McAdams, A. James. Judging the Past in Unified Germany. Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press, 2001. 288 pp. $53.00 hardcover; $20.00 paperback. All countries that have successfully shed authoritarian regimes face the demand for retroactive justice for the victims. A. James McAdams's convincingly argued monograph analyzes how Germany has met this challenge with respect to the legacy ofthe SED-regime over the first decade after unification. Conceptually, McAdams distinguishes four forms of retroactive justice: "criminal justice" exemplified in the trials against border guards and SED functionaries responsible for killing civilians at the German-German border; "disqualifying justice" exemplified in the handling of the Stasi-files; "moral justice" exemplified in the case of the Bundestag's Enquete Commission charged to investigate the GDR-past; and "corrective justice" exemplified in the program of property restitution. McAdams's monograph masterfully examines how legal-constitutional, political, historical, and moral discourses intersect in the policy-- and decision-making processes necessary to implement retroactive justice. The author attributes Germany's success in this regard to the country's willingness to favor historical contextualization of past deeds over blanket moral judgments. This also describes McAdams's own approach, which is guided by the assumption that a genuine effort was made to do justice to victims of the GDR-regime. He supplements his examination of the historical record with interviews he conducted with decision-makers during the 1990s. His research leads him to debunk some of the cherished myths about unification. Me-Adams's first example, the trials against the border guards and SED-functionaries, illustrates the complexity of determining individual culpability. McAdams lauds the German Justice Department's recognition that a viable concept of law existed in the GDR, under which the perpetrators could be judged. In his opinion, the fact that most judges based their verdicts on existing GDR law rather than Western German standards refutes the cliche of the GDR as an "Unrechtsstaat," which perpetrators frequently used in order to excuse their conduct. Hence, the courts were able to assess individual responibility while avoiding ascribing collective guilt to the East German population. McAdams gives equally enthusiastic endorsement to how the FRG dealt with the complicated historical and legal situation in the case of the Stasi files and property restitution. As to the latter, McAdams concedes it contributed most to the tensions between East and West Germans. At the same time, however, he takes issue with the popular notion that the government acted like a colonial power in taking over the GDR wholesale. …


"Pressure from Turkish TV's watchdog is forcing the writers of a popular TV show to have their lead characters, an unmarried couple, wed in the interests of promoting greater morality, daily Haberturk reported today. Zeynep and Ozan, the couple in the popular "1 Erkek 1 Kadin" (One Man, One Woman), will be married in a wedding scene that is to be included in next week's episode following pressure by the Turkish Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK). The pair's failure to tie the knot, d...


In the project of open education, establishing and improving study supporting system which is suited to open education and satisfy students' demand is a systematic engineering. It covers the whole process of teaching and learning. In the systematic engineering, we should quicken the application and equipment of modern education technoledge, redefine the role of the teacher, strengthen the construction of teaching resouces and scientific research ,and at the same time strengthen the guidance of individual study method, so that we can keep study supporting system of open education on track.


This research examined if job stress mediates the relationship between physical environmental risk and safety behavior of employees. In addition, we investigated whether perceived control moderates the physical environmental risk-job stress link. In order to test our hypotheses, 1005 employees in va...


Objective To determine(compare) the diagnostic value of transvaginal ultrasonography and hysteroscopy in patients with postmenopausal bleeding. Methods Between January, 2000 and December, 2003, 63 women with postmenopausal bleeding were enrolled in a retrospective study. They underwent transvaginal ultrasonography and hysteroscopy, and were submitted to biopsy after hysteroscopy. Results Among 63 women enrolled, the histological findings were scanty material in 2(3 17%), atrophy in 18(28 57%), normal endometrium in 4(6 35%), endometritis in 1(1 59%), polyps in 11(17 46%), leiomyoma in 9(14 29%), non atypical hyperplasia in 3(4 76%), atypical hyperplasia in 2(3 17%), and endometrial carcinoma in 13 cases(20 76%). For the assessment of endometrial carcinoma, vaginal ultrasonography revealed sensitivity 69 23%, specificity 88%, positive predictive value 60%, negative predictive value 91 67%; and hysteroscopy revealed sensitivity 76 92%, specificity 98%, positive predictive value 90 91%, negative predictive value 94 23; and the combination of transvaginal ultrasonography and hysteroscopy revealed sensitivity 100%, specificity 89 7%, positive predictive value 92 3%, negative predictive value 100%. Conclusion Transvaginal ultrasonography was useful screening tests for postmenopausal bleeding women. The combination of transvaginal ultrasonography and hysteroscopy was a superior diagnostive procedure for the women with endometrial thickness equal of more than 4 mm.


Opioid drugs include opium and all its mixtures, its derivatives, and related synthetic compounds. They are all narcotics and they produce drug addiction of the same general variety. The important phenomena of tolerance, physical dependence and emotional dependence are responsible for many of the medical problems associated with their use. Medical disorders are especially common among heroin addicts, since heroin is only obtainable illegally and at high expense, and it is usually administered intravenously by the addict himself or a fellow addict. Medical disorders commonly seen among addicts include serum hepatitis, venereal diseases, malnutrition, skin infections with residual scars, superficial venous thrombosis, abscess formation of the skin and of internal organs, amenorrhea, fungus diseases of the skin, respiratory diseases (pneumonia, tuberculosis, bronchial asthma), psychosomatic disorders, periodontal disease and dental caries.


We outline a plan for a detailed study of SIDIS hadron-multiplicities (pion and kaon). The goal of this plan is to firmly establish the kinematic region over which SIDIS reaction can be reliably interpreted to the next-to-leading-order QCD in terms of parton distributions and fragmentation functions.


This paper summarizes results of automatic analysis of coordinating constructions and appositions in the Prague Dependency Treebank using a method of analysis by reduction. Experiments are performed on a large subset of the treebank. This subset is obtained as a result of a query providing a set of more than 4,300 suitable sentences and their tree structures containing coordinations and appositions. The automatic procedure is complemented by a manual analysis of reasons why certain sentences (trees) were not fully reduced. This analysis helps to gain a better insight into the phenomena of coordination and apposition and their formal properties. Dependency trees have a long tradition in linguistics, especially in the description of Slavic languages of Central and Eastern Europe. Although the history of linguistics witnessed many heated discussions between the followers of the tradition of constituent trees and the linguists adoring dependency trees (both sides usually unable to persuade the opponents about the advantages of their type of trees), it seems that the dependency notation has recently been recognized as an efficient and transparent data type for the description of syntactic relations in treebanks for a number of languages. One of the dependency treebanks which became quite popular among linguists due to the thoroughness of its annotation is the Prague Dependency Treebank (PDT), see (Bejček et al. 2013), the corpus exploited in this paper. One of the difficulties faced by the dependency notation is the necessity to express within a dependency tree not only dependencies, but also relations which are naturally not of a dependency nature. This is a well-known issue, a member of the Prague Linguistic Circle, Lucien Tesnière (Tesnière 1959) already distinguished between structural relations which we nowadays call as dependency ('connexion'), and between the coordinating relationships ('junction').1 In this paper we study primarily the relationships of coordination and apposition, which pose a great challenge to any dependency formalism. The analysis is performed Copyright c © 2015, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved. However, such conception is not accepted without reservations – there are influential approaches which capture coordination as a (type of) a dependency relation, see esp. (Mel'čuk 1988). by means of analysis by reduction (Lopatková, Plátek, and Kuboň 2005; Lopatková, Plátek, and Sgall 2007), a procedure which naturally defines governing and dependent words in a dependency relationship; we enrich the procedure to capture also relations of coordination and apposition. We have applied the analysis by reduction automatically to dependency trees of selected sentences from the Prague Dependency Treebank. The results obtained by this method were then manually analyzed. This approach actually brings two kinds of results – it helps to gain better insight into the problem of coordination and its annotation in the corpus, and, on top of that, it also helps to identify potential annotation inconsistencies in the corpus. The theory we adhere to in our investigations, dependency-based Functional Generative Description (FGD), is described primarily in (Sgall, Hajičová, and Panevová 1986). Analysis by Reduction The original method of analysis by reduction (AR) makes it possible to formulate the relationship between dependency and word order (Lopatková, Plátek, and Kuboň 2005). This approach is beneficial especially for modeling the syntactic structure of languages with a high degree of free word order, where the dependency structure and word order are only loosely related. Let us now describe the ideas behind the method used for sentence analysis. Analysis by reduction is based on a stepwise simplification of an analyzed sentence. It defines possible sequences of reductions (deletions) in the sentence – each step of AR is represented by deleting of at least one word of the input sentence; in specific cases, deleting is accompanied by a shift of a word form to different word order position. Let us stress the basic constraints imposed on the analysis by reduction, namely: (i) the obvious constraint on preserving individual word forms, their morphological characteristics and/or their surface dependency relations, and (ii) the constraint on preserving the correctness (a grammatically correct sentence must remain correct after its simplification). The basic principles of AR can be illustrated by the following Czech sentence (1).


Simple Summary The NEOPA trial was a large clinical trial in Germany, funded by the German government. It aimed to investigate if a treatment before the surgical removal of pancreatic head cancer, consisting of a combined local radiation and chemotherapy, might improve the survival of the patients. The trial had to be discontinued due to recruitment failure. In this article, the reasons for this are investigated and discussed, intending to draw lessens for future research initiatives and to address deficiencies in the surgical study culture. Abstract Background: A significant number of clinical trials must be prematurely discontinued due to recruitment failure, and only a small fraction publish results and a failure analysis. Based on our experience on conducting the NEOPA trial on neoadjuvant radiochemotherapy for resectable and borderline resectable pancreatic carcinoma (NCT01900327—funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research—BMBF), we performed an analysis of potential reasons for recruitment failure and general problems in conducting clinical trials in Germany. Methods: Systematic analysis of environmental factors, trial history, conducting and funding in the background of the published literature. Results: The recruitment failure was based on various study-specific conceptional and local environmental aspects and in peculiarities of the German surgical study culture. General reservations against a neo-adjuvant study concept combined with game changing scientific progresses during the long-lasting planning and funding phase have led to a reduced interest in the trial design and recruitment. Conclusions: Trial planning and conducting should be focused, professionalized and financed on a national basis. Individual interests must be subordinated to reach the goal to perform more relevant and successful clinical trials in Germany. Bureaucratic processes must be further fastened between a trial idea and the start of a study.


The CD30‐postive lymphoproliferative disorders, including lymphomatoid papulosis and primary cutaneous anaplastic large cell lymphoma, account for up to 30% of all cutaneous T‐cell lymphomas (CTCLs) and are the second most common form of CTCLs after mycosis fungoides. Both conditions differ in their clinical presentations; however, they share the expression of the CD30 antigen as a common immunophenotypic hallmark. There is a wide spectrum of management options depending on factors such as extent of disease, staging and treatment tolerability. This Clinical Practice Statement is reflective of the current clinical practice in Australia.


This paper introduces ideas covered at greater length and in greater depth in the following three volumes: New results on prime numbers: There is such a thing as society and: More for Less. Among ideas which it introduces are: i) a new approach to the generation of integers; ii) the idea of a mathematical-physical dichotomy and its usefulness for describing and understanding mathematical and physical and economic phenomena and; iii) fundamental roles for the ideas of duality and intervening duality in representing and explaining mathematical and physical and economic phenomena. Specifically: Sections 2 through 6 of the paper establish how abstract mathematical and physical principles can usefully be founded on a new way of motivating the generation of integers stemming from more-for-less principles together with principles of mathematical/physical dichotomy and of duality. In those five sections it is also shown how, at the same level of abstraction, such principles may be useful in exploring economic phenomena as well as more narrowly mathematical and physical phenomena. The paper then proceeds, in Sections 7 and 8, to consider foundational issues with reference to mathematics and to physics and to economics. In particular, in Section 8 much attention is given to demonstrating how and why formalizations of economic processes of interaction between individuals necessarily involve variants of uncertainty and incompleteness principles which differ in fundamental ways from those which have been considered to be important for more narrowly mathematical and physical investigations. Following an Overview the contents of the paper are: 2. More for Less An Economic Example:A Physical Example; A Mathematical Example; 3. More for less and the generation of integers; 4. More for less, contradiction and mathematical/physical dichotomy; 5. More for less and price related economic interpretations; 6. Mutual exclusion and incompleteness, orthogonality and duality; 7. Some important methodological points; 8. Some important applications to economic methodology; 9. An overall summary and some remarks concerning purposive indeterminacy, purposive incompleteness and purposive (self) contradiction. Appendix 1. Contradiction, self contradiction and collective choice: new directions for commodities and characteristics analysis. Appendix 2 Intervening duality, degeneracy and cycling via the question z=1? Appendix 3. Degeneracy, alternate optima and cycling.


A novel approach for detecting and recognizing arrow traffic lights in urban scenes was proposed.Firstly,the boards of arrow traffic lights were localized by image segmentation and morphology processing.Secondly,color image of traffic light board region was converted to YCbCr color space.Candidates of traffic lights(red,yellow,green) were obtained through threshold segmentation in Cb and Cr channels,by judging morphology and relative position between candidate and its board.Thirdly,Gabor wavelet transform and 2D independent component analysis(2DICA) were used to extract traffic light candidate's features,and finally nearest neighbor classifier identifies arrow direction.Experimental results indicate that the overall recognition rates of the proposed method are over 91%,and computation time of each frame is 152 ms.So the proposed algorithm will provide real-time,robust and accurate arrow traffic lights information to moving vehicles.


The objective of this research is to analyze COVID-19 outbreak data in Asia using k-means and Seasonal Patterns techniques. The data was gathered from various organizations worldwide, available on GitHub from February 24, 2020, to May 16, 2022. The population density in Asia was clustered into Clusters_0 (high density), Clusters_1 (low density), and Clusters_2 (medium density) using k-means clustering. Moreover, forecasting was performed using the seasonal variation technique to create a map of the COVID-19 spread in Asia. Based on the available actual data, the spread of COVID-19 is expected to exhibit a decreasing trend in transmission over the next 30 days with a total margin of reliability rate of 81.21%. This research can be useful for policymakers, organizations, and public health officials to make informed decisions about future COVID-19 response plans.


State estimation has a special role in the real-time control and monitoring of smart distribution networks. State estimation process is typically based on network topology and measurements sent from meters. Employing an accurate state estimation algorithm as well as transferring high volumes of measurements are serious challenges in large scale grids. In this paper, compressive sensing is used to reduce the measurement data volume, before transmission, to alleviate problems such as lack of storage space, interference and delay. In this paper, a modified extended Kalman filter algorithm is proposed which estimates states from compressed data directly without applying the reconstruction procedure. The main differences between the proposed method and EKF are the network dynamic modeling approach and the states correction mechanism. The IEEE 33-node distribution network with two DGs is employed to illustrate the effective performance of the proposed method. Results show that the states of the test feeder are accurately estimated even with only 50% compressed measurements.


In this paper, we use the (k,s)−Riemann-Liouville operator to establish new results on integral inequalities by using fractional moments of continuous random variables.


An observational study, involving 1053 employees of a Glasgow factory, was conducted to determine the overall level of behaviour change and the characteristics of those who responded after attending a workplace health check. Eight hundred and sixty-eight individuals received one of four versions of a health check. Participants were deemed to have `responded' if they made one or more of the advised behaviour changes (stopped smoking, increased exercise, reduced alcohol consumption, improved diet). Twenty-six per cent of participants were not `at risk' on entry to the study. Those in the `not at risk' group were characterised by having higher socio-economic status and educational attainment than those `at risk' and were more likely to perceive themselves as being in good health and at low risk of coronary heart disease. Forty-seven per cent of those who received the health check and returned for follow-up reported one or more of the desired behaviour changes (responders). In comparison to those who made none of the desired changes (the non-responders), responders tended to perceive their own health to be poorer and their risk of coronary heart disease to be greater and they were more likely to have perceived the health check as threatening. In future, health check interventions should take account of these two important findings: that such a large proportion (almost half) responded positively by changing behaviour and that it was those who perceived themselves to be `at risk' who tended to comply with advised behaviour changes.


A novel compact refractive index (RI) sensor based on an ultra-weak intrinsic fiber Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) is proposed and demonstrated, which is simply fabricated by splicing a tiny section of thin-core fiber to a single-mode fiber. Such an FPI exhibits an average RI sensitivity of 240dB/RIU over a wide RI range of 1.3326–1.4305, with a maximum sensitivity of 1110.7dB/RIU at the RI of 1.4305. In addition, the FPI can also achieve the simultaneous measurement of the RI and temperature.


Heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) occurs in as many as 3% of patients who are exposed to this drug, and some 20% of patients with HIT suffer


Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a common atrial arrhythmia occurring in clinical practice and can be diagnosed using electrocardiogram (ECG) signal. A novel method is proposed to detect normal, AF, non-AF related other abnormal heart rhythms and noisy recordings based on the combination of deep features and handcraft features. We used Computing in Cardiology Challenge 2017 database as training set and MIT-BIH atrial fibrillation database (AFDB) as test set. The proposed algorithm was achieved an accuracy of 96.3%, F1 of 95.5%, sensitivity of 88.7% and specificity of 99.6% in MIT-BIH AFDB, better than the method which only adopted deep features or handcraft features. Experimental results show that our method would be a good choice for the detection of the AF.


The market for funeral services is one dealing with the most sacred and emotionalised objects. Similarly to the life insurance industry and the organ transplant industry it is conditioned by the fact of death. The paper considers the following issues: what is sold out and purchased on this market? What are the qualities of the goods offered? On which terms are economic transactions arranged? And which factors define buyers' rational behaviour? A major insight of the study is that a cultural construct of deserving funerals is traded here. Market for funeral services can be viewed as an interplay between sacred and secular. Understanding of cultural restraints governing market transactions allows us to reveal how ritual rules are transformed into market rules.


A method is given to count the minimum temperature difference between target and background under given conditions on the perspective of countermeasure Forward Looking Infrared system(FLIR).The four targets with different sizes are set.By counting four different targets,the relationship of target size and minimum temperature difference detected by FLIR is discussed mainly.


Destination of this research is how to use this software simulation swansoft able to improve the practice of 3 grade students on courses machining base CNC use CNC machine type Sinumerik 802Se/c turning. The population was 3 grade students of Machinical Engineering Education skill courses totaling 62 of 2 class. Methods of data collection using the documentation and performance test also observation sheet. The result showed that there was an incrase in students learning outcomes pre-test score was 6,38 after initially getting treatment increased by 7,76. This is in contrast with the control group increased pre-test score 6,33 to 6,99. The result of the test T post-test obtained t = 12,024 for practice. Therefore,  tcount=10,943 > ttable = 1,67. Therefore, the implementation software simulation swansoft would make a better outcome to the students.


1. From myth to personality disorder 2. A normal asset with cultural differences 3. The origins and scope of narcissistic personality disorder 4. Identifying pathological narcissism 5. Differentiating pathological narcissism 6. Asset or disruption? Narcissism in the workplace 7. My way or no way? Narcissism and suicide 8. Correction or corrosion? Changes in pathological narcissism EPILOGUE


Sliding friction of a charged gel on a substrate was investigated by applying electric voltage between gel and the substrate. It is found that the sliding friction increases markedly with the increase of the applied voltage; the friction coefficient increased by a factor of about 10 when 70 V voltage is applied. This voltage dependence of frictional force is explained by using the adhesion friction model proposed by Schallamach.


We define that Sisplay's is the central point of contact between the IT department and the different areas of People's Play, where you can find a solution to the problems related to hardware and software or to receive answers to their queries. The idea of designing this software is to reduce the steps that were performed, as the movement of technical personnel to resolve incidents at different branches, causing delays and losses in commercial areas.

 The great need for Sisplay's for People Play's is because there is no systematic way of having a clear and concise information equipment and software company and not be able to have control over the state of the themselves and be able to serve efficiently and quickly than to improve the processes in each point of sale of the company. The proposed grade for this project is to show how the initial prototype will Sisplay People's Play's for as a technological tool to improve management processes equipment, lifting incidents, support and troubleshooting of various problems submitted to the company (computers, printers, servers, etc..) and also can be carried through a database for a service history for each of the points of sales.


Protein kinase C (PKC) is highly concentrated in the hippocampus and is thus a possible neural substrate of learning and memory. This study was designed to determine whether partial acquisition (i.e., the minimal amount of training leading to above‐chance performance) of a spatial discrimination in an eight‐arm radial maze alters hippocampal PKC activity. Mice were sacrificed at different times (5 minutes, 1 hour, 24 hours) after the second learning session, and PKC activity was measured in both cytosolic and membrane fractions of the hippocampus. In order to determine which component of the task was involved in the alterations in enzymatic activity, hippocampal PKC activity was also measured in a group of mice that was allowed to explore the maze freely. Significantly less PKC activity was found in the cytosolic fraction from the trained animals than from the quiet or active control groups. No differences were observed between the quiet and active controls. In contrast, there were no significant between‐groups differences in membrane‐bound PKC activity, although a negative correlation between the membrane‐bound PKC activity and learning scores (accuracy) was noted. These results suggest that hippocampal PKC activity is involved essentially in the associative component of the task. The lack of learning‐induced alterations in membrane‐bound PKC activity and the negative correlation between this enzymatic activity and learning accuracy are discussed.


In this essay I explore problems of pedagogy related to Hans Krása's Brundibár by drawing heavily upon the thinking of two divergent theoretical perspectives regarding Holocaust testimony as advanced by Giorgio Agamben (2002) and Shoshana Felman (1992). I theorize that lodged within a space of difficult knowledge coalesced through violence, trauma, complicity, memory, and music lies a rupture at the heart of the Brundibár experience. This space is created yet not altogether embraced by contemporary musical experiences of Brundibár in the most extensive and all-encompassing comprehension of its musicking: experiencing the operetta allows its participants to hear those whom it is impossible to hear. I claim that the musical experience as inhered within and enabled by the operetta serves a testimonial and therefore pedagogical function. This function, figuratively hearing and being present to Brundibár's present absences, implies an empathic walking-beside-in-solidarity and is a position that I suggest allows participants to engage with the operetta more fully.


Macimbi have two generations per annum one in November and the other in April. The
November generation has a higher population per tree 206.9?56.7 than the April generation
100?25. The growth rate is the same for both generations. Each moth oviposits on one tree
and the average distance between oviposited trees is 45.7?15 m. The protein and fat content of the larvae are 59% and 14% respectively. The mass of fresh full-grown ?worms? is 12g and they are 8-9cm long. The growth rate is increased when the relative humidity is above 75% and the temperature is 30?2oC. Worms harvested before maturity need evisceration whereas those gathered when fully grown need no evisceration. Spines begin to be effective
as defense mechanism against predators after the fourth week. The pupa stage lasts 38?2
days for the November generation and 180?12 days for the April generation because of
winter. It is suggested that persons be allocated woodlots as this could lead to responsible and sustainable harvesting and protection of the environment.


This workshop will help new FYC instructors interpret learning outcomes and best practices for designing research assignments for beginning researchers as related to information literacy concepts. We will use the "FYC Instructor Toolkit" libguide, discuss


Women with a history of preeclampsia exhibit increased salt sensitivity of blood pressure in postpartum period, which might be responsible for their increased risk of future cardiovascular diseases. However, it is unclear whether preeclampsia can cause the increased salt sensitivity at postpartum. Vasopressin may play a role in the pathogenesis of both preeclampsia and salt‐sensitive hypertension. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine whether the exposure to preeclampsia causes the increased salt sensitivity of blood pressure at postpartum, and if so, whether vasopressin is involved in its process.


Natural gas has been playing an increasingly important role in the global energy transition with various efforts underway to minimize greenhouse gas emissions during gas production to align natural gas E&P operations with strategic ESG goals. Plunger lift (PL), one of the major artificial lift types applied to natural gas wells, leverages the potential energy naturally present in gas wells to lift liquid to the surface and hence has a lower operational greenhouse gas emissions footprint than other lift types leveraging pumps (ESP), compressors (Gas Lift) or electric motors (Rod Lift). A common challenge in PL wells is the occurrence of liquid loading events, during which the mass of the liquid column and plunger becomes too large to be naturally lifted, and manual intervention techniques are required to bring the plunger and liquid back to the surface. One such intervention technique is the venting of pressurized gas from the well. During this process, very large amounts of methane and other pollutants are released into the atmosphere, which not only presents a significant economic loss but also results in a substantial negative impact on the greenhouse gas footprint of the PL operation. This study presents results from a field pilot during which physics and AI-assisted technology are leveraged to automatically optimize plunger lift operations with the objective of minimizing flowing bottom hole pressure, decreasing the variance of plunger velocities, and avoiding plunger rise velocities that are outside safe operating standards. During the presented field pilot, production of natural gas was increased by 4% while the number of required venting events and the associated release of greenhouse gas was reduced by 48% due to enhanced well stability.

 Fully automated setpoint management leveraging physics-assisted artificial intelligence algorithms was implemented in a field-based pilot, which resulted in a monthly production uplift up to 4% over plan as well as a 48% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions due to increased well stability and fewer venting events.


THIS study analyzes the effects of a repurchase of stock by tender offer, a firm action often compared to a cash dividend, because both actions involve a cash flow from the firm to its common stockholders. Firms can repurchase common stock through: (1) privately negotiated purchases, (2) purchases in the secondary market, or (3) tender offers. Of the three methods, tender offers generally involve the largest repurchases of stock and as a consequence are the most promising form of stock repurchase for empirical study. While an issuer tender offer for common stock is similar to a cash dividend, the analogy clearly is not complete, since: (1) A stock repurchase is generally taxed as a capital gain (or loss) while a dividend is taxed as ordinary income in its entirety. (2) A stock repurchase requires an associated decrease in total slfares outstanding while a dividend does not. (3) A stock repurchase is a voluntary transaction by individual shareholders which generally alters relative shareholdings, while a dividend is involuntary and has no effect on relative shareholdings. (4) A right to tender is nontransferable and its value can only be realized by tendering shares or selling shares in the secondary market prior to offer expiration, while a dividend is received by all shareholders. Stock repurchases by tender offer can cause major adjustments in firms' capital structures by increasing leverage and significantly modify stockholders' personal tax liabilities and relative share ownership. Yet, there is little evidence in the literature concerning the price impacts on the firm's securities of the announcement and expiration of tender offers. In the process of bridging this gap, we hope to be able to gain some insights into the effects of capital structure and dividend policy changes.


The spread of infectious diseases globally has been a threat to public health and national economies for many centuries. One of the undeniable sectors that contributed to the spread of disease is maritime transport. This research aimed to examine ship sanitation for controlling and preventing the potential risk of disease transmission. This study used an observational survey method, with a sample of 24 ships that anchored in the port of Kendari by using an accidental sampling technique. Findings from this research revealed that there were ships with high-risk sanitation categories or have unqualified levels of sanitation. The main determinants that contribute to accelerating the global transmission of many infectious diseases on the ship are the sign and presence of vectors. Outbreaks associated with the presence of vectors on board are usually related to inadequate control and sanitation along with insufficient attention to preventing contamination. Therefore, the crewmember on board needs to increase their knowledge through various ship sanitation training, develop sanitation programs and integrate sustainable monitoring and evaluation programs of vectors toimprove sanitation as an effort to prevent risk factors for disease transmission.


Disposing municipal solid wastes (MSW) with the cement clinker kiln could be a good solution to the domestic MSW disposal problems. But during the transportation and storage, the kitchen residue in MSW produces considerable quantity of malodorous gases and percolating liquor under the action of microbe, which will produce bad impact on operators and surrounding environment. Experimental study was done for understanding inhibitive effect to fermentation with common intermediates and/or raw materials in cement plant, and the result shows that adding these fermentation inhibitors can effectively inhibit the fermentation phenomenon, reduce the amount of odor emission within 60 hours, which is an enough time duration for MSW disposing.


For a decade, the Ceph distributed file system (CephFS) has been widely used to serve the ever-growing big data in many key fields ranging from Internet services to AI computing. To scale out the massive metadata access, CephFS adopts a dynamic subtree partitioning method, splitting the hierarchical namespace and distributing subtrees across multiple metadata servers. However, this method suffers from a severe imbalance problem that may result in poor performance due to its inaccurate imbalance prediction, ignorance of workload characteristics, and unnecessary/invalid migration ac-tivities. To eliminate these inefficiencies, we propose Lunule, a novel CephFS metadata load balancer, which employs an imbalance fac-tor model for accurately determining when to trigger re-balance and tolerate benign imbalanced situations. Lunule further adopts a workload-aware migration planner to appropriately select sub-tree migration candidates. Compared to baselines, Lunule achieves better load balance, increases the metadata throughput by up to 315.8%, and shortens the tail job completion time by up to 64.6% for five real-world workloads and their mixture, respectively. Be-sides, Lunule is capable of handling the metadata cluster expansion and the client workload growth, and scales linearly on a cluster of 16 MDSs.


The aim of this study is to find out the effect of parallel type aerobic and anaerobic training on the muscular endurance of hockey players. Forty five male hockey players selected from Department of Physical Education and Sports Science, Annamalai University, Tamil Nadu. They were divided into three groups, namely, aerobic training group - I and anaerobic training group - II and control group - III. The both groups experimented with aerobic and anaerobic training respectively for 8 weeks. The data collected from the two groups prior to and post experimentation were statistically analyzed to find out the significant difference if any, by applying the analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). Since three groups were involved the Scheffe's test was applied as post hoc test to determine the paired mean differences, if any. In all the cases statistical significance was fixed at 0.05 levels.


Abstract The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of solution treatment on the corrosion behavior of Mg-8%Al-(0-1)%Zn casting alloys in 1M NaCl aqueous solution. After the solution treatment, all alloys showed singleα-(Mg) phase microstructure by dissolution of β(Mg 17 Al 12 ) phase into the α-(Mg) matrix. The H 2 evolution volumedecreased with an increase in Zn content, which indicates that the addition of Zn plays a beneficial role indecreasing corrosion rate of the Mg-Al-Zn alloy in solution-treated state. The microstructural evaluations on thecorrosion products and corroded surfaces after the immersion test in 1 M NaCl solution revealed that the incor-poration of more Al 2 O 3 and ZnO into the corrosion product, by which the penetration of Cl − ions is impeded, arethought to be responsible for the better corrosion resistance in relation with the Zn addition. (Received April 10, 2015; Revised April 20, 2015; Accepted April 28, 2015)Key words : Mg-Al-Zn alloy, Microstructure, Corrosion properties, solution treatment


Background: One of the basic steps to quality improvement in hospitals is to obtain patients' feedback. Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the quality of hospital services from patient's perspective in hospitals affiliated with the Dezful University of Medical Sciences (DUMS), Dezful, Iran. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 400 patients were selected from six hospitals of DUMS. The data was collected using the SERVQUAL questionnaire including 22 pairs of questions (organized in two aspects of service importance and performance) in 5 dimensions of tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. The importance-performance analysis (IPA) was used to determine the weaknesses of service quality and prioritizing the aspects requiring improvement. Results: The mean age of the patients was 38.5, 32% (n = 128) had academic degrees, 55% (n = 220) were self-employed, and 16.5% (n = 66) did not have health insurance. The average length of day was 7.8 ± 8.3 days. The mean score of the importance and performance were 4.37 ± 0.75 and 3.72 ± 0.94, respectively. The service quality gap was -0.65. Tangibility (-0.68) had the largest negative gap while the smallest gap was related to the reliability (-0.63). The gap between importance and performance was significantly negative in all attributes and dimensions (P < 0.001). The results of the IPA showed that the tangibility was located in the Q VI, reliability and assurance in the Q I, and the responsiveness and empathy in the Q III quadrants. Conclusions: Quality of hospital services did not meet patients' expectations and there is a room for improvement and obviate the gaps. Decision-makers can further use the results of the IPA to effectively allocate limited resources giving special attentions to the organizational weaknesses.


The cloying aroma of family values is in the air. While most Americans no longer want to live in Ozzie and Harriet families, now we can smell as if we do. Vanilla Fields, Angel, Escape for Men, "the trendiest perfumes of the current era" according to a New York Times style commentator, are "family values in a bottle-olfactory comfort foods, ripe with the scentmemory of childhood, redolent of the sweet smells of mother's kitchen."' Thanks to the perfume industry's market response to the gnawing gap that exists between family realities and family values in the U.S. today, Hilary Clinton can conduct public policy work from the West Wing of the White House smelling as if she had finally learned to bake cookies. In November 1992, there seemed impeccable cause to imagine that the U.S. family wars were about to abate. The extent and irreversibility of family change, assisted by Murphy Brown, the Republican convention fiasco, and the Year of the Woman, seemed to have vanquished the familyvalues brigades, while "the economy, stupid" lured many Reagan Democrats back from their costly supply-side fling. Who would have predicted that even the liberal media would scramble to rehabilitate Dan Quayle's image before Bill and Hilary had survived their blistering first hundred days? Yet that is exactly what happened. "Dan Quayle Was Right," blared the April 1993 cover of the Atlantic, a magazine popular with the very "cultural elite" whom the former vice-president had blamed for the decline of Western civilized family life. Far from withering, a revisionist campaign for family values has flourished under Democratic skies. While Clinton's job stimulus package suffered a silent demise, pro-family-values stories mushroomed in magazines, newspapers, on radio and TV talk shows, and in scholarly journals. The Atlantic cover story by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead2 ignited "the single strongest public response to any issue ever published by the Atlantic since at least 1981," and was recycled from sea to rocky sea.3 A New York Times op-ed, "The Controversial Truth: Two-Parent Families Are Better," by Rutgers University sociologist David Popenoe, also enjoyed acclaim, with retreads and derivatives appearing from the Chronicle of Higher Education to the Santa Rosa (Calif) Press Democrat.4 In the winter 1992-93 American Scholar, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a founding father of post-World War II family-crisis


The incidence of falls in older adults increases with a decline in lower extremity strength, functional balance, and multi-tasking while walking. This study examined the relationship between plantar flexor muscle strength and balance as it is used in everyday tasks. The participants were thirty-eight adults age 65 or older residing in an independent living community. Participants' plantar flexor strength was measured using a Hand-Held Dynamometer followed by performance of the Timed Up- and-Go (TUG) test under three different conditions. The relationship between strength and TUG scores was explored. No significant relationship was found, therefore, plantar flexors were not found to be the most important muscle group in the lower extremities to reduce fall risk. In situations that older adults face daily, challenges beyond their functional abilities may increase their risk of falls. We chose to study the relationship between the functional ability to balance and plantar flexor muscle strength. It is hoped that knowledge gained will allow older adults to improve functional balance by training specific muscle groups, such as the plantar flexors. Research has shown that lower extremity strength correlates with functional balance.(1,2,3) However, specific studies regarding the relationship between functional balance and plantar flexor strength have not been studied extensively.(4) This study measured plantar flexor strength using a hand-held dynamometer (HHD) and challenged functional balance with the Timed "Up & Go" Test (TUG) under three different conditions to examine the relationship between plantar flexor strength and balance in independent, community-dwelling older adults.(4,5,6,7) 2. Experiment, Results, Discussions, Significance Experiment Testing began with measuring the strength of the plantar flexors of the ankle using a HHD. Seated participants were instructed to place both feet flat on the ground. The tester positioned the participant's dominant foot at a 90o angle from their lower leg with the heel resting on the ground and the HHD was placed with the force plate at the ball of the foot. Particpants were then instructed to push the foot down (plantar flex) with as much force as possible. The average of three trials was recorded. Following this, the TUG was performed to assess functional balance during mobility.(5,8,9,10) Subjects rose from a standard arm chair, walked 10 feet to a tape line on the floor, turned and walked back to the chair, and descended to the starting seated position. Timing began just before the subject rose from the chair and ceased upon return to the starting position. This test was repeated two additional times adding a functional or cognitive challenge. The functional challenge was carrying a plastic cup of water filled up to a 1 inch mark from the lip, and the cognitive challenge was counting backwards by threes from 85. The order of TUG tests was randomized.


To date, the grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) system has drawn consideration from researchers and academicians due to the speedy improvement and the declining price of solar panels. The proficiency and dependability of a grid integrated PV system rest mainly on the power conversion unit and the proper controlling mechanism. This paper introduces a novel asymmetric hexagonal-shaped fifteen-level inverter designed to feed a grid-integrated solar PV system. First, it aims to reduce the number of components and thereby decrease the installation space and cost of the multilevel inverter. Moreover, it has a low total blocking voltage (TBV) and total device rating (TDR) and uses few switching devices for generating per level of output voltage. The proposed topology utilizes only eight switching devices for generating fifteen levels at the output, which is lower than conventional multilevel inverter topologies. Here, a low-frequency modulation scheme using the half-height (HH) method generates switching pulses to minimize the complexity. The proposed multilevel inverter topology is also validated through the simulations in the MATLAB SIMULINK environment. The proposed inverter need for filters is illustrated according to different grid codes for integrating PV systems to the grid.


At present,China's urban and rural medical security system has been basically formed,which funda mentally realized the complete coverage of the medical insurance.However,in this process,the phenomenon that the urban and rural residents have repeatedly participated in different kinds of social medical insurances has emerged,which has affected the fairness of the medical security system and the operating efficiency of the system.Through the definition over the concept of the repeated insurance coverage,the Paper has summarized the groups and main types having repeatedly participated in the social medical insurance,analyzed the causes for the repeated insurance coverage phenomenon from the design of the basic medical insurance system,the division of profits among the departments and other aspects,as well as the negative effects generated by the repeated insurance coverage,upon which the paper has proposed the countermeasures to strengthen the informatization construction for the three basic medical insurance sys tems,to integrate the urban and rural medical security systems,to combine the medical resources,and to realize the in formation sharing,etc.so as to explore the effect exerted by the system integration on the fair utilization of the health re sources.


Recycling broiler litter (BL) nutrients is an important strategy for sustainable forage production. However, BL can contain Clostridia bacteria that can contaminate forages at harvest, resulting in poor ensilage quality and botulism-related animal health risks. A better understanding of the effects of BL amendment on alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) production and ensiling is beneficial for promoting manure-based alfalfa production. This 2-year study examined the effects of high-level BL (HBL) at 112 kg N ha−1 and low-level (LBL) at 56 kg N ha−1 on alfalfa forage production, fermentation characteristics, and Clostridium botulinum concentrations in silage and haylage produced from 350 g dry matter (DM) kg−1 forage and 500 g DM kg−1 forage respectively, and soil characteristics compared to a control treatment (CT). Results showed that the application of BL did not affect forage production (12.8–13.1 MG ha−1) and nutritive value. The alfalfa produced high forage yield with superior ensilabilty in the second year. The BL application increased soil NH4-N, Ca, Fe, and B, but did not affect fermentation characteristics or Clostridium botulinum concentrations in ensilage. Silage had superior fermentation quality, and Clostridium botulinum concentration was found to be higher than in haylage. Broiler litter fertilization for alfalfa is environmentally safe and has forge production, ensilage fermentation quality, and botulism risks similar to CT.


First, based on the parallel computing model HPM, the characteristics of the architecture of the SMPS cluster are investigated Focusing on the two aspects: the parallelism and the locality (storage and communication) of the architecture of CoSMPs, the main factors that influence the performance of the parallel applications are analyzed, and the problems of how to parallelize and optimize applications are investigated Both the merits and the demerits of the two programming modes: the MPI mode and the MPI+SMP (OMP) directive mode are investigated Then, some techniques about how to parallelize and optimize applications on CoSMPs are investigated in detail Finally, the performance of the two communicational modes(the loop exchange mode and the border exchange mode) on CoSMPs is investigated on an instance of the cluster of SMPs the Dawning 3000 super computer Via two examples-the matrix multiply algorithm for the loop exchange and the five point algorithm for the border exchange mode the methods are tested and the results are consistent with the theoretical conclusion


Objective:To detect the changes of cellular and humoral immunity after subtotal splenectomy in rats with portal hypertension (PHT),and to evaluate the role of subtotal splenectomy for treating portal hypertension. Methods:The rat model of cirrhotic PHT was established by hypodermic injection of 60% carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) oil solution (0.003 ml/g) into the abdomen and by replacing the drinking water with 10% alcohol solution. The portal vein pressure ≥12 mmHg and pathological changes indicated that the rat model was established successfully. The blood routine,determination of immunoglobulin and T lymphocyte subgroups,and HE staining were performed. Results:There were no significant differences in the results of blood routine and the levels of immunoglobulin and T lymphocyte subgroups between normal control group and partial splenectomy group in which the size of residual spleen is almost the same as that of normal spleen. The degree of liver fibrosis was less severe in partial splenectomy group in which the size of residual spleen is almost the same as that of normal spleen. Conclusion:The residual spleen after partial splenectomy in rats with portal hypertension has physiological function to some extent. The residual spleen whose size is almost the same as that of normal spleen after partial splenectomy could maintain the cellular and humoral immunity.


Using reinforced concrete retaining wall as an example, the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that one does not have to be an optimization expert to take advantage of the power built into modern tools such as the Microsoft Excel. Worksheets designed for usual analysis and design computations can be turned into formal design optimization tools by simply choosing cells corresponding to design variables, objective function and suitable constraint functions. This way an optimum design can be obtained in a systematic manner without having to resort to manual trial and error process. The paper presents the worksheets for design of cantilever retaining walls and shows several optimum design examples. To further demonstrate the usefulness of these worksheets a sensitivity analysis is carried out that shows the effect on optimum cost of various parameters such as wall height, surcharge pressure, allowable soil pressure, and internal soil friction angle.


This paper proposes the design of a system to semi-automatically identify possible relationships between learner behavior and task performance in an intelligent desk. The aim of detecting such relationships is to help teachers and students in the learning process, supporting their activities with an unobtrusive observation to identify special needs to improve their performance. The proposed system is based on models of the desk, of behaviors arising from user-object interactions, and task performance. Its components are designed to address four main functions: data acquisition, behavior identification, task performance identification, and computing relationships between behaviors and task performance.


New design methods and tools often promise large benefits for specific engineering tasks or whole engineering processes to make increasingly complex and sophisticated products possible. However, estimations for the pay-off of new methods or tools are based on gut feelings or rare expert knowledge. In this paper we present our approach for well-founded quantitative estimations for the economic impact of new methods or tools. We show the beginning of our methodology with an early experiment and the impact analysis for a case study of a design flow for electronic circuits.


Abstract : This paper discusses the potential for providing low cost tactical remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs), with emphasis on development of an unconstrained innovative approach in establishing their logistic and maintenance characteristics which can significantly influence the overall design of RPVs and their support aerospace ground equipment (AGE).


OBJECTIVE
The aims of the current study were to determine if impulsivity serves as a risk factor for eating disorder behavior and to examine whether different risk outcomes are obtained depending on the assessment strategy used to measure impulsivity.

METHOD
Three independent studies are reported, each of which examined the relationship of impulsivity and eating disorder behavior in a prospective longitudinal design with adolescent subjects recruited from both public and private schools. Individuals displaying eating disorder behavior at initial assessments were not included in the analyses, to ensure that we were testing the role of impulsivity in the onset of eating disorder behavior.

RESULTS
Trait impulsivity, measured with traditional personality scales, failed to predict the onset of eating disorder behavior in all three studies. However, when behavioral constructs associated with impulsivity, such as delinquency or substance abuse, were examined, they significantly predicted the onset of eating disorder behavior in most of the analyses conducted.

DISCUSSION
These results provide moderate support for the idea that impulsivity serves as a risk factor for the onset of eating disorder behavior. However, this is only true when more objective behavioral measures were utilized.


Buddhism viewed generically as a broad church is a religio-philosophical system which presents a world view. This understanding of Buddhism, it is argued, among other considerations, has a bearing on church and state relations. In exploring aspects of religion and statecraft, the Paper adopts a historical-doctrinal viewpoints rather than one based on popular Buddhism, i.e., the day to day practice viewed historically. The social and political philosophy manifested in matters of governance was framed within a spirit of humanism markedly evident in the Edicts of the famed Indian Emperor Asoka. In many respects Buddhist ideals of statecraft embodying principles and practices such as the rule of law, deliberative democracy, procedures of governance and the social policies of the Asokan welfare state bear a striking similarity to Enlightenment values in Europe. This remarkable consequence of East-West dichotomies, the paper concludes, may create the space for a civilizational dialogue, not a 'clash of civilizations.'


Senior High School (SHS) covers the last two years of the K to 12 program. In SHS, students will go through a core curriculum and subjects under a track of their choice. One of the core subjects is Physical Science which requires 80 hours per semester. There is still a dearth of reference materials prepared which are aligned to the SHS competencies. Hence, the researchers developed a workbook to partly address the dilemma. The Proton: Workbook in Physical Science was validated by experts and students and piloted among college freshmen. The expert validators "strongly agree" that the developed instructional material possesses adequacy, coherence, appropriateness and usefulness as indicated in the overall mean of 3.90 (sd=0.06). Likewise, the students rated the workbook to be very much acceptable based on the overall mean of 3.79 (sd=0.39). The developed workbook is recommended for use as instructional material for the core course in senior high school. It is further recommended that instructors should also develop workbook in other science core courses in the K12 senior high school curriculum.


GENERAL PURPOSE To educate wound care practitioners about methods of communication that can help promote patient adherence to wound healing recommendations. TARGET AUDIENCE This continuing education activity is intended for physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and nurses with an interest in skin and wound care. LEARNING OBJECTIVES/OUTCOMES After participating in this educational activity, the participant will: 1. Distinguish the use of theoretical frameworks to promote patient adherence to prescribed wound healing recommendations. 2. Synthesize the principles of motivational interviewing to best encourage patients to adhere to prescribed wound healing recommendations. 3. Select the appropriate self-care strategies for patients who have nonhealing wounds. ABSTRACT Patients with chronic wounds make daily decisions that affect healing and treatment outcomes. Patient-centered education for effective self-management decreases episodes of care and reduces health expenditures while promoting independence. Theoretical frameworks, including the Health Belief Model, Theory of Planned Behavior, Social Cognitive Theory, and Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change, can assist healthcare providers in identifying strategies that enhance adherence. These strategies include the use of motivational interviewing, a communication technique designed to elicit patients' perspectives regarding treatment goals, outcome expectations, anticipated barriers, and intentions to follow provider recommendations.


White mold disease, caused by fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum (Lib.) de Bary., is a disease hard to control due to the high amount of sclerotia produced, which guarantees its survival in the soil for years leading to significant yield losses. Alternative techniques to control the pathogen have been researched, including homeopathy. The present work aimed to evaluate the in vitro antifungal effect of homeopathic medicines on S. sclerotiorum mycelial growth. Homeopathic medicines Sulphur, fungal sclerotium Nosode and Calcarea carbonica, in 30CH, 200CH and 1000CH dynamizations were tested. Assays were carried out in a completely randomized design, with four repetitions. Experiments were performed through the addition of homeopathic medicines on the surface of plates containing culture medium, followed by insertion of a disc containing fungus mycelia and incubation. Control treatment received no homeopathic medicine. The mycelial progression was monitored by seven halo diameter measurements during experiment period. All homeopathic medicines tested and their dynamizations were able to inhibit partially the development of the fungus. Calcarea carbonica at the dynamization of 1000 CH showed the best inhibitory effect on S. sclerotiorum, which under its effect produced a mycelial halo 40% smaller than the control treatment.


Aldosterone is considered to be a link between hypertension and obesity; obese individuals have high serum levels of both sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) and very low-density lipoprotein (VLDL). S1P has been reported to be a novel stimulator of aldosterone secretion and phospholipase D (PLD) activity. VLDL has also been shown to stimulate aldosterone production in multiple zona glomerulosa cell models via PLD. PLD is an enzyme that hydrolyzes phosphatidylcholine to phosphatidic acid (PA) which can then be converted to diacylglycerol (DAG) by lipin-1. However, it is unclear which of the two lipid signals, PA or DAG, underlies PLD's mediation of aldosterone production. We hypothesized that the S1P1 receptor (S1PR1) agonist, SEW2871, (and VLDL) induces steroidogenesis and therefore aldosterone production via lipin-1-mediated metabolism of PA to DAG, with our hypothesis focusing on DAG as the key lipid signal produced by PLD (indirectly). In HAC15 cells, lipin-1 was overexpressed using an adenovirus or inhibited using propranolol followed by treatment with or without SEW2871 (or VLDL) for 24 h. Steroidogenic gene expression and aldosterone levels were monitored by qRT-PCR and radioimmunoassay, respectively. We demonstrated that lipin-1 overexpression (OE) enhanced the SEW2871-stimulated 109-fold increase in CYP11B2 expression by 26% while lipin-1 inhibition decreased the SEW2871-stimulated 56-fold increase in CYP11B2 expression by 74%. While lipin-1 OE had no further effect, propranolol reduced SEW2871-stimulated increases in NR4A1 (2-fold) and NR4A2 (9-fold) mRNA levels by 22% and 52% respectively. The SEW2871-stimulated increase in aldosterone production was inhibited by propranolol (53%), although it was not enhanced by lipin-1 OE. Similar results were obtained with VLDL. Our results are, therefore, suggestive of DAG being the key lipid signal since regulating lipin-1 affects S1PR1 agonist- and VLDL-stimulated steroidogenic gene expression and ultimately, aldosterone production. Our study warrants further investigation into these steroidogenic signaling pathways which can lead to the identification of novel therapeutic targets such as lipin-1, or its downstream pathways, to potentially treat obesity-associated hypertension.


In this paper, we report the observation of a novel optical interaction that occurs in compound collector heterojunction bipolar transistors (CCHBT). This interaction causes an increase in the collector current, due to optical biasing, that can also be used to monitor the thickness of the InGaP layer in the CCHBT collector. We demonstrate this effect by examining I-V curves and C-V curves with and without illumination.


We study the dynamics of a nonintegrable system comprising interacting cold bosons trapped in an optical lattice in one dimension by means of exact time-dependent numerical density-matrix renormalization group techniques. Particles are confined by a parabolic potential, and dipole oscillations are induced by displacing the trap center of a few lattice sites. Depending on the system parameters this motion can vary from undamped to overdamped. We study the dipole oscillations as a function of the lattice displacement, the particle density, and the strength of interparticle interactions. These results explain the recent experiment [C. D. Fertig et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 120403 (2005)].


If you're wondering, what diseases you can get from drug abuse, look no further White Sands is the Treatment Center for you.


The paper introduces the concept of website content management system,depictes the application of Foosun dotNETCMSv1.0 management software in the digital library websites and the key steps of constructing the digital library websites,finally it summarizes the advantages of constructing the websites for digital libraries by using the Foosun website content management system.


In recent years, the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language develops vigorously, presenting a trend of large amount of people, large scale and younger age. Chinese course is opened in more and more kindergartens in various countries in Southeast Asia, which forms a new challenge to Chinese teaching. Teaching by game is suitable for the mental characteristics of children, and it can create a joyful and relaxed learning environment in the classroom, stimulating Children's enthusiasm to learn to the largest extent, making learning easier and teaching more efficient. The game teaching strategy is discussed in this paper from the principles and precautions to carry out children's Chinese teaching in Southeast Asia areas starting from the definition of game and the psychological mechanism of children. Keywords—Southeast Asia; children; Chinese teaching;


There are approximately 3.9 million deliveries in the United States every year. Fortunately, most of these deliveries are appropriately anticipated and occur with trained staff. Because deliveries occur so infrequently in the prehospital setting, initial effort should be directed toward getting the mother quickly to a hospital with obstetric and gynecological care. There, well-trained providers can deliver the baby in a controlled setting with adequate equipment, and expertise should complications arise. However, there may not always be enough time to get the mother to the appropriate facility. Increased perinatal mortality and morbidity for both neonate and mother have been associated with unplanned prehospital deliveries. Some studies indicate that the causes of the perinatal morbidity and mortality are avoidable. For this reason, it is crucial for emergency medical service (EMS) providers to be familiar with the appropriate delivery technique.


The geodynamic evolution of the Eastern Mediterranean region has been associated with a complex space-time distribution of tectonic events. There is ample evidence indicating that a great tsunamigenic earthquake with a magnitude of up to 8.3 occurred near the west coast of the island of Crete on July 21, 365 A.D. The tsunami was responsible for extensive destruction on Peloponnese, Sicily, Cyprus and Egypt and elsewhere. The combined catastrophic impact of the earthquake and tsunami, is believed to have been a significant catalyst in the declination of the Roman Empire and its subsequent division between the East and the West (Byzantine) in 395 A.D. The catastrophic event was a manifestation of ongoing complex interactive tectonic activity in the Eastern Mediterranean, which raises questions about the recurrence of another great tsunamigenic earthquake and its potential impact. The present study examines historical records, summarizes known destructive effects and analyzes the possible source mechanism of the tsunamigenic earthquake, in terms of current understanding of regional tectonics. Finally, based on such analysis and numerical modeling of the tsunami, the study draws conclusions about the recurrence of a similar catastrophic event.


Combustion of organic matter in sealed Pyrex, Vycor, and quartz ampules at temperatures between 520 and 900[degrees]C yields less than stoichiometric amounts of water. The loss of hydrogen to hydration reactions between water vapor and glass/quartz interferes with the determination of C/H and N/H elemental ratios in organic matter. The effect increases from quartz to Vycor to Pyrex, but the incomplete yield does not significantly affect the precision and accuracy of the determination of stable hydrogen isotope ratios. Reactions between water and Pyrex do not affect the conversion of water to hydrogen with zinc in Pyrex ampules at 500[degrees]C, which is quantitative, but even preoutgassed zinc contains a deuterium-depleted hydrogen blank. D/H ratios in hydrogen from the Zn method require a nonlinear correction to achieve compatibility with [delta]D values from the uranium method. 19 refs., 4 tabs.


This paper presents few projects that are available today in sea trials and that are already connected to the grid. The energy harvested from waves is clean and should be used on a higher scale around the globe. The huge ocean surface can generate enough power to cover all our needs. Also for a point absorber the author plotted with Ansys Fluent the heave motion. All details from the diagram can give valuable information about speeds and accelerations in point absorbers.


It has been shown that absorbing aerosols (dust, smoke, volcanic ash) can be detected in the ultraviolet wavelengths (331 nm to 380 nm) from satellite observations (TOMS, Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer) over both land and water. The theoretical basis for these observations and their conversions to optical depths is discussed in terms of an aerosol index AI or N-value residue (assigned positive for absorbing aerosols). The theoretical considerations show that negative values of the AI frequently represent the presence of non-absorbing aerosols (NA) in the troposphere (mostly pollution in the form of sulfates, hydrocarbons, etc., and some natural sulfate aerosols) with particle sizes near 0.1 to 0.2 microns or less. The detection of small-particle non-absorbing aerosols from the measured backscattered radiances is based on the observed wavelength dependence from Mie scattering after the background Rayleigh scattering is subtracted. The Mie scattering from larger particles, 1 micron or more (e.g., cloud water droplets) has too small a wavelength dependence to be detected by this method. In regions that are mostly cloud free, aerosols of all sizes can be seen in the single channel 380 nm or 360 nm radiance data. The most prominent Al feature observed is the strong asymmetry in aerosol amount between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, with the large majority of NA occurring above 20degN latitude. The maximum values of non-absorbing aerosols are observed over the eastern U.S. and most of western Europe corresponding to the areas of highest industrial pollution. Annual cycles in the amount of NA are observed over Europe and North America with maxima occurring in the summer corresponding to times of minimum wind transport. Similarly, the maxima in the winter over the Atlantic Ocean occurs because of wind borne transport from the land. Most regions of the world have the maximum amount of non-absorbing aerosol in the December to January period except for the eastern North America and Europe. Comparisons of the estimated TOMS aerosol optical depths show good agreement in magnitude and seasonal dependence with sun-photometer optical depths obtained at Goddard Space Flight Center (39degN 76.88degW) in the U.S. and in Lille (50.63degN 3.07degE) in France. The study of these aerosols is important for detecting the sources of industrial pollution and its redistribution by winds on a global basis, as well as its effect on reducing the UV irradiance at the Earth's surface.


The New York Times Magazine recently featured an article provocatively titled "The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn't" (Johnson, 2015) in which the author surveyed statistical data from the U.S. Labor Department and the U.S. Economic Census to arrive at a somewhat upbeat assessment of the economic well-being of the creative economy. The article suggests that the recording industry's recent shortfalls in album sales is negated in part by new revenue streams from live performance; Hollywood's abandonment of mid-budget films in favor of formulaic blockbusters and endless parades of sequels is made more palatable by the release of more eclectic films by independent production companies; the emergence of blockbuster economics in e-book publishing is made more palatable by niche markets supported by indie bookstores. In other words, our collective anxieties about the economic impact of recent technological developments in the creative economy are unwarranted because "...there are now more ways to buy creative work, thanks to the proliferation of content-delivery platforms" (para. 28). Likewise, "...just as there are more avenues for consumers to pay for creative work, there are more ways to be compensated for making that work" (para. 29). The author concludes that the recent restructuring of production, distribution, and consumption has not significantly impacted the prospects of earning a livelihood within the creative industries. Simply put, consumers can now choose from a larger selection of creative works than ever before and that means more people are getting paid to do what they love. In general terms the creative industry is analogous to the sector known as the Information and Cultural Industries as defined by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). Developed by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), NAICS is a hierarchical classification system of industry sectors, subsectors, and groups. NAICS is also the departmental standard for Statistics Canada and Industry Canada. According to Industry Canada (n.d.), the


The invention relates to a method for selecting a microorganism, and this microorganism for the treatment of food allergies, specifically celiac disease. The mechanism of action of the microorganisms are (i) the regulation of the innate immune response and the adaptive immune response; (Ii) reduction of toxic gluten peptides epitope concentrations in the small intestine steel; (Iii) strengthening the defensive barrier function against harmful antigens and bacteria; And it includes the provision of the enzyme activities to promote (iv) digestion.


Foucault contends that the production of discourse is controlled and selected in each society.Those that are not in line with the interest of the dominant group or institution are ruled out from circulation.Therefore,in order to get one's statements accepted,the speaker can only follow the dominant discourse.As far as the translator is concerned,the change he/she makes to the translated text is not always the embodiment of the subjectivity,rather,it shows his/her compromise to the dominant discourse.This paper analyzes Eileen Chang's short story Steamed Osmanthus Flower Ah Xiao's Unhappy Autumn and her own translation,and points out that Chang manipulates the source text which aimed to resist colonialism,and turns it to be the symbol of her complicity with American Orientalism so as to help her get rid of the identity as an Other in the United States.


The path planning problem is an important problem in the research area of robot, games and group animation. This paper shows a 2.5-dimensional terrain grid which can reduce the amount of computation. By applying the fuzzy logic theory, the terrain trafficability of the rugged road can be evaluated based on different gradient, roughness, elevation difference; the trafficability factor can be achieved and applied to the heuristic function. The improved algorithm can solve the symmetry problem of path planning on uneven surfaces, reduce the search space.


Depressed Cake Shop uses baked goods to promote conversations about mental illness and support local and national mental health organizations.


How does auditory information influence the perception and evaluation of complex skills? Especially in technical compositional sports, such as gymnastics, the visual information perceived by the judges (and coaches) is the subject of an immediate evaluation. Various factors influence the judges' performances. The impact of auditory information on the evaluation of complex skills is predominantly unexplored. Therefore, the study aimed to investigate floor music's role in female gymnastics routines. Participants with different gymnastics expertise were asked to rate acrobatic series on the floor in three different audio-visual conditions (original, inter-beat, matched-beat). The current study results show that participants (irrespective of the group) rated acrobatic series in the matched-beat higher than in the original condition. In conclusion, it would be interesting to investigate if an effect on the participants' perception is given for other gymnastics skills (gymnastic jumps and leaps) or the overall (execution) score on the floor.


Some derivatives of 7-acetylamino-2H-pyridazino [4,5-b] [1,4] benzothiazin-1 (1OH)-one (VI a...d) and of 7-acetylamino-3H-pyridazino [4,5-b] [1,4]benzothiazin-4 (1OH)-one (X a...d) substituted in the 2 and 3 positions with dialkylaminoalkyl groups are described. The compounds were subjected to pharmacological screening.


Efficient continuous resonant frequency mixing ω4 = ω1 − ω2 + ω3 in Na2 has been realized. A bichromatic field (λ1 = 488 nm, λ2 = 525 nm), generated by an Ar+-laser-pumped Na2 Raman laser, and radiation at λ3 = 655 nm from a dye laser interact resonantly with corresponding transitions X1∑g+(υ=3,J=43) → B1Πu(6, 43) → X1∑g+(13,43)→A1∑g+(24,44) in a test Na2 heat pipe. For input powers of 200, 25, and 400 mW an output beam of as much as 0.2 mW at λ4 = 599 nm has been observed. Measured parameter dependences indicate an influence of interference effects. This is directly related to the discussion of lasing without inversion.


The current study compared the abuse experiences of 108 sexual minority and heterosexual former foster youth who received scholarships through the Orphan Foundation of America. Participants used an anonymous online survey to answer questions regarding their history of physical and sexual abuse. All participants who reported a history of sexual abuse also completed the Trauma Related Beliefs questionnaire (TRB; Hazzard, 1993). Differences across sexual orientation were observed in sexual, but not physical, abuse rates and in the Self-Blame/Stigmatization subscale of the TRB. Specifically, sexual minority participants reported more incidents of sexual abuse, as well as higher scores on the TRB subscale, than did heterosexual participants. These results suggest that sexual orientation is relevant to the experience of abuse among children in the child welfare system.


The paper presents an investigation of the dialectical relationship between banking concentration and the stability of the banking sector, using data from twelve Arab countries for the period 2014-2019 in the framework of a dynamic panel data model. The findings show that the banking sector in the Arab countries follows the "Concentration-Stability" hypothesis. That is, banking concentration has a significant positive impact on bank stability. The paper explains that this result is due to two main reasons. The first reason is that large banks tend to manage their assets and capital more efficiently compared to smaller banks, while the second reason is that systemically important banks (DSIBs) are subject to additional quantitative and qualitative regulatory requirements, especially after the global financial crisis in 2008. The paper also reveals that economic growth has a significant positive effect on bank stability, while credit risk has a significant negative impact on bank stability. The paper suggests encouraging the merger of small banks, as this leads to enhancing their operational efficiency, strengthening their financial positions, and supporting their ability to absorb potential shocks.


This report describes the progress in several projects: gas phase substitution reactions of thermal chlorine atoms with tetramethyl metallo-organic compounds; abstraction reactions by thermal chlorine atoms with tetramethyl metallo-organic compounds; gas phase thermal {sup 38}Cl reactions with M(CH{double_bond}CH{sub 2}){sub n}: non-RRKM decomposition of excited radicals (M = Sn, Si, n = 4; M = Sb, n = 3; M = Hg, n = 2); quantitative product identification for reactions of hydroxyl with {sup 14}CS{sub 2}; and statistical analysis of ground-based measurements of total ozone with Dobson spectrometers. The report also contains a research proposal for work from May, 1991 through April, 1992.


Detonation spraying has advantages of strong bonding without heating substrates, high coating speed, low requirements for the quality of surface treatment of substrates and others. In the present research, yttria stabilized zirconia. powders were used for detonation spraying thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) on a Ni-base superalloy with a bond coat of NiCrAlY. Thermal exposure tests were conducted at a constant temperature in air. After thermal exposure, microstructure observation, element distribution analysis and hardness measurement were carried out. The cracking behavior of the as-prepared and preoxidized TBCs specimens was investigated.


A simple and practical method is proposed to estimate offsets of beam position monitors. It is reported that this method had been applied successfully to an 8 GeV electron storage ring at SPring-8. Resulting offsets are compared with those measured by using a beam-based method.


Introduction For the past two years we have been considering how best to revise British Library (BL) policies on the distribution of our MARC databases. The existing policy is one of close control based on the sale of records by BLAISE and a very limited number of other professional agencies, and has been made obsolescent by the important changes taking place both in the technology of data storage and distribution and in the structure of the library automation 'industry' in Britain.


Spontaneous aggregation of amyloid beta (Aβ) proteins leading to the formation of oligomers and eventually into fibrils has been identified as a key pathological signature of Alzheimer's disease. Structure of late stage aggregates have been studied in depth by conventional structural biology techniques including Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, X-ray crystallography and Infrared Spectroscopy; however the structure of early-stage aggregates is less known due to their transient nature. As a result, the structural evolution of amyloid aggregates from its early oligomers to mature fibril is still not fully understood. Here we have applied AFM-IR nanospectroscopy to investigate the aggregation of Aβ 16-22, which spans the amyloidogenic core of the amyloid beta peptide. Our results demonstrate that Aβ 16-22 involves a structural transition from oligomers with parallel beta sheets to antiparallel fibrils through disordered and possibly helical intermediate fibril structures, contrary to the known aggregation pathway of full-length Aβ.


In previous studies research has shown that generation y experience resistancefrom older generations represented in the labor market in USA. The resistance isdue to differences between the generati ...


The invention discloses a dust exhaust device used for a textile workshop. The dust exhaust device used for the textile workshop comprises a shell body (2), wherein a wind suction opening (4) is arranged on the shell body (2). The dust exhaust device used for the textile workshop is characterized in that a plurality of rolling shafts (6) are arranged at the position of the wind suction opening (4) at uniform intervals and the surface of each rolling shaft(6) is adhesive. The dust exhaust device used for the textile workshop is simple in structure and good in dust exhaust effect.


We now proceed to make a few observations upon the different prophylactic and therapeutic measures, enumerated at the end of the former part of this review. Since the possibility of the entrance of air into a wounded vein of those parts included by Amussat, in his " espace dangereuse' cannot be doubted, the surgeon ought to use every precaution while operating in this region, and even in parts beyond it,?if the coats of the veins are likely to be capable of resisting the atmospheric pressure,?to avoid the wounding of a large vein. It may be advisable to follow in some cases the advice given by Dupuytren, to re-


The role of MMPs (matrix metalloproteinases) in kidney diseases has been widely accepted, where they can regulate inflammatory response because of their effects on both recruitment and survival of inflammatory cells. TNFα (tumour necrosis factor α) has also been implicated in the pathogenesis of inflammatory kidney diseases, including forms of glomerulonephritis associated with viral diseases. Previously, we established the functional linkage between viral receptors of the innate immune system, the TLRs (Toll‐like receptors) and control of MMP activity in human MC (mesangial cells). Expression levels of MMP‐2, MMP‐7, MMP‐9, TIMP‐1 (tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase 1) and TIMP‐2 in human MC in culture were analysed by RT‐PCR (reverse transcription–PCR). TNFα significantly enhanced the TLR3‐dependent induction of MMP‐9 in human MC. Expression levels of MMP‐2, TIMP‐1 and TIMP‐2 were not significantly affected by the activation of TLR3 or TNFα stimulation. No significant MMP‐7 expression was found. We conclude that the role of MMP‐9 in chemotaxis, activation and proliferation of inflammatory cells is amplified by TNFα originating from infiltrating cells, especially monocytes, producing a regulatory loop that potentially leads to a self‐propagating inflammation.


I read with pleasure the article of Anderson et al.1 concerning double outlet right ventricle, in which they reviewed various aspects of this peculiar diagnostic group of congenital cardiac malformations for the purpose of continuing medical education. I congratulate the authors on writing an excell ent overview on these historical and pathomorphological aspects of the entity relevant to clinical disciplines dealing with congenital cardiac disease. With respect to the present discussion on the value of double outlet as a diagnostic term, however, I would like to add some comments on a closely related matter. At first sight, this may seem to be merely of interest to some of the preclinical disciplines. I refer to the value of the term "conotruncal malformations" as an overarching diagnosis to include double outlet along with other major congenital cardiac defects. This topic might be of minor practical relevance to those clinicians primarily dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of congenital cardiac disease. It has, however, some relevance for the interpretation of epidemiologic and molecular genetic data, the correct interpretation of which might lead to the development of strategies for the prevention of some congenital cardiac malformations. In contemporary articles on congenital cardiac disease, the anatomically heterogeneous group of defects with the ventriculo-arterial connection of double outlet is frequently classified as a subgroup of the class of "conotruncal malformations".2–5 This implies that the morphogenetic origin of the particular cardiovascular malformation is an abnormality in the development of the outflow region, specifically the "conotruncus" of the embryonic heart, whatever that might be. Besides double outlet, the grouping of "conotruncal malformations" includes defects such as Fallot's tetralogy, complete and corrected transposition, and common arterial trunk. Since the introduction of double outlet right ventricle as a diagnostic term by Witham in 1957,6 we have learnt that it does not define a specific morphological entity, but simply represents the ventriculo-arterial connection in which both arterial trunks arise from the morphologically right ventricle. Anderson and co-authors1 have nicely demonstrated the remarkable anatomical heterogeneity found within this diagnostic group, as well as the controversies which surround this topic. When I think of the bewildering anatomical variability demonstrated, I wonder why clinicians familiar with such defects do not seem to question the current practice of grouping all these variants into a single morphogenetic class, namely that of the "conotruncal malformations". I especially wonder about this practice, since there is a wealth of published data suggesting that the range of morphogenetic pathways leading to double outlet is not confined to abnormal conotruncal development. Based on the analysis of the pathological anatomy of human specimens with double outlet, for example, several pathologists came to the conclusion that developmental alterations in the endocardial cushions of the atrioventricular canal might be causally involved in the pathogenesis of some of the hearts.7–9 The fact that anomalies in development of these endocardial cushions seem to be of central importance for the pathogenesis of abnormal ventriculo-arterial connections was, indeed, noted in several embryological studies.10–12 Moreover, the morphological features of embryonic hearts, in which the double outlet ventriculo-arterial connection seems to have resulted exclusively from abnormal development of the atrioventricular region, have been demonstrated recently by scanning electron microscopy.13 It appears, therefore, that the diagnostic group of double outlet right ventricle might encompass at least two different morphogenetic classes, a class of "conotruncal malformations" along with a class of "atrioventricular malformations". Knowledge on the presence of at least two different morphogenetic classes of double outlet might be helpful for the interpretation of epidemiologic data. The evaluation of data from the Baltimore– Washington Infant Study, for example, led to the distinction of two diagnostic subgroups, one with abnormally related great arteries with anterior aorta, and a second with normally related great arterial trunks.14 It is tempting to speculate that these two Cardiol Young 2001; 11: 689–690 © Greenwich Medical Media Ltd. ISSN 1047-9511


The rapid growth of the UX profession has led to an increased need for qualified practitioners and a proliferation of UX educational programs offered in both academia and industry. In this note, we present the design and initial evaluation of a new studio-based undergraduate program in UX--the first of its kind at a large, research-intensive US university. The program includes several curricular innovations, such as an integrated studio pedagogy in which six topical strands are interwoven across two types of studios. These studios are interconnected and span five semesters of the undergraduate experience. We present the curriculum model and the foundational principles that informed its design. We describe the two types of studios and their interconnection, and present early evaluation data showing that students are building valuable skills. The program described in this note provides a trailblazing model for UX pedagogy at the undergraduate level.


To innovate classroom teaching,we give students the right to choose through a "learning supermarket",which includes offering students the right to choose teaching in a "class supermarket",assigning selective homework to students in a "homework supermarket",and conducting selective appraisals in an "appraisal supermarket".In this way,we try to make Chinese teaching automatic,cooperative,open and explorative.


In a former number we placed before our readers a brief account of Professor,Weir Mitchell's investigations connected with the venom of the crotalus (rattlesnake); and, as the subject of snake poisoning has very recently excited a good deal of interest, we have pleasure in directing attention to a pamphlet, written some twenty-six years since, containing a full notice of the chemical composition of viper venom, and of the discovery by the writer?Prince Louis-Lucien Bonaparte?of its active principle, to which he gave the name of " echidnina," deriving it, he says, " dal Greco i^idva echidna vipera, oppur quello di viperina "


Water-in-oil gel emulsions consisting of water and n-butyl acrylate were successfully prepared using N-3-hydroxybutylcarbonylL-isoleucylaminooctadecane and sorbitan monooleate (Span 80) as gelator and surfactant, respectively. Stable gel emulsions were formed using aqueous phase fractions (APFs) ranging from 10 to 90 vol%. Creaming, flocculation and coalescence were not observed. Low-temperature polymerization of the gel emulsions with a redox initiator gave the corresponding low-density, highly porous poly(n-butyl acrylate)s (PBAs). The microstructures of the PBAs were observed using scanning electron microscopy. All the porous PBAs comprised numerous spherical structures whose sizes could be controlled by adjusting the gel emulsion APF. The densities and porosities of the porous PBAs decreased and increased, respectively, with increasing APF. The absorption capacities of the porous PBAs in organic solvents were studied. The porous PBAs selectively absorbed kerosene from water instantly and the kerosene could then be recovered by physical compression of the PBAs. Further porous polymers were prepared from gel emulsions containing styrene, methyl methacrylate (MMA) or 2-ethylhexyl acrylate (EHA) as continuous oil phases. The order of absorption capacity and swelling ratio in kerosene was poly(EHA) > PBA ≫ poly(MMA). Porous copolymers were also prepared from gel emulsions containing a mixture of EHA and MMA as the oil phase. Their absorption and swelling in liquids could be controlled by changing the ratio of EHA and MMA in the gel emulsions. poly(EHA-co-MMA) (6:4) was the best polymer when absorption capacity, swelling ratio and durability were simultaneously considered. © 2018 Society of Chemical Industry Supporting information may be found in the online version of this article.


Abstract. A total of 20 renal transplant patients with end‐stage diabetic nephropathy entered a randomized controlled trial comparing preoperative, fractionated total lymphoid irradiation (TLI) (radiation dose, 20–30 Gy) with postoperative cyclosporin A (CsA). Both groups received postoperative low‐dose methylprednisolone maintenance therapy. The 3‐year patient and graft survival was similar for both groups (100% and 71% in the TLI and 75% and 75% in the CsA group, respectively). Rejection crises occurred significantly more frequently (P < 0.01) in the TLI‐treated recipients. The incidence of infectious or diabetic complications was not significantly different in both groups. It is concluded that TLI and CsA are both effective treatment modalities for cadaveric renal transplantation in diabetics; CsA, however, is superior in preventing rejection crises.


A retrospective review of pediatric conjunctival tumor cases seen at an ocular oncology service indicates that the vast majority of lesions are benign. Of 262 pediatric tumors, only 3% were malignant, and the most common diagnosis was nevus.


Role playing game is defined as one of the popular genres of video games being released for computer and video game console system. In some of role playing game, the students can give the main character is name of story. Especially in teaching narrative using RPG, narrative is basically story within this story telling, there are many kinds of narrative comedy, mystery, romance, etc. The topic of RPG related with education has become interesting topic recently. In SMPN2 Purwoasri, the teacher has been done the implementation of teaching writing using RPG since a year ago. The game was conducted to make students more interesting in in teaching writing. In this research, the design used is descriptive qualitative design. The subject of the research is students VIII-F class which consists of 30 students. Concerning the preparation that the teachers have in teaching writing English at SMPN 2 Purwoasri. The teacher should have the syllabus or lesson plan before they teach writing English at SMPN 2 Purwoasri. Concerning about the material that the teachers used syllabus and lesson plan based on the curriculum 2013. The method used was think pair solo. While the media used as brainstorming the idea in writing is RPG Final fantasy. The teachers automatically evaluated the students' writing English in every meeting the teacher gives evaluation using four aspect those are: grammatical, generic structure, words and spelling and content

Key words: narrative text, teaching process, RPG (Role playing game)


This paper explores the features of panda 3d game engine and the AI algorithm used in creating games. Here we propose the A* algorithm which is used in game development and explain its merits and demerits with other path finding algorithms. We describe the importance of AI in games and even understand how to A* algorithm works and also how to implement A* algorithm in python.


This Study focused on the process of technology transfer for the aircraft development program by the strategic alliance. Especially, this study showed how the learning firms absorb new technology from the foreign leading company. This case study concludes that teachability, asset specificity, relation capital with partner, information sharing system in organization and knowledge base are key factors for absorbing the new technology from the technology leading partner.