Quantum physics is the cornerstone of contemporary science,and has led to a revolution in high-tech development. Its combination with information science has resulted in the interdisciplinary field of quantum information. It provides a new train of thought for overcoming the limits of computer chip size. Since 1987,our investigations on quantum open system theory,quantum ecoherence,and the fundamental problems of quantum physics have kept pace with the rapid development of quantum information science in the last decade. Starting with Huan-Wu Peng's important research on open quantum systems (the quantum damped harmonic oscillator) at the end of the 1970s,we will review the basic concepts and scientific importance of this field. At the same time,we will give a brief description of our series of studies on the theory of quantum open systems and its applications in quantum information.


Abstract Plastic deformation processes are among the most demanding processes in manufacturing because they lead to different microstructure features in the materials produced. Various dislocation patterns can be induced by plastic strain under different conditions. A serrated yielding/jerky flow in some dilute alloys, such as aluminium-magnesium alloys during plastic deformation, is a well-known phenomenon under certain regimes of strain rate and temperature, as reported in a significant number of works. The serrated features in these materials reflect the so-called Portevin-Le Chatelier effects. These undesirable effects are due to the interaction between solute atoms and mobile dislocation during the plastic deformation, which is known as dynamic strain ageing. There are a significant number of theoretical and numerical investigations that have focused on describing the serrated behaviours of these materials during plastic deformation. Hence, the fundamental objective of this paper is to provide a general review of different constitutive modelling in regards this feature. The typical material models and new constitutive models describing this feature are presented. In addition, applications of the models are provided along with their respective advantages and disadvantages.


Abstract High-performance liquid chromatographic methods for determining the optical purities of ramipril, a novel angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor, and its synthetic intermediates have been developed. Analytical procedures were established for the resolution of optical isomers of two moieties, precursor I and precursor II, used for the preparation of ramipril. No occurrence of racemization during condensation reaction of the two precursors could be unambiguously confirmed by the proposed methods. On the basis of analytical data ramipril bulk material proved to be optically pure.


We propose an effective and robust automatic face detection method which can locate the faces in natural scene images. The method can be used as a preprocessor of a face recognition system. Several approaches that use the human skin color in the images have been proposed for detecting human faces. They cannot adequately cope with the problem such as false positives, the human skin color of other body parts and face orientation. We use two natural and powerful factors, the skin color and the eyes. This method takes two steps in order to extract regions of the human skin color and the eyes in the images. In the first step of the processing, regions of the human skin color are extracted and those regions are converted into gray scale from the original image. The skin color is a fast and robust cue that can be used as the first step in a face detection. In the next step, the eyes are extracted from candidate regions by calculating central moments and by using geometrical relationships between the eyes. The position and angles between the eyes can determine the exact location of a face. Experimental results using the proposed method show that human faces can be detected in color images regardless of size, expression, lighting conditions and orientation.


This paper addresses the direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation-based source localization problem by using the convolutional neural network (CNN) and root-MUltiple SIgnal Classification (MUSIC) technique. Existing grid-less neural network-based approach employs a LeNet-based CNN, where its network complexity depends on the number of sensors. To overcome this issue, we propose a LeDIM-net CNN that works for a uniform linear array with an arbitrary number of sensors. The proposed LeDIM-net architecture maintains spatial resolution throughout the network while exploiting non-local spatial information. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed LeDIM-net over the existing grid-less LeNet-based approach and root-MUSIC at low SNRs for arrays with different sensors by maintaining the same network complexity.


The invention discloses a nickel-free hole sealing agent for an aluminum alloy. The nickel-free hole sealing agent comprises water solutions of fluorotitanic acid, a corrosion inhibitor and a chelating agent, wherein on the basis of the volume of the hole sealing agent, the concentration of the fluorotitanic acid is 6.0-9.0 g/L, the concentration of the corrosion inhibitor is 1.0-3.0 g/L and the concentration of the chelating agent is 1.0-3.0 g/L. The hole sealing agent takes the fluorotitanic acid as the main ingredient, and pollution of nickel salt to the aluminum alloy and the water quality is eliminated from the source. The invention further provides a hole sealing treatment process using the nickel-free hole sealing agent for the aluminum alloy. The operation is simple, energy conservation and environment protection are realized, waste water is easy to treat, the hole sealing agent is suitable for large-scale production, nickel pollution in the building aluminum alloy finished surface treatment process, the aluminum alloy using process and the waste treatment process is completely ended, and the bottleneck problem about restricting the industry development over the years is solved.


BACKGROUND
  Functional faecal retention and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are common in childhood. There is some evidence, mostly from clinical samples, of an association between them.

METHODS
  The association between parental reports of inattention/hyperactivity and colonic symptoms in children between four and ten years of age was examined using the Health Survey for England 2000.

RESULTS
  Boys were about twice as likely to be rated by their parents as inattentive/hyperactive if they had colon symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS
  This study adds to existing evidence associating bowel function and behavioural symptoms, especially in boys. Given the high prevalence of gastrointestinal symptoms in general, and the increasing personal and societal impact of childhood behavioural problems, further exploration of the relationship is warranted, with particular attention to causal pathways.


Innovative attitudes are critical affective learning outcomes for engineering graduates. However, affective learning requires immersive environments and ill-defined problem contexts which are difficult to create in traditional curricula due to resource and time constraints. The Aircraft for Rhino and Environmental Defense (AREND) project is a long-term, co-curricular learning initiative that has succeeded in cultivating innovative attitudes in students. Through collaborative autoethnography, we identify that immersion in an authentic innovation process and a project-based learning environment foster attitudes of experimentation, risk-taking, adaptation, alternatives seeking, self-reliance, implementation, persistence, user-focus, being visionary, being passionate, leadership, being a team player and being persistent. The paper offers practical insights to educators wishing to create similar experiential learning environments.


Recently, there has been considerable professional concern over many of the issues associated with environmental assessments, including report writing.

Unfortunately there still are no nationally recognized published guidelines on what constitutes an acceptable report.

In this article the authors show how reports can be vastly improved to help companies evaluate risks and make better business decisions. Their guidance can be applied to a broad range of auditing and assessment activity to improve environmental quality performance.


tag=1 data=Concern grows over VDU cancer link. by Collyn Rivers

tag=2 data=Rivers, Collyn

tag=3 data=Australian Business,

tag=6 data=27 February 1991

tag=7 data=21,22.

tag=8 data=CANCER%COMPUTERS

tag=10 data=Evidence is mounting that emissions from computer terminals may be carcinogenic - but our own authorities have yet to act.

tag=11 data=1991/3/3

tag=12 data=91/0308

tag=13 data=CAB


This paper describes a self-commutated static var compensator for suppressing voltage fluctuations caused by an ac electric railway (Shinkansen, or new trunk line). The ac electric railway is a single-phase load with large changes of reactive power and it causes large voltage fluctuations and power imbalances among the three phases in the power system.

The authors have developed a new voltage fluctuation compensating system using a self-commutated static var compensator. This system has the functions of reactive power compensation and negative-phase-sequence current absorption. It can suppress rapidly changing voltage fluctuations and reduce the three-phase power imbalance caused by the ac electric railway effectively. This compensating system, with a capacity of 40 MVA, was put to practical use for the first time in the world in 1993. The test results at the site show that the system has excellent performance characteristics.

A theoretical analysis of the characteristics of voltage fluctuations with or without the compensating system and an evaluation of test results, including a comparison between the theoretical and measured values, are also reported. © 1998 Scripta Technica, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 121(3): 67–78, 1997


The poor stability of most therapeutic viruses in the human bloodstream is a major obstacle in the field of cancer virotherapy, preventing systemic intravenous delivery to treat tumour metastases. Delivery is typically limited by inactivation of virus particles by blood components and rapid scavenging by hepatic phagocytes. Members of the Alphavirus family are exposed to blood during natural infections; as such, we hypothesised that evolutionary pressure may have led to blood stability and clearance kinetics superior to those of other viruses currently in development for use as oncolytic agents.

Sindbis virus is a member of the Alphavirus family that has shown promising anti-cancer activity in pre-clinical models. A concern for the clinical use of Sindbis virus as an anticancer agent is its pathology in humans, known as Pogosta disease. The symptoms of Pogosta disease may be a result of Sindbis virus replication in neuronal, muscle or haematopoietic tissues. Inhibiting virus replication in these tissues could, therefore, alleviate such potential side effects of virotherapy treatment. Introduction of microRNA response elements, perfectly complementary to microRNAs specifically expressed in liver (miR122), neuronal (miR124), muscle (miR133 and miR206) and haematopoietic (miR142-3p) cells, successfully attenuated SV replication in these tissues.

In contrast to all other viruses studied, data presented in this thesis show that Sindbis virus infectivity in vitro is not significantly inhibited by incubation with neat, whole naive human blood. Despite full infectivity in naive mouse blood, virus particles were rapidly cleared from the circulation of mice in vivo by the liver. An attempt to decrease the clearance rate by depletion of Kupffer cells through pre-treatment of mice with clodronate liposomes was ineffective. We also explored the use of Sindbis virus packaged in mosquito cells to more closely mimic virus particles exposed to blood in the wild during mosquito mediated transmission, but this also failed to improve virus circulation kinetics in mice. Despite rapid clearance from the circulation, intravenous administration of Sindbis virus had significant anti-cancer efficacy in C57BL/6 mice bearing syngeneic B16F10 metastatic melanomas.

Overall, data presented support our proposed use of Sindbis virus as a systemically delivered oncolytic agent and suggest decreasing the rate of clearance by the liver could dramatically enhance therapeutic outcomes. In addition it is shown that microRNA targeting of Sindbis virus provides a means of alleviating potential side effects of the administration of large virus doses.


The present invention relates to a method and power plant for burning a carbon-based fuel to the power generation. The plant compressor (s) for the compression of air (5 ', 5 ...) is a pressurized fluidized bed combustion plant that is arranged on a separate shaft from the expander (s) (29) axis for the expansion of the combustion gases.


The chemical behavior oJ various compoullds oJ rare earlhs, both s)'nthesized alld isolatedFom steels. were investigated ill order to estab lish a methodJor phase alia lysis oJ rare earth elemellts ill hot-rolled steels. The isolation oJcompounds oJrare earthsJrom steels was carried out by the electrolytic solution method ill lIonaqueous solvent. The residues examilled by X-Tf!y diffraclometry conlailled suljide, oxysuljide R 20 2S (R meallS a rare earth elemellt ), and/or oxide of rare earths. The procedureJor /)hase analysis oJ rare earths ill steel is asfollows: (I) 0.52 g oJ sample was electrolytically decomposed ill 600 ml qf methanol contaillillg 5% triethallolamine and JOo tetramet/!ylammonium chloride at a current dellsity oJ 50 mA /cm2 under lIitrogen atmosphere, and then , the isolaled residue was jillered. (Separatioll qf combined rare earth elemen/J. ) (2) The differet'ce ill the amount between lotal rare earths and combined rare earths gives the amount oJ metallic rare earths. (3) The isolated residue was treated with 50 ml oJ 10% iodine solution ill melhanol at room temperature Jor 30 mil/. and jiltered. (Se/)ara tioll oJ oxysuljide and oxide oJ rare earlh elemellts.) (4) Amount oJ rare earths as suljides can be calculated by subtmcting the amount oJ rare earths as oxysuljide alld oxideJrom that oJ combilled rare earths. The method Jor phase ([nalysis was a/)/Jlied to several hot-rolled steels containing various amounts oJ rare earths alld sulfur. The allisotropy (G/L ) oJ impact values is cOllsiderably affected by the ra lio (r) oJ sll!fur as rare earlh suljides, dejilled by


Effect of filler-nucleating agent on the crystalline behaviors of polypropylene(PP)was studied with mica and whisker as the inorganic filler which were added into PP with rare earth.Since mica and whisker can acted as heterogeneous nucleating agent to enhance the crystallization,the polymorphic composition of ternary composite was dependent on the competition between inorganic filler and nucleating agent.The nucleation efficiency of mica was weak,and its effect had been depressed by the introduction of nucleating agent.Whereas whisker had relatively high nucleation ability,thus the crystallization behavior of PP can be enhanced by a synergic effect of whisker and WBG.


Abstract Leaf oils of Pitaviaster haplophyllus (F. Muell.) T. G. Hartley were analyzed by GC and GC/MS. It was found that the oils were almost entirely sesquiterpenic in nature. The principal components of the oils were germacrene D (10–28%), germacrene B (1–30%), bicyclogermacrene (2–10%) and elemol (5–21%).


FIELD: medicine, allergology, chemical-pharmaceutical industry. SUBSTANCE: invention relates to a composition containing cetirizine or its salt as an active component and involves additionally cyclodextrin compound as an additional substance. The developed anti-allergic composition is used for topical use and as a prophylactic agent in allergic diseases in ophthalmology and otolaryngology. EFFECT: enhanced effectiveness of the composition. 12 cl, 5 tbl, 8 ex


The input of hazardous substances into the Baltic Sea has, unfortunately, quite a long history. The Helsinki Commission for the Protection of the Baltic Sea Environment (HELCOM) has been researching and analyzing sources of pollution in the Baltic Sea for thirty years. The Baltic Sea is a marine region in transition, in which many problems have been resolved and many problems still remain. The geographical, climatological and oceanographic conditions of the Baltic Sea are unique, and pollution of its environment has grave consequences. Hazardous substances are toxic, persistent and liable to bio accumulate in marine webs up to the levels which may be toxic to the organisms themselves, be toxic to their predators or affect the immune or hormonal systems. The HELCOM and its Member States, achieved to a great degree the elimination of pollution from hazardous substances, in comparison with other regional seas. Keywords: Baltic Sea; hazardous substances; HELCOM


[Objective] The diversity of lactic acid bacteria in traditional fermented milk from Hulun Buir in Inner Mongolia was studied. [Methods] The samples were analyzed using pure culture and 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis. [Results] A total of 24 strains of lactic acid bacteria were obtained from eight fermented milk samples (6 fermented cow milk and 2 fermented mare milk). All the isolates were classified to 5 genera and 9 species: Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens (2 strains), Lactobacillus kefiri (2 strains), Lactobacillus paracasei (5 strains), Lactobacillus plantarum (3 strains), Lactobacillus rhamnosus (1 strain), Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis (6 strains), Leuconostoc mesenteroides subsp. dextranicum (2 strains), Streptococcus thermophilus (2 strains), and Enterococcus faecium (1 strain). [Conclusion] Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis is the dominant species, held 25% of the total isolated lactic acid bacteria, and Lactobacillus paracasei occupied 呼斯楞等: 内蒙古呼伦贝尔地区传统发酵乳中乳酸菌的多样性分析 985 Tel: 010-64807511; E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com; http://journals.im.ac.cn/wswxtbcn 20.83% of the total lactic acid bacteria isolates as the predominant species of traditional fermented milk from Hulun Buir in Inner Mongolia.


in nature. Except for the exact sciences, where experiments prove the rules, we gather a lot of informa tion based on the opinions of men. Assuming that our psychic information much of the time is passed on to us from men in another phase of life, we then have the same situation to contend with. However, if we seek contacts with personalities who have progressed greatly on their side of life, we are assured of more accurate information than that received from teachers here. Those on the other side who have gone forward are surely capable of answering correctly any of the questions we may or can propound. There is always much that they, no matter how far forward they have traveled, do not know or understand, because the Cosmos is constantly evolving and new questions arising. They , however, have long ago solved the simple prob lems of our earthly existence and therefore are capable of explaining methods to help us forward. So far I have tried to explain the methods of several types of contact and by one or more means you will probably have opened the door to the University of Life. Don't waste this wonderful opportunity to learn and merely ask for trivial information. The small and simple things are our own to solve. These little jobs must be done by us to teach us the rudimentary steps. We will never have any of our problems actually worked out for us by those on the other side, but we will receive knowledge which will teach us the simple and


Abstract In facilities containing tritium, all process equipment is contained in inerted gloveboxes operating at slightly negative pressure relative to the process rooms. The gloveboxes have recirculation systems which include a stripper system. The glovebox stripper systems capture tritium from the glovebox atmosphere to minimize facility emissions with the possibility of recovering the tritium. Hydrogen isotopes released into the gloveboxes are converted to oxide form and removed from the glovebox atmosphere by the glovebox stripper systems – the intended function of these systems. Protiated water (and oxygen) enters the glovebox system in various ways. All water in the gloveboxes is ultimately removed by the stripper system molecular sieve beds which are then processed or disposed of as waste. The water and oxygen enter the glovebox in locations both internal and external to the gloveboxes. The majority of oxygen and water originates external to the gloveboxes in current facility operations. This study evaluated approaches for water source reduction i.e. reducing the amount of water entering the gloveboxes. The second approach explored options to segregate or prevent the mixing of protiated water in the glovebox with the tritiated water formed as part of the tritium oxidation and capture process used to reduce facility emissions.


FIELD: transport. SUBSTANCE: invention relates to ground tests of opening structures, predominantly solar batteries (SB) with null-gravity conditions simulation. The bench is designed for opening two dissymmetrical SB panels (1) and contains frame leg (2) on which weight-releasing device (3) is mounted and adapter frame (4) for spacecraft simulator (5). In the upper part of leg (2), bracket (6) is installed. The bracket is moved horizontally. In the lower part of leg, adjustable pillars (8) are installed. Device (3) is made as separate swivel links (9) where bracket (6) is rigidly connected with the first link. Rotation axes of links are coaxial to rotation axes of corresponding SB panels (1). The latter is provided by moving the bracket (6) manually along guides and by fixing it with special screw. In each link (9), two dampers in the form of rods (not shown) are fixed. During SB testing for opening connection with board (5) is released and SB (1) flaps begin to open under action of operational springs. As gap between SB (1) flaps and device (3) is limited (not more than 150 mm) the presence of the said dampers with hangers has little altering influence on calculated flap movement, and their rigid connection in the form of rods provides synchronous movements of SB (1) flaps and the device (3). EFFECT: widening of bench operational functionality, as well as maximum approximation of SB flaps opening conditions to null-gravity conditions. 6 dwg


In this paper, the history and future prospects of the bulk power transmission system of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) are presented. This paper also introduces some technical problems, which has occurred in accordance with the expansion of TEPCO's power system, and measures for ensuring stable power supply.


This paper presents the comparison of different modified Soret lenses suitable for a millimeter and submillimeterwave dualband integrated pixel detectors. The approach is based on the modification of a printed planar Soret lens, designed to operate in the sub-mm range, to obtain an antenna at the millimeter region. Three modifications of a transmission-mode Soret Lens at 850 GHz based on spiral, logarithmic and meander antennas geometries have been analyzed with a combination of Kirchhoffs Diffraction and full-wave simulation methods. The performance of the designs has been experimentally demonstrated in the submillimeterwave band, showing good agreement with simulation results.


This paper presents some hydrogeological features of Ryomo area in Tochigi Prefecture, based on the investigation for an appropriate usage of groundwater (1975, 1979, 1981) and the integrated investigation of hydraulics and hydrogeology in Tokyo urban area (1974) which were carried out by Tokyo Regional Bureaw of International Trade and Industry.
 This paper is summarized as follows ;
 1. The investigated area consists of mountains, hills, plateaus and lowlands, which are put in order from surrounding mountainous area towards a center of Kanto-plane.
 2. The mountains comprise consolidated hard rocks such as granitic rocks, volcanic rocks and Paleozoic formations. The area except the mountains is composed of unconsolidated formations such as Tertiary and Ouaternary system.
 3. The above unconsolidated formations results unconformably upon the impervious basement comprising the consolidated rocks and are divided into six formations such as formation“F”to forma ion &l”quo;A".
 4. A form of the impervious basement indicates existence of two waste-filled valleys at both sides of the Ota observation well. One of them was called “Kinugawa waste-filled valley”by Dr. Akio Suzuki. And it is estimated that a hill lies in the gound at the extention of the Utsunomiya hill.
 5. The thermal gradient of groundwater is divided into three groups in the investigated area. The thermal gradient is 1°C/100 m in south of Tone river and is 3°C/100 m in north of Tone river. Further, it is 5°C/100 m in the Watarase basin.
 6. Groundwater quality varies from CaSO4 type to Ca (HCO3) type on the Key-diagram correspondent with a depth of respective formations. And it is likely thet there is a higher concentration in sodium ion in the area where is affected by groundwater of the basement.
 Although above mentioned results were led from the study, further, a palaeogeographicai study is required on difference of the thermal gradient of groundwater and on a type of groundwater. 株式会社 日さく NISSAKU CO., LTD


As part of its Covid-19 vaccination campaign, the New York City Health Department created a Misinformation Response Unit to monitor messages on multiple media platforms and implement rapid response strategies to limit their spread.


This paper addresses the problem of adaptive filtering using the LMS method when two or more observation sequences are available with differing sampling rates. In such cases the steady-state behavior of the filters would be periodically time-varying. We develop the form of the algorithm and examine the performance of the algorithm in the context of interference suppression for narrowband and broadband sources of interference.


In this article, we investigate the event-triggered containment control problem for a class of multiagent systems, where agents are described by higher-order linear dynamics subject to stochastic disturbances. In event-triggered control scenarios, the control action is updated when a specified error reaches a given threshold. Due to the existence of stochastic factors, the given threshold may be reached in an any short time interval, which makes it hard to avoid Zeno behavior. In view of this, we propose two novel event-triggered containment control schemes for the underlying multiagent systems with stochastic disturbances. Using the stochastic control theory, graph theory, and Lyapunov functional method, it is proven that the followers' states can almost surely converge to the convex hull spanned by the leaders' states. It is noted that the continuous communications among agents are not required and each agent's inter-event intervals are lower-bounded by a positive constant. As such, the proposed control schemes are both practical and implementable. Finally, a numerical example is presented to illustrate the developed schemes' effectiveness.


An interdisciplinary faculty group devoted to improvement of teaching is described. Group composition, meeting format, and topics of discussion are outlined. Benefits of participation include discussion in a supportive but challenging atmosphere, open exchange of new ideas, enhanced interpersonal connectedness, and increased opportunity for cross-disciplinary collaboration.


Abstract — This paper presents a numerical investigation of two horizontally mounted four-lobed swirl pipes in terms of swirl induction effectiveness into flows passing through them. The swirl flows induced by the two swirl pipes have the potential to improve the efficiency of Clean-In-Place procedures in a closed processing system by local intensification of hydrodynamic impact on the internal pipe surface. Pressure losses, swirl development within the two swirl pipe, swirl induction effectiveness, swirl decay and wall shear stress variation downstream of two swirl pipes are analyzed and compared. It was found that a shorter length of swirl inducing pipe used in joint with transition pipes is more effective in swirl induction than when a longer one is used, in that it has a less constraint to the induced swirl and results in slightly higher swirl intensity just downstream of it with the expense of a smaller pressure loss. The wall shear stress downstream of the shorter swirl pipe is also slightly larger than that downstream of the longer swirl pipe due to the slightly higher swirl intensity induced by the shorter swirl pipe. The advantage of the shorter swirl pipe in terms of swirl induction is more significant in flows with a larger Reynolds Number.


We propose and demonstrate hybrid cladding-pumped/Raman amplification for multicore fiber transmission systems. 46WDM PDM-16QAM signals were transmitted over a 7-core transmission line and Q-factor enhancement is demonstrated using the core-by-core gain control scheme.


In 1992, Olivier Kahn (France, 1942–1999) defined the research field of molecular magnetism in the preface of his pioneering book[1] as follows: "Molecular magnetism deals with the magnetic properties of isolated molecules and assemblies of molecules. These molecules may contain one or more magnetic centers. Assemblies of molecules are most often found in molecular crystals with very weak interactions between the molecular entities. They can be found in extended systems, built from molecular precursors or "bricks", in a way that maximizes the inter actions betweenthe bricks and, hopefully, yields bulk magnetic properties." In that pedagogic textbook, Olivier Kahn remarkably set up some intuitive concepts for rationalizing the exchange inter action between transition metals, and how to elaborate and assemble appropriate molecular building blocks to direct the desired magnetic interactions. An efficient methodology was thus offered to synthetic chemists. Since then, molecular magnetism has continuously attracted chemists to judiciously design new molecule-based architectures, physicists for advanced characterizations of the properties of these new compounds, and theoreticians to understand and predict their fascinating behavior. This research field is intrinsically multidisciplinary, at the interface of molecular and solid-state sciences, with strong potential to be at the forefront of future technological innovative applications.


Assessment of supply chain risk and security criterion as an integrated area is important to enhance risk and security measures and hence achieve higher standards of risk enabled secured supply chain. This is possible by proper identification of key criterion and possible solution alternatives with significant measures of their weighted relationship. This paper aims to select the important criteria to assess the supply chain risk and security management (SCRSM) and evaluating alternative SCRSM strategies for proactive support. In this research, the objective is to provide a SCRSM framework and how the supply chain principles can actually be used to design and operate processes to assure supply chain risk and security. The novelty of this paper is the implementation of multi-criteria decision-making methodology to identify the important SCRSM criteria and sensitivity analysis for evaluation of alternative solution strategy. An analytic hierarchy process (AHP)-based multi-criteria decision-making methodology is employed to take into account both qualitative and quantitative factors to select important criteria and identification of right alternative strategy ascertain the supply chain risk and security. By using AHP methodology we could optimise the selection of risk and security alternatives followed by relevant choices for decision making with implication. The aim is to encourage more efforts in this domain for wider benefits.


butter and pottery. Elsewhere, McDonald uses ethnographic fieldwork to assess the long-term history of stone bracelet production in Mali, Muller-Kosack explores the complexity of the ethnohistoric data that might provide a context for the stonewalled DGB sites of Cameroon, von Hellermann (not perhaps wholly convincingly) considers historical evidence that the kingdom of Benin may not always have existed in a thickly forested environment, and Orijemie et al. provide unexpected palynological evidence for a pre-European presence in Nigeria of ornamental trees of Asian/Indian Ocean origin. If Randsborg's extremely brief paper on his work in Benin offers the reader less (not least by wholly ignoring the work of Béninois archaeologists and several American-led research projects), Allsworth-Jones's own chapter on fieldwork at Adesina Oja, a village now engulfed by Ibadan, is a tour de force in employing ethnographic data to explore archaeological sites, engaging African students in the materiality of their own past and developing an archaeology of Nigeria's recent history. Overall, then, this is a most useful collection of papers and one currently without equal in its coverage of a broad swathe of West African archaeology.


Motion-Compensated Averaging (MCA) with blind deconvolution has proven successful in mitigating turbulence effects like image dancing and blurring. In this paper an image quality control according to the "Lucky Imaging" principle is combined with the MCA-procedure, weighting good frames more heavily than bad ones, skipping a given percentage of extremely degraded frames entirely. To account for local isoplanatism, when image dancing will effect local displacements between consecutive frames rather than global shifts only, a locally operating MCA variant with block matching, proposed in earlier work, is employed. In order to reduce loss of detail due to normal averaging, various combinations of temporal mode, median and mean are tested as reference image. The respective restoration results by means of a weighted blind deconvolution algorithm are presented and evaluated.


Human immunode ciency virus-1 (HIV-1) can induce dementia with alarmingly occurrence worldwide. The mechanism of HIV-associated dementia unfortunately, remains poorly understood, but the discovery of HIV-1 binding sites in the brain, including chemokine receptors, has provided new insights. Brain macrophages and microglia, but not neurons, are infected by HIV-1. Mysteriously, however, neurons are injured and may die from apoptosis. The predominant pathway to neuronal injury appears to be indirect via the release of macrophage, microglial and astrocyte toxins that produce overexcitation and free radical formation resulting in excitotoxicity, a process shared with other neurodegenerative diseases. Recent insights into signaling pathways mediating these neurotoxic events offer hope for the development of therapeutic targets. In this Workshop, we will review the pathophysiology of HIV-associated dementia, concentrating on the pathways to neuronal injury involving (i) chemokine receptor activation on the cell surface of macrophages, astrocytes, and neurons, and (ii) caspase activation in neurons, eliciting both mitochondrial and non-mitochondrial apoptotic signals.


1. A modification of Chakravarti9s analeptic test is described, in which adequate controls are used in each experiment. 2. The effects of several widely-used stimulants upon mice anaesthetised with nembutal have been compared. The results have been assessed by an application of the "time-response curve" method.


Helicobacter pylori is a spiral-shaped Gram-negative bacteria implicated as a cause of histological gastritis, contributing to peptic ulcer disease and perhaps playing a role in gastric cancer in humans. The organism is found worldwide; the prevalence of infection increases with age; and colonization probably persists for life. Diagnostic approaches chat have been used include tissue stains, culture of stomach biopsy specimens, labelled-urea breath tests and serology. It is too early to advocate treatment for all infected individuals; the benefits and risks have yet to be carefully studied and assessed.


An impact action can cause local, or even overall, damage to structural components. This paper investigates the effect of flat and wavy steel fibers on the mechanical impact resistance of all-lightweight concrete beams under single and mixed conditions. Four all-lightweight concrete beams were subjected to drop hammer impact tests. From the failure mode, local shear-type damage occurred at the midspan of the all-lightweight concrete beams, with mainly shear cracks. The steel fiber has an inhibitory effect on the generation and development of cracks and improves the phenomenon of concrete crushing and spalling after the impact of the beam. Different mixing methods will have different effects on the crack-inhibition effect of steel fiber. The mixed addition of steel fiber has a more prominent effect on crack-development inhibition, making the cracks finer. Under the conditions of adding the flat steel fibers alone, the wavy steel fibers alone, and the mixed addition of steel fibers, the peak displacement at the midspan was reduced by 14.29%, 22.86%, and 37.14%, respectively; in comparison, residual displacement was reduced by 18.18%, 50.91%, and 54.55%, and the peak impact force was increased by 6.98%, −2.62%, and 1.89%. In addition, the stiffness loss of the steel fiber-added specimens is slight, which can have a higher impact response when the drop hammer falls. The results show that the addition methods of the steel fibers have different effects on the improvement of the impact resistance of the all-lightweight concrete beams, and the mixed addition has a better effect than the single addition.


In my thesis I explore the following three texts:The Adventures of Don Chipote, Lunar Braceros 2125-2148,andSleep Dealer. I analyze how the Mexican immigrant experience isconnected and distinct in each text, particularly through a historical and science fictionperspective. I demonstrate how the Mexican immigrant must leave his/her homeland in attemptto gain a stronger sense of identity in a new world. However, during their migrating experiencethey encounter physical, economic, communicative, and technological barriers that prevent themfrom obtaining the identity they desire. Moreover, once they have migrated to the new land andmust work as cheap labor, they are completely removed from any type of identity they possessedbecause their jobs dehumanize them through exploitation and technology. In the end, theMexican immigrant either fails or is successful in obtaining the identity he/she wants through theexperiences and interrelationships he/she has gained from the other land. Regardless of what theyaccomplished, these characters determine their own success when overcoming obstacles, andestablish an individual and communal identity from their experiences. My thesis reveals how theMexican immigrant gains valuable knowledge from his/her experience to become importantfigures recognized in society.


Sustainability is an important issue in construction sector regarding the use of virgin materials as well as the emission of greenhouse gases from the production of raw materials. Cement is the prime constituents of structural concrete and it produces approximately 7% of global man made CO2. To create sustainable environment, interest in blended cements is growing up because of its advantages in reducing CO2 emissions and fuel consumption. Supplementary cementitious materials such as Ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) as well as fly ash are being used as an effective partial cement replacement material to make blended cement. This paper presents an experimental investigation carried out to study the effects of GGBFS and fly ash on strength development of mortar. Cement was partially replaced with six percentages (10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50% and 60%) of GGBFS and fly ash by weight. Ordinary Portland cement (OPC) mortar was also prepared as reference mortar. A total of 600 cube and briquette mortar specimens were cast and compressive as well as tensile strength of the mortar specimens were determined at curing age of 3, 7, 14, 28, 60, 90 and 180 days. Test results show that strength increases with the increase of supplementary cementitious materials up to an optimum value, beyond which, strength values start decreasing with further addition. Among all the mortars used, the optimum amount of cement replacement in mortar is found around 40% of GGBFS that provides 22% higher compressive and 23% higher tensile strength as compared to OPC mortar. On the other side, 40% cement replaced fly ash mortar shows 13% higher compressive and 9% higher tensile strength as compared to OPC mortar. © 2017 Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh. All rights reserved.


The invention discloses a power factor regulating circuit and a regulating method. The regulating circuit comprises a main circuit, an auxiliary power supply module, a singlechip control module and a driving module. An input power source Vac is connected with the input end of the auxiliary power supply module; the output end of the auxiliary power supply module is respectively connected with the singlechip control module and the power source input end of the driving module; the singlechip control module samples the input voltage and the input current of the main circuit; the input end of the driving module is connected with the driving signal end of the singlechip control module; and the output end of the driving module is connected with two switch tubes of the main circuit. With the regulating method, automatic regulation to different loads can be realized, and the power factor regulating circuit and the regulating method are mainly used for reactive power compensation for perceptual power loads such as a transformer, an electric motor, a fluorescent lamp and an electric-arc furnace in a power grid. According to the invention, through the regulation of the power factor, the load can be unimpeded and the load voltage and the load current can be of the same phase.


Although intestinal endometriosis is not uncommon in women of reproductive age. Endometriosis of  colon that involved mucosa is quite rare and differential diagnosis from colon cancer may be difficult. We present a case of middle-age woman with colonic endometriosis. Her initial clinical diagnosis including radiologic and endoscopic studies was sigmoid colon cancer with right ureteric involvement. After laparotomy and en-bloc resection, the histological examination revealed extensive involvement of endometriosis. Conclusion : Colonic endometriosis is a relatively rare disease and is difficult to differentiate from  malignancy. Keywords : Colonic endometriosis, intestinal endometriosis, mimicking colon cancer


The Court of Justice of the European Union has recently issued its judgments in bpost and Nordzucker, in which it considers the scope and interpretation of the ne bis in idem principle (i.e., the protection against double jeopardy) provided by EU law. This article sets out some of the key takeaways from the two judgments and discusses their potential implications in navigating the forthcoming overlap between the Digital Markets Act and EU competition law enforcement. While bpost and Nordzucker provide welcome clarification as regards due process and proportionality in this context, key questions remain unanswered and we can expect more litigation in this area moving forward.


Over the last few decades, there have been innumerable science, engineering and societal breakthroughs enabled by the development of High Performance Computing (HPC) applications, algorithms and architectures.

In the context of this talk, our focus is on numerical linear algebra algorithms that appear in many large scale simulations and are often the most time consuming numerical kernel; more precisely we consider numerical schemes for the solution of large sparse systems of linear equations.

In this talk, we will first cover the spectrum of the ongoing research activities of the HiePACS Inria team that ranges from dense and sparse direct solvers to novel block Krylov methods.

The core of this presentation will focus on hybrid methods that hierarchically combine direct and iterative methods for the solution of large sparse systems of linear equations. These techniques inherit the advantages of each approach, namely the limited amount of memory and natural parallelization for the iterative component and the numerical robustness of the direct part.

In order to perform extreme scale simulations on large distributed platforms, the number of iterations is often the main limitation of these methods since the convergence may deteriorate with the number of computational nodes. Taking into account a low-rank approximation of our problem, we are able to alleviate this penalizing numerical effect.

Focusing on the distributed sparse hybrid solver MaPHyS developed in the HiePACS Inria team, we will show how the adaptation of a semi-algebraic coarse space originally proposed in the context of domain decomposition methods ensures the scalability of a distributed sparse hybrid solver.


This paper focuses on the effects of plyometric trainings on upper extremity anaerobic power and shotspeed in 20 volunteer male handball players, who are in the men's handball team at Süleyman Demirel University. Players were randomly divided into two groups as handball training group (HTG) and plyometric training group (PTG). While HTG continued routine handball training, plyometric trainings were applied to PTG additionally for 8 weeks, 3 days a week, at least 30 minutes a day. The upper extremity anaerobic power and shotspeed tests were applied to the groups in 1st and 8th weeks of the period (Inbar et al., 1996). Data analysis was made by using comparison tests. The study reveals that plyometric trainings have positive effects on shotspeed in handball. Considering that plyometric training provides maximum contraction in the shortest time possible, it can be said that applying plyometric training in pre-season and inseason training programming may be more effective.


The Petri nets and the mapping method of four workflow primitives to Petri nets is introduced firstly.Next,according to research of remote sensing satellite business operation and management unit,hierarchical modeling for business operation and management unit is completed.Finally,the model of Petri nets is simulated by the software of Visual Object Net + +,and the time performance of the model is analyzed.The result of the simulation shows that the model based on Petri nets for workflow of business operation and management unit is collect,and the emergency mode of the model cost about sixty percents less time than the conventional model,therefore,the emergency mode has higher efficiency.


A high-power wide beamwidth circularly polarized (CP) antenna with lightning protection is presented. The antenna is designed to operate at 1.41 GHz with a wide beamwidth for airport uses. It consists of four helix antenna elements forming a quadrifilar-helix antenna (QHA), a strip-line feeding network and a lightning rod for lightning protection. The QHA is fed using a high-power feeding network with sequential phase rotation of 90°. The lightning rod is installed at the center of the ground plane on the base of the antenna. Simulation is used to design and study the antenna which is also fabricated with housing for measurement. Simulation and measured results agree well. Results show that the QHA antenna has a hemispherical radiation pattern with a beamwidth of 100° and a CP beamwidth of 109° in elevation.


The article deals with the dependence of the interval variables-estimates (the respondents' attitudes to political parties, political leaders, satisfaction with the work of state bodies, attitudes to voting results) on the nominal parameter "The accepted idea", which is represented by five meaningful nominal responses. The first is the idea of intrinsic value of the individual, the recognition of human rights and freedoms. The second is the idea of respect for traditions, the past, and countering various innovations and changes. The third is the idea of value of the nation as the highest form of social unity. The fourth is the idea of social justice and equality, when the interests of society are above all. The fifth is the idea of national and racial superiority, heroism, and power cult. The dependent (interval) parameters are as follows: interest in politics; attitude to the United Russia party; attitude to V.V. Putin; attitude to D. A. Medvedev; dissatisfaction with the results of voting in the elections to the RF State Duma; satisfaction with the results of voting in the Russian Federation presidential elections; age; attitude to M.D. Prokhorov; attitude to A.A. Navalny; subjective assessment of their financial situation. A new version of authorial method is applied to analyze cause and effect relation in parallel for any interval and nominal variables. And as a result, it became possible to speak about the dependence of an interval parameter on a multivalued nominal variable, and to select the relation necessary in strength, based only on numerical values.


The growth morphology, structure, and magnetism of ultrathin Co films on the W(111) surface are studied with conventional and spin polarized low energy electron microscopy and diffraction and first principles total energy calculations. Pseudo-layer-by-layer growth of thick pseudomorphic (ps) Co films is observed at 380 K, while Stranski-Krastanov growth and transformation to a (6\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}6) closed-packed structure are observed at higher temperatures. On the basis of the calculations, only one ps Co monolayer is expected to be thermodynamically stable against three-dimensional island formation. Calculations also indicate that the magnetic moment on Co atoms at the interface is reduced due to strong hybridization with the substrate, but remains non-zero even for the single ps monolayer. Metastable ps Co/W(111) is found experimentally to be ferromagnetically ordered at 380 K when film thickness exceeds 7.6 ps ML. Although only in-plane magnetization is observed, substrate atomic steps have a strong influence on the magnetization easy axis and magnetic domain structure, which suggests that the in-plane magnetocrystalline anisotropy is weak.


Airborne LIDAR instruments are capable of delivering high density point clouds, but sampling is inherently uneven in both 2D and 3D space due to collection patterns as well as effects like occlusion. Taking full advantage of the detail available when creating 3D models therefore requires that resolution be adaptable to the amount of localized data. Voxel-based modeling of LIDAR has proven advantageous in many situations, but the traditional use of a fixed grid size prevents full realization of the potential resolution. Allowing voxel sizes to vary across the model using spatial subdivision techniques overcomes this limitation. An important part of this process is defining an appropriate limit of resolution for different sections of a model, and we incorporate information gained through tracing of LIDAR pulses to guide this decision process. Real-world data are used to demonstrate our results, and we show how dynamic resolution voxelization of LIDAR allows for both reduced storage requirements as well as improved modeling flexibility.


Net emission coefficients were calculated for a two-dimensional HID light source in accordance with the composition, the local temperature, and the radiation relative to the rest of the discharge which can be absorbed in the same volume of an element. All important line-broadening mechanisms were included, and the effects of emission and absorption on the net emission coefficient were accounted for on a line-by-line basis. Particular attention has been paid to the effect of pressure on the net emission of the 253.7 nm resonance line and the visible lines.


: : Agricultural Sciences : : Applied Biology : : Civil Engineering : : Applied Physics : : All fields of Engineering : : Applied chemistry : : Astronology : : Marine Sciences : : Applied Mathematics : : Artificial Intelligence : : Atmospheric Sciences : : Automatic Control : : Automotive Engineering : : Medicine Research : : Medical Technology : : Medical Sciences : : Chemical Engineering : : Chemistry : : Civil Engineering : : Information Technology : : Telecommunication Engineering : : Computer Databases & Software : : Construction : : Electrical Engineering : : Electronics Engineering : : Control Engineering : : Computer Systems Engineering : : Animal and Veterinary Sciences : : Biomedical Materials : : Energy Resources & Research : : Environmental Engineering : : Fire & Fire Prevention : : Food & Food Industry : : Geology : : Industrial Engineering : : Machine Learning : : Machinery : : Marine Technology : : Mechanical Engineering : : Metallurgy : : Mineralogy : : Mining Engineering : : Neural Networks : : Oceanography : : Optical & Neural Computing : : Petroleum & Gas : : Physics : : Robotics : : Solid State Technology : : Textile Industry & Fabrics : : Transportation : : Waste Management : : Industrial Arts etc : : Business Administration : : Commerce : : Social Science


In The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, Yoram Hazony suggests that it is part of Rabbinic tradition that in the Akedah, Abraham never intended to sacrifice Isaac (2012, 115-118). In a recent paper, Sam Lebens (2017, 501) argued that in making this claim, Hazony is misrepresenting Rabbinic tradition. In this paper, I show that Hazony can concede to Lebens's argument and still have something interesting to say about the Akedah, namely, that it provides an opportunity to reflect on what might happen when a 'Shepherd' is commanded by God to violate what they understand to be a principle of natural law.


Objective: This study has been conducted with the aim of assessing the risk management category and its status in hospital from the perspective of senior managers in Urmia hospitals considering the existing scientific gap and the importance of the issue for the health system and society. Methods: This cross-sectional research was conducted in all 12 hospitals in Urmia. Participants in the research included 37 senior hospital managers. Data gathering instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire with Likert scale. Content validity and reliability of the tool (Cronbach's alpha coefficient) have been also measured in a similar study. This tool has been designed in two parts: Demographic specifications and items (44 questions). Kolmogorov-Smirnov, ANOVA one-way, independent t-test, and Spearman tests were used in SPSS 20 software for statistical analysis. Results: The average of total score of all risk management components was equal to 3.0445, which is in moderate level. According to ANOVA one-way test, there was no significant relationship between the organizational status of managers and their education level with any of the risk management components. Furthermore, it was specified using independent t-test, there is no statistically significant relationship between gender and risk management components. It was specified using Pearson correlation test; there is a statistically significant relationship between gender and education level as well as individual's organizational status (p-value: 0.001). Conclusion: Studied hospitals have suffered from the lack of risk management. There is not enough knowledge in this regard among senior hospital managers, and therefore, due to the importance of this issue, needed policies and programs should be provided to all hospital managers and needed supporting and education should be provided in regard to the implementation of risk management measures.


What is new about the Nuclear Age is the total incompatibility of current thinking with the increasing scope and accelerating speed of electronic technology. Hitherto sequent events now approach simultaneity, as the new nuclear embrace merges friend with foe. Once dominant concepts and ground rules yield to new percepts and process patterns by electric speedup. But the cause of the problem also provides means for its solution, by learning to use all our faculties with their technological extensions not merely as specialists, but with comprehensive awareness as human beings.


If values that we monitor changes during discrete periods (for example, in discrete time intervals), the formula above leads to a difference equation or a dynamical system. In this case, we are dealing with a function that depends on discrete integer values – a sequence. Recall that a sequence of real numbers (indexed by nonnegative integers) can be given by listing its terms (for example, 1, 1 2 , 1 3 , . . .) or by the formula for its n-th term (for example an = 1 n ). Alternatively, a sequence of real numbers {an} can be represented by a recursive equation


SUMMARY Eighteen male growing Friesian calves averaging 187±2.50 kg body weight and 9±0.19 months of age were used to study the effect of feeding rations containing different levels of poultry litter and corn silage on some heavy metals accumulation and histological aspects of body tissues. Calves were divided into three similar groups (6 in each) and were assigned randomly to the three experimental rations as follows: R1 (control): 65 % concentrate feed mixture + 15 % berseem hay + 20 % rice straw. R2: 12.5 % poultry litter + 12.5 % corn grains + 75 % corn silage. R3: 25 % poultry litter + 25 % corn grains + 50 % corn silage. The contents of copper (Cu), cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb) were higher in poultry litter compared to the other tested feedstuffs. The concentrations of Cu, Cd and Pb in experimental rations and intake by growing calves increased with increasing the level of poultry litter and decreasing the level of corn silage. The concentrations of Cu, Cd and Pb in blood and seminal plasma, liver, kidneys, testes and muscles of growing Friesian calves significantly (P<0.05) increased when the level of poultry litter was increased and the level of corn silage was decreased. The concentrations of Cu, Cd and Pb in blood and seminal plasma, liver, kidneys, testes and muscles of growing Friesian calves fed R3 which contained 25% poultry litter were higher than the normal levels. Friesian calves fed R1 and R2 showed normal histological structure of body tissues. However, calves fed R3 showed severely damaged hepatocytes, more vacuolated and enlarged hepatocytes, lymphocytic infiltration between hepatocytes and necrotic area of hepatocytes of liver. Glomeruli lost their architecture and lumen of convoluted tubule besides the lymphocytic infiltration of kidneys. Degenerations and necrosis of the testes were observed while the semineferous tubles and their lumens were free from spermatozoa. It could be concluded that using poultry litter in the ration of growing calves fed corn silage at the level of 25% of DM basis led to an increase in the concentration of heavy metals in blood and seminal plasma and accumulation in body tissues causing abnormal histological aspects. So, poultry litter should not exceed 12.5% on DM basis of the ration.


K. C. Chan, Y. X. Liang, E. S. Hui, P. W. Kau, R. G. Ellis-Behnke, G. E. Schneider, K. F. So, and E. X. Wu Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging and Signal Processing, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, Department of Anatomy, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States


In order to formally reason about low-level system programs one needs a semantics (for the programming language in question) that can deal with programs that are not statically type-correct. For system-level programs, the semantics must deal with such heretical constructs like casting integers to pointers and converting pointers between incompatible base types. In this paper we describe a formal semantics for the data types of the C++ programming language that is suitable for low-level programs in the above sense. This work is part of a semantics for a large subset of the C++ programming language developed in the VFiasco project. In the VFiasco project we aim at the verification of substantial properties of the Fiasco microkernel, which is written in C++.


Research has shown that visual aesthetics is a key determinant of the perceived credibility of human-computer-interaction systems. However, there is limited research on which of the two dimensions of visual aesthetics (classical and expressive) has a stronger impact on the perceived credibility of persuasive health apps. Consequently, we conducted an empirical study among 669 subjects to investigate: (1) which of the two dimensions has a stronger influence on the perceived credibility of fitness apps modeling exercise behavior; and (2) the moderating effect of gender-based personalization. Our results show that, regardless of gender-based personalization, it is the perception of classical aesthetics that determines the judgment of the credibility of a persuasive health app. Expressive aesthetics has no significant influence on perceived credibility. Our findings underscore the need for designers of persuasive systems in the health domain to focus more on the classical dimension of aesthetics (orderliness, clarity and simplicity) when designing health applications for behavior change in order to enhance their perceived credibility.


PURPOSE
The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of hypericin on MCF-7 (Michigan Cancer Foundation- 7) breast cancer cells, as it is known to exert an antitumor effect on the expression and regulation of ADAMTS1, 3, 10 and the p53 gene in breast cancer cells.

METHODS
MFC-7 cells were cultured and subjected separately to various doses (1, 5 and 7.5 μg /mL) hypericin. After 24 hrs, RNA was isolated and transcribed into cDNA. Expression analysis was performed by real time (RT)-PCR and cell survival was determined by the XTT assay.

RESULTS
While the expression of ADAMTS1 in MFC-7 cells decreased to 0.04-fold after exposure to 1 μg /mL hypericin, the expression increased by 5.6- and 36-fold with 5 and 7.5 μg/mL, respectively. Furthermore, ADAMTS3 expression in MCF7 cells increased 3.9-fold with the use of 5 μg /mL of hypericin. These concentrations of hypericin did not lead to significant changes in the expression of ADAMTS10 and the p53 gene. Viability of cancer cells as evaluated by the XTT assay showed that hypericin concentration of 7.5 μg /mL led to increased apoptosis of cancer cells.

CONCLUSION
The increase in ADAMTS1 expression may prevent metastasis or facilitate the development of an adjuvant factor with tumor-suppressive effects. Hypericin may therefore exert its antitumor and apoptotic effects in MFC-7 cells via ADAMTS1 and ADAMTS3.


To progress in the field of lyrical art, one must draw strength from origin. As water flows inevitably from source to sea. The legend of "The Flying Dutchman" (Der Fliegende Holländer) came to Wagner's mind during the violent storm that broke as he left Riga for France. At the genesis of this opera, stands the sovereign power of nature, carrying within it the secret destiny of man. As an enigma. The main theme of the cursed captain would be today differently understood. Because romanticism, limitless love and supreme sacrifice, redemption, are gone over. But face from the sea in fury, man's heart stays with fundamental interrogation about meaning of life and existence. One could read this raging ocean as the mirror of a tormented, wandering, unstable conscience. That's why "The Flying Dutchman" is ever contemporary. We propose to extract (to save) from these upset waters the true Leitmotif, unperishable, that leads to the dawn of Future. Our method lies in total freedom of interpretation and complete reconstruction of this Wagner's masterpiece.


Reports on phytoplasma diseases in plant wild species are rare. Particularly interesting is the case in an Austrian forest, in the region Rosalia, Lower Austria, where a high number of plants, including Euonymus europaea, Sorbus aucuparia, Fraxinus excelsior, Fagus sylvatica, Betula alba, Sambucus nigra, Pyrus sp. and Picea abies, appeared with typical symptoms attributed normally to phytoplasma infection. Plants of Rubus ideaus, Rubus fruticosus and Vaccinium myrtillus, which represent small fruit species, showed clear symptoms. In preliminary test to verify phytoplasma presence in V. myrtillus the presence of phytoplasmas belonging to ribosomal group 16SrVI were identified after nested PCR on 16S ribosomal gene and restriction digestion with the appropriate enzymes. These plants were introduced in vitro to assure the conservation of the phytoplasma isolate for further analysis. Since in this area only a few home gardens are present in the neighbourhood of the forest land, the way of introduction of the phytoplasmas remains obscure.


The aim of this work is to design and to apply a robust model of knowledge management for power en- terprises that can be used to identify a key group of knowledge and abilities, to understand and put into practice those knowledge, to make an inventory of experts, to retain and capitalize the expertise and know-how, to share and transfer the knowledge between people, to identify training needs and requirements arising from work. As a con- clusion, the model of knowledge management is called PAR and it is based on three knowledge strategies with re- spect to aims, actions, resources and indicators.


Bariatric surgery is a clinically effective tool that commonly results in sustained weight loss changes for the majority of patients. While bariatric surgery is generally associated with a number of positive health outcomes post-operatively, some popular media outlets and clinical anecdotes have presented concerns about the notion of "addiction transfer" and substance abuse post-bariatric surgery. There is a lack of research, however, in this area. The present study examined the rate of substance abuse in a broad sample of postbariatric surgery patients and examined potential risk factors for the development of substance abuse post-surgery. It was hypothesized that documented risk factors for substance abuse, more generally, would also predict substance abuse among this population. In addition, it was hypothesized that a number of theoretically-driven variables would predict substance abuse among this sample more specifically. For instance, it was hypothesized that those who had high food addiction scores pre-surgery would be more likely to meet criteria for substance abuse post-surgery, thereby supporting the addiction transfer theory. Participants completed a web-based survey assessing retrospective accounts of pre-surgical substance use, eating pathology, family history, and traumatic history, post-surgical substance use, life stressors, and body image, and global trait-like measures such as emotion dysregulation, impulsivity, sensation-seeking, and coping skills. Findings revealed that a subgroup of individuals met criteria for substance abuse post-bariatric surgery; however, the majority of those who met substance abuse criteria post-surgery did not have a history of substance abuse. Family history of substance abuse, poor coping skills, and major life stressors were related to substance abuse post-bariatric surgery, particularly for the new-onset substance abuse group. Contrary to expectations, however, the theory of addiction transfer


Disclosed are a method for determining respiratory characteristics of lung-pulmonary circulation system by respiratory blood gas and blood gas data, and a displaying instrument for the same. More particularly, the present invention describes a method for determining respiratory characteristics of the lung-pulmonary circulation system by using respiratory blood gas and blood gas data and a display instrument for the same, so that the present invention provides partial O 2 and/or CO 2 pressure in other major parts, as well as shunt ratio of lungs and physiological dead space ratio by locally applying partial O 2 and/or CO 2 pressure information in lung-pulmonary circulation system in which gas-exchange is performed, and offers medical information such as cardiac output of a heart per beat.


Traditional 3D graphics systems, e.g. Denali, with texture mapping capability implement the standard graphics pipeline in a pipelined parallel architecture. The systems are sufficiently powerful and flexible to support efficiently applications such as volume rendering. We discuss how Denali, manufactured by Kubota Graphics Corporation accelerates volume rendering. Volume rendering methods including maximum intensity projection and iso-surface rendering are implemented using Denali's 3D texture mapping capability. The volume rendering realization utilizes a partitioning data allocation scheme instead of a replicating approach to reduce dramatically texture memory requirements. Denali has two major parallel components: Transformation and Rasterization Modules (TRMs) and Frame Buffer Modules (FBMs). The flexible TRMs, containing a general purpose RISC processor, use object parallelism. The FBMs, containing hardware ASICs and pixel memory, use pixel parallelism. The TRMs and FBMs use dynamic and static load balancing schemes respectively to assign a roughly equal amount of computation to each parallel node.<<ETX>>


Presented is a procedure for determining the iron content in a polyurethane encapsulant curing agent by x-ray emission spectroscopy. Standards were prepared by adding ferric acetyl acetonate to a curing agent of identical composition to that being analyzed, but containing no iron. Results show that x-ray emission spectroscopy is feasible for determination of iron in the 30 to 50 ppM range. This range could probably be extended by the preparation of additional standards. Precision of the method is approximately 1.2 ppM at the 99 percent confidence level.


The thermal decomposition of cobalt acetate tetrahydrate (Co(CH3COO)2 · 4H2O) has been studied via thermogravimetric (TG) analysis, in situ X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The results of TG and XRD showed that the parent salt melted and then the dissolved crystalline water was vaporized in two steps. The dehydration process was followed by a major step concerning the decomposition of the acetate group, leading to basic acetate as an intermediate, which then produced CoO and Co in N2 and H2 atmosphere, respectively. Three decomposition intermediates Co(CH3COO)2 · 0.5H2O, Co(CH3COO)2, and Co(OH)(CH3COO) were presumed. In situ XRD experiments revealed that the intermediate basic acetate was poorly crystallized or even amorphous. Evolved gases analysis indicated that the volatile products of acetate decomposition were water vapor, acetic acid, ethylenone, acetone, and CO2. A detailed thermal decomposition mechanism of Co(CH3COO)2 · 4H2O was discussed.


Modern countries'criminal legislation has mostly paid the suitable concern to self-defence, they believe that it should be based on the " proper foundation " , what is more ,it should have "the emergent illegal violation" and "the defence" action as its conditions.


Objective To investigate the pathological and immunohistochemistry features,diagnosis and treatment of primary duodenal papillary carcinoid.Methods One case of primary duodenal papillary carcinoid and related literature were studied retrospectively.Results The patient was treated by duodenal papillary tumor excision and left the hospital smoothly.The diagnosis was primary duodenal papillary carcinoid by endoscopic ultrasonography and biopsy.They were positive for chronogranin A and somatostatin by immunohistochemistry.Conclusions The disease of primary duodenal papillary carcinoid is rare in clinic and usually hard to diagnose.It needs to make a diagnosis by the means of combining pathologic morphologic features of with features of immunophenotype.The treatment is mainly surgery.


The pornological and analytical characteristics of 6 Sicilian pomegranate selections: 'Dente di Cav allo: 'Neirana.' 'Profeta: 'Racalrnuto,' 'Ragana,' and 'Sclinunte were studied in the same experimental orchard located in Sicily in comparison to those of the 'Roja Spanish culiivar grown in the same envi ronment. The average characteristics of the indigenous accessions were somewhat less attractive than the Spanish culiivar. All the tested accessions had qualitative characteristics that fit general commercial requirements. However, significant statistical differences emerged among the cultivars for all the ob served pornological and analytical characteristics. Compositional analyses revealed thai, with the ex ception of' Racalrnuio,' all the local accessions can be included in the group of sweet culiivars. 'Racalmuto' had the highest fruit weight. the lowest percentage of pulp and. because of the lowest titratab!e acidity. showed a value of total soluble solids conrenr/tirratab!c acidity -+-5 times less than the average of the remaining accessions. O;erall, a considerable amount of variation has been found among the different local accessions. es pecially as far as number of arils per fruit and titraiablc acidity are concerned.


Almost two years ago a new device called an Electron Beam Ion Trap (EBIT) was brought into operation at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for the purpose of studying veryhighly-charged ions using x-ray spectroscopy. During this period EBIT has demonstrated its ability to make several different kinds of measurements for ionization stages that have not been accessible before.(ls2*3) The measurements may be grouped into three general types: (1) Measurement of electron collision cross sections using line radiation, (2) Precise measurement of energy levels (e.g. Lamb shifts), and (3) Measurement of properties of the .


By introducing the foreign reformation experience of buying health care service by the government and combining the real conditions of it in China,in this paper we analyze the existing problems on buying the service for community public health service by the government and put forth the strategy and suggestions,in order to provide some reference for implementation of this reform in China.


To examine baseline differences in neuropsychological performance between long-term stable mild cognitive impairment (sMCI) and those who convert from MCI to dementia (cMCI), hypothesizing sMCI will perform better on memory measures. While conversion has been previously examined, none examined sMCI with over 10 years follow-up.

 Data from the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center were used. Participants were defined as sMCI (n = 29) if cognitive status was MCI at first visit and at least 9 subsequent visits (10 total) and cMCI (n = 1887) if cognitive status was MCI at first visit and the participant converted to dementia at any subsequent visit. Participants with any history of stroke, traumatic brain injury, alcohol or drug abuse, or other neurological disorder were excluded. Participants completed neuropsychological measures of global cognition, immediate and delayed verbal memory, working memory, mental manipulation, semantic fluency, processing speed, and confrontational naming. Depressive symptoms were assessed using the Geriatric Depression Scale. The Mann-Whitney-U non-parametric test was used to compare both groups at baseline on all measures. Predictors of sMCI were explored using binomial logistic regression.

 Participants did not differ significantly in age, level of education, or depressive symptoms. Comparison between groups at baseline indicate sMCI participants performed significantly better than cMCI on global cognition U = 13673,p < .001, delayed verbal memory U = 14549,p < .001, and semantic fluency U = 15538.5,p < .001. Of these significant measures, none predicted sMCI.

 As hypothesized, sMCI performed better on delayed verbal memory, but also semantic fluency and global cognition, though none predicted sMCI. Future research must examine neuropsychological measures of other cognitive domains and their predictive value.


Several associations between cancer and some risk factors mainly concerning lifestyle, are well established. In view of the importance to convey this knowledge to the population for effective cancer prevention, this research was carried out to assess the level of information in a population in the countryside of Brazil. A survey by household interview was carried out in a probabilistic sample of four towns in order to obtain data on the knowledge of people about the association between tobacco, alcohol, certain types of food and sunlight, and the occurrence of cancer. The sample was obtained in a two phases process (blocks and houses) and every person older than 20 years was interviewed in the selected house. A total of 1084 persons were interviewed and their level of knowledge about the association between cancer and the risk factors was low (60% for tobacco, 45% for alcohol, 39% for certain foods and 67% for solar irradiation). This level increased with schooling and socioeconomic levei and decreased with age for people older than 60 years. This did not occur for alcohol, for which the trend went in the opposite direction regarding schooling and social class. The level of knowledge about these associations was higher for women. These data permitted us to identify population groups which could benefit from programs aimed to change their style of life.


In order to study the impact of mutation loads on the walking gear of the shear,transient dynamic analysis of engagement of the walking gear and the pin-track is carried out based on ANSYS Workbench,and the influence of the linear variation of mutation loads with time on the stress of the walking gear is obtained.The study can provide references for the design of the shearer walking gear and the damage analysis of the walking gear.


The main challenge of e-learning systems is to provide courses tailored to different students with different learning rate and knowledge degree. Such systems must be also efficient, as well as adaptive. However, the most recent researches can be classified in to two major groups. The first group emphasizes the need for E-learning to be adaptive. While the second group, emphasizes the efficiency of such systems. In this research we set an objective to achieve both efficiency and adaptivity. This can be accomplished by selecting a representative algorithm for the first group and a representative algorithm for the second one, and attempting to combine them. This is justified by the fact that the first one aimed at improving the ability to select dynamically an appropriate learning object for a specific learner, while the second one aimed at selecting a learning path that costs least time and effort. In order to decide how these two approaches can be combined, the representative approaches were further analyzed, implemented and then experimented. As a result, a formalization and some modifications to these algorithms were suggested and a new approach is proposed. (Journal of American Science 2009;5(6):32-42). (ISSN: 1545-1003).


Wastage of Purple Cornichon grapes due to species of Botytis and Penicillium was considerably reduced by wrapping bunches in tissues impregnated with sodium o-phenylphenate, o-phenylphenyl acetate or o-phenylphenyl butyrate. Sodium metabisulphite and ammonium carbonate crystals were less effective. The phenol derivatives were equally effective and their potency was 4.3 times that of sodium metabisulphite. The potency of ammonium carbonate was 0.5 times that of sodium metabisulphite.


Simple Summary Allograft inflammatory factor 1 (AIF1) is a calcium-binding protein that participates in intracellular processes such as phagocytosis, membrane ruffling and F-actin remodeling. Due to its multiple functions, AIF1 is linked with the activation of macrophages and several diseases such as kidney disease, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, metabolic diseases, neurological disorders and transplants. In this review, we present a comprehensive review of the known structure, functions and role of AIF1 in inflammatory diseases. Abstract Macrophages are a type of immune cell distributed throughout all tissues of an organism. Allograft inflammatory factor 1 (AIF1) is a calcium-binding protein linked to the activation of macrophages. AIF1 is a key intracellular signaling molecule that participates in phagocytosis, membrane ruffling and F-actin polymerization. Moreover, it has several cell type-specific functions. AIF1 plays important roles in the development of several diseases: kidney disease, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, metabolic diseases and neurological disorders, and in transplants. In this review, we present a comprehensive review of the known structure, functions and role of AIF1 in inflammatory diseases.


Cytosine and 7-deazapurine (pyrrolo[2, 3-d]pyrimidine) derivatives have a great role in medicinal chemistry and have shown rather marked antitumor, antiviral, antibacterial and antiinflammatory activities.[1-4] 7-deazapurines are an important class of compounds, structurally and chemically related to naturally nucleosides. In the last few years, several 7-deazapurine derivatives have been approved for the treatment of different diseases or are currently in phase I/II clinical trials.[1] As important pharmacophores, pyrrolo[2, 3-d]pyrimidine scaffold is being extensively investigated and many of such compounds resulted active as kinase inhibitors.[5] Herein we present the synthesis of novel N-4-benzoylcytosine–1, 2, 3-triazole and pyrrolo[2, 3-d]pyrimidine–1, 2, 3-triazole hybrides and their cytostatic and antibacterial evaluations. The novel N-1 propargylated and C-5 alkynylated N-4-benzoylcytosine derivatives were prepared by N-alkylation of pyrimidine bases and subsequent Pd-catalysed Sonogashira cross-coupling reaction, while C-6 substituted pyrrolo[2, 3-d]pyrimidine derivatives were afforded by in situ N-heteroannulation of C-5 alkynylated cytosines. Cytosine- and 7-deazapurine–1, 2, 3-triazole hybrides were obtained by click reaction with corresponding azides in the pressence of CuI and base. The novel compounds were evaluated against tumor cell lines (HeLa, CaCo-2, Raji and K562) and on the growth of gram-positive and gram-negative bacterial strains. [1] F. Musumeci et al, Eur. J. Med. Chem. 2017, 127, 369. [2] L. Wang et al, J. Med. Chem. 2015, 58, 6938. [3] V. P. Kumar et al, Bioorg. Med. Chem. Lett. 2013, 23, 5426. [4] K. M. H. Hilmy et al, J. Am. Sci., 2011, 7, 308. [5] T. Wang et al, Bioorg. Med. Chem. Lett. 2016, 26, 2936.


According to the definition of Meadow (1989), child abuse is defined as treating a child in an unacceptable way in a given culture at a given time. Major criteria for diagnosis of physical child abuse include sever, multiple, and patterned injuries with different stages of healing. Sometimes, even a single, minor injury may be sufficient to diagnose physical child abuse based on how much it is unacceptable to that particular culture at a given time. When single minor trauma is found, the criteria that could be used to decide whether it is unacceptable to the culture at a given time include; severe pain, severe disfiguration, negligence and lack of care such as injuries to main members of the body,unacceptable punishments such as biting, burning, pinching or tying to an object and,severe mental trauma such as due to non-sexual genital injuries. Much information can be gathered from minor injuries and their consequences such as how much of care was rendered. A new criterion to diagnose physical child abuse is introduced using single minor injuries. However, there is no objective and defined way of deciding how much the trauma is unacceptable for the culture at a given time. Therefore, this should be decided by law of common man, that is, if the ill-treatment of the child is unacceptable to a common man in the society.


Currently, the disposal and recycling of the alcohol industry products creates a number of difficulties due to the lack of well-established recycling lines in Ukraine. Since 1998, eight enterprises of the state-owned concern Ukrspirt have been converted to produce high-octane oxygen-containing additives (CFCs) for ethanol-based fuels to organize the processing of waste from the alcohol industry. During this time, they produced 28.2 thousand tonnes of CALs, but CALA enterprises face great difficulties in selling their products, as they are new and expensive. The influence of fusel oil additives on commodity fuels on the main physical and technical indicators of the obtained alternative fuels is considered in the paper. According to the results of studies of octane number, we have established the optimal compositions of fuel mixtures of fusel oils with gasoline A-80 can contain up to 10% of the latter. For mixtures of fusel oils with diesel fuel by cetane number, their optimum content in diesel fuel is from 4 to 10% by volume. But, according to the trends of the development of diesel engines, the compression ratio increases, which allows the use of diesel fuel with higher cetane number, and therefore it is possible to raise the content of fusel oils in diesel fuel to 12%. According to the results of studies of the environmental performance of the ZIL-130 engine when fusel oils are added to commercial gasoline in an amount of 2 to 10% vol. the CO content in ICE exhaust gases decreases by 9.3%, fuel consumption increases by 6.5%, hydrocarbons by 10.2% and nitrogen oxide by 16.9%. As a result of increasing the content of fusel oils in diesel from 0 to 6%, there is an increase in mass flow rate of fuel to 6.1%, an increase in the concentration of hydrocarbons to 10% and nitrogen oxides by 1.9% in the exhaust gases of the engine D21A1. Thus, as we see today, along with traditional fuels for internal combustion engines, it is possible to use their alternative substitutes quite efficiently both in their pure form and in mixtures with them. There are all prerequisites for this in Ukraine and the region, the only question is the financing of these projects.


SpaceWire, a recent ESA standard, is gaining popularity because of its simple circuitry, low power consumption, and high-link speed. However network management on SpaceWire networks is hampered by the lack of a link-layer broadcast mechanism which is required for services such as the address resolution protocol (ARP) and the dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP). Currently, address resolution and host IP assignments require manual configuration. This paper describes a link-layer broadcast service and encapsulation service for SpaceWire that is implemented in the host node software drivers and requires no change to routers or host node interface hardware. We believe this work will help move SpaceWire towards a future of plug and play networks, decreasing the cost and time required to develop and integrate space systems.


In two age groups of squirrel monkeys, subjects performed an operant response for light onset in the presence or absence of white noise. Results of the study indicate that light is an effective reinforcer for both younger and older monkeys, but differentially. The study also indicates that the presence of white noise affects responding in both age groups dissimilarly.


Colour, flavour and texture are key factors in food acceptability. Additionally, colour may be used to evaluate composition and chemical changes in foodstuffs, being one of the indicators of product quality [Garcia & Yousfi, 2005; Maskan, 2003; Sinnecker et al., 2002]. Extra-virgin olive oil is susceptible to oxidation, as all the vegetable oils. Oxidation is the predominant cause of oil quality deterioration during storage [Morello et al., 2004]. These oxidative reactions result in a partial loss of minor constituents, primary cause of the health-promoting effects of oil consumption [Chen & Huang, 1998; Manna et al., 1997; Psomiadou & Tsimidou, 2002a, b; Visoli & Galli, 1998]. The oxidation of olive oils leads to the degradation of natural pigments responsible for the oil colour, including carotenoids and pheophytins [Morello et al., 2004]. Oxidation products absorbing in the visible spectral range may also contribute to colour changes. Therefore, the olive oil colour may become a critical tool in quality evaluation [Bilancia et al., 2006; Ceballos et al., 2003]. Colour is measured quantitatively using such equipment as spectrophotometers or tristimulus colorimeters. Usually the colour is quantified using the units proposed by the Commission International d'Eclairage (CIE). The colours are thus defined by their tristimulus values (X, Y, and Z), which may be used to calculate the respective derivative values, L*, a*, and b*colour space coordinates [Calvo, 2004]. The position of a colour in the CIELAB colour space is defined in a threedimensional Cartesian coordinate system. The lightness value (L*) indicates how light or dark a colour is. The a* and b* values indicate the locations along the respective red-green and yellow-blue axes. The CIELAB space offers means for calculating two parameters directly related to the visually perceived colour attributes, namely, the hue angle h°, providing a quantitative measure of the hue; and chroma C, providing a quantitative measure of the colour saturation. Our present objective was to evaluate the colour changes of an olive oil during storage. Additionally, we studied the relations between the pigment contents and the colour parameters of the same olive oil.


Background. Seborrheic dernnatitis (SD) is a frequent complication of infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Most studies examining the cause of SD have concentrated on the roles of Pityrosporum ovale and sebaceous lipids. Previous studies of skin surface lipid from patients with SD have produced conflicting results, with some authors reporting an abnormal lipid composition and others finding little or no abnormality.


Efficient use of radio spectrum includes placing modulated carriers as close as possible without causing Inter-Carrier Interference (ICI). Optimally, the bandwidth of each carrier would be adjacent to its neighbors, so there would be no wasted spectrum. In practice, a guard band must be placed between each carrier bandwidth to provide a space where a filter can attenuate an adjacent carrier's signal. These guard bands are wasted bandwidth. In order to transmit high data rates, short symbol periods must be used. The symbol period is the inverse of the baseband data rate (T = 1/R), so as R increases, T must decrease. In a multi-path environment, a shorter symbol period leads to a greater chance for Inter-Symbol Interference (ISI). This occurs when a delayed version of symbol 'n' arrives during the processing period of symbol 'n+1'. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) addresses both of these problems. OFDM provides a technique allowing the bandwidths of modulated carriers to overlap without interference (no ICI). It also provides a high date rate with a long symbol duration, thus helping to eliminate ISI. OFDM may therefore be considered as a modulation technique in a broadband, multi-path environment. OFDM is a modulation technique [32],[43] where multiple low data rate carriers are combined by a transmitter to form a composite high data rate transmission. Digital signal processing makes OFDM possible. To implement the multiple carrier scheme using a bank of parallel modulators would not be very efficient in analog hardware. However, in the digital domain, multi-carrier modulation can be done efficiently with currently available DSP hardware and software. Not only can it be done, but it can also be made very flexible and programmable. This


The present invention discloses a FPGA-based interference cancellation method for a base station system and locking can be achieved, the system: a first low noise amplifier connected to the output of a first order filter, a first analog to digital converter and down-converter; of two output terminal of the low noise amplifier is connected to a second order filter and a second downconverter, analog to digital converter output and the second down-converter connected; a first output terminal and a second output terminal of the analog to digital converter are connected by a first and a second FPGA FPGA, the FPGA of the second output terminal are connected to a first DAC, a second DAC, and serial digital to analog converter; sequentially output of the first DAC is connected to a first IQ-modulator, a first power amplifier and the third filter, the output of the second DAC is sequentially connected to a second IQ modulator, fourth filter and a second amplifier, the output end of the serial digital to analog converter is connected to the voltage controlled oscillator. Simple implementation of the present invention, low cost, compatible with multiple standard systems, can be widely used in the communications industry.


Waves of misery
 is a phenomenon where spikes of many node splits occur over short periods of time in tree indexes. Waves of misery negatively affect the performance of tree indexes in insertion-heavy workloads. Waves of misery have been first observed in the context of the B-tree, where these waves cause unpredictable index performance. In particular, the performance of search and index-update operations deteriorate when a wave of misery takes place, but is more predictable between the waves. This paper investigates the presence or lack of waves of misery in several R-tree variants, and studies the extent of which these waves impact the performance of each variant. Interestingly, although having poorer query performance, the Linear and Quadratic R-trees are found to be more resilient to waves of misery than both the Hilbert and R*-trees. This paper presents several techniques to reduce the impact in performance of the waves of misery for the Hilbert and R*-trees. One way to eliminate waves of misery is to force node splits to take place at regular times before nodes become full to achieve deterministic performance. The other way is that upon splitting a node, do not split it evenly but rather at different node utilization factors. This allows leaf nodes not to fill at the same pace. We study the impact of two new techniques to mitigate waves of misery after the tree index has been constructed, namely Regular Elective Splits (RES, for short) and Unequal Random Splits (URS, for short). Our experimental investigation highlights the trade-offs in performance of the introduced techniques and the pros and cons of each technique.


ABSTRACT Ooids in the Pleistocene Ironshore Formation of Grand Cayman Island generally have large nuclei and a thin cortex. The morphology, composition and texture of the nuclei suggest that they originated as pellets, proably from the burrowing shrimp Callianassa. Evidence, including the presence of spherulites in the ooid nuclei, suggests that bacteria may have played an important role in the initial lithification of the pellets and the subsequent development of oolitic films around the pellets. The ooids are considered to be quiet-water ooids akin to those at present forming in Bimini Lagoon. Many of the ooids are incorporated in the walls of Ophiomorpha, a burrow system possibly formed by the shrimp Callianassa. Included in the wall structures of the Ophiomorpha are double pellet structures. The setting of ooids in wall structures suggests that some of the ooids formed below the sediment-water interface. FACTEURS BIOLOGIQUES DANS LA FORMATION DES OOIDES DANS LES EAUX CALMES RESUME Les ooides de la Formation d'Ironshore de l'ile Grand Cayman ont generalement des nucleides larges et un cortex peu epais. La morphologie, la composition et la texture des nucleides suggerent qu'ils sont origines comme des pellets, probablement des ecrevisses forantes Callianassa. L'evidence, la presence des spherulites dans les nucleides des ooides incluse, suggere que des bacteries ont joue un role important dans la lithification initiale des pellets et le developpement subsequent des films oolitiques autour des pellets. Les ooides sont consideres comme etant des ooides des eaux calmes similaires de ceux qui se forment a present dans la Lagune de Bimini. Beaucoup des ooides sont incorpores dans les murs d'Ophiomorpha, un systeme de forages peut-etre forme par l'ecrevisse Callianassa. Aussi inclus dans les structures des murs d'Ophiomorpha sont des structures de pellets doubles. L'incorporation des ooides dans les structures des murs suggere que certaines ooides se formaient en dessous de l'interface sediment et eau. Traduit par G. van Doorne


The existing method of teaching software engineering subjects is severely limited by scope, time and exposure to real world settings. As a result of which the significance of Software Development Processes (SDP) is not very well appreciated by students. Technical debt is the debt that the project incurs by missing any process/activity in the SDP. The idea of this paper is to impart the concept of technical debt in a real world setting to students through the board game "Hard Choices". The board game Hard Choices developed by SEI, at Carnegie Mellon University is available under creative commons license. Additionally, this paper evaluates the effectiveness of this board game to communicate the concept of technical debt. During the course of the experiment we observed that students: (i) attached importance to SDP, (ii) understood the consequence of skipping a step in SDP. The above observations stem from the comparison of scores of pre and post test which show that after the conduct of the board game the scores obtained in post-test were significantly higher at 95% confidence levels (t-test paired two sample for means). Additionally a Likert questionnaire analysis also revealed that the students perceived the instruction methodology of using board games to be lucid and engaging.


We present a numerical analysis of the stationary magnetic states realized in a planar system of concentric circular arrays of Josephson junctions coupled through identical inductances. In particular, a magnetization experiment is simulated by analyzing the flux distribution upon application of an external magnetic field in the direction orthogonal to the system after zero-field cooling. It is shown that this system can be adopted as a Josephson-junction-array model of sintered high-${\mathit{T}}_{\mathit{c}}$ superconductors.