In this paper, we propose a method to efficiently control the path of non-playable characters (NPC) in an interactive virtual environment such as a game or virtual reality (VR) by calculating a weight map and path similarity based on the user's path. Our method automatically constructs a navigation mesh that provides a new route to the NPC by referring to the user's trajectory. Our method finds more paths that users usually go through as time passes, and the number of users increases. Accordingly, the paths that NPCs can traverse automatically are updated adaptively to the virtual environment. In addition, NPC agents can move smartly by assigning high weights to the user's preferred paths. We tested the usefulness of the proposed method through several example scenarios in an interactive environment such as a video game or VR, and this method can be easily applied to various types of navigation based on the interactive environment.


The bactericidal effects of high concentrations of airborne ozone have been tested against Escherichia coli. Unlike previous sterilization methods, ozone is produced inside the sterilization chamber itself, reaching high ozone concentrations exceeding 1000 ppm. Ozone-generating ceramic plates are placed inside the sterilization chamber and switched on for a maximum operating time of 3 minutes. After the ozone plates are turned off, heating resistors are turned on for ozone destruction for a period not exceeding 20 minutes. The experimental study was performed using Escherichia coli ATCC 25922 bacteria. A sterilization rate higher than 99.99% was obtained for this species.


A recent small study finds that microneedling can improve acne scarring and the associated hyperpigmentation in patients with skin of color.


Clemenceau, in his savage arraignment of medieval Christianity and the intolerance of theologians of that period in one of the brilliant chapters of his book "In the Evening of My Thought," pays science a worthy tribute. He writes: "Science has made doubt reputable." It is difficult fully to comprehend this tribute from a man like the "Old Tiger"; although a devoted disciple of science, in several distinct branches he was constantly at war with scientists and at no time during his long and tempestuous life could it be truthfully said that he had been affected by its spirit as to either patience or tolerance. In what I present here I must assume that in the study of scientific subjects the spirit of science has not failed to be imbibed and absorbed, because a part of what I shall say will be devoted to a brief analysis and criticism of some


In this study, serum lysozyme activity was studied by the agar well diffusion assay in various species of fish (common carp, Cyprinus carpio, pikeperch, Sander lucioperca, prussian carp, Carassius gibelio) and crayfish (Astacus leptodactylus) obtained from three different regions in spring and autumn in 2013. The highest levels of lysozyme activity were found in pikeperch fish, followed by common carp, prussian carp, and crayfish, respectively. There was no significant difference between common carp, prussian carp, and crayfish, but it was found a significant between pikeperch fish and the other species (p<0.05). There was a significant difference of serum lysozyme levels between spring and autumn in common carp, prussian carp and crayfish (p<0.05). There was no significant difference between seasons in pikeperch fish. These results showed different of the lysozyme activity in the fish innate immune system in the aquatic ecosystem of different species.


The structures of bis-(2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-3,5-heptanedionato) Cu(II) 1, di-fts-methoxy-di-μ-methoxy-tetrakis [ (2,2,6,6-tetramethy 1 ~ -3,5-heptanedionato)Cu(II)] 2, μ4-oxa-bispyrazolatotetrakis[(2 ,2,6,6-tetramethyl-3,6-heptanedionato)Cu(II)] 3, and hexa-μ 3-hydroxy-μ6-(hydrogendioxo-0,0')-nonakis[(2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-3,5-heptanedionctto) Cu(II)] 4 were determined by X-ray diffraction techniques. Compound 1 is a planar molecule with weak packing interactions and high thermal motion due to the interactions between the bulky t-butyl groups. The observed density is only 1.14 Mgm-s. Compound 2 is a step tetramer concenptually derived from squareplanar dimers in which the axial site of one Cu(II) ion in each dimer is occupied by a bridging oxygen from an adjacent dimer. Compound 3 has four Cu(II) ions tetrahedrally coordinated to a central oxygen atom. Compound 4 has six Cu(II) ions occupying the corners of a trigonal prism and three lying above the rectangular faces. Six hydroxyl ions each coordinate three Cu(II) ions, one from each end of the prism and one from the face. In the center is an (0-H ... Of3 unit which trigonally binds the Cu(II) ions on each end of the prism. The bulky t-butyl groups in the four complexes effectively isolate the central Cu(II) ions from any intermolecular interactions.


Propose the method of acquisition boards interface via EPP protocol and CPLD. Give a detailed technical solution. Communications speed can reach 1000kB/s. At the same time fully meet the requirement of vibration signal processing high-speed synchronous.


Blastomycosis, endemic in North America, has been hardly reported in Korea. We describe laboratory experience in phenotypic and molecular identification of Blastomyces dermatitidis first isolated in Korea. The patient was a 45-year-old male with pulmonary blastomycosis mimicking pulmonary tuberculosis. Diagnosis was based on culture and dimorphism combined with DNA target sequencing of internal transcribed spacers (ITS) and D1/D2 regions. (Korean J Clin Microbiol 2012;15:114-116)


Report describes growth of silver-alloy crystals under widely varying conditions of growth rate, temperature gradient, and magnetic field. Role of gravitation and convection on crystal substructure is analyzed, as well as influence of magnetic fields applied during crystallization.


A total of 89 dental patients who attending dental clinics Khartoum State during April – May 2015, were enrolled in this Study, Their age range between (10-70) with mean (40). The aim of this study was to detect HIV Antibodies 0,1,2 serum specimens were collected from dental patients and analyzed by using Enzyme linked immune sorbent assay ( ELISA), and to detect relation between seropositivity and other factors including age, gender, past history of dental care, and The result was showed that 1(1.1 %) were case positive. One positive was female house wife.


Conformal embedding of closed‐universe models in a de Sitter background suggests a quantisation condition on the available conformal time. This condition implies that the universe is closed at no greater than the 10% level. When a massive scalar field is introduced to drive an inflationary phase this figure is reduced to closure at nearer the 1% level. In order to enforce the constraint on the available conformal time we need to consider conditions in the universe before the onset of inflation. A formal series around the initial singularity is constructed, which rests on a pair of dimensionless, scale‐invariant parameters. For physically‐acceptable models we find that both parameters are of order unity, so no fine tuning is required, except in the mass of the scalar field. For typical values of the input parameters we predict the observed values of the cosmological parameters, including the magnitude of the cosmological constant. The model produces a very good fit to the most recent CMBR data, predicting ...


The typical application of wireless mesh networks is Internet access. This application introduces a gateway, which becomes the preferred destination in the network. In such topology, the throughput share is unfair because the number of medium accesses increases with the distance to the gateway. In this work, we propose the route-length-based fairness (RLF) mechanism to assign a higher priority on medium access for packets that traverse a high number of hops, named long-life packets. When comparing the proposed mechanism to IEEE 802.11g, the simulation results show a considerable improvement in fairness for applications running over UDP and TCP.


Belonging to technical area of mechanism design, the method includes two portions: establishing kinetic equation of belt conveyor, and resolver for kinetic equation. Kinetic equation of conveyor system is obtained from combination of kinetic equations of conveyor belt, driving unit, and tension unit. The resolver for kinetic equation is obtained from calculations for following factors: running resistance of dynamic procedure, total length of conveyor belt, parameter of each roller, mass of cylinder, stiffness matrix, start-up procedure and stopping procedure etc. Being clear and accurate concept of kinetic equation, the invention gives out boundary condition and initial condition of kinetic equation for continuous model. The invention is closer to practical situation of running resistance to raise accuracy for solving data. Thus, the invention discloses scientific foundation for designing belt conveyor.


Any reader who is slightly familiar with African American history will very likely take pause at a book opening with an epigraph from Ulrich B. Phillips. But that is precisely how Thomas Sowell begins this collection of new and recycled essays?with a quote from Phillips: "We do not live in the past, but the past in us." Given Phillips's interpretation of the past, especially the history of slavery in the United States, that epigraph could be very troubling. Phillips, a professor of American history at the University of Michigan, was an apologist for the South's peculiar institution. He concluded that Africans were "better off on American plantations than the captors who remained in the African jungle."1 Phillips perpetuated the myth that Africa was an undifferentiated jungle, when what might be described as "jungle" comprised only five percent of the continent.2 Phillips offered a benign depiction of the southern plantation as "a school constantly training and controlling pupils who were in a backward state of civilization," and characterized African Americans as undergoing "a slow process of transition from barbarism to civilization." For Phillips, "the plantations were the best schools yet invented for the mass training of that sort of inert and backward people which the bulk of American [N]egroes represented."3 It is ironic, or perhaps coincidental, that Sowell uses Phillips to introduce this book. They both possess a jaundiced view of African Americans and their culture. Sowell, an economist and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, seeks to answer the lingering question of why African Americans lag behind other groups in the American economy. There can be little dispute over the existence of an economic gap between the black and white population in the United States. What is at issue are the reasons for the gap. Sowell argues that "causal explanations impinge on prevailing visions. Where the prevailing vision is one of external causation, verbal ingenuity


Since the electrical load is significantly affected by many factors, such as the economic policy, the human behaviors, the political environment, etc., it is of great difficult to achieve the accurate forecasting. In order to solve such problem, an electric load demand prediction model is proposed in this paper firstly, by utilizing the interval type-2 fuzzy logic (IT2FL) method. Then, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is applied to obtain the best parameters of the model, including the antecedents and consequents of the designed fuzzy rules, aiming at further improving the forecasting performance. Finally, experimental and comparison are conducted. And, both of them demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed forecasting model.


Ion exchange is one of the methods used to remove heavy metal such as copper and cobalt from wastewaters. Parameters affecting the ion-exchange of copper and cobalt aqueous solutions using clinoptilolite are the objectives of this study. Synthetic solutions were prepared with the concentration of 0.02M, 0.06M and 0.1M. The cobalt solution was maintained to 0.02M while varying the copper solution to the above stated concentrations. The clinoptilolite was activated with HCl and H2SO4 for removal efficiency. The pHs of the solutions were found to be acidic hence enhancing the copper and cobalt removal. The natural clinoptilolite performance was also found to be lower compared to the HCl and H2SO4 activated one for the copper removal ranging from 68% to 78% of Cu uptake with the natural clinoptilolite to 66% to 51% with HCl and H2SO4 respectively. It was found that the activated clinoptilolite removed more copper and cobalt than the natural one and found that the electronegativity of the metal plays a role in the metal removal and the clinoptilolite selectivity. Keywords—Clinoptilolite, cobalt and copper, Ion-exchange, mass dosage, pH.


Posttransplant lymphoproliferative disease (PTLD) is a serious complication after pediatric liver transplantation (pLT), which may lead to death. 18F‐FDG PET/CT is rarely considered in PTLD after pLT and lacks clear diagnostic guidelines, especially in the differential diagnosis of nondestructive PTLD. The aim of this study was to find a quantifiable 18F‐FDG PET/CT index to identify nondestructive PTLD after pLT.


Macrocyclic ligands, 2,5,8,10,13,16,17,20,21,24-decaazatricyclo[220.127.116.11]tetracosane (DATT), 2,5,8,10,13,16,17,20,22,26-decaazatricyclo[184.108.40.206]hexacosane (DTCH), 2,5,8,11,14,17,19,22,23,26-decaazatricyclo[220.127.116.11,18]hexacosane (DATH), and 2,5,8,11,14,17,19,23,24,28-decaazatricyclo[22.214.171.124,18]octacosane (DATO), from template condensation of diethylenetriamine with nickel(II) complexes of macrocycles 1,3,6,8-tetraaza-2,2,7,7-tetrachlorocyclodecane (TTCE), 1,3,7,9-tetraaza-2,2,8,8-tetrachlorocyclododecane (TTDE), 1,4,7,10-tetraaza-2,3,8,9-tetrachlorocyclododecane (TTCD), and 1,4,8,11-tetraaza-2,3,9,10-tetrachlorocyclotetradecane (TTTE), respectively, are described. Formulations of the tricyclic cage ligands and their nickel(II) complexes have been confirmed by elemental analyzes, conductivity and potentiometric measurements, and infrared, electronic, 1H-NMR, and mass spectral studies. Highest enhancement of equilibrium constant for nickel(II) complex of DATT (by 1010) over that of the corresponding tetraaza macrocycle of similar planar cavity ([10]-N4) is observed. The cage effect on equilibrium constant decreases rapidly with increase in planar cavity size ([10]-N4 → [14]-N4) of the tricyclic ligand; it can be considered negligible in the DATO system where nickel is well fitted in the planar cavity. A small variation in metal-ligand stability constants (log K = 21–23) indicates that a low value due to poor fitting of the nickel in the planar cavity is compensated by its encapsulation in the small spherical cavity. Thus, high and comparable stability constant values are expected for planar tetraaza and spherical polyaza cavity systems in which nickel ion can be nicely fitted.


he objective of the paper is to examine the influence T of mass poverty on national security and the role of National Directorate of Employment in addressing the challenges of unemployment which is one of the causes of poverty in Nigeria. The paper notes that poverty is one of the forces militating against the socio-economic and political developments in Nigeria as well as one of the factors responsible for raising wave of insecurity. Adopting a qualitative approach, relevant information was sourced from secondary data. It observes that national security and poverty are the biggest problems facing most nations of the world today, whether they are developed or developing. The paper argues that the most pathetic feature of the Nigerian society today is that an elite minority of its citizens are living in affluence, while the majority is wallowing in poverty which has significant influence on national security. It therefore suggests among others that there is need for government to complement the efforts of the NDE at state level through provision of funds and infrastructures that will help in the realization or actualization of alleviating poverty. The paper concludes that poverty is a social menace in Nigeria and constitutes a threat to national security.


We present an incremental approach to the migration of non decomposable COBOL applications to a Web-enabled multi-tier architecture. The relevant software components of the target architecture, namely the communication middleware and the generator of graphical user interfaces, are developed once for all in order to reduce the migration effort. An Eclipse plug-in has also been developed to support the software engineer in the migration of the graphical user interface and in the restructuring and wrapping of the original legacy code. A pilot project on a COBOL legacy system evolved during the last thirty years has been used to experiment the migration strategy and the plug-in


The goal of tissue engineering is to repair or regenerate damaged tissue using a combination of cellular biology and materials engineering techniques. One of the challenging problems in tissue engineering is the development of a reproducible three-dimensional (3D) scaffold to support cell migration and infiltration. Although natural polymers, such as dissolved collagen or alginate, are considered ideal for this purpose, their hydrophilic properties have hindered the fabrication of designed 3D scaffold structures. To overcome this problem, we developed a novel system for the cryogenic plotting of 3D scaffolds. Using this technique, we created various 3D collagen scaffolds with designed pore structures that exhibited desired properties. The diameter of the individual collagen strands, which varied from 250 µm to 500 µm, was reproducibly dependent on processing parameters, and the final collagen scaffold showed little shrinkage (less than 12%) relative to the initial design. To evaluate the fabricated scaffold, we adapted the scaffold to regenerate skin tissue. Immunohistochemical analysis demonstrated that co-cultured keratinocytes and fibroblasts completely migrated throughout the 3D collagen scaffold and keratinocytes were well differentiated on the surface of scaffold like a human skin.


Mobile robots of various types have been proposed for infrastructure inspection and disaster investigation. For such mobile robot applications, accessing the areas is of primary importance for missions. Therefore, various locomotive mechanisms have been studied. We introduce a novel mobile robot system, named DIR-3, combining a crawler robot and a microdrone. By rotating its arm back and forth, DIR-3, a very simple, lightweight crawler robot with a single 360-degree rotatable U-shaped arm, can climb up/down an 18 cm high step, 1.5 times its height.Furthermore, to inspect high places, which is considered difficult for conventional mobile robots, a drone mooring system for mobile robots is presented. The tethered microdrone of DIR-3 can be controlled freely as a flying camera by switching operating modes on the graphic user interface. The drone mooring system has a unique tension-controlled winding mechanism that enables stable landing on DIR-3 from any location in the air, in addition to measurement and estimation of relative positions of the drone. We evaluated the landing capability, position estimation accuracy, and following control of the drone using the winding mechanism. Results show the feasibility of the proposed system for inspection of cracks in a 5 m high concrete wall.


Based on studies in the field, found the problem that almost all of the coaches of the sport in the KONI Kota Payakumbuh have constraints in the preparation of training programs physical condition to the athlete in a situation of pandemic COVID-19 right now. It is originated from the low understanding of the trainers about the basic concepts of the physical conditions in sports coaching achievement for athletes. Through this community service activity of the team of community services Universitas Negeri Padang will give you a full u in scientific to the participants about: (a) the basic concept of training the physical conditions in sports coaching achievements against the athlete. (b) basic Concepts related to test and measurement of the physical condition of the athlete. (c) the Design and preparation of training programs physical conditions in the face of the situation of the pandemic and post-pandemic which according to The rules of the science of Sports Coaching (d) Innovation forms of exercise physical conditions with the intensity adjusted to each branch of the sport. The delivery of material to the participants was performed through the stages of presentation, discussion, practice with mentoring, and evaluation. The results of the activities of the participants obtained is: (a) Have an understanding of the basic concepts of training the physical conditions in sports coaching achievements. (b) Have an understanding and be able to perform the test, measurement, and evaluation of the physical condition of the athlete. (c) is Capable of designing training programs physical conditions in the face of the situation of the pandemic and post-pandemic. (d) able to innovate in compiling forms of exercise physical conditions with the intensity adjusted to each branch of the sport.


Over the past decade ensemble selection has been proposed as an "overproduce and select" method for constructing ensemble classifiers from simpler individual classifiers. Many prior research papers suggest using the top performing 10%-20% of classifiers in an ensemble. In this paper, we simulate a duel between the top performing (strong) X% of classifiers and the bottom performing (100−X)% (e.g. the top 20% versus the bottom 80%). We propose an ensemble selection algorithm that can effectively use them to construct much stronger classifiers, and apply the algorithm to find the best ensemble (of top performing classifiers as well as of bottom performing classifiers). We also show that using the bottom performing classifiers can yield comparable and sometimes better performance. Furthermore the bottom classifiers can outperform top classifiers for many different values of X, and in some cases all values of X. Our algorithm is based on heuristic search algorithms for developing ensembles of diverse classifiers that optimize complementarity. These results are based on experiments made with 6 publicly available datasets and heterogeneous ensembles using 22 kinds of classifiers.


Heterogeneity of hepatitis C viral (HCV) genomes of several isolates from different countries has been reported, but there is little information on HCV isolates for the Federal Republic of Germany. Therefore, the nucleotide (nt) and deduced amino acid (aa) sequences of interesting parts of the viral genome derived from different human isolates in Germany were compared with each other and with the nt and predicted aa sequences of recently published isolates. HCV sequences were obtained by reverse transcription of viral RNA extracted from serum followed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification. Within the 5′ nontranslated region we found only 3 single nucleotide exchanges among 2 of our isolates, and in comparison to sequences of Japanese isolates 2 to 3 exchanges, and to U.S. isolates 1 to 5 exchanges (homologies 98% to >99%). Determination of a 249‐bp core sequence from two German isolates exhibited 3% sequence divergence. The sequence of the core region (nt 342–911) showed a homology of about 88–91% on nt level and 96–97% on aa level as compared to U.S. isolates and other German isolates, and a homology of 95–96% (nt) and 96–98% (aa), respectively, to Japanese isolates. Less homologies were noticed for the E1 and E2/NS1 genes, especially in the N‐terminal E2/NS1 hypervariable domain. Our isolates HD1 and HD2 showed nt sequence homologies of about 72–81% and aa homologies of 76–88% to U.S., German, and French isolates, and 89–91% (nt) and 89–96% (aa), respectively, to Japanese isolates. These results indicate that various German isolates are more closely related to Japanese isolates and differ from other European isolates as reported so far.


Harvey J. Levin's Fact and Fancy in Television Regulation: An Economic Study of Policy Alternatives (New York: Russell Sage Foundation with distribution by Basic Books, 1980---$20.00)


Summary

The objective of the study is to use hydroxyl-terminated natural rubber (HTNR) as the toughening modifier for poly(lactic acid) (PLA). Photochemical degradation of natural rubber by ultraviolet radiation from high pressure mercury vapor lamp was used as depolymerization and hydroxylation of natural rubber. Molecular weight of HTNR was 25,000 () and estimation of hydroxyl number of HTNR according to ASTM D4274-11 was 2.04 mg KOH/g. The present of hydroxyl group was confirmed by FT-IR, 1H-NMR and 13C-NMR spectrum. HTNR was blended with PLA in the ratio of 100/0, 100/3, 100/5, 100/10, and 100/15. Tensile and impact tests were carried out according to ASTM D638 and D256 respectively. It was found that tensile strength and tensile modulus of the PLA/HTNR blends were not significantly decreased whereas elongations at break were increased up to about 9 times compared with neat PLA. For impact properties, the results showed that impact strength of PLA was significantly increased up to 4 times with an addition of 10 wt% HTNR. SEM micrographs of the blends showed well disperse of HTNR particles and the occurrence of ductile fracture.


The problem of electron-electron lifetime in a quantum dot is studied beyond perturbation theory by mapping onto the problem of localization in the Fock space. Localized and delocalized regimes are identified, corresponding to quasiparticle spectral peaks of zero and finite width, respectively. In the localized regime, quasiparticle states are single-particle-like. In the delocalized regime, each eigenstate is a superposition of states with very different quasiparticle content. The transition energy is ${\ensuremath{\epsilon}}_{c}\ensuremath{\simeq}\ensuremath{\Delta}(g/\mathrm{ln}g{)}^{1/2}$, where $\ensuremath{\Delta}$ is mean level spacing, and $g$ is the dimensionless conductance. Near ${\ensuremath{\epsilon}}_{c}$ there is a broad critical region not described by the golden rule.


OWL 2 is commonly used to represent objects with complex structure, such as complex assemblies in engineering applications, human anatomy or the structure of chemical molecules [2]. Towards that direction, the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) has developed the ChEBI ontology as a public dictionary of molecular entities, which is used to ensure interoperability of applications supporting tasks such as drug discovery. In order to automate the classification of molecules, ChEBI descriptions have been translated into OWL and then classified using state of the art Semantic Web reasoners. While this has uncovered numerous implicit subsumptions between ChEBI classes, the usefulness of the approach was somewhat limited by a fundamental inability of OWL 2 to correctly represent the structure of complex molecular entities. OWL 2 exhibits a so-called tree-model property, which prevents one from describing non-tree-like relationships using OWL 2 schema axioms. For example, OWL 2 axioms can state that butane molecules have four carbon atoms, but they cannot state that the four atoms in a cyclobutane molecule are arranged in a ring.


The aim of the present investigation was to examine the applicability of ultrafiltration and enzyme degradation process in enhancing of bioactive components. Skimmed milk was treated with Chy-Max Plus (which is produced by fermentation of a 100% chymosin rennet enzym) and the effect of the enzyme concentration, the time of the enzymatic degradation, and the cut off value of the membrane on the protein retention, flux, membrane fouling and gel formation were measured.


The verification of safety-critical real-time systems can find design problems at various phases of the development or prove the correctness. However, the computationally intensive nature of formal methods often prevents the successful verification. Abstraction is a widely used technique to construct simple and easy to verify models, while counterexample guided abstraction refinement (CEGAR) is an algorithm to find the proper abstraction iteratively. In this work we extend the CEGAR framework with a new refinement strategy yielding better approximations of the system. A prototype implementation is provided to prove the applicability of our approach.


In reference to the article by Sane et al. entitled "Value of Preoperative Chest X-ray Examinations in Children"
 (Pediatrics 60:669, November 1977), we would like to know if the authors broke down the abnormalities by age group—for instance, five-year segments. If so, did a preponderance of abnormalities of any variety occur at any particular age? We believe that should be stated, as it would strengthen their thesis if there was no difference between 0 and 19 years of age.


Multilingual coreference resolution (MCR) has been a long-standing and challenging task. With the newly proposed multilingual coreference dataset, CorefUD (Nedoluzhko et al., 2022), we conduct an investigation into the task by using its harmonized universal morphosyntactic and coreference annotations. First, we study coreference by examining the ground truth data at different linguistic levels, namely mention, entity and document levels, and across different genres, to gain insights into the characteristics of coreference across multiple languages. Second, we perform an error analysis of the most challenging cases that the SotA system fails to resolve in the CRAC 2022 shared task using the universal annotations. Last, based on this analysis, we extract features from universal morphosyntactic annotations and integrate these features into a baseline system to assess their potential benefits for the MCR task. Our results show that our best configuration of features improves the baseline by 0.9% F1 score.


Background of Study: Bullying is a phenomenon that occurs primarily in teens especially in school. It can take the form of physical, verbal, social, cyber and mental/psychological. Have a teenager being a victim of bullying, it can affect the formation of his or her self-confidence. The aim of this research is to clarify the relationship between bullying and self-confidence in Al-Irsyad Tawangmangu Islamic junior high school.Methods: This study used a non-experimental research type with a cross-sectional design. The sample in this study amounted to 47 teenagers responden at Islamic Junior High school Al-Irsyad Tawangmangu.Total sampling was used as sampling technique. The instruments used were The Revised Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire and also a self-confidence questionnaire. Data analysis used kendall tau test.Results: In this study, it was found that the majority of bullying in adolescent in Islamic Junior High School Al-Irsyad Tawangmangu was in the low category as many as 30 respondents with a percentage 63.8%. Confidence in adolescent at Islamic High School Al-Irsyad Tawangmangu majority in the medium category as many as 26 respondents with a percentage 55.3%. Kendall tau obtained p value= 0,05 and r value= 0.366. Teenagers who experience bullying in the low category tend to experience self-confidence in the moderate category as many as 17 respondents (56.7%). Conclusion: there were relationship between bullying with self confidence among teens in Al-Irsyad Tawangmangu Islamic junior high school.Keywords: bullying; self confidence; teenagers


Formal models of urban systems have the potential to reveal much about the form and functioning of urban settlements. Hitherto, much of this potential has remained unrealised due, in part, to a dearth of relevant digital data at the local scale. We have argued elsewhere (Longley and Harris 1999) that because urban regions are increasingly socially fragmented, descriptive models which are grounded in census or other areally aggregated data are restricted in what they can tell us about human activity patterns and their effects on the urban environment. Yet innovations in our ability to measure, share and to concatenate new sources of digital data is creating opportunities to develop more relevant and timely depictions of urban morphology and urban change. In this paper we explore the potential contributions of urban remote sensing and socio-economic 'lifestyles' datasets.


We present a novel experience based sampling or experiential sampling technique which has the ability to focus on the analysis's task by making use of the contextual information from the environment. In this technique, sensor samples are used to gather information about the current environment and attention samples are used to represent the current state of attention. The task-attended samples are inferred from experience and maintained by a sampling based dynamical system. The multimedia analysis task can then focus on the attention samples only. Moreover, past experiences and the current environment can be used to adaptively correct and tune the attention. Experimental results have been presented to demonstrate the efficacy of our technique.


The invention discloses an amphiphilic triblock copolymer with acid sensitivity and a preparation method and an application thereof. The preparation method comprises the following steps of: modifying polyethylene glycol with a hydroxyl group at the end to enable the structure of polyethylene glycol to contain a diazido ethyl diacetal end group, namely polyethylene glycol contains the diazido ethyl diacetal group at the end; carrying out ring-opening polymerization on cyclic ester monomers by utilizing propargyl alcohol as an initiator and stannous caprylate as a catalyst to obtain biodegradable polyester with alkynyl at the single end; and finally, under the action of a 'click' chemical catalyst and ligand, carrying out 'click' chemical reaction on polyethylene glycol containing the diazido ethyl diacetal group at the end and the biodegradable polyester with alkynyl at the end to obtain the biodegradable amphiphilic triblock copolymer with acid sensitivity. The biodegradable amphiphilic triblock copolymer with acid sensitivity has good biocompatibility, biodegradability and acid sensitivity, and can be used as a drug carrier.


In this era of healthcare reform, peforming care using resources in an eficient manner is essential. "Nursing Futures," a process used by a 24bed general rehabilitation unit in a 530-bed facility, helped the unit to identify key components of care, determine opportunities for improvement, and create a new system for the delivery of care that maximized resources and improved customer satisfaction. A Nursing Futures Committee, composed of nursing stafffrom all levels and from all shifis, used a continuous quality improvement process to focus on the problems in care delivery and developed ways to solve these problems using the time and talents of registered nurses in the most efective way. The committee also identijied expectations of staff by various customer groups; analyzed the delivery system and defined its shortcomings; developed the ideal patient care unit within financial and institutional constraints; and executed the plan, considering cost and evaluation of patient and stafsatisfaction before and after the system was implemented. The new system provided consistency in patient care assignments by reorganizing the unit into two nursing teams and by creating a new nursing position, the patient care manager


In order to fully understand the variation of the fruit alpha-glucosidase inhibitory activity-related phytochemical basis in the Chinese peach [Prunus persica (L.) Batsch], mature fruit from 33 cultivars was used for the investigation of fruit phenolic phytochemical attributes, including total phenolics, flavonoids, anthocyanins, and procyanidins, as well as the alpha-glucosidase inhibitory activity in vitro. Alpha-glucosidase inhibitory activity varied significantly among tested peach cultivars and was strongly correlated with total phenolics, total procyanidins, and total flavonoids. Untargeted UPLC-Q-TOF/MS-based metabolomics were used to comprehensively discriminate between peaches with different inhibitory activity on alpha-glucosidase. Principal component analysis (PCA) and orthogonal partial least squares discrimination analysis (OPLS-DA) were used for this process. Twenty-three differential compounds were identified between peach cultivars with high and low alpha-glucosidase inhibitory activity, and nine, including procyanidin C1, procyanidin trimer isomer 1, procyanidin trimer isomer 2, procyanidin B1, procyanidin dimer, epicatechin-epicatechin-epicatechin, phloridzin, kaempferol 3-(2'',6''-di-(E)-p-coumarylglucoside), and luteolin 3'-methyl ether 7-malonylglucoside, were identified as marker compounds responsible for the discrimination. Overall, variations in metabolites in peach pulp reflect the diversity in peach germplasm, and these nine compounds are good candidate markers for future genetic breeding of peach fruit with high alpha-glucosidase inhibitory activity.


During the second half of the 19th century, a German business community of about 100 merchants and commercial clerks developed in Glasgow. Their trade networks extended not only to Germany but also to other countries. T he main arguments and findings of this article include the following: the community was significantly larger than previously assumed; endogenous recruitment based on ethnic and family ties prevailed; migrants benefited from their specific human capital (training, languages, intercultural competence) to fill a (skills gap) in Britain; labour market competition at the junior career level was less pronounced than contemporaneous assessments suggested; naturalisation was undertaken mostly for pragmatic reasons; there were close ties at intra-ethnic level, but also with the local business elite. Bilateral and Global Framework B 19 14 , Britain's Second City hosted a German business community of around 100 individuals whose trade networks extended not only to Germany but also to other markets around the world. Analysing the roots, structure and transnational activities of this group gives insights into aspects of economic globalisation and Anglo-German relations during a period which has traditionally been analysed under the primary lens of a rising antagonism. In light of political and economic tensions it would be futile to contest the main axiom of this literature. However, more recent approaches which move away from clear national demarcations and instead focus on transnational connectivity have led to a recalibration of the binary picture. Academically trained elites in both countries, for example, shared much of the same outlook and value system, and industrial innovation was characterised by intense cross-border exchange of knowledge and hardware. In this vein, the following article introduces a German business community under the auspices of economic opportunities and social interaction with local elites. What emerges is a bourgeois group leading those «transnational lives» which have been identified as a feature of «global modernity». Economic and social ties were entertained locally at an interand intra-ethnic level; transregionally with other places in Britain; and transnationally with Germany and beyond. The article is, 1 The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for Zeitschrift fur Unternehmensgeschichte. 2 Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise of the AngloGerman Antagonism ¡860-1914, London 1980. 3 Thomas Weber, Our Friend «The Enemy». Elite Education in Britain and Germany before World War I, Stanford 2007; Stefan Manz et al., Towards an Anglo-German Histoire Croisée. Migrants, Transfers and Cross-national Entanglements, in: Idem et al. (eds.), Migration and Transfer from Germany to Britain 1660-1914, Munich 2007, 9-18. 4 Desley Deacon et alt. (eds.), Transnational Lives. Biographies of Global Modernity, 1700 Present, Basingstoke 2010. 5 For theory and case studies see Katrin Lehnert/Lutz Vogel (eds.), Transregionale PerspekFrontline Agents of Globalisation l8l therefore, a periphery-led case study of German globalisation which, at the same time, questions a clear centre-periphery dichotomy as both spheres were fluid and permeable. The microhistorical analysis is based on extensive biographical and company data. These give insights into a relatively successful community of merchants, clerks and managers with high levels of endogenous employment and self-employment. A number of theoretical angles help to embed this case study into the wider field of entrepreneurial migrations. These will include the question o i human capital in the form of education and transcultural competence as a predisposed or acquired asset. Did the specific business education in Germany and the ability to lead «transnational lives» generate comparative advantages within British labour market and trading structures? A second angle will be the question of social capital in the form of mutually supportive ethnic networks. What was the role of ethnic associations in creating a group identity and facilitating access to collectively-owned social capital? And thirdly, did specific features of an ethnic enclave economy foster access to, and career prospects on, the local labour market for members of the ethnic group? The German business community in Glasgow was a local manifestation of Germany's expanding economy in the second half of the 19th century. A community had existed in London since the middle ages, but this was now reduplicated on a smaller scale in provincial cities. B y 19 14 , Germany had superseded France and Britain in terms of industrial production. Her export rates rose faster than those of world exports generally. Almost a quarter of domestic industrial production was exported, as opposed to 15 per cent for Britain and France respectively. Her share in world trade rose from 9.5 per cent in 1874/78 to 12.2 per cent in 1909/13 . A side effect of economic globalisation was the growth of German merchant communities in all world-regions with trading potential. Whether in the Pacific, Brazil, the United States or the Ottoman Empire, whether in Hong Kong, St. Petersburg or Mexico City: 1 0 Germans grasped the opportunities of tiven. Kleinräumige Mobilität und Grenzwahrnehmung im ig.Jahrhundert, Dresden 2 0 1 1 . 6 Heinz-Gerhard Haupt/Jürgen Kocka (eds.), Comparative and Transnational History. Central European Approaches and New Perspectives, New York/Oxford 2009; Sebastian Conrad, Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial Germany, Cambridge 2010. 7 Roger Waldinger, The Ethnic Enclave Debate Revisited, in: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 3 (1993), 444-452; Alejandro Portes, Social Capital. Its Origins and Applications in Modem Sociology, in: Annual Rev iew of Sociology 24 (1998), 1-24; Hartmut Berghoff/Uwe Spiekermann, Introduction to Immigrant Entrepreneurship. GermanAmerican Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present, http://www.immigrantentrepreneurship. org/ [last access 18.12.2012]. 8 Natalie Fryde, Ein mittelalterlicher deutscher Großunternehmer. Terricus Teutonicus de Colonia in England, 1217-1247, Stuttgart 1997; Nils Jörn, «With money and bloode.» Der Londoner Stalhof im Spannungsfeld der englisch-hansischen Beziehungen im 15. und 16.Jahrhundert, Köln 2000; Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, Deutsche Kaufleute in London. Welthandel und Einbürgerung 1660-1818, Munich 2007. 9 Cornelius Torp, Die Herausforderung der Globalisierung. Wirtschaft und Politik in Deutschland i860 bis 1914, Göttingen 2005; Werner Plumpe, Eine wirtschaftliche Weltmacht? Die ökonomische Entwicklung Deutschlands von 1870 bis 1914, in: Bernd Heidenreich/Sönke Neitzel (eds.), Das Deutsche Kaiserreich 1890-1914, Paderborn 2 0 1 1 , 39-60. 10 Stewart G. Firth, German Firms in the Pacific Islands 1837-1914, in: John A Moses/Paul M. Kennedy (eds.), Germany in the Pacific and Far East 1870-1914, St. Lucia 1977, 4-25; Margarete Busch, Deutsche in St. Petersburg 1865-1914. Identität und Integration, Essen 1995; Markus A. Denzel (ed.), Deutsche Eliten in Übersee (16. bis frühes 20 .Jahrhundert),


Using acrylamide( AM),2- acrylamido- 2- methylpropane sulfonic acid( AMPS),and taking cationic monomer as a raw material,a suitable non- solid phase drilling thickening agent was synthesized by an aqueous solution polymerization method in the oxidation of ammonium persulfate and sodium bisulfite composition- redox initiator system under the radical polymerization. The optimum reaction conditions were identified with single factor variable method: the mass of the monomers used account for 30% of the mass of overall reaction system,m( AM) ∶ m( AMPS) ∶ m( the cationic monomer) = 8∶3∶1,the ratio of the mass of initiators to that of monomers was 0. 5%,the p H value of reaction system was 7,the reaction temperature was 45 ℃,sustained responsed over 4 h to obtain the desired product,and performance evaluation was conducted for the target reaction product.


The objective of this paper is to design a power control policy that maximizes the long-term time-averaged sum throughput of a Gaussian multiple access channel (MAC), where the transmitters as well as the access point (AP) are energy harvesting nodes (EHNs). In addition, the policy is required to facilitate uncoordinated operation of the network. That is, in each slot, the transmitting nodes and the AP need to independently take their actions, e.g., the amount of energy to be used for transmission or whether to turn on and receive the data. First, in order to benchmark the performance of any policy, we derive an upper bound on the throughput achievable, by analyzing a centralized genie-aided system where the nodes have infinite capacity batteries and can freely share the available energy among themselves. In addition, the genie-aided system has non-causal knowledge of the energy arrivals at all the nodes. Next, we show that, surprisingly, a simple time sharing based online policy which requires no coordination among the transmitters and uses time-dilation at the receiver achieves the upper bound asymptotically in the battery size. We also present a policy that requires an occasional one-bit feedback from the AP about its battery state, and show that it requires a smaller sized battery at the receiver compared to a policy which operates without any feedback from the AP, to achieve the same performance. We use Monte Carlo simulations to validate our theoretical results and illustrate the performance of the proposed policies.


N-body simulations are employed to investigate relationships between the global properties of collisionless, self-gravitating systems (e.g., galaxies) that result from hierarchical merging. Each galaxy of mass M is assumed to form by the merging of two identical progenitors of mass 1/2 M from an interpenetrating parabolic encounter. The remnant galaxies depart strongly from homology with their progenitors at all stages in the merging hierarchy. A power-law relation between galaxy mass and central velocity dispersion results, with exponent similar to the observed luminosity-velocity dispersion relation for ellipticals. Since this relation appears to be entirely scale-free, we inspect observational data on other stellar systems supported primarily by random motions (globular clusters and dwarf elliptical galaxies). The possibily that hierarchical merging has operated over many decades in mass (10/sup 5/< or approx. =M/M/sub sun/ < or approx. =10/sup 12/) is discussed.


Following a run of successes in the German regions of Thuringia, Brandenburg and Saxony, Germany's anti-Eurozone party Alternative for Germany (Alternative fur Deutschland, AfD) is riding high in the polls. Patricia Hogwood writes, however, that the party may struggle to translate this success into the federal arena. In particular, the key concerns of the AfD party elites – external trade and Eurozone reform – sit awkwardly with the largely domestic concerns of their voting public, which centre on labour market and welfare state reforms and immigration. Unless the AfD can reconcile these interests, the party risks implosion under the twin pressures of warring elite factions and electoral volatility.


In the present research, the partition of Pb in soil-crop system and effects of soil Pb contamination on microbial ecology of three different soils were investigated in greenhouse pot trial. The results showed that the metal content in Brassica chinensis L. could be described by a nonlinear relationship with soil metal. Both 0.43 mol/L HNO3 and 0.05 mol/L EDTA extractable Pb in soil were significantly correlated with the content in Brassica chinensis L. shoots. In contrast, Pb content in Brassica chinensis L. shoots had no significant correlation with 0.01 mol/L CaCl2 extractable Pb in soils. Considering the simplicity and low cost of 0.43 mol/L HNO3 or 0.05 mol/L EDTA extraction, the extraction solution could serve as an alternative method for assessment of phytoavailability of soil Pb to plants. Soil Pb contamination had no effect on nitrifying bacteria and soil microbial diversity. Critical limit of Pb based on human health risk, national food criterion or plant toxicity were 140、59 and 12263 mg/kg for Fe-accumulic Gleyic Stagnic Anthrosols, 790、292 and 13902 mg/kg for Typic Gleyic Stagnic Anthrosols, 1266、418 and 30422 mg/kg for Lithic Ochri-Aquic Cambosols, respectively.


The Tebbe transformation of carbonylic substrates such as aldehydes, ketones, esters and amides into alkenes has been analysed theoretically. The active complex in the Tebbe reaction was modelled by various X2TiCH2(X =η5-C5H5, H or Cl) complexes. The extended-Huckel approach was used to obtain a qualitative molecular orbital interaction picture of the reaction giving the expected titanaoxetane intermediate. A concerted path is proposed. A formally 2π+ 2π reaction path is made allowed due to the existence of a very polarized titanium–carbon π-type orbital (highest occupied molecular orbital) providing two electrons more for the cycloaddition. The geometrical structures of the titanaoxetanes were analysed by extended-Huckel, semiempirical as well as ab initio methods. These indicate that the four-membered ring will take a planar geometry, as puckering of the metallacycle results in weakning of the titanium–oxygen bond. A comparison of the 4- and 3-exo-methylenetitanaoxetane isomers revealed that the former is the most stable.


The author describes how available statistics and consumer participation indicate that, though not perfect, the benefits of UK electric utility privatization and competition outweigh the monopolistic structures of the past.


While the use of automated writing evaluation software has received much attention in CALL literature, as Frankenberg-Garcia (2019) notes, empirical research on predictive text and intelligent writing assistants is lacking. Thus, this study addressed this gap in the literature by examining the impact of Grammarly, an intelligent writing assistant that incorporates predictive text technology, on the mobile writing quality of Japanese L2 English students. Specifically, the study explored if Grammarly had a significant effect on the grammatical accuracy, lexical richness, writing fluency, or syntactic complexity of L2 students' writing when compared to unassisted mobile writing. A total of 31 university EFL students participated in the 8-week study which utilized a counterbalanced design. Participants took part in weekly guided freewriting tasks under each writing condition (non-Grammarly and Grammarly) over the duration of the study. The descriptive statistics and results from t-tests showed that when students wrote with the assistance of Grammarly, they produced fewer grammatical errors and wrote with more lexical variation. These findings highlight the potential of predictive text and real-time corrective feedback as a way to support L2 writing, particularly among novice writers who may struggle to write effectively in the L2.


The aim of this work was to study contribution of endothelium derivedfactors (nitric oxide and prostacycline) as well as different adrenoreceptor subtypes in the mechanism of coronary dilation induced by carvedilol in isolated guinea pig heart. We found that carvedilol increased coronary flow in isolated guinea pig heart. This effect was significantly reduced in the presence of nitric oxide synthase inhibitor L-NAME (W M) and did not change in the presence of cyclooxygenase inhibitor indomethacin (5 · 10' 6M), beta-1/beta-2 adrenoceptor antagonist nadolol (.10' 5 M) and alfa-1/alfa-2 adrenoreceptor antagonist phentholamine (.10 5 M). So, in isolated guinea pig heart carvedilol induce coronary vasodilation, which is mediated by endothelium-derived nitric oxide and does not depend on release of prostacyclin as well as on interaction with any subtype of adrenoceptors.


The Leishmania major receptor for macrophages is a lipid-containing glycoconjugate that is recognized by the monoclonal antibody WIC-79.3. When L. major promastigotes were incubated with Fab fragments of WIC-79.3 prior to injection into genetically susceptible mice, their infectivity was decreased. Fab fragments from an irrelevant control antibody of the same class had no effect. The L. major glycolipid was purified from detergent-solubilized promastigotes by affinity chromatography on immobilized WIC-79.3 and used to vaccinate mice that are genetically resistant or susceptible to disease. Genetically resistant mice could be protected totally from cutaneous disease with as little as 5 ,.g of glycolipid. A high but not absolute level of resistance was also induced in the susceptible mice, in which the disease is otherwise fatal. No protection was obtained with the carbohydrate fragment of the glycolipid alone or by injection of the glycolipid in the absence of adjuvant. Genetically susceptible mice, immunized and protected from disease as a result of multiple injections of live avirulent cloned promastigotes of L. major, produced antibodies to the glycolipid ofL. major. No antibodies were detected in serum from chronically diseased Mice. The data suggest that this functionally important antigen of L. major is a candidate vaccine against cutaneous leishmaniasis. Old World cutaneous leishmaniasis, caused by the protozoan Leishmania major, is usually a self-limiting disease that is followed by long-lasting immunity and resistance to reinfection. To date, no vaccine exists against any parasitic disease of man, including leishmaniasis, but controlled exposure to living promastigotes has been used to induce protection [reviewed by Greenblatt (1)]. Cutaneous leishmaniasis should therefore be amenable to vaccine-based control. Ideally, the vaccine would consist of a defined antigen preparation. To facilitate the development of leishmania vaccines, much use has been made of the mouse model for cutaneous leishmaniasis, which shares many features with the disease in man (2-4). Mice express a spectrum of disease patterns similar to that observed in man. Most laboratory mouse strains are "resistant," in that cutaneous lesions resolve spontaneously. In contrast, BALB/c mice and H-2 congeneic mice on a BALB/c background are susceptible and develop fatal disease. Genetically based variation in susceptibility therefore enables vaccination protocols to be tested under conditions of high stringency by using BALB/c mice or conditions oflower stringency by using C3H/He or C57BL/6 mice (5, 6). We have recently identified and characterized a glycolipid antigen present on the promastigote membrane (7). This antigen was also found on the surface of the infected macrophage (7) and was subsequently shown to be the parasite receptor for macrophages (8). The Leishmania glycoconjugate is thus the molecule directly involved in the initiation of infection. It therefore seemed possible that immunization with this molecule might prevent infection. In this paper, we provide experimental evidence suggesting that this is the case. MATERIALS AND METHODS Mice. C3H/He and BALB/c and its congeneic partner lines BALB/c.H-2b (BALB/B) and BALB/c.H-2k (BALB/ K) mice were produced in a pathogen-free facility and maintained conventionally as described (4, 9). Parasites. The cloned, virulent L. major parasite line V121 was produced from the human isolate LRC-L137 (10) and maintained by passage in BALB/c mice. Promastigotes were grown in vitro in blood/agar cultures (4) or in RPMI 1640 medium with 10% fetal calf serum. Preparation of Glycolipid from L. major Promastigotes. V121 promastigotes were grown in vitro for 4-6 days and washed in phosphate-buffered saline (Pi/NaCl) (pH 7.3), and 109 parasites were solubilized in 10 ml of 1% Triton X-100 in Pi/NaCl (TX-100/Pi/NaCl) containing protease inhibitors (2 mM phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride and 10 mM iodoacetamide). Insoluble material was removed by centrifugation at 28,000 x g for 30 min. The detergent-soluble material was loaded onto a column containing monoclonal antibody WIC-79.3 bound to CNBractivated Sepharose (7 mg/ml of gel) (Pharmacia). The column was washed extensively in detergent-free Pi/NaCl, and the bound glycolipid antigen was eluted with 6 M guanidine HCl. The antigen was dialyzed in Pi/NaCl before use. In initial experiments, the Triton X-100 on the column was exchanged with octyl glucoside (30 mM in Pi/NaCl) before elution of antigen with 6 M guanidine HCl. The octyl glucoside was then removed by dialysis in Pi/NaCl. Subsequently, it was found that the presence of detergent was no longer necessary after the glycolipid had bound to the antibody column, and the yield of purified antigen was similar in the two protocols. Since the monoclonal antibody WIC79.3 is directed to a carbohydrate epitope in the glycolipid, the same column and a similar protocol were used for the purification of the water-soluble carbohydrate fragment of the antigen (excreted factor, EF) released by the parasites into culture medium (8). In this case, no detergent was used. To quantitate the amount of glycolipid or glycoconjugate obtained, the Dubois-Gillis method was used (11) with glucose as standard. Antibodies. The IgG1 monoclonal antibody WIC-79.3 is described in detail elsewhere (12-14). It binds specifically to the L. major promastigote membrane glycolipid and to the carbohydrate fragment of the glycolipid that is released from the parasite surface into culture medium in which the paraAbbreviations: EF, excreted factor; IRMA, immunoradiometric


To the Editors: The study by Brainard et al. (1989) on the metabolic pathway for the synthesis of y-aminobutync acid (GABA) from [ I-'3C]glucose in the brain of rats demonstrates the potential value of I3C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in elucidating metabolic pathways in CNS tissues, but it is very difficult to reconcile their results with current concepts of metabolism in CNS tissues. There NMR data indicate that little, if any, I3C from glucose was incorporated into GABA via a pathway in which pyruvate was converted to acetyl-CoA. To account for this surprising result, the authors suggested that GABA is synthesized primarily, if not entirely, via an anaplerotic pathway, and as indicated in their Fig. 4, the acetyl-CoA required by this pathway must be derived from an unlabeled pool of glucose. We cannot think of any realistic way that this could happen, at least not under normal metabolic conditions. Another possible explanation is that acetyl-CoA is derived from something other than glucose, perhaps P-hydroxybutyrate or fatty acids. However, this would require pyruvate dehydrogenase to be inactive in the GABAforming compartment and would also mean that at least 10% of the acetyl-CoA entering the tncarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle must come from sources other than pyruvate. Neither is likely to be true under normal metabolic conditions. Perhaps metabolic activity in rats anesthetized with pentobarbital and artificially ventilated is unusual. As noted by Brainard et al. (1989), their data are consistent with previous studies indicating that the metabolic pathways mediating anaplerotic activity and the synthesis of GABA each account for 10% of the glucose metabolized oxidatively. Because pyruvate carboxylase, the primary anaplerotic enzyme in the rat brain (Patel, 1974), is located predominantly, if not exclusively, in astrocytes (Shank et al., 1985), most anaplerotic activity must occur in these cells. If GABA were synthesized via the anaplerotic pathway, GABAergic neurons would be dependent on astrocytes for an immediate supply of precursors for the synthesis of GABA. Furthermore, virtually all anaplerotic activi iy vloold have to be funneled to SABAsgic nekiuns. There is compelling evidence that astrocytes do supply glutamine (see Nicklas, 1986) and possibly a-ketoglutarate and malate to neurons (Shank and Campbell, 1984). However, it is unlikely that these substrates are funneled solely to GABAergic neurons, at least not under normal metabolic conditions. This would also mean that the substrate molecules supplied by astrocytes would either have to be metabolized to GABA before mixing with existing pools or that virtually the entire pool of TCA cycle intermediates and glutamate within GABAergic neurons must be derived from astrocytes. The study by Brainard et al. (1989) is weakened by the lack of data on the accumulation of 13C into alanine, aspartate, and glutamine and on the tissue content of amino acids. This makes difficult comparison of the results of this study with those of previous studies using ['4C]gl~~ose. Based on the size of the peaks in their Fig. 1, the results appear to be quite different. For example, little, if any, label appears to have accumulated in the C3 position of alanine, whereas in previous studies using unanesthetized rats, alanine was highly labeled at intervals of <30 min (Gaitonde, 1965; Shank and Aprison, 1970). In addition, the relative amounts of label in aspartate and glutamine appear to be much lower than those found in previous studies. Although their results are provocative and have important implications, we believe that until confirmed by a more rigorous study using unanesthetized rats, the conclusions must be regarded as tentative.


The indoor safe area of a building is important to the health and well-being of people. All buildings have some sort of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing services such as coolant, pump, and water heater to provide a comfortable environment inside the building. These services must be managed in some way to ensure a comfortable environment. Building Management System (BMS) provides a comfortable working environment reliably. In this article, we propose effective Internet of Things(IoT) applications, which are used to monitor everyday home environments with inexpensive ubiquitous sensor systems. The parameters for using smart sensors and transmitting data over the internet provide a self-monitoring mechanism to improve unit performance in the monitoring phase. The structure of the monitoring system is based on a combination of widely used distributed sensors, data aggregation, and information systems for inference and situational awareness. The results are encouraging considering the reliability of the sensing information transmission through the proposed unified network architecture using Amazon Web Services(AWS) Cloud services for smart predictive systems.


The criteria for characterization of the process of formation of professional pedagogical communicative competence of future teachers are looked throught in the article. It is given criteria, their indicators and levels (high, medium, low). It is characterized the methodology of determining the level of formation of professional pedagogical communicative competence of future teachers.


Traumatic injury by a foreign body is a common cause of traumatic pericarditis (TP) and traumatic reticuloperitonitis in buffaloes. Both mimics almost the same clinical sign under field conditions. Clinical, hematobiochemical and ultrasonographic changes between TP and TRP cases in buffaloes were evaluated in the present study. From the period of January 2020 to December 2020, a total of twelve buffaloes were investigated with TP and TRP conditions. Six animals each suffering from TP and TRP were included along with six normal healthy animals as control. Different clinical signs, haemato-biochemical parameters and ultrasonographical findings were recorded in each group and comparative analysis was done. Brisket edema in TP affected buffaloes and arch back condition in TRP affected buffaloes was the common clinical finding. Ferroscopy was performed to confirm the location of foreign body. Jugular pulsation was noted in Group II as well as Group III buffalo. A significant increase in WBC count and a significant decrease in hematocrit was noted in Group III animals compared to healthy animals. SGOT and fibrinogen concentration was significantly increased in both group animals. Anechoic fluid accumulation in TP and thickening of the reticular wall in TRP were the most consistent ultrasonographic findings in buffaloes.


The discussion on ICT for developing countries often focuses on interface design to include marginalized users. However, this is only part of the challenge the development of ICT in such contexts face. Based on two past projects and an ongoing one, this position paper categorizes the diverse challenges the provision of financial infrastructures for rural and underserved societies encounter. Many of these aspects do not become visible in ICT development in Europe or North America. Reflecting the experiences of the Indian projects might not only inform future such projects but also help to uncover and reconsider 'working relations of technology production and use' (Suchman) that are often taken for granted.


The role of the human pineal gland in normal physiology and in disease is little understood. influence on the pituitary-gonadal axis (Minneman & Wurtman, 1975) and also to control cyclic variations in sleep and arousal (Quay, 1974). ing enzymes exhibit a diurnal rhythm, both in rat (Axelrod & others, 1965: Klein & Weller, 1970) and in man, and is synchronous with the serum melatonin diurnal rhythm (Smith & others, 1977). Transmethylation by pineal hydroxyindole-o-methyl transferase (HIOMT) might, if defective, be implicated in the pathogenesis of abnormal mental states (Jones & others, 1969: Greiner, 1970). Psythiatric patients often show disturbances in sleep patterns (Retch, 1975; used radioimmune assay (Smith & others, 1977) to estimate the elevation of daytime melatonin (and possibly nighttime) serum concentrations in 5 psychiatric patients being treated with varying doses of chlorpromazine (100mg-400mg daily) who thus produced high concentrations with little rhythm (Table 1). The daytime concentrations were enhanced 4-5 times over normal whilst the nighttime increase was 14 times normal. A similar effect was reported in rats (Wurtman & others, 1968) when chlorpromazine increased serum melatonin concentration five-fold. Five psychiatric patients not being treated with chlorpromazine had lower than normal serum melatonin concentrations (Table 11, suggesting that the increase in melatonin serum concentrations in patients with abnormal mental states is due to the effect of the drug and not to an inherent difference from normal individuals. However, no dose response correlation can yet be made. Whether this effect of chlorpromazine is due to an increased biosynthesis of melatonin or a reduced rate of metabolism is unclear. But, since intravenous injection of melatonin in man induces sleep (Cramer & others, 1976) the elevated melatonin concentrations can explain the initial tranquillizing effect observed in the clinical use of chlorpromazine before the gradual onset of the antipsychotic action. Interestingly fluphenazine, another neuroleptic, does not appear to increase serum melatonin concentrations in man or in the rat (unpublished data). Whether the low absolute levels of serum melatonin (and shallow rhythm) in the group of patients not being treated with chlorpromazine is significantly different from normal has yet to be established.


I write to introduce myself to readers and contributors as the new Editor-in-Chief. ''Chemistry & Ecology'' was first published in 1982, 20 years ago, and Dr. E.J Perkins (University of Strathclyde, Department of Biology, Marine Laboratory, Kilcreggan, Dunbartonshire, Scotland) was the Editor-in-Chief. Dr. G. Howells (Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge) collected the heritage of Dr. E.J Perkins, and launched the journal with new scopes. Dr. G. Howells managed the journal from 1987 to 2001, changing the Journal's title from ''Chemistry in Ecology'' to ''Chemistry and Ecology''. In January 2002 Dr. Howells left, but she will continue as Advisory editor. I wish to thank the former Editor for the work done and for the sensitivity and courage she displayed in promoting the scientific works carried out not only in the most developed countries but also in emerging countries. This often required a huge amount of work for improving scientific quality and manuscript style, together with major editing. The ambition was the one of connecting emerging issues related to the problems of (new) chemicals into the environment and the interactions between ecology and chemistry. Last, but not least, promoting the use of ''chemistry'' in ecological research. Her expertise in radiochemistry and hydrobiology certainly facilitated the ability to cover different issues and broad thought integrated scientific topics, a hard issue for most environmental scientists. In the last 20 years ''Chemistry and Ecology'' published more than 350 articles and hundreds of contributors from all parts of the world have been attracted by topics of the journal and therein published their results. The objective of the new Editoral Board is to continue improving the standard making this journal, in the next years, one of the most relevant outlets for these topics in the world. In January 2002 ''Chemistry and Ecology'' moved from Gordon & Breach to Taylor & Francis Publishing Group (London) that wanted to improve the journal by means of accurate editing, strict timing of publication and increasing its diffusion. As the new Editor-in-Chief, I'm looking for new perspectives. Aims and scopes have been updated to the new scientific frontiers and opened to topics that 20 years ago were still unknown. From now on ''Chemistry and Ecology'' aims also at playing a key role in highlighting the contributions from multi-disciplinary approaches dealing with the following topics:


In this paper, we propose a novel graph convolutional network (GCN) for pansharpening, defined as GCPNet, which consists of three main modules: Spatial GCN Module (SGCN), Spectral Band GCN Module (BGCN), Atrous Spatial Pyramid Module (ASPM). Specifically, due to the nature of graph convolutional network, the proposed SGCN and BGCN are capable of exploring the long-range relationship between the object and the global state in the spatial and spectral aspects, which benefits for pan-sharpened results and has not been fully investigated before. In addition, the designed ASPM is equipped with multi-scale atrous convolutions and learns richer local feature information, so as to cover the objects of different sizes in satellite images. To further enhance the representation of our proposed GCPNet, asynchronous knowledge distillation is introduced to provide compact features by heterogeneous task imitation in a teacher-student paradigm. In the paradigm, the teacher network acts as a variational auto-encoder to extract compact features of the ground truth MS images. The student network, devised for pansharpening, is trained by the assistance of the teacher network to transfer the important information of the expected ground truth MS images. Extensive experimental results on different satellite datasets demonstrate that our proposed network outperforms the state-of-the-art methods both visually and quantitatively. The source code is released at https://github.com/Keyu-Yan/GCPNet.


The complex vasculature seen in the vascular plants provides a scaffolding of structural support and is responsible for the movement of water, minerals, photosynthate and some hormones. The auxin canalization model proposes that a positive feedback mechanism causes auxin-transporting cells to become vascular cells. We have isolated a leaf-patterning mutant, unhinged (unh), which shows a simplified leaf vascular pattern with more freely ending veins and fewer secondary veins. Expression of the ATHB8::GUS reporter construct indicates that the UNH gene acts prior to procambial patterning of the first presumptive secondary veins. Expression of the auxin responsive reporter gene DR5::GUS is reduced in unh leaves and roots, indicating that UNH may be involved in auxin signaling. Increasing the level of auxin in unh leaves through the addition of auxin transport inhibitors, low concentrations of 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, and through introducing unh into mutants in which auxin transport is defective partially rescues the unh phenotype, supporting this hypothesis. The unh mutation maps to a 60kb region near the top of chromosome IV. No other leaf vascular mutant or auxinassociated mutant have been reported in this area, thus UNH represents a novel component of leaf vascularization and auxin signaling.


This study attempts to determine the optimal production run time for an economic production quantity (EPQ) model with a Poisson breakdown rate, the rework of nonconforming items, and multi-delivery of finished products. It is assumed that nonconforming items can be randomly produced and repaired through a rework process added at the end of the production process. Production equipment is subject to a random breakdown, which follows a Poisson distribution. When a breakdown occurs, the machine immediately goes under repair and adopts an abort/resume inventory control policy. Under this policy, the production of the interrupted lot instantaneously resumes when the machine is repaired and restored. Upon completion of the rework process, n fixed quantity installments of the finished batch are delivered to the customer at a fixed interval of time. Mathematical modelling together with a numerical analysis is used in this study. Theorems on the convexity of the expected system cost function and bounds of production uptime are proposed and proved. A recursive searching algorithm is developed to find the optimal replenishment uptime within the bounds. Finally, a numerical example is provided to demonstrate the practical usage of the study results.


This book provides an up-to-date, research-based, but practical and accessible description of contemporary technical communication practice in a global environment. It gives readers a thorough understanding of the technical communication field by emphasizing how it should be viewed as a profession, how one might pursue a career in it, and finally how to practice it. Finally, the book draws the reader's attention to background material with a succinct summary of ideas that have been popularized in both literature and practice. In addition, the book's extensive multiple method study methodology provides a solid justification for the information's foundation. The book has nine chapters that are divided into the following three sections: An introduction to the fundamentals of technical communication as a profession; an examination into how diverse the technical communication profession is—for instance, by examining the many competencies required, various sorts of activities that are performed, and various work environment options accessible, including working from home; and finally, an introduction into the theories and procedures that serve as the book's foundation and link the first two sections to a research framework. This book is accessible and useful for industry practitioners, students, and teachers. The book also helps novices by giving them all the knowledge they need about the subject, educational options, societies, technologies, necessary skills, workplaces, and the need to adapt quickly to changing conditions to meet future needs. Real-world case studies and the sharing of technical communicators' real experiences are of tremendous value to professionals and will aid in the development of their technical communication skills.


Abstract : The intellectual claim for an independent Air Force is that air power promised to be the decisive factor in modern warfare. This claim rests on the theories of early air power advocates such as Guilio Douhet and General Billy Mitchell. Influenced by World War I, air power theorists proclaimed that the skillfully wielded aerial weapon offered the way to strike directly at the heart of the enemy and bring victory without major contributions from surface forces. Embraced by generations of airmen, these theories have set the standard by which air power has been measured. But has the Air Force earned the right to exist as an independent service based on its decisiveness in modern war? This research paper examines this question by conducting a review of literature pertaining to the decisiveness of air power. Background on the theories of Douhet and Mitchell is included to understand how their theories affected subsequent airmen. The performance of the Air Force in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf wars is then examined for decisiveness. An examination of these wars indicates that the Air Force has failed to prove decisive in a way that matches the promises of Douhet and Mitchell, though the contributions to the war efforts by air power are unquestionably valuable. The unavoidable conclusion to be drawn from this research is that the Air Force has not earned its right to exist as an independent service by decisiveness alone, though other considerations for an independent Air Force may be more compelling in today's world.


The manuscript version of Louisa May Alcott's "Eli's Education," published in the March 1884 issue of St. Nicholas Magazine as part of Spinning-Wheel Stories, varies textually from its published forms. The Century Company editors, including Mary Mapes Dodge, revised the text for verbal propriety regarding god, guilt, sex, and dialect. The textual variants between versions and the correspondence between Alcott and Dodge reveal their collaboration, which is situated in the larger context of dialect use and consumer culture in the late 19th-century.


Objective:To explore the diagnosis fingings of non-diver bone infarction on plain radiography,CT and MRI,by imaging manifestation in 9 cases.Methods:All of patients were examined by plain radiography,7 cases were examined by CT,2 cases were examined by MRI,2 cases were confirmed by biopsy.Results:13 sites of the bone infarct in 9 patients were found,including 7 in the distal femur,4 in the proximal tibia,2 in the distal tibia.Two lesion sites in these patients were confirmed by operation and pathology.Plain radiography manifestation was inhomogeneous ossification in the intramedullary cavity.CT manifestation was "map-shaped"lesions with the surrounding sclerotic rim in the intramedullary cavity.T1WI and T2WI on MR showed inhomogenous mixed signal in center area of focus.Conclusion:Plain radiography can suffice for diagnosing the bone infaction in the middle and later stages.CT examination can obtain more sensitive diagnosis than plain radiography.MRI possesses a higher sensitivity in diagnosis of early bone infarction.


Summary Aqueous extracts of leaves of Jatropha curcus Linn. and Vitex negundo Linn. were evaluated for anthelmintic activity on adult Indian earthworms Pheretima Posthuma, using piperzaine citrate as reference standard. The results indicated that leaves of Jatropha curcus Linn. was more significant than that of leaves of Vitex negundo Linn.


Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011 caused serious damages in various fields of our life. Telecommunication networks, which have recently become vital infrastructure, were not the exception and destroyed at various points as well. The rapid recovery of the damaged network infrastructure plays a crucial and important role for the communications and the information exchanges among affected regions, emergency evacuation centers and public offices. The authors have started research and development on the rapid recovery of the disrupted communication links, especially of the backhaul connectivity of the base stations (BS) in the Public Land Mobile Networks (PLMN). The key technology is the use of the multilayered communications network which makes use of various wireless network technologies with different properties and attributes. The authors employed the regional wireless access network and its extension by the multi-hop wireless Local Access Network (LAN) relay for the recovery of BS backhaul connectivity. This paper introduces the concepts, requirements and challenges, which should be overcome through the research and development, for the recovery of the BS backhaul connectivity by other wireless access networks under the disaster situations.


The world's energy sector has undergone drastic changes in the last decades due to the climate change and the turn to renewable energy sources. Biomass is the largest renewable source of carbohydrates on the Earth and is an important substrate for biofuel production. Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeasts are the main producer of first-generation ethanol from corn and sugarcane. However, these yeasts lack the ability to utilize the important components of lignocelluloses such as pentoses D-xylose and L-arabinose. Pentose-fermenting yeasts could become an alternative to S. cerevisiae in ethanol production from lignocelluloses. This review focuses on the ecology, geographical distribution, taxonomy, and potential applications of naturally-occurring pentose-fermenting yeasts. Pentose-fermenting yeasts have been frequently found in the lignocelluloseassociated substrates. Decaying and rotten wood and the gut of wood-boring insects are especially important natural reservoirs of this group of yeasts. Simple sugars xylose and L-arabinose would be present in such habitats as suitable nutrients for pentose-assimilating yeasts. The other natural habitats reported for pentose-fermenting yeasts are soil, plants, and herbivore faeces. Pentose-fermenting yeasts are found in many geographical regions and have been isolated on almost each continent. Dozens of novel pentose-fermenting yeast species have been discovered in the last decade. The previously poorly explored regions, including Brazil, China, and several Asian countries were especially oft en reported as sites of isolation of such yeasts. Most xylose-fermenting yeasts belong to genera Scheffersomyces, Candida, Spathaspora, Sugiyamaella, and Pachysolen, while the most efficient ethanol producers are represented by species Scheffersomyces stipitis and Spathaspora passalidarum. The vast majority of research on the biotechnological application of pentose-fermenting yeasts focuses on their role in the production of bioethanol from lignocellulose. This group of yeasts could be either directly involved in the fermentation stage of ethanol production or serve as a source of genetic material for the genetic manipulation of other industrial yeast strains. Pentose-fermenting yeasts could also be involved in the production of various chemicals from lignocellulosic substrates, mainly polyols, xylitol, and arabitol. Thus, the search for novel pentose-fermenting yeasts that could become new efficient ethanol producers or donors of new genetic material is still ongoing. The previously unexplored or poorly studied geographical regions and natural habitats can hide many novel yeasts with huge biotechnological potential.


Prediction of wind breakage and uprooting in tree stands requires information on weight of dry crown, branahwood, and foliage. This information )las not been. published. An experimental progrs.m . .started. in 1951 has led to a number of generalized relations by which these crown .characteristics can be determined with good .accuracy over a wide range of tree diameters, apecie·s, and. speeies groups~~~' Crowns, their components--branchwood anQ. fo1iage-.,..a:nd stems were anal;rzed for 211 conifer trees representing 13 species and 4 sites from 4 ·states.. D;ia;meters of ·stems :rang·ed front l inch to 37 inches at breast height., Weights of ·dey crown, dry branchwood, and .. dey fol:iag'e were to:und to be significantly-. related to stem diameter at base of live crown for each species provided .e:row length is taken .into account. ~elation .for o:rown.weight varied with species and site but not with crown geometry, :position of the crown in the canopy,. or age~ Both branohwood and foliage relatiott...s appear ·to behave similarly. Cro:wn weight relations for all species were grouped ··by statistical con:tiJarison. of regre.ssio:n. lines. Resulting groups were rationalized on the basis of similar tree characteristics in an attempt tQ e:stablish a. basis for rating the c:r~own. weight of' foreign species.~: or native species not yet analyzed.. No firm basis for ratings could be deduced. · At a l2··dnch stem diameter at base of crown, crowns o£ shade-tolerant species were not necessarily :P...eavier than those of intolerant ·trees although they generally had 1;3maller branch-to-foliage ratios~ In .all species this ratio exceeded 11'10 for trees larger than ; inches· stem .diameter at . base of cro'W!l. So that results could be applied to stands of trees, the species were grouped to correspond to selected American fqrest ·cover types. Equations for weight times length of dry crown for these 11 cover types are presented ..


: This article proposes a methodology for the structural design of multi-layered glass beams considering lateral-torsional buckling. The basis is the use of two separate effective thicknesses to determine flexural and torsional rigidities, based respectively on the Enhanced Effective Thickness (EET) and sandwich theory. Analytical formulae are then used to calculate the elastic critical bending moment and a design curve is developed based on numerical results. The proposed methodology yields reliable results for the structural design of glass beams in a wide range of current configurations.


The ventral incisional hernia is a serious complication postoperatively, and the recurrence was one of the focuses of surgeons, which was affected by multi-factors, such as patients, repair techniques and meshes. How to decrease recurrence is always being discussed, and mesh repair has become one of the main methods for recurrent incisional hernia. We can obtain approving and long term outcomes by variety and appropriate meshes utilization combining with different new techniques, such as CST, sandwich technique.

Key words:
Ventral hernia; Herniorrhaphy; Recurrence


The National Policy for Permanent Education in Health (Pneps) aims at achieving changes in pedagogical and health practices and, thus, the improvement of the professionals, emphasizing the link between social control, management, health care and schools. This study aims at examining the experiences of permanent education in Brazilian health services according to Pneps, the areas and the actors involved, the methodology used and the funding. It is characterized as an integrative study and proposes to critically analyze the stages of the studies that were found. Methodology: survey of the literature at Bireme, Capes, and BDTD for the period ranging from 2004 to 2010. The experiences published are in accordance with Pnps in some aspects and at different periods of time, demonstrating that it is essential to debate work practices, bringing together the four components of training in health: management, attention, social control and education. This study may not only encourage the publication of other experiences, but also turn health services into a space for production of knowledge.


The paper explains the complex programme of work on the M5 motorway bridges once the thaumasite form of sulfate attack was discovered in the foundations.


Recently, it has been shown that an explicit expression of the classical/general error locator polynomial for a class of binary cyclic codes can be determined by Lagrange interpolation formula. In this paper we extend it to the case of ternary cyclic codes and give an upper bound on the term numbers of the general error locator polynomial. Based on the obtained classical/general error-locator polynomials, we propose the algebraic decoding of the (11, 6, 5) and (23, 12, 8) ternary cyclic codes.


In this paper we study the two-sided ideals of the enveloping algebra (cid:85) (cid:115) (cid:14) (cid:14) .. (cid:85) (cid:115)(cid:108) (cid:75) over an arbitrary field (cid:75) of characteristic zero. Starting with two basic 2 ideas, that an irreducible Lie module is generated by its highest weight vector and that the Lie module structure of (cid:85) comes from its ring multiplication, we have found a ''good'' subset of (cid:85) consisting of highest weight vectors for irreducible (cid:85) -submodules of (cid:85) so that each two-sided ideal of (cid:85) is uniquely generated by at most two elements of that set. Actually, each ideal is generated as a two-sided ideal by just one element. By uniqueness, all the information about the ideal is encoded (cid:14) . in the formula for its generator s . For example, we can list and classify all the prime ideals by height, determine the intersection of an ideal with the center, find the radical ideals and the radical of an ideal, and determine when two ideals are included one in another. An interesting property is that each ideal of (cid:85) can be uniquely written as a product of primes. We also obtain the ''least common multiple'' and the ''greatest common divisor'' formulas for the prime ideal factor- izations of the intersection and the sum of two ideals. This paper contains many other results of this nature.


In New Testament scholarship, there is a division between practitioners of performance criticism and those who engage the sociology of reading and reading cultures in the ancient Mediterranean context. The former, as the name of their methodology implies, tend to emphasize the performative nature of engaging textual traditions and downplay the importance of the physical document in a performance event. The latter stress the importance of the physical text in a reading event. This article reaches across the division between performance and reading, suggesting that written manuscripts play different roles in different kinds of performance and reading events. It surveys primary source evidence of two types: one in which the physical text is absent from or de-emphasized in the performance event and another in which the document is explicitly present and figures prominently in the reading event. The article concludes by suggesting that performance critics ought to be more explicit about what role they imagine physical documents to have in hypothetical performance events and that those engaging the sociology of reading ought to be more attuned to the performative potential of communal reading events.


Two rice varieties Fe2+ tolerant Zhongyou 9288 and Fe2+ sensitive Shanyou No.10 screened from 19 rice varieties were used to study the biological characteristics of rice root border cells and their toxicity responses to ferrous iron stress.The experimental results showed that,the first border cell occurred almost synchronously with the emergence of primary root tip and the numbers of border cells reached maximum(1165 for Zhongyou 9288 and 1311 for Shanyou No.10)when the root was 25 mm long.The greatest activity of border cells of two rice varieties was observed at 20 mm root of length.The highest relative activity of Pectin methylesterase(PME)was achieved when the root was 2 mm long.With the increasing concentration of Fe2+,the number of root border cells in Zhongyou 9288 increased and reached the maximum at 100 mg/L of Fe2+,then decreased.The number of root border cells in Shanyou No.10 decreased all through.The activity of two rice varieties root border cells was reduced when concentration of Fe2+ was between 0 to 200 mg/L,but increased a little at 400 mg/L compared with that at 200 mg/L and decreased again when the concentration of Fe2+ reached 800 mg/L.With the increase of Fe2+ concentration,the PME activity of Zhongyou 9288 and Shanyou No.10 increased and reached the maximum at 200 mg/L and 100 mg/L,respectively,then decreased.The mechanism of ferrous iron toxicity on PME activity was discussed.


The crystallization and distribution of the materials in the active layer has a large effect on performance of solution-processed bulk heterojunction organic solar cells (OSCs). In this work, polyethylene glycol (PEG) is doped to the active layer as a common and inexpensive additive to modulate the crystallization and distribution of the material in the vertical direction. The effect of the addition of PEG on the active layer is confirmed by measuring the contact angle, grazing-incidence wide-angle x-ray scattering, and surface morphology. A performance improved device with power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 11.30% was achieved by doping 4 wt% PEG, which has 20% improvement over control devices (9.44%). It is important to note that the devices show strong tolerance to film thickness, the unpackaged devices with 300 nm thick active layer exhibit PCE of 8.58% (with PCE of ~80% compared with control devices). Also, devices show strong tolerance to high humidity environment, devices placed in 60% RH for 10 d still has 80% PCE. Moreover, green solvent was used to investigate the effect of PEG on the preparation of the device in the atmosphere, devices doped with PEG exhibit greater tolerance to the environment in preparation. This work provides a convenient way to improve device performance, tolerance to thickness, and stability at high humidity.


We characterize a class of strongly intermittent processes in space and time as sporadic chaos, for which the dynamical entropy (a measure of randomness or information content} per unit time is not extensive and exhibits fractal scaling with the system size. Theoretical arguments are presented to show that directed percolation processes at the criticality are sporadically chaotic in that sense. For deterministic sporadic chaos, many positive Lyapunov exponents exist but the information generation rate per unit time and unit space volume is zero. An analysis of the Lyapunov exponent spectrum is carried out on the Chate-Manneville coupled map lattice model at the transition point from rest to space-time chaos. The scaling exponents for the dynamical entropy per unit time and the attractor's Lyapunov dimension are estimated. Furthermore, the accumulation of exponents near zero gives rise to a divergence of the Lyapunov exponent distribution density at zero.


The daytime PBL heating process and the air-land heat budget are analyzed for central Japan under fair weather and weak synoptic wind conditions, making use of routine observational data. The convective boundary layer (CBL) depth increases as the PBL heating rate Qs increases. According to the horizontal distribution of Qs, the depth of the CBL is larger over the inland basin and inland plain areas, while it is smaller over the coastal and mountainous areas. The mountainous area has a large CBL height (ASL) in spite of small values of Qs due to the higher ground level. The CBL height increases monotonically from the coastal region toward inland areas. The air-land heat budget is estimated for 11 sub-regions. Overall, there is no significant difference in the heat budget among the sub-regions, except that the Kanto Plain has a somewhat larger sensible heat flux and smaller latent heat flux, due to having the smallest percentage of vegetated area and the largest percentage of urban area. The Bowen ratio is estimated as 1.03 when averaged over central Japan. Surface moisture availability *, the ratio of the bulk latent heat transfer coefficient to the sensible heat transfer coefficient, is estimated as 0.29 for the mean value during the spring season over central Japan. Regional variation of * ranges from 0.16 to 0.46 over all the sub-regions.


In the article the stages modernization of brewing classical technology is proved and offered, on these stages the critical control points demanding the reduction of the toxic microimpurities impact of beer on the target organs and functional systems of consumers are determined. The developed complex of technical and technological decisions has an advance scientifi c and technical level corresponds to European phytopharmaceutical course of development in brewing and this complex can be a base of the offers from the Russian Federation to WTO and Custom Union countries.


The aim of the study is to investigate the effect of varying pH and different metal ion concentrations on the analyses of antioxidants by reducing potential (RP) and 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging techniques. The investigation was conducted by examining the effects of various pH values (4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9) and potassium chloride concentrations (50, 100, 150, 200, 250 and 300 ug/mL) on the optical densities of reducing potential and DPPH radical scavenging potential of aqueous infusions of Cassia alata (L.) Roxb. The determinations were also conducted on the extraction media with the intention of identifying the probable source of variation in the investigation. The antioxidant potentials for both the aqueous infusion and media were most efficient at the least pH 4.0. Moreover, the antioxidant potentials decrease as the ion concentrations increase. The study revealed that the colorimetric methods for the determinations of DPPH radical scavenging and RP could be liable to errors arising from slight changes in acidity and concentrations of the metal ions thus affecting the performance characteristics in terms of repeatability and reproducibility of reports and meaningful comparisons of antioxidant capacity of dietary products among different authors.