Wings of flying insects produce extremely low frequency (ELF) radio emissions. These radio emissions are detectable with a tune radio frequency radio receiver. The insect's right and left wings do not always move at the same velocity, therefore, different ELF radio frequencies are produced. ELF radio frequencies have been shown to pump (put energy into) insect semiochemicals in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The ELF radio frequencies are related to the far-infrared emission of such insect.


In this paper, we used a Bayesian model averaging (BMA) approach to analyse the changes in rainfall extremes in the periods 2041–2070 and 2071–2099 over northeast Bangladesh as a consequence of climate change. Climate change over this region could potentially impact agricultural production, water resources management, and the overall economy of the country. We used six regional climate models (RCMs) over the Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment South Asia domain. We used one medium stabilization scenario (RCP4.5) and one high‐emission scenario (RCP8.5) for projecting the extreme rainfall indices. A multi‐model ensemble mean was generated using the BMA approach. The BMA mean is a weighted average related to each RCM's predictive skill during the training period. Most of the rainfall extremes are expected to increase in both pre‐monsoon (March–May) and monsoon (June–September) seasons in the future compared with baseline (1976–2005). The average pre‐monsoon rainfall of the study area is projected to increase by 12.93 and 18.42% under RCP4.5 and 18.18 and 23.85% under RCP8.5 for the periods 2041–2070 and 2071–2099, respectively. The average monsoon rainfall of the study area is projected to increase by 4.96 and 2.27% under RCP4.5 and 6.56 and 6.40% under RCP8.5 for the periods 2041–2070 and 2071–2099, respectively. All the extreme indices except consecutive wet day are expected to change significantly at the 95% confidence level during the pre‐monsoon season. The study area will potentially be subjected to more frequent floods in the future both in pre‐monsoon and monsoon seasons as a consequence of climate change. Notably, the intensity and the magnitude of flash flooding in the pre‐monsoon season are expected to increase more in the future because the increase in extreme indices is more significant during that season.


The focus is on Jonah's psalm in the second chapter of the book of Jonah, in order to identify some of the important Hebrew structural and stylistic features. A contemporary scenario is set with the Chichewa-speaking peoples of east-central Africa. The specific project Skopos, aims to produce a ""literary functional equivalence"" (LiFE) translation that will foster a dramatic oral recital or choral rendition of this psalm.


Purpose: This research focuses on a case study of one woman, EB, and her lifelong and exclusive wearing of the designs of Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) Rive Gauche. The stories she tells and the reasons for her continual wearing of Rive Gauche reflect a unique perspective of what makes a woman's clothing sustainable. Design/methodology/approach: EB's clothing, claiming continuity and longevity, was the prompt for an in-depth examination focused on sustainable design from the user's perspective. Phenomenological methodology supported interview questions about motivation for selecting items, what characteristics were valued in the wearing, and feedback and reflections that make the experience of wearing these selections special. Findings: Findings included her unremitting and intense admiration for YSL as a designer and the continuous dialog between designer, his creations and the wearer that ensued. Data revealed that her stories and reflections were concrete outcomes of her emotional bond to her clothing. Her admiration for the designs for Rive Gauche was singular and intense; her stories were exciting and funny but also disclosed sustainable practices. EB sustainability practice continues in her innovative ability to express her identity through use of her remaining YSL designs that have become multi-functional, loved and cared for items whose characteristics allow for continued wearing into the unforeseen future. Originality/value: This research supports an assertion that sustainability is tied to the product life cycle and the relationship of the user to the designer. This research also supports the use of phenomenological theory and methods to understand the emotional bonds connecting a user to products.


This study aims to analyze the influence of satisfaction on the commitment of generation Y teachers who work in the municipal schools of Curitiba/PR. It is a quantitative, exploratory and descriptive research using the Job Satisfaction Scale (Siqueira, 2008), and the organizational commitment variables by Meyer and Allen (1991). The respondents were teachers with a maximum of 5 years of activity in the municipal education system in Curitiba/PR and up to 30 years of age, belonging to Generation Y. The data were treated using statistical methods such as measures of central tendency, graph of variability and linear regression model. The results reveal that the dimensions of satisfaction with leadership and promotions/career growth are those that impact commitment. Key-words: public management, education, satisfaction, commitment, generation Y.


WOMEN AND C.S. LEWIS: WHAT HIS LIFE AND LITERATURE REVEAL FOR TODAY'S CULTURE. Carolyn Curtis and Mary Pomroy Key, eds. Lion Hudson, 2015. 287 p. ISBN 978-0-7459-5694-7. $17.95. MORE THAN FIFTY YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH, THE WRITINGS OF C.S. Lewis continue to instruct and inspire readers ranging from children to accomplished scholars. The accusation that Lewis was sexist, or even misogynistic, also remains in circulation after all this time. The issue has been addressed before, but primarily by academics in books for academics. Editors Carolyn Curtis and Mary Pomroy Key seek to present a more accessible evaluation of Lewis's attitude toward women in both his personal life and his literary works, and to examine his continuing relevance in light of current "women's issues." To that end, they have collected essays from educators, poets, authors of fiction, popular speakers, a journalist, and a childhood correspondent of C.S. Lewis, as well as some of the most highly respected living Lewis scholars. The book is divided into five sections, in which contributors offer insight into the women in Lewis's life, the portrayal of girls and women in his novels, the treatment of the feminine in his poetry, the effect of Lewis's life and literature on twenty-first century understanding of women's roles and rights, and the impact his views of women have had on current-generation thinkers. "Section One: Lewis, the man--and the women in his life" is made up of seven chapters. In the first of these, Crystal Hurd does an admirable job of fleshing out Flora Lewis, previously known to many only as the mother Lewis lost in childhood. This brief biographical sketch does much to inform the reader of the foundation she laid for her sons' intellectual and spiritual development. It is, in my opinion, the most informative essay in this opening section. It is followed by Paul McCusker's exploration of the relationship between Lewis and Mrs. Janie Moore. The chapter discloses no new information to those familiar with Lewis's life story, but does tease out connections between the young man's home life and his living arrangement with the older woman, and highlights Lewis's strong sense of duty and service, both in his relationship with Mrs. Moore and in his writings. In the third chapter, Lyle W. Dorsett presents a concise, well-developed biography of Joy Davidman, examining the impact of Lewis's published works and personal letters on her conversion, and culminating in their friendship and eventual marriage. Don W. King's essay presents a scant biographical sketch of Ruth Pitter but adequately outlines her relationship with Lewis and then contrasts her personality with Joy Davidman's. In Chapter Five, Crystal A. Downing offers a well-written examination of Lewis's friendship with Dorothy L. Sayers and their influence on each other's work. Disappointingly, Chapter Six, by Alister McGrath, titled "On Tolkien, the Inklings--and Lewis' blindness to gender," focuses primarily on the Inklings, mentioning the writer's female friends and his gender-blindness in only one short paragraph near the end of the piece. Section One closes with the preposterously titled "C.S. Lewis and the friends who apparently couldn't really have been his friends, but actually were," an index-like listing compiled by Colin Duriez of nine women--four of whom were dealt with individually in previous chapters--with whom Lewis had some connection. "Section Two: Lewis, the fiction author--how girls and women are portrayed in his novels" is, I believe, the meatiest part of the book. In the first chapter, Devin Brown neatly defends The Chronicles of Narnia against popular accusations of sexism. Next, Steven Elmore provides us with a close look at the characterization of females in The Space Trilogy, noting the strength and intelligence of Perelandra's queen, Tinidril, and Jane Studdock's inclusion and growth in the Fellowship of St. Anne's in That Hideous Strength. …


Equation 2 contains an error. The first line, which contains an integral sign, should not be included. Please view the correct equation here:


The subjective tests can improve the quality of education by measuring the cognitive abilities, but the biggest drawback is the lack of fairness, consistency, and accuracy. To improve the drawback, we proposed the best effort system that scores the correct subjective answers based on the correct answer table made by committee members, then classifies the rest of subjective answers into groups of similar answers so that the latest automatic scoring systems and graders assign each reasonable credit to each group of similar subjective answers. In the scoring system, the groups of the similar answers are evaluated by raters and the latest automatic scoring systems, such as syntax tree comparison grading, and the syntax and semantic tree-oriented grading. All the scores for each similar answer are added and then an average for each similar is stored in the similar answer table. Finally, the system grades applicant's answers using the correct answer table and the similar answer table. This paper proposes the algorithm for the best effort scoring system to include the latest automatic scoring system in order to be as fair, consistent, and accurate as possible.


Background: Abruptio placenta is one of the common cause of antepartum haemorrhage and is defined as premature separation of normally implanted placenta. It is more common in second half of pregnancy. Abruptio placenta is serious complication of pregnancy and causes high maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality.Methods: This retrospective study of abruptio and its maternal and perinatal outcome was carried out between July 2016 and October 2017 at Rama Medical College Hospital and research centre.Results: Incidence of Abruptio placenta is 1.6%. It is most common in the women of age group 30-35 years. 75% of cases were associated with severe pre-eclampsia. Live births were 75% while stillbirths were 25%. PPH occurred in 30% of cases. DIC accounts for 25% of the complication.Conclusions: Abruptio placenta is life threatening complication of pregnancy and it is associated with poor maternal and fetal outcome if not managed appropriately. Hence early diagnosis and prompt resuscitative measures would prevent both perinatal and maternal mortality and morbidity.


Synchronization phenomena is one of the fundamental phenomena in nature and it is observed over the various fields. Studies on synchronization phenomena of coupled oscillators are extensively carried out in various fields, physics [1], biology [2], engineering and so on. It is important to investigate the synchronization phenomena of coupled oscillators for the future engineering application. The coupled van der Pol oscillator is one of coupled oscillators, and synchronization generated in the system can model certain synchronization of natural rhythm phenomena. Parametric excitation circuit is one of resonant circuits, and it is important to investigate various nonlinear phenomena of the parametric excited circuits for future engineering applications. In simple oscillator including parametric excitation, Ref. [3] reports that the almost periodic oscillation occurs if nonlinear inductor has saturation characteristic. Additionally the occurrence of chaos is referenced in Refs. [4] and [5]. In our research group, we have investigated synchronization of parametrically excited van der Pol oscillators [6]. By carrying out computer calculations for two or three subcircuits case, we have confirmed that various kinds of synchronization phenomena of chaos are observed. In the case of two subcircuits, the anti-phase synchronization is observed. In the case of three subcircuits, self-switching phenomenon of synchronization states is observed. In our previous study, we investigate synchronization of parametrically excited van der Pol oscillators with small mismatch [7]. The small mismatch is added to the amplitude of the function relating to parametrically excitation. In the case of two subcircuits, we confirm that the two subcircuits are synchronized at in-phase state when the adding mismatch is small. By increasing the small mismatch, we observe unsynchronous phenomena. Furthermore, we applied this circuit model to ten coupled oscillators as random network model with hub. In this study, we investigate the clustering of ten coupled oscillators as random network model with hub and without hub in order to investigate effect of hub for the clustering.


Objective To evaluate the clinical effect of laparoscopic surgery for the patients suffering from ovarian cysts. Methods The clinical data of 96 patients who underwent ovarian cysts in our hospital during January 2010 to January 2011 were collected. 56 cases were treated with laparoscopic surgery and 40 cases underwent laparotomy surgery as the control group, after treatment, all patients were detected and compared the outcomes. Results There were significant differences in duration of the operation,amount of blood loss, out-of-bed activity time and exhaust time between the patients undergoing laparoscopic surgery and laparotomy surgery(P0.05). 2 cases in laparoscopic surgery to transfer laparotomy surgery,without complications occurrence. Conclusion Laparoscopic surgery in treatment of the patients with ovarian cysts has the advantages of fewer traumas and has good curative effect. It was a kind of ideal type of treatment for the patients with ovarian cysts.


The present study used the liquid extraction pretreatment method and developed a liquid chromatographyultraviolet detector (LC-UV) for the simultaneous determination of 14 sulfonamides (SAs) residues in porcine and chicken muscle. Linearity within a range of 50-150 ㎍/㎏ was obtained with the correlation coefficient (r²) of 0.9673-0.9997. The mean recovery of SAs was 55.9-109.7% (relative standard deviations; RSDs 1.7-17.3%) in porcine muscle and 52.8-112.4% (RSDs 2.3-16.9%) in chicken muscle. The limits of detection (LODs) and limits of quantification (LOQs) were 2-32 and 7-96 ㎍/㎏ in porcine muscle, and 4-32 and 13-97 ㎍/㎏ in chicken muscle, respectively. These values were lower than the maximum residue limits (MRLs) established by the European Union. The sum of all SAs residues present should be less than 100 ㎍/㎏.


TPS8128 Background: The majority of NSCLC patients (pts) present at the time of diagnosis with advanced disease. Subsets of pts are eligible for therapies targeted at mutated oncogene drivers; however, the majority of pts have few effective options beyond standard platinum-based chemotherapy. Preclinical data suggest that immune dysfunction, including T-cell downregulation through increased tumor expression of programmed death-1 ligand (PD-L1), plays a role in NSCLC. Nivolumab, a fully human IgG4 PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibitor antibody, has shown clinical activity against several solid tumors including NSCLC. Preliminary data suggest that nivolumab's activity in first-line NSCLC is accentuated in pts with positive tumor PD-L1 expression (PD-L1+). This phase III, randomized, open-label trial will compare the clinical activity of first-line nivolumab monotherapy vs ICC in treatment-naive pts with stage IV or recurrent NSCLC with PD-L1+ tumor expression. Methods: Chemotherapy-naive pts with ECOG performanc...


Soft tissue sarcomas of head and neck are very rare, in adult population, that too a peripheral nerve sheath tumour getting transformed slowly on a due course of time to rhabdomyosarcomas is very rare. When we are encountering a patient with peripheral nerve sheath tumour, the possibility about malignant transformation to a soft tissue sarcoma must be explained to the patient and should be on regular follow-up.


Transmission characteristics of Fabry-Perot (F-P) filter based on silicon substrate with different transmissivity of high reflection (HR) coatings, incident angle, and interference orders are investigated. The results show that the transmissivity of HR coatings has great effect on full width at half maximum (FWHM) of transmission spectrum, the FWHM of F-P filter reduced from 209 nm to 3.4 nm with the reflectivity of HR coatings increased from 84.7% to 99.6%. The peak wavelength shifts from 1546.3 nm at 0° to 1542.6 nm at 5°, indicating that the FWHM of transmission spectrum broadens as the incident angle increases. The 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order interference are 3.4 nm, 2.3 nm, 1.8 nm, and 1.5 nm, respectively. Thus, in the applications tuning in a narrow wavelength range, F-P filter can be designed to operate in high-order mode to achieve a narrow transmission spectrum.


AUTHOR Janger, Matthew TITLE A Statistical Analysis of Student Progress and Achievement in the Pilot Writing Project at City College of New York. INSTITUTION City Univ. of New York, NY. City Coll. SPONS AGENCY Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (ED), Washington, DC. PUB DATE 1997-05-00 NOTE 65p. CONTRACT P116B30689 PUB TYPE Reports Evaluative (142) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC03 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS College Curriculum; *College English; College Freshmen; Curriculum Development; English Curriculum; English (Second Language); Enrichment; Freshman Composition; Higher Education; *Instructional Effectiveness; Pilot Projects; *Remedial Instruction; Student Placement; *Writing Instruction IDENTIFIERS *City University of New York City College


The main objective of this work was to study the effect of soaking blanched potato slices in different salt solutions on acrylamide formation and sensorial quality of fried potato. Prior to frying, potato slices (Agria variety, diameter: 37 mm, width: 1.5 mm) were blanched in hot water at 85Ċ for 3.5 min; these slices were considered as the control. Slices of the same dimensions were blanched as in the previous step, and soaked at 25Ċ in KCL, NaCL and CaCL2 solutions of 0/1 M for 5 min. Blanched and soaked slices were fried at 180Ċ for 4.5 min. The acrylamide content was determined by GC-ECD. The sensory quality of the potato chips was evaluated based on their crispness, aroma, flavor and overall acceptability by using 10point hedonic scale, where 1= dislike extremely and 10= like extremely by 50 untrained panelists. Samples soaked in KCL, NaCL and CaCL2 solutions showed significant reduction in the formation of acrylamide by 32, 46 and 55% respectively in comparison with control. CaCL2 showed more efficient in inhibiting acrylamide formation than KCL and NaCL. Results of sensory evaluation demonstrated that samples soaked in CaCL2 solution had significantly the lowest values of taste, odor and overall acceptability. While NaCL soaked samples had significantly (p< 0/05) the highest scores of overall acceptability. It was concluded that soaking of blanched potato slices in NaCL solution (0/1 M) can be proposed as a reliable mitigation strategy to reduce acrylamide formation in fried potato with more acceptable sensory characteristics.


"July 10, 1962." "This report is based on a thesis submitted to the Department of Electrical Engineering, M.I.T., May 13, 1961 ..."


A compact 2-port multiple input multiple output (MIMO) antenna system with fractal shaped antenna elements of total size 17×40 mm2 is proposed for WiMax/WLAN applications. The physical separation between the antenna elements of the proposed system is 0.15λ (λ being the free-space wavelength at 5.4 GHz). The two antenna elements are orthogonally placed and the MEMO system exhibits pattern diversity with high isolation, without additional structures for isolation improvement. The performance of the antenna is studied in terms of S-parameter, radiation pattern and envelope correlation coefficient. The measured results show that the relative bandwidth of the proposed antenna is 1.2 GHz (4.8 - 6 GHz) with S11 ≤ -10dB, S11 ≤ -20dB and envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) <; 0.01. The proposed MEMO system is believed to be a good candidate for high density packaged MIMO system.


'I cannot but think that the opportunity [the 3rd reading of the Reform bill] would be a good one for making an appeal to the instinct and good sense of Englishmen, and, tho' it may be a repetition, to dispel the apprehension that the measure is a democratic one…The Ministry and the House of Commons have shown (Mr Gladstone and Mr Bright notwithstanding) that they trust the people of England.' G. A. Hamilton, memorandum-to Derby dated July 141 867. Hughenden MSS By May 2 Ayrton's motion had been passed with some Conservative support and a sizeable Conservative abstention in opposition to the government, which, though it had Adullamites voting with it, had no Radical support at all. It had been passed in circumstances in which, although the two-year residential qualification had been made an issue of confidence in the first week of April, it could not sensibly be made the occasion for a general election. As Taylor knew, and the division lists made clear, it was not even a restriction which all Conservatives felt happy to maintain. It was impossible in his view to resign on it, and it is clear that resignation did not appeal to Disraeli. On the other hand, though the immediate problem was solved by the Cabinet's decision to accept the amendment despite Hardy's objections, it seemed likely that there would be similar problems in the future. Disraeli's willingness to concede was inexhaustible, but, if the situation recurred in which he had to concede after resisting and being defeated in the House, confidence in the government's control of the situation would vanish. This would have been true at any time.


Owing to the economic advantage,the pipe jacking method has been used widely;the control of surrounding environment has also been promoted.But for the disturbance characteristics it is only researching on the medium and small pipe jacking;and it has no considering the particularity of super large diameter pipe jacking.Based on the in-situ monitoring of the Shanghai Expo Cable Tunnel construction,the curves of soil and water pressure are analyzed.The results show the disturbance characteristics for 5 stages during the propulsion.The engineering experiences show that three key parameters of long distance pipe jacking construction are slurry sleeve,stability control of excavation face and position dynamic adjustment.The slurry sleeve forming process and disturbance characteristics are researched;in the process of slurry injecting,slurry membrane forming and the slurry sleeve completion,the functions of the slurry sleeve are filling,supporting,deadening and lubricating,etc.


Action principles of the BF type for diffeomorphism invariant topological field theories living in n-dimensional spacetime manifolds are presented. Their construction is inspired by Cuesta and Montesinos' recent paper where Cartan's first and second structure equations together with first and second Bianchi identities are treated as the equations of motion for a field theory. In opposition to that paper, the current approach involves also auxiliary fields and holds for arbitrary n-dimensional spacetimes. Dirac's canonical analysis for the actions is detailedly carried out in the generic case and it is shown that these action principles define topological field theories, as mentioned. The current formalism is a generic framework to construct geometric theories with local degrees of freedom by introducing additional constraints on the various fields involved that destroy the topological character of the original theory. The latter idea is implemented in two-dimensional spacetimes where gravity coupled to matter fields is constructed out, which has indeed local excitations.


We present a technique for coherence transfer of laser light through a branching fiber link, where the optical phase noise induced by environmental perturbations via the fiber link is passively compensated by remote users without the requirements of any active servo components. At each remote site, an acousto-optic modulator (AOM) is simultaneously taken as a frequency distinguisher for distinguishing its unique frequency from other sites' and as an optical actuator for compensating the phase noise coming from the optical fiber. With this configuration, we incorporate a long outside loop path consisting of a fiber-pigtailed AOM into the loop, enabling the significant reduction of the outside loop phase noise in the passive way. To further address the residual out-of-loop phase noise coming from the interferometer and the two-way optical frequency comparison setup, we design a low-noise active temperature stabilization system. Measurements with a back-to-back system show that the stability in our stabilization system is <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2\times 10^{-16}$</tex-math></inline-formula> at 1 s, reaching <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2\times 10^{-20}$</tex-math></inline-formula> after 10,000s. Adopting these techniques, we demonstrate transfer of a laser light through a branching fiber network with 50 km and 145 km two fiber links. After being compensated for the 145 km fiber link, the relative frequency instability is <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3.4\times 10^{-15}$</tex-math></inline-formula> at the 1 s averaging time and scales down to <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3.7\times 10^{-19}$</tex-math></inline-formula> at the 10,000 s averaging time. This proposed technique is suitable for the simultaneous transfer of an optical signal to a number of independent users within a local area.


At this writing the author tries to make a car rental application, the purpose of making this application is to help accelerate and simplify the process of vehicle rental transactions.With the above reasons, the writer tries to make car rental application using Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, which is software used to combine design and web-based program to walk into one, as well as PHP and MySQL for creating, designing, and managing databases. Site navigation structure of this car rental application using the navigation structure of a mixture (composite) which is a combination of the navigation structure of linear, non linear and hierarchical. Linear navigational structure is a structure that only display one at a display on the screen and there can be no branching. While a hierarchical navigation structure is a structure that relies on branching to display data based on certain criteria. This application is in the allocation for rental rather than for the general manager so that this application be given a username and password securit.


Metronidazole is given to patients with liver disease because of its efficacy against anaerobic organisms.' Although relatively safe, it can cause uncomfortable gastrointestinal and neurological symptoms that may be related to prolonged high blood concentrations of the drug.' Cirrhotic livers have an impaired drug metabolising capacity,2 but two recent studies of elimination of metronidazole in liver disease have produced conflicting results.3 We studied the disappearance of metronidazole from plasma in 10 patients with decompensated chronic liver disease and compared the results with those in nine healthy subjects.


Radiofrequency catheter ablation is an effective and safe treatment of idiopathic ventricular tachycardia (VT) arising from the left coronary aortic sinus (LCAS) when there is a distance of >1 cm between the ablation catheter tip and the left coronary ostium (LCO).

A 26-year-old Asiatic woman …


This article describes the main results obtained from analyzes of face-to-face experiences in high school mathematics. These experiences are realized by two models of cooperative learning: the collaborative model and the peer tutoring. Both models differ in the required roles, in the task types given to students and in the teacher's role change. From the analysis viewpoint of the peer collaboration model the positive aspects are seen such as: disciplinary skills, decision making skills, strengthening of knowledge, social interaction, meanwhile the negative aspects are: group assessment, unintentional waste of time. The peer tutoring model was more effective when it happened without given roles. Both models highlighted effective results through dialogue between students and arguments of a metacognitive rather than cognitive nature. The presented analysis may be important in identifying the effectiveness of working with groups under these two models and the possibility of implementing them in an online learning format.


Spin polarized calculations are performed to study the structural and electronic properties of Mn doped BiFeO3 (BMFO) using simplified local spin density approximation (LSDA) functional under density functional theory (DFT). The B-site doping concentration of Mn in BMFO considered to be 16.7 % (BiMn0.167Fe0.833O3). Density of states calculations are carried out for both ferromagnetic (FM) and anti-ferromagnetic (AFM) order in BMFO. The results predict that BMFO is a half metal for both FM and AFM BMFO with magnetization of 29.0000 µB/cell and 1.0000 µB/cell respectively. The ground state of BMFO is found to be antiferromagnetic and demonstrates BMFO to be a potential candidate for spintronic applications.


In this paper, we investigate the effects of RF impairments and imperfect channel estimation (ICE) on the performance of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) wireless systems with transmit diversity for Space-Time Block Codes (STBC) employing Nt : Nt ∈ (2, 3, 4) transmit antennas and one receive antenna in a Rayleigh fading environ- ment. The bit error rate (BER) expressions of the OSTBC-OFDM system is derived for each transmit-receive antenna configuration in the presence of phase noise and channel estimation errors. With emphasis on complex signal constellations, we further investigate the effect of doppler on the performance of OSTBC- OFDM for different code rates R :1 /2 ≤ R ≤ 1, including maximal-rate OSTBC codes. To illustrate the extent of system degradation due to these impairments on a proposed practical system, the presented results are verified through simulations by making use of the system parameters from the IEEE802.16e standard.


Hyperspectral data offers a powerful tool for predicting soil heavy metal contamination due to its high spectral resolution and many continuous bands. However, band selection is the prerequisite to accurately invert and predict soil heavy metal concentration by hyperspectral data. In this paper, 181 soil samples were collected from the suburb of Nanjing City, and their reflectance spectra and soil lead concentrations were measured in the laboratory. Based on these dataset, we compare Least Angle Regression, which is a modest forward choose method, and least squares regression and partial least squares regression based on genetic algorithm. As a result, regression with band selection has better accuracy than those without band selection. Although both Least Angle Regression and partial least squares regression with genetic algorithm can reach 70% training accuracy, the latter based on genetic algorithm is better, because it can reach a larger solution space. At last, we conclude that partial least squares regression is a good choice for the soil lead content retrieval by hyperspectral remote sensing data, and genetic algorithm can improve the retrieval by band selection promisingly. Bands centered around 838nm,1930nm and 2148nm are sensitive for soil lead content.


Within the chamonium-threshold QCD theory, the two-photon spectroscopies of charmonia will provide the unique test on the non-perturbative treatment. With the high luminosity and excellent detector in the BESIII experiment, the two-photon transition from ψ(2S) to J/ψ is firstly observed and the preliminary result of the measurement of the branching fraction is given.


2015 dissertation for MSc Finance and Risk. Selected by academic staff as a good example of a masters level dissertation.
Purpose – The aim of this dissertation is to examine the impact of financial crisis on
portfolio performance. The objective is to evaluate how the returns and risks from selected
stocks performed during and after the 2007 financial crisis.
Methodologies –This study uses time series data from stocks indices. This paper uses mean
variance approach model to measure these stocks indices' returns and risks. The periods
studies were grouped into three period's: period before financial crisis (January 2004-
December 2006), period during financial crisis (January 2007- December 2009) and the
period after financial crisis (January 2010- December 2012).
Results- Evidences from the findings shows that there are greater impacts of financial crisis
in the period especially the 2007-2009 on the return and the risk via the activities of stocks in
the markets of selected countries. This means higher returns from the investments and less
risk before crisis 2007. And this is opposite during the period of financial crisis with higher
variance (risk) and less return from investment.
Recommendations- The key goal of this research is to find the impact of financial crisis on
portfolio. Based on the results, I recommend that future research should not be based on
foreign stocks markets portfolio only, but should include indices from underdeveloped
countries, given that these countries have low correlation with developed economies and as
such do not experience the same risks.
Originality- This dissertation examines the impact of crisis on portfolio via the Markowitz
model on five selected countries indices.


Objective To establish HPLC method for determination of Fexofenadine Hyfrochloride related substances. Method The column:Hypersil Phenyl 2(5μ)(250 mm×4.6 mm).The mobile phase:0.5% monobasic sodium phosphate in water(pH 4.0)-acetonitrile(60 ∶ 40),Add 2 ml of triethylamine per liter, and mix. The flow rate:1.5 mL/min. The detection wavelength:220 nm. Calculate the content of Fexofenadine Hyfrochloride related substances with the normalization. Conclusion The method is accurate, simple, and quick. It can be used on the analysis of Fexofenadine Hyfrochloride related substances.


Kinetic properties of a two dimensional model of fermions interacting with antiferromagnetic spin excitations near the quantum critical point (QCP) are considered. The temperature or doping are assumed to be sufficiently high, such that the pseudogap does not appear. In contrast to standard spin-fermion models, it is assumed that there are intrinsic inhomogeneities in the system suppressing space correlations of the antiferromagnetic excitations. It is argued that the inhomogeneities in the spin excitations in the "strange metal" phase can be a consequence of existence of $\pi $-shifted domain walls in the doped antiferromagnetic phase. Averaging over the inhomogeneities and calculating physical quantities like resistivity and some others one can explain unusual properties of cuprates unified under the name "Marginal Fermi Liquid" (MFL). The dependence of the slope of the linear temperature dependence of the resistivity on doping is compared with experimental data.


Highly efficient and good quality blazed diffraction gratings are required to achieve low insertion losses of wavelength division multiplexer/demultiplexer in multichannel multiplex systems. This paper presents a method and describes the technology for fabrication of diffraction gratings on glass using an ion etching technique. In contrast to other methods, ion etching technique allows not only the fabrication of arbitrary blaze angles but also different blaze angles can be realized on a single glass sample. The process is low in cost, uses readily available materials and has mass production capability.


BACKGROUND
Sprayers have been shown in numerous reports to influence pesticide deposition and distribution significantly, and public concern for their potential risk has been increasing in recent years. In this study, a hand-held gun sprayer and two air-assisted sprayers (conventional axial fan air-blast sprayer and tower sprayer) were used by applying myclobutanil and tebuconazole for systematically investigating their influence on pesticide distribution and deposition in a semi-dwarf apple orchard.

RESULTS
The coefficient of variations of different canopy zones associated with the tower sprayers were 38.9-41.9% for leaves and 35.5-36.4% for fruit, generally lower than the coefficient of variations related to the other two sprayers. Tests conducted by the air-assisted applications have recorded an overall higher drift on the adjacent rows than experiments carried out with hand-held gun sprayer. The results of drift in soil indicated that pesticide was mainly distributed within 5 m downwind the treated area, and the distribution pattern is influenced by sprayer design. The total pesticide concentration deposited in soil within 5 m applied by tower sprayer is 0.28 m mg kg-1 for myclobutanil and 0.90 m mg kg-1 for tebuconazole, respectively, much lower than that of others.

CONCLUSION
The result indicated that the tower sprayer could give a more uniform distribution and guarantee better effectiveness of the phytosanitary treatment. Besides, the tower sprayer could also better protect the soil and reduce environmental pollution due to its scientific structural design. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.


The study aims to optimize dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME)of decabrominated diphenyl ether (BDE-209) in water samples rapidly through genetic algorithm neural network (GANN) model. A GANN model was established based on an orthogonalized experiment of BDE -209 DLLME. Convergence speed,learning precision and generalization were compared between BP neural network model and GANN model. Matlab genetic algorithm toolbox was applied to seek a solution of DLLME optimization,and the optimum DLLME conditions were validated by experiments. Average errors between predicted and experimental values of extraction recovery were less than 14.41%,and R2 was 0.8887. The optimum DLLME condition of BDE-209 was 10μL of tetrachloroethylene,0.71mL of acetone,pH 5,20% of NaCl and extraction time of 10min. Results showed that the extraction recovery and enrichment factor of optimum condition had an increase of 54% and 580 respectively through GANN model.


Multiwavelength lasers are reportedly useful for treating venous lake (VL) in Caucasian patients. However, the same parameters may not be safe for Asian patients with Fitzpatrick skin type (FST) IV.


Objective
To investigate the value of ultrasound in the localization of peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC) in neonates.

Methods
A retrospective analysis of the PICC catheterization was conducted at Department of Neonatology, Beijing Chaoyang District Maternal and Child Healthcare Hospital from June 2017 to December 2018.The ultrasound monitoring was performed immediately after PICC catheterization.The probe was placed into the midline position of the lower xiphoid or the subclavian parasternal line for scanning, and it would be the PICC if a high-echo " equal sign" was observed by ultrasound.It was believed that the PICC was successfully placed when ultrasound detected that the PICC tip was located in the junction of inferior vena cava or superior vena cava in the right atrium.

Results
(1)Among 112 infants with PICC catheterization, 103 cases (92.0%) were accurately placed, 9 cases (8.0%) were not placed in the ideal site, among them, 2 cases were too deep, 4 cases were too shallow and 3 cases were catheter heterotopia.The tip position was accurate after the readjustment under ultrasound monitoring in those patients whose the first ultrasound showed the tip position was not ideal.(2)The PICC indwelling time was as short as 2 days (removed due to severe arrhythmia) and as long as 56 days with an average of (15.1±10.7) days.(3)The catheter-related complications occurred in 3 cases with an incidence of 2.7%.

Conclusions
Using ultrasound to determine the PICC tips position is accurate and reliable, which is worthy of extensive application in the neonatal wards.

Key words:
Ultrasound; Peripherally inserted central catheter; Infant, newborn


Abstract In this work, efficient procedures for benzylation of a range of aromatic compounds by benzyl acetate in the presence of catalytic amounts of 3-methyl-1-sulfonic acid imidazolium tetrachloroaluminate ([Msim]AlCl4) or silica sulfuric acid (SSA) under mild conditions are described. Simple methodology, easy workup procedure, clean reaction and reusability of the catalyst are some advantages of this work.


A chloroform solution of N-benzoyl-N-phenylhydroxylamine (BPHA) may be used for extracting niobium from sulphuric or tartaric acid solution, but the yellow colour of niobium-BPHA complex found in the organic layer is too pale to be applied for the colorimetric determination of micro amounts of niobium. It is found in our laboratory that through the addition of ammonium thiocyanate the colour intensity of the niobium complex increases greatly. As in the case of titanium, the increase in colour intensity is due to the formation of a new niobium-BPHA-thiocyanate complex, the molecular extinction of which is found to be 46,500, 30,700, and 18,000 at 360, 380, and 420 mμrespectively. Based upon this highly sensitive reaction, a method of extraction and colorimetric determination of microgram amounts of niobium is suggested.
 The absorption spectrum of niobium-BPHA-thiocyanate complex shows a peak at 360 mμ. In order to adopt the method more widely in practice, the optical density may be measured in the visible region, namely, at 380-420 mμ. The colour intensity of solutions containing 3-30μg of niobium in 5 ml of chloroform obeys Beer's law. The acid concentration of test solution (10ml) is adjusted to 7-8 N with respect to hydrochloric acid, and 200 mg of ammonium thiocyanate is then added. The extraction is carried out with 5 ml of chloroform containing 0.4-0.7 mg of BPHA. After shaking for five minutes, the golden yellow colour of the niobium complex in the organic layer is ready for spectrophotometric determination. Extraction from sulphuric acid solution gives an optical density about 20 per cent lower than that from hydrochloric acid medium. In this case,10ml of test solution is adjusted to 8-9 N with respect to sulphuric acid, and 5ml of chloroform containing 1.0-2.5 mg of BPHA is used for extraction.
 Large amounts (up to 0.3g) of aluminum, milligrams of lanthanum and thorium, and 0.05-0.1 mg of molybdenum, tungsten, vanadium, and zirconium do not interfere. Tantalum when present in equal quantity gives a result 5 per cent higher. Titanium interferes rather seriously. The optical density of the titanium complex is only a little lower than that of niobium. Tartrate ion does not interfere, while large amount of sulphate ion causes a somewhat lower result. Small amounts of oxalate and fluoride ions exert no influence.By the methods of continuous variation and of Bent and French, the ratio of niobium, BPHA, and thiocyanate in the complex has been found to be 1∶2∶1. Hence, the probable formula may be [NbO(SCN)(BPHA)_2].


Considering the customers' demand for high quality products, surface finishing represents an extremely delicate phase in the production of ceramic tiles. In these terms, stiffer machinery can be considered a practical response to the need of accurate manufacturing processes. This research is focused on investigating and improving the (elasto)dynamic behaviour of a large machine tool, used for polishing and lapping ceramic tiles. A modal analysis was realized comparing natural frequencies in respect to different design solutions. The stiffness optimization was obtained by changing the structural design.


Carcinogen‐induced early DNA lesions and metallothionein (MT) over‐expression have been implicated in cell proliferation and thereby subsequent expression of premalignant phenotype of the cell. We have therefore investigated the chemopreventive potential of vanadium in a multi‐biomarker approach, viz. 8‐hydroxy‐2′‐deoxyguanosines (8‐OHdGs), DNA single‐strand breaks (SSBs), DNA‐protein crosslinks (DPCs), chromosomal aberrations (CAs), in situ MT expression, and cell proliferation in rat liver preneoplasia. Hepatocarcinogenesis was induced in male Sprague–Dawley rats with a single, necrogenic, intraperitoneal (i.p.) injection of diethylnitrosamine (DEN) (200 mg/Kg body weight) at week 4 of the experimental protocol followed by promotion with phenobarbital (PB) (0.05% in basal diet), on and from week 8 and continued till 32 weeks in a long‐term regimen. There was a significant and steady elevation of modified DNA bases 8‐OHdGs (P < 0.0001; 90.69%) along with substantial increments of the extent of SSBs (P < 0.001) and CAs (P < 0.001) following DEN exposure. Supplementation of vanadium at a dose of 0.5 ppm abated the formations of 8‐OHdGs (80.63%; P < 0.0001), SS‐DNAs (P < 0.001) and SSBs/DNA unit (P < 0.01; 56.39%), DPCs (59.26%; P < 0.0001) and CAs (71.52%; P < 0.001) in preneoplastic rat liver studied at various time points. Low dose of vanadium treatment further reduced liver‐MT immunoreactivity (P < 0.05) and BrdU‐labeling index (P < 0.02) and a significant positive correlation (r = 0.92; r2 = 0.85; P = 0.0001) was noted between them. Continuous vanadium administration also decreased nodular incidence (66.67%) and nodule multiplicity (62.12%; P < 0.001) along with substantial improvement in the altered hepatocellular phenotype when compared to DEN + PB treatment alone. The study indicates that vanadium‐mediated suppression of cell proliferation and resulting premalignant expression might be due to the observed reductions in hepatic 8‐OHdGs, SSBs, DPCs, CAs, and MT immunoreactivity. Vanadium is chemopreventive for DEN‐induced hepatocellular preneoplasia in rats. J. Cell. Biochem. 101: 244–258, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


This paper presents a method of evaluating transient stability of a multimachine system comprising a unified power flow controller (UPFC) and grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) system. The proposed model is based on an equivalent π circuit of a transmission line model. All equations required for this purpose have been symmetrically derived. The simulation techniques in stability mode of evaluating transient stability of a multimachine system equipped with a UPFC and grid-connected system are also presented. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been tested on the New England system comprising 10 generators and 39 buses. The simulation results with various cases are also compared and discussed.


Photosynthesis is the basis of biological survival. Traditional methods are complicated, time consuming and destruction of the sample. Variable chlorophyll a fluorescence techniques provide a rapid, sensitive and non-invasive measurement of the photosynthetic physiology of algae. Based on this technique, an in situ measurement system of photosynthetic activity (Fv/Fm) was established, using blue LEDs and detecting the main emission peak of chlorophyll fluorescence around 685 nm. Both the laboratory cultures of Skeletonema costatum and Prorocentrum minimum and field experiment in the coastal sea of Qingdao showed a significant correlation between Fv/Fm values measured by our newly developed system and those analyzed by commercial Water-PAM fluorometer, indicating that our measuring system could be used to analyze photosynthetic activity of marine algae in natural waters.


This paper confirms that the electrical characteristics of FinFETs such as the on/off ratio, drain-induced barrier lowering (DIBL), and sub-threshold slope (SS) can be improved by optimizing the FinFET spacer structure. An operating voltage that can maintain a life of 10 years or more when hot-carrier injection is extracted. An excellent on/off ratio (7.73×107) and the best SS value were found at 64.29 mV/dec with a spacer length of 90 nm. Under hot carrier-injection conditions, the supply voltages that meet the 10-year lifetime condition are 1.11 V, 1.18 V, and 1.32 V for spacer lengths of 40 nm, 80 nm, and 120 nm, respectively. This experiment confirmed that, even at low drain voltages, the shorter is the spacer length, the greater is the deterioration. However, this increasing maximum operating voltage is very small when compared to the increase in the driving voltage required to achieve similar performance when the spacer length is increased; therefore, the effective life is expected to decrease. The results indicate that structural optimization must be performed to increase the driving current of the FinFET and prevent degradation of the analog performance.


Using the force feedback technology, which has been used in video games for years, prototypes of touchable online Braille generator and touchable online graphical display have been developed for visually impaired or blind users.
Without expensive devices, these prototypes let blind people access information on the web by touching the output Braille displays or by scrolling over tactile graphical displays with a force feedback mouse. User studies have been
conducted with visually impaired people and the data collected provide valuable information about the optimal conditions for these prototype force feedback displays, such as how strong the force should be and how big the Braille dots should appear. The end product of this research will enable visually impaired people to enjoy information on the web, including images, more freely.


Acid red B (ARB) solution was electrolyzed in a single-chamber cell and a two-chamber cell using Pt/C gas diffusion electrode (GDE) as cathode. In the single-chamber electrolysis, the treatment effect of gas (diffusion) cathode was much better than that of graphite cathode;and the H_(2)O_(2) yield of gas diffusion (cathode) was 10 times than that of graphite cathode; when the pH was 1 and electrolysis time was 40min, there was best treatment effect, the color removal was 78.3%. The degradation mechanism of ARB was analyzed through the two-chamber electrolysis. The mechanism in the anodic region was the direct oxidation, which was slightly (affected) by pH variation, Fe(II)existence and aeration. In the GDE, O_(2) was reduced to H_(2)O_(2), then (decomposed) to hydroxyl radical that had strong ability to oxidize organic compounds. Meanwhile, indirect (oxidation) in cathodic region was strongly affected by pH variation, Fe(II)existence and aeration. After ARB solution was treated in that condition: pH was 3, \ was 50mmol ·l~(-1), air flow was 180L·h~(-1), for 80min, the color removal and COD removal in the cathodic region, which were 94.2% and 66.8% respectively, was higher than the removal in the anodic region, which were 73.3% and 56.2%. The apparent current efficiency that was the sum of current efficiency in the anodic and cathodic region reached to 145.3%.


In diagnostic services, agents typically need to weigh the benefit of running an additional test and improving the accuracy of diagnosis against the cost of congestion, i.e., delaying the provision of services to others. Our paper analyzes how to dynamically manage this accuracy/congestion tradeoff. To that end, we study an elementary congested service facing an arriving stream of customers. The diagnostic process consists of a search problem in which the agent conducts a sequence of imperfect tests to determine whether a customer is of a given type. Our analysis yields counter-intuitive insights into managing diagnostic services. First, we find that the maximum number of customers allowed in the system should initially increase with the number of performed tests. This result is in sharp contrast to the established literature on value/congestion tradeoffs, which consistently asserts that congestion levels should decrease with service times. Second, we find that the agent should sometimes diagnose the customer as being the positive type, even when all tests are negative. Finally, our numerical study shows that our counter-intuitive findings can have a significant impact on system performance.


...........................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements..........................................................................................iii Table
  of
  Contents..............................................................................................iv Introduction......................................................................................................1 The
  Affective
  Alarm
  Model...............................................................................3 Evidence
  for
  the
  Affective
  Alarm
  Model.........................................................10 The
  Corrugator
  Supercilii................................................................................13 Negative
  Affect
  and
  Self-‐Control.....................................................................16 Methods.............................................................................................................18 Hypotheses........................................................................................................24 Data
  Analysis......................................................................................................27 Results...............................................................................................................28 General
  Discussion...........................................................................................35 Future
  Directions.............................................................................................40 Conclusions......................................................................................................43 References.........................................................................................................45 Figures...............................................................................................................56


As health care moves from hospital to home, the spectrum of catheter-related infections is changing. This case-control study looked at infections associated with the "needleless" midline or central intravenous catheters commonly used for home-care patients.

A Houston visiting nurse service cared for 53 …


P until fairly recently, the conventional wisdom about the relation of Robert Frost to modernism, when it was considered at all, was that for the most part there was none-that between Frost's poetry on the one hand and a virtually monolithic phenomenon composed primarily of the work of Eliot, Pound, Stevens, and Williams on the other, there was and could be little commerce. But over the last several years, as the issue has begun to be addressed with greater seriousness and scrutiny (by such critics as Frank Lentricchia, Richard Poirier, William Pritchard, and others), it has become harder not only to maintain the separation between Frost and his contemporaries but to continue to regard modernism itself as a unified, homogeneous movement in literary history, as though it were an exclusive club with strict rules of membership and with no room for a poet who refused to abandon the formal and generic conventions of traditional verse. The insistence on Frost's difference from modernism, it has become clear, was based on an oversimplification of both. Whether Frost himself would have welcomed the end of his exclusion from the company of the great modern poets is, of course, another question. His friendship with Pound, Frost once noted, lasted but six weeks, his relations with Stevens were always cool and distant, and Eliot and Williams he hardly knew at all and seemed to prefer it that way. But in spite of Frost's personal attitudes and antipathies, which probably contributed to the general critical sense of his isolation from his contemporaries, one important result of this new attention to him in the context of modernism may well be a new understanding of modernism itself, of the different ways in which it was possible to be a modern poet. And such understanding may derive as


Catalogers make decisions constantly, especially when recataloging serials. This article explores the decisions that need to be made when recataloging serials, within the framework of a decision-making model used in business. For catalogers, this model consists of becoming aware that a recataloging problem exists, defining what the problem is, analyzing the alternatives for handling it, selecting the best solution based on the library's goals and resources, implementing it, and obtaining feedback. Then the cycle begins again wilh new problems.


Objective To evaluate the effect of surgical intervention on the treatment of intracranial metastatic tumors. Methods Curative effects in the near future of 57 cases with intracranial metastatic tumors treated surgically in the recently past 3 years were analyzed retrospectively. Results Of all the 57 cases,46 cases(80.7%) were treated with complete tumor resection under naked eye,9 cases(15.8%) with hypo-complete resection and 2 cases(3.5%) with partial resection.Postoperative clinical symptoms improved markedly in 49 cases(85.9%),were unchanged in 5 cases(8.8%),and were deteriorated in 3 cases(5.3%).2 cases had no symptoms before operation. Conclusion Surgical intervention is an important and valuable means in the treatment of intracranial metastatic tumors by confirming diagnosis to direct the further combined therapies and relieving intracranial hypertension crisis to save some patients' lives and to improve the qualities of patients' lives.


The species Sporophila bouvreuil comprises four subspecies: S. b. bouvreuil , S. b. pileata , S. b. saturata and S. b. crypta . The males of each subspecies differ in plumage whereas the females and juveniles are very similar and difficult to identify to subspecies. Here we use external morphological characters, mostly plumage, to examine the validity of the subspecies. A total of 209 specimens was examined (131 S. b. bouvreuil , 29 S. b. crypta, 43 S. b. pileata and 6 S. b. saturata ). Although morphological measurements did not separate any taxa, plumage patterns support recognition of two taxonomic units, one of birds having reddish brown male plumage and the other of birds with grayish to white male plumage. Discrete diagnostic characters and sympatry in SE Brazil allow separation of Sporophila pileata (Sclater 1864) from S. bouvreuil (Muller 1776). On the other hand, S. b. saturata Hellmayr 1904 and S. b. crypta Sick 1968 should be considered synonyms of S. bouvreuil .


Objective
To explore the key points of anesthetic management for drug induced sleep cine magnetic resonance imaging(cine MRI) in children with obstructive sleep apnea(OSA).

Methods
Clinical data of eighteen cases of OSA children underwent cine MRI were analyzed retrospectively. Demographics, anesthetic drugs, vital sign profiles, as well as side effects were all included.

Results
After cine MRI examination, eleven of the eighteen OSA children(61.1%) were found positive results. By dexmedetomidine(Dex) induction, OSA children occurred serious bradycardia(P<0.05) while SpO2 decreased significantly(P<0.05). During the cine MRI examination, there were two cases of OSA children with ketamine supplementation due to body movement. The success rate of anesthesia was 88.9%. We found bradycardia in eight cases. The incidence was 44.4%. None of children had severe hypoxia(SpO2<90%). The incidence of bradycardia in the positive results group(63.6%) was significantly higher than that of negative result group(14.3%)(P<0.05).

Conclusions
Dex is an efficacious drug used to induce sleep cine magnetic resonance imaging in OSA children with minimal respiratory depression. However, bradycardia is still noteworthy. Ketamine should be considered as a combination drug in case of body movement.

Key words:
Obstructive sleep apnea; Children; Anesthesia


Concrete is one of the most produced and utilized materials in the world. Due to the labor intensive and time consuming nature of concrete construction, new and innovative concrete mixes are being explored. Self-consolidating concrete (SCC) is one such method of improving the overall cost and time efficiency of concrete production. SCC is a highly flowable form of concrete. This characteristic drastically reduces the amount of labor and time needed to place the concrete. The highly flowable nature also allows for much easier placement in applications of highly congested reinforcement. In order to test this new and innovative concrete mix, SCC was tested for both hardened material properties and durability in this investigation. The results indicated that SCC was superior to the baseline conventional concrete.


The S/N capability of an Idealab Fourier Transform Spectrometer using a HgCdTe detector was improved by a factor of 30 to a level where system performance with a Nernst glower source was limited only by the extrinsic detector noise. The results reported here constitute a hardware demonstration of an analysis recently performed by Zachor and Aaronson. Our analysis and hardware demonstration are in substantial agreement with the work of Zachor and Aaronson which was carried out independently. Diagnostic data will be presented which illustrate the distortion to the spectrum caused by errors in sampling. The characteristics/specifications for signal and sampling control electronics which provide dynamic compensation for sampling errors will be discussed, and test data showing the 30 fold improvement in S/N will be presented.


Objective To study the relationship between body mass index(BMI) and blood pressure(BP) of the people aged 40~64 years old to provide reference for controlling cerebral artery disease risk factor.Methods Questionnaire,blood pressure,height and weight were measured in 515 people aged 40~64 years old in Nanhui district of Shanghai.According to BMI,they were divided into three groups: normal,overweight and obesity.Correlative analysis between BMI and BP was done.Results The rate of obesity,overweight and the average BMI were all higher in the group of hypertension than those in control one.BMI of female has more significant influence on BP(P0.01).With the increased BMI,diastolic blood pressure(DBP) and systolic blood pressure(SBP),except for SBP in group of male,were significantly different among three groups(P0.01).Relationship between BMI and BP was positively correlative with SBP(r=0.221,P0.01) and DBP(r=0.180,P0.05) of females,and DBP of male(r=0.141,P0.05).Conclusion Relationship between BMI and BP is significantly correlative in the people aged 40~64.And the correlation of BMI with BP of female was higher than that of male while the correlation of BMI with DBP is higher than that of SBP in male.


This paper shows how recent revolutionary Bayesian Network (BN) algorithms can be used to model very complex reliability problems in a simple unified way. The algorithms work for socalled hybrid BNs, which are BNs that can contain a mixture of both discrete and continuous variables. Such hybrid BNs enable us to model failure times and reliability together. The approach allows a compact representation of the event-dependent failure behaviours characteristic of fault-tolerant systems, avoiding the state space explosion problem of the Markov Chain based approaches. The BN framework presented is able to solve any configuration of static and dynamic gates with general time-to-failure distributions, without using numerical integration techniques or simulation methods. Unlike other approaches (which tend to be restricted to using exponential distributions) we can use as input any parametric or empirical failure rate distribution. The approach offers a powerful framework for analysts and decision makers to successfully perform robust reliability assessment. Sensitivity, uncertainty, diagnosis analysis, common cause failures, and warranty analysis can also be easily performed within this framework.


A field trial on the effect of GA 3 and NAA was conducted on tomato cv. Kashi Vishesh during the rabi season of 2011-12. The different concentration of GA 3 (20, 40, 60 and 80 ppm) and NAA (25, 50, 75 and 100 ppm) were sprayed on the crop to study the growth behavior and yield and yield attributes of tomato. It was found that there was a linear increase in growth parameters like plant height and number of branches per plant with increasing level of GA 3 and NAA. The maximum plant height was recorded as 85.3 cm and 82.3 cm with the application of GA 3 @ 80ppm and NAA @ 100ppm, respectively after 60 days of transplanting. Similarly, the yield and yield attributes were also affected significantly with increasing concentrations of GA 3 and NAA. A maximum yield of 483.6q/ha and 472.2 q/ha was obtained with the use of GA 3 @ 80ppm and NAA @100ppm, respectively.


Three cryoprotectants [dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO), propylene glycol (PG) and glycerol], two diluents (sucrose- and saline-based), two sperm collection times, two freezing rates and three times between thaw and activation (0, 30 and 60 min) were tested in order to develop a protocol for the cryopreservation of sperm of haddock Melanogrammus aeglefinus and Atlantic cod Gadus morhua. The faster freezing rate resulted in extremely low post-thaw motility in comparison to the slower freezing rate, which was successful for sperm from both gadids. In both cases, the use of PG resulted in significantly higher post-thaw sperm motility-recovery indices than with DMSO or glycerol, which did not differ significantly from one another. Diluent had no effect on post-thaw sperm motility for Atlantic cod or haddock. Sperm collected at the end of the spawning season tended to have reduced post-thaw motility compared to that collected 2 weeks after the start of spawning. A 30 min delay between thaw and activation of haddock and Atlantic cod sperm resulted in a significant decrease in sperm motility. When PG was used as cryoprotectant, sperm motility continued to decrease between 30 and 60 min post-thaw. With DMSO or glycerol as cryoprotectant, motilities were already very low after 30 min post-thaw and did not decrease any further after 60 min. Cryoprotectant, diluent and time between thaw and activation had no effect on mean or maximum sperm swimming speeds for either Atlantic cod or haddock sperm. Fertilization success for haddock eggs, like sperm motility, was higher with PG-frozen sperm than DMSO- or glycerol-frozen sperm. These results constitute the first reported successful cryopreservation of haddock sperm and improve on previous methods used to cryopreserve sperm from Atlantic cod.


Little is known about the effect of cessation of menstruation on lung function. The aims of the study were to examine the association of lung function with natural and surgical cessation of menstruation, and assess whether lower lung function is associated with earlier age at cessation of menstruation. The study was performed in 141 076 women from the UK Biobank, who had provided acceptable and reproducible spirometry measurements and information on menstrual status. The associations of lung function (forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1), spirometric restriction (FVC < lower limit of normal (LLN)), airflow obstruction (FEV1/FVC <LLN)) with cessation of menstruation and age at cessation of menstruation were assessed using regression analysis. Women who had natural cessation of menstruation showed a lower FVC (−42 mL; 95% CI −53– −30) and FEV1 (−34 mL; 95% CI −43– −24) and higher risk of spirometric restriction (adjusted odds ratio 1.27; 95% CI 1.18–1.37) than women still menstruating. These associations were stronger in women who had had a hysterectomy and/or oophorectomy. The earlier the natural cessation of menstruation, the lower the lung function. There was no clear association of lung function with age at hysterectomy and/or oophorectomy. Airflow obstruction was not associated with cessation of menstruation. Lower lung function associates with cessation of menstruation, especially if it occurs early in life. Low lung function associates with menopause, especially if it occurs early in life http://ow.ly/RWRt3021tBY


Hypertension is one among the leading risk factor for mortality and it is called as "the silent killer". The new creation of the term 'prehypertension' classification by the Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure JNC 7 guidelines has provided a new path to the researchers to examine this group separately as it decreases the average life expectancy by as much as five years. Physical activity in the form of regular aerobic exercise has been proven in prevention of high blood pressure as well as the lowering of blood pressure among all levels of hypertension. The circuit training and endurance training exercises are known to reduces both systolic and diastolic arterial blood pressure along with improvement of health related quality of life. Breathing training exercises is the only simple method to improve respiratory control to reduce the blood pressure in prehypertensive individuals. The aim of this study is to examine the effects of endurance and breathing training versus circuit and breathing training on blood pressure, body mass index, waist circumference and quality of life in pre hypertensive overweight adults. This is an experimental design with pre and post comparative study. The subjects of 25-40 years of overweight both male and female, clinically diagnosed with prehypertension were included in the study. Those with known cardiac, pulmonary, neurological and musculoskeletal disorders were excluded in the study.40 subjects were randomly assigned into two groups, Group A received endurance training with breathing exercise while Group B received circuit training and breathing exercise for 12 weeks and 5 sessions per week. The outcome measures were blood pressure, BMI, waist circumference and quality of life. The outcome tools were sphygmomanometer, weighing machine, Stadiometer, inch tape and SF 36 Short-Form 36 Questionnaire. On comparing Pre-test and Post-test within Group A and Group B on blood pressure, body mass index, waist circumference and quality of life shows a significant difference in mean values at P<0.001. Thus this study concludes that 12 weeks of circuit training and breathing exercise reduces blood pressure, body mass index, waist circumference and improves the quality of life in pre hypertensive overweight adults.


The present invention second rail lengthwise direction to the adjustment relates to a possible vehicle seat (1), the first rail 12 fixed to the structure, the is guided in a first rail 12 is connected to the vehicle seat 1 ( 13) at least one rail pair including a 10, a releasable locking device (6), the rail pair to lock the position of the first rail 12 relative to the second rail 13 in a releasable manner (10) the first end stopper portion for restricting a movable, second end stop section, and the third and comprising an end stop, one of the end stop (6 ') is moved out of the path of movement of the rail (12, 13) "may be separated by a movable stop surface (13 stop surface 13" that may be) is arranged on a second rail 13 which is fixed to the sheet can be separated, and movable over the stop face (13 " can operate with a locking device 6 to be adapted to the retracted position -) is easy to stop end portion 6 'is formed.


In the first issue of this volume (LAIC 19.1), as we caught up with the delegates who trekked to the IALIC conference held in Edinburgh in the summer of 2017, we explored the metaphor of 'Third Space' (after Bhabha, 1994). As we saw back in January, this trope can be used in research into intercultural communication either to symbolise the hybrid identities of those who are straddling two or more 'cultures', or to represent a synthetic, hermeneutic zone in which texts from one 'culture' are (re)interpreted in the context of 'another culture' to generate new and potentially transgressive meanings. In this second issue of the year, we return to possibly more familiar territory for some readers of these pages. As a journal which focuses on language and intercultural communication we necessarily reflect contemporary research which investigates not only the ways in which different languages and cultures are used in social situations and mobilised as the cornerstone of subjects' identities, but also the ways in which these languages and cultures are acquired in both formal and non-formal settings. In this, the mission of the journal and the Association has, as I see it, an educational dimension which embraces some of the origins of the field (e.g. Byram, 1989; see also Martin, Nakayama, & Carbaugh, 2013). Thus in this first 'open' issue of Volume 19, we return somewhat to origins to present a collection of papers which relate for the most part to some aspect of intercultural pedagogy, finishing off with a challenging exploration of the interactions that take place in business meetings. What is conspicuous about these papers is the range of different contexts and approaches which are represented: the continuing hegemony – and indeed 'racialisation' – of the 'native speaker' in language classrooms in the global South (Khan); 'communicative language teaching' and 'traditional Chinese language teaching' (Clark-Gareca and Min Gui); a 'discourse approach' to teaching culture (Gyogi); 'community schools' for the children of Chinese migrants living in the UK (Ganassin); 'intercultural training' in the workplace (Barakos); and 'discursive leadership' (Chan and Du-Babcock). The striking thing about these six papers is how each of their pedagogic contexts/ discursive approaches is conventionally presented as hermetically sealed – each with their own literatures, narratives, practices and contexts – although the aspiration for, and the exercise of, some sort of intercultural communication is a thread which remains common to each. As Elisabeth Barakos brings out explicitly in her paper, the specific realisation of intercultural pedagogy at any one moment is embedded in the specific social and institutional conditions in which the activity is carried out. It is over twenty years since Claire Kramsch and Michael Byram crystallised their respective critiques of the hegemonic position of native speaker norms in language teaching and learning (Byram, 1997; Kramsch, 1997). And indeed meetings held in Leeds Metropolitan University in the late 1990s on 'Intercultural Capability' travelled in part in the pedagogical and intellectual slipstream of these developments towards the end of the 20c. (http://ialic.international/ about-ialic/ialic-history/). However – as any of us who have taught courses on language teaching methodology will recognise – twenty years later, such standards remain entrenched within the teaching of many different languages, and perhaps most especially English. Our first paper, by Cristine Khan, reprises some of the issues around 'native-speakerism' and reviews the ways in which this argument has developed over the intervening period, embedding it in her own personal biography and identity. Colombia, like many countries in the Global South, has apparently developed programmes to improve bilingual education in English and Spanish within its educational system. Drawing on a carefully documented series of formal and informal interviews with undergraduates studying modern languages in Colombian universities, Khan concludes that hegemonic discourses maintain a 'racialized figure' of the


Risk taking propensity has been hypothesized to be a general personality disposition and many devices have been proposed for use in its assessment. Several types of studies relevant to the validity of these measures are reviewed. These studies expose a considerable lack of agreement among what are s


Recent findings enlightened the pivotal role of cyclooxygenases-1 and -2 (COX-1 and COX-2) in human diseases with inflammation as the committed earliest stage, such as cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. COXs are the main targets of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and catalyze the bis-oxygenation of arachidonic acid into prostaglandin PGH2, then converted into prostaglandins, thromboxane, and prostacyclin by tissue-specific isomerases. A remarkable amount of pure COX-1 results is necessary to investigate COX-1 structure and function, as well as for in vitro disease biochemical pathway investigations.

 Spodoptera frugiperda cells were infected with Baculovirus that revealed to be an efficient expression system to obtain a high amount of ovine COX-1. Protein solubilization time in the presence of a non-ionic detergent was modified, and a second purification step was introduced.

 An improvement of a previously reported method for pure recombinant oCOX-1 production and isolation has been achieved, leading to a lower starting volume of infected cells for each purification, an increased cell density, and of the number of viral particles per cell, and a shortened infection period. The protocol for the recombinant oCOX-1 expression and purification has been in-depth elaborated to obtain 1 mg/L of protein.

The optimized procedure could be suitable for producing other membrane proteins as well, for which an improvement in the solubilization step is necessary to have the availability of high concentration proteins.


Pharmaceutical companies conduct longitudinal studies on human subjects that often span several months. It is unrealistic to expect patients to keep every scheduled visit over such a long period of time. Despite every effort, patient data are unavailable for some time points. Eventually, these become missing values in a SAS data set. However, for reporting purposes, the most recent previously available value is substituted for each missing visit. This is called the Last Observation Carried Forward (LOCF) and is familiar to the Pharmaceutical audience. There are a number of ways to carry forward the last observation using SAS. This paper focuses on a technique that has gained prominence among SAS-L regulars. It is called the DO loop of Whitlock (DOW) also known as the Dorfman-Whitlock loop.


Cooperative spectrum sensing significantly improves the detection reliability of a cognitive radio network. In cooperative spectrum sensing, cognitive radio nodes send their hard decisions/detections to the fusion center via a control channel. Traditional control channels are bandwidth constrained, and a large number of hard decisions to the fusion center may saturate the control channel, thereby degrading the performance of the network. In this paper, we consider a cooperative spectrum sensing scheme, where each cognitive radio node performs a fixed sample sensing test and sends a hard decision to the fusion center via a common control channel. The fusion center collects the hard decisions from all cognitive radio nodes to form an observation vector, and performs a sequential probability ratio test to make the final decision. We term this sensing scheme as hybrid spectrum sensing. An optimization problem is formulated for the hybrid sensing strategy in order to maximize the cognitive radio network's throughput while considering interference (interference on primary user by cognitive radio network) and control channel's bit rate constraint. The decision thresholds for the cognitive radio nodes and the fusion center are considered as optimization parameters. Though the optimization problem is nonconvex, we provide an efficient algorithm for obtaining the global optimal solution. Extensive simulation results are provided to demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed approach.


This paper introduces the overseas smart substation technology scheme, describes the communication network architecture and equipment redundancy configuration in the typical overseas test smart substation scheme, and compares the similarities and differences between China's smart substation redundancy configuration technology and the overseas smart substation configuration technology. The distribution of measurement and control functions of overseas smart substations that are different from China's designs are explained in detail. The different architectures of overseas smart substations and China's smart substations are illustrated. Finally, the suggestions of overseas Smart Substation and China's smart substation are summarized.


Dr. Charles Lowery holds the B.A. in Spanish with a minor in English from the University of Texas at Tyler, the M.A. in Educational Administration from Stephen F. Austin State University, and the M.S. in Instructional Technology from Walden University. He earned the Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from Stephen F. Austin State University. Formerly he taught as a 4-8 grade bilingual teacher and later served as a school principal with additional experience as a district Title III coordinator. Currently, Dr. Lowery is an instructor in the Educational Administration program in Ohio University's Patton College of Education. His research interests include scholarpractitioner models of democratic educational leadership for social justice, equity, and care. In early December of 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act became law, signed into effect by President Barak Obama. This legislation marks the most recent reauthorization of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), replacing the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. While the Every Student Succeeds Act maintains annual standardized testing, the bill serves to limit the federal government's purview on PK-12 education (DarlingHammond et al., 2016). In doing so, the new legislation shifts educative power from the federal level to the state and local educational agencies (McGuinn, 2016). This brief puts forth several policy proposals from local education agencies and the Coalition of Rural Appalachian Schools, offering the pedagogic expertise of teachers, principals, superintendents, and university faculty in the areas of curriculum, instruction, and assessment to policymakers and legislators. FALL 2016


Online teaching and learning became popular with the evolution of the World Wide Web now days. Implementing online learning tools within EFL contexts will help better address the multitude of teaching and learning styles. Difficulty in academic writing can be considered one of the common problems that students face in and outside their classrooms. Moreover, because the young learners today are digital native, integrating online learning tool with their learning is needed. This research was conducted to analyze students' achievements by submitted tasks using both face-to-face setting for the pre individual and collaborative tasks, and online learning environment for the post individual and collaborative tasks. The participants in this study were a class of Arabic major from a college in Saudi Arabia. The research was searching for the differences between the students' individual and collaborative work using Google Docs, and discerning the students' perspectives toward collaborative work with Google Docs on English writing tasks. To explore the integration effectiveness; pre and post-questionnaires, pre and post written tasks, students' portfolio, a customized rubric for test scores, and post interviews were conducted to test and analyze the outcomes. Results show significant increase in the students' scores using Google Docs. Further, the results were consistent as that students perceived Google Docs as a useful tool for both individual and group work.


Based on conventional meteorological observation data of Taklimakan Desert Hinterland Weather Station from 2004 to 2008, and these data were analyzed with the correlation coefficient method, and the correlativity between meteorological factors and pan evaporation and related regression models were established, as well as its fit precision was also tested. The results were shown that there was an extremely significant positive correlation level between pan evaporation and 2m average wind speed, average temperature and sunshine duration in the Taklimakan Desert Hinterland, while it presented an extremely significant negative correlation with the average relative humidity on the annual scale; but in different seasons, the meteorological factors that affected the evaporation pan evapotranspiration were different, all regression models that were established between meteorological factors and pan evaporation reached an extremely significant level, and this method was simple. In the fitting results of pan evaporation in the different seasons, through the inspection with root mean square error method, the fitting precision in spring was highest, followed by autumn> summer> winter.


The last decade has seen an unprecedented growth in the practice of Islamic banking and finance which has now been recognized as a viable alternative and hopefully it will be the only financial system needed to get out from the current crisis, with the expectation that it will play an increasingly more important role in the years to come; as such, the appeal of this type of finance stems mainly from its underlying fundamental concept of justice as well as from the sharing of risk and prohibition of interest. We intend in this paper to examine the practice of Islamic Finance and its impact on the financial health of companies. Given that a company forms a micro financial system, its good financial health contributes to building a powerful economic engine; this is why we have a greater focus on companies' financial situation, especially the company's debt situation. Therefore, we have, over 3 years (2009-2011), selected a sample of 20 firms with considerable conventional bank loans. We have also extracted about 40 financial indicators impacting their debt situation in order to set up an intelligent financial solution to measure the impact of interest on the firm's solvency. Using Linear regression Model and Support Vector Machine Model (SVM), we have proved the high-impact of interest loans on the financial behavior of companies, and we have concluded through our SVM prediction model that interest loans can highly increase unexpected financial crises.


Separable space–time covariance models are often used for modeling in environmental sciences because of their computational benefits. Unfortunately, there are few formal statistical tests for separability. We adapt a likelihood ratio test based on multivariate repeated measures to the spatio–temporal context. We apply this test to an environmental monitoring data set. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Thanks to government policies in technology that have been launched during the last five years the Colombian society is the Latin American leader in the internet access and multimedia content consumption , thanks to this has also increased the presence of companies providing mobile phone services, as this was a landmark in the development of modern forms of communication, not only has limited the transport of voice between separate geographical extremes, today the company also offers complementary services such as data transport, which can range from simple text to videos shot in high definition, these companies were used Bogota as test center for many of the technologies that are implemented, so currently tests are ahead for the implementation of 4G networks , so there is a solution for all the problems that have been submitted by coverage and service quality, on the contrary believe that this breakthrough technology overflowed multiple consequences to human health , causing malformations in fetuses , appearance cancer in people exposed to mobile phone use , coronary damage , including and especially when there is no clear regulations governing radiation produced by mobile phone base stations . From these disparate points of view in this paper seeks to provide a point of view with a technical support on the real impact of this communication system on the health of man, with which also is expected to be improved and existing regulations that operating companies are obliged to make periodic measurements on their networks, to facilitate early detection of faults that can cause overexposure with possible consequences for the health of the surrounding population , to avoid this situation dosimeters must be installed in sensitive spots network , ie in the vicinity of hospitals, schools, or urban areas with high concentrations of population , this in order to ensure that the radiation emitted by the base stations have a maximum power density of 1 mW/cm2 , this can be achieved by proper planning of networks by operators , which guarantees that no adverse effects on health or normal development of life is not present.


In this special issue, the structure-agency dialectic is used to shift the analytic frame in science education from focusing on youth as in need of remediation to rethinking new arrangements, tools, and forms of assistance and participation in support of youth learning science. This shift from "fixing" the individual to re-mediating and transforming the functional system is key to reimagining new forms of learning and doing science that are tied to the imaginings of new futures, trajectories, and identities. In this manuscript,wediscussthemajorcontributionsofthesestudiesinthespecialissue.Insodoing,weseektolay outboththepossibilitiesandlimitsofthestructure-agencydialecticinadvancingscienceforall.Wesuggest that social and pedagogical imaginaries enable one to move the structure-agency dialectic towards transformative ends. We further suggest that to account more actively for how position and power shape the ways in which individuals seek to take action, the meanings they ascribe to such action, symbolically and otherwise,wemustbereadytointerrogatetherelationbetweenstructureandagencyandissuesofequityand consequential and valued forms of science learning in local environments and in larger educational systems. # 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 52:574--583, 2015.


Purpose: To analyze the socio-demographic and electro-clinical data of Epilepsy patients presenting in the 'Epilepsy Clinic' of a referral hospital.
Method: Epilepsy patients came to this weekly clinic after referral from this hospital OPD, other hospitals and from private practitioners. All the patients were enrolled from November, 2012 to December, 2015. Then clinical diagnosis was established by the chief investigator. Routine EEG was done. MRI was advised in appropriate cases. Finally the clinical findings and investigation reports were correlated.
Results: Among 331 patients, 63% were male and 37% were female. 86% patients were in the younger age group (0- 29years). 75% patients were suffering from various forms of LRE, 19% from Generalized Epilepsy Syndrome, 2.7% were unclassified and 2.7% had pseudo-seizure. Total 224 EEG could be done. Among them 118 (52.7%) had different types of abnormalities. Among total 158 MRI, 120 (76%) were abnormal. 6.3% patients could not go to school, 3.3% left study and 12.7% patients remain unemployed due to the disease burden.
Conclusion: This is a hospital based study. In this study LRE comprises 75% of total patients which is relatively higher than other reports. Males were predominating and younger people were affected more with epilepsy. Due to this disease various social problems were occurring regarding study and employment. This result demands community based larger study in our country.
Bangladesh Journal of Neuroscience 2015; Vol. 31 (2): 83-93


The paper proposes a new analytical procedure that involves discontinuous analysis to estimate the bearing capacity of granular roadbed used in ballasted track, namely "railroad ballast." To examine the applicability of the procedure, a series of numerical simulation bearing capacity tests for a 1/5 scale model of a real ballasted track were performed by employing discontinuous deformation analysis (DDA) that regards a particle of crushed stone as an irregular polygon. By comparing the analytical results and experimental results, the effect of roadbed stiffness on the bearing capacity of railroad ballast was examined. As the result, it was revealed that the roadbed stiffness has significant influence on the bearing capacity of railroad ballast, and that discontinuous analysis is an effective method to simulate the mechanical behavior of railroad ballast if the roadbed, which has been often modeled as a continuum, can be approximated with discontinuous modeling well.


Many in house researches have been performed, and are still under development, at ASTRIUM Space Transportation to develop 3 degrees of freedom attitude control law for lifting body re-entry vehicle during hypersonic phase. Main objective of this paper is to present researches results based on adaptation of gain scheduled control law that was initially developed for ARD capsule to lifting body re-entry control. It includes detailed definition, development and validation for lifting body re-entry application. Main interest of this so-called ARD-like control law is that all control gains are computed using analytic relations based on simplified models that may be implemented on-board. Final gain scheduling is reduced to 12 parameters linked to objective variation along the flight which means that ARD-like control law is robust to flight conditions. However, despite its robustness, such a control law still needs iterative process to respect all performance and stability objectives for the large number of varying parameters with huge domain of uncertainties. Among promising control method, LPV seems perfectly suited for such kind of problem and studies are on going to improve re-entry control design. Thus, preliminary results on longitudinal control laws using polytopic modeling and LPV control design are also briefly presented in this paper and compared to ARD-like gain scheduled control law for European re-entry vehicle. Studies are still on going to extend these results to full 3 degrees of freedom control.


Abstract. Small-amplitude compressional magnetohydrodynamic-type waves are studied in the magnetosphere. The magnetosphere is treated as a rarefied plasma with anisotropy in the kinetic pressure distribution. The parallel and perpendicular pressures are defined by general polytropic pressure laws. This double-polytropic model can be considered as a natural extension of the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model when the plasma is collisionless.  Generalized dispersion relations for surface and body waves are derived and analyzed for an isolated magnetic slab. The waves are confined to the slab. For specific polytropic indices, the results obtained in the (i) Chew-Goldberger-Low (CGL) double-adiabatic and (ii) double-isothermal approximations are recovered. Key words. Magnetospheric physics (MHD waves and in-stabilities; plasma sheet; plasma waves and instabilities)


Data-driven assistive wearable technologies are promising to support young adults with neurodiversity in inclusive education. Existing datasets focus on wearable sensor data of various activities from neurotypical people. However, no dataset exists including learning-related activity data from individuals with neurodiversity. The contributions of this paper include (1) WLA4ND, a dataset of learning activities performed by eight young adults with neurodiversity collected from smartwatch sensors. The activities are common learning tasks, including reading, writing, typing, answering follow-up questions, and off-task. (2) Evaluation of classification on WLA4ND with five activity recognition models, including conventional and deep learning methods. The Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network (CRNN) model achieved a balanced accuracy of 92.2% for user-dependent evaluations, while Federated Multi-Task Hierarchical Attention Model (FATHOM) achieved 91.8% for user-independent evaluations. This evaluation demonstrates that existing activity recognition technologies can be applied to neurodiverse populations. Also, WLA4ND can be used by researchers as a complement for activity recognition, automatic labeling, and next-generation assistive wearable applications.


AGV (automated guided vehicle) systems are extensively used in factory and warehouse environments. As most of these environments employ a mix of AGVs, manually driven vehicles, and human workers, safety is an important subject. Current AGV systems employ safety fields and laser scanners to ensure safety in their environments. These fields however are often primitive and do not take into account future AGV trajectory or intentions of agents in their vicinity. This results in inefficient operation of such AGVs. We propose a three-layered architecture that consists of safety fields that are formed around immediate future trajectory of AGV as well as on the predicted intention of an agent in AGV vicinity, resulting in more efficient AGV behaviour. Results are presented using real laser data from a small-sized lab AGV as well as an industrial forklift truck.


The primary cause of hight yield on rice was high temperature, adequate illumination and low humidity, it can excite production potential, increase N fertilizer utilization, then it increase indicator of harvest panicle and grain num-ber, reduced the incidence of disease, finally achieve high-yield.