Today, mobile devices are important tools for students' daily life. They use a mobile device for communicating, playing, reading, photo shooting, learning, etc.. Therefore, this study used a qualitative approach to explore the practice and stratrgies of mobile formal and informal learning for university students studying at Guangzhou based on a theoretical model of the Framework for the Rational Analysis of Mobile Education (FRAME) model. Fourteen Guangzhou's university students were invited to participate pre-focus group interviews, diaries, and post-interview from April to June of 2013. The results find that the ratio of using a mobile device for informal learning is higher than formal learning and provides the strategies of using mobile devices in formal and informal learning of Guangzhou's university students. Therefore, teachers may design mobile learning (m-learning) and teaching activities for students based on the findings of this study. However, the findings provide good examples of using mobile devices for formal and informal learning.


This experiment,using muskmelon planting in pots as material,the effects of 3 different air temperatures and relative air humidity as well as different irrigation amount in the 3 environments mentioned above on the physiological properties,fruit quality and water use efficiency of muskmelon in greenhouse were studied.The results showed that,with the same irrigation amount,in the environment with 19~33℃ daily average temperature and 69%~78.68% daily average humidity,comparing to that with 14~27℃ daily average temperature and 60%~85% daily average humidity or that with 16~30℃ daily average temperature and 65%~90% daily average humidity,single plant yield increased,while the chlorophyll content in muskmelon leaves,vitamin C in muskmelon fruit,total soluble sugar,soluble solids and water use efficiency dropped;and that soluble protein and other solid content in the fruit was relatively higher in the environment with 14~27℃ daily average temperature and 60%~85% daily average humidity than in all the other ones.Under the same environment,the chlorophyll content in muskmelon leaves,vitamin C in muskmelon fruit,total soluble sugar,soluble solids and water use efficiency all dropped gradually with the increase of irrigation amount.Considering yield and quality comprehensively,we think that the environment with 14~27℃ daily average temperature,60%~85% daily average relative humidity and 100% evapo-transpiration loss,was favorable to both muskmelon fruit yield and quality and it can be used as technical indexes in greenhouse production management.


ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the results of a study of the Hennen Annual Public Library Ratings (HAPLR). This study was conducted for the U.S. National Commission on Library and Information Science (NCLIS) as part of a larger survey of library assessment instruments. HAPLR ratings are based upon public library data available from the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The paper examines promotion of the HAPLR rating method and construction of its scores, summarizes literature on library input and output measures, reviews published criticisms, identifies other key shortcomings of the method, and explores selected statistical trends in NCES public library data from 1999 through 2004. The article concludes that imprecision in HAPLR scores renders the method unsuitable for quantitatively assessing comparative and individual library performance. Statistical validity of the method has never been demonstrated. Input/output data that HAPLR uses are inadequate measures of library performance and quality. The scores are susceptible to inaccuracies in the compilation of NCES data. Promoters of the HAPLR methodology should fully disclose the limitations and biases of the method. These limitations also need to be understood and heeded by the public library community, which has injudiciously joined its national library identity with a statistically unsound portrayal of its collective and individual institutional strengths and weaknesses.


The VVER 440/230 nuclear power stations are currently being examined for safety improvements to meet internationally accepted safety criteria. Westinghouse has performed scoping analyses to evaluate different conceptual designs for modernization of the confinement systems. These designs represent alternatives for maintaining the confinement pressure below the 1-bar gauge (0.1-MPa) design pressure following a postulated loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA). These conceptual designs included the following: (1) adding a filtered vent to provide a release path to the atmosphere; (2) adding an auxiliary expansion volume to contain the mass and energy release; (3) adding an ice condenser unit to passively provide absorption of the energy released from the break. Each of these designs is intended to provide a means of handling the mass and energy released during the first 60 s of the LOCA. Thereafter, upgraded confinement spray and residual heat removal systems will provide the required pressure suppression and heat removal. Mass and energy release transients were generated for the VVER plant design for input into the confinement integrity evaluation. Three different hypothetical accidents were assumed: a 200- and 500-mm double-ended guillotine break and a 200-mm split break in the main reactor cooling piping. The transients were developed by scaling available best-estimatemore » LOCA blowdown calculations and confirmed with RETRAN code calculations.« less


The effects of transdermal estradiol treatment (HT) in amenorrheic athletes (AA) with low body weight (BW) and low bone mineral density (BMD) are unknown.


A demodulator for demodulating a phase shift keying signal to regenerate a data signal. The demodulator comprises a clock generator for generating three-phase clock signals which are of substantially the same frequency as a carrier frequency of the phase shift keying signal and 120 DEG out of phase from each other, phase difference detectors for detecting phase differences of the phase shift keying signal relative to respective three-phase clock signals, a timing extractor for producing a data clock signal by fetching the three-phase clock signals and detected phase differences, and a phase difference change detector for producing the data signal by detecting the presence or absence of a change of phase difference between portions of the phase shift keying signal corresponding to preceding and succeeding bits of the data clock signal.


The Association of Swedish Foundries has recently made an investigation of the possibilities of using industrial robots in foundries. The result is published in a special report: 'Industrirobotar i giuterier' (Industrial robots in foundries). This article is based on this report.


At present, higher vocational education had experienced great development and become the focus in our country. This text narrates some characteristics of statistics course in higher vocational education by penman's own teaching experiences, involving four aspects, namely, the language of teaching, the manner of teaching, the method of teaching along with enhancing the practice processes and bringing up the laboratory utilization .


The mass spectra of five representative hydrocarbon molecules (acetylene, ethylene, benzene, neopentane, and normal heptane) have been measured as a function of electron bombarding energy in the range from 200 to 2400 eV. In addition the distribution of the kinetic energy of formation of most of the fragment ions has been determined. These results are discussed in terms of current theories of the ionization—dissociation process for polyatomic molecules. In particular, the data are shown to be consistent with the assumption that the accessible electronic states in the reactant molecular ion separate into at least two noninteracting groups which lead to experimentally distinguishable fragmentation processes.


Discussed is how a local transit system, Green River Intra-County Transit System (GRITS), of Owensboro, Kentucky, serves as a Greyhound terminal agent, issuing tickets and providing package service while receiving commissions from Greyhound for these services adding revenue and expanded service to its terminal operations. This is yet another example of the Greyhound Rural Connection Program (RCP) at work.


Surgical reconstruction of facial structures of burned patients remains one of the most difficult areas of plastic surgery, and the esthetic results are not always acceptable. Implant-retained maxillofacial prostheses are an alternative treatment to surgical reconstruction for patients who lost facial structures from burn. This article describes fabrication of an implant-retained auricular prosthesis and a nasal prosthesis for two burned patients and represents treatment outcomes. Extraoral implants were placed in the defect sites. After a 3-month osseointegration period, abutments were connected to the implants at stage 2 surgery. Retention was obtained with bar-clips attachment for auricular prosthesis and magnetic attachment for nasal prosthesis. The prostheses were fabricated from silicone. After prosthetic reconstruction, clinical follow-ups were performed every six months. The implant-retained prosthetic rehabilitation of the burned patients discussed in this article resulted in acceptable functional and cosmetic results.


This paper is devoted to the study of the chemotaxis model for drug delivery purposes. The pattern formation for a volume-filling with nonlinear diffusive terms is investigated. The proposed mathematical model is governed by a reaction–diffusion system modeling the interaction between the cell density and the concentration of the chemoattractant. We investigate the pattern formation for the model using Turing's principle and linear stability analysis. An asymptotic expansion is used to linearize the nonlinear diffusive terms. Next, we introduce an implicit finite volume scheme; it is presented on a triangular mesh satisfying the orthogonality condition. Finally, numerical results showing the formation of the spatial pattern for the chemotaxis model are presented and analyzed. The results demonstrate promising progress in understanding the process of controlling and designing targeted drug delivery.


Anterior tooth loss and restoration in the esthetic zone is a common challenge in dentistry today. The prominent visibility of the area can be especially distressing to the patient and requires a timely and esthetically pleasing solution. Immediate single-tooth implantation followed by immediate provisionalization is becoming an increasingly desirable treatment that offers numerous benefits over conventional delayed loading. In the past, the non-restorable tooth was extracted and possibly grafted for site preservation. A removable partial denture (or flipper) was fabricated and placed for use during healing. After an adequate healing period, an implant was placed and buried under the gingiva, and the patient continued to wear the flipper until the implant had osseointegrated and was ready to be uncovered and restored. The patient would therefore wear the removable partial denture for upwards of six to eight months. This course of treatment often results in a less than desirable gingival architecture surrounding the final restoration. There are also clear indications that partial removable dentures are an important causative factor in the alveolar bone resorption process. 1


This paper first outlines the application status of three dimensional surface models in the design of highway alignments, and points out the existing difficulties and faults in the application. The authors explore the establishing methods for three-dimensional surface models, and merging methods for three dimensional models with digital terrain models. Finally, the specific application of three dimensional models in some aspects of the design of highway alignments is discussed.


Some 7700 radio aurora spectra obtained from a six link 50-MHz CW radar network set up on the Canadian prairies were analyzed with respect to the distributions of mean Doppler shift, spectral width and skewness. A comparison with recently published SABRE results obtained at 153 MHz (Schlegel et al., 1986) shows substantial differences in the distributions which are probably due to different experimental and geophysical conditions. Our spectra are mostly broad with mean Doppler shifts close to zero (type II spectra). The typical groupings of type I and type III spectra are clearly identified. All types appear to be in general much more symmetric than those recorded with SABRE, and the skewness is only weakly dependent on the sign of the mean Doppler shift. Its distribution peaks near zero and shows a weak positive correlation with the type II Doppler shifts while the mostly positive type I Doppler shifts are slightly negatively correlated with the skewness.


Introduction Population ageing has become one of the most important global trends in the twenty first century. The revolution in longevity and the steady declining fertility rates dramatically raised the number and proportion of elderly (60+) all over the world. Since 1950, the proportion of elderly has been rising steadily, passing from 8 per cent in 1950 to 11 per cent in 2009, and is expected to reach 22 per cent in 2050 (World Population Ageing, 2009).


We study the effects of multiple transitions in the vacuum dark energy density on the H 0 tension problem. We consider a phenomenological model in which the vacuum energy density undergoes multiple transitions in the early as well as the late universe and compare the model's predictions using the three sets of data from the cosmic microwave background, baryonic acoustic oscillations, and supernovae. The transient dark energy can be either positive (dS-like) or negative (AdS-like). We conclude that a transient late-time AdS-type vacuum energy typically yields the higher value of H 0, which can alleviate the H 0 tension. In addition, to obtain a value of H 0 comparable to the value obtained from the local cosmological measurements the spectral index n s moves toward its Harrison–Zel'dovich scale-invariant value.


This study seeks to examine the influence of mothers' schooling accomplishments on child mortality outcomes by exploiting the exogenous variability in schooling prompted by the 1997 universal primary education (UPE) policy in Uganda. The UPE policy, which eliminated school fees for all primary school children, provides an ideal setting for investigating the causal effect of the subsequent burst in primary school enrollment on child mortality outcomes in Uganda. The analysis relies on data from three waves of the nationally representative Uganda Demographic and Health Survey conducted in 2000/01, 2006, and 2011. To lessen the bias created by the endogenous nature of education, this study employs the mother's age at UPE implementation as an instrumental variable in the two-stage least squares model. The empirical analysis shows that one-year spent in school translates to a 2.24 percentage point decline in under-five mortality as observed at survey date and a 1.58 percentage point reduction in infant mortality even after accounting for potential confounding variables. These upshots are weakly robust to a variety of sample sizes and different model specifications. Overall, the results suggest that increasing the primary schooling possibilities for women might contribute towards a reduction in child mortality in low-income countries with high child mortality rates.


Some theoreticians have conceived of the human response to bereavement and loss as a sequence of characteristic stages beginning with denial, progressing to various kinds of emotional turmoil, and ending with acceptance. The theory is appealing to clinicians. These researchers attempted a test of Jacobs's four elements — disbelief, separation distress (i.e., yearning, anger), depression, and …


We give a brief description of a freespace beam steering crossbar switch design using acousto-optic deflectors, and report the results of an experiment to accurately measure beam deflection time for the beam width required to support our design. A beam diameter of lmm to allow reasonable separation of 32 potential targets along an axis was steerable in 130 ns to 569 ns, depending on beam proximity to the piezoelectric transducer. All experimental components and instru-mentation used are commercially available.


A 47 years old female presented in outpatient department; University College of homoeopathy, Jodhpur. By the investigations it was confirmed that she was suffering from PCOS, bilateral renal stones, thickening of endometrial layer, bulky uterus and fatty changes in liver. Homoeopathic medicine Natrum muriaticum constitutionally worked well on her and Sabina helped to manage the case spontaneously by its physiological dosing. For removing miasmatic obstacle in case Medorrhinum has been prescribed. Most of the complaint of patient got relived after medication


This qualitative case study examined the experience of middle-aged homemakers with buying and wearing clothes. Clothing benefits and clothing purchase types were observed in the homemakers` daily clothing-related behavior. This study aims to understand clothing consumption values in light of clothing benefits and to determine purchasing methods, purchasing mental states, and personal characteristics according to the clothing purchase types of middle-aged homemakers. The participants of this study were four full-time homemakers and four homemakers with a job outside the home, all in middle age. This study was conducted through in-depth interviews based on an unstructured questionnaire, and the data were collected from January 2010 to October 2010. The results were as follows: first, the clothing benefits were identified as a social stereotype, aesthetic taste, economy, wearing situation, and age perception. The most important clothing consumption values to the middle-aged homemakers based on the observed clothing benefits were, in order: social value, emotional value, epistemic value, functional value, and conditional value. Second, the type of clothing purchase was observed to be planned buying, followed by impulse buying, and compensatory buying. Even when a homemaker planned to shop regularly, when they were exposed to an attractive retailer promotion, they seized on the opportunity on impulse or made a compensatory purchase to divert oneself. Even though homemakers prefer primarily impulse buying, when they went shopping for clothing with their mother-in-law or husband, they made planned purchase also.


High-radix integrated silicon photonic switches promise ultrahigh bandwidth communications required by next generation data centers. To holistically explore the characteristics of high-radix integrated optical switches, this work systematically studies the latency, throughput and energy consumption, with detailed models and various system configurations. Three categories of space switches, blocking, rearrangeable non-blocking and strictly non-blocking switches, are investigated, together with one of the widely used wavelength switches, arrayed waveguide grating router (AWGR). The work paves the ways to automatically optimize high-radix integrated silicon photonic switches.


The utility model relates to a technology which is that the potential security risk existing in the daily operation and management process in the community power transformer station is intelligently monitored, in particular to a community power transformer station integrated monitoring system. A theftproof sensor, a fire sensor, a SF6 gas sensor, an oxygen sensor, a transformer over-temperature sensor are respectively connected with a signal amplifying unit, the signal amplifying unit is connected with a A/D conversion unit, the A/D conversion unit is connected with a master control microprocessor CPU, the master control microprocessor CPU is respectively connected with a RAM memory unit, a voice module unit, a display unit, a blower fan control unit and a GSM, GPRS cell phone module unit, the voice module unit is connected with a power amplifier unit, and the display unit is connected with a LCD display. The system operates the long-distance alarm and the remote control through a GSM and GPRS wireless communication network; in addition, the data all can be sent to the host computer through the GSM and GPRS communication network, and then the host computers in a plurality of communities are operated wireless networking monitoring through a terminal.


Electrode loss,which occurs during the electrospark moulding process can be automatically measured and compensated.The following thesis is a brief introduction of the applying method for the above-mentioned argument.With the application of this method,the accuracy of the dimention and shape of the products will be improved.Meanwhile,the consecutive unattended operation can also be realized.This method is especially suitable for the uni-electrode multi-cavity process,thus the dimentional conformity of the cavity is guaranteed.


The dynamic behavior of the rotor-bearing system of the slider-crank mechanism was studied in this paper. Based on the finite element method, a model of the rotor-bearing system was developed. The calculation results of the numerical simulation demonstrated that dynamic response of the shaft depended on both the bearing stiffness and the dynamic property of the slider-crank such as rotor rotate speed.


Microwave absorption (MA) materials with high heat resistance have a wide range of applications in many fields. In this work, a C,N-codoped MoSi2 ceramic was prepared via a facile solid-phase reaction method and its MA properties was investigated. On the one hand, the results indicate that this ceramic possesses excellent heat resistance and the weight of the MoSi2 is almost constant when the temperature is lower than 800°C. On the other hand, this ceramic shows good MA performance when the filler loading ratio increases to 30 vol%, the value of reflection loss (RL) could reach to −17.70 dB at 7.44 GHz with the thickness of 2.0 mm and the effective electromagnetic absorption bandwidth (RL below −10 dB) could reach to 1.88 GHz (9.28–11.16 GHz) with the thickness of 1.5 mm. Multi-polarization resonance loss is considered as the predominant attention mechanism on the MA performance of this MoSi2 ceramic. This research provides a new idea for understanding resonance mechanism and greatly expands the application scope of MoSi2 ceramic in MA area.


Preparation of anode supported Sc2O3 stabilized ZrO2(SSZ) film for solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) by hydrothermal method was investigated. The effect of anode, precursor, pH value, precipitation agent, hydrothermal time and temperature on the property of SSZ electrolyte film was studied. The optimum conditions of hydrothermal process were determined. The studies show : SSZ film is fluorite cubic structure, homogenous, dense and integrate into a whole with the anode. The thickness of the film is about 20-40 μm after several times of hydrothermal coating. The conductivity of SSZ electrolyte film reaches 0.078 5 S/cm at 800 ℃, and shows good conduct activity in comparison to SSZ ceramic.


We consider a model of production with a continuum of linear techniques and examine the related choice of technique and shape of the demand for capital schedule. The primary conclusion regards the possibility of a decreasing demand for capital schedule combined with reswitching and reverse capital deepening.


For the sake of improving the whole power of the short distance 1Km bicycle item in our country,the text take 24 short-distance 1Km bicycle men athletes who take part in the bicycle tournament from 2005 to 2007 as study objects,and plot out the Speed Competence,and study its character.The subsection study of the Speed Competence plays an important role in selection,training and competition of the short-distance bicycle item.Therefore,the study into the subsection of the Speed Competence of the short-distance Bicycle,and investigating the correlation between subsection and sport achievement,are important meaning to the theory and practice.


The importance of the Castilian language is undoubtedly a culturally important fact in Early Modern Portugal, particularly between the mid-fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries. This essay highlights some aspects of this phenomenon, which, despite inevitable variations in different contexts, received significant expression in a number of fields of Portuguese culture and society — among them, the court, literature and intellectual culture, and politics. The importance of Castilian only began to decline in Portugal from the eighteenth century onwards, a fact that may be accounted for both by the relative loss of Spanish influence over Portugal, and by the ascent of a new cultural paradigm, mainly derived from French culture.


This document is the Final Report for the seventh annual Utah Transportation Research Advisory Council (UTRAC) workshop, which was held March 12-13, 1997 at Utah State University. The meeting was facilitated by the Utah Transportation Center under the direction of the Research Division of the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT). The purpose of the meeting and the resulting document was to develop an effective, results-oriented priority program for statewide transportation research during the next few years. The focus of the meeting was to bring together participants from all areas of transportation research throughout the state: various divisions and regions of the Utah Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, universities, and private consultants. This document covers specific research areas including (1) construction and maintenance, (2) materials and pavements, (3) hydraulics, roadway design, landscape, and environmental, (4) IVHS, planning, traffic, and safety, (5) structures and geotechnical. Each section proposes activities that should be undertaken to help UDOT achieve its strategic goals.


The hemolymph of larvae acclimated in freshwater (19 mosmol/L) and seawater (897 mosmol/L) was analyzed and levels of Na+ (191 mM, 247 mM), Mg2+ (8 mM, 14 mM), Cl− (60 mequiv./L, 126 mequiv./L), and osmolarity (417 mosmol/L, 530 mosmol/L) were determined. Paraclunio alaskensis larvae were shown to be both euryhaline and hyperosmotic and hyposmotic regulators. The isotonic point of the hemolymph was 475 mosmol. Whole larvae contained 72% water and actively regulated water content (signified by changes in weight) over a wide range of external media. The basal respiration rate of larvae in seawater (0.032 μg O2∙mg dry weight−1∙h−1) indicated active cuticular respiration. The significance of these findings in relation to the intertidal habitat is discussed.


Vocational ability of an individual and working process are co-existent and complementary to each other.To construct a working-process-oriented vocational ability index satisfies the mutual needs of working process and individual development.The paper constructs a hierarchical working-process-oriented vocational ability index from the perspectives of morality,intelligence,physique and art.The paper also defines,for the four perspectives,the corresponding hierarchical indexes of talent training and provides,on the index basis,the suggested evaluation criteria.


Objective To study the effect with Biphasie positive airway pressure(BIPAP)in patients with overlap syndrome.Methods 60 patients of COPD accompany with OSAS were treated by BIPAP,and were measured by polysomnography(PSC)during all-night sleep,analyzed the results before and after treatment.Results After treatment,the average apnea index(AHI) showed a decrease from 41±16 to 10.0±3.0,the average apnea time decreased by 13sec,the 1ongest apnea time decreased by 56sec,the lowest SaO2 increased from(58.2±6.0)% to(90.5±6.7)%.The sleep effect(SE) was increased.Conclusion The ventilation with BIPAP in patients with owerlap syndrome was efficacious.


Many conflicting theories and statements appear in plant physiological literature regarding phototropism. Such conditions frequently exist in a young science where much of the earlier work is qualitative. In many of these early experiments dealing with the bending of plant stems toward light, the lights used were such that it was impossible to determine accurately whether the color or the intensity was the predominating cause of the bending. The relative influence of the different colors, or wave-lengths, could not be determined because different intensities were used. Both of these light factors must be considered, as a greater value of one may off-set the lesser value of the other. In order to determine which colors are most effective in phototropic bending, it is necessary to use wave-lengths of equal intensities. One method of evaluating the wave-length effects is described by HURD.' Wratten light filters were used between the light source and the fucus spores and rhizoids with which this work was performed. The intensities were made equal by increasing or decreasing the distance of the electric are from the measuring instrument. PARR,2 working with Pilobolus under carefully controlled conditions, found that light in all regions of the visible spectrum brought about responses in this plant. The presentation time decreased gradually from red to violet, with no indication of intermediate maxima or minima. This work appears to be at variance with statements appearing even in recent text books on plant physiology, that the more highly refrangible rays of light are most effective in phototropic movement with the effect diminishing from blue to yellow, and again increasing in the red and infra-red. PRIESTLEY' has recently attempted to give a rational explanation to the phenomenon of phototropism. He shows that phototropic curvature in coleoptiles is consistent with the "light-growth" hypothesis, in spite of


In the article the present-day problems of historical studies are considered on the ground of reference to the activity of many historians and publicists as well as to the authors own experience.


We consider joint source-channel coding for a memoryless Gaussian source and an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. A code is said to be robust if its performance is arbitrarily close to the theoretical limit for a wide range of channel noise conditions. The existence of robust codes depends on the ratio of the channel bandwidth to the source bandwidth-a quantity we called /spl rho/. We first show that when /spl rho/=1, robust codes do indeed exist. Secondly, no robust code exists for /spl rho//spl ne/1.


The traditional method of slope stability analysis is safety factor, and its applications have long time, broad prospects and abundant experience;However, the weakness of safety factor cannot consider uncertainty of parameters and models. Reliability theory can effectively solve uncertain and correlative problems in slope system; However, Reliability theory is complicated and short of abundant experience. Therefore it is necessity to build dual index system of slope stability coupling safety factor and reliability. As an example, under changing of water level of Yangtze River from 135m to 175m, average safety factor (most likely safety factor) and corressponding reliability of Songjiawu landslide in Dongxiangkou town of Badong county were calculated Multiplied most likely safety factor by corresponding reliability and reduced most likely safety factor, reliability safety factor of slope was obtained. Suppose that critical value of reduced safety factor is 1.05, critical failure probability and variation coefficient corressponding different most likely safety factors can be calculated. According to different most likely safety factors and their failure probabilities, divisional chart of slope stability was drawn. By dual index system of slope stability coupling safety factor and reliability, stability of Songjiawu landslide was assesssed; research result shows that reliability safety factor of this landslide is 1.068, slightly great than 1.05, and this landslide is low stability. In this paper, building method of dual index system of slope stability coupling safety factor and reliability was presented.


Students with significant cognitive disabilities typically experience poor post-school outcomes as adults. Federal legislation and recent research reflect the importance of teaching self-determination skills as a strategy to improve post-school outcomes. However, the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS-2) reported that individuals with mental retardation, autism, and multiple disabilities often lack self-determination skills. The current study investigated the impact of Multimedia Social Stories on knowledge of adult outcomes and opportunities among transition-aged youth with significant cognitive disabilities using a multiple probe across participants design. All students acquired information taught and generalized skills to an informal transition planning meeting and a preference assessment activity. Limitations, as well as recommendations for research and practice, are provided.


ABSTRACT This paper investigates the short- and long-term effects of both the home learning environment (HLE) and the teacher factors of the dynamic model of educational effectiveness upon student mathematics achievement. Written tests were administered to Grade 1 students (N = 1,444) of 48 primary schools at the beginning of Year 1 and at the end of Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3. A parent questionnaire measured student background factors and the HLE, whereas external observations measured the teacher factors. One aspect of the HLE (i.e., home learning materials) was associated with student achievement, not only at the end of Year 1 but also at the end of Year 3. Almost all teacher factors were associated with student achievement at the end of Year 1 and at the end of Year 3. The long-term effect of teachers was stronger than their short-term effect. Implications for research, policy, and practice are drawn.


The following contribution is intended to show the possibility of making the combustion of heavy fuel oil environmentally more compatible and thereby enabling the further use of the cheaper fuel oil S. At a boiler with heavy-fuel firing in the combined heat and power station of the University of Stuttgart, a test of 1000 hours' duration has shown, how, by preparing the oil with additives, the problems of excessive dust emissions and output of acid waste gas constituents, combined with corrosion problems, can be reduced


This article expounds the essence of persuasiveness and conclusiveness of audit evidence,analyzes the causes of persuasive audit evidence from the point of the nature,timing and extent of audit procedures,and points out that persuasive rather than conclusive audit evidence is the common choice of CPAs,users of financial statements and the other parties.CPAs can only provide reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free of material misstatements.Finally,this article concludes that sufficiency and competence are the criteria to evaluate persuasiveness of audit evidence,and complying with code of professional ethics,audit standards and system of quality control are the main three measures of obtaining persuasive audit evidence.


Simple Summary Meningioma is the most common intracranial neoplasm derived from the arachnoid cap cells of the leptomeninges. Malignant meningioma is generally more aggressive than other meningioma and frequently recurs even after surgery and radiation therapy. Clinical trials have been performed on candidate drugs, including everolimus, an inhibitor of mammalian target of rapamycin. However, an effective standard systemic therapy has not yet been established and the prognosis of patients with malignant meningioma is still poor. We recently reported the radiosensitization effects of gemcitabine in malignant meningioma cells, which suggests its potential to enhance the efficacy of candidate drugs for meningioma. In the present study, we demonstrated that gemcitabine enhanced the therapeutic effects of everolimus in malignant meningioma cells, and these effects were further augmented by navitoclax, an inhibitor of anti-apoptotic BCL-2 family proteins, both in vitro and in vivo. The present results provide support for the clinical application of gemcitabine and navitoclax in combination with everolimus to the treatment of patients with malignant meningioma. Abstract Despite several clinical trials with encouraging findings, effective standard systemic therapies have yet to be established for malignant meningioma and the prognosis of these patients remains poor. Accumulating preclinical and clinical evidence suggests that gemcitabine is effective against malignant meningioma. To identify drugs with therapeutic effects that may be enhanced in combination with gemcitabine, we screened drugs that have been tested in preclinical and clinical trials for meningioma. In IOMM-Lee and HKBMM malignant meningioma cells, gemcitabine enhanced the growth inhibitory effects of the mTOR inhibitor everolimus, the clinical benefits of which have been demonstrated in patients with meningioma. The synergistic growth inhibitory effects of this combination were accompanied by cellular senescence characterized by an increase in senescence-associated β-galactosidase activity. To enhance the effects of this combination, we screened senolytic drugs that selectively kill senescent cells, and found that navitoclax, an inhibitor of anti-apoptotic BCL-2 family proteins, effectively reduced the number of viable malignant meningioma cells in combination with everolimus and gemcitabine by inducing apoptotic cell death. The suppression of tumor growth in vivo by the combination of everolimus with gemcitabine was significantly stronger than that by either treatment alone. Moreover, navitoclax, in combination with everolimus and gemcitabine, significantly reduced tumor sizes with an increase in the number of cleaved caspase-3-positive apoptotic cells. The present results suggest that the addition of gemcitabine with or without navitoclax to everolimus is a promising strategy that warrants further evaluation in future clinical trials for malignant meningioma.


In recent years, businesses are realizing important innovation functions in order to maintain a progressive profit and to have a long life-time. In the first part of this study, innovation, invention and creativity concepts are defined, types of innovation are explained. And then, the importance of innovation functions of SMEs' in their development and institutionalization are analyzed. In the second part, a field survey about innovation functions of 260 SMEs' in Mersin is conducted. Data are collected by questionnaire forms and tested with Chi-Square Independence Analysis. At the end of the research, it has been concluded that, ninty-six SMEs' are realizing innovation function in Mersin. The most important reason of SMEs' for innovation function is to reduce material wastes and expenses. Also, the factors effecting non-innovativeness are the lack of financial resources and qualified personnel.


Introduction Malignant gliomas are the most angiogenic tumours; angiogenic vessels are abnormal with increased non-selective permeability of endothelium leading to elevated interstitial pressure and poor perfusion, hence gliomas are inherently deprived of metabolisable substrates and removal of waste products [1]. Level of communication in terms of oxygen delivery to brain tumours has been recently assessed, using BOLD signal changes and showing that in 9L gliomas tissue O2 tension (ptO2) increases under hypercapnia [2]. BOLD contrast is known to correlate with pO2 although in a qualitative manner [3], with underlying physiology making full analysis of hypercapnic challenge difficult [4]. Here we have examined BOLD and T2 responses in F98 and 9L rat gliomas to hypoxic hypoxia in order to indirectly assess vascular responsiveness in these tumours.


In this paper, we present an automated on-line service for troubleshooting performance problems in server clusters caused by unintended vicious cycles. The tool complements a large volume of prior performance troubleshooting and diagnostic literature for server farms that identifies problems arising due to resource bottlenecks or failed components. We show that unintended interactions between components in large-scale systems can cause performance problems even in the absence of bottlenecks or failures. Our tool leverages discriminative sequence mining to identify anomalous sequences of events that are candidates for blame for the performance problem. The tool looks for patterns consistent with "vicious cycles" or unstable behavior, as such patterns, when present, are most likely to be problematic. It highlights candidates that are semantically conflicting, such as those arising when different performance management mechanisms make adjustments in conflicting directions. Our approach offers two key advantages in performance troubleshooting. First, it does not require detailed prior knowledge of the underlying system to diagnose the problem. Second, contrary to simple statistical techniques, such as correlation analysis, that work well for continuous variables, our scheme can also identify chains of events (labels) that may explain the root cause of a problem. Our service is deployed on a web server testbed of 17 machines. To make the comparison of our scheme to prior work more concrete, we first reproduce two real-life problem scenarios reported in earlier literature, then explore a third, new case study. In all cases, our tool reports the patterns that explain the cause of the problem without requiring detailed a priori knowledge.


A new numerical approach for wall functions is proposed, in order to bridge the gap between low‐ and high‐Reynolds near‐wall turbulence modelling. It allows arbitrary sizes of near‐wall cells with the objective of using local grid refinement or adaptive meshes in industrial calculations. This finite volume‐finite element approach is based on the introduction of assumed shape functions into the energy conservation equations, for the determination of four wall scalings factors. Equilibrium assumptions are avoided, and replaced by formal integration of budget equations in the first cell. The approach is proved accurate and stable in a simple channel flow, but the formalism was developed for non‐equilibrium situations where it still needs to be tested. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The classification of Motor Imagery (MI) tasks constitutes one of the most challenging problems in Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) mostly due to the varying conditions of its operation. These conditions may vary with respect to the number of electrodes, the time and effort that can be invested by the user for training/calibrating the system prior to its use, as well as the duration or even the type of the imaginary task that is most convenient for the user. Hence, it is desirable to design classification schemes that are not only accurate in terms of the classification output but also robust to changes in the operational conditions. Towards this goal, we propose a new sparse representation classification scheme that extends current sparse representation schemes by exploiting the group sparsity of relevant features. Based on this scheme each test signal is represented as a linear combination of train trials that are further constrained to belong in the same MI class. Our expectation is that this constrained linear combination exploiting the grouping structure of the training data will lead to representations that are more robust to varying operational conditions. Moreover, in order to avoid overfitting and provide a model with good generalization abilities we adopt the bayesian framework and, in particular, the Variational Bayesian Framework since we use a specific approximate posterior to exploit the grouping structure of the data. We have evaluated the proposed algorithm on two MI datasets using electroencephalograms (EEG) that allowed us to simulate different operational conditions like the number of available channels, the number of training trials, the type of MI tasks, as well as the duration of each trial. Results have shown that the proposed method presents state-of-the-art performance against well known classification methods in MI BCI literature.


A huge amount of the world's data, is both sequential and low-level; many applications consume higher-level information (e.g., words and sentences) that is inferred from these low-level sequences (e.g., raw audio signals) using a model (e.g., a hidden Markov model). This inference process is typically statistical, resulting in high-level streams that are imprecise. Common queries on this data include sequence-finding event queries and OLAP-style aggregates of these event queries (e.g. "How many times do 2008 NPR podcasts use the phrase 'Barack Obama'?"). These queries are difficult to support efficiently because of the large data volumes and rich semantics of imprecise data. In this work, we introduce LaharOLAP, a warehousing system for a common type of imprecise, sequential model called a Markovian stream. As part of LaharOLAP, we propose semantics for OLAP-style event queries on Markovian streams and algorithms for processing these queries. To address performance, we study and exploit a variety of lossy compression techniques, noting that the applications that consume Markovian stream data are already accustomed to imprecision. Through experiments on real data collected from our building-wide RFID deployment, we find that, in practice, lossy compression techniques can yield significant performance gains with only a small loss in accuracy.


The invention relates to a method and apparatus for interference free transmission of data between control units (1) in an optical bus, in particular a CAN bus. To ensure that each control unit (1) determines whether a priority higher signal on the bus forces the self transmitted signal, the transmitted signal Tx logically during transmission with the received bus signal and read the resulting signal Rx by the control unit (1) , DOLLAR A The apparatus can also be used for monitoring and control of a conventional bus transmission.


This report is a summary of the main results from the 2018 NMS lab's customer survey that was conducted by Winning Moves. Every few years, NPL, NML at LGC and NEL work together to commission a joint survey of their customers, to assess the extent to which the public funding provided by BEIS is converted into economic or societal benefits. The customer survey is a quantitative survey designed to capture the impact the core labs create for their customers, understand customer's use of the labs, and capture satisfaction. This report goes beyond this to measure the economic importance of private sector users, and quantify spending on measurement. The sample of users includes those working in the private sector, of which a number of these are calibration laboratories, and users and partners in the healthcare sector and academia.
The NMS lab's customer survey is a core requirement of the NMS evaluation plan. This summary was written by staff at NPL in collaboration with NML and NEL.


The escalating threat of climate change necessitates urgent global action to reduce carbon emissions and adopt sustainable practices. Buildings, as significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, require immediate attention and transformative solutions. This article delves into the concept of carbon footprint reduction through sustainable renovation of buildings, exploring essential strategies and initiatives in combating climate change and achieving environmental objectives. The paper begins with an introduction to the pressing issue of climate change, its correlation with carbon emissions from buildings, and the crucial importance of addressing the carbon footprint challenge in the construction sector. It introduces sustainable renovation as a viable solution to mitigate emissions. Through a comprehensive analysis, the article examines the impact of buildings on carbon footprints, highlighting statistics on global carbon emissions from the sector, scrutinizing energy consumption, and operational practices that contribute to heightened carbon footprints, and discussing the environmental consequences. The article then delves into key strategies for carbon footprint reduction, such as energy-efficient retrofitting, the integration of renewable energy sources, and water conservation methods. To highlight real-world success stories, the article presents case studies of sustainable renovation projects that have achieved substantial carbon emission reductions, shedding light on valuable lessons learned from these initiatives. Conclusively, the paper envisions the potential impact of sustainable renovation on global carbon emissions and offers recommendations to policymakers, stakeholders, and building owners to accelerate the transition towards sustainable building practices. In essence, this article provides a comprehensive overview of the significance of sustainable renovation in reducing the carbon footprint of buildings. By embracing collective efforts and committing to sustainable practices, a greener and more resilient future can be secured, ensuring a sustainable planet for generations to come.

https://universepg.com/public/storage/journal-pdf/Carbon footprint reduction through sustainable renovation of buildings.pdf


The preliminary design of this Amyl Acetate plant is intended to review the
feasibility of this plant construction. The Amyl Acetate plant is designed to fulfill
60.000 tons/year capacity and this plant will be operated continuously for 330
days/year. In order to gain the product as the designed capacity, 40.528,15
tons/year of amyl alcohol and ton/year of acetic acid is required as the main raw
material.
The amyl acetate is produced by esterification process and catalyzed by
Amberlyst 15 ion exchange. The reaction takes place in a fixed bed reactor in
atmospheric condition. Extractive distillation column and decanter are needed as
purification unit to get the 98,7% purity of Amyl Acetate product.
The Amyl Acetate plant is located in Semarang, Central Java and required
75.000 m2 area and employs 216 labors. The energy consumed includes electricity
about 189,94 kW and 2.551 kg/hour of fuel oil. Moreover, the utility requires
33.321 kg/hour of make-up water and 200 m3/hour of instrument air.
Fixed capital costs $ 23.878.125,04 and Rp 6.700.508.187,35, working
capital costs $ 806.357,05 and Rp 424.948.209.869,01, total production costs $
7.250.779,12 and Rp 1.426.497.162.417,07. Based on the economical feasibility
studies, this plant is categorized as low risk chemical plant with 27,46% ROI
(before taxes), 2,67 years POT (before taxes), 55,69% BEP, 35,79% SDP, and
30,6% DCFRR. From those point, we can say that the preliminary design of this
Amyl Acetate plant is quiet appealing for further studies.


This paper is devoted to the possibilities of the reclamation use of claystone sorbents of the Most and Sokolov basins. The properties of phytotoxic areas suitable for the application of sorbents, the locality, and parameters of the main clay sorbents of both brown coal basins are briefly summarized in the paper. Clay sorbents are suitable for the reclamation of phytotoxic surfaces contaminated by coal. This paper provides a brief evaluation of the properties of the claystone sorbents of the North Bohemian and Sokolov basins. In the region of the North Bohemian brown coal basin, potential sorbents can be used for the reclamation works.


Biography Dr Rob Rahaley is South Australia's Chief Veterinary Officer. He is also a specialist veterinary pathologist andworked for 15 years in the Victorian veterinary laboratory system before becoming a partner in Veterinary Pathology Services, Australia's largest private veterinary laboratory, and managing their Adelaide laboratory for 12 years. During this timehis companywas awarded the inaugural contract to provide veterinary laboratory services to the South Australian Department of Primary Industries. The company was sold to IDEXX Laboratories in 2000 and in 2002 hemoved to the UK as manager of the IDEXX laboratory at Wetherby. He returned to Australia in 2005 as the Australian and New Zealand Country Manager for IDEXX. Dr Rahaleywas appointed the SouthAustralianChief VeterinaryOfficer in 2007. He is a member of the Australian Animal Health Laboratory Strategic Policy Group and is an Affiliate Professor within the School of Animal and Veterinary Science at Adelaide University.


Language is a vital instrument used by human beings to disseminate information to the understanding of people. The way language used usually determines the consequence or outcome of its impact on the society. Through language, conflict that could result in war can be engendered; and also through language, peace in the society can be promoted. Depending on how language is used, the experience within the society can be negative or positive. In this paper, the speeches of Lt. Col. Gowon and Lt. Col. Ojukwu (as they then were in pre-1966) preceding the civil war in Nigeria are in focus. The various ways these leaders subtly presented their speeches raised tension and eventually led to the civil war which was fought for more than three years. In the study, it was argued that if the two leaders have been more circumspect in their use of language, probably, the war that ravaged Nigeria for more than three years would have been averted. The paper concludes that leaders should always explore peaceful means through their use of language during volatile situation so that the sentiments of their followers will not be wiped up.


OBJECTIVES
We examined lengths of hospital stay among individuals categorized according to weight status.

METHODS
We used data from the First National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Epidemiologic Followup Survey to estimate length-of-stay differences.

RESULTS
Individuals with body mass indexes (BMIs) of 35 kg/m2 or above, those with BMIs of 30 to 34 kg/m2, and those with BMIs of 25 to 29 kg/m2 had crude length-of-stay rates greater than those of normal-weight individuals. Association between BMI and length of stay varied over time.

CONCLUSIONS
Obese individuals experience longer hospital stays than normal-weight individuals.


The consequences of the Volcker enquiry into the scandal over the United Nations Oil for Food program were discussed in a speech given at The Sydney Institute on 2 November 2005. It was pointed out that though member states reveal they want an end to political fiefdoms in the Secretariat, they don't want to surrender their own positions of influence in the UN system. Paul Volcker's report on the Oil for Food program in the year 1995 was one of his major contributions and the largest program ever undertaken by the UN.


Background and Aims: Several recent studies explored the separate mortality effects of heat and the duration of heat waves. Some of them show large differences in the associated effects. However, f...


District in the North (14 communes and one town) District in the South (13 communes and one town) 1 tobacco farming commune (11 villages, 6,170 people) 1 non-tobacco farming commune (11 villages, 5,655 people) 3 randomly selected villages 120 randomly selected households 3 randomly selected villages 120 randomly selected households 1 tobacco farming commune (9 villages, 2,0541 people) 1 non-tobacco farming commune (12 villages, 21,049 people) 3 randomly selected villages 120 randomly selected households 3 randomly selected villages 120 randomly selected households


The preparation and chemical modification of dendritic–linear block copolymers with surface functionalized dendritic components are presented. Isophthalate ester-functionalized dendrons featuring benzylic halide groups at their focal points have been used for the metal catalyzed "living" radical polymerization of styrene. The molecular weight of the dendritic–linear block copolymers determined by MALDI-TOF and Size Exclusion Chromatography was found to be accurately controlled up to molecular weights of ca. 30,000 a.m.u., with polydispersities less than 1.2. Subsequent functional group modifications of the peripheral ethyl ester groups of the dendritic block have been successfully carried out leading to carboxylic acids, butyl amides, benzyl alcohols, benzyl halides, and also accelerated generation growth via transesterification with a first generation dendritic alcohol. Several of these new dendritic–linear block copolymers exhibit interesting aggregation characteristics as evidenced by 1H-NMR spectroscopic studies. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Polym Sci A: Polym Chem 36: 1–10, 1998


Spheroidal cast iron has been applied to automotive and machinery parts to reduce their manufacturing cost. But those applications were restricted to machined parts because of its difficulty to be welded with similar and dissimilar material. In this study, the liquid phase diffusion bonding process with thin amorphous Ni-based alloy sheet was applied to spheroidal cast iron(FCD600) and structural carbon steel(S45C) joint, and effects of bonding conditions on mechanical properties of them were investigated. Experimental results are as follows. (1) Tensile strength and fatigue strength of spheroidal cast iron and structural carbon steel bonded joint were improved with increasing in the bonding temperature. (2) Spheroidal cast iron and structural carbon steel bonded joint with optimal condition showed the same mechanical properties as the spheroidal cast iron base


Objective To study the influence of Helicobacter pylori (HP) on heat shock protein 60 (HSP^o) in patients with peptic ulcer. Methods HP clearance was investigated,and HSP60 in serum and gastric mucosa was assayed by Western dot blot. Results Compared with control group,the contents of HSP60 before treatment increased significantly in HP negative( P 0.05) and HP positive patients ( P 0.01); after treatment, HSP60 content was higher in HP positive patients than in HP negative and HP eradicated patients ( P 0.05); there was no sisnificant difference between the latter two groups ( P 0.05). Conclusions HP infection promotes the expression of HSP60, and HP clearance decreases the expression,thus correlation existing between HP and HSP60.


Mycoplasma genitalium is a little known, yet common, sexually transmitted pathogen. Its increasing resistance to first‐ and second‐line antibiotics and declining cure rates are cause for concern, which means testing for the organism in symptomatic men with non‐specific urethritis is important.


Objective To observe the changes of microglia after focal cerebral ischemia in different times in adult rats and explore the relationship between microglia and cerebral ischemia.Methods We established the middle cerebral artery occlusion model with minimally invasive open skull operation in adult rats.27 adult male rats were randomly divided into 9 groups(n=3)including 7 ischemia groups(2 h,6 h,12 h,1 d,2 d,3 d,1 w),a normal control group and a sham-operat group.Have been fluorescented by the lectin,a marker of microglia,the variation of microglial cells in rats after focal cerebral ischemia were investigated among ischemic central area,ischemic penumbra,and normal perfusion area by laser scanning confocal microscope.Results Microglia of rats in the normal control group and sham operation group was small and branch-like and evenly distributed in the cerebral cortex.After focal cerebral ischemia,there were many necrotic cells in the ischemic core;there were small and branch-shaped microglia in the normal perfusion surrounding of the ischemic area and contralateral normal brain tissue,and these microglia cells were resting cells and similar to those in the control group.In the ischemic penumbra between the ischemic border zone and normal tissue,there were a large number of bush-like cells with larger body,shorter and fewer processes,which even become into amoeba-like cells with round-body and disappeared-processes and we call them activated microglia cells.There were few activated microglia cells at 2 h,6 h,12 h after ischemia.But they gradually increased after 1d and reached the peak at 3d to 1w after ischemia.Conclusion A large number of activated microglia accumulate after cerebral ischemia,microglia activation and proliferation laws may be related to delayed neuronal damage.


Quantitation of herpes simplex virus (HSV) DNA in bronchoalveolar lavage specimens could indicate an infectious role in the lower respiratory tract. The aim of this study was to compare quantitative HSV DNA results from adult bronchoalveolar lavage specimens to clinical outcome. Quantitative real‐time PCR assays targeting HSV and other herpes viruses were performed on adult bronchoalveolar lavage specimens obtained from a largely immunocompromised population during a 1‐year period. The results were compared to patient characteristics and outcome. HSV DNA was detected in 11 (19%) of 57 bronchoalveolar lavage specimens with a mean viral level of 5.6 log genome equivalents/ml (range, 2.9–8.1 log). A threshold of HSV DNA levels equal or higher than 5.0 log (n = 7) was associated with mortality within 28 days following hospital admission (odds ratio [OR], 6.8; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.2–39.2). A threshold level of 5.5 log was associated with mortality within 28 days of sampling (OR 8.5; 95% CI 1.2–62.1), only after excluding patients receiving specific antiviral medication. Patients with HSV DNA levels equal or higher than 7.5 log had severe respiratory failure. Viral pneumonia was histologically proven in one patient with 8.0 log at autopsy. No patient with HSV DNA levels below 5.5 log (n = 5) or DNA levels higher than 5.0 log of cytomegalovirus (CMV) (n = 3), Epstein‐Barr virus (EBV) (n = 9), varicella‐zoster virus (VZV) (n = 1), or human herpesvirus 6 (HHV‐6) (n = 0) died within 28 days of hospital admission. We conclude that quantitative detection of HSV DNA in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid is a potential diagnostic tool for detection of relevant viral infection of the lower respiratory tract. J. Med. Virol. 79:597–604, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


as a whole and especially the meditational traditions of Zen, save amongst those scholars who have themselves been involved in Buddhist practice in the region. The only translation into English until recently was that of Charles Luk in the course of his Ch'an and Zen Teachings, third series (London: Rider, 1962), where the text is embedded in the commentary of Hanshan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)—in fact, given the brevity of the text itself, and preponderance of doctrinal material in it, translation with commentary would seem to be the only option, though Luk's work, by providing little else to contextualize his rendering, still falls short of an adequate scholarly version.


Objective: To investigate the effect of extraction parameters with particular interest during the microwave deacetylation process on the characteristics of chitosan produced from Penaeus monodon (P. monodon) sourced within the coastal region of Lagos, Nigeria for applications of controlled release systems for pharmaceutical industries. Methods: Chitosan was extracted from shrimp (P. monodon) shell and evaluated as a controlled release system for curcumin. Effects of relevant processing parameters on physicochemical and functional characteristics of the extracted chitosan were assessed. The crude chitosan was purified and used to prepare controlled release formulations for curcumin via ionic gelation with tripolyphosphate. Results: Data from the study showed that increasing time and temperature during deproteinization significantly improved the removal of protein bound to the shell matrix. Also, the ratio of the weight of the deproteinized sample to the volume of HCl used for demineralization influenced the process. During microwave-assisted production of chitosan from chitin, increase in the concentration of the deacetylating medium significantly increased solubility, viscosity and degree of deacetylation, whereas increasing temperature and time during deacetylation of chitin degraded the biopolymer to give low molecular weight chitosan. Optimized extraction and purification process yielded absolutely soluble medium to low molecular weight chitosan. The encapsulation efficiency, loading capacity, percentage yield, release efficiencies in simulated gastric and intestinal fluids of curcumin loaded in the formulations of chitosan from P. monodon were compared favorably to encapsulation and release characteristics of the encapsulated curcumin in commercially available chitosan used as the reference. Conclusions: Valorization of shrimp waste into pharmaceutically graded medium molecular weight chitosan was achieved. The chitosan obtained can be used as a controlled release system for phyto-pharmaceuticals. Article history: Received 28 Oct 2016 Received in revised form 10 Nov 2016 Accepted 12 Nov 2016 Available online 16 Nov 2016


By using modern materials growth techniques such as molecular beam epitaxy, a tunable δ-potential can be intentionally doped into semiconductor nanostructures. In this work, we theoretically investigate modulation of electron-spin polarization by such a δ-doping in a hybrid ferromagnet and semiconductor nanostructure, where a nanosized ferromagnetic stripe with horizontal magnetization is deposited on top of a semiconductor heterostructure. It is shown that this nanosystem possesses a considerable spin polarization effect due to breaking the intrinsic symmetry by the δ-doping. It is also shown that both magnitude and sign of spin polarization vary dramatically with the height and/or position of the δ-doping. These interesting properties may provide an alternative scheme to achieve a controllable spin-polarized source, and this nanostructure may serve as a structurally tunable spin filter.


Respiration of a facultative alkaliphile, Bacillus lentus C-125, was increased around alkaline pH near the upper pH-limit for growth of the organism. O2-Uptake rates of the cells grown in a complex medium at pH 7–9 and 9.5–10 were 0.98–1.4 and 2.4 μmol O atom/min/mg cell protein, respectively. Membrane vesicles from the cells grown at pH 7–9 and 9.9 incorporated O2 at rates of 1.1–1.4 and 2.5 μmol O atom/min/mg envelope protein, respectively, using exogenous NADH as an electron donor. In the presence of menadione as an exogenous electron acceptor, the membrane vesicles from the cells grown at pH 7–8.5 and 9.9 oxidized NADH at rates of 1.4–1.7 and 6.3 μmol NADH/min/mg envelope protein, respectively. Levels of respiratory and NADH-oxidation activities of the organism are dependent on the growth pH, and higher than those reported previously in alkaliphilic Bacillus spp.


After the coup d'etat on March 4th, 1933, the Austrian government not only banned the Communist Party, the socialdemocratic paramilitary organization ('Republikanischer Schutzbund'), the Nazi Party and in 1934 also the SocialDemocratic Party itself, but also persecuted their supporters by various measures. Particularly after the uprisingof the Social Democrats ('Schutzbundaufstand') in February 1934 and the 'Naziputsch' in July 1934 innumerablepolitical opponents were sent to jail or an internment camp ('Anhaltelager'). Individual pardoning of the imprisonedand interned opponents soon started in reaction to diplomatic pressure on the Austrian government, whichthus also targeted at international pacification. The article deals with the 'amnesties' from December 1934 to April1938, which have been rather neglected by historical research so far.


Objective To observe the protective of melatonin on experimental spial cordischemia-reperfusion injury.Methods Male Spryue-Dwleys rats were divided into three groups,rats inone group only had laparotomy without aortic occlusion;in other two groups had their infrarenal arota temporarily occluded for 30 min,then were given either a 20 mg/kg single dose of melatonin and saline containing 2% ethanol intraperitoneally twice,5 min fefore aortic occlusion and 5 min after the clamp was removed.At 4hours after reperfusion,the animals were authanized and lumboscaral spinal cord tissue was removed for the determination tissular malondialdehyde(MDA) levels and relevant enzyme activities.Results Malondialdedhyde levels,indicating the shem-operated group.Catalase (CAT) and glutathione peroxidase(GSH-Px) enzyme activities were decreased in the the nonmelatonin treated group compared to the sham-operated group.Melatonin can attenuate the changes(P0.05).Conclusion Melatonin can effectively protected spinal cord from ischemia-reperfuion injury.


Interface water anions composed of several chainlike or cyclic fragments were simulated with a 6-31++G** basis set at the unrestricted Hartree–Fock level with the second-order Moeller–Plesset perturbation theory corrections taken into account. The estimated vertical electron detachment energies (VDEs) of (H2O) anions were approximated by a VDE-n−1/3 dependence close to the experimental one. A hypothesis about the predominant formation of interface structures under conditions of molecular flows is put forward. The atomic population analysis, character of the highest occupied molecular orbital, and changes in the geometry of interface anions with an increase in their molecular size reveal the compact localization of the excess electron density in water clusters and allow evaluating the effective excess-electron radius of condensed water as 2.5 A, in good agreement with a similar empirical estimate. The scope of the data obtained shows the relatively low probability of the formation of octahedral hydration shells compared to the tetrahedral coordination of solvating water molecules. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2002


Acylation of a surface-initiated poly(hydroxyethyl methacrylate) (PHEMA) film with a perfluoroalkyl acid chloride (C7F15COCl) results in a highly blocking film with fluorocarbon side groups that orient at the air−film interface to produce an ultralow-energy surface. The kinetics of the acylation step was monitored with reflectance-absorption infrared spectroscopy to reveal that the rate of fluorination depends on the chain length and solution concentration of the perfluorinated acid chloride as well as the solvent used. By control of the time of exposure to C7F15COCl, films with fractional conversion of the hydroxyl groups to fluorinated esters between 0 and 0.8 were produced. Increasing fractional conversion from 0 to ∼0.2 has a dramatic effect on surface wettability and electrochemical barrier properties as a densely packed, oriented fluorocarbon surface region is formed that greatly reduces water and ion transport. Additional fluorination has no effect on wettability but gradually increases film resist...


Aiming at stable CsPbI3 perovskite solar cells, Ge incorporated for the first time into DMAPbI3‐based precursor systems. Ge incorporation is found to be able to modify crystallization growth of CsPb1−xGexI3 films and reduce annealing temperature and treatment time by lowering CsPbI3 formation energy. The champion power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 19.52% is achieved with a certified PCE of 18.8%, which is the highest performance of CsPbI3 PSCs with alien element‐doping. In addition, in situ formation of GeO2 can passivate the grain boundary and surface defects, thus significantly improving the moisture resistance of the perovskite film and related devices. Excellent operational stability is achieved with no PCE degradation over 3000 h at a fixed bias voltage of 0.85 V under continuous white LED (6500 K) illumination and a nitrogen atmosphere. This work demonstrates that Ge‐incorporation is a promising way to stabilize CsPbI3 perovskite solar cells by simultaneously improving perovskite crystallinity and passivating the grain boundary and interfacial defects.


【In order to elucidate thermal stability of Fe- $Fe_2Ti$ eutectic structure, the initial several structures have been investigated in the changes of coarsening and spheroidization during prolonged annealing under the eutectic temperature. The results are as follows: 1) The rate constant of coarsening and spheroidization was formulated as $S^{-n}-S_0^{-n}=k{\cdot}t$ , where S is the total area of the interface between ${\alpha}$ and C( $Fe_2Ti$ ) per unit volume, $S_0$ is initial value and k is the rate constant. 2) The coarsening and spheroidization mechanism was described by Ostwald ripening and controlled by diffusion of Ti-atom in ${\alpha}$ -phase. 3) The spheroidization rate constant in eutectic lamellar structures was depended upon annealing temperature and showed the Arrhenius relation. The activation energy for spheroidization of lamellar structure was 365 kJ/mole.】


Many of the world's languages show similarities to each other. Similarities may be just coincidences, and linguists are not persuaded that languages have a historical connection until they find reasonably systematic evidence. For example, the fact that the English word 'three' sounds and looks somewhat like the Dutch drie and German drei is of itself no proof that English, Dutch and German are historically related. It is only when we find a pattern of correspondences that we can take languages to be related. One of the relevant patterns here is that many English words beginning with th have counterparts in Dutch and German with d:


Calculation of the degree of crystallinity on basis of Attenuated Total Reflection Fourier Transform Infrared spectra (ATR FT-IR spectra) was carried out for the different brands of unfilled and filled polyethylene samples.


~W~7~JHEN I published in 1940 the only known Attic decree naming in its preamble v v at least part of the name and demotic of the secretary of 298/7 I suggested that the calendar equation indicated an ordinary year of twelve months.' This determination was taken over by Pritchett and Meritt in Chronology of Hellenistic Athens (p. xvi), by Pritchett and Neugebauer in Calendars of Athens (p. 80), and by Meritt in The Athenian Year (p. 232). There is one consideration which at the time did not seem so important as it does now and which I wish to discuss here. The incentive to a reconsideration has been the observation that the sequence of ordinary and intercalary years which called for OOIOI in 299/8-295/4 rather than OIOOI at the beginning of the 8th Metonic cycle was the first apparent deviation from Meton's norm for possibly a hundred years, except for the anomaly in 307/6 which had valid and obvious historical reasons and which could be amply explained.2 I noted, as a comment on the cycles, that " the eighth cycle has only the transposition of IO to OI in the years 298/7 and 297/6." 8 Otherwise the cycle in the festival calendar of Athens followed faithfully the normal Metonic cycle of intercalation. In the text of Hesperia, IX, 1940, pp. 80-83 (13), as now restored with a stoichedon line of 29 letters, the equation reads:


The National Road Administration constructed a test road in order to study the problems in using all-bitumen (HB) pavements, such as strengthening of the subgrade, choice of plant for spreading the pavement, and suitable course thickness. The test road is approx. 1 km long, the subgrade being clay mixed with sand. It was divided into 10 sections, each of which had a different subgrade preparation, pavement thickness and construction method. It has been found that lime stabilisation of the subgrade is suitable if this is reasonably uniform and well compacted clay. If composition is variable, then bituminous gravel (BG) must be spread in such a way that the formation is not broken up. If the clay is very wet, the surface must be lime stabilised. It is best to lay BG by a spreader if the subgrade is strong enough, otherwise a grader must be used. The first course must then be at least 15 cm. The pavement is more even when laid by spreader; 20 cm can however be spread by grader and remainder by spreader. If the subgrade is strong enough then it is best to lay 25 cm course with a spreader, while on weak subgrades 2-3 courses are more suitable. /TRRL/


With the rapid growth of digital libraries, more data and smart services are involved. People come to recognize the importance of digital libraries and the convenience they might bring to the society. However, the cost of owning a digital library is quite high, and many institutions do not have the ability to run and maintain a digital library by themselves, especially for massive data and complex services which require lots of storage and computing resources. In this paper, we proposed the Digital Library Engine, which aims to provide a new Platform as a Service for fast developing and deploying digital libraries in cloud. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first work to create a PaaS system for digital libraries. With the help of Digital Library Engine, institutions only need to develop some service bundles, which can be deployed in the engine, and then their own digital libraries could be running well with features of scalability, reliability, security, extensibility, availability and manageability. The practice in CADAL and the experiments demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of our engine.


The influence of mineral adsorbent Min-A-Zel Plus (5 g/kg) and maize meal (25 and 50 g/kg) used alone or combined, on chemical composition, biochemical changes and quality of lucerne silage was investigated. Based on the obtained data, it can be concluded that addition of Min-A-Zel Plus reduces aminogenesis, while the use of maize meal alone or with zeolite favorable conditions are achieved for lactic acid fermentation, so that the quality of obtained silages is better by one quality class. To achieve better effects of silage quality, the use of combination of mineral adsorbent with carbohydrate additives is recommended.


p53 Gene and proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) are both related closely to the ra-diotherapy of non-small cell lung cancer(NSCLC). The life span of NSCLC patients with both p53 and PCNA positive is shorter than that of NSCLC patients with both p53 and PCNA negative. Studying the expression of p53 and PCNA in NSCLC, and their relationship with the radiosensitivity and prognosis of NSCLC can play a positive role in individualized treatment and increasing curative effect.

Key words:
Carcinoma,non-small-cell lung;  Genes,p53;  Proliferating cell nuclear antigen;  Radia-tion tolerance;  Prognosis


The associative interactions of several cationic probes, Le., bis(a-naphthylmethy1)a"onium chloride (DNMAC), (a-naphthylmethy1)a"onium chloride (NMAC), dibenzylammonium chloride (DBAC), and (benzy1)a"onium chloride (BAC), with anionic polyelectrolytes, Le., sodium poly(ethy1enesulfonate) (PES), sodium poly(styrenesulfonate) (PSS), and sodium poly(2-acrylamido-2-methyl-l-propanesulfonate) (PAMPS), and with a neutral polymer, poly(ethy1ene oxide) (PEO), have been investigated by fluorescence techniques. Evidence is presented that the probe conformation in both the ground and the excited singlet states depends on the type of interaction (hydrophobic or electrostatic) that dominates in determining the binding strength. For example, the predominately hydrophobic binding of DNMAC and PEO in aqueous solution produces a decrease in the ratio of excimer to monomer emission of the probe, relative to that in aqueous solution. The predominately electrostatic binding of DNMAC and PAMPS in methanol produces a sharp increase in the ratio of excimer to monomer emission of the probe relative to that of the probe in methanol solution. The binding of the probes to the polyelectrolytes PAMPS, PSS, and PES in aqueous solution results in an enhancement of excimer emission of the probe. The dependence of such enhancement of the excimer emission on the probe and/or polyelectrolyte concentration suggests that, in spite of the low effective charge of the probes, electrostatic interactions of the probe and the polyelectrolyte are not negligible with respect to the hydrophobic interactions.


269 lenging, particularly considering the absence of maps. Yet the value of such a quality is that even if not read in its entirety, this book is a powerful statement about why scholars should approach evidence with circumspection, an open mind, and imagination. By not only understanding but also acknowledging the shortcomings of evidence and by allowing the evidence to speak before coming to one's own conclusions, scholars might actually find the unexpected. They might find fallacies that speak truths. Given the imaginative and forthright approach to evidence and its analysis, I can imagine using this book in any advanced course on early America or historical methods. And today when information overload threatens to overwhelm us with both truths and untruths, it reminds us that those "untruths" can also tell us things, often unsettling, about ourselves.


Preeclampsia is aclinical disorder which happens only through pregnancy and a postpartum period, it affects approximately 5-8% of all pregnancies women worldwide and it is recognized by high blood pressure and the presence of protein in the urine. Uric acid has been used for early diagnosis of preeclampsia. Hyper uricemia is one of the earliest and most steady observations well-known in preeclamptic pregnancies. severity of preeclampsia increases with increasing uric acid. The present study was achieved to investigate uric acid level in serum of preeclampsia pregnancy woman and to predict the severity of preeclampsia. The study involves 30 cases of preeclampsia of age group between 20-42 years with mean ± SD of (32.7 ± 6.2) years and 30 of healthy pregnant women of age group between 19-41 years with mean ± SD of (31.1 ± 6.2). Serum uric acid was determined from all subjects by an enzymatic method (uricase). The noticed mean serum uric acid levels in preeclampsia was 7.68 ± 0.79 mg /dl as compare to 4.18± 1.17 mg/dl in control group. The difference between them is significant because pvalue is less than 0.05. The routine estimation of uric acid level in serum can be valuable as diagnostic indicator to predict the severity of preeclampsia.


Conventionally, the majority of reinforced phases are directly added into coating materials to form reinforcement in the matrix. The interface between the particles and matrix is often a potential source of weakness owing to different thermal expansion coefficients between them. When the surface of particles is not clean or is polluted, cracks may propagate from the interface. These issues can be resolved if the reinforcements are formed in the matrix by reacting between added pure elements. The reinforcements may be more compatible with the matrix and the interface may be cleaner than that of composites made conventionally. Because the in situ formed dispersions are thermally stable, this will ensure that the composite matrix has sufficient strength to transfer stress. Therefore, this methodology finds wide attention to form reinforcement in the matrix and various techniques are being tried to develop the process.This paper describes an in-situ synthesis of TiC particles in Fe matrix using laser cladding. A precursor mixture of graphite and titanium is deposited on low-carbon steel using pre-placed technique and promising results are observed. The comprehensive study is under progress. The paper presents the optimization of the process parameters and material characterization using various techniques, including – optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and microhardness.Conventionally, the majority of reinforced phases are directly added into coating materials to form reinforcement in the matrix. The interface between the particles and matrix is often a potential source of weakness owing to different thermal expansion coefficients between them. When the surface of particles is not clean or is polluted, cracks may propagate from the interface. These issues can be resolved if the reinforcements are formed in the matrix by reacting between added pure elements. The reinforcements may be more compatible with the matrix and the interface may be cleaner than that of composites made conventionally. Because the in situ formed dispersions are thermally stable, this will ensure that the composite matrix has sufficient strength to transfer stress. Therefore, this methodology finds wide attention to form reinforcement in the matrix and various techniques are being tried to develop the process.This paper describes an in-situ synthesis of TiC particles in Fe matrix using laser cladding...


This article aims to examine the relationships between external and internal social capital, managerial human capital, and managerial knowledge structures, respectively. It also examines the effect of managerial human capital and managerial knowledge structures on firm performance in the telecommunications sector in Jordan. A questionnaire was distributed to 250 managers in the telecommunications sector in Jordan. Utilizing structural equation modeling, it was found that external social capital has a positive significant effect on internal social capital and managerial human capital. Internal social capital has positively and significantly affected managerial knowledge structures. Furthermore, both managerial human capital and managerial knowledge structure had affected firm performance positively. As technology is expanding in this sector, relevant knowledge and information is becoming a source of competitive advantage, thus managers in this sector should build beneficial ties that might enhance human resources' capabilities that benefit the decision-making processes.


A spinal correction device is provided to correct the spine and to relax or strengthen muscles and ligaments around the spine by providing regular twist stimulation at a proper strength to a user's upper and lower body without damage due to excessive stimulation. The spinal correction device includes: a head support sheet(110); an upper and a lower body support sheet(120,130); an ankle fixing unit(200); an upper and a lower twist shaft mutually gear-connected by being respectively mounted on the bottom of the upper and the lower body support sheet; a crank member connected to a driving motor and the lower body twist shaft, and converting a rotary motion of the driving motor into a twist motion of the upper and lower body support sheet by the upper and lower body twist shaft; and a heating unit(700) installed between the upper and the lower body support sheet and radiating heat and far-infrared rays to the upside.


Forecasting energy data, especially the primary energy requirement, is the key part of policy-making. For those territories of different developing types, seeking a knowledge-based and dependable forecasting model is an essential prerequisite for the prosperous development of policy-making. In this paper, both autoregressive integrated moving average and backpropagation neural network models which have been proved to be very efficient in forecasting are applied to the forecasts of the primary energy consumption of three different developing types of territories. It is shown that the average relative errors between the actual data and simulated value are from 4.5% to 5.9% by the autoregressive integrated moving average and from 0.04% to 0.47% by the backpropagation neural network. Specially, this research shows that the backpropagation neural network model presents a better prediction of primary energy requirement when considering gross domestic product, population, and the particular values as predictors. Furthermore, we indicate that the single-input backpropagation neural network model can still work when the particular values have contributed most to the energy consumption.


The use of high gain amplifiers is shown to be helpful in the representation of constraints. This method enables one to represent constrained systems in a manner such that all coordinates are available for the application of arbitrary forces or displacements. The procedure is explained by means of an example.


Due to the fast development of graduate education, there appeared a lot of problems. This article, based on the summation of previous graduate education, claims that, in order to cultivate creative graduates, the emphasis should be laid on the scientific management system, diversity of education mode, standardization of management, establishment of platform for discipline development, taking the advantage of the university's cross-discipline development and cultivation of an excellent team of tutors.


A self-healing group key distribution scheme with revocation in MANET using dual directional hash chain was proposed.The association relation between different session keys was built.By means of broadcast information and own secrets,the legal nodes which lost some legal session keys due to network faults could be capable of recovering such lost session keys on their own,without requiring additional transmission from the group manager.The group manager could revoke the group nodes by revocation polynomial.Node was endowed with a set of masking secret according to its life-cycle.Through the security and efficiency analysis,the key distribution scheme reduces communication cost and storage cost yet still achieves security property.


Clemmesen's discussion of "Epidemiology and Etiology of Leukemias and Lymphomas"; Howard Latourette's and George Linden's presentation of some of the data prepared by the End-Results Evaluation Section of the Cancer Chemotherapy National Service Center, National Cancer Institute. A series of papers dealing with a wide range of topics dedicated to cancer control is part of the proceedings chaired by John R. Heller, with individual presentations by Anthony Curreri, Emerson Day, Louis Venet, E. Cuyler Hammond, Lewis C. Robbins, Paul Boyle. Mack Shanholtz, and many others. This book represents a timely summary of authoritative thinking on many facets of the cancer problem. Those concerned with the educational aspects of chronic disease in general who wish to keep abreast of developments and thinking in the current organized effort aimed at cancer control will find this reference volume most useful. LEONID S. SNEGIREFF


Much clinical and trauma work has focused on interventions with individuals experiencing interpersonal violence and past traumas. Refugees' experiences include past and present and chronic intergroup and interpersonal traumas with cumulative linear and nonlinear dynamics. Refugees face unique social and political traumatogenic ecologies that can play at least an equivalent or even more significant role in traumatic stress compared with that of survivors of interpersonal trauma who do not experience atrocities such as exile, political and religious persecution, and torture. Evolving paradigms of intervention need to be developed to integrate individual and ecological models of recovery that focus on the whole person within her or his social and political ecology and on past as well as present traumatogenic experiences; in addition, these paradigms need to mobilize refugees' resilience.


We describe work done in the field of folkloristics and consisting in creating ontologies based on well-established studies proposed by "classical" folklorists. This work is supporting the availability of a huge amount of digital and structured knowledge on folktales to digital humanists. The ontological encoding of past and current motif-indexation and classification systems for folktales was in the first step limited to English language data. This led us to focus on making those newly generated formal knowledge sources available in a few more languages, like German, Russian and Bulgarian. We stress the importance of achieving this multilingual extension of our ontologies at a larger scale, in order for example to support the automated analysis and classification of such narratives in a large variety of languages, as those are getting more and more accessible on the Web.


To establish the determination methods of phosphates in foods, the following methods were examined, being followed with satisfactory results. Polyphosphates contained in foods could be separated qualitatively by thin-layer chromatography using Avicel-SF cellulose powder as adsorbent and a mixture of 0.5% pyridine-acetone solution and 20% trichloroacetic acid solution as the developing solvent. The quantity of phosphates was determined indirectly by determining the amount of molybdenum by atomic absorption spectrophotometry, after the formation of complex between phosphate and molybdate. Ion-exchange column chromatographic technique was applied for the separation of various kinds of polyphosphates contained in soft drink. These methods were applied to various kinds of foods, and from our results it was found that polyphosphates were present only in pressed ham, sausage and soft drink, and the amount of phosphates added to foods was found to be not so much.


E-mail: email@example.com Received: 20/03/2021 Acceptance: 20/04/2021 Available Online: 22/04/2021 Published: 01/07/2021 The effects of black cumin seed powder, papaya seed powder, and mustard seed powder on broiler chickens' growth and blood indices were investigated. The basal diets (starter and grower) were formulated and divided into five portions. The first portion (T1) had no supplementation; portion two (T2) had 1.1 g/100g oxytetracycline (OT) supplementation. 15g/kg papaya seed powder, mustard seed powder, and black cumin seed powder were added to portions three (T3), four (T4), and five (T5), respectively. The haematological indices were not significantly affected by the dietary treatments. The birds' relative growth rate was improved by oxytetracycline, papaya, mustard, and black cumin dietary supplementation. The serum alanine aminotransferase concentration of the broiler chickens in T1 was not statistically significantly different compared to T2, T3, and T4. Birds in treatments T1 and T2 had serum albumin concentrations that were comparable to those fed T3 and T4 supplemented diets but statistically lower (P<0.05) than T5. Weekly growth rate and relative growth rate were significantly improved under T3 and T4.


Introduction: Cholera is an acute intestinal bacterial disease that initiates with watery diarrhea and vomiting. The cause of infection is a gram negative bacillus named Vibrio cholera. Cholera has been caused terrible outbreaks of diarrheal disease in the world and is a major problem in Africa, Asia and South America. This study aimed to determine the relationships between cholera risk factors and its outbreak in kashan . Materials & Method: In this population based case-control study, 44 cholera cases and 44 healthy controls among the population of kashan city were studied. Disease confirmation was based on the national program of disease control and stool examining. Cholera risk factors were assessed by interviewing. Data were analyzed using SPSS software. Logistic regression was used to determine the relationship between variables and disease. The significance level was set at 0.05. Findings: Analysis of data showed that cholera was associated with job, source of drinking water, consumption of vegetables and carrot juice. After adjustment for confounding factors using logistic regression analysis, the relationship was statistically remained significant for vegetable consumption (OR=22.93), carrot juice (OR=5.32) and ice pellets (OR=5). Discussion & Conclusion : To determine the risk factors associated with an outbreak and providing necessary information for decision making, case control or cross sectional studies were recommended. This study provided information on the cholera outbreak and its risk factors which have a vital role for controlling of future outbreaks .


The median is an important summary measure for survival data. A confidence interval for the median estimated from censored survival data is easily obtained from the pointwise confidence interval around the Kaplan–Meier estimator. A test for equality of k medians is also given.

Keywords:

survival analysis;
confidence interval;
Kaplan–Meier estimator


Pyoderma gangrenosum (PG) is a reactive, noninfectious, neutrophilic dermatosis. Diagnosis of PG is based on exclusion, due to lack of availability of a confirmatory test. PG is not caused by infection or gangrene. Misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis of PG can lead to devastating results.


Time‐domain electromagnetic (TEM) prospecting systems, including the Crone pulse electromagnetic (PEM) system, are becoming more widely used in the search for massive sulfides. We have developed interpretation aids for the moving‐source configuration of the Crone PEM system using the PLATE and SPHERE programs developed by the University of Toronto. PLATE models a thin rectangular sheet in free space and SPHERE models a two‐layer sphere in free space. The effects of varying the model parameters, particularly the dip, depth, and conductance for large plates, are shown. As the dip of a plate goes from 0 to 90 degrees, the negative side lobe over the conductor becomes less pronounced. The depth can be estimated from the amplitude of the positive peak over the edge of a conductor. The depth of exploration for the Crone PEM system is approximately twice the coil separation for shallow dipping plates, and one coil separation for steeply dipping plates when there is not a significant half‐space or overburden resp...


Phase-change in reduced gravity has been receiving considerable attention due to its relevance to a large number of applications, such as casting and processing of materials, materials purification, and growth of pure crystals. A two-dimensional fixed-grid numerical technique is developed to investigate the effects of natural and thermocapillary convections on the freezing of tin and sodium in a rectangular cavity at 1 g, 1/3 g, 1/6 g and zero gravity. The results showed that the combined effects of natural and thermocapillary convections increased the melt velocities, and reduced the freezing rates, particularly near the top free surface. Because the Marangoni number for tin is 58 times that for sodium, the thermocapillary effect for the former was much more pronounced. The solid fraction in the cavity was only slightly dependent on the Bond number Bo, but the local crust thickness varied considerably with Bo.