In recent years, the heterogeneity of both commodity and supercomputers hardware has increased sharply. Accelerators, such as GPUs or Intel Xeon Phi co-processors, are often key to improving speed and energy efficiency of highly-parallel codes. However, due to the complexity of heterogeneous architectures, optimization of codes for a certain type of architecture as well as porting codes across different architectures, while maintaining a comparable level of performance, can be extremely challenging. Addressing the challenges associated with performance optimization and performance portability, autotuning has gained a lot of interest. Autotuning of performance-relevant source-code parameters allows to automatically tune applications without hard coding optimizations and thus helps with keeping the performance portable. In this paper, we introduce a benchmark set of ten autotunable kernels for important computational problems implemented in OpenCL or CUDA. Using our Kernel Tuning Toolkit, we show that with autotuning most of the kernels reach near-peak performance on various GPUs and outperform baseline implementations on CPUs and Xeon Phis. Our evaluation also demonstrates that autotuning is key to performance portability. In addition to offline tuning, we also introduce dynamic autotuning of code optimization parameters during application runtime. With dynamic tuning, the Kernel Tuning Toolkit enables applications to re-tune performance-critical kernels at runtime whenever needed, for example, when input data changes. Although it is generally believed that autotuning spaces tend to be too large to be searched during application runtime, we show that it is not necessarily the case when tuning spaces are designed rationally. Many of our kernels reach near peak-performance with moderately sized tuning spaces that can be searched at runtime with acceptable overhead. Finally we demonstrate, how dynamic performance tuning can be integrated into a real-world application from cryo-electron microscopy domain.


Structured illumination microscopy (SIM) has proven an instrumental technique for studying in vitro cellular processes that occur below the diffraction limit; however, the need to capture multiple raw frames to form a single SIM reconstruction precludes imaging highly dynamic phenomena. This speed limitation is further exacerbated as most current systems rely on diffractive optical elements to generate patterned excitation in the sample plane. These are usually slow to manipulate, sensitive to wavelength, or both. Here we introduce a novel high-speed, multicolor, structured illumination microscope that utilizes a fiber array for pattern generation and electrooptics for fast pattern manipulation. The use of broadband polarization optics, electro-optics, and fibers allows for efficient illumination over an extensive wavelength range, 400-700 nm, with greater than 10 kHz pattern manipulation capabilities. Combining these elements enables structured illumination frame rates of over 100 frames per second, well exceeding the frame rates of commercially available microscopes such as the OMX system. Figure 1 shows a schematic of the fast fiber SIM system. We demonstrate the system on fluorescent bead monolayers, fixed and multi-color stained Cos-7 cells, and live YFP stained chromosomes in e coli.


Dengue fever is a disease caused by arboviruses, belonging to the family Flaviviridae, genus Flavivirus, presents four serotypes (DENV 1-4), being transmitted by the mosquito Aedes aegypti (female). The Flavivirus genome contains a single open reading frame, which encodes a single polyprotein and is then cleaved to generate three structural proteins that make up the viral particle: C (capsid), E and prM and seven non-structural proteins: NS1, NS2A, NS2B, NS3, NS4A, NS4B and NS5. Protein E, approximately 60 kDa , is the largest structural protein in the virion, accounting for the fundamental biological properties of the virus. Its structure consists of three distinct domains: domain I or central domain, domain II and domain III, where domain III of protein E (ED3) is involved in receptor binding and is the highest target of neutralizing antibodies. The bixin and norbixin binders are major carotenoids found in Bixa orellana L. (urucum) belonging to the Bixaceae family, one of which is liposoluble and the other is water soluble, respectively. These substances are responsible for the reddish coloration of annatto, a plant native to South America. In this work, the interaction between the DENV-4 protein and the Bixin and Norbixin ligands, using computational simulation, aiming at molecular Between bixinoids ligands and dengue virus protein serotype four (DENV-4). The present study was developed in four stages: (1) Obtaining the structures of Bixin and Norbixin ligands in the chemspider repository (http://www.chemspider.com/); (2) Preparation of bixinoid ligands using Arguslab software; (3) Obtaining the protein from DENV-4 in the protein data bank repository and preparing it for docking; (4) Molecular protein-binding docking using the Chimera software. After completion of the molecular coupling between bixin-protein, the following values were found; RMSD l.b: 3,601 Å and RMSD u.b: 9,113 Å, Score of -4.3 and 17 active twists. As well as the values found for the molecular docking between the norbixin ligand and the DENV-4 protein were; RMSD l.b: 2,699 Å and RMSD u.b: 3,609 Å, and Score of -5.2, it being possible to identify that both ligand-protein complexes reached 17 active twists in the Chimera software. Using the Arguslab and Chimera software, it was possible to determine the spatial orientation of the bixinoids ligands to the active site of the DENV-4 protein, where the obtained distances of 2,4 Å between the protein and the Bixin ligand and 2,3 Å between The protein and the Norbixin ligand, indicate stability of the binding-protein compound, which reflects in great possibilities of the dockings realized to be used in the production of new drugs against dengue fever.


Locating and understanding the internal and external forces that inform and shape the policies of U.S. local governments is a common undertaking in the social sciences. However, Gerald Frug and David Barron's City Bound: How States Stifle Urban Innovation provides a fresh and fundamentally different approach to this task. The primary objective of the book is to illustrate how state-defined designations of city authority can affect local governments' policy-making efforts. The authors' central premise is that an examination of the legal framework in which cities operate—what they call "city structures"—can reveal the parties responsible for resolving urban dilemmas. This examination can facilitate an amendment of local government power through state legislation and ultimately enable communities to craft creative and workable initiatives that will enable greater autonomy over the direction and implementation of their vision for the future. Frug and Barron state that they "want the reader to experience the ways in which city policy is controlled by state law" (p. 53). And yet the book provides readers with much more than that. This book provides a compelling and detailed look at the different kinds of allowances and limits of power that govern cities and provides illustrative alternatives for urban development. The book is divided into three parts. In the first part, the authors review major strands in the urban theory literature and address misconceptions about the nature and degree of autonomy allotted to local governments in the United States. Frug and Barron posit that the reigning narrative among many legal scholars—an "unrealistically expansive idea of the amount of legal power that states have conferred upon their local governments" (p. 31)—is one that perpetuates the privilege of the suburbs and hurts declining central cities. Ultimately, this can foster what Frug and Barron term defensive localism—"an effort to defend local power in order to preserve the status quo" (p. 207). The authors advocate the reconceptualization of local autonomy by "recognizing that the current legal structure does not grant autonomy to local governments. Instead it grants them some substantive powers but denies them others" (p. 35). In the second section of the book, Frug and Barron effectively illustrate how states have held city power in check. Focusing principally on the city of Boston, with New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Denver, Atlanta, and Seattle used for comparative purposes, the authors demonstrate how state laws, statutes, and constitutional provisions constrain local policy choices. This is accomplished through an in-depth examination of the nature of home rule and a detailed illustration of how city policy making is limited in the critical municipal matters of raising and spending money, planning for land use and development, and education. In the third part of the book, the authors present four futures that cities might envision and plan for: a global city, a tourist city, a middle-class city, and a regional city. Again, the authors provide ample examples of how a state's legal framework places limits on the extent to which cities are capable of pursuing their vision of the future. For example, the development of a vast and efficient transportation network is fundamental to a local government seeking global city status. The construction and expansion of airports, the building The American Review of Public Administration Volume 39 Number 6 November 2009 699-701 © 2009 The Author(s) http://arp.sagepub.com


Building on results obtained in [GVRS], we prove Local Stable and Unstable Manifold Theorems for nonlinear, singular stochastic delay differential equations. The main tools are rough paths theory and a semi-invertible Multiplicative Ergodic Theorem for cocycles acting on measurable fields of Banach spaces obtained in [GVR].


The utility model relates to a spiral lacrimal passage flushing device. The spiral lacrimal passage flushing device consists of an injector inner spiral port, an injector nipple part, an injector needle cylinder, an injection needle handle, an outer spiral port of a flushing needle, and the flushing needle, and is characterized in that the flushing needle is provided with the outer spiral port; the inner spiral port is formed outside the nipple part of the front end of the needle cylinder; and the outer spiral port on the flushing needle is combined with the nipple part and is connected with the inner spiral port in a spiral way. The spiral lacrimal passage flushing device is reasonable in structure and easy to operate, and the port of the lacrimal passage flushing needle and an injector is in a spiral type, so that the adverse event that the flushing needle is separated from the injector under the conditions of blockage of the lacrimal passage and increased pressure can be avoided effectively.


significant increase in mean body weight (5.9 1.4 versus 5.4 1.5 kg, P 5 .017) in 133 diabetic cats at day 45 compared with day 0, respectively. By day 45, polyuria and polydipsia had improved in 79% (105 of 133), 89% (118 of 133) had a good body condition, and 9-hour mean blood glucose concentration, serum fructosamine concentration, or both had improved in 84% (112 of 133) of the cats compared with day 0. Hypoglycemia (o80 mg/dL) was identified in 151 of 678, 9-hour serial blood glucose determinations and in 85 of 133 diabetic cats. Hypoglycemia causing clinical signs was confirmed in 2 diabetic cats. Conclusions and Clinical Relevance: PZIR is effective for controlling glycemia in diabetic cats and can be used as an initial treatment or as an alternative treatment in diabetic cats that do not respond to treatment with other insulin preparations.


From Lie-group (symmetry) analysis of the multi-point correlation equation Oberlack and Guenther Fluid Dyn. Res. 33, 453-476 (2003) found three different solutions for the diffusion of shear-free turbulence: (i) a heat equation like solution when the turbulence diffuses freely into the adjacent calm fluid, (ii) a deceleration wave like solution when there is an upper bound for the integral length scale and (iii) a finite domain solution for the case when rotation is applied to the system. This paper deals with the experimental validation of the theory. We use an oscillating grid to generate turbulence in a water tank and PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry) to determine the two-dimensional velocity and out-of-plane vorticity components. The whole setup is placed on a rotating table. After the forcing is initiated, a turbulent layer develops that is separated from the initially irrotational fluid by a sharp interface, the so-called turbulent/nonturbulent interface (TNTI). The turbulent region grows in time through entrainment of surrounding fluid. We measure the propagation of the TNTI and find good agreement with the theoretical prediction for all three cases.


Bhutan is a mountainous country in the Himalayas with a small and scattered population. Most people live in small villages with 5 to 20 houses which are sometimes clustered together, but in many villages the houses are rather scattered on the mountain slopes. Also there are many solitary houses far away from any village. Providing water to all these scattered houses by means of the
conventional techniques is very expensive due to the total length of pipe required. Further more, it also puts a high workload on the households because of the extensive labour inputs required for trench digging. Fortunately, in many cases small springs can be found relatively near to these houses. Developing these small springs and tapping the water for distribution is the subject of this paper. In fact, the spring protection technique discussed here can also be used for much bigger springs supplying water to Gravity Flow Water Supply Systems.


Ground segmentation, as the basic task of unmanned intelligent perception, provides an important support for the target detection task. Unstructured road scenes represented by open-pit mines have irregular boundary lines and uneven road surfaces, which lead to segmentation errors in current ground segmentation methods. To solve this problem, a ground segmentation method based on point cloud map is proposed, which involves three parts: region of interest extraction, point cloud registration and background subtraction. Firstly, establishing boundary semantic associations to obtain regions of interest in unstructured roads. Secondly, establishing the location association between point cloud map and the real-time point cloud of region of interest by semantics information. Thirdly, establishing a background model based on Gaussian distribution according to location association, and segments the ground in real-time point cloud by the background substraction method. Experimental results show that the correct segmentation rate of ground points is 99.95%, and the running time is 26ms. Compared with state of the art ground segmentation algorithm Patchwork++, the average accuracy of ground point segmentation is increased by 7.43%, and the running time is increased by 17ms. Furthermore, the proposed method is practically applied to unstructured road scenarios represented by open pit mines.


Background/purpose: Narrowband (NB) UVB (NB‐UVB) phototherapy has recently demonstrated high levels of efficacy and tolerability in a variety of skin diseases. The purpose of the present study was to assess the efficacy of NB‐UVB phototherapy in the management of pityriasis lichenoides (PL).


This study attempts to examine the actual number of supporters of children and of supported children [in Finland]. The main features of this portion of the population are described. As the family statistics do not directly specify which parents really are child supporters the author makes several alterations of the family statistics. The proportion of child supporters in the labor force as well as the division of child supporters into nonactive and active population are estimated. Finally the author examines the tax deductions and child allowances granted to supporters of children and compares them with the taxes paid by child supporters. Data for the second half of 1980 are from official publications of the Central Statistical Office of Finland. (EXCERPT)


Thermal stability of azo lake pigments (Orange II, Alizarin Yellow GG) was studied by thermal glavimetric analysis. The pigments were decomposed through two or three stages from room temperature to 600•Ž on heating. In the first stage the azo group of Orange II was decomposed, then the aromatic rings were decomposed in the residue of thermal degradation and the color changed completely. The influence of the metal salts on thermal stability was better in order Ba, Sr and Ca. The enolf orm of Alizarin Yellow GG was preferentially decomposed in the first stage and the ketof orm was decomposed in the second stage and the color changed through both stages. These tendency was indistinct in order Ca, Sr and Ba salt. * Setagaya-ku , Tokyo, Japan


Private Life of Lady Swallow is regarded as the primary legend,and makes a marvelous impact on the following novel creation for its exquisite art.Since novel is based on historical facts,there is a certain relation be- tween contents and history that is referred.So if we make a comparative study on literary narration and historical narration,it is much easier to comprehend the author' s purpose,inclination and artistic skills.


The crystal and molecular structures of inulin, the poly(2→1)-β-d-fructofuranan, hemihydrate and monohydrate, were determined by a constrained linked-atom least-squares (LALS) refinement, utilizing intensities measured from electron diffraction data and stereochemical restraints. Single crystals were grown from dilute aqueous ethanol solutions and their three-dimensional electron diffraction diagrams analyzed. In the hemihydrate form, there is half a molecule of water per fructosyl residue. In this allomorph, which corresponds to air-dried crystals, inulin adopts an orthorhombic P212121 space group with cell parameters a = 16.70 A, b = 9.65 A, and c (chain axis) = 14.4 A. By using the base plane electron diffraction data combined with the upper layer line data, the best molecular model was refined to an R factor of 22.7% and R'' factor of 22.3%. This model has two antiparallel sixfold helices centered on the twofold screw axes intersecting the base plane of the orthorhombic system. The six water molecules...


Purpose To evaluate intermediate-term outcomes after computed tomography (CT)-guided radioactive 125I seed implantation (CTRISI), and to determine prognostic variables associated with outcomes in patients with pulmonary metastases. Material and methods Thoracic surgeons evaluated and performed implantation of 125I radioactive seeds under CT guidance or combined with surgical resection. Patients were monitored in the thoracic surgery clinic for recurrence and survival. Results Fifty patients (31 men, 19 women; median age, 59 years; range, 16-85) underwent CTRISI. The primary cancer was colorectal in 10 (20%), malignant fibrous histiocytoma in 8 (16%), sarcoma in 5 (10%), renal in 4 (8%), and other in 22 (44%) patients. CTRISI was the sole treatment in 45 patients (90%) and was combined with surgical resection in 5 patients (10%). The actuarial D90 of implanted 125I seeds ranged from 90 to 160 Gy (median, 120 Gy). No procedurally related deaths occurred. At a median follow-up of 41.5 months (range, 7-74 months), 6 patients were alive. The median survival time was 42.1 months (95% confidence interval: 26.5-53.4), and the estimated 1-, 3-, and 5-year overall survival rates were 88.0%, 58.0%, and 26.7%, respectively. Lesion size was an important prognostic variable associated with overall and progression-free survival (p < 0.05). Conclusions CTRISI is safe in this group of patients with pulmonary metastases and provides reasonable results. Surgical resection remains the standard for resectable cases, but CTRISI offers an alternative for selected patients or may be used as a feasible approach in combination with surgical resection for selected patients.


The effects of heat treatment on the microstructural evolution and mechanical behavior of Al-Si-Cu alloy were investigated. Solution heat treatment was performed at 500oC/6h and 540oC/6h, followed by quenching in warm water at 60oC. Lastly, artificial ageing treatment was performed at 160oC/6h, 190oC/4h and 210oC/2h. The microstructural evolution of the samples before and after heat treatments was analyzed by optical microscopy, scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) and Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS). Analyses revealed the presence Al5FeSi, Al15(FeMn)3Si2, Al2Cu and Si particles. The morphologies of the present phases were dependent on the heat treatment. Solution treatment at 540oC/6h resulted in significant softening of the alloy compared with the treated samples at 500oC/6h. Vickers hardness analysis indicated that the hardness peak of the alloy after heat treatment was about 125 HV. Mechanical properties of different phases have been investigated by nanoindentation technique, which indicated that the highest hardness and modulus of elasticity were found for the Si particle, especially those distributed in the microstructures of the samples submitted to higher solution and ageing temperatures.


ETYMOLOGY sometimes helps to suggest philosophical meanings. The Latin verb cernere, whence our adjective " certain " is derived, means to separate or sift, and, by extension or transference, to distinguish, decide, determine, and the like. An object therefore can be declared " certain in itself " if it is or has been separated or sifted. But from what? One may reply, in the most general terms: from any admixture with anything else. Accordingly, we obtain the notion of a fixing upon, a determination to, one thing, through the exclusion of all else. Thus it is legitimate to speak of " certitude " in the natures of things and their operations, inasmuch as a thing by its nature is fixed upon or determined to its proper connatural object. In this sense, natural non-cognitive tendency or inclination has of itself the property of certitude. So likewise has sense appetite. Bodies heavier than air tend downward with 'certitude'; sight is with certitude adapted to the perception of color, hearing to sound, etc. Certitude in this broad meaning is found also in the virtues. A virtue, especially a moral one, can be said to function in the mode of nature so far as it is determinative with respect to some single end, inclining its possessor toward it. A man enjoying the virtue of justice ' naturally ' tends to be equitable in his dealings with others and with himself; and so in all other


Background: Chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) is a very common disorder in ENT practice. There are many modalities available for the treatment and control of symptoms of allergic rhinosinusitis, varying from antihistamines, corticosteroids, mast cell stabilizers in oral and topical


To achieve a more uniform electric field (E-field) distribution on a spacer surface in HVDC gas insulated lines (GILs), novel spacers were fabricated by depositing ZnO films onto spacer surfaces using magnetron sputtering method. Through measurement, the deposited ZnO films of different sputtering times were found to have nonlinear surface conductivities, which can relax the E-field distribution. An iterative method was applied to optimize the sputtering time distribution in the radial direction of spacer, and an almost uniform E-field distribution was achieved after five iterations. For fabricating the optimized spacer, a baffle with a designed gap was placed above the rotating spacer to control the sputtering time at different radial positions. From the E-field simulation results, it can be seen that the introduction of a novel spacer with a 30 min-sputtered ZnO film can greatly reduce the E-field concentration around the triple junction of HV electrode, air and spacer. By grading the sputtering time distribution in an optimal way, a further E-field strength reduction is obtained inside the GIL. Flashover tests were conducted under DC and polarity reversal voltages, and the optimized spacer shows the best insulation performance, followed by the 30 min-sputtered spacer, and finally the conventional spacer. By applying such novel spacers, higher compactness and reliability can be achieved in HVDC GILs.


Janet Nakarmi Hailin Sang∗ Abstract In this paper we study the ideal variable bandwidth kernel estimator introduced by McKay [7, 8] and the plug-in practical version of variable bandwidth kernel estimator with two sequences of bandwidths as in Giné and Sang [4]. The dominating terms of the variance of the true estimator in the variance decomposition are separated from the other terms. Based on the exact formula of bias and these dominating terms, we develop the optimal bandwidth selection of this variable kernel estimator.


This paper proposes the technique of augmented template matching that positions the object having a standard shape of two dimensions under the outdoor environment. The intensity of the object under the outdoor environment usually changes in various ways. The main reason is that the lighting condition changes, and the surface properties of the object change. It is difficult to apply the conventional template matching under the outdoor environment, because conventional template matching assumes the lighting condition does not change and the surface properties of the object do not change. Then, the partial template made by dividing the conventional template (the whole template) to increase information on the object to discriminate the object under the outdoor environment is introduced. The proposed technique is to calculate similarities with the partial and the whole templates, and to judge by the linear discriminant method. In this paper, the principle of the proposed technique and effectiveness based on the experimental result are shown. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 154(4): 49–60, 2006; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/eej.20270


The paper deals with effect of the personalized ventilation on thermal comfort of the human body. Especially the influence of different temperatures and velocities of the supply air provided by the personalized ventilation on sitting user during standard light office work. The goal is to figure out possible and comfortable range for the personalized ventilation system and to determine the maximum power of the device. For measurement we were using a prototype of the personalized ventilation system which is able to adjust temperature of the supply air using thermoelectric elements. A thermal manikin was used to simulate the human body and to measure the effect of the ventilation system to the human thermal comfort and the PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry) was used to measure vector field around the human body.


According to the theory of demographic transition, Indonesia is now in the second phase of demographic transition. Mortality rates are decreasing and life expectancy is increasing. At present, the mortality rate is estimated at 8 per thousand and infant mortality rate at 68 per thousand. Based on those levels of mortality, life expectancy at birth is around 60 years. By the year 2000 life expectancy will be around 65 years. The age structure of the population towards the year 2000 will undergo some changes : the proportion of age groups 0-4 and 5-9 will consistantly decrease while the age group 55 and over will increase (up to 10% of the population). The decrease in the 0-4 age group is caused by a succesful family planning programme. It is expected that the birth rate will be around 20 per thousand by the year 2000. The increase in the old age group, although still relatively small is an increasingly important problem which we have to face by the year 2000.


A procedure to obtain the parameters of the constitutive equations used to describe the shear-thinning behavior of polysaccharides is presented. It is shown that the existence or not of a master log viscosity-log shear rate curve, for all concentrations, is independent from the equation used to describe the data. Once the master curve is constructed it can be employed to obtain the parameters of the constitutive equation with a higher accuracy, since the experimental range is extended. Some applications to experimental data reported in the literature, for polysaccharides, are presented and a fitting procedure to usual constitutive equations is given, based on the master curve and its first derivative. Finally, the applicability of a method proposed recently in the literature, to be used to obtain the parameters of a constitutive equation for polysaccharides is discussed in detail.


Background: The pharmacology of oxycodone is poorly understood despite its growing clinical use. The discrepancy between its good clinical effectiveness after systemic administration and the loss of potency after spinal administration led the authors to study the pharmacodynamic effects of oxycodone and its metabolites using in vivo and in vitro models in rats. Methods: Male Sprague-Dawley rats were used in hot-plate, tail-flick, and paw-pressure tests to study the antinociceptive properties of morphine, oxycodone, and its metabolites oxymorphone and noroxycodone. &mgr;-Opioid receptor agonist–stimulated GTP&ggr;[35S] autoradiography was used to study G-protein activation induced by morphine, oxycodone, and oxymorphone in the rat brain and spinal cord. Spontaneous locomotor activity was measured to assess possible sedation or motor dysfunction. Naloxone and the selective &kgr;-opioid receptor antagonist nor-binaltorphimine were used to study the opioid receptor selectivity of the drugs. Results: Oxycodone showed lower efficacy and potency to stimulate GTP&ggr;[35S] binding in the spinal cord and periaqueductal gray compared with morphine and oxymorphone. This could relate to the fact that oxycodone produced only weak naloxone-reversible antinociception after intrathecal administration. It also suggests that the metabolites may have a role in oxycodone-induced analgesia in rats. Intrathecal oxymorphone produced strong long-lasting antinociception, whereas noroxycodone produced antinociception with very high doses only. Subcutaneous administration of oxycodone and oxymorphone produced thermal and mechanical antinociception that was reversed by naloxone but not by nor-binaltorphimine. Oxymorphone was more potent than oxycodone, particularly in the hot-plate and paw-pressure tests. Conclusions: The low intrathecal potency of oxycodone in rats seems be related to its low efficacy and potency to stimulate &mgr;-opioid receptor activation in the spinal cord.


The l‐plane analyticity of Schrodinger energy levels En(l) for power law potentials V(r)=rα, for α>2 has been proved by using the Kato–Rellich perturbation theory for linear operators.


Deniable authenticated protocol is a new cryptographic authentication protocol that enables a designated receiver to identify the source of a given message without being able to prove the identity ...


The hermaphrodite snail Helisoma duryi reproduces preferentially by cross-fertilization. Virgin and castrated snails lay an insignificant number of egg masses. The fine structure of its endocrine dorsal bodies (DB), which regulate reproduction, has been studied in reproductively inactive virgin and castrated snails and in reproductively active mated snails, using tannic acid staining and autoradiography after injection of [3H]leucine. The DB cells of the mated snails appear synthetically active, containing scattered rough endoplasmic reticulum (RER) and probably smooth endoplasmic reticulum (SER), many Golgi complexes, and putative DB hormone-containing granules. On the other hand, the DB cells of the virgin and castrated snails appear synthetically inactive, containing RER in circular stacks, few Golgi complexes, many lipid droplets, and scattered glycogen. Mitochondria appear slender in mated snails, whereas those in virgin and castrated snails appear large and spherical. With tannic acid treatment, the processes of the DB cells of mated snails exhibited more released granules than those of virgin and castrated snails. Many silver grains were seen on RER, Golgi complexes, and mitochondria in the autoradiographs of the DB cells of mated snails. It is suggested that the DB cells of the reproductively active snails are synthetically more active than those in virgin and castrated snails and that the DB cells may produce peptide hormone as well as a steroid hormone.


The prolonged Victorian craze for mesmerism and hypnotism produced a large body of popular fiction between 1860 and 1910, deploying its practices as tropes for a variety of cultural and political issues, though there is as yet little scholarship exploring it. Much of this fiction directly or indirectly addresses urgent late Victorian anxieties about women's ownership of their bodies, their children and their property, in light of the controversial women's property legislation of the 1870s and 1880s. Such fiction usually subjects both the person and property of a middle- or upper-class lady to the control of a male mesmerist or hypnotist. This article foregrounds Florence Warden's A Woman's Face (1888), comparing it with Frank Barrett's The Woman of the Iron Bracelets (1893), to demonstrate how popular fiction by female as well as male authors betrays a profound uneasiness about woman's autonomy, her willpower and capacity for self-governance, and her ability to manage material property. Both novels overtly empower their female protagonists, but deploy subtler, covert means to question female self-control and to warn against female will-to-power. This ambivalent treatment suggests that women's property legislation did not betoken an unequivocal confidence in women's powers, and that fin-de-siècle cultural turmoil contributed to uncertainty about extending women's rights.


We consider the advanced modulation and coding schemes used in CCSDS (Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems) standards for deep space telemetry and telecommand. They are based on a powerful turbo or low-density parity check (LDPC) outer code and binary modulation formats that, for those schemes foreseen to be employed at the lowest baud rates, may contain an unsuppressed carrier to help synchronization. In this paper, we face the problem of carrier phase synchronization for these modulation and coding schemes.


Management scholars have long argued that firm performance difference can be driven by strategic resources inside a firm. Most resources in organizations are considered as input factors required to perform a firm's business functions and operations efficiently. There are other resources such as brand capital and organizational knowledge that are produced from the usage of inputs. Resources are said to be strategically important when their use enables the firm to create economic rents, resulting in the firm's competitive advantage that no current and potential competitors can achieve. Examples of strategic resources are managerial skills, specialized knowledge, and organizational routines such as human resource and supply chain practices. Strategic resources arising from within firms and across partnering firms can also be uniquely accessed, combined, and utilized in order to drive firm performance and growth. Most empirical studies have focused on understanding how firms develop and transform rent-generating resources into a form of firm-specific assets that enable them to exploit new opportunities and achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Research inquiries on strategic resources have also led to the development of several important conceptual perspectives, such as the resource-based view, dynamic capabilities, core competence, and the knowledge-based view. The respective conceptualization of these perspectives has sparked many debates and critiques among the perspectives about the assumptions of resources and associated value and the extent to which different perspectives contribute to the usefulness of explaining persistent firm performance difference and prescribing pragmatic approaches to management.


Abstract When I was a boy in St. Louis, Missouri, I grew up across the street from the house of Norris K. Smith, an art historian who taught at Washington University. As I have gotten older, I associate this experience with a picture in Smith's last book–a book about Renaissance perspective and a kind of career summation he published in 1994 called Here I Stand: Perspective from Another Point of View. The picture, painted by the artist Robert Jordan, shows the vantage from the far distance of Perugino's Sistine fresco, the Christ Giving the Keys of the Church to St Peter. Perugino shows the protagonists front and center, with smaller and inconsequential figures populating the mid ground and distance. But in Jordan's picture we see Peter and his entourage as tiny figures in the far distance, beheld from over the shoulder of a faraway ball-player in Perugino's original. Thinking of this image in Smith's book, recalling the reversed perspectives of life on either side of Cornell Avenue in St. Louis, and considering my difference from Smith, I speculate on the meanings of the words world and space as they relate to Perugino's painting and to the act of writing art history.


At present,with the development of computer technology and the popularity of Internet technology,large-scale resource shar ing has become the inevitable choice of all walks of life.Grid resources,as an important kind of resource sharing system,provide a new way for resource sharing and information exchange through dynamic resource exchange.At the same time,the ontology is applied to re source matching,which collects effective information at maximum degree to provide the needed customers in order to meet their needs.This paper demonstrates the specific operant behavior of computer resources system during analog network communication,and analyzes system numerical changes when the number of the concepts changes.


Summary form only given.Quasi-phase-matched frequency conversion in orientation-patterned GaAs is a promising technique for generation of mid-IR radiation from near-IR pump lasers. GaAs has a large nonlinear susceptibility (d/sub 14//spl ges/90 pm/V), a transparency range from around 1 /spl mu/m to beyond 12 /spl mu/m, a high thermal conductivity (46 W/m-K), and a high optical damage threshold. The domain periods required for quasi-phase-matching parametric interactions in GaAs with different pump lasers are shown as a function of signal and idler wavelength. We have demonstrated the fabrication of all-epitaxial, orientation-patterned GaAs films having domain periods suitable for such near-IR-pumped quasi-phase-matched parametric devices and apertures sufficiently thick for bulk optical focusing.


In logical AI, an agent's beliefs are typically categorical, in that they are specified by a set of formulas. An agent may change its beliefs as a result of being informed in one fashion or another about some aspect of the world, or following the execution of some action. The areas of belief revision and reasoning about action deal with just such change in belief. However, most information about the real world is not categorical. While there are well-established accounts for accommodating noncategorical information via probability theory, it is worth asking whether probabilistic information may be reconciled with the logical accounts of belief change. We present such an account in this paper. An agent receives uncertain information as input and its probabilities, expressed as probabilities on possible worlds, are updated via Bayesian conditioning. A set of formulas among the (noncategorical) beliefs is identified as the agent's (categorical) belief set. This set is defined in terms of the most probable worlds such that the summed probability of these worlds exceeds a given threshold. The effect of this updating on the belief set is examined with respect to its appropriateness as a revision operator. It proves to be the case that a subset of the classical AGM belief revision postulates are satisfied. Most significantly, the success postulate is not guaranteed to hold. However it does hold after a sufficient number of iterations. Not is it the case that in revising by a formula consistent with the agent's beliefs, revision corresponds to expansion. On the other hand, limiting cases of the presented approach correspond to specific approaches to revision that have appeared in the literature. It is a great pleasure to dedicate this paper to Hector Levesque on the occasion of his 60th birthday. While Hector's work has broadly focussed on representational aspects of an agent's beliefs together with accounts of reasoning – whether epistemic, nonmonotonic, limited, in a theory of action, or otherwise – it has certainly touched on many other areas over the years. This paper outlines a possible linking of two such areas, that of reasoning about noisy sensors on the one hand [Bacchus, Halpern, and Levesque 1999], and revision in the presence of (categorical) observations on the other [Shapiro, Pagnucco, Lespérance, and Levesque 2011].


This article demonstrates how the retrofitting of an ethylene furnace by replacing pyrolysis coils with a new design sharply improved its performance. The revamped furnace was designed and built for a 300,000 MTA (metric ton/yr) ethylene plant in the early 70s. Basic design considerations for the furnace were the use of high-severity cracking to provide high C/sub 2/H/sub 4/ and total olefin yields; by a careful selection of pyrolysis coil dimensions and materials, the coil was equipped with feedstock flexibility; and the furnace can handle four different gas fuels and two different liquid fuels. The furnace is a vertical twin-cell type with induced draft fans, and its four-pass pyrolysis coils (vertical/and single diameter) are arranged in a double staggered row. The cracked gas streams from the four-pass coils are combined at the furnace outlet by a special fitting and exit the furnace.


Fishers must constantly make inferences about the location, abundance, quality, and distribution of the resource. These inferences are derived from indirect observation and sampling. Every time a fisher sets out hook, or trap, he/she is sampling the water for the resource, which can then be related to proxies such as water conditions, underwater environments and topography, weather, and catch characteristics.


The human leukemic cell line AML‐193 was tested for its proliferative response to endogenously produced autocrine factors and to a variety of cytokines and colony‐stimulating factors. Cells grown in the absence of GM‐CSF incorporated tritiated thymidine, and this was partially reversed by adding neutralizing anti‐GM‐CSF antibodies to the culture medium, suggesting that it was due, at least in part, to autocrine GM‐CSF production. This was confirmed by immunopurification of a GM‐CSF‐like activity from cell supernatant of AML‐193 cells grown in serum free medium in the absence of exogenous GM‐CSF. When AML‐193 cells were cultured with GM‐CSF in combination with other cytokines, lnterleukin‐1 α and β (IL‐I α and β), lnterleukin‐3 (IL‐3), lnterleukin‐6 (IL‐6), granulocyte colony‐stimulating factor (G‐CSF) and tumor necrosis factor a (TNFα), none of them affected the concentration of GM‐CSF required to induce 50% of maximum proliferation (D50). However, the maximum proliferation induced by GM‐CSF alone was drastically decreased by IL‐I α, IL β and TNFα. Inhibition caused by exposure of the AML‐193 to IL‐I for up to 24 hr was reversible, ruling out a direct cytotoxic effect.


Summary The objectives of the study are to describe the vascular anatomy of the carpal foot pad and to describe the surgical technique for its dissection as a free microvascular flap. Sixteen front legs from ten different dogs weighing from 20 to 30 kg were used for the study. All of the dogs were euthanatized for reason unrelated to the study. Dissection of the carpal foot pad with its dominant arterial and venous pedicle was performed and angiographic studies were performed by injection of barium sulphate and "high detailed" radiography. The vascular anatomy of the carpal foot pad was consistent in all of the dogs. The arterial pedicle arises from the caudal interosseous artery and venous drainage is provided by the cephalic vein. A branch of the ulnar nerve parallels the arterial blood supply and may be included in flap dissection. Surgical dissection of the carpal foot pad flap is relatively straight forward. The length and diameter of the arterial and venous pedicle are appropriate for microvascular anastomosis. The carpal foot pad in the dog represents a viable option for microvascular transfer and reconstruction of weight bearing surfaces. Cadaveric dissection was used to study the vascular anatomy of the carpal foot pad in dogs and to assess its potential use as a free microvascular flap.


This paper presents a method for evaluating the risks in a situation where parameters in the calculation are expressed in the form of dependent fuzzy numbers and probability distributions. The procedure of risk estimation combines stochastic simulation with the execution of arithmetic operations on interactive fuzzy numbers. In order to define operations on such numbers, non-linear programming is used. Relations between the parameters presented in the form of fuzzy numbers and probability distributions are expressed by means of interval regression. The results of computations indicate that the relations between parameters have a significant impact on the ratios characterizing risk.


December 1998 was a busy time for British Columbia's "Tobacco Industry's Poster Child". In Vancouver, preparations were underway for a World Health Organisation (WHO) meeting to forge an international treaty on tobacco control and the poster child poster was prominently displayed. In Vancouver, Dr Douglas Bettcher, coordinator of the WHO's framework convention on tobacco control team, and a native of Alberta, Canada, discovered the poster child model was one of his cousins. He invited the model, Christine Hemmerling of nearby Maple Ridge, to address the convention delegates. The same week, a new animated billboard of the poster child was mounted throughout Vancouver. It began with an image of a lovely young girl holding a flower. The image then metamorphosed into the now familiar "Tobacco Industry's Poster Child" with the diseased lung, cancerous gums, stained teeth, yellowed fingers, and wrinkled skin (figure 1). The WHO meeting, which took place on 2–4 December 1998, and the billboard, were part of a series of British Columbia's Tobacco Strategy activities over the past year. These activities included a number of firsts for the province's tobacco initiatives and positioned the British Columbia government as a leader in tobacco prevention and reduction throughout Canada. The Honorable Penny Priddy was appointed minister of health and minister responsible for seniors in February 1998 (figure 2). Priddy says the goal of British Columbia's tobacco strategy is to protect British Columbia's children from becoming addicted to the tobacco industry's deadly products. "When I first began as Minister of Health, I heard some disturbing statistics: every day in British Columbia, 20 more children start smoking. That's almost the average size of a classroom of 11-year-olds," Priddy said. "Most of those kids will become addicted, and half of those addicted will eventually die of a smoking related illness." Soon after taking on her new portfolio, Priddy introduced landmark legislation to increase the penalties for retailers convicted of selling cigarettes to young people under the age of 19. In addition, amendments were passed to the Tobacco Damages and Health Care Costs Recovery Act—legislation passed in 1997 to authorise the Government of British Columbia and assist individuals to launch court action to seek damages for costs incurred as a result of tobacco-related illness.


Inland waters have lately been recognized to be an important component in the carbon cycle, having a significant role in carbon sequestration and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Attention has also ...


Purpose: To investigate the features of muscle torque,power and nerve acting in different eccentric contraction speed.Methods: 12 male subjects are being tested respectively to complete the eccentric contraction at the angular speed of 60 °/s and the 180 °/s.The vastus lateralis(VL)and biceps femoris(BF)myo-electrical signal are tested by with ME6000 wireless sEMG Testing System synchronization.Results: It shows that the Torque,Work and power at 60 °/sec,180 °/sec increased with the movement speed correspondence.The sEMG shows that flexor and extensor were all activated,the extensor sEMG was higher than flexr;iEMG decreased with the speed increase but RMS,MF and MPF increased.Conclusions: In eccentric contraction,torque and power increase with contraction speed increase,but myo-electricity activeness(iEMG) reduces,Being different from the concentric contraction,the eccentric contraction has the unique force output and nerve control way.


Pedagogy, as a career and as a discipline, is directly related to the knowledge of education, and the function of educating is the proper function of professionals of education; it is a function that has to be exercised with technical competence. From Pedagogy, as knowledge of education, it is assumed and based that the quality of education depends largely on the quality of the professionals of education and, while it is true that education is a shared responsibility, it is also assumed and it bases that the technical competence of these professionals depends, in turn and to a large extent, on the knowledge of the education that they have received, build and apply. The term 'mesoaxiological' means to value as educational any means used to educate; it means to make theoretical, technological and practical knowledge of education to intervene and evaluate any medium that is used in the pedagogical intervention, adjusting it to criteria of meaning of education which have been established and validated from the knowledge of education. To understand the mesoaxiological perspective, it is necessary to focus the discourse on the meaning of education and its relation with Pedagogy, which is knowledge of education. This article establishes argumentation in favor of the relationship between Pedagogy, as a discipline and as a career, and the function of educating, taking as the axis of the discourse: the concept of education, the professional development of pedagogical functions and the importance of technical competence in order to  structuring of the educational system and also on the pedagogical intervention.


Abstract : A general description of the latest version of the proposed tunnel is given together with some details of its estimated performance. Some features of the tunnel have been revised following the first preliminary design proposals and these items are discussed. Results of an investigation into the expected future use of the channel are summarized. An aerodynamic circuit test-rig which has been constructed is briefly described along with some of the results, obtained. Further information on the pilot tunnel, which is nearing completion, is presented.


In recent years,relations between fairn ess and efficiency are being studied from many subjects.The Contract Theory in t he western thinking public may be the seed on this subject .Rawls'Justice Theor y should be paid close attention to.In this article,the writer expounds his theo ry from three angles:its raising,its making,and its realization.In one side,Rawl s'views have many reasons,but in another they are inferior to the Historical Ma terialism.


This paper presents an analysis and reconstruction of a real-world, high-speed yaw and rollover of a sport utility vehicle that occurred on paved and unpaved surfaces with uneven topography. A law enforcement videotape of the crash, along with detailed inspection and measurement of the subject vehicle and accident site, enabled quantitative analysis of the event. The physical evidence was correlated with video images of the real-world rollover to obtain detailed information of the rollover mechanics throughout the sequence. The initial speed of the vehicle was 79 mph and its speed at overturn was 54 mph. The vehicle rolled six revolutions. The average roll rate for the entire sequence was more than 300 degrees/second, with peak values approaching 540 degrees/second. The rollover deceleration was found to be non-uniform during the sequence, and ranged from approximately 0.6 g to 0.2 g. Comparison with analytical results obtained from a reconstruction approach using typical values of constant deceleration indicates reasonably close agreement for overturn speed and average roll rate.


This paper analyzes the interaction between firm investment and both capital structure and equity financing,obtaining endogenously the investment timing,bankruptcy timing,and equity-selling ratio.The simulation of our model shows that the initial debt and new debt financing affect the firm investment.-the initial debt has promotive effect on the firm investment,while the equity financing is constraint,they are two factors causing overinvestment or underinvestment.


Forest fire is one of the foremost environmental disasters that threatens the Australian community. Recognition of the occurrence patterns of fires and the identification of fire risk is beneficial to mitigate probable fire threats. Machine learning techniques are recognized as well-known approaches to solving non-linearity problems such as forest fire risk. However, assessing such environmental multivariate disasters has always been challenging as modelling may be biased from multiple uncertainty sources such as the quality and quantity of input parameters, training processes, and a default setup for hyper-parameters. In this study, we propose a spatial framework to quantify the forest fire risk in the Northern Beaches area of Sydney. Thirty-six significant key indicators contributing to forest fire risk were selected and spatially mapped from different contexts such as topography, morphology, climate, human-induced, social, and physical perspectives as input to our model. Optimized deep neural networks were developed to maximize the capability of the multilayer perceptron for forest fire susceptibility assessment. The results show high precision of developed model against accuracy assessment metrics of ROC = 95.1%, PRC = 93.8%, and k coefficient = 94.3%. The proposed framework follows a stepwise procedure to run multiple scenarios to calculate the probability of forest risk with new input contributing parameters. This model improves adaptability and decision-making as it can be adapted to different regions of Australia with a minor localization adoption requirement of the weighting procedure.


This paper reports a new anti-geometric attack watermarking algorithm based on the Contourlet transform.It presents the concept of space direction significant tree(SDST) using the Contourlet coefficients′ father and son relationship at different resolutions,and determines the important factors to embed watermark information.This paper calculates and compares the eigenvalues between the original image(the watermark has been embedded) and the receive image(under attack) to correct the image by the new imitation normalization method for resisting geometric attacks.The results show that the algorithm has good robustness to flipping,scaling,rotation and other attacks.At the same time,it can ensure the watermark information robustness and imperceptibility.


INTRODUCTION: Sickle cell anemia is associated with intense oxidative stress, and optimal antioxidant levels are essential to prevent continuous oxidant tissue damage. The role of oxidant damage to red blood cells in sickle cell anemia (SCA) has been of interest in recent years, and some available results indicate that sickled red blood cells produce almost twice as much superoxide, hydrogen peroxide, and hydroxyl free radicals compared with normal red cells. To counter the effects of oxidants, red blood cells have evolved a number of self-sustaining activities of antioxidant defense enzymes including but not limited to superoxide dismutase (SOD). This study aimed to measure serum SOD activity in patients SCA patients (as a measure of antioxidant defense) during the crisis and in steady state and to compare this with the activity in HbAA normal controls. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Eighty-eight participants were recruited into this case control study and comprised 34 HbAA controls, 12 HbSS patients in crisis, and 42 HbSS patients in steady state. Five milliliter of venous blood was collected from each participant and 3 ml was dispensed into plain tubes and centrifuged. The serum was used for the estimation of SOD activity. The remaining 2 ml was used for hemoglobin electrophoresis. RESULTS: SOD levels were highest in the HbAA control group (1.928 ± 0.051 U/mL) followed by the HbSS patients in steady state (1.844 ± 0.118 U/mL) and lowest in the HbSS patients in crisis (1.755 ± 0168 U/mL). This difference was statistically significant with P = 0.001. CONCLUSION: SOD levels are reduced during vaso-occlusive crisis.


AHP analytic hierarchy process(AHP)was used to analyze qualitatively and quantitatively factors affecting the innovation and development of industrial tourism in Liaoning province.The results show that,in rule layer weight analysis,the influence of scale is the largest(more than half),followed by level and benefits.The analysis is correlated with the fact that industrial tourism in Liaoning province is big but not strong.In factor layer analysis,the weights of direct economic benefit,industrial tourism product structure and industrial tourism development are low.It reveals that the above three factors are indeed the soft spots in the innovation and development of industrial tourism in Liaoning province.The model analysis provides valuable macroscopic-and microscopic-insights for the government and enterprises.Based on market demand-oriented,innovation and development efficiency of industrial tourism will be increased,tourist enjoying create fun;Technology and innovation as a means,innovation and development level of industrial tourism will be improved.Scientific management development system is established,the scale of industrial tourism will be expanded,and meets market demand better.


To understand the types of gene action controlling outcross-related traits and its mid-parental heterosis,QTL mapping of eight outcrossing-related traits including panicle exsertion degree(PED),flag leaf length(FLL),flag leaf angle(FLA),vertical distance between panicle tip and flag leaf tip(DPFT),second leaf length(SLL),second leaf angle(SLA),vertical distance between panicle tip and second leaf tip(DPST) and length of the first internode(LFI) from the top was conducted using 254 Xiushui 79/C Bao recombinant inbred lines(RILs) and two backcross hybrid populations derived from these RILs.45 main-effect QTLs(M-QTL) were identified in the three populations.The percentage of phenotypic variance explained by each QTL ranged from 1.5% to 80.3%.Among them,73.3% QTL showed an additive effect,4.5% a partial-to-complete dominant effect,and 22.2% an overdominant effect.Eighty-two pairs of digenic epistatic QTL(E-QTL) were detected in the 3 populations,of which 43 pairs were detected in RIL population,and the percentage of phenotypic variance explained by each pair of QTL ranged from 1.0% to 7.0%,with an average 2.7%.Sixteen pairs of E-QTL were detected in XSBCF1 population.Among them,11 pairs were detected by using XSBCF1 phenotypic value,and the percentage of phenotypic variance explained by each E-QTL ranged from 11.2% to 36.8%,with an average 21.0%.Six pairs of E-QTL were detected by using mid-parental heterosis value(HMP),and the percentage of phenotypic variance explained by each E-QTL ranged from 33.1% to 76.8%,with an average 55.0%.Twenty-three pairs of E-QTL were detected in CBBCF1 population.Among them,16 pairs of E-QTL were detected by using BCF1 phenotypic value,and the percentage of phenotypic variance explained by each pair of E-QTL ranged from 6.2% to 60.0%,with an average 24.0%.Seven pairs of E-QTL were detected by using the mid-parental heterosis value,and the percentage of phenotypic variance explained by each pair of E-QTL ranged from 21.3% to 44.4%,with an average 31.0%.These results showed that outcrossing-related traits themselves were mainly controlled by multiple loci with additive effects,and the primary genetic basis of mid-parent heterosis for outcrossing-related traits was overdominant and epistatic effect in japonica rice.


This study sought to clarify the transformation and succession of the historical environment of Cakranegara, a historical Indonesian city based on the following viewpoints: 1) transformation of building lots and their uses; 2) utilization of space on the streets; and 3) proposing appropriate indices to evaluate the historical environment of Cakranegara. The major findings were: 1) the transformation of the spatial structure of the city can be evaluated by analyzing the relationship between the change of building lots and their uses. The tendency of splitting or consolidating lots varies depending on land use type and location; however, almost half of the building lots have retained their original size; 2) the utilization of public space in Cakranegara can be analyzed and evaluated using seven categories of objects, three time scales, three types of ownership, and five categories of open space; 3) usage of Tagtagan, which is a space installed along both sides of a street, has transformed from a space for religious activities and planting trees to a space with multiple uses for daily living activities; and 4) public space is characterized by a dualistic spatial structure – space for commercial/transportation uses and space for residential uses – based on road hierarchies.


Electron beam welding was used for welding of Ti-5Al-2.5Sn alloy using three types of beam oscillation patterns, i.e. elliptical, concentric circles and arrow shape waveform. The influence of these patterns on microstructure, mechanical properties and residual stresses was investigated using optical microscopy, electron back scattered diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, microhardness measurement, residual stress measurement, impact testing, smooth and notch tensile testing. A partial martensitic transformation was observed in the fusion zone of all the three welding patterns. The fusion zone of arrow pattern weldment exhibited approximately 16% and 1.2% higher hardness than elliptical and concentric circles patterns, respectively. Owing to an improved texture of the basal and prismatic planes in the cross-weld direction, the arrow pattern showed improved strength, reduced tensile residual stresses than elliptical and concentric circles pattern. Elliptical pattern showed superior elongation characteristics as well as increased impact strength as compared to the arrow and concentric circle patterns.


Mesenchymal stem cells can restore the hepatic function by paracrine mechanism and differentiation into hepatic parenchymal cells,so transplantation of mesenchymal stem cells would be the important therapic method for liver disease.This review introduced the mechanism of homing and differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells in liver.


There are seven ways of dealing with criminal syndicates, i.e.: to keep a high pressure; to set up files and to exchange information in time; to enhance efficiency and make the work more effective; to set up a data bank of evidence as if to fasten a chain on criminals; to use police force in different cities and to imprison the criminals in different cities; and the cooperation of the multi kinds of police force and to enact economic punishment so as to prevent them fome committing crimes again.


The growth of the portuguese towns and the unbalanced urban system is dealt with in this article. The disproportion of their demography and their situation on the west side increase the spatial disorder. There is a clear hegemony of the Lisbon, and in a lesser extent, of Porto upon the rest of the hierarchy. The danger of an extreme hegemony of Lisbon against the weak regional capitals is evident in the future urban growth


Fast Handovers for the MIPv6 (FMIPv6) has been proposed to reduce the Handover latency, in the IETF. It could not find the acceptable reduction, so led to more efforts to improve it and however the creation of multiple Handover methods in the literature. A stable connection is very important in mobile services so the mobility of device would not cause any interruption in network services and thus mobility management plays a very important role. Mobile IPv6 has become a general solution for supporting mobility between different networks on the internet which a flawless connection needs to be managed properly. In order to select the appropriate method, in this paper, all the proposed methods have been classified according to the identified performance metrics. Call blocking probability, Handover blocking probability, Probability of an unnecessary handover, Duration of interruption and delay, as the most important Handover algorithm performance metrics are introduced. The AHP method will be deployed to weight the metrics in a sample topology according to the selected sound application. Then the TOPSIS method will be employed to find the appropriate Handover algorithm.


Low energy ion pretreatment of silicon dioxide (SiO2) surfaces results in a reduced incubation time (tinc) for polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) deposition by rapid thermal chemical vapor deposition. By pretreating SiO2 surfaces with inert (He+, Ar+) and chemically active species (H+, N+), it was determined that ion pretreatments reduce tinc and increase the poly-Si nuclei density by creating nucleation sites via a physical damage mechanism, rather than a chemical process.


Straight forward reinforcement design procedure for continuously reinforced concrete highway pavements; upon selection of maximum permissible crack width, section of slab between cracks is analyzed to satisfy static equilibrium, under assumption that slab length does not change; formulas for necessary crack spacing and optimum steel area and perimeter.


Beyond Zero Emissions is a not-for-profit, volunteer run climate change campaign centre. We differ from mainstream environmental groups on one very important point we believe that we have already allowed climate change to go too far, and must act immediately to reduce our levels of greenhouse gas emissions to zero and below. We are involved in political lobbying, corporate and community campaigning, education, research, solution development and have a weekly radio program on 3CR community radio.


A parent‐held record has been issued to all children born in New South Wales (NSW), Australia since 1988. Five years after its introduction, an evaluation was undertaken to determine its retention rate over time, rate of documentation of immunization status and other important child health information, and its perceived usefulness to parents. The cross‐sectional study comprised an interviewer administered questionnaire to 622 households derived from a stratified random sample of 25 local government areas, representative of 73% of all households containing children under 5 years of age in NSW. A concurrent postal survey assessed the attitudes and use of the Personal Health Record (PHR) among a stratified random sample of 911 health care providers.


Fast acquisition sequences enable >200Hz 2D cardiac B-mode imaging with little compromise in image quality. Fast imaging minimizes frame to frame decorrelation, enabling RF-based tracking for enhanced signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in motion and deformation imaging. Our objective was to evaluate the performance and hypothesize on the clinical usefulness of Fast RF-based Tracking (FRFT) in comparison with the established modalities of Tissue Doppler Imaging (TDI) and image-based speckle tracking (ST) at conventional frame rates. FRFT enables visualizing the mechanical waves propagating through the myocardium during valve closure. Improved tracking SNR promises a modality confidently displaying 2D regional strain rate. Further clutter suppression is required to improve success rate in all walls.


Horticulture is backbone of our country and greater population about 60-65% is directly or indirectly hooked in to it. In the export earnings for the country the role of horticultural produce is vital. In Indiaabout 20-40% of total horticulture produce wasted due to lack of post-harvest management of vegetables which resulted in huge financial loss.Most poor horticulture producers cannot meet the expense of modern technologies.Many metabolic changes occur in vegetables after harvesting that are influenced by disruption of supply of nutrients, water and growth regulators from the parent plant to the harvested vegetables. The overall process leads to postharvest deterioration of the produce. However, the losses are often reduced with adoption of postharvest management and use of processing technology of vegetable crops.


In this paper, absorber material is utilized to mitigate an EMI problem in real hardware. For a complex and large system, identification of the source location is the first problem which must be solved to achieve electromagnetic interference (EMI) mitigation. Emission Source Microscopy (ESM) provides a powerful tool for locating the sources of radiation in GHz range on a printed circuit board (PCB). Once the source is identified, a suitable volume of the absorber material is placed on the source location to effectively reduce the radiated power at the frequency of interest. Further measurements of the total radiated power in a reverberation chamber are also performed to validate the EMI reduction method with the absorber material.


The Bush administration's response to the September 11 attacks has rendered more urgent Al Qaeda's stated objective to eject the United States from the Middle East. The aim here is not to evaluate the direction of the war on terrorism, but to explore why Al Qaeda has been so unsuccessful in capitalizing on its political violence. The article begins with the premise that terrorism is a communication strategy. It contends that Al Qaeda's policy failures are due to its inability to convince Bush that it would refrain from attacking Americans if the United States moderated its Middle East policies. Borrowing from the literature in political psychology and perception and misperception in international relations, the article offers several explanations for Al Qaeda's ineffectiveness in getting this message across. The article concludes by deriving general observations about the limitations of terrorism as a form of political communication.


To illustrate the physiological and biochemical mechanism of Ni on the toxic effects of wheat. Effects of different concentrations Ni( 0,50,100,200 and 400 μmol·L- 1) on the growth of roos and the metabolism of reactive oxygen species( ROS) in roots of early Triticum aestivum L. seedlings were explored. The results indicated that treatment with 50 μmol·L- 1Ni for 6d had no significant effect on roots growth,the contents of reactive oxygen species and activities of antioxidative enzymes. 100- 400 μmol·L- 1of Ni resulted in a decrease of fresh weight and length of roots,but the contents of H2O2 and MDA,production rate of O2- ·increased with increasing Ni concentration. The activities of superoxide dismutase( SOD,EC 1. 1. 5. 1. 1),glutathione reductase( GR,EC 1. 6. 4. 2),glutathione Stansferase( GST,EC2. 5. 1. 18) and glucose- 6- phosphate dehydrogenase( G6 PDH,EC 1. 1. 1. 49) augmented gradually with increasing Ni concentration,being the maximum at 400 μmol·L- 1of Ni. Ascorbate peroxidase( APX,EC1. 11. 1. 11) increased first,and then depressed,being the maximum at 100 μmol·L- 1of Ni,while the activities of peroxidase( POD, EC 1. 11. 1. 7) remained unaltered under the tested Ni concentrations. Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis native analysis revealed that 100μmol·L- 1of Ni induced two additional isozymes bands of APX- 3 and APX- 4. Two isozymes bands of SOD and four bands of G6 PDH in the control seedlings were found and there was a continuous enhancement in the intensity of SOD and G6 PDH bands in roots treated with 100 and 400 μmol·L- 1Ni. The present study confirmed that excess Ni inhibits root growth and induced oxidative stress by inducing ROS formation,while a increase of activities of SOD、APX、GST and GPX appears adaptive response of wheat roots against Ni-induced oxidative stress,not being able to eliminate ROS in roots.


The vase life of cut flowers of gladiolus cv Pink Friendship was found maximum (11.06 days) in the solution of combination of sucrose (4%) and 8-HQC (200 ppm) However, combinations like sucrose 2% + 8-HQC(200 ppm). sucrose 4% + A12(SO4)3 (300 ppm) and sucrose 4% + CoSO4 (400ppm) were also found better in increasing vase lie and quality of flower over control significantly. Whereas longevity of each floret was found maximum (4.57 days) in sucrose 4% + A12(SO4)3 (300ppm.).


To conduct an effective failure investigation, we need to review in details to hit the root cause.There are different areas to initiate with the investigation depending upon the nature of the failure and accordingly investigation is carried out.InvestigationAnalytical: Confirmed Out of Specification.Material: Qualification status of Vendors & review of test result of raw material/ packing material, Storage of Raw materials/ Packing materials & Deviation during Receipt/ Storage. Storage, Transportation and distribution of Finished Product.Dispensing of Raw material/ Packing material: Line clearance procedures, Environmental condition and Deviation for/ during Dispensing. Review of Dispensing of Raw Material/ Packing material. Calibration status of Dispensing Balances and Qualification of the Personnel.Manufacturing/ Packing: Line clearance procedures and Environmental condition for/ during manufacturing/ Packing. Review of Batch Manufacturing / Packing process and Process Validation of the product. Qualification, Calibration, Preventive maintenance and cleaning status of the equipments involved. Qualification/ training of the personnel involved in the Manufacturing/ Packing operation. Deviation/Non conformance during the Batch Manufacturing/ Packing.Utilities and System: Review of the utilities and system involved in the manufacturing of the product. Deviation/Non conformance in the utilities and system.Evaluation of Sample: Evaluation (Physical & Chemical) of Control samples and defective product received.Quality System: Review of Deviation, Changes and stability test results associated with the product. Historical trend (Compliant/Recall/Failure).Others: Impact on other batch/Product. Others, if any, which may cause the failure.


The validity of basic courses in higher education is affected by various factors including the society,the university,teachers,students,etc.By exploring the prevailing difficulties in teaching and learning,the paper tries to activate the integral effect with pluralistic teaching approaches to urge the target groups to take the initiative to learn.


There seem to be obscurities about the meaning of behaviorism and its connections to economic theory, especially in recent discussions about "economics and psychology". This essay aims at exploring that subject, and analyzing the possibility of defining such a thing as a "behaviorist choice theory". It does so by presenting the main traits of behaviorism as conceived by historians of psychology, and contrasting that view against that of economists. It highlights the role of "control" in defining behaviorism, and claims that rather than affecting choice theory, behaviorism influenced unorthodox writings by economists involved in early institutionalism and the progressive movement of the 1890s1920s.


OLIVEIRA, Aylson Costa, M. Sc., Universidade Federal de Vicosa, February, 2012, Kiln-furnace system for charcoal production. Advisor: Angelica de Cassia Oliveira Carneiro. Co-advisors: Benedito Rocha Vital and Ana Marcia Macedo L. Carvalho. The quality of charcoal depends on the wood and technology conversion. Although several studies were developed seeking to improve the quality of wood, much of the Brazilian production of charcoal still occurs in kilns with low yield and and emissions, polluting the environment. In order to change this scenario, the objective of this study was to evaluate the functioning of a kiln-furnace system with low emission of pollutants and maximization of charcoal yield. Three kilns were built, attached to a furnace for burning the gases generated during the carbonization. The capacity of each oven was 9m3. Subsequently, four carbonizations were performed using Eucalyptus wood. The charcoal yields , quality of charcoal and furnace efficiency were determined. The control of the carbonization is performed by measuring the temperature inside the kiln, with the aid of an infrared temperature sensor. The average production of charcoal was 33% in the kilnfurnace system, higher than usually found for the main kilns used in the conversion of wood into charcoal. The yields of semi-carbonized wood were less than 8%. Charcoal presented fixed carbon content exceeding 80%, calorific power equal 8000 kcal.kg -1 and had low sensitivity of generation of fines (particle size less than 12.7 mm) during its handling, suitable characteristics for industrial and domestic uses. Furnace was effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, working for a third of carbonization. It follows that the evaluated kiln-furnace system presented easy construction, low cost, and a high charcoal yield with good indicators of quality, which may be diffused among the producers of charcoal.


Creative agriculture is a new type of industry,conform to the requirements of the development of productive forces,it is the product of social development several factors,the inevitable result of joint action.This new industry development on the farmers' income and even the whole society's stable development is of great strategic significance.Baofeng county in henan province has rich cultural precipitation,the local people in the rich culture influence form of the spontaneous the local characteristics of creative agriculture.But as a result of the development of creative agriculture to the understanding and the understanding is not deep opaque,lack of government guidance and support,cultural creative industry and agriculture fusion is inadequate,has not formed a certain scale,the system and on the further development of creative agriculture.Through discussing the creative agriculture present development situation and the existing problems,and puts forward some Suggestions according to the actual,can provide certain reference significance for other areas to the development of creative agriculture.


This study compares the linear regression model, ordered probability model, and multinomial logit model for prediction of the individual thermal sensation votes (TSVs) and TSV distributions under given conditions. A thermal comfort dataset from "Pakistan project" was used to develop and evaluate the models. The predictive capability of the three models were systematically evaluated and compared. The results showed that the ordered probability model and the multinomial logit model correctly predicted around 50% of the individual TSVs, whereas the accuracy of the linear regression model was only around 40%. In addition, the chi-square statistics show that the ordered probability model and the multinomial logit model better predicted the TSV distributions than the linear regression model.


In order to realize the overloading dynamic characteristics of shell comprehensively and objectively in the process of penetration into target, the non-stationary penetration acceleration signals must be processed. In the paper, the actual acceleration signal which was obtained in the test of projectile penetration into target is analyzed, such as pretreatment, integral analysis in the time domain, by Fourier transform in the field of frequency. This paper has a wavelet analysis on the signal, gets the characteristics of the penetration acceleration signal based on signal processing and the comprehensive analysis and provides a kind of data processing method to get the concerned data for engineers.


In recent years, with the development of unmanned vehicle technology, researches on its materials, energy, sensing and other aspects emerge constantly, of which formation control is an important direction. However, most of the existing documents only conduct static analysis on the formation when considering the energy consumption, and the dynamic relationship among formation schedule, performance requirements and energy consumption is not considered as a whole. In this paper, according to the performance requirements at different stages of formation, we divide the whole formation process into three stages and introduce a scheduling based on a hybrid controller. The controller dynamically schedules the whole formation process according to the requirements of each stage to achieve the balance between energy consumption and performance. The simulation results show our scheduling has good performance from both steady-state and dynamic perspectives with low energy consumption.


In conjunction with the quality of raw material suppliers, farmers need to be developed to implement quality standards internationally recognized so as to form a high-quality cultural behavior in production activities. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of the application of HACCP management and quality management on quality culture through the performance of farmer groups. The study was conducted on edamame soybean production centers in Jember, Lumajang and Bondowoso. The study can be used as input for the management company to assess the implementation of the core variables of research that has been conducted in order to improve the performance of farmer groups and cultural quality of the plasma, and then as input for the plasma to determine production strategies in order to produce a quality product.Sampling methods for farmers is done by using snowball sampling. To examine the relationship between variables observed with latent variables, use the software SEM. The results of the analysis and testing of suitability models were then compared with the size of the goodness of fit. The results showed that the conceptual model of structural equation models have met the eligibility (fit), this result indicates that the model fits the empirical conditions. Theoretical research model is an adaptation of the concept of quality management system. According to our model, HACCP Management and Quality Management System has positive influence on the Quality Culture of Edamame Farmers through Group Performance. Partially, quality management culture has positive effect on the quality of edamame farmers. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n5s5p209


When a dielectric layer, in‐cell retarder (ICR) is formed between the electrode and LC layer to obtain a single‐gap transflective fringe‐field switching (FFS) display, the driving voltage is highly increased due to the thickness of the dielectric material. In particular, the driving voltage of the transmissive part becomes very high, and goes beyond the driver integrated circuit (IC) range for mobile application because the homogenously aligned liquid crystal director should rotate twice as far as that in the reflective part. The correlation between the driving voltage and electrode structures was investigated. It was found that the problem could be solved by optimisation of the common electrode structure such that the electrode structure changed from a plane to slit shape (in‐plane field is mainly used instead of fringe field), realising a high performance FFS transflective display.


Exercise plays a key role for bone remodeling throughout our lives. Within bone cells, osteocytes have the ability to translate mechanical stimuli to bone anabolic cellular signaling. A variety of protocols have been used to apply both direct and indirect stimuli to bone. Herein, we compared running and free fall impact exercise protocols and their effects on markers of osteogenesis and bone strength. Methods: 50 female Wistar rats (6 weeks-old) were randomly assigned to either a sedentary group (S) or one of 4 exercise groups: treadmill training (T) and 3 Free-fall (F) groups (F30, F45, F60 respectively fall of 30, 45 and 60cm; 5 days/week, 8 weeks). We evaluated BMD and BMC (by DXA), bone microarchitecture of the left femur and tibia (by μCT), mechanical strength of the left femur (three-point bending test), and bone marker levels (by ELISA). Arch Clin Med Case Rep 2022; 6 (1): 91-104 DOI: 10.26502/acmcr.96550455 Archives of Clinical and Medical Case Reports 92 Results: After 8 weeks of physical exercise (EXE), whole body BMD and BMC were both significantly higher from baseline in all EXE groups, with no difference between the 4 EXE groups. Left femur and tibia BMC and BMD significantly increased in the F45 and F60 groups compared to the S and T groups. BV/TV, Tb.Th and Tb.N were significantly higher in F45 and F60 compared to all other groups. Tb.N was significantly higher in F60 compared to F45. Yield point stress and Young modulus were significantly higher for F45 compared to S and T groups. Bone alkaline phosphatase and osteocalcin levels were significantly higher in the F45 group compared to the remaining groups. NTX level was significantly decreased in the F45 compared to the S and T groups. Conclusion: Both treadmill and impact training protocols produced a benefit on BMD and BMC. Interestingly, impact mechanical stress was a better stimulus for bone trabecular structure than treadmill running. Biochemical and biomechanical bone parameters were more sensitive to moderate impact exercise (F45) while high impact exercise (F60) promotes further trabecular number.


Interest in implicit processes is at an all-time high in psychology. Research on individual differences in implicit motivation has been conducted for decades and offers an important conceptual and empirical foundation for the growing interest in cognitive processes outside awareness. In this article, we review the past findings on the influence of implicit motivation on both basic and complex cognitive processes in the stages of attention and encoding as well as rehearsal, organization, and retrieval. Data from narrative essays as well as experimentally controlled studies demonstrate that individual differences in implicit motives have an influence on each step of learning and memory processes. Implicit motives influence the cognitive processing of motive-related information to facilitate desired affective end states. The idea that people have motives and intentions outside their awareness is currently of great interest in psychology (e.g., Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Gladwell, 2005; Schultheiss, 2008; Woike, 2008). Research on implicit processes is burgeoning. Many new and interesting variants on how motivational factors influence cognitive processes are being discovered. Implicit motives are one form of motivation that plays an important role in the regulation of cognition. Over 50 years ago, implicit motives were identified as personality dispositions that operate outside of conscious awareness; and as orthogonal to selfreported preferences and goals (McClelland, Koestner, & Weinberger, 1989). In personality, researchers (e.g., McClelland, Koestner, & Weinberger, 1989; Woike, 2008) have gathered validity data for the distinction between explicit and implicit motives. Implicit motives are people's less conscious preferences to experience certain types of affect and are linked to intrinsic incentives (i.e., enjoying an activity for its own sake), and are better able to predict long-term behavioral trends, or cognitive styles. Explicit motives, in contrast, are people's (conscious) self-attributed goals and values that are activated by extrinsic incentives (i.e., receiving a reward for an activity), and are best suited to predict behavior occurring in well-structured situations that are rich in social incentives and require a cognitive decision on the course of action. These motives are measured through different assessment techniques that estimate their strength at their respective levels of awareness. Implicit motives must be measured indirectly and cannot be cross-validated with self-reported measures of motivation. In this paper, we deal exclusively with the topic of implicit motives, for a review of the differential influence of implicit and explicit motives on cognitive processes, see Woike (2008). The most frequently used method of assessing implicit motives is the Picture Story Exercise (PSE; McClelland, Koestner, & Weinberger, 1989), which requires research participants to write imaginative stories to drawings showing people in ambiguous social situations. The stories are then scored with empirically derived coding systems. Recently, researchers have found that PSE measures of implicit motivation loaded on the same


OBJECTIVE
To investigate the effect of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1,25VD3) on house dust mites (HDM)-induced expression of thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) in human airway epithelial cells in vitro.

METHODS
Human airway epithelial 16HBE cells were incubated with 200, 400, and 800 U/L in the absence or presence of 1,25VD3 (10(-8) mol/L) for 6 h and 24 h, and TSLP mRNA and protein expressions in the cells were assessed using quantitative PCR and ELISA.

RESULTS
16HBE cells incubated with HDM at 200, 400, and 800 U/L showed significantly increased TSLP mRNA and protein expressions (P<0.05). Pretreatment of the cells with 1,25VD3 obviously lowered 400 U/L HDM-induced TSLP expressions (P<0.05), but 1,25VD3 added along with HDM in the cells did not produce significant effects on TSLP expressions (P=0.58).

CONCLUSION
Both 1,25VD3 and HDM can induce TSLP expression and release in 16HBE cells, but pretreatment with 1,25VD3 can decrease HDM-augmented TSLP expression in the cells.


Transforming Books: Paper, Metamedia and Digitisation White Magic: The Age of Paper*, Lothar Müller, Cambridge: Polity, 2015, ISBN: 978-0-7456-7253-3 Metamedia: American Book Fictions and Literary Print Culture after Digitization, Alexander Starre, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2015, ISBN: 978-1-60938-359-6 *First published in German in 2012 as Weiße Magie: Die Epoche des Papiers, München, Carl Hanser Verlag


The structure of a poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA)-iodine complex was investigated by a resonance Raman spectroscopy, wide angle X-ray diffraction, small angle X-ray scattering, NMR and IR spectroscopies. The Raman spectra of swollen PVA films exhibited fundamental scattering at 164, 108, and 42 cm−1 with Ar+ ion and dye lasers as the excitation sources. The results of Raman spectra showed that only the I5− is formed in the complex, irrespective of the difference in the visible absorption spectra. The relative intensity of the peak at 65 ppm decreased with increasing amount of complex in the 13C NMR spectra. The absorbance of the infrared spectrum in the region of 2900–3300 cm−1 decreased with increased iodine concentration of the soaking solution, while the absorbance in the region of 3300–3700 cm−1 increased. These results show that some changes in the state of hydrogen bondings are induced by complexation. The weight of the PVA film increased rapidly by iodine sorption at the first stage and then decreased. The changes of the long period and volume took place rapidly, being followed by much slower increase in Young's modulus. The ratio of the decrease in volume was much larger than that of the long period. It was assumed that the fast contraction in iodine-soaking was mainly due to the release of water out of membranes induced by iodine-sorption but not due to the complexation.


The aim of the study is to evaluate the degree of contamination of the aquifer of Mitidja (Algeria) by nitrates and to determine the origins of this contamination by a statistical approach and to estimate the impact on the quality of the aquifer by the application of the Water Quality Index (WQI). The results show that the aquifer is strongly contaminated by nitrates with an average of 71.58 mg/l. These results were confirmed by the calculation of the Water quality Index (WQI) which varies between 59.29 and 190.25 with an average of 110.16, thus 60% of samples are characterized by a water of bad quality for human consumption. The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) enounce the anthropic origin of the nitrates which are regarded as chemical pollutants of permanent type and diffuse sight that their origin is agricultural.


The community service activities are carried out in order that the students improve the English skills, especially for students at the Ar-Raudhah Mustia Education Foundation, Batu Malenggang Village, Langkat Regency. Its application is carried out by the singing method. Through the singing method taught, the students quickly absorb something that is taught and make a better mood. It is a way to achieve a goal in learning in a fun way. In this service, the tool used is the guitar.


Abstract Scrutinising primarily unpublished, archival sources, this study examines, from an historical perspective, the image and identity of the South African Military Academy to determine to what extent that image and identity was and still is conducive to military education in South Africa in particular and the African continent in general. It argues that the Military Academy has historically struggled to establish a credible image and identity in the eyes of the military and that it was often at odds with the expectations of the Defence Force. The study also indicates how, given South Africa's former race and gender policies, the Military Academy functioned for four decades as a de facto white, male, Afrikaans-speaking military-academic institution. It highlights the Military Academy's concerted effort from the early nineties, in anticipation of the new political dispensation, to change its identity in terms of language, race and gender. It concludes that this, coupled with the introduction of a series of new needs-driven military-academic programmes, greatly enhanced the image and credibility of the Academy and placed it in a favourable position to play an indispensable role in the education of SANDF officers. Furthermore, as the only institution of its kind in war-torn Sub-Saharan Africa, it is argued that the Academy is well positioned to make a meaningful contribution to military professionalism on the continent and to further the goals of the African Renaissance.


The invention relates to particles which show a stimulable shape change and the recording is controlled in active cells. The particles can be used as delivery systems for bioactive molecules or diagnostic agents and are of a size that allows inclusion in a cell in its spherical shape. Each particle assumes a temporary, non-spherical and thus not or only slightly absorbable form, which can be converted by a suitable stimulus into a spherical and absorbable form.


Our study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic performances of 3 routine examination methods for cerebrovascular disease in a rabbit carotid artery atherosclerosis model.


Several nickel on silica catalysts, prepared by impregnation or precipitation/deposition, and a commercial catalyst were tested for activity and selectivity in the sunflower seed oil hydrogenation. An average turn-over frequency of 2.57 s−1 was found for the catalysts, assuming inaccessibility of nickel in pores smaller than 2 nm and a constant nickel surface concentration poisoned by the reaction mixture. After studying the mass-transfer steps, the effect of temperature (373-453 K) and pressure (101-608 kPa) on reaction rates in the kinetic regime was analyzed, and the corresponding apparent activation energies and reaction orders were obtained. Conclusions on the effect of temperature and pressure on the selectivity to the preferential hydrogenation of polyunsaturates (So) and to the formation of trans-isomers ((Strans)0) in the kinetic regime were derived from the results. Finally, a similar analysis was carried out when diffusion limitations were known to be present.

Plusieurs catalyseurs de nickel sur de la silice, prepares par impregnation ou precipitation/depot, en un catalyseur commercial ont ete testes en termes de leur selectivite dans l'hydrogenation d'huile de tournesol. On a trouve une frequence de renouvellement moyenne de 2,57 s−1 pour les catalyseurs, en supposant l'inaccessibilite du nickel dans les pores inferieures a 2 nm et une concentration de surface de nickel constante empoisonnee par le melange de la reaction. Apres avoir etudie les etapes du transfert de matiere, on a analyse l'effet de la temperature (373-453 K) et de la pression (101-608 kPa) sur les vitesses de reaction dans le regime cinetique, et on a obtenu les energies d'activation apparentes correspondantes. A partir des resultats, des conclusions ont ete tirees sur l'effet de la temperature et de la pression sur la selectivite a l'hydrogenation preferentielle des polyinsatures (So) et a la formation de /rans-isomeres ((STranx)0) dans le regime cinetique. Enfin, une analyse similaire a ete menee lorsqu'on a su qu'il y avait des limitations de diffusion.


Spatial distributions find applications in various fields, such as public health, biology, ecology, geography, economics or sociology. The DAC statistic is the difference between the empirical cumulative distribution of cases and that of non-cases at a particular point. Simulations indicated that the location of the maximum DAC statistic is not unique. Previous studies attempting to use the DAC statistic to suggest or even predict occurrences of low birthweight clusters faced various problems, such as the discrete nature of sample data or software limitations. This study uses the longitude and latitude as the coordinates of the homes of mothers in Spartanburg County, SC who gave birth to their babies in 1989 or 1990, and the DAC statistic in conjunction with various kriging approaches. For the particular data set used in this study, SAS yielded inconclusive results. The results obtained using ArcGIS confirm previous findings suggesting low birthweight clusters located in Spartanburg, Chesnee, and possibly Inman and Greer. Therefore, the DAC statistic should be used with caution, but its usefulness as a set of spatial descriptive statistic is not diminished in the least.