Banking in the modern sense of the word can be traced to medieval and early Renaissance Italy, to the rich cities in the north like Florence, Venice and Genoa. The word bank was borrowed in Middle English from Middle French banque, from Old Italian banca, from Old High German bank, bank "bench, counter "Private-sector banks have been functioning in India since the very beginning of the banking system. Initially, during 1921, the private banks like bank of Bengal, bank of Bombay and bank of madras were in service, which all together formed Imperial Bank of India. A debit card (also known as a bank card or check card) is a plastic card that provides the cardholder electronic access to his or her bank accounts at a financial institution. The person impossible to get credit card is possible to get this plastic card. Debit card help to avoid more fraudulent activities and help the customer in carry cash, purchase goods, pay bill, recharge etc., in always.


Columnist Francis Sullivan ponders the mysteries of Gmail, and talks about the trade-offs between what it promises and the costs of those promises.


The article is devoted to the analysis of the different approaches to the determining of the investment definition and investment market structure. An investment is an asset intended to produce income or capital gains. The investment market can be divided into two types: the real investment market (costs for new construction, expansion, reconstruction and technical re-equipment of existing enterprises, purchase of machinery, equipment, tools, inventory, project search, etc.) and the financial investment market (costs for the purchase of valuable papers, investment loans, etc.). The institutional structure of the economic system includes non-financial corporations, financial corporations, general government, households, non-profit organizations that serve them. It concentrates on the financial corporaytions as major participants on the investment market. The purpose of their activities is to facilitate the transfer of funds from creditors to borrowers, which is fundamentally different from other types of industrial activity. The article rewiews the characteristics of some types of institutional financial corporations and there performance indicator. Financial corporations include banks, credit unions, pawnshops, leasing companies, trusts, insurance companies, retirement savings institutions, investment fundsand other legal entities whose provide financial services. Non-bank finantial institution considered as institutions of investment market other than banks, which include those that own investment activity at the expense of own and borrowed funds (undertaken for commercial and / or social impact) and those that perform a supporting role in the investment process (only seek to achieve the commercial effect). The dynamics of the investment activity structure of bunking facilities and non-bank financial institutions was analyzed in terms of nancial and real investments during the years 2016-2019. Conclusions were made on the materiality of changes and directions that occurred during this period, and positive and unfavorable changes in the formation of investments were described. It concentrates also on development problems of the Investment market in Ukraine.


Anoplophora glabripennis(Motsch.) is a main wood borer of willow,poplar and other deciduous hardwood trees in the northwestern China and North China.It is difficult to control this insect pest.Dastarcus helophoroides(Fairmaire) is an important parasitoid of A.glabripennis and other cerambycids,and it has been used as a biological agent to control A.glabripennis in recent years in China.However,due to long life-span of D.helophoroides and its hosts,the evaluation of biological control effect of D.helophoroides remains a challenge.In order to appropriately evaluate the biological control effect of A.glabripennis by D.helophoroides,field experiments of three consecutive years were carried out to investigate the control effect after releasing the parasitoid.The sample area was located in Weiyang District,Xi'an City,northwestern China,where Salix babylonica L.was seriously infested with A.glabripennis.The parasitoid release site and two control sites were selected in this area,of which one control site(control site 1) was adjacent with the parasitoid release site,the other control site labeled as control site 2 was 1.5 km away from control site 1.All trees in the sample sites were painted and marked with numbers,so they could be continuously investigated in the following years.D.helophoroides adults were released in the releasing site on May 30,2009.The results showed that the infested rates of A.glabripennis decreased both in the parasitoid release site and in the neighboring control site(control site 1) in the 3rd year.The average numbers of larval frass extruded hole per tree were decreased from 4.63 holes per tree and 5.06 holes per tree,respectively,in 2009 to 0.93 holes per tree and 0.87 holes per tree,respectively,in 2011.The infested rates of A.glabripennis in control site 2 were not significantly different between the first year(2009) and the third year(2011)(P0.05),and the average number of frass holes per tree was 7.41 holes per tree in 2009 and 7.68 holes per tree in 2011,respectively.The results reveal that D.helophoroides can effectively control A.glabripennis and is a prospective insect natural enemy.Finally,methods for evaluating biological control effects of the longhorned beetles in fields were discussed based on the present study.For the longer life-cycle forest insect pests and their insect natural enemies,convincing evaluation results of biological control should be based on survey of longer period on treatments.


Case 1: In September 1991, a 31-year-old patient received flurbiprofen for post-traumatic muscular pain. He was otherwise in good health and took no other medication. A few days later, while under treatment, he developed an itchy rash which spread rapidly. Flurbiprofen was stopped. When first seen by a dermatologist in November 1991, he had a generalized, excoriated, erythematous papulovesicular rash. A biopsy specimen showed subepidermal bullae, accompanied by slight necrosis of keratinocytes. A perivascular inflammation with some eosinophils was seen in the dermis. Direct immunofluorescence (IF) study of perilesional skin showed C3 and fibrin deposits in the vessel walls, without any deposits at the dermoepidermal junction. The eruption changed progressively into vesicles, being most severe on the extensor surface of the extremities and the buttocks. A repeat biopsy, January 1992, was typical of dermatitis herpetiformis (DH). Neutrophilic papillary abscesses (Fig. 1) with granular deposits of IgA were seen at the tips of the dermal papillae. Screening tests, including complete blood count (CBC), sedimentation rate, antinuclear antibodies (ANA), C3, C4, CH50, hepatic and renal function tests, protein electrophoresis, and G6PD, were normal. The patient did well on dapsone, 100 mg/day. After good control of the condition for 2 months, dapsone was decreased to 100 mg on alternate days by the patient himself. This was followed by a slight reappearance of lesions, which disappeared when dapsone was increased again to 100 mg/day.


Uncertainty relations are key components in the understanding of the nature of quantum mechanics. In particular, entropic relations are preferred in the study of angular position and angular momentum states. We propose a new form of angle–angular momentum state that provides, for all practical purposes, a lower bound on the entropic uncertainty relation, H &phgr; + H m ?> , for any given angular uncertainty, thus improving upon previous bounds. We establish this by comparing this sum with the absolute minimum value determined by a global numerical search. These states are convenient to work with both analytically and experimentally, which suggests that they may be of use for quantum information purposes.


The ribs of the wing will give shape to the wing and spar will take most of the bending loads in the wing structure. In the present work, the rib and spars will be designed for twisting, bending and axial loads in terms of size, shape for a particular material considering engine mountings, landing gear, fuel tank attachments in addition to external aerodynamic loads. Analysis will be carried out using Ansys software and the values are validated using the standard theory.


A numerical study on the transient vapor flow and heat transfer is performed to investigate the ideal switching operation of heat source in a high temperature heat pipe. The cylindrical 2-dimensional compressible laminar vapor flow is assumed for the vapor space and the conjugate heat transfer for the heat pipe wall, wick and vapor space is calculated. The different boundary conditions such as constant heat flux, convective or radiative boundary at the outer wall are used respectively to compare the influence of boundary conditions on the transient operation. The transient temperature profile and the internal flow of the entire pipe for the switching operation are described as a result. The results show that the transient time is not significantly affected by the boundary conditions at the outer wall in present study. During the transition, two independent flows are observed temporarily on the right side and left side of the heat pipe. It is also found that the trend of temperature variation in the vapor region is different from the variation in the wick and wall region.


In this paper we study the performance trade-offs between conventional cellular and multi-hop ad-hoc wireless networks. We compare through simulations the performance of the two network models in t...


This chapter discusses how developing technology has enabled people to have increasingly realistic virtual sexual encounters and whether these technological advances are actually bringing us closer together or driving us further apart. One is left to wonder that if sexual alternatives such as sex robots and online sex become more and more accessible, many individuals may simply come to prefer this nontraditionally partnered form of sex to the old-fashioned way. The chapter explores whether or not futurists will be correct in their prediction that, by 2050, human-on-robot sex will be more common than human-on-human sex and, if so, if this is necessarily good or bad.


A Quick Response Code is a 2D barcode which enhances the features of 1D barcodes like it can store a lot more information than 1D barcode. It looks like a square made up of black and white small boxes or cells. These cells contain information and data of the QR code. This proposed work concentrates on the concept of QR Code and its scanning process. Firstly a study is done to get the general information about the QR Codes in order to give people a detailed understanding about them. Additionally, it explores the usage of QR Code in different fields. Secondly proposed work learns about the scanning process of QR Code and gives an idea about its scanning techniques. This research work proposed a website which explores and analyses the scanning of QR Code Using USB device. Alongside scanning of QR Code this website also scans three other barcodes to give an idea about other existing barcodes.


This paper deals with designing dashboard system for performance monitoring and evaluation based on Key Performance Indicators (KPI) at Uni versity. The case study took place at Faculty of Science and Technology – Airlangga University. KPI's faculty were derived from KPI's university. Performance monitoring and evaluation need a lot of data from entire university . Management at university need s to view the data in an efficient and effective way . Dashboard is a tool that provides a visual interface, which consolidates and presents information about KPI at a glance in a single screen . This research used methodology that consider s three main aspec ts of the d ashboard, data/information, personalization, and collaboration among users. In this research, we can see that meta - information analysis and data summarization for university dashboard are activities that need to be concerned. Every strata level has different threshold for the same indicator. The results from prototype test ing show that information displayed on the dashboard has fulfilled user requirement s .


The exchange of cholesteryl esters between different lipoproteins was reported to be mediated by a protein present in human plasma. In this study we have examined the movement of cholesteryl ester from unilamellar phospholipid vesicles to high density lipoprotein (HDL). Experimental conditions were established so that vesicles containing egg yolk lecithin and cholesteryl oleate (molar ratio of 86:l) could be incubated with human HDL so that neither disruption of particles nor transfer of lipid occurred. Addition of human lipoprotein-deficient plasma to the system promoted the transfer of cholesteryl oleate, but not phospholipid, from vesicles to HDL. Cholesteryl oleate transfer was dependent upon amount of HDL or lipoprotein-deficient plasma added and occurred when either HDL, or HDL, were present. Addition of unesterified cholesterol to the vesicles did not influence cholesteryl ester transfer to HDL. When phospholipid vesicles containing both cholesteryl oleate and triolein (molar ratio 86: 1: 1) were incubated with HDL and lipoprotein-deficient plasma, only cholesteryl oleate was transferred from the vesicles to HDL. Lipoprotein-deficient plasma derived from rabbits promoted the selective transfer of cholesteryl oleate from these vesicles, but rat plasma did not cause any movement of cholesteryl oleate or triolein from vesicles to HDL. HDL containing labeled cholesteryl esters was prepared and incubated with vesicles containing unlabeled cholesteryl esters or phospholipid done. Addition of lipoprotein-deficient plasma did not promote transfer of cholesteryl esters from HDL to vesicles, whereas transfer from HDL to low density lipoprotein was readily observed. The results indicated that a protein present in rabbit and human plasma is effective in the selective, unidirectional transport of cholesteryl esters from a phospholipid bilayer to a plasma lipoprotein.-Young, P. M., and P. Brecher. Cholesteryl ester transfer from phospholipid vesicles to human high density lipoproteins. J . Lipid Res. 1981. 22: 944-954. Supplementary key words cholesteryl oleate . lipoprotein-deficient plasma . cholesteryl ester transfer protein Cholesteryl ester is a component of all the major lipoprotein classes and is localized predominantly within the hydrophobic core of these particles (1). I t has been recognized for some time that, in man, cholesteryl ester can move between different lipoproteins (2, 3), but only recently has it been established that specific substances, present in human plasma, can mediate either the exchange o r net transfer of lipoprotein-associated cholesteryl ester. A cholesteryl ester exchange protein has been described both in rabbit and human plasma that was not associated with lipoproteins following ultracentrifugation of plasma at d 1.25 g/ml, and the activity in this lipoprotein-free plasma was shown to catalyze cholesteryl ester exchange between different lipoprotein classes (411). On the basis of kinetic studies on cholesteryl ester exchange between LDL and HDL using lipoproteindeficient plasma as the source of exchange activity, it w a s proposed that an exchange protein had a greater affinity for HDL than for LDL (8). An exchange protein from human plasma was purified and found to be a glycoprotein that facilitated exchange between all combinations of high density, low density, and very low density lipoproteins (12). This purified protein did associate specifically with HDL, but not LDL or VLDL, to form an isolable complex and also associated with unilamellar lecithin vesicles (13). Isolation of a cholesteryl ester transfer protein from human serum, called apoprotein D, also was reported (14) and was shown to catalyze the net transfer of cholesteryl ester from HDL to VLDL or LDL. This transfer was accompanied by a reciprocal back-transport of triglyceride from VLDL or LDL to HDL. In a subsequent study (15), this transfer protein was shown to exist in plasma in complexes with other apoproteins and the enzyme 1ecithin:cholesterol acyltransferase, (LCAT). Most recently the isolated transfer protein was shown to facilitate the transfer of cholesteryl ester between phospholipid vesicles of different chemical composition (16). T h e precise mechanism involved in either cholesteryl ester transfer or exchange remain unreAbbreviations: HDL, high density lipoprotein; LDL, low density lipoprotein; VLDL, very low density lipoprotein; DTNB, 5,5! dithiobis (2-nitrobenzoic acid); NaN3, sodium azide; LCAT, lecithin: cholesterol acyl transferase. 944 Journal of Lipid Research Volume 22, 1981 by gest, on N ovem er 6, 2017 w w w .j.org D ow nladed fom solved. In the present study we have described the properties of an in vitro system containing phospholipid vesicles, HDL, and human lipoproteindeficient plasma where cholesteryl ester transfer from unilamellar lecithin vesicles to HDL can be


The category of value has been examined with characteristic methodological traditions of Russian scientific school. Notions of social entropy and information value were qualified and described in accordance with Cosmic model of world.


This paper examines the impact of internet technology on emerging businesses and its contribution to the development of entrepreneurship in Greece. It emphasizes the importance of start-ups in the business ecosystem and the creation of favorable conditions for the development of innovative business ideas. In addition, a theoretical approach of basic concepts of the ecosystem of the startups is carried out which, in combination with the quantitative research that follows, attempts to answer the question whether the development of internet technology affects entrepreneurship in Greece currently and in the future.


The invention provides a method for eliminating water ripples caused by an LVDS (Low Voltage Differential Signal) spread spectrum. The method is characterized by comprising the steps of acquiring a frame rate R, calculating the time t for displaying a frame according to the acquired frame rate, setting FMOD according to the time t for displaying a frame so as to enable t=k*(1/FMOD), wherein FMOD represents the frequency for carrying out spread spectrum modulation on LVDSs, and k is a positive integer, and carrying out spread spectrum modulation on the LVDSs according to the FMOD so as to generate and send LVDS spread spectrum signals.


FPGA has the user programmable ability, like the software, it can be programmed. In this paper, we designed ultasonic detection circuit, and gives the hardware and software design. The Signal Tap II the logical analyzer show that, the system can acquisition at high speed, and can work in real-time


The present invention relates to a method for the pneumatic switch, the pneumatic switch means and production of. The pneumatic switch (1) with a membrane (3) and the diaphragm (3) is operably linked to the switching mechanism, wherein the switching mechanism includes an adjustable biasing member. The present invention also provides an apparatus and a method of producing the pneumatic switch. Pneumatic switch of the present invention can be easily adjusted sensitivity or switching point determination operation.


This section encompasses advances in all the major areas of liver disease. An important addition to this year's section is the contribution of Dr Sanyal on nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. The section on portal hypertension was an unexpected loss this year, but will return next year as will the section on cholestasis and cholestatic syndromes. Other topics will be introduced as clinical circumstances mandate. The contributors to this section have done a superb job of covering advances in their areas of expertise. I will focus on the highlights from each contribution.


ABSTRACT: This article is expected to provide an overview of the level of futsal playing skills of students of the Department of Physical Education, Health and Recreation (PJKR) Faculty of Sports Science (FIK) Makassar State University (UNM). So that through this article, it is hoped that it can also be used as a guide to improving the basic skills of playing futsal for students. This research is descriptive and quantitative with one variable without making comparisons and without connecting with other variables. The method used in this research is a survey. This survey was conducted to determine the level of futsal playing skills of students majoring in Physical Education, Health, and Recreation, Faculty of Sports Science, Makassar State University. The skill test used involves several basic techniques including dribbling, passing, control, and shooting. Based on the results of the study, it was obtained that the score of the futsal playing skill level of the PJKR FIK UNM students was 5 students (5%) declared very good, 32 students (32%) declared good, 32 students (32%) were declared sufficient, 26 students (26%) were declared poor. , and 5 students (5%) stated less once. While the average value of 60.59 seconds is at the interval of 54.95 < X 66.24, the level of futsal playing skills of the PJKR FIK UNM 2019 students is considered sufficient.


Considerable research has viewed Paradoxical leadership as a positive style of leadership in different contextual settings. But little is known how paradoxical behavior of a leader can be detrimental for followers. The present study proposed etic view of paradoxical leadership based on social comparison theory explaining how and why people make comparison with similar and dissimilar others, that might lead to interpersonal conflict which may trigger negative outcomes. We have proposed and tested a sequential mediation model between Paradoxical leadership and employee job stress through interpersonal conflict and job insecurity. The study is based on time lagged data (3 intervals apart by one month each) from 285 service sector employees of Pakistan. All measures used were validated before testing mediation model. Structure equation modeling has been used for model testing that provided a good support to the hypothesized model. Results justified that when employees make comparison among each other based on leader's behavior with them and indulge in interpersonal conflicts and feel more job insecurity that ultimately proceeds towards their job stress.


(such as Aminopyrazine is different to the present invention relates to can be used as the compound of ATR inhibitors of kinases for preparation Zole derivatives and correlation molecule) method and intermediate.The invention still further relates to can be used as the compound of ATR protein kinase inhibitor.The invention still further relates to the pharmaceutically acceptable compositions of the described compound comprising the present invention;Use the various disease of described compounds for treating, obstacle and the method for disease of the present invention;For the method preparing the described compound of the present invention;For preparing the intermediate of the described compound of the present invention;And the solid form of the described compound of the present invention.The described compound of the present invention has Formulas I or an II:


To explore the effects of Runing Granule and its detached formula on the restrain growth and anti-metastasis of breast cancer by experimental research in vivo, BALB/c female mice were modeled by transplanting with high metastasis MDA-MB-435 breast tumor cell and were randomly divided into model group,Runing Granule group and its detached formula for regulating thoroughfare-conception vessels and smoothing liver to activate blood groups, tamoxifen (TAM) group, cyclophosphamide(CTX) group. Each group was treated for 7 weeks. The diameter and weight of tumor were recorded by means of anatomical microscope to take count of the nodes of lung surface and lung tissue slice to observe lung metastasis. Facscalibour was adopted to observe the cell cycle. Results: Runing Granule group significantly reduce the growth of tumor. Runing Granule and regulating thoroughfare-conception vessels, or soothing liver to activate blood groups in suppressing lung metastasis were 46.36%, 32.73% and18.2% respectively,there was no significant difference between Runing Granule group and CTX group(50.91%). Runing Granule could inhibit the cell mitosis,increase the ratio of G0/G1, reduce the ratio of S-phase cell. The regulating thoroughfare-conception vessels group had similar effect. The inhibiting tumor growth and anti-metastasis effects of Runing Granule was better than its detached formulae, and the formula for regulating thoroughfare-conception vessels group was better than smoothing liver to activate blood group in suppressing lung metastasis. The anti-metastasis mechanisms of Runing Granule may adjust cell cycle and inhibit the DNA synthesis of tumor.


Agreement between the United States of America and Japan concerning Japan's financial contribution for U.S. administrative and related expenses for the Japanese fiscal year 1990 pursuant to the Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement of 8 March 1954. Tokyo, 28 August 1990


Solution-mediated concomitant phase transformation (SMCPT) of the Piroxicam (PCM) monohydrate was found. The PCM monohydrate could simultaneously transform to block Form I and needle Form II in acetone at 31 °C. However, the Form I and the Form II can be selectively grown in the presence of 0.04 mg/mL HPC and 1% H2O, respectively. In addition, the morphology of Form I is changed from block to rod-like or even needle with the increase of the concentration of HPC. Based on these phenomena, the roles of hydroxypropyl cellulose (HPC) and H2O in the solution-mediated concomitant phase transformation were studied. The mechanisms of HPC and H2O to affect the process of SMCPT of the PCM monohydrate are different. In the presence of 0.04 mg/mL HPC, the interactions between the HPC molecules and the PCM molecules was the main factor that governed the process of SMCPT of the PCM monohydrate. However, in the presence of 1% H2O, the driving force of SMCPT played the main role. In our work, the outcome of SMCPT could b...


Objective: The study was conducted to compare the outcome of labour between the unengaged and engaged head at the onset of labour at term in primigravidas. The aim was to determine the course of labour in between unengaged and engaged head in primigravida at term at the onset of labour and to study the maternal and neonatal outcome. Design: A prospective hospital-based comparative study. Methods: In this prospective comparative study, primigravida women at onset of labour at term who were admitted in labour room and satisfying inclusion and exclusion criteria were included. Group (I) study group included 110 primigravida at term with unengaged (at 37-41weeks) head at onset of labour and in Group (II) Control Group 110 primigravida at term with engaged (at 37-41weeks). Detailed clinical history, physical examination and investigation are reported. The duration of stages of labour and total duration of labour and its partographic analysis, need for Induction and augmentation of labour or surgical intervention, mode of delivery and fetomaternal outcome was recorded. Results: In Group I, 83.64% cases went into spontaneous labour while 90 % cases in Group II. 16.36% cases in group I and 10% cases in group II needed induction of labour with PGE2 gel. In group I, 68.18% required augmentation of labour compared to 33.63% in group II. Duration of 1st ,2nd stage of labour and total duration was more in group I as compare to group-II. Incidence of normal vaginal delivery and LSCS were 52.73%,32.73%respectivaly in group I while 71.82%,17.27% respectively in group II, the difference was statistically significant with p-value 0.011. Fetomaternal morbidity which was higher in group-I as compare to group-II was documented which was not statistically significant. Conclusion: The unengaged head in primigravida at the onset of labour at term can have normal vaginal delivery with appropriate induction and augmentation of labour and constant vigilance throughout the labour by partograph monitoring. Which can reduce primary caesarean delivery rate, maternal morbidity and healthcare expenditure in unengaged primigravida. Proper trial of labour in primigravida with unengaged head at term in the absence of cephalopelvic disproportion, vaginal delivery is possible with watchful expectancy with appropriate means of intervention.


In this paper we prove the property of local asymptotic normality of the likelihood ratio statistics in the competing risks model under random censoring by non-observation intervals.


How and why turbulence sustains in super-critically stratified free atmosphere and ocean? Sergej S. Zilitinkevich Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland Division of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland Department of Radio Physics, University of Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia Faculty of Geography, Moscow University, Russia Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia 6 University of Tyumen, Russia It is widely believed that in very stable stratifications, at Richardson numbers (Ri) exceeding critical value Ric ~ 0.25 turbulence decays and flow becomes laminar. This is so at low Reynolds numbers (Re), e.g., in lab experiments; but this is not true in very-high-Re geophysical flows. Free atmosphere and deep ocean are turbulent in spite of strongly supercritical stratifications: 1 << Ri < 10. Until recently, this paradox remained unexplained. The Energyand Flux-Budget (EFB) turbulence-closure (Zilitinkevich et al., 20072016) has disclosed the following turbulence self-control mechanisms:  Until recently, the role of negative buoyancy flux, Fb > 0, in turbulence energetics was treated in terms of the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) budget equation and understood as just consumption of TKE by the buoyancy forces. This has led to the conclusion that sufficiently strong static stability causes the negative buoyancy flux sufficiently strong to exceed the TKE generation rate and thus to kill turbulence.  However, considering TKE equation together with budget equation for turbulent potential energy (TPE proportional to the squared buoyancy fluctuations) shows that the role of Fb in turbulence energetics is nothing but conversion of TKE into TPE (Fb just quantifies the rate of this conversion); so that Fb does not affect total turbulent energy (TTE = TKE + TPE).  Moreover, as follows from the buoyancy-flux budget equation, TPE generates positive (directed upward) buoyancy flux irrespective of the sign of the buoyancy gradient. Indeed, the warmer fluid particles (with positive buoyancy fluctuation) rise up, whereas the cooler particles sink down, so that both contribute to the positive buoyancy flux opposing to the usual, negative flux generated by mean buoyancy gradient.  In this context, strengthening the negative buoyancy flux leads to decreasing TKE and increasing TPE. The latter enhances the counter-gradient share of the total flux, thus reduces and, eventually, increases TKE. The above negative feedback was disregarded in the conventional concept of down-gradient turbulent transport. This mechanism imposes a limit on the maximal (independent of the buoyancy gradient) value of and thus prevents degeneration of turbulence. The EFB theory has predicted that the critical Richardson number, Ric ~ 0.25, characterising the hydrodynamic instability limit and the turbulent-laminar flow threshold at low Reynolds numbers, remains a principal threshold also in the very-high-Re turbulence; but here it separates the two turbulent regimes of dramatically different nature:  Ri < Ric: the familiar "strong-mixing turbulence" typical of boundary-layer flows, wherein turbulent Prandtl number remaines practically constant: PrT ~ 1 (the socalled "Reynolds analogy");  Ri > Ric: the newly revealed "wave-like turbulence" typical of the free atmosphere and deep ocean, wherein PrT sharply increases with increasing Ri (asymptotically as PrT ). This theoretical finding fits well with experimental evidence. Modellers long ago knew that turbulent heat transfer in the free atmosphere should be taken much weaker than the momentum transfer. The EFB theory gives authentic formulation for this rule and provides physically grounded method for modelling turbulence up to very stable stratifications. Benefits and challenges of long-term eddy covariance flux measurements over lakes Ivan Mammarella and many others Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, Finland Advancing our understanding on physical processes controlling turbulent exchange of energy and matter over lacustrine systems is crucial in order to improve climate and weather forecast models. The eddy covariance (EC) technique is the standard tool for long-term turbulent flux measurements at ecosystem scale. Long series would allow for detection of e.g. inter-annual variability, effects of anomalous weather episodes and trends stemming from environmental changes and climate change. We discuss on challenges for long-term EC measurements over lakes, as well as the requirements for a comprehensive measurement set-up, including auxiliary measurements. We demonstrate the benefits of long-term data for linking lake biogeochemistry and physical processes in the water column via examples from few lake sites. Direct numerical simulation of intermittent turbulence in stably stratified plane Couette flow


Hydroxyapatite ceremic has an excellent biocompatibility. However, there is required some improvement in respect to the mechanical characteristics of hydroxyapatite ceramic. In order to improve the mechanical characteristics of hydroxyapatite ceramic, this study is on the method of forming a composite structure of hydroxyapatite ceramic adhered to the metals by glass. Experimental proceaures were as follows: a) Bonding strength of the metals with 4 types of glasses adhered to them. b) Bonding strength of the metals by the addition to the glass of 5% (wt%) of Sn or Ba. c) Bonding strength of hydroxyapatite ceramics by the addition to the glass of 5% (wt%) of Sn or Ba. d) Bonding strength of hydroxyapatite ceramic and metals by the addition to the glass of 5% ( wt%) Ba. e) Study of adherence mechanism by S. E. M. and E. P. M. A. The results obtained showed that the bonding strength between the glass, which was produced in this study, and the Ti, Co-Cr-Ti alloy was good. Especially, the bonding strength between the Co-Cr-Ti alloy and the hydroxy-apatite by the addition to the glass of 5% (wt%) of Ba was shown to be from 308.5 kg/cm2 to 420 kg/cm2 in the pull out test.


The ability to put hundreds of logic gates on a single chip of silicon offers great potential for reducing power, increasing speed, and reducing cost. Unfortunately, several problems must be solved in order to exploit these advantages of large-scale integration, LSI. This paper will describe a logic design method that will greatly simplify problems in testing, diagnostics, and field service for LSI. The design method is based on two concepts that are nearly independent but combine efficiently and effectively. The first is to design sequential logic structures so that correct operation is not dependent on signal rise and fall time or on circuit or wire delay. The second is to design all the internal storage elements (other than memory arrays) so that they can also be operated as shift registers to facilitate testing and diagnostics. Sequential logic, which is difficult to test, can then be transformed to combinational logic, which is less difficult. The transformation is performed during test generation. Advantages and cost impact will also be discussed qualitatively.


A number of liquids including N2, Ar, and H2O were shock compressed in the pressure range 0.1–1.0 Mbar using a two‐stage, light‐gas gun. Metal plates were accelerated to 7 km/s and strong shockwaves were generated on impact with targets. Equation‐of‐state data were obtained by measuring shock and impact velocities and applying the Rankine‐Hugoniot conservation relations. Compression factors up to threefold over liquid density and temperatures up to 20 000 K were achieved. The experimental techniques will be described including the shock‐impedance‐matching method, the two‐stage gun, the fast electronics with subnanosecond time resolution, and the cryogenic target holders. By means of the statistical mechanics calculations of Ross, the repulsive pair potential between molecules will be demonstrated to obey the principle of corresponding states for some of the liquids. Electronic excitation will be shown to have a strong influence on the shock velocity in Ar at the high temperatures achieved. [Work performed...


We are building the first comprehensive database of privacy incidents [6]. Such a database helps identify the common elements in privacy incidents that enable technology and policy improvements. Previous work uses news articles to populate the database [15]. We find Twitter to be a good source of information about new privacy incidents. We created data sets of positive examples (privacy-related tweets) and negative examples (non-privacy-related tweets) and used them to train 6 different classifiers. The classifier based on a linear SVM has the best recall on our testing data set (i.e., fraction of privacyrelated tweets that are identified): 91.26%.


There are several factors that contribute to low independence in learning, one of which is the ability of the students themselves. This study aimed to find out how independent learning affects students' ability to solve mathematical problems. The study's population was made up of 36 class X students at SMK Dewantara Cibinong. The students were observed in order to gather data for the study. This study uses a qualitative descriptive approach to examine the correlation between two variables. The study aimed to find out whether there is a link between being able to learn independently and being good at solving mathematical problems relating to two-variable linear programming. The study used a self-learning questionnaire and a test of mathematical problem-solving abilities to collect data. The data analysis used in this study included a product moment correlation analysis to measure the relationship between independent learning and mathematical problem solving abilities. The results of this study suggest that independent learning does not have a significant impact on solving math problems for class X students of SMK Dewantara Cibinong. However, it is possible that the data collected was not sufficient to prove a relationship between independent learning and math problem solving.


The aim of the dissertation is to investigate the implication of limited asset market partecipation and habit formation in consumption for the monetary policy in new Keynesian DSGE models. It emerges that the combination of this two ingredients has important implication on the stability properties of the model and its performance in replicating the business cycle dynamics.


Economy, ease and speed of construction are the main factors for using steel as a building material. In this paper conventional hot rolled steel I-beam sections are considered as the main flexural member of industrial buildings. The main goal is to increase the load carrying capacity of the beam with inverted w shape stiffener condition at centre. The initiative was to identify the maximum load behaviour and deflection of steel beams with stiffener in the web. The performance of such beams has been considered only for vertical loads. Hot rolled steel beam of ISMB 100 with stiffener were tested to failure experimentally. The beams were simply supported at the ends and subjected to a 2 equal concentrated load applied at one third of span from both ends.  The deflection at centre of beam and various failure patterns are studied. All the beams were analyzed by the finite element method by using general finite element analysis software ANSYS and the results were compared with those obtained experimentally. The finite element results for deformation and ultimate strength shows good agreement with the corresponding values observed in the experiments. At last, a comparative study was carried out using finite element method to examine that which type of beam gives best performance during loading. The numerical results indicate that the use of hot rolled I section with stiffener is an economical and advantageous choice.


s Several major biodiversity informatics projects in Germany can be considered as important modules for building up the national Global Taxonomy Initiative. Examples are the Entomological Data Information System (http://www.insects-online.de/), which will bring together important entomological collections housed at different museums within one "Virtual Museum" (for Orthoptera: see http://www.dorsa.de). Another example is the "Global Register of Migratory Species" (http://www.groms.de), a cross-sectional database and geographical information system, specialising on migratory species. Finally, there is the "Inventory of biological research collections in Germany (ZEFOD)", collecting metadata on biological collections in Germany (www.genres.de/zefod).


The purpose of this paper is to analyze some of the migratory movements that were part of the occupation of the southern half of the current State of Rio Grande do Sul throughout the 19th century. This will be done based on the migrations made by Joao da Silva Tavares and his relatives along his trajectory, used as a guide to ascertain the different conjunctures in which such migratory movements were inserted. For this purpose, several sources will be used, especially baptism registrations, which provide the main information about the origin of the population groups analyzed here. This information is obtained through the application of a methodology of a serial nature to such sources. Based on our analyses, we will not only illustrate some of the characteristics of those migratory movements, but also demonstrate the importance of the "internal" migrations in such movements. Keywords: migrations, Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul, trajectory, Joao da Silva Tavares.


Energy storage technologies are of great practical importance in electrical grids where renewable energy sources are becoming a significant component in the energy generation mix. Here, we focus on some of the basic properties of flywheel energy storage systems, a technology that becomes competitive due to recent progress in material and electrical design. While the description of the rotation of rigid bodies about a fixed axis is classical mechanics textbook material, all its basic aspects pertinent to flywheels, like, e.g., the evaluation of stress caused by centripetal forces at high rotation speeds, are either not covered or scattered over different sources of information; so it is worthwhile to look closer at the specific mechanical problems for flywheels, and to derive and clearly analyse the equations and their solutions. The connection of flywheels to electrical systems impose particular boundary conditions due to the coupling of mechanical and electrical characteristics of the system. Our report thus deal with the mechanical design in terms of stresses in flywheels, particularly during acceleration and deceleration, considering both solid and hollow disks geometries, in light of which we give a detailed electrical design of the flywheel system considering the discharge-stage dynamics of the flywheel. We include a discussion on the applicability of this mathematical model of the electrical properties of the flywheel for actual settings. Finally, we briefly discuss the relative advantages of flywheels in electrical grids over other energy storage technologies.


Given that much of the research on classroom libraries focus on elementary school classrooms, this study sought to examine classroom libraries at the middle school level. Access to books is especially important for middle school students given the persistent decline in reading engagement at this level. The research questions guiding this investigation focused on the nature of the libraries, the physical features of the libraries, the contributions made by the libraries to the literacy environment of the classrooms, the contents of the libraries, and teacher perceptions of their own classroom libraries. Findings indicate that teachers value classroom libraries for promoting literacy engagement and understand how these libraries provide students with immediate and easy access to books. The contents of the libraries that were examined varied in terms of genre, multicultural literature, and social justice issues.


Background: This study explored the experiences of university employees that participated in a walking intervention that encouraged individuals to walk more throughout their workday. The 10-week program was comprised of 5 phases (i.e. baseline, anticipating barriers, short planned walks, longer planned walks and maintenance) and utilized a pedometer diary and an online website for logging steps. The pedometer diary included "action plans" for addressing barriers and planning walking and the online dashboard provided graphical outputs that allowed participants to visualize whether they were reaching or exceeding their step targets.
Methods: A subsample of 12 academic and administrative employees from the study completed open ended questionnaires at the end of the study. The questions focused on capturing the major themes of benefits/mediators and problems/moderators of the program and were assessed using phenomenological approaches. Results: Participants found a raised consciousness of physical inactivity throughout the work day. They also found it useful to have a graphical display of physical activity patterns, but found time constraints and lack of managerial support to be the primary barriers/moderators of the program. Those most likely to withdraw from the program experienced technical difficulties with objective monitors and the online website.
Conclusions: Findings highlight the value in being involved in a group forum and provide insights into the challenges of supporting such programs within the workplace.


The present research was carried out in the laboratory of biological sciences was elaborated a natural soft drink using the carom with different levels of glucose (5%, 10%, 15% and the control), the best treatment was defined by physicochemical, microbiological and sensory analysis. The statistical tests were a completely randomized design, analysis of variance, and Tukey's test for mean separation (P<0.05); Sensory analysis was performed with an affective test with untrained panelists. The results were that the glucose level does interfere with the physicochemical, microbiological and sensory parameters of the drink, concluding that the glucose level at 10% and 15% are the most convenient because they are within the parameters of the INEN standard for carbonated beverages (NTE INEN 1101: 2017). While in the organoleptic characteristics the drink with 15% glucose had greater acceptance by the panelists.


Currently, only 50% of concrete produced from construction and demolition waste is being recycled in Europe. This falls short of the European Union's target of 70% by 2020. Moreover, this figure only considers coarse fractions (>4 mm), as technical issues arise when using fine fractions. In pursuit of a complete circular life for recycled concrete, this investigation explores the potential use of fine fractions to enhance the physicochemical conditions and reduce the element concentration of acid mine drainage. Two trickling sets were prepared using a filter holder, with acidic waters passing through a layer of recycled concrete aggregates. Results revealed an immediate increase in water pH to neutral levels, a reduction in solution oxidation, and the complete, or near-complete retention, of potentially toxic elements by the substrate (with retention percentages of over 99.9% for Al and Fe, between 43.1% and 61.1% for S, over 91.1% for Zn, and over 99.1% for Cu). The experiment also showed a significant increase in Ca levels (tripling the initial value) and some Mg in the water, which could promote the subsequent precipitation of carbonates and the retention of trace metals. In summary, this study demonstrates the effectiveness of using recycled concrete aggregates in a laboratory setting. Further investigation is necessary to evaluate the feasibility of implementing this technique at the pilot scale.


Fake news basically means fabricating a story without verifiable information, source or quote of the story. CheckThat! 2021 Task-3 has two subtasks, subtask 3a and 3b. We participated in Subtask 3a, which is a multi-class fake news classification problem. The goal was to determine whether the main claim of a news article is true, partially true, false or other. We were provided with a dataset of news articles by the organizers which consists of news articles, their titles and the rating of the article. We took advantage of TF-IDF vectorization and proposed an Extreme Gradient Boosting algorithm for our best classification model. The approaches were very interpretative with a highest classification accuracy of 0.57 and highest f1-macro score of 0.54 on the given dataset. We also tried other classification models and got varying results which are simple Logistic Regression Classifiers, Passive Aggressive Classifiers and Random Forest Classifiers.


Digital Image Watermarking is a technique for inserting information into an image that can be later extracted for a variety of purpose including identification, ownership authentication, and copyright protections. The goal of this paper is to design a secure watermarking scheme in spatial domain to identify the true buyer and to protect the ownership copyright of digital still images. The scheme inserts a binary watermark in an original image that serves as a fingerprint for a specific buyer. Utilizing the one-way property of the hash function, it generates the unique buyer fingerprint. An image index concept has been used to split the image randomly into disjoint blocks. A threshold is defined for manipulation of pixel intensities of these blocks. The amount of manipulation in pixel intensities absolutely depends upon the buyer fingerprint. The recovery of the watermark not only identifies the buyer but also protects the owner's copyright. The extracted buyer fingerprint identifies the buyer of the original image. The scheme has the ability to trace the buyer involved in forgery. The experimental results show that the watermark can be retrieved from the attacked watermarked image even if the opponent has the complete information of watermarking scheme.


Recently, the increasing road traffic congestion has attracted a lot of attention from the research community aiming at proposing innovative solutions to reduce the huge economic loss incurred by this problem. In this paper, we first evaluate the impact of random road incidents on the commuters travel time and the overall traffic congestion level under several scenarios, and provide comprehensive analysis of the obtained evaluation results. Then, we propose an extension of the open source traffic simulator SUMO (Simulation of Urban MObility) to enable real-time vehicles re-routing, to bypass the blocked road due to an incident, by updating their predefined static routes during simulation runtime. The proposed re-routing mechanism has been implemented and the obtained results have proven its high efficiency on reducing the commuters travel time, in case of accident, compared to the basic SUMO.


Life is moving very fastly. People are not able balance their work/life. They are facing a lot of problems in their daily life. Tight schedules, pressure of the boss to do the work into stipulated time, never ending meetings etc. makes the person tired and he/she do not remain able to enjoy his life at home with their spouse and children. Can the existence of work-life balance programs be attributed to a realization of social responsibility by the employers towards their employees or to a realization of the competitive advantage it offers to employers? Before we can answer this question, we need to define what work-life balance is and various factors associated with it, which is also the purpose of this article.


Although there is a discussion on the teaching of grammar at school, the current trend is not the traditional grammar, but a model of grammar that leads the students to reflect about the real use of the language with its linguistic varieties, including the normative one. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how textual linguistics and functionalism can help in that sense. The contents of textual linguistics focused are mechanisms to build and categorize discourse objects and the textual function of nominalizations. Besides, these contents of functionalism are the mechanisms to introduce, maintain and resume discursive topics.


The decline in muscle strength of the lower limbs because of ageing and diseases is the main reason why elderly and disabled have difficulty in standing and walking. In this paper, a transfer robot is designed to assist the elderly and disabled in standing and moving. The robot uses the traction assist method to lift the user, which can reduce the user's lower limb muscle force during the standing process. The structure of the robot was optimized through a biomechanical analysis software to minimize the user's lower limb muscle force during the lifting process. The robot has three different control modes, including the autonomous transferring mode. One healthy person and three stroke patients were invited in the experiment to evaluate the robot. Electromyographic signals of subjects' lower limbs muscles were recorded to analyse subjects' muscle force during the standing process. The results showed that the assisted standing by the transfer robot reduced the muscle force of the user's lower limb. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT


Sympathetic nerves have major roles in renal physiology and the pathophysiology of sepsis. Recent work has shown that rapid sprouting of sympathetic nerves occurs in the spleen of septic mice. This study was done to investigate effects of acute sepsis on renal morphology in mice and to test the hypothesis that sprouting of sympathetic nerves also occurs in septic kidney. Sepsis was induced in male C57BL/6 or ChAT‐eGFP mice at 4–6 months of age by cecal ligation and puncture (CLP). Sham control mice underwent similar surgery without CLP. Both sham and CLP mice received a subcutaneous injection of resuscitation fluid (1 ml lactated Ringers) immediately after surgery. Mice were euthanized with isoflurane at 16 h post‐surgery and the kidneys were removed for histological or biochemical evaluation. Serum was collected to measure levels of cystatin C, an indicator of renal function. Paraffin sections were stained with PAS or H&E. Digital images of stained renal corpuscles were collected and used to measure area of the glomerulus and Bowman's capsule. ChAT‐eGFP mice were used to evaluate sympathetic nerve density and screen for eGFP+ non‐neuronal cholinergic cells in kidney. Frozen, 100 μm longitudinal sections of kidneys were immunolabeled for the sympathetic nerve marker, tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), and for eGFP. Images of stained sections were collected by confocal microscopy and marker densities quantified using ImageJ. Bowman's space was significantly smaller in septic mice (Sham: 633 ± 92 and CLP: 304 ± 33 μm2; n=3 per group, P<0.05), and many cortical tubular cells had a bubbly appearance. Both of these results suggest acute renal pathology, however, cystatin C levels were not elevated (Sham: 376 ± 22 and CLP: 325 ± 11 ng/ml, n=6 per group, P>0.05). Acute sepsis did not affect sympathetic nerve density determined by confocal analysis or the abundance of TH determined by Western blotting. However, preliminary evidence indicates that renal levels of the sympathetic neurotransmitter, norepinephrine, are reduced in the kidney at 16 h post‐CLP (Sham: 353 ± 25 and CLP: 129 ng/g ± 20; n=6 per group, p<0.0001). While the kidney lacks cholinergic innervation, we were surprised to find that many tubular cells stained for eGFP, suggesting they might have a cholinergic phenotype. Acute sepsis did not affect either the density of GFP+ cells in confocal analysis or the abundance of GFP in Western blots. We conclude that septic mice, show only minor renal pathology in the early stages of disease. Furthermore, we found no evidence for noradrenergic nerve sprouting in the kidneys, whereas in a previous study, noradrenergic nerve density in the spleen more than doubled using the same model. This difference suggests that sprouting of sympathetic nerves is not a general phenomenon in sepsis and may be limited to lymphoid tissue. Further studies are needed to understand the mechanism and consequences of reduced norepinephrine in the kidney and to determine the role of cholinergic tubular cells in renal physiology and pathophysiology.


The topic of this article, «Mircea Eliade, C. G. Jung, and the Eranos meetings » , recently received considerable attention and a good number of critical analyses. Steven M. Wasserstrom and Hans Thomas Hakl both provided excellent reconstructions, from different perspectives, of the Eranos circle, especially in the period this article deals with, the 1950s. Moshe Idel, Florin Turcanu, Dan Dana, and Natale Spineto contributed a great deal to cast a light on Eliade's literary, personal, and academic outcome during the 1940s and 1950s. While the present text does not claim to have uncovered new historical data in the relationship between Eliade and Jung at Eranos, already magisterially probed by Turcanu, it pursues three new avenues of interpretation. It first mines Eliade's 1950s diaries to analyze the role of personal dream interpretation as secondary data for Mircea Eliade's history of religion. It turns next to Eliade's correspondence with Jung to re-examine the historian of religions' involvement with analytical psychology. It finally advances the proposal for a new trajectory of Eliade's development of the set of perennial conceptual placeholders, such as «sacred/ profane » , «labyrinth/ center » , «axis mundi » , «initiation » , «trans-conscious » , and «cosmic Christianity » . We dubbed them perennial conceptual placeholders in virtue of the epistemic and ontological work, of universalizing bent, Eliade had asked them to carry out in his scholarship. This article suggests that Eliade forged some of them in his cultural journalism, written in Romanian, and fully developed them during the 1950s Eranos meetings, as a form of personalized history of religion and cure for the souls.


Based on the relevant research of autonomous learning home and abroad,this paper attempts to explore the impact of autonomous learning ability on college students in respect of learning interest,learning efficiency as well as their English comprehensive proficiency.This empirical research includes questionnaire,interview,metacognitive strategy training and heuristic teaching.It elaborates the whole process of cultivating students' autonomous learning ability and its research outcomes,and then gives concerning analysis and recommendations.


The aetiology of keloids is becoming clearer, but many questions remain, including about the most optimal treatment. Current therapies include surgical excision, radiotherapy, and various pharmaceutical drugs. However, none of these drugs are keloid‐specific. Moreover, all current interventions are associated with high recurrence rates. Here, we review the pharmaceutical interventions that are currently available. All are based on the fact that keloids are an expanding solid mass with intense chronic inflammation at its advancing edges. Consequently, current pharmaceuticals aim to reduce the mass and/or symptoms of keloids, similar to surgery and radiotherapy. They include chemotherapies, immunotherapies, volume‐reducing therapies, and anti‐inflammatory therapies. We also describe new advances in keloid pharmaceuticals. They include drugs that were designed to treat systemic diseases such as hypertension or breast cancer but were found to also treat keloids. Furthermore, recent progress in genetic, epigenetic, and stem cell therapies suggests that they could become useful in the keloid field. This review of pharmaceutical advances will hopefully promote additional research and the development of effective and specific pharmaceuticals for keloids.


Considering the growing number of observations of a seismic discontinuity at the top of D″, some 300 km above the core-mantle boundary, we investigate the scenario of whether this feature could be global. We show that the mean first arrivals of P-waves, as used to build global models, can be fit by the two branches of a discontinuous model. We argue that the intermittence of the detection of the reflector is due to lateral variations of a global discontinuity. These observations put strong constraints on the type of chemical layering that could explain the discontinuity. We speculate that the properties of the D″ discontinuity are better explained in terms of a new phase transition.


CRD summary This review determined if highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) increased the risk of engaging in unprotected sex. The authors concluded that human immunodeficiency virus-positive patients receiving HAART did not show increased risky sexual behaviour. The results were not consistent among studies and the quality of the included studies was not assessed. Hence the authors' conclusion may not be reliable.


We study the federated pure exploration problem of multi-armed bandits and linear bandits, where $M$ agents cooperatively identify the best arm via communicating with the central server. To enhance the robustness against latency and unavailability of agents that are common in practice, we propose the first federated asynchronous multi-armed bandit and linear bandit algorithms for pure exploration with fixed confidence. Our theoretical analysis shows the proposed algorithms achieve near-optimal sample complexities and efficient communication costs in a fully asynchronous environment. Moreover, experimental results based on synthetic and real-world data empirically elucidate the effectiveness and communication cost-efficiency of the proposed algorithms.


The purpose of this paper is to explore how knowledge creation in EU externally funded security Research and Innovation (R&I) projects can be understood through the concept of community of practice (CoP). A multiple case study design was used to examine EU R&I projects with the Wenger's identity-practice framework that characterizes conventional CoPs. Qualitative data analysis was conducted based on rich empirical data collected during June 2015 – July 2017. The results of the study suggested that the EU R&I project consortium is a knowledge community in its own right, which knowledge creation cannot be fully understood if analysed as traditional project organizations. CoP framework can provide a meaningful way to investigate how explicit and tacit knowledge is created and shared within a project consortium and across different consortiums. Namely the engagement in different phases of the work undertaken by the project consortium can help to understand how the socialization facilitates knowledge creation and transfers, as well as identity development as the project evolves. As a whole, CoP theory can provide new insight in the knowledge creation in cross-border and cross-sectoral collaborations. It can provide a meaningful way to explore how the knowledge is emerged through a practice in project consortiums before, during, and after


Objective We sought to understand how U.S. residents responded to COVID-19 as it emerged, and the extent to which spatial-temporal factors impacted response. Materials and Methods We mined and reverse-geocoded 269,556 coronavirus-related social media postings on Twitter from January 23rd to March 25th, 2020. We then ranked tweets based on the socioeconomic status of the county they originated from using the Area Deprivation Index (ADI); that we also used to identify areas with high initial disease counts ("hotspots"). We applied topic modeling on the tweets to identify chief concerns and determine their evolution over time. We also investigated how topic proportions varied based on ADI and between hotspots and non-hotspots. Results We identified 45 topics, which shifted from early-outbreak-related content in January, to the presidential election and governmental response in February, to lifestyle changes in March. Highly resourced areas (low ADI) were concerned with stocks, social distancing, and national-level policies, while high ADI areas shared content with negative expression, prayers, and discussion of the CARES Act economic relief package. Within hotspots, these differences stand, with the addition of increased discussion regarding employment in high ADI versus low ADI hotspots. Discussion Topic modeling captures the major concerns in COVID-19-related discussion on a social media platform in the early months of the pandemic. Our study extends previous studies that utilized topic modeling on COVID-19 related tweets and linked the identified topics to socioeconomic status using ADI. Comparisons between low and high ADI areas indicate differential Twitter discussions, corresponding to greater concern with economic hardship and impacts of the pandemic in less resourced communities, and less focus on general public health messaging. Conclusion This work demonstrates a novel framework for assessing differential topics of conversation correlating to income, education, and housing disparities. This, with integration of COVID-19 hotspots, offers improved analysis of crisis response on Twitter. Such insight is critical for informed public health messaging campaigns in future waves of the pandemic, which should focus in part specifically on the interests of those who are most vulnerable in the lowest resourced health settings.


The efficiency of transistor sizing and folding techniques to mitigate SET in CMOS circuits is evaluated using circuit and device simulations. According to the LET of the ionizing particle, the SET can be more or less filtered by these methods. Based on the results of the circuit and device simulations, a novel technique able to reduce the SET effect is proposed. The method combines transistor sizing, folding and resistors. The technique was applied in a chain of inverters and SRAM cell.


In a matter of a couple of decades, the segment of the low cost companies grew from a few companies operating in Great Britain to several tens operating all over European Union. Nowadays, a dense network of connections links a large number of cities, ranging from the bigger metropolis down to very few populated regions, with relatively affordable prices. Populations enjoy from unprecedent mobility and isolated regions profited from the access to other regions without even perceiving that the current benefits they have developed at the cost of some market casualties. Many of the original low cost companies have meanwhile gone bankrupt along with some of the already established ones. The growth of the low cost segment has definitively changed the air transport landscape in Europe and in the future more changes are expected, similar to what occurred in the United States. Although the impact of these dynamics has been thoroughly researched, from an institutional point of view they remain fairly unknown. This paper presents a part of the results and findings of a research study prepared for the European Parliament, focused on the impacts in the development of the airports and local economies. The purpose of the overall study was to evaluate and assess the consequences of the growing low cost airline sector for transport infrastructure and passenger flows in Europe and to advise the European Parliament on the need for future actions.


1172 CMAJ, July 10, 2012, 184(10) © 2012 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors Ultrasound-guided corticosteroid injection for plantar fasciitis: A single ultrasound-guided injection of dexa methasone is a safe and effective shortterm treatment for plantar fasciitis. This is the conclusion of a controlled trial in which 82 participants with at least eight weeks of heel pain were randomized to receive an injection of dexamethasone or normal saline under ultrasound guidance. All participants also received an ultrasound-guided posterior tibial nerve block with 2% lidocaine before the injection. At four weeks, the dexa methasone group showed greater improvement in pain scores than the placebo group (mean adjusted betweengroup difference 10.9, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.4 to 20.4), with a number needed to treat of 2.93 (95% CI 2.76 to 3.12). There were, however, no significant differences in pain scores between the two groups at 8 and 12 weeks, al though swelling of the plantar fascia was reduced in the treatment group for up to 3 months. No adverse events were reported. See BMJ 2012;344:e3260 doi: 10.1136/bmj.e3260.


For all but the most simple geometric models it is difficult to find a mapping from a two-dimensional texture space to the surface of a model that does not distort the texture. This paper introduces a method M of texture synthesis where such a mapping is not necessary because the texture is generated directly on L the surface of the model. No assignment of texture coordinates to polygon vertices is needed. We N describe how to generate a mesh of points on a polyhedral model using a relaxation process and how this mesh is used to generate textures. There is no distortion from such a texture because the geometry of the texture matches the geometry of the model. These textures can be rendered free of artifacts resulting from the discrete nature of the underlying mesh or due to aliasing of the texture features. Such textures can also be used as bump maps. We demonstrate how a pattern formation mechanism zalled reaction-diffusion can be simulated on a such mesh to create a variety of patterns found in nature. Reaction-diffusion is an addition to the growing collection of procedural methods found in the texture synthesist's toolbox. Biologists have shown how the chemical mechanism of reactiondiffusion can be used to form simple spotted and striped patterns. We show how the range of these patterns can be extended by having one chemical system lay down an initial pattern and then allowing one or more later systems to refine the pattern. In this way, texture features can be generated such as the clusters of spots on a leopard known as rosettes and the web-like patterns found on giraffes.


Multiple tunneling junctions consisting of metal islands about 2 nm in diameter and <2 nm gaps were fabricated by a combination of high resolution electron‐beam lithography and an ionized beam deposition technique. The effective tunneling capacitance of this structure is calculated to be about 0.2 aF, implying that the charging energy associated with an electron tunneling on or off the islands is well above the thermal energy at room temperature. Electrical measurements showed clear Coulomb blockade effects in this structure. Coulomb gaps of 0.16 V were observed at 77 K in the source–drain current–voltage characteristics and the nonlinearity persisted up to room temperature although the Coulomb gaps disappeared as the temperature was raised. When the voltage applied to the gate electrode was swept, the drain–source current showed strong oscillations at constant drain–source bias voltage, confirming the existence of single electron charging effects. This process can be used to fabricate single electron dev...


The presence of persistent polarization in electrically stressed (d.c.) low density polyethylene (LDPE) may be determined from an analysis of current transients arising from a step input of thermal radiations, incident on the polymer surface with its electrodes shorted. It has been shown [1–3] that for charging fields smaller than 4.0 × 107V m−1, the current transients may arise from a presence of impurity ions and at fields greater than 4.0 × 107V m−1 injected space charges become the dominant contributors in influencing the non-uniform polarization in a complex manner.


From ACT UP to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the Era of Globalization , Benjamin Shepard and Ronald Hayduk, eds. This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website , where most recent articles are published in full. Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.


The purpose of this study is to analyze the type of shots and goals scored of the teams competing in the 2016 IIHF World Championship. The research group is the six ice hockey teams including Austria, Italy, Japan, Korea, Poland, and Slovenia participating in the organization of 2016 IIHF World Championship that had held in Katovice of Poland. The ice rink was divided into 15 areas where wrist shot, slap shot, backhand shot, and tip-in shot occurred for analysis. Areas 4, 5, 8, and 9 are included in the slot zone. Data obtained were analyzed according to areas in the form of frequency and percentage. As a result, it was seen that most of the shots and goals have been made from the area 5 for team Korea by wrist shot and area 4 for opponent in front of the net and most of the goals are scored by wrist shot.


Based on the full analysis of prior benefit estimation methods of pumped storage power station, from the perspective of pumped storage power station participating in actual operation, itemized analysis on the main dynamic benefits of pumped storage power station and further study of quantitative calculation methods of all the benefits have been down in this paper. When calculating emergency reserve benefit, it introduces a new method of quantitative evaluation of dynamic benefits in a accident, whose core is calculating the curves of load rising in two situations, which are with and without pumped storage units' participation. With this method, three specific indicators for the evaluation of emergency reserve benefit can be achieved, namely the lack of supply of power consumption, the lack of electricity and accident duration difference. The calculation of black start benefit should be taken into account some of the cost compensation as a black start power. These studies can necessarily promote the healthy development of the pumped storage power station.


Primary pulmonary adenoid cyctic carcinomas are extremely rare tumours and make up 0.1%-1% of lung tumors. They are detected when clinical symptoms are evident. It has a relative good prognosis in comparison to other histological types. Since they are mainly located at trachea and main bronchus, disease is discovered due to obstructive symptoms and signs. Dyspnea, coughing, hemoptysis, fatigue, wheezing, shortness of breath and weight loss are among the clinical findings. The most important tool for diagnosis is bronchoscopy. In early stages tumor can be completely resected. Radiotherapy or chemotherapy can be given as adjuvants. Our first case is a 48-years-old male who was diagnosed with asthma and followed up for two years and later presented with a suspected lesion observed on pulmonary X-ray and computerized tomography. Our second case is a 51-years-old male, admitted with back pain and shortness of breath. We present these cases since they are rarely seen accompanied with a review of the literature.


As part of the debate on Mediterranean urbanities in between 'ordinary' and 'global' cities, the present paper proposes a reflection on Athens' long-term expansion seen as a paradigmatic example of urban development in southern Europe. The article debates economic restructuring, demographic processes, and social changes taken as determinants of the shift in the city's morphology towards urban dispersion. By reconnecting socioeconomic dynamics into a multidisciplinary perspective, the author engages in a debate on the future of large Mediterranean cities in between settlement expansion and crisis.


The study aim known the relationship between the family environment and adolescent's depression. Were 391 adolescents (14 to 16 years old) of both sexes, who studied in middle level schools of Mexico City. The instruments was the Adolescence Family Environment Scale (Ruiz-Cardenas, Reidl y Gallegos, 2017), which distributed in five factors: relationship between parents, family communication, rules and standards, hostility, and family acceptance, which account for 52% of the variance with a global Cronbach's Alpha of 0.899 and construct validity. The scale D, depression of the Multifactor Inventory of the Minnesota Personality Adolescent used to assess depression. The results obtained show significant differences between men and women. Multiple regression analysis presented as family environment variables that predict depression in women the lack of family communication and family norms, while teenage male variables that predict depression are lack of family acceptance and conflictive between the parents.


Improvements to a ground-based 40W 1.55 micron uplink transmitter for the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration (LLCD) are described. The transmitter utilizes four 10 W spatial-diversity channels to broadcast 19.4 - 38.9 Mbit/s rates using a variable-duty cycle 4-ary pulse position modulation. At the lowest rate, with a 32-to-1 duty cycle, this leads to 320 W peak power per transmitter channel. This paper discusses a simplification of the transmitter that uses super-large-area single mode fiber and polarization control to mitigate high peak power nonlinear impairments.


This study researched on the convergence system of Bluetooth 3.0 technology and Android application including image security technology. By using the independent network of Bluetooth, this system is not only capable of storing images in case of occurring events but also capable of transmitting images. A Bluetooth technology for vehicle camera used in ITS or intelligent car is adapted. To memorize and monitor the information of happenings inside or outside of a vehicle, the camera module is designed and performed. A vehicle black box applied Android application for a smart mobile phone and Android system was developed. The system of a vehicle camera test is also setting up.


60 www.ijeas.org  Abstract— Over the last two decades, there is growing interest from many companies on disaster management and practices. Organizations want to lead to sustainable workforces and embrace the high performance of the service organization. The topic is of great significance in particular in the context of tourist attraction in Junagadh. The project site stretches from the foot of Mount Girnar to a point near the Ambaji Temple at the top of the Mountain. Land required for this project is 72,817m2. The project will be developed as a mode of transportation for carrying pilgrims from the foot of Mount Girnar to Ambaji Temple This paper reviews the expectation of disaster balance as per the environmental impact such as the festival of "Maha Shivratri" also considering the tourist attraction and provides a suitable context for them.A qualitative approach in a single case study identified various elements of environmental disaster balance initiatives, related outcomes in their performance. The EMP provides a delivery mechanism to address potential adverse impacts and to introduce standards of good practice to be adopted for all project works. For each stage of the programme, the EMP lists all the requirements to ensure effective mitigation of every potential biophysical and socio-economic impact identified in the EIA. Aerial Ropeway Transportation technologies (ART), a type 13 of aerial transportation mode in which passengers are transported in cabins that are suspended 14 and pulled by cables, is one popular example of these technologies. The recent introduction of 15 this technology into the urban environment, in addition to the vendors' continuous trials to 16 improve upon existing aerial ropeway technologies has led to several recent advancements and 17 improvements to the technology as illustrated by several recent implementations around the 18 world. In this article, we try to shed some light on some of the most recent improvements in the 19 technology specifications, operation and safety considerations of ART technologies as observed 20 from several case studies around the world.


The State Route (SR) 509 East-West Corridor Project in Tacoma, Washington was conceptually designed as a 2.4-km (1.5-mi)-long elevated structure spanning a waterway, a railroad yard, a wastewater treatment plant, and a river. Costly deep foundations were initially chosen because thick deposits of very soft soils were present. Project costs were reduced by selecting an alternate design in which a portion of roadway was supported by two embankments up to 12 m (40 ft) high. However, maintaining embankment stability and a reasonable construction schedule became a primary concern. An innovative embankment design that incorporated high-strength geotextiles in conjunction with staged construction was developed. To evaluate stability, settlement, lateral movement, and rates of consolidation, a 4.3-m (14-ft)-high, fully instrumented test embankment was constructed in January 1992 and was subsequently monitored for approximately two years. This test embankment was one of the first of its kind in Washington State to use inexpensive and unobtrusive instrumentation such as horizontal profiles and pneumatic piezometers. The data was used to verify the design parameters, confirm the constructability, and better predict the behavior of the roadway embankments. Construction of the SR-509 roadway embankments began in May 1994. Instrumentation was installed and monitored during the construction of the two embankments to aid in determining safe stage heights and appropriate delay periods. Temporary geotextile walls were constructed at the bridge abutments to facilitate surcharge placement. To date, settlements of up to 1.7 m (5.7 ft) have been observed during the successful construction of the two embankments. An overview of the geotextiles used and the performance of one of the two embankments are discussed.


In studies of turbulent flows and other self-similar flows, one is interested in measuring the velocity difference δv(r) = v(x) − v(x + r) over varying length r, rather than the local velocity v(x). As was demonstrated many years ago by Bourke et al.[1], the velocity difference δv(r) is accessible by the technique of homodyne photon correlation spectroscopy (PCS).


ABSTRACT A comparison of simulation results with the prediction of the structural properties of square-shoulder fluids is carried out to assess the performance of three theories: Tang–Lu's first-order mean spherical approximation, the simplified exponential approximation of the latter and the rational-function approximation. These three theoretical developments share the characteristic of being analytical in Laplace space and of reducing in the proper limit to the Percus–Yevick result for the hard-sphere fluid. Overall, the best agreement with the simulation data is obtained with the simplified exponential approximation.


Why would readers of the Career Planning and Adult Development Journal want the information provided in this issue? Latinos are the largest minority group in the United States, comprising 13 per cent of the total population. Career development professionals find themselves serving clients from Latin America in educational and work settings. Many recent immigrants to the United States are from Latin American countries. Professionals need to be aware of the cultural backgrounds of their clients in order to customize services to best meet client needs. The beginning ideas for this issue were formed in the later part of the 1990s as I was attending several professional conferences. At one of the American Counseling Association [ACA] conferences, I attended an International Symposium where a variety of presenters talked about counseling issues in their countries. No information was provided on Latin American countries and, during the discussion, the point was made that few, if any, counselors from Latin America attended counseling conferences. I also participated in several international symposia at the California Career Conferences [now known as the International Career Development Conference]. While in 1997 we had two speakers from Argentina and in 1999 we had a speaker from Spain, again I found myself wanting more information. I have also participated with my graduate students in several sessions of the International Counseling Conference, and we were excited when the 2000 conference was held in Costa Rica. While we had several enlightening sessions with speakers from the host country, the conference had no other participants from Latin America. Recently I was perusing the ACA web site and again looked for representatives for Latin America in the Branch information. The designated slot for the representative from Latin America was empty, although there was a representative listed from Puerto Rico, and some readers may want to find her e-mail and contact her after reading this issue's article on Puerto Rico. Two reasons have been presented for the absence of professional colleagues from Latin American countries at professional conferences: the lack of funding for travel to conferences and the less-defined professional role for counselors and career development specialists in Latino culture. Content Development for this Issue In developing this Journal issue we started with the premise of reporting on countries in Latin America, partners to the United States and Canada in the region of the Americas. It was necessary to find sources of information on career counseling and services in the countries of interest. Often it was difficult to connect with a professional in the country who could write the article or assist with its development. If information was available in print or web site form, it was often in Spanish. Next, it was decided to add Spain and change the focus to Career Development in Spanish-speaking countries. Spain shares language and culture with Latin America. Information on career development services in Spain was available, as were opportunities for career professionals to visit the country and explore its educational and employment programs. Finally, in reflecting on the title, I thought readers needed information on career development issues in a country with one of the largest populations of Spanish-speaking inhabitants - the United States. Recent census figures showed Latinos are the largest minority group in the United States, comprising 13 per cent of the total population (US Census Bureau, 2000). Latino culture dominates many areas of the country. Los Angeles has the largest Mexican population outside of Mexico City and Miami has the second largest Cuban population in the world. (Elashmahi & Harris, 1998). Overview of the Articles Our issue opens with the article "Career Counseling Issues: A Latin American Perspective". The reader gets an overview on cultural world view and career and personal role expectations commonly found in all Spanish-speaking countries with particular focus on Latin American countries. …


This paper presents the kinematic design and simulation of a parallel robot for transperineal prostate biopsy entitled BIO-PROS-2. Parallel structures have been widely appreciated for their positioning precision and stiffness, making them a viable option for transperineal prostate biopsy. The robotic system is designed according to a specific protocol covering both therapeutic and safety issues. BIO-PROS-2 kinematic design is presented, followed by the geometric and kinematic modeling and the workspace for some predefined insertion points. The simulation results with the robot integrated with the medical task are also presented.


A number of precoding methods have recently been proposed for massive MIMO scenarios that assume the use of one-bit digital-to-analog converters, or that constrain the signal to be of constant modulus. The methods that provide the best performance employ non-linear precoding techniques that require a search for a parameter vector of the same dimension as the number of antennas, which is prohibitively expensive for massive MIMO applications. In this paper, we propose a reduced complexity precoding method based on linear programming and constructive interference that exploits an initial approximate solution to significantly reduce the dimension of the search. In particular, the method uses the output of an initial quantized linear precoder and updates only those elements that do not satisfy a certain reliability condition. Simulations show that the resulting loss in performance due to the use of the simplified approach is insignificant provided that the reduced dimension is chosen to be large enough, but still much smaller than the number of antennas.


A braking system for electrically driven vehicles consists essentially of a driven front axle (VA) and an undriven rear axle (HA) in the form of a triple-circuit (I, II, III) compound system consisting of hydraulic friction brakes (3, 4, 10, 11) and an electro-regenerative (II) braking system, in which the electro-regenerative braking system makes use of one of the electric drive motors of the motor vehicle for braking and power recovery. The actuation of the friction brakes connected to the second and third braking circuits and the braking force distribution between the front and rear axles are controllable by means of an electronic regulator which receives information via e.g. the brake pedal position and evaluates this information to control the brakes acting on the driven wheels.


In the recent years, most developing countries have resorted to importing of used vehicles as a means of solving acute/shortage of transportation facilities. Some of these vehicles are so dilapidated that they never serve any purpose before finding their way to the junkyards and refuse dumps. This paper seeks to quantify the available salvage value/service materials potential from these imported used vehicles in Nigeria. Most of the streets in the urban areas and construction sites are littered with junk vehicles which were abandoned by their owners. These vehicles, many of which have actually reached their end-of-life are potential secondary materials as they can be recycled into the same product or something less, thereby creating economic, social and environmental benefits.


Plato's dialogue interweaves substantive inquiry into the nature of the statesman with sustained reflection on the range of methods to be employed in such an inquiry, and periodic assessment of the interlocutors' proficiency at those methods. The inquiry as a whole belongs to the discipline of 'dialectic', whose goal is to 'display things in a formula' – (...


Satellite images are corrupted by noise in its acquisition and transmission. The removal of noise from the image by attenuating the high frequency image components, removes some important details as well. In order to retain the useful information and improve the visual appearance, an effective denoising and resolution enhancement techniques are required. In this research, Hybrid Directional Lifting (HDL) technique is proposed to retain the important details of the image and improve the visual appearance. The Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) based interpolation technique is developed for enhancing the resolution of the denoised image. The performance of the proposed techniques are tested by Land Remote-Sensing Satellite (LANDSAT) images, using the quantitative performance measure, Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and computation time to show the significance of the proposed techniques. The PSNR of the HDL technique increases 1.02 dB compared to the standard denoising technique and the DWT based interpolation technique increases 3.94 dB. From the experimental results it reveals that newly developed image denoising and resolution enhancement techniques improve the image visual quality with rich textures.


The WPA has received over the time more than 300 complaints of political abuse of psychiatry against Falun Gong practitioners in China. During the 12th World Congress of Psychiatry, which took place in Yokohama, Japan, in August 2002, the General Assembly gave mandate to the WPA Executive Committee to explore this issue by means of a fact-finding mission to China.

In order to prepare this mission, the President, Past-President and President-Elect of the WPA and the Chairperson of the WPA Committee on Review of Abuse of Psychiatry met, on January 10 and 11, 2004, with the President and Vice-President of the Chinese Society of Psychiatry and the Chinese Vice-Minister of Health. A plan for a visit to China to take place at the end of March 2004, aiming to examine records and to interview patients and their families or doctors, after obtaining their consent, was accepted by the Chinese Vice-Minister of Health and the Chinese Society of Psychiatry.

During the meeting of the WPA Executive Committee held in Cairo, Egypt, on February 12 and 13, 2004, a Task Force was appointed for the mission. This was a technical, independent, unbiased delegation, totally supported financially by the WPA central funds. The members of the Task Force were O. Steenfeldt-Foss (Chair), M. Kastrup (Co-Chair), F. Allodi (Secretary), J. Cox, J. Arboleda-Florez, A. Stone, D. Moussaoui and F. Tan. The practical arrangements for the mission were immediately started. The date of April 4 was agreed upon for the beginning of the mission.

Just a few weeks before this date, the Chair of the Task Force received a letter from the President of the Chinese Society of Psychiatry, in which the terms of reference of the visit were changed with respect to those agreed upon in January. The mission was therefore suspended. A period of impasse followed.

In May 2004, a meeting of the WPA Executive Committee, Committee on Review of Abuse of Psychiatry and Task Force on China with the President and Vice-President of the Chinese Society of Psychiatry was arranged. During this meeting, the representatives of the Chinese Society of Psychiatry admitted instances in which some Chinese psychiatrists had failed to distinguish between spiritual-cultural beliefs and delusions, as a result of which persons were misdiagnosed and mistreated. They stated, however, that this pattern of misdiagnosis and mistreatment took place because of lack of training and professional skills of some psychiatrists rather than as a result of systematic abuse of psychiatry. Furthermore, the representatives of the Chinese Society of Psychiatry agreed to examine case records at various hospitals where those instances of misdiagnosis and mistreatment may have occurred, and to present and discuss the findings at a workshop with WPA in a collegial manner, so that it can be better understood why these failures have occurred.

At the present time, the WPA is unable to state whether there has been systematic political abuse of psychiatry in China. This is not to deny that there have been government-ordered crackdowns on Falun Gong practitioners. The focus of the WPA in this case is on political abuse of psychiatry. What has become clear during this long and arduous process has been the need to assist Chinese colleagues in matters concerning forensic psychiatry, medical ethics, patients' rights, mental health legislation, diagnosis and classification, to help them improve the care of mentally ill in China and prevent future abuses.

In spite of the obstacles and the difficulties, the WPA has been able to collect evidence that our profession has been actually misused in some Falun Gong practitioners in China. Cases of misdiagnosis and mistreatment have occurred, and the Chinese Society of Psychiatry has acknowledged them. These cases concerned the very delicate issue of considering spiritual thoughts as delusions and, as a consequence of this, hospitalizing and treating with antipsychotic drugs people who were not mentally ill. Whether these cases of misdiagnosis and mistreatment were due to ignorance or to political pressure cannot be said at the moment, because of lack of reliable evidence. The WPA will persevere in its efforts to implement a fact-finding visit to China, as requested by the General Assembly in Yokohama, in the hope to be able to clarify this issue. Part of these efforts will be a joint WPA-Chinese Society of Psychiatry course, to be held in Beijing in February 2005, aiming to discuss ethical issues, human rights, psychiatric diagnosis and the following steps to achieve our goal.


The article provides some critical views on the Draft Chapter of the International Trade Organisation (I.T.O.), which is now to be ratified by the World Conference at Havana. The author particularly emphasises the "false aims" which, in his opinion, obscure what should be the real and fundamental aim of the I.T.O. and threatens to complicate its functioning by an orientation not in accordance with historical reality. From this aspect, he considers the greater part of the regulations contained in the Draft Chapter as superfluous, while, on the other hand, he complains that the functions of the conciliation and organisation which the I.T.O. is called upon to fulfil are not adequately covered. In conclusion, the author touches on the delicate problem that the I.T.O. - in its proposed form - might develop into a superstate planned economy, arbitrary and irresponsible, with serious results for countries that are economically weak in the post-war world.