspectral data cubes, providing images with high diffraction-limited resolution in a relatively short time frame. A selected group of prepared cross-section samples – mockups containing thin layers of organic material and layers of materials containing similar chemical moieties, and a sample from a real work of art – were analyzed in order to evaluate the utility of the IRENI beamline for the examination of samples relevant to cultural heritage. The results suggest that the high resolution imaging obtainable by IRENI is ideally suited to address some of the challenges related to the analysis of the small multi-layered inorganic/organic composite samples commonly found in cultural heritage research.


Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) affects myofibers and muscle stem cells (SC), causing progressive muscle degeneration and repair defects. It was not known whether dystrophic myoblasts—the effector cells of muscle growth and regeneration—are affected. Using a combination of transcriptomic, molecular, functional analyses, and genome-scale metabolic modelling, we demonstrate, for the first time, convergent cell-autonomous abnormalities in primary mouse and human dystrophic myoblasts. In Dmdmdx mouse myoblasts lacking full-length dystrophin transcripts, the expression of 170 other genes was significantly altered. Myod1 (p=2.9e-21) and key muscle genes controlled by MyoD (Myog, Mymk, Mymx, epigenetic regulators, ECM interactors, calcium signalling and fibrosis genes) were significantly downregulated. Gene ontology enrichment analysis indicated significant alterations in genes involved in muscle development and function. These transcriptomic abnormalities translated into functional alterations such as increased proliferation (p=3.0e-3), reduced chemotaxis towards both sera-rich (p=3.8e-2) and cytokine-containing medium (p=1.0e-2), and significantly accelerated differentiation in 3D organotypic cultures. These altered myoblast functions are essential for muscle regeneration. The defects were caused by the loss of expression of full-length dystrophin, as strikingly similar and not exacerbated alterations were also observed in dystrophin-null Dmdmdx-βgeo myoblasts. Corresponding abnormalities were identified in an established dystrophic mouse muscle (SC5) cell line and human DMD primary myoblasts, confirming universal, cross-species and cell-autonomous nature of these defects. The genome-scale metabolic analysis in human DMD myoblasts indicated significant alteration in the rate of glycolysis/gluconeogenesis (log2FC = 4.8), leukotriene metabolism (log2FC = 4.754), mitochondrial beta-oxidation of branched-chain, odd-chain, and di-unsaturated fatty acids (n-6) (log2FC = -1.187, log2FC = -0.8295 and log2FC = -0.655). These results demonstrate the disease continuum: DMD defects in satellite cells cause myoblast dysfunctions affecting muscle regeneration, which is essential to counteract myofiber loss. Contrary to the established belief, our data demonstrate that typical DMD alterations occur in myoblasts, making these cells a novel therapeutic target for the treatment of this lethal disease.


The cardiac resynchronization therapy is an effective treatment for systolic failure patients. Independent electrical stimulation of left and right ventricle corrects mechanical ventricular dyssynchrony. About 30–40% treated patients do not respond to therapy. In order to improve clinical outcome authors propose the two channels impedance cardiography for assessment of ventricular dyssynchrony. The proposed method is intended for validation of patients diagnosis and optimization of pacemaker settings for cardiac resynchronization therapy. The preliminary study has showed that bichannel impedance cardiography is a promising tool for assessment of ventricular dyssynchrony.


Introduction:

Fatigue and daytime sleepiness (DS) are understudied among children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Past studies have identified pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as TNFα and interferon-inducible protein measured in serum as potential mediators of fatigue and sleep disturbances in other populations. Cytokines measured in cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) may correlate more closely with DS than those measured in serum. Yet, CSF measurements of cytokines are rare because they are difficult to obtain. ALL patients undergo lumbar puncture as part of routine exams, thus presenting an opportunity to measure CSF levels of cytokines without additional procedures. The aim of our study was to examine the associations of plasma and CSF cytokines with patient-reported fatigue among children with ALL. Our hypothesis was that higher levels of cytokines and soluble cytokine receptors would be associated with greater patient-reported DS.

Patients and Methods:

This study included 16 children aged 4-11 years with ALL who had cytokine and DS measures available. The cytokine IL-6, and cytokine receptors IL-1 R1 & R2, TNF R1 & R2 were measured in plasma and/or cerebral spinal fluid at up to three time points during maintenance chemotherapy regimens, approximately 3 months apart. DS was assessed at each of these same time points using the Pediatric Daytime Sleepiness Scale (PDSS), which is completed by the child and has possible values between 0 and 32 points. Higher scores on this scale indicate greater DS, with a score of 17 or greater indicating clinically relevant DS. We used repeated measures linear regression models to examine the association of each cytokine with PDSS scores, adjusting for age at each visit.

Results:

The mean age at study entry was 6.1 years (SD=2.4), and 47% of patients were male. The mean PDSS score was 20.4 points (SD=6.1, range 4 to 29), and 79% of the patients had a PDSS score ≥17. Table 1 shows the age-adjusted associations of each cytokine with PDSS score. Each 100 pg/mL increase in CSF TNF R2 was associated with a 2.13 (SE=0.76) point higher score on the PDSS (p=0.01). In general, higher cytokine levels in both plasma and CSF were associated with higher PDSS scores, although no other associations reached statistical significance.

Conclusions:

We found that the majority of ALL patients undergoing maintenance chemotherapy experienced clinically relevant DS. Higher CSF levels of TNF R2 were associated with greater patient-reported DS, which supports results from past studies that measured TNFα in plasma. This association is biologically plausible because TNF R2 mediates the many metabolic effects of TNF that can include fatigue and sleep. We are in the process of evaluating other cytokines and cytokine-receptors on sleep. Our findings suggest that the complex relation of fatigue, daytime-sleepiness, and CSF cytokines should be evaluated in a larger patient population, and that targeting chronic stimulation of the TNFα pathway may help to mitigate daytime sleepiness in ALL patients.

| Cytokine or Cytokine Receptor | Beta (SE)a per 100 pg/mL unit increase | p-valuea |
| ----------------------------- | --------------------------------------------- | -------- |
| IL-1R1 | | |
| Plasma | 1.74 (3.1) | 0.59 |
| CSF | -- | -- |
| IL-1R2 | | |
| Plasma | 0.01 (0.02) | 0.39 |
| CSF | 0.05 (0.08) | 0.55 |
| IL-6 | | |
| Plasma | 0.02 (0.02) | 0.29 |
| CSF | 0.28 (0.38) | 0.47 |
| TNF R1 | | |
| Plasma | 0.29 (0.28) | 0.31 |
| CSF | 0.77 (0.74) | 0.31 |
| TNF R2 | | |
| Plasma | 0.04 (0.07) | 0.56 |
| CSF | 2.13 (0.76) | 0.01 |

Table 1.
Age-adjusted associations of IL-1 R1 & R2, IL-6, and TNF R1 & R2 withPediatric Daytime Sleepiness Scale (PDSS) scores among pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) patients

a Estimates are from repeated linear regression models, adjusted for age at each visit.

Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


The object of this work is to reflect on the question of what is generally refered to as organizational values. It also aims to develop and expand our understanding of the mechanisms of construction and reconstruction of values within organizations. The work tries to identify the nuances woven into this complex web of construction of individual values and how they are inter-linked within the continuous process of construction and reconstruction and the manner in which they interact within the organizational context establishing a system of organizational singularity. The authors thus identified a common view that organizational values are generated by the organizations themselves, almost as if they were individual beings with a life of their own capable of generating organizational values and then imposing them on those they employ and the market. The essence of this work was therefore to reflect on organizational values versus individual values and the process leading to their construction and reconstruction in the search for what we call organizational singularity.


A low profile, compact dual band slotted patch antenna has been designed using finite element method-based high frequency full-wave electromagnetic simulator. The proposed antenna fabricated using LPKF printed circuit board (PCB) fabrication machine on fiberglass reinforced epoxy polymer resin material substrate and the performance of the prototype has been measured in a standard far-field anechoic measurement chamber. The measured impedance bandwidths of (reflection coefficient  dB) 12.26% (14.3–16.2 GHZ), 8.24% (17.4–18.9 GHz), and 3.08% (19.2–19.8) have been achieved through the proposed antenna prototype. 5.9 dBi, 3.37 dBi, and 3.32 dBi peak gains have been measured and simulated radiation efficiencies of 80.3%, 81.9%, and 82.5% have been achieved at three resonant frequencies of 15.15 GHz, 18.2 GHz, and 19.5 GHz, respectively. Minimum gain variation, symmetric, and almost steady measured radiation pattern shows that the proposed antenna is suitable for Ku and K band satellite applications.


Owing to the difference in physical and chemical properties, the liquid drops' growth states are dissimilar to different liquids under same conditions. And this drop growth difference to various liquids is embodied in the corresponding drop's contour feature obviously. Thus the liquid identification method based on CCD imaging system will be introduced in detail in this paper. Through experiments to different liquids, the region area, boundary girth, drop length, drop plumpness, drop circularity, and the profile edge of the liquid drop image will be extracted and analyzed. And with these information the liquid identification can be realized. From sample experiments the region area and the drop plumpness is more effective than other parameters in liquid discrimination. And the boundary girth and drop length difference is very small to some liquids, thus they are the realitive weaker character to liquid drops.


Pest species assemblages associated with vegetable, field and forage, ornamental, fruit, and tree crops in Colorado were surveyed. Analysis of species richness on crop plants indicated that the insect orders Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, and Homoptera contained most crop pests. The insect family with the most pest species was Aphididae. Total pest species richness was correlated with major pest species richness. Frequently occurring species were determined for each crop type; there was little overlap among dominant pest species assemblages. Foliage- and stem-feeding pests were more common than trunk-, fruit-, and root-feeding species. Polyphagous species comprised ca. 70% of the species in crop pest species assemblages. but only about one-third of the total pest species list. Sequential evolution may be more common than coevolution in crop systems, due to artificial selection pressure imposed by plant breeders.


The growing attention in smart WSN deployments for monitoring, security and optimization applications urges the design of new tools in order to recognize, as soon as a possible, anomalous states of systems whenever they occur. In order to develop an anomaly detection system enabling to discover unusual events in a non-stationary process, a scalable immune based strategy has been adopted. The algorithm works as an instance based 1-class classifier capable to un-supervisedly model the "normal" spatial-temporal variable behavior of the system identifying first order anomalies. Typical immune-like processes guarantee a slow adaptation of the set of local patterns to long term variation in the monitored system. The algorithm has been applied to a several real scenarios showing to be able to work on both on resource constrained WSN nodes and on dealing with large data streams in centralized data processing facilities.


The presence of a plane, parallel-sided dielectric component in the optical path produces channeled spectra or signatures in conventional or Fourier transform spectroscopy respectively. These features are generally undesirable and a method of removing them based on scaling the zero path signature of the interferogram is described. Spectroscopic information concealed by the signatures is left intact. The method is applied to signatures arising from the diamond window of a Golay detector and the results presented for both the interferograms and the corresponding spectra.


Many analysts decry the lack of sufficient investment in Africa, implying that investment in Africa is 'too low'. We find no evidence that private and public capital are productive in Africa, either in the cross‐country data or in micro‐data from Tanzania. In this restricted sense, investment in Africa is too high rather than too low.


Akhand, Saeed S. M.S., Purdue University, August 2014. Role of a putative bacterial lipoprotein in Pseudomonas aeruginosa-mediated cytotoxicity towards airway cells. Major Professor: Gregory G. Anderson. The patients with Cystic Fibrosis (CF), an inherent genetic disorder, suffer from chronic bacterial infection in the lung. In CF, modification of epithelial cells leads to alteration of the lung environment, such as inhibition of ciliary bacterial clearance and accumulation of thickened mucus in the airways. Exploiting these conditions, opportunistic pathogens like Pseudomonas aeruginosa cause lifelong persistent infection in the CF lung by forming into antibiotic-resistant aggregated communities called biofilms. Airway infections as well as inflammation are the two major presentations of CF lung disease. P. aeruginosa strains isolated from CF lungs often contain mutations in the mucA gene, and this mutation results in higher level expression of bacterial polysaccharides and toxic lipoproteins. In a previous work, we have found a putative lipoprotein gene (PA4326) which is overexpressed in antibiotic-induced biofilm formed on cultured CF-derived airway cells. In the current work, we speculated that this particular putative lipoprotein affects cellular cytotoxicity and immune-stimulation in the epithelial cells. We found that mutation of this gene (∆PA4326) results in reduced airway cell killing without affecting other common virulence factors.


Comparative vocabulary of the actual sugar cane terminology in the Atlantic The comparative vocabulary of the actual sugar cane terminology in the Atlantic, including the ibero-americane terminology, once that it presents linguistic data from Canarias islands and references to the terminology of other geographical areas of Spanish language, that shows us the central paper of Madeira island as epicenter in the diffusion of the sugar cane culture in the Atlantic. The maderian people, specialized in the sugar cane production, participated actively in the transplantation of the terminology and technology of this economic activity to the new sugar cane areas in the Atlantic: Canarias, Cap Vert, S. Tomé and Principe and Brazil. And indirectly, through the Canarias islands, the sugar cane terms and techniques arrived to the Latin American countries of spanish language, as Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Argentina. In opposition of the industrialized sugar cane production, which terminology and technology presents none linguistic and cultural interest, the actual terminology of the traditional sugar cane production, conserved in the poor countries and in the most isolated regions that we studied, presents a lot of terms from the old sugar cane maderian production, as trapiche, rapadura, mestre de açúcar, forma de açúcar e açúcar mascavado, that is very important to collect and save. That's why the interest of this comparative vocabulary of the actual sugar cane terminology in the Atlantic, the registration of this linguistic and cultural patrimony that shows us the path and the variation of the terms and techniques of the sugar cane culture in the three continents: Europe, Africa and America.


In the current practice, scientific programmer and HPC users are required todevelop code that exposes a high degree of parallelism, exhibits high locality,dynamically adapts to the available resources, and hides communication latency.Hiding communication latency is crucial to realize the potential of today'sdistributed memory machines with highly parallel processing modules, andtechnological trends indicate that communication latencies will continue to bean issue as the performance gap between computation and communication widens.However, under Bulk Synchronous Parallel models, the predominant paradigm inscientific computing, scheduling is embedded into the application code. All thephases of a computation are defined and laid out as a linear sequence ofoperations limiting overlap and the program's ability to adapt to communicationdelays.In this paper we present an alternative model, called Tarragon, to overcome thelimitations of Bulk Synchronous Parallelism. Tarragon, which is based ondataflow, targets latency tolerant scientific computations. Tarragon supports atask-dependency graph abstraction in which tasks, the basic unit ofcomputation, are organized as a graph according to their data dependencies,i.e. task precedence. In addition to the task graph, Tarragon supports metadataabstractions, annotations to the task graph, to express locality informationand scheduling policies to improve performance.Tarragon's functionality and underlying programming methodology aredemonstrated on three classes of computations used in scientific domains:structured grids, sparse linear algebra, and dynamic programming. In theapplication studies, Tarragon implementations achieve high performance, in manycases exceeding the performance of equivalent latency-tolerant, hard coded MPIimplementations.


The book review section of a journal is often the first section perused by readers. This section provides a valuable service to readers who, because of ever-present time pressure, wish to learn about new publications and seek guidance on book selection. As the new editor of the book review section, I would like to express my thoughts on the role of this section in knowledge development and transmission. I also would like to provide some guidelines for contributors.


This paper provides an overview of the characteristics of selected types of active interference dedicated to medium range surveillance radars. That is why at the very beginning examples of platforms used to interfere the operations of both land based surveillance radars and radars mounted on boards of combat aircraft are characterized. The paper focuses mostly on surveillance radars and their resistance to noise jamming. An example calculation of effective jamming range in relation to a medium range radar is considered in the text. Moreover a graphic representation of the influence of jamming on the operation of a radar with reference to the application of jamming and thereof lack are discussed. The basic aim of the considerations is an efficiency assessment of the jamming impact on the operation of the radar. Among others the effectiveness of the radar transmit pulse power changing is assessed with regard to the prevention of intentional jamming. The conclusions provide exemplary methods of mitigating the impact of jamming on the operation of the radar. Additionally the paper provides information on priorities to be taken into consideration in the field of contemporary radiolocation.


: the specialty of mathematics and applied mathematics has a wide range of uses. If you want to learn the specialty well, you need to create a suitable classroom atmosphere to help students improve their innovation ability and make students study efficiently in a relaxed environment. This article focuses on the construction of innovative mathematics and applied mathematics, hoping to provide some reference for relevant education industries. -39-effectiveness of students, optimization of practical teaching and too detailed division of specialty, and puts forward the thinking of constructing innovative mathematics and Applied Mathematics Specialty. This puts forward the reform and development strategies of mathematics and applied mathematics, including accurate positioning, optimizing the existing curriculum, guiding students to correctly view the learning process, optimizing teaching methods, and paying equal attention to theoretical teaching and applied teaching.


Hydrolytic enzyme producing Trichoderma species have long been rec-ognized as an agent for controlling plant diseases caused by various phytopathogenic fungi. A study was in-tended to identify highly chitinase and cellulose isolated Trichoderma producer from the rhizosphere. Chitinase gene iso-lated from Trichoderma strains FUE3, FUE5, FUE6, FUE9, FUE15 and I18 had one fragment with length of 1039 bp, en-coding 344 amino acids. Cellulase gene isolated from Trichoderma strais FUE15 had one fragment with length of 204 bp, encoding 68 amino acids. The results pre-sented showed that Trichoderma strains I18, FUE9, FUE6, FUE3, FUE5 and FUE15 exhibited significant activities of chitinase compare to control. The high potent cellulase producer was detected by FUE5 being 0.075 mg/ml whereas, the lowest figure produced by FUE15 being 0.024 mg/ml.


Ophthalmoscopy is an important skill for the medical student to master. Students have difficulty visualising the retina, and are hesitant to practise with patients. Our study aim was to demonstrate that an eye simulation experience would be beneficial for developing ophthalmoscopy skills.


Abstract : A by-product of future automated tactical systems is a proliferation of data to be organized and analyzed. To help cope with this problem and bring about an efficient man-computer interface, an evaluation of the decision aiding literature was undertaken. Special emphasis was placed on those aids which might be useful in tactical systems and could be implemented in the G3 versions of SIMTOS (i.e., simulated tactical operations system). It was found that more than one decision aid was necessary to impact significantly on an ultimate decision. Therefore, a decision support complex was designed for incorporation into the SIMTOS. The support complex utilized a normative approach and an adaptive approach in regard to estimating the pre-combat tactical situation and in regard to allocating fire resources during combat.


The photonic properties of artificial opals directly depend on the atmosphere (air, usually) filling the voids in the constitutive dielectric material. Here, a novel use of bare artificial silica opals (direct and inverse) is presented for straightforward water dew detection, in which the stop‐band exhibits a drastic change upon soaking of the voids. In particular, the opal reflectance drops to one‐fifth within 100 ms scale, so the fading of the opal structural color upon dew formation is evident for the naked eye. Moreover, the stop‐band redshifts up to 60 nm, leading, by convenient selection of the stop‐band wavelength, to perceptible color change. Due to the porous nature of the opal, the dew formation in the opal voids is shifted to lower saturation pressures compared to an open system. This is experimentally demonstrated by controlled reduction of the pores size, so that the advancement of the dew point temperature is tuned between 2.5° and 6.3°. The outstanding color change together with the easy fabrication (without postprocessing) and selectable size (from miniature to large‐area) make artificial opals cost‐effective and versatile visual dew detectors. The tunable advance of the opal response over the actual dew point is practical to adequately anticipate and prevent dew formation in neighboring surfaces. Furthermore, opals might serve as useful probe systems for the study of fundamental phenomena such as condensation of vapors in porous and particulate media.


This article has no abstract.

Keywords:

π-allylpalladium complexes;
allylic acetoxylation;
oxygenation of allylsilanes;
alkylidenecyclopentenediones;
1-alken-4-ones;
oxidative cyclization;
coupling;
transvinylation;
addition reactions;
coupling reactions;
oxidative cyclization;
arene functionalization


Endometrial Metaplasia is the process in which normal endometrioid glands are undergoing replacement by other types of benign epithelium. Endometrium can show us a diversity of metaplastic changes. Modified differentiation of Endometrial cells can be due to the presence of degenerative/reparative, hormonal or neoplastic processes. The presence of Epithelial Metaplasia can signify other concomitants benign and malignant processes. Endometrial metaplasia can be either a single process or present with other histopathological changes. There are different types of endometrial metaplasia but the most common is tubal metaplasia. The second most common can be squamous metaplasia, transitional cell metaplasia, arias-Stella reaction/changes, cellular eosinophilic changes and mucinous metaplasia. different types of metaplasia can show us the various type and intensities of expression for P16, Cyclin E, Cyclin A, Ki67, B catenin, ER, CDX2, CD10, P63. The role and importance of distinct types of endometrial metaplasia in the relapse of cancer and neoplastic progression are still unknown. There is the clinical opinion that behind every single metaplastic process there is stem cell reprogramming but the phenomenon of endometrial metaplasia needs more thorough studies.


The present invention discloses the use Lycojaponicumin A in the manufacture of a medicament treatment of gastric cancer, which belongs to the field of pharmaceutical technology. The present invention by an in vitro antitumor activity evaluation MTT found, Lycojaponicumin A human gastric cancer cell line HGC-27, growth of MGC-803, BGC-823 and SGC-7901 also significantly inhibited. Thus, Lycojaponicumin A can be used for making an anti-gastric cancer drugs, it has a good development and application prospect. For Lycojaponicumin A according to the invention for the manufacture of a medicament for the treatment of gastric cancer belongs to the first public, since the framework type belonging to a new framework type, and which have unexpectedly strong activity for inhibiting gastric cancer cells.


T preparation of leucite from K+/Na+ ions exchange process of analcime in K2CO3 solution was studied. Abundant K+ in leucite after exchange is beneficial for the application in agriculture as slow release fertilizers. This is a good method to translate non water-soluble potassium resources into water-soluble potassium resources. It can solve the problem of the shortage of water-soluble potassium resources. It is also a new and popular way for the preparation of slow release fertilizers. In this study, X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transformation infrared spectrometry (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were utilized to characterize the as-exchanged samples. Flame photometry was applied to determine the concentrations of potassium oxide. XRD data and FTIR results determined that leucite was prepared from K+/Na+ ions exchange process of analcime in K2CO3 solution at 60oC, 90oC and 120oC for 1 h, 2 h, 4 h, 6 h and 10 h. The crystal structure of analcime and leucite show that potassium atoms surrounded by six oxygen atoms in leucite are located in the sites of water molecule in analcime. The preparation of leucite from analcime in K2CO3 solution is a reversible chemical reaction. The K+/Na+ ions exchange was stabilization at higher temperatures (90oC and 120oC) and longer time according to the K2O contents in samples. It turned out that the reaction rate was controlled by product layer diffusion from the experiments and analysis of kinetics according to shrinking core model. It shows that the potassium oxide of samples maximum is 17.10% (in theory is 21.58%) obtained from analcime reacted with 4 mol/L K2CO3 solution (KAlSi2O6/K2CO3 mole ratio=1:10) at 120oC for 4 h.


Atrial septal defect of the secundum type is a defect above the location of the embryologic as primum in the region of the foramen ovale (Fig. 1). A part of the septum primum exists on the floor of the atrium above the level of the atrioventricular valves and these valves are uninvolved. This is distinguished from the primum type of defect in which the atrioventricular valves form the floor of the defect, there being no septum between the defect and the valves, and in which the valves are frequently deformed. The atrial septal defect is probably the most common congenital malformation of the heart (6). This has been true in our experience. The secundum type is of particular importance because of its frequency (over 95 per cent of the total cases of atrial septal defect seen at this institution) and relative amenability to surgical correction. Numerous papers concerned with the clinical aspects of atrial septal defect have appeared in the literature (1, 2, 3, 4). Diagnosis has usually been made on the basis of findings derived at cardiac catheterization. By this means, however, the primum and secundum types cannot be differentiated nor can the association of anomalous pulmonary venous connections be definitely excluded. In the past two and a half years, twenty patients with this anomaly, ranging from three to thirty-four years of age, have been repaired surgically at the University of Colorado Medical Center following detailed


Image filtering processes are applied on images to remove the different types of noise that are either present in the image during capturing or introduced into the image during transmission. The salt & pepper (impulse) noise is the one type of noise which is occurred during transmission due to bit errors or dead pixels. The images are blurred due to object movement or camera displacement when we capture the image. This pepper deals with removing the impulse noise and blurredness simultaneously from the images. This filter is a combination of weiner filter and median filter.


Objective To explore the clinical significance of determination of CA125 and ADA in blood serum and pleural fluid in patients with tuberculous pleuritis. Methods Chemo-immumo fluorescence method was used to determine CA125 and ADA in blood serum and pleural fluid of 30 patients without tuberculous pleuritis and 48 ones who suffered from tuberculous pleuritis.Then calculated their specificity,sensitivity,positive predictive value,negative predictive value and accuracy rating.Results The positive rating of CA125 and ADA in patients with tuberculous pleuritis was higher.Compared single item with symphysial detection,the latter in blood serum there was a little adscendent in specificity,but not obviously adscendent in sensitivity and accuracy rating.In pleural fluid there were obviously raise in specificity and accuracy rating,while not descent in specificity.Conclusion Symphysial detection of CA125 and ADA in blood serum is not helpful to auxiliary diagnosis in tuberculous pleurisy,but the symphysial detection in pleural fluid is extremely utility.


This book addresses the required and optimal equipment necessary for administering a site for multimedia applications. It also discusses, in detail, Internet and MBone resources as well as how to produce and distribute Internet MPEG, QuickTime, and AVI videos. -- Appeals to PC, Macintosh, and Unix users on the Internet -- Examines the solutions to video conferencing, 3D virtual shopping, and Web TV commercials for site administrators -- Shows users how to broadcast, advertise, and display their products on the Internet -- Addresses the Internet site administrator's concerns about the effects of video on a network


Nanoscopically small and artifcially made: Metamaterials open up previously undreamed of possibilities for researchers. Tailored "photonic atoms" help them achieving new optical properties and inspire them to develop innovative applications


THIS PAPER DISCUSSES THE DEVELOPMENT OF MUSKEG RESEARCH STUDIES IN ALBERTA, WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO VANE SHEAR TESTING. CORRELATIONS OF VANE SHEAR STRENGTH, WATER CONTENT, AND CLASSIFICATION ARE PRESENTED. LIMITED CONCLUSIONS ARE DRAWN FROM AN EVALUATION OF FLEXIBLE PAVEMENTS CONSTRUCTED IN MUSKEG AREAS. A SAMPLER FOR USE IN VERY SOFT FIBROUS PEAT IS ALSO DESCRIBED. /AUTHOR/


Rockfall is a dynamic geological disaster in slope engineering.The design of protective structure is based on the correct evaluation of the rockfall trajectory. The rockfall trajectory is affected by many factors,so it is very necessary to analysis exactly the sensitivity of kinematic parameters to the control indexes for design of protective structure,thus the disaster prevention can be carried out directly. In this article,the orthogonal experiment is combined with the numerical method of rockfall trajectory which is based on the kinematics. Taking the slope rockfall hazard near the DK27+120 mileage in jingying expressway for example,three control indexes for design of protective structure are taken as the experiment indexes,and five parameters influencing the rockfall trajectory are taken as the experimental factors. Arranged the tests based on the orthogonal experiment table,3 indexes 5 factors orthogonal experiment are carried out. Range analysis and variance analysis are adopted to study the sensitivity and significance of kinematic parameters of rockfall,then the main parameters influencing the control indexes for design of protective structure are determined to provide the scientific basis for the disaster prevention of rockfall.


Using a regional atmospheric model for Arctic climate simulation, two groups of numerical experiments were carried out to study the influence of changes in the underlying surface (land surface, sea surface, and sea ice (LS/SS/SI)) from mild ice years to severe ice years on Arctic climate. In each experiment in the same group, the initial values and lateral boundary conditions were identical. The underlying surface conditions were updated every six hours. The model was integrated for 10 a and monthly mean results were saved for analysis. Variations in annual mean surface air temperature were closely correlated with changes in LS/SS/SI, with a maximum change of more than 15 K. The impact of changes in LS/SS/SI on low-level air temperature was also evident, with significant changes seen over the ocean. However, the maximum change was less than 2 K. For air temperature above 700 hPa, the impact of LS/SS/SI changes was not significant. The distribution of annual mean sea level pressure differences was coincident with the distribution of annual mean sea ice concentration. The difference centers were located in the Barents Sea, the Kara Sea, and the East Siberian Sea, with the maximum value exceeding 3 hPa. For geopotential height, some results passed and some failed a t -test. For results passing the t -test, the area of significance did not decrease with height. There was a significant difference at high levels, with a value of 27 gpm in the difference center at 200 hPa.


This paper Introduces the work of a University of Birmingham Research Project. An overview Is given of changes and developments in the English EBD field since the last major national investigation carried out by Dawson, Wilson and Evans in the late 1970s. Major pieces of legislation have had an impact while researchers have stressed the Importance of moving away from 'within‐child' deficit model thinking. The 'schools effectiveness' movement has gathered pace and is reflected in the HMI/Ofsted view of schools for pupils with EBD. The second half of the paper outlines the difficulties encountered in trying to give an accurate picture of numbers of children deemed to have EBD and of numbers of EBD special schools In the maintained, non‐maintained, 'approved' and 'registered' independent sectors. Finally, figures based on a study of DfE statistics for 1994 are given.


The pancreatic cancer (PC) has the lowermost survivability and ranks as the fourth prominent reason of cancer death and the rate of death is increasedby ever year. The major risk factors for the invasion of pancreatic cancer are smoking, intake of alcohol, diabetes mellitus and earlier pancreatitis also leads to the development of pancreatic cancer. The aim of this suggested method is to detect the PC, which is accomplished by using the image processing technique. In this paper, the CT image is considered as the input image which experiences the process of preprocessing to eliminate the presence of noise in the image and that has been accomplished by adaptive Weiner filter. After the preprocessing, the noise free image is then segmented by using the modified region grow model. SIFT (Scale invariant feature transform) method is used to extract the parameters of the pancreatic cancer and this extracted features are enhanced by PCA (principal component analysis) to optimize the features of the pancreatic CT image. The parameters of the image have been stimulated by relating the CNN (convolutional neural network) classifier. After classification, the classified image has been compared, thus the comparison is done only between the test data and the trained data to categorize the image as PC or non-PC. The entire process is then stimulated in the MATLAB and most recent technique is used for the performance estimation and so high accuracy is achieved.


The measures regarding the emergency power supply of 23 patients that received at-home artificial respiration management were implemented. An external battery which could provide power for 5-6 hours in all cases was set up. The patients who used an electric wheelchair were equipped with a battery for respirators, and this battery was improved to allow it to be used in emergency situations. For the patients who did not use an electric wheelchair, the introduction of the lithium battery respirator was pushed forward. Because these cannot support blackouts of 24 hours or more, further improvement is needed.


The influence of "the historical view of civilization from the view of ecology", raised by the well-known Japanese scholar Umesao Tadao, was massive. It provides a new angle for cognition and research of the evolution of human civilization, especially for modernization. However, inspecting from the aspect of history, such a view has many flaws. As a mode of modernization, it is not convincing; as a representational Japanese cultural theory, it tends to over-glorify the Japanese culture,which is hard for us to agree to.


Abstract The study investigated the perception of farmers about the use of urine for growing vegetables in Ibadan. A sample of 60 vegetable farmers that participated in the practical demonstration of the method was taken and data were analysed with descriptive and Logit regression. Results show that majority of the farmers were young adults. Willingness to grow vegetable crop with urine is significantly influenced by soil fertility, farmers' religion, and ownership of degraded farm plots. It was recommended that cultural and religious issues bordering on contacts with urines should be addressed with proper orientation and awareness creation among the farmers.


Open access is an evolution process.However,in recent years,the development of open access is accelerating,in that the meaning of open access is enlarging,the quantity of open access is adding,the impact of open access is increasing.In China,the theoretical study and practice are taking place active changes.But the problems still need to be solved.


Spartan society has acquired prominence in historiographical analyses produced since the eighteenth century onwards. Among the various elements which composed this society the figure of the Spartan woman was undoubtedly a widely debated aspect. Spartan women were considered from two distinct perspectives: at times represented in the discourse of classical authors as a model of social conduct; on other occasions seen as having excessive 'freedom' and inordinate sexual practices. We aim to compare the images constructed by Xenophon and Aristotle to verify the relations between the respective discourses and the social context in the classical period (the fifth and fourth centuries BC).


Median arcuate ligament syndrome presents as abdominal pain. It usually occurs in young people, who presents with abdominal pain associated with eating. This pictorial review deals with 2 such patients who showed typical imaging features revealed by ultrasound, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and conventional angiography.


The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has put Vietnam and the others in a situation that needs to have the policies instantly to handle the quick spread of the diseases. The regulations issued in this situation are usually effective immediately, some of them have restricts some civil rights. Lots of countries must promulgate the legislation in emergence to cope with the diseases. However, the competent authorities didn't declare a state of emergency, they just use other mechanisms to give more laws that restrict civil rights despite the diseases were being very complicated is the problem had to be clarified. Simultaneously, the mechanism to make the rules about the disease in the emergency in our country is still not enlightenment. The essay concentrated on analysis, judging the limit and inadequacies of enacting policies about disease prevention in Vietnam, and proposed Solutions to complete the procedure of issuing documents, even so, make out the authorization of the People's Committee that promulgating policies in emergency and unexpected.


Core–shell structures offer opportunities to overcome challenges to the durability of Li-ion batteries with high energy density due to instability at the cathode/electrolyte interface. Achieving complete stability requires fundamental understanding of the role of the shell in providing passivation without compromising carrier transport, by tuning surface chemistry and structural features in a highly conformal barrier layer. Here, individual LiCoO2 nanoplates were employed as the core, and passivating shells were grown at a tailored thickness and composition, through different Al loadings and annealing temperatures. Depending on the annealing conditions, the sub-5 nm shells were shown to vary from amorphous aluminum oxide layers to LiAlxCo1–xO2 gradients, resulting in an Al-rich outer layer on a Co-rich core. This control revealed the differing balance between effective minimization of redox-active Co3+ at the surface and transport properties of the two types of shell. Based on correlations with electrode ...


Common anomaly recognition methods are easy to misjudge and miss outliers for the online monitoring data. This is a bottleneck problem that needs to be overcome in dam safety management moving toward informatization. Based on the data of nine hydropower stations along Dadu River Basin, this paper analyzed existing problems of the common anomaly identification method and an algorithm was proposed based on improved M-robust regression recognition. In this algorithm, the AR factor was introduced to avoid the defect that the traditional model cannot simulate random variables. The extreme value method and robust estimation were utilized to avoid the leverage effect. The model collapse caused by maximum measured value was avoided through improving the residual calculation model of M-robust and optimizing the weight distribution function. The maximum of the three values, residual quartile difference, discrete quartile difference, and measurement accuracy, was used as an anomaly recognition criterion to improve the evaluation criteria. The algorithm compiled was used in the Dadu River Company since 2017. The statistics showed that for the 150,000 measured values per day, the evaluation time could be within 15 min, the missed judgment rate was 0%, and the misjudgment rate was less than 2%. The proposed algorithm achieved a great improvement and can meet the needs of online outlier recognition in dam safety management.


Silica sols and powders extracted from hydrothermal solutions have been investigated. Hydrothermal solutions contain the colloidal silica forming as a result of polycondensation of the molecules of orthosilicic acid. Via ultrafiltration membrane concentration of hydrothermal solutions, silica sols with SiO2 contents up to 940 g/dm 3 (62.2 wt %) and particle radii of 29-135 nm are obtained. The silica powders with the specific surface of 50-500 m/g, average pore diameter of 3-12 nm, and pore volume of 0.2-0.3 cm/g are obtained via cryochemical vacuum-sublimation drying of sols with the use of liquid nitrogen. Silica sols and powders were used as additivities for rising concrete compressive strength.


AbstractA manufacturing system capable of processing multiple part types generates input, at a given rate, R, to a set of m cells. Each cell processes a certain type of parts and has its own production and buffer capacities. We study the problem of aEocating the production rate, R, among the m cells, such that the total throughput (over all m cells) will be maximised, while the blocking probabilities willl be kept below a given set of limits. An optimisation problem is formulated, which maximises a concave function over a convex set. An algorithm is developed, which fuUy exploits the problem structure and efficiently generates the optimal solution. Several extensions of the model are also discussed.


The invention relates to a manufacturing process of a fan blade employing a fiber-reinforced resin matrix composite and used for a wind-driven generator. The fan blade comprises a blade root embedded part, a foaming core, as well as a composite coating which takes an epoxy resin and reinforced fibers as the substrate, wherein the epoxy resin is an injection-scale epoxy VER (vinyl ester resin), and the reinforced fibers are glass fiber cloth and carbon fiber cloth. An injecting technology is adopted for molding and includes the following steps: (1) clipping the glass fiber cloth and the carbon fiber cloth into various layers in specified dimensions according to design requirements, and cleaning and heating a die; (2) laying up in the upper die and the lower die of the fan forming die, and placing the blade root embedded part and the foaming core; (3) performing die assembly, adopting an injection device to inject an epoxy VER system into a closed die cavity, pumping vacuum, and preserving heat for the die at 25 DEG C; and (4) opening the die, and molding the fan. According to the manufacturing process, the fan blade is integrally formed with high precision in dimensions and appearance as well as high surface finish; and the forming efficiency is high, the environmental pollution is little, VOC (volatile organic compounds) are smaller than 20ppm, and the production efficiency is improved.


The history of the IUD and its association with complications is reviewed. Concern regarding infection and perforation caused the IUD not to be used very much for contraceptive purposes from the 1930s to the 1960s. With the development of lighter more malleable materials and materials with a memory the IUD came into greater use in the 1960s. More careful guidelines for IUD use were drafted in the mid-1970s as a result of evidence linking the IUD to midtrimester sepsis. It is now believed that at least among young single women the IUD raises the risk of pelvic inflammatory disease. Mortality rates from the pill are 4 times greater than IUD mortality rates. More and more medicated IUDs are now being used. These are suspected of causing ectopic pregnancy rates even higher than previously known.


Excimer laser annealing has been successfully used to crystallize the SnO2: Sb (ATO) solgel films deposited on Pyrex substrate. This technique allows confining the heating in the film thickness, without affecting the substrate, due to very short absorption length of the UV radiation. Semi-quantitative data about the crystal growth rate depending of laser fluence and number of laser pulses have been obtained. The ablation laser fluence threshold value was estimated by an optical method on the base of the edge Fresnel diffraction pattern observation. The crystallization process has been studied in detail using XTEM imaging. A mechanism of the laser crystallization process is proposed on the base of the statistical quantitative data of growth of the crystallite grain of the ATO oxide film induced by laser annealing.


Primary cutaneous amyloidosis (PCA) is the deposition of amyloid proteins in the skin without systemic involvement. Amyloidosis cutis dyschromica (ACD) is a rare variant of PCA with onset typically in early childhood or at a prepubertal age. It is more common in the Asian and Southeast Asian people. Clinically it manifests as asymptomatic diffuse hyperpigmentation interspersed with hypopigmented spots without papulation. Histologically, small foci of amyloid closely under the epidermis are seen. There are only few case reports in the literature of this rarer variant. We report a case of a 32-year-old male presenting as dyschromatosis with a prepubertal onset and histopathological evidence of intradermal deposits in the upper dermis which was confirmed on Congo red staining and hence was diagnosed as a case of ACD.


Fringe deflectometry technique (FDT) plays a more and more important role in specular surface measurement due to its large slope measurement range. However, its accuracy is heavily dependent on the quality of the extracted phase. The gamma effect of liquid crystal display (LCD) and CCD introduces significant phase distortion, resulting in a periodical phase error and measurement error. A mathematical model is established to illustrate phase error introduced by gamma effect, and an optimal algorithm based on four-time four-step phase-shifting (FFPS) is proposed to retrieve phase. Simulation results prove that FFPS phase retrieval method can compensate for the phase error caused by the nonlinearity of the LCD and CCD point-by-point, thus it is immune not only to calibration error, but also to the non-unitary of the gamma effect spatially and temporally. Experimental results are also presented to verify the performance of the proposed method.


In order to investigate the effect of hydroxyl group containing tablet excipients on the duration of adhesion of mucoadhesive polymers, discs containing Carbopol 934 (C934), polycarbophil (PC), sodium carboxymethyl cellulose, hydroxypropylmethyl cellulose (HPMC), tragacanth (trag.) and sodium alginate (Na alg.), either alone or in the presence of various amounts of excipients were prepared. The duration of adhesion of the prepared discs were determined in pH 7.0 phosphate buffer at 37°C. All the excipients examined reduced the duration of adhesion and the relative durability of the polymer containing discs. HPMC discs despite showing the longest duration of mucoadhesion, suffered the greatest reduction in adhesive properties in the presence of excipients which were examined. Following HPMC, Na alg. and then trag. discs showed the greatest sensitivity to the presence of excipients. The least reduction in the duration of adhesion was observed with PC and C934. Among the excipients tested, spray-dried lactose produced the greatest reduction in the duration of adhesion, followed by polyethylene glycol 6000 and pregelatinized starch. The smallest reduction in the adhesive properties of the test polymers was due to talc powder. Hence, it seems that addition of the tablet excipients adversely reduce the adhesive properties of mucoadhesive dosage forms, which should be carefully considered during their formulation.


Children who use long-term ventilation at home and their parents find it difficult to access suitable respite services for short breaks. This article describes, through the use of a case study, a project to develop a respite service for such children at a children's hospice in England. The service development was a response to local need, which included a requirement to develop bespoke assessment documentation and processes as well as a comprehensive staff development package. The article follows the journey of one family through the development and use of the new service.


A steering wheel (1) for a motor vehicle, comprising a hub (2), a C-shaped portion (3) integral with the hub (2) defining two free ends (3a, 3b) facing one another, and a complementary arcuate portion (4) connecting the two free ends (3a, 3b) of the C-shaped portion (3), the complementary arcuate portion (4) defines two opposite ends (4a, 4b) rotatably mounted to said respectively two free ends (3a, 3b) of said C-shaped portion (3) so as to pivot said complementary arcuate portion (4) between a first position in which the C-shaped portion (3) and the complementary arcuate portion (4 ) define a substantially toroidal convex shape, to a second position in which the complementary arcuate portion (4) is closer to the hub (2).


Objective To investigate the expression of telomerase activity and proliferating cell nuclear antigen(PCNA)in cervical intraepithelial nepolasm(CIN)and cervical cancer. Methods The activation of telomerase in cervical cancer,CIN and normal cervices were detected by TRAP-silver staining method.Paraffin embeded specimens were used to detect the expression of PCNA by SP.Results Positive rate of the expression of telomerase was 86.67% in cervical cancer,35.71% in CIN and negative in normal;PCNA labelling indexs were 66.73±12.41,37.28±11.25,6.97±4.05 respectively,the differences between them were significant(P0.05). The expression of PCNA in patients with positive telomerase activity was higher than those with negative ones(P0.05).Conclusion Expression of telomerase activity correlates with progressing of cervical cancer.High expression of PCNA correlates with activation of telomerase.


Objective: To explore the relations between serum fructosamine(FA),glycosylated hemoglobin Alc(HbAlc) and fasting blood glucose(FBG).Methods: Using glucoseoxidase-peroxidase(GOD-POD),nitroblue tetrazolium(NBT),and turbidiimetric inhibition immunoassay(TINIA),tomeasured FBG,FA and HbAlc in 134 diabetic patients,39 healthy subjects being the control group.Results: FBG,FA and HbAlc concerntration of diabetic patients were obviously higher than those of normal control group(P0.01);There were positive correlations between serum FBG and FA(r=0.67) and HbAlc(r=0.66).Conclusion: There are strong relations between FA and FBG,HbAlc.It can provide a lot of information about monitoring glucose levels of immediate,shortterm and long-term by combined detection of FBG,FA and HbAlc.They will be helpful in the diagnosis and the prognosis of diabetic patients.


The authors then trace in sections three and four the long historical identity and kinship of Israelis and Arabs, who 'have become locked in bitter conflict over the same small terrain' (9). The reason for this tragedy, state the authors, is obvious: differences in national sentiments, political loyalties, religious ideologies, linguistic, and cultural identities. More important, however, in the Arab-Israeli grievance is the British Mandate in 1917 and the UN decision in 1947. The upshot: four periods of full-scale war ( 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973); and the emergence to power of the United Nations and the United States created by the gradual decline of the British hegemony. The crucial question in the minds of the authors is finally presented in section five: How can 'responsible Christians' enhance prospects for peace, justice, and reconciliation in the Arab-Israeli conflict? This leads the authors to discuss a number of highly controversial issues: historic decisions (the British Mandate of 1917 and the UN decision of 1947); Israeli settlements in occupied Arab territories; refusal of Arab states to recognize the state of Israel; and the status of Jerusalem. Undoubtedly, the authors have presented, in a forceful style, a document that is factual and scholarly. The entire work, however, is rooted in a sense of moral guilt-a guilt often experienced by 'Western' Christians as a result of 'Christian responsibility for injustice to both' Arabs and Jews (such as anti-Semitism and the Crusades). Nevertheless, the document is not simply a confession of guilt; repentance means for the authors a determined attempt to right historical wrong. Whether or not 'their Christian style as ministers of reconciliation is a model of peacemaking scholarship' (Introductory Note) is, after all, a matter that can only be decided by Jews, Arabs, and Eastern Christians of the Middle East.


The resistive switching behaviors of selector-less resistive random access memory (ReRAM) have been extensively investigated to eliminate the tradeoff between selectivity and reliability. To achieve excellent selectivity, reliability should be sacrificed, and vice versa. The reason for this tradeoff is the narrow read operation margin of ReRAM having high selectivity. Therefore, the role of each layer has been analyzed and engineered to satisfy both selectivity and reliability requirements of the ReRAM. In the selector-less ReRAM, oxygen vacancies of the switching layer control set voltage for achieving high read operation margin, whereas oxygen vacancies of the tunnel barrier control selectivity.


In this study, a real-time wireless embedded EEG-based brain computer interface (BCI) system was developed for drowsiness detection in a realistic driving task. Accidents caused by driver's drowsiness behind the steering wheel have a high fatality rate because of the marked decline in the driver's abilities of perception, recognition, and vehicle control abilities while sleepy. Therefore, real-time drowsiness monitoring is important to avoid traffic accidents. In this study, an embedded EEG-based BCI system which includes a wireless physiological signal acquisition module and an embedded signal processing module was designed, and a real-time drowsiness detection algorithm based on our unsupervised approach was implemented in the embedded signal processing module. EEG signal would be monitored and analyzed by the embedded signal processing module, and the warning tone would be triggered to prevent traffic accidents when the drowsiness condition occurred.


Physical-layer network coding (PNC) can significantly improve the throughput of wireless communication systems by exploiting signal superimposition at relays. It is practically challenging to achieve symbol alignment in PNC. In this paper, we study the impact of the signal power loss and the inter-symbol-interference (ISI) on the system performance when the symbols are not aligned. We show that when the signal power loss is taken into account during the decoding process, the system performance can be improved significantly. Simulation results also show that by sacrificing spectral efficiency, the PNC system using Gaussian pulses generally achieves higher bit-error-rate (BER) performance than the one using square-root raised-cosine (RRC) pulses when symbol misalignment occurs.


W. H. Auden's poetry of the thirties is often described in terms of its distinctive variety - from the difficult work of his earliest period to the preoccupation with clarity, and the growing centrality of light verse to his poetic identity later in the decade. Similarly the arc of this development can be explained according to the particular critical flashpoints of the literary milieu of the thirties, featuring Auden himself as a crucial actor. Rather than focusing predominantly on the figure of Auden to recount this development, however, this article places the reader's engagement with the variety of his work as paramount. I suggest that contextualising the reader's spoken interaction with the page – as a crucible in which the 'singular' force of Auden's work is fully revealed – can lead to fresh formulations of a well-established critical narrative, and can qualify recent claims for Auden's proto-postmodernism.


Colletotrichum is considered one of the fungal genera with the greatest diversity of species of phytopathogenic fungi and with a wide range of hosts including tropical fruits. In this study, the concentration of chitosan applied was a key factor in the in vitro inhibition of the three Colletotrichum isolates with the most sensitive being the one from banana. Germination was the development stage most affected by the application of this polymer. At the end of 10 days of storage, control of anthracnose in soursop, mango and banana fruit was considerable with the application of 1 % chitosan, with 80 to 100 % inhibition. Likewise, the ripening process of fruit with and without chitosan was generally similar. Activity of the peroxidase (POD) and polyphenol oxidase (PPO) enzymes was observed only in fruit of mango cv. 'Tommy Atkins,' inoculated and non-inoculated with C. gloeosporioides, the activity of both enzymes was higher in the chitosan treatments and the 1.0 % concentration was able to induce gene expression of POD and PPO, occurring until 24 h.


AbstractLike all activities in our civilised world the transport of radioactive waste on public routes or routes to which the public has access (e.g. rail/road) entails some elements of risk — nuclear and nonnuclear — for man and his environment. The risks involved in waste transport comprise the radiation exposure of the population and transport personnel from normal, accident-free transport, as well as from possible transport or handling accidents with the potential of causing radiation exposure of people and contamination in the surrounding area.


Nonparametric methods for the estimation of the link function in generalized linear models are able to avoid bias in the regression parameters. But for the estimation of the link typically the full...


In part one of this dissertation, we develop a systematic matrix-analytic approach, based on intertwinings of Markov semigroups, for proving theorems about hitting-time distributions for finite-state Markov chains—an approach that (sometimes) deepens understanding of the theorems by providing corresponding sample-path-by-sample-path stochastic constructions. We employ our approach to give new proofs and constructions for two theorems due to Mark Brown, theorems giving two quite different representations of hitting-time distributions for finite-state Markov chains started in stationarity. The proof, and corresponding construction, for one of the two theorems elucidates an intriguing connection between hitting-time distributions and the interlacing eigenvalues theorem for bordered symmetric matrices. In part two, we develop the theory of strong stationary duality for diffusion processes on finite intervals. We analytically derive the generator and boundary behavior of the dual process and recover a central tenet of the classical theory by proving that the separation mixing time in the primal diffusion is equal in law to the absorption time in the dual diffusion. We also exhibit our strong stationary dual as the natural limiting process of the strong stationii


We compute for any ordering the star exponentials of all polynomials of degree not greater than two on the 2l-dimensional phase space of a quantum system with l degrees of freedom, and we show in the particular case of the Moyal star product that the Weyl transform of the Moyal star exponential of the one-dimensional harmonic oscillator Hamiltonian is the evolution operator of this quantum system.


The goal of this work was to develop a serious game which would aid in the retention of foreign-language non-contextualized vocabulary items in different age categories. To this end, the loci method was used to enhance visual and spatial memory among the game's players. The novelty of this proposal lies in the combining of mnemonic strategies with the environment of an exploratory video game. Structurally, this project consists of three main pillars: pedagogical foundations, the development of the serious game, and the evaluation of the game's efficiency through qualitative and quantitative study. The 3D game was developed through the Unity game engine in its version 2020.3. The prototype's efficiency was assessed quantitatively in an experimental group of 21 participants who were compared with a control group of 27 participants. All the data were displayed in R Studio using the ggplot2 library. The study was complemented with qualitative findings collected through semi-structured interviews with a group of 7 participants. The experimental method proved to be more efficient and more entertaining than the conventional method used in the control group.


Anatomic correction for simple transposition of great arteries surgical treatment should be done before a month of age, after that there is a gradual diminished pulmonary vascular resistances facing of left ventricle with involution of ventricular mass. This is not an optimal situation for arterial switch operation because a high morbimortaliy. This is a report of an infant who couldn't be operated because an absent of optimal left ventricle for anatomical correction. They received ventricle training first and in a second time, arterial switch operation. Training of left ventricle to support systemic circulation is possible using pulmonary banding and systemic pulmonary shunt.


To manage a project is everything but easy, you might even say that it's hard. Loads of things might go wrong during the jurney towards the goal, which generally is a closed project and a satisfied customer. It's all about keeping the group together and working towards the same goal. This document was written to, in a straightforward way, give the reader an idea of how humor and other questionable methods may be used to keep the group together and improve the progressrate.


Environmental costs and obligations are significantly growing and will continue to grow as our society becomes more environmentally conscious and environmental regulations increase. Examines the significance of environmental outlays, discusses existing governmental regulations and accounting standards pertaining to environmental concerns, investigates the current accounting practices of environmental costs and obligations, and makes recommendations for proper measurement, recognition and disclosure of environmental outlays. Examines annual reports of the studied companies and reveals inconsistencies in accounting practices for measurement, recognition and disclosures of environmental outlays. Suggests these inconsistencies are primarily due to lack of sufficient and uniform authoritative accounting standards and ever‐changing public policy and regulatory standards. Indicates that society will benefit from uniform and specified accounting standards for environmental reporting in protecting organizations′ f...


Restrictions on in-person teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic severely challenged higher education practices worldwide. While didactic delivery of course content is easily achievable with virtual teaching technologies, promoting critical engagement with this material can be more difficult, particularly with classes of larger size and lower experience. Yet despite these practical challenges, for teachers of social psychology the pandemic context offered an unprecedented pedagogical opportunity to highlight both the relevance and limitations of social psychological research for tackling societal challenges. This paper outlines a strategy developed to sustain socially critical learning objectives within remote delivery of a large introductory social psychology module. This revolved around establishing asynchronous, peer-led online discussion forums wherein students independently considered how the concepts they encountered in weekly pre-recorded lectures could be applied to understand societal responses to the pandemic. The present article describes the structure of this pedagogical activity and the benefits it offered to students, teaching staff and the wider community.


The Confederation of Latin American Workers (cr) was the most numerous trade union orga- nization with the greatest number of continen- tal and international links ever recorded. How- ever, historical research is as yet unaware of its profound significance for Latin American sociopolitical history of the 20th century. This article discusses the stereotypes, prejudices and oversights put forward by workers' historiogra- phy on the trade union and socio-political per- formance of CTAL. It concludes that there is a need to consider new aspects to interpret its historical trajectory.


We have examined the parametrization of the e(+)e(-) -> omega pi(0) cross section in the vicinity of the phi resonance and the extraction of the branching fraction of the isospin violating process phi -> omega pi(0) from experimental data. We found that there are two possible solutions of the branching fraction: one is 4 x 10(-5), and the other is 7 x 10(-3). The latter is two orders of magnitude higher than the former, which is the commonly accepted one.


The syntheses, crystal structures, and magnetic properties of two new copper(II) complexes with molecular formulas [Cu7(μ2-OH2)6(μ3-O)6(adenine)6](NO3)2·6H2O (1) and [Cu2(μ2-H2O)2(adenine)2(H2O)4](NO3)4·2H2O (2) are reported. The heptanuclear compound is composed of a central octahedral CuO6 core sharing edges with six adjacent copper octahedra. In 2, the copper octahedra shares one equatorial edge. In both compounds, these basic copper cluster units are further linked by water bridges and bridging adenine ligands through N3 and N9 donors. All copper(II) centers exhibit Jahn–Teller distorted octahedral coordination characteristic of a d9 center. The study of the magnetic properties of the heptacopper complex revealed a dominant ferromagnetic intra-cluster interaction, while the dicopper complex exhibits antiferromagnetic intra-dimer interactions with weakly ferromagnetic inter-dimer interaction. Graphical abstract


Malawi, one of the poorest countries in Africa, has major electricity generating difficulties, due to limited conventional fossil fuel resources and an over reliance on one form of electricity generation, viz. hydroelectricity, with very low generation capacity. Due to its location within the East African Rift System (EARS), one of the hottest geothermal zones in the world, it is endowed with significant potential geothermal energy resources. In recent decades, there has been major global growth in geothermal energy utilization, both in direct utilization applications and in electricity generation. However, despite its favourable location, Malawi has been slow in harnessing its potentially significant geothermal resources. Geological investigations of the Malawi sector of the EARS indicates that the Malawi Rift is controlled by N-S rift parallel normal faults, that also control upwards migration of the geothermal waters feeding hot springs, which occur along the length of the rift. The hot springs with the most potential for electricity generation occurs mainly in the northern half of the country and are thought to be sourced from porous sedimentary reservoirs at depth, either deeply buried young Neogene rift floor deposits or older Karoo sandstones, occurring in fault-bound basins within the Precambrian framework of the country. A recent investigation to catalogue all of the hot springs in Malawi has led to the identification of 15 previously undocumented springs including the third hottest spring recorded in the investigation. This exercise has resulted in the delineation of 6 or 7 groups of springs with appropriate temperatures and geological settings that suggest a potential for electricity generation. These merit further detailed surface geological, geophysical and geochemical exploration and monitoring, which should be undertaken, prior to any decisions on drilling. Other lower temperature hot springs in the country have the potential for utilisation for various direct applications, which could bring major benefits to local communities. Icelandic International Development Agency (ICEIDA) is positive to support Malawi in coming up with proper legal frameworks in geothermal development while the World Bank, under the Energy Sector Support Programme (ESSP), is supporting in the development of Terms of Reference for pre-feasibility studies in geothermal development. Some reputable international institutions, through their fact finding missions, have also made advances to assist in the exercise. Major challenges hindering geothermal development in Malawi have been the absence of both technical and financial capacity, and the lack of government leadership in spearheading an assessment of the geothermal resources of the country. This has resulted in a spirit of individualism, coupled with an absence of collaborative cooperation between government agencies, research organisations and institutes of higher learning, which has led to a failure to share information, consequent duplication of tasks and unnecessary waste of resources. The Government of Malawi claims to have instituted a geothermal working group, consisting of all the stakeholders from government, industry, research organisations and teaching institutions which seems to be non- existent due to its non-functionality.


This paper develops a dynamic model and designs a controller for a fully anthropomorphic, compliantly driven robot. To imitate muscles, the robot's joints are actuated by DC motors antagonistically coupled through tendons. To facilitate safe interaction with humans, the robot exploits passive mechanical compliance, in the form of elastic springs in the tendons. To enable simulation, the paper first derives a mathematical model of the robot's dynamics, starting from the "Flier" approach. The control of the antagonistic drives uses a biologically inspired puller-and-follower concept where at any instant the puller is responsible for the joint motion while the follower keeps the inactive tendon from slackening. In designing the controller, it was first necessary to use the advanced theory of nonlinear control for dealing with individual joints, and then to apply robust control theory in order to extend control to the multi-joint robot body.


In December 2019, an outbreak in the city of Wuhan, Hubei China occurred and was named COVID- 19 by the World Health Organization and declared as a pandemic on January 30, 2020. The etiologic agent of acute respiratory disease is the novel corona virus 2019 (2019-nCoV) or the extreme acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). During many dental operations, aerosols are produced and these aerosol methods, which are major problems for dentists, have become the main area of concern in dentistry. Dentists are at greatest risk since they are located close to the oropharynx. This study summarizes the effect of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on dental care, administration, and emergency dental treatment service. It also identifies COVID-19 and explains about six commandments for dental practitioners during the treatment process to be practiced during the pandemic.


This work shows the most outstanding aspects in the analysis carried out to different parameters that influence on the dispersion of pollutants in the air. The analysis is developed based on the emissions generated by a boiler of 200 hp, and discharged to the environment through a chimney of 10 m of height and 0.5 m of internal diameter. It s taken in consideration variables as, the speed of the wind, the exit temperature of the gases and the conditions of atmospheric stability. It is also examined the form that the use of the equations of Briggs, Concawe, Holland and Carson & Moses, utilized in the determination of the increment in the height of the stack s plume, affects the concentration of pollutants when they are applied in dispersion models. With the purpose of offering the information in convenient form, graphics and comments are included, as much about the obtained results, as about the basic concepts that govern the dispersion of pollutant substances in the air. Although parameters analysed are important for the modelling of dispersion of pollutants, it is necessary to point out that this field is complex, and additional factors, out of reach of the present work, intervene too.


Nineteen different gallium nitride nanopowders were prepared with four distinct synthesis methods under a wide range of experimental conditions. Variations of synthetic details were aimed at making...


The adsorption of phenol on activated carbon was studied under varying conditions of time, pH and degassing temperature. Equilibrium adsorption was established within 4 h. The pH was found to have a pronounced effect on adsorption. The change in adsorption due to pH level might be caused by ionization of the phenol into cationic and anionic species and by the respective positive and negative charged surfaces of carbon, which it acquired at low and high pH levels. An increase in degassing temperature was also found to have a significant effect on the adsorption of phenol. This was thought to be due to the comparatively non‐polar surface and large surface area of the carbon samples degassed at high temperatures. Degassing at high temperatures causes decomposition and the evolution of polar surface functional groups, leaving the carbon surface relatively non‐polar, where upon the non‐polar phenol adsorb to a comparatively large extent. Freundlich's and Langmuir's equations were successfully applied to the adsorption isotherms.


We study differential shot noise in mesoscopic diffusive normal-superconducting (NS) heterostructures at finite voltages where nonlinear effects due to the superconducting proximity effect arise. A numerical scattering-matrix approach is adopted. Through an NS contact, we observe that the shot noise shows a reentrant dependence on voltage due to the superconducting proximity effect but the differential Fano factor stays approximately constant. Furthermore, we consider differential shot noise in the structures where an insulating barrier is formed between normal and superconducting regions and calculate the differential Fano factor as a function of barrier height.


Background: Metastasis-associated miRNA (metastamiR) harbors a great potential to confine metastasis as the most lethal aspect of cancer. miR-193b-3p is an anti-metastatic miRNA, whose expression significantly decreases in metastatic breast cancer cells. Objectives: In the present study, the expression patterns of different cell-lines were investigated, following an effective miR transfection strategy. Methods: Double-stranded oligo of mature miR-193b-3p, miR-negative, and miR-LacZ were designed and cloned into pcDNA6.2gw/EmGFP plasmid. Calculating the population doubling time (PDT), non-tumorigenic MCF-10A, tumorigenic but non-metastatic MCF-7, and metastatic MDA-MB231 were transfected by Lipofectamin2000 and Express-In. The expressions of miR-193b-3p and miR-191 have been quantified by Real-time PCR 48 hours after transfection. Scratch, Transwell migration, and Matrigel invasion assays have been carried out to assess the migration and invasion levels of the cell-lines. Results: The PDT (21.27±0.43, 28.18±0.34, and 35.83±0.44 hours) and miR-193b-3p relative expression before transfection (100, 42 and 8) were measured for MCF-10A, MCF-7, and MDA-MB231 cell-lines, respectively. Better transfection results were obtained based on nano-liposome method. The expression of the miR-193b-3p was increased 32, 19 and, 65 fold-change. The rate of invasion in metastatic cells was 6.6 fold-higher in comparison to MCF-7 cells. Conclusions: Higher expression rate of the miRNA is anticipated to occur, following miR-mimic transfection. However, the observed differential patterns of miRNA increase in the context of different cell-lines, indicating the involvement of more complicated cellular pathways. Scrutinizing these cellular mechanisms could open new horizons in cancer therapy and management strategies.


Proper use of adjustable speed drives in any application requires informed considerations of many issues. When the application is an integral part of a continuous process, in financial terms, many of those considerations can be greatly magnified. By definition in this paper, a continuous process is any process in which the product being manufactured flows through the manufacturing cycle with no interruption or intermediate storage or lag. Therefore, any interruption to that process will halt the entire manufacturing flow with implications ranging from just lost production to extremely costly implications like repair, re-string-up or removal of polymers that have "set" in piping, etc. Paraphrasing a real estate motto, applying ASDs in a continuous process the three most important factors are: reliability, reliability and reliability. The basis for the reliability issues along with "state of the art" potential solutions are presented.