This invention discloses a method for managing customers and increasing numbers of analog LAN in broadband MAN. When inbounding data packet, access layer Ethernet exchanger increases a mark containing VLAN ID for customer data packet, the accumulating layer broadband access server manages according to VLAN ID belonged customer in the mark to elimiante the increased mark to exchange data packet route on internet, when down bounding data packet the accumulating layer broadband access server identifies ID data packet belonged customer to increase a VLAN ID label for the said data packet; the access layer Ethernet exchange eliminates the label of increase VLAN ID. This invention can resolute customer on-net place in broadband MAN, without changing 802. IQ standard, without changing present Ethernet exchange, VLAN number can be increased.


Optical activity has been observed for the first time in a crystal of the non-enantiomorphous class \bar 4 CdGa2S4 is optically isotropic at 4872 A (20°C) and this allows observation of optical rotation for propagation in directions away from the c axis. The magnitude of the optical rotatory power is 17.3 deg.mm−1 along (100) and 11.6 deg.mm−1 along (110). The form of the optical rotatory power for general directions in the (001) plane has the predicted symmetry, showing positive and negative lobes. The refractive indices and birefringence are temperature-dependent and the point of isotropy shifts from 4825 A at 0°C to 5780 A at 400°C.


TC21 is
considered a new titanium alloy that is used in aircraft applications as a
replacement for the famous Ti-6Al-4V alloy due to its high strength. The effect
of single and duplex stage heat treatments on fatigue behavior of TC21 Ti-alloy
(Ti-6Al-2Sn-2Zr-3Mo-1Cr-2Nb-0.09Si, wt.%) was investigated. Two heat treatment
cycles were applied on as-received TC21 Ti-alloy. The first cycle was called
single stage heat treatment (SSHT). The other cycle was named duplex stage heat
treatment (DSHT). Typical microstructures of SSHT & DSHT composed of
primary equiaxed α phase, residual β phase and secondary α phase (αs). Secondary α phase was precipitated in the residual β phase due to low cooling rate using air cooling and aging treatment.
Morphology of α phase does not change after solution treatments, while their volume
fraction and grain size were changed. SSHT showed the highest fatigue strength
of 868 MPa due to high tensile strength, hardness and existing of high
percentages of residual β phase in the microstructure. However, DSHT reported lower fatigue
strength of 743 MPa due to increasing grain size of α phase. The fracture surface of fatigue samples showed cleavage ductile
fracture mode for both heat treatment cycles.


SUMMARY 28 Children operated for pyeloureteral obstruction causing hydronephrosis are reported. The results of the surgical treatment was ana-lized after a 4 years follow up. 25 pyeloplasties were performed and the best results corresponded to the more widely used Anderson Hynes tecnique (11 cases). Poor results derived from very dilated kidneys or the use of non dismembered tecniques. There as little improvement in the posoperati-ve radiological appearence but there was a better visibility of the union and a improved pass of contrast medium to the ureter. 8 patients underwent nephrectomy due to irreversible damage caused by severe atrophy or infection. 1 patient died 6 days after a nephrectomy having a normal opposite kidney for unknown reason. REFERENCIAS 1.— Baghdassarian G. Otga, Glaser R., Vanhoutte J. "Roentgen evaluation of renal size in pediatric age group. Amer. J. Dis. Child. 110: 162-165, (1965). 2.— Williams Innes. "Pediatric Urology". Butler-worths Ch. 10: 149, (1968). 3.— Scott J. Ztschr. Kinderchir Grenzgeb. 2: 338, (1965). 4.—• Puga F. y colabs. "Infecci6n urinaria en el nino". Rev. Chil. Ped. Marzo-Abril (1973). 5.— Zilleruelo y colabs. "Infeccion urinaria en el lactante". Rev. Chil. Ped. Nov.-Dic. (1971). 6.— Nixon H. Br. J. Surg. 40: 601. (1953). 7.— Williams DJ. and Kartaftis, CM. Br. J. Uro-lo. 38: 138. (1966). 8.— Mc Govern J. "The presenting manifestations of obstructive urinary anomalies in children". Pediatrics. 27: 3-16. (1961). 9.— Rodriguez O. "Experimental Hidronephrosis" J. Urol. 84: 704-705. (1960). 10.— Johnston JH. and Mathew R. "Obstructive foetal ureteral folds". Z. Kinderchir. 7: 500-507. (1969). 11.— Valayer /., Cendron J. and Petit P. "Dilatation pyelo-calicielle conge'nitale par anoma-lie de la jonction py£lo-ureterale chez l'en-fants. Annates de Chirurgie Infantile. Paris. 8: 99-117, (1967). 12.— Zincke HJ>. Kejalis. "Ureteropelvic Obstruction in Children". Surgery Gynec. and Obst. 139: 873, (1974). 249


An electronic system is described that programs output data of a neutron diffractometer. The neutron beam is passed through a fission detector, strikes the target, and is diffracted to the BF/sub 3/ detector. The fission detector, diffractometer, and scattering angle data are fed to the programmer. Programming of the fission detector data eliminates neutron flux variation errors. The programmer uses multi-cathode glow-transfer tubes as switches or control devices. (T.F.H.)


This paper describes cognitive-emotional theories of aging with the objective of providing new theoretical knowledge on aging phenomena. According to these theories, emotion and cognition determine distinct itineraries in terms of develoment. While cognition performance declines with chronological age at a lineal rate, emotion remains intact and even contributes to improve cognitive performance in the older segments of life.


Introduction: Sleep deprivation is a growing problem, especially among medical students who must meet high academic standards, as well as, their parent's expectations. Since poor sleep quality and daytime sleepiness have important consequences in the mental health of medical undergraduate students the management of these problems would begin with and be guided by assessment of these sleep-related and mental health parameters. Aim: To evaluate the sleep quality and effects of sleep deprivation on the psychological well-being and mental health of undergraduate medical students. Materials and Methods: This was a cross-sectional descriptive study conducted by Department of Psychiatry, G.S. Medical College and Hospital Pilkhuwa, Hapur, Uttar Pradesh, India, on undergraduate students, for a period of a month in May 2022. Four hundred medical undergraduate students from 1st, 2nd, 3rd part 1 and 3rd part 2 Bachelor in Medicine and Bachelor in Surgery (MBBS) years, who fulfilled the inclusion and exclusion criteria, were enrolled in the present study after their informed consent was taken. Epworth Sleepiness Scale (EPSS), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), Depression Anxiety Stress Scale 21 (DASS-21), and Psychological General Well-Being Index (PGWBI) were used to assess the participants. Sleep quality and sleepiness were correlated with anxiety depression, stress, and subjective general well-being using Spearman's coefficient with significance at 0.05 and 0.001 levels. Results: The study participants were in the age group of 17-24 years and majority of the students (n=130, 32.5%) were 20-yearold. Females accounted for near half of the study participants (n=190, 47.5%). Most of the students in the participant group had poor sleep quality with a mean of 6.75±1.811 and issues of daytime sleepiness (10.68±3.481). The DASS-21 revealed severe anxiety (15.5±2.473) and moderate stress (22.89±3.396) levels. Significant positive correlation was seen between the anxiety (r=0.110; p-value <0.05) and stress (r=0.452; p-value <0.01) index with EPSS. A significant positive correlation was found between anxiety (r=0.118, p-value <0.05), stress (r=0.410; p-value <0.01) and psychological well-being (r=0.119; p-value <0.01) and PSQI score. Conclusion: The study revealed that, many undergraduate medical students in different semesters slept insufficiently and struggled with daytime tiredness. Among the students, higher stress and anxiety levels, along with a low level of subjective psychological well-being were discovered. Additionally, the study revealed higher levels of anxiety and stress in medical undergraduates, who had poorer sleep quality and excessive daytime sleepiness. Also, students with poor quality of sleep had lower psychological general well-being.


Pediatric glaucomas are a heterogenous group of eye diseases associated in some cases to genetic syndromes. The objective of this study is to identify the different etiologies of glaucoma in children and to describe medical and surgical treatments in these patients in a tertiary referral hospital. Patients and Methods: Retrospective, descriptive and transversal study. Medical records analysis of patients diagnosed with glaucoma from 2011 to 2015. Age at diagnosis, laterality, etiology, associated syndromes, medical and surgical treatment and follow-up were gathered. Results: We identified 77 patients. Average age at diagnosis was 2.27 years.There was no gender predilection.The most frequent etiology was primary congenital glaucoma (63%) followed by glaucoma secondary to cataract surgery (19%). Sixty percent of all cases were bilateral. All patients underwent examination under anesthesia. Sixty-two patients (80%) required surgical treatment. There were 15 systemic and genetic diseases associated with pediatric glaucoma. Only two thirds of all patients continued their follow-up. Conclusions: Pediatric glaucomas are a challenge for ophthalmologists because they comprise a complex group of eye diseases with a difficult clinical approach due to systemic and genetic abnormalities, delayed diagnosis and high frequency of surgical treatment along with lack of follow-up.


Introduction to Economic Cybernetics introduces the reader to economic cybernetics, that is, the application of the principles of the theory of automatic control to the problems of managing the economic processes, and particularly the processes in a socialist economy. Topics covered include the general principles of regulation and control; cybernetic schemata of the theory of reproduction; the theory of stability of regulation systems; and a generalization of the theory of regulation. This book is comprised of five chapters and begins with an overview of economic cybernetics, followed by a discussion on the process of automatic regulation and how it functions, with particular reference to the basic formula of the theory of regulation and cybernetic interpretation of operations on operators. The following chapters focus on cybernetic schemata of the theory of reproduction; the dynamics of regulation processes; and the practical problems in regulation. The final chapter describes a general theory of regulation formalized as a linear differential-difference ""equation of response"", and gives the solution to this equation for both the homogeneous and non-homogeneous versions. This monograph will be a useful resource for practitioners of economics, physics, and mechanics.


A mathematical model with two different methods to represent the mass transfer in the biomass matrix, (series and parallel) is proposed to simulate a supercritical extraction unit. The model is solved using the method of lines and finite differences with flow correction. Using experimental extraction curves, both models were fitted fairly well, with equivalent accuracy. Two operating regimes were detected in the selected experimental conditions: equilibrium and mass transfer controlled. The last one is more difficult to simulate, requiring specific mass transfer parameters for series and parallel alternatives, for its accurate representation.


The mass media have given anyone who is remotely interested a general picture of what it is like to be a heroin user. Very few people, however, have any idea of what it is like to try to stop being an addict. Even addicts and ex-addicts provide a confused and frequently inaccurate picture. This article discusses the types of problems counselors encounter when they deal with those who want to stop using heroin and focuses on those issues about which most people seem unaware.


A long-term field study was carried out during 2000 to assess the yield response of soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] and wheat (Triticum aestivum L. emend. Fiori & Paol.) to K application in relation to advancing years of cropping, changes in K status in soil profile and to estimate the contribution of non-exchangeable K to crop uptake. Average yield data of 27 years showed significant response to applied K, resulting in 69.9% increase in yield of soybean and 20.0% increase in residual wheat crop. Year-wise yield response pattern exhibited gradual increase in K response with the advancing years. During 1973-79 and 1986-96, average yield response of soybean ranged from 7.22 to 11.7 kg seed/kg K and 22.71 to 25.73 kg seed/kg K respectively. The yield response of succeeding wheat to residual K also showed increasing trend from 2.42 to 4.77 kg seed/kg K during 1973-80 to 8.10-9.65 kg seed/kg K during 1985-93. After 27-year crop cycle, total removal of K by the crops exceeded K applied to the soil, showing a net negative K balance, ranging from 73.9 to 937.3 kglha. Soil analysis after 27 years of cropping, showed net depletion of K in the soil profile (0-45 cm) with varying magnitudes, depending on the yield responses to applied fertilizers and manurial inputs. Continuous annual application of recommended doses of NPK and 10 tonnes farmyard manure to soybean sustained not only higher productivity of soybean and residual wheat crop, but also resulted in build-up of available K (26.7 kg K/ha) and relatively lower crop mining of K from non-exchangeable pool (595.3 kg K/ha). In the treatments receiving NP or NPK, non-exchangeable K contributed 96.25 and 49.02% of total crop removal respectively. However, the contribution of non-exchangeable K decreased substantially to 19.3 8% in the treatment receiving continuous application of recommended doses of NPK and 10 tonnes of farmyard manure/ha.


Fatal road traffic accidents in Victoria in 1968 have been analysed with a view to describing the fatal accident situation prior to the introduction of compulsory wearing of seat belts. The results of the investigations reveal that there may be other accident countermeasures which may be at least as effective as compulsory wearing of seat belts.


A machine for dehulling fluted pumpkin seed ( Telfairia occidentalis ) was developed. The main objective of developing the machine was to provide a better substitute to traditional methods of dehulling the seed which contains edible oil of high medicinal and nutritional values. Traditional methods are full of drudgery, slow, injury prone and would lead to low and poor outputs in terms of quantity and quality of dehulled products. The machine is made of five major parts: the feed hopper (for holding the seeds to be dehulled before getting into the dehulling chamber), dehulling chamber (the part of the machine that impacts forces on seeds thereby causing fractures and opening of seeds coats for the delivery of the oily kernels), discharge unit (exit for oily kernels and seed coats after dehulling), the frame (for structural support and stability of all parts of the machine) and electric motor (power source of the machine).The development process involved design of major components (shaft diameter (20 mm), machine velocity (7.59 m/s), power requirement (3hp single phase electric motor) and structural support of mild steel angle iron), selection of construction materials and fabrication. ANSYS R14.5 machine design computer software was used to design the shaft and structural support; while other components were designed with conventional design method of using design equations. The machine works on the principle of centrifugal and impact forces. Performance evaluation was carried out after fabrication and 87.26%, 2.83g/s, 8.9% and 3.84%were obtained for dehulling efficiency, throughput capacity, percentage partially dehulled and percentage undehulled respectively.


I address three interrelated issues concerning the contents of experiences. First, I address the preliminary issue of what it means to say that experiences have contents. Then I address the issue of why we should believe that experiences have contents. Finally, I address the issue of what the contents of experiences are.


It is well known that energy spectrum of solar energetic particles (SEP), observed by ground-based neutron monitors (NM) and muon telescopes (in the high energy region; the transfer to the space from the ground observations is made by the method of coupling functions) and by detectors on satellites and space-probes (in small energy region), is significantly changed with time (usually from very hard at the beginning of event to very soft at the end of event). The observed spectrum of SEP and its change with time are determined by three main parameters: energy spectrum in source, time of ejection and propagation mode. In the past we considered the first step for forecasting of radiation hazard the simple isotropic mode of SEP propagation in the interplanetary space. It was shown that on the basis of observational data at several moments of time there could be solved the inverse problem and determined energy spectrum in source, time of ejection and diffusion coefficient in dependence on energy and distance from the Sun. Here we consider the inverse problem for the complicated case, namely, the mode of anisotropic diffusion and kinetic approach. We show that in this case the inverse problem can also be solved, but there is need in neutron monitor data at least from several locations on the Earth. We show that in this case the solution of inverse problem starts to work well sufficiently earlier than solution for isotropic diffusion, but after 20-25 minutes both solutions give about the same results. It is important that obtained results and reality of used model can be controlled by independent data on SEP energy spectrum in other moments of time (is not used at solving of inverse problem). On the basis of obtained results one can estimate the total release energy in the SEP event and radiation environment in the inner heliosphere, the magnetosphere and atmosphere of the Earth during SEP event. © 2008 BBSCS RN SWS. All rights reserved.


Based on a motivational perspective of passion, we investigated the associations between passion for the Internet and level of self-determined motivation toward the couple's relationship. Our results show that an obsessive passion toward the Internet was associated with lower self-determination in the couple, greater conflict in the relationship, and low levels of dyadic adjustment. In contrast, harmonious passion toward the Internet was associated with greater self-determination in the couple, less conflict, and greater dyadic adjustment. Results suggest that use of the Internet is not necessarily associated with ncgative interpersonal outcomes. Rather, it appears that the way the activity has been internalized is associated with how individuals internalize their reasons for behaving in other domains.


Protein secretion from rat parotid slices was studied by measuring the rate of release of 3H-protein from tissue superfused with Krebs–Ringer bicarbonate medium. Isoproterenol (IPR) and dibutyryl 3...


The results of these studies are the basis for using a wound dressing based on bacterial cellulose in the comprehensive pathogenetic therapy of burn wounds. The process was studied on a model of III B degree planar burn wounds of rabbits. The experimental studies of the efficiency of the Derma RM wound covering have shown that its use in local treatment of uninfected deep burns prevents complications of the process of wound healing, and reduces the wounds healing time.


This study discussed the use of Hedges to observe cooperative principle rule, especially in debate. As is known that in a debate, usually a moderator gives questions to the debaters and the debaters try to answer the question. And when they are not sure about their answer, hedges are used which function to make things fuzzier as defined by Lakoff (1975). This study's aims are to analyze the use of hedges for observing the cooperative principles rule and to analyze the interlocuter's responses in the 2020 American presidential election debate between Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. The researcher adopted the theory about understanding hedges from Lakoff, (1973), the hedges' function from Fraser (2010), and the cooperative principle theory from Grice maxim (1983). This research is qualitative research and to analyze the data the researcher uses discourse analysis. The sources of the data were the transcripts and the videos of Joe Biden and Donald Trump's presidential debate. From the results of the study, the researcher found that the 2020 American presidential candidate, Joe Biden, broke the maxim quality 4 times and obeyed the maxim quality once, for the maxim quantity Biden neither broke nor obeyed the maxim quantity. while for maxim relation, Biden broke 5 times and obeyed once, and for maxim manner, Biden broke once and 0 obeyed with maxim manner. While the 2020 American presidential candidate, Donald Trump broke the maxim quality 4 times and obeyed the maxim quality once, for the maxim quantity Trump neither broke nor obeyed the maxim quantity. while for maxim relation, Trump broke 5 times and obeyed once, and for maxim manner, Trump broke once and 0 obeyed with maxim manner.

Keywords: Hedges, Cooperative Principle, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump debate


T he study of advanced ceramics and more so the application of advanced theoretical principles to the design and development of future materials is clearly a highly specialised task. The preface discloses that much of the text is derived from lectures, papers and posters presented at the Max-Planck Institut, the University of Stuttgart, including work done at the Pulvermetallurgisches Laboratorium (PLM). Chapter 1 is extremely brief – three pages of text bolstered by a wodge of 30 brightly coloured prints of modern ceramic objects. It is perhaps common knowledge that modern engineering ceramics are compounds of metallic and/or non-metallic elements – oxides, such as alumina and zirconia; carbides, of silicon, titanium and tungsten; nitrides, silica, cermets and nano phase materials. Chapter 2 is more substantial and provides a detailed account of chemical, crystal and microstructures. Four types of bonding – ionic, covalent, Van der Waals and metallic forms are identified. A single example of each helps to make the distinction clear. Block, Bragg and Schrodinger mathematical formulations and experimental methods (used to measure atomic spacings) are explained in more detail, than is often the case. Lattice types, crystal types and defect types are sections fully supported by scores of fine crystallographic images. There are, in fact, 103 plates in Chapter 2, the last of which fig. 2.103 shows a bio-compatible ceramic hip joint endoprostheses, made real by a hint of blood and gore. Such joints are said to be far superior to those made of metal. Chapter 3, Chemical, Physical and Mechanical Properties of Ceramics is by far the longest chapter. The first twenty pages are devoted to phase diagrams which show phase equilibria for twenty or more different ceramic compounds. Numerous isothermal Structural Analysis: with Applications to Aerospace Structures


Impact shear tests of the Kolsky thin‐wafer type were used to determine the effect of temperature and strain rate on the critical resolved shear stress for slip in aluminum single crystals at strain rates of 104 sec−1 and in the temperature range 20° to 500°K. The aluminum deformed in a viscous manner in that the flow stress was proportional to the plastic strain rate. The behavior was found to be temperature‐dependent. The results are discussed in terms of dislocation damping models where the friction force acting on a dislocation results from, at cryogenic temperatures, electronic viscosity, and at higher temperatures, phonon viscosity. The theories predicted general agreement as to the magnitude of the observed damping but some discrepancy was found to exist between the observed and theoretical temperature dependence of the damping.


The structure, thermal stability and corrosion behavior of the Ti40Zr10Cu36Pd14 bulk metallic glass and its crystalline alloys have been investigated in this paper. The results of potentiodynamic polarization measurements revealed that the Ti-based bulk metallic glass and its crystalline counterparts examined were spontaneously passivated by anodic polarization with the passive current density about 10 � 2 A/m 2 . The higher corrosion resistance for the Ti-based bulk metallic glass and partly crystalline alloys was attributed to stable and protective passive films enriched with titanium and zirconium. The Ti40Zr10Cu36Pd14 bulk metallic glass and its partial crystalline alloys produced recently without toxic elements are expected to be applied as biomaterials. [doi:10.2320/matertrans.MJ200713]


Optically active α-arylpropionic acids constitute a group which involves many useful compounds. We selected a microorganism which has the ability to realize the asymmetric decarboxylation of α-methyl-α-phenylmalonic acid to afford optically active α-phenylpropionic acid and it identified as Alcaligenes bronchisepticus KU 1201. When the aryl group was phenyl, 4-chlorophenyl, 6-methoxy-2-naphthyl or 2-thienyl, the substrate afforded optically active α-arylpropionic acid in high optical and chemical yield.


We show in this paper the existence of the random attractor of the stochastic Cahn-Hilliard equations with an additive white noisein(2(G),‖·‖-1).


A 57 year old woman experienced six days of daily thunderclap headaches, which spontaneously resolved. Computed tomography showed a small volume of peripheral subarachnoid haemorrhage, and computed tomography angiography showed "possible vasculitis."

Magnetic …


The high resolution direction of arrival (DOA) estimation has been an important area of research for a number of years. Many researchers have developed a variety of algorithms to estimate the direction of arrival. Another important aspect of the DOA estimation area is the development of high speed hardware capable of computing the DOA in real time. In this research the authors have first focussed on the development of parallel architecture for multiple signal classification (MUSIC) and estimation of signal parameters by rotational invariance technique (ESPRIT) algorithms for the narrow band sources. These algorithms are substituted with computationally efficient modules and converted to pipelined and parallel algorithms. For example one important computation of eigendecomposition of the covariance matrix has been performed using Householders transformations and QR method.


This Privat Docent thesis presents three of my recent studies that explore the development and the mechanisms of large-scale epileptic networks in the kainate mouse model of TLE using high density EEG combined to multiple intracerebral recordings. We reveal that a large-scale epileptic network develops and invade both hemispheres, generating epileptic patterns and altering functional connectivity at the whole brain level. We further show that low frequency synchronization and cross frequency coupling are key mechanisms at works in these large-scale pathologic networks. To introduce these works, I first discuss the fundamental, clinical and translational scientific contributions summarizing current knowledge and providing new insight on the large-scale aspects of focal epilepsies, with a particular focus on mesial temporal lobe epilepsies.


The borrowing and rearrangement of musical content, especially in the digital context, raises difficult questions for copyright law. There is significant community support for a loosening of the restrictions on the derivative (and particularly creative) use of copyright material. Law reform is called for. This paper discusses the possible introduction of a new exception to copyright infringement but notes that in the drafting of any such exception not only the economic rights but also the moral rights of the originating author need to be taken into account.


This paper aims to add new insights about the approximation of convex bodies by polytopes by illuminating the connection between sphere covering and approximating a convex body in the symmetric difference metric. Our main contribution is a new concentration inequality for the symmetric volume difference of the Euclidean unit ball and a random polytope with a restricted number of facets. This inequality is a dual analogue of the results of Vu. In this paper, we derive concentration inequalities for polytopes with restricted number of facets whose normals are chosen uniformly and independently from the ball, and all facets have the same height one. As a corollary, we derive a dual variance estimate for the facets case that is analogous to results of K\"ufer and Reitzner. We also reveal some new insights on approximating the Euclidean ball by polytopes with a restricted number of vertices.
As a second contribution, we show that the Delone triangulation numbers $\text{del}_{n-1}$ and Dirichlet-Voronoi tiling numbers $\text{div}_{n-1}$ differ at most by a factor of $c\ln(n)$, and hence are asymptotically equal as $n\to\infty$. We also discuss applications of this result to asymptotic best approximation of convex bodies by inscribed and circumscribed polytopes.
This paper also provides new results on "random sphere covering".


This paper presents a new flying sensor system to capture 3D data aerially. The hardware system, consisting of a omni-directional laser scanner and a panoramic camera, can be mounted under a mobile platform (e.g., a balloon or a crane) to achieve the aerial scanning with high resolution and accuracy. Since the laser scanner often requires several minutes to complete an omni-directional scan, the raw data is distorted seriously due to the unknown and uncontrollable movement during the scanning period. To overcome this problem, 1) we first synchronize the two sensors and spherically calibrate them together, 2) our approach then recovers the sensor motion by utilizing the spacial and temporal features extracted both from the image sequences and point clouds, and 3) finally the distorted scans can be rectified with the estimated motion and aligned together automatically. In experiments, we demonstrate that the method achieves a substantially good performance for indoor/outdoor aerial scanning in the applications such as Angkor Wat 3D preservation and manufacturing 3D survey with respect to other state-of-the-art methods.


India has a parliamentary system. But articled in India's Constitution is a provision that authorizes the President to occasionally enact legislation without involving Parliament. Such presidential legislation are called ordinances, not Acts; and rather than enact, the President promulgates them. Textually, ordinances are bounded by several 'controls'. They are limited to circumstances when at least one House of Parliament is not in session, and the President is satisfied that the circumstances are such that immediate action is necessary. And without such formal parliamentary approval after a specified duration, they cease to exist. But after sixty years of constitutional practice these controls are redundant; aggressive political conduct and forgiving judicial interpretations made them so. What was exceptional and temporary is now 'normal' and 'permanent'. As a result, India effectively has two 'Parliaments' – the President, formally speaking, is like a parallel Parliament. This article explains how this second – or, alternative – Parliament came about, and its implications for India's more traditional Parliament. The article locates its central claims within a larger body of comparative law scholarship on presidential systems and executive lawmaking, arguing that the powers of India's President (in acting through the Council of Ministers) rival the strongest presidencies globally.


This paper explores the impact of occlusions in video action detection. We facilitate this study by introducing five new benchmark datasets namely O-UCF and O-JHMDB consisting of synthetically controlled static/dynamic occlusions, OVIS-UCF and OVIS-JHMDB consisting of occlusions with realistic motions and Real-OUCF for occlusions in realistic-world scenarios. We formally confirm an intuitive expectation: existing models suffer a lot as occlusion severity is increased and exhibit different behaviours when occluders are static vs when they are moving. We discover several curious phenomenon emerging in neural nets: 1) transformers can naturally outperform CNN models which might have even used occlusion as a form of data augmentation during training 2) incorporating symbolic-components like capsules to such backbones allows them to bind to occluders never even seen during training and 3) Islands of agreement (similar to the ones hypothesized in Hinton et Al's GLOM) can emerge in realistic images/videos without instance-level supervision, distillation or contrastive-based objectives 2 (eg. video-textual training). Such emergent properties allow us to derive simple yet effective training recipes which lead to robust occlusion models inductively satisfying the first two stages of the binding mechanism (grouping/segregation). Models leveraging these recipes outperform existing video action-detectors under occlusion by 32.3% on O-UCF, 32.7% on O-JHMDB & 2.6% on Real-OUCF in terms of the vMAP metric.


Computer programming is considered a fundamental subject in most of engineering and computer related programs in many universities. Usually, the teaching responsibility is given to a single department, which will serve the entire university. The limitation on staffing most of the time, results in the creation of bigsized classes. This in turn, will produce voluminous workload to the teaching staff, hence, rendering close monitoring of students' performance next to impossible. Relief might be possible by venturing into the realm of a Computer-Assisted Assessment (CAA). This paper describes our experience in designing and implementing a CAA System that is based on distributed and agent-oriented architectures. The system design caters for two primary objectives; to harness the power of distributed computing and to enable the integration of CAA into existing E-Learning System. We have analyzed and extracted important functionalities required for the system and describe agent's roles for each of the functionalities. We also describe the communication and accessibility aspect of the agents. We have developed an independent assessment module and performed some tests in a computer laboratory environment. We present in the last section of the paper, our findings regarding the feasibility, scalability and accuracy of the assessment module's as well as its limitations. Keywords— Agent-based system, Computer programming, Computer-Assisted Assessment (CAA), E-learning INT HE increasing number in programming classes [1, 2] warrants the use of computer supported systems in relieving lecturers' academic tasks. Student assessment has become an important issue because of the large number of students involved. For a fundamental course such as computer programming, it has become necessary to be able to oversee students' weekly progress to make sure that every student is at par with one another. Considering the difficulties involved, Computer-Assisted Assessment (CAA), might be able to offer some help in reducing lecturers' marking chores and results management [3]. As a consequence, the number of assessment can be increased gradually and student performances can be monitored very closely. RODUCTION Manuscript received June 12, 2009: Revised version received June 13, 2009. This work was supported by the Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia under Grant 600-IRDC/SSP/DANA 5/3/Dsp (64/2008). Suraya Masrom. Author is with the Universiti Teknologi MARA, Perak, MALAYSIA, Phone: 605-3742720; Fax: 605-3742261; e-mail: suray078@ perak.uitm.edu.my. Abdullah Sani Abd. Rahman. Author, is a lecturer at Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Bandar Seri Iskandar, Perak, MALAYSIA. Phone: 6053687490; Fax: 605 -3656180; e-mail: email@example.com We believe the incorporation of CAA into E-learning environment will be beneficial to both lecturers and students. Students and lecturers in an E-learning environment can be located anywhere in the globe, they don't have to synchronize their meeting and lecturer can give their notices, notes, assignment task anytime. The scope of functions in CAA for E-learning environment discussed in this paper are not just limited to the automated marking process but are also geared towards the possibility of providing active resource discovery and delivery. In this work, we rely on the agent oriented concepts and technology to create pro-active environments for the e-learning system. Agents are autonomous programs that are given specific tasks in a distributed environment. They take inputs from the environment and make decisions on what output to produce based on constraints and priorities given to them by the programmer.


Oleic acid is one of the unsaturated fatty acids which frequently appears in food products such as edible fats and oils. A molecule of oleic acid possesses a double carbon bond, C=C, which is responsible for a transition to a new phase when pressure is applied. This work presents the results of optical observations of such a transition. The observations were made in two cases, the first being static p–T conditions under 60 MPa at 20°C and the other the dynamic application of the pressure up to 350 MPa. The obtained visualization reveals differences in the creation of the phase and in its further appearance. Some crystal forms may be recognized. These results tend to be of interest for food engineers due to increasing interest in high-pressure food preservation among nutritionists and medical scientists concerned with fatty acids.


The broad application area and accompanying challenges make machine learning-based recognition of handwritten scripts a demanding field. Individuals' writing practices and inherent variations in the size, shape, and tilt of characters may increase the difficulty level. Deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) models have been successful in solving pattern recognition problems, but at the expense of a considerable number of trainable parameters and heavy computational loads. The proposed work addresses these problems by using the shifted window (SWIN) transformer method to recognize handwritten Devanagari numerals for the first time. In the presented model, the SWIN transformer is finely tuned to withstand popular DCNN models, such as VGG-16Net, ResNet-50, and DenseNet-121, in terms of recognition accuracy, space requirement, and computational complexity. The model successfully attained a recognition accuracy of 99.20% with only 0.218 million trainable parameters and 0.0912 giga floating-point operations per second (FLOPs). This indicates the validity and soundness of the proposed model for recognizing handwritten Devanagari numerals.


Introduction: The use of non-surgical retreatment is a conservative approach compared to periapical surgery for treating persistent infections. To ensure effective treatment, the retreatment procedure should be performed efficiently using suitable instruments. The purpose of this study is to compare the time required for two different rotary instruments to remove endodontic material from the root canal and evaluate the amount of remaining filling material on the root canal wall


A synopsis is presented as a guide to both the abridged and complete versions of the novel 'Come in Spinner' written by Dymphna Cusack and Florence James. The sections that were cut in the original edition published in 1951 have also been included in the guide.


In this paper a Gallium Nitride MMIC technology for high-power amplifiers between 27 GHz and 101 GHz based on 150 nm- and 100 nm-gate technologies is presented. The GaN HEMT MMICs are designed using coplanar waveguide transmission-line-technology on 3-inch semi-insulating SiC substrates. The measured output power of several dual-stage GaN HPAMMICs amounts to 33–34 dBm at 27–28 GHz with a reproducible measured small-signal gain of 10 dB. Optimized GaN test structures matched to 27 GHz provide a maximumPAE of 28%with an associate output power of2 W/mm at 27 GHz in cw-operation. In pulsed operation with 10%duty-cycle, a PAE level of >35% is achieved with a power density of 4.5 W/mm, again at 27 GHz. GaN HEMT MMICs at 60 GHz provide gain levels of >6 dB per amplifier stage, while a MMIC at 101 GHz reaches 3.2 dB of gain.


The throttle velocity control characteristic is analysed in this paper. To eliminate the serious overshoot coused by time lay, the Smith pre estimater is used. The high precision velocity tracing is achieved by double loop and PID control system. The application in practice is successful.


Certainly, Carabidae, Curculionidae and Chrysomelidae are the beetle families that are most studied and the most inspiring for scientific papers. Those three families are also among the most numerous and present the most colorful beetles. Publications go from simple articles in the past to sophisticated papers using cladistics, molecular biology and statistics, in pure research or, for leaf-beetles or weevils, in agriculture. Thousands of papers are published each year on Chrysomelidae. Probably the actual described number of Chrysomelidae, estimated last century as 35.000 species, reaches 45.000 and there probably exist 55.000 to 60.000 species around the world. Canopy species are among the least known, true also for minute species living in litter or mosses

Coleoptera can easily exceed 1 to 2 million species and, in the past (in the Mesozoic, but mostly in Cenozoic), they must have been much more numerous. Only Curculionidae and perhaps Staphylinidae can surpass the number of Leaf-Beetles. Curculionidae are present everywhere, even in the sub-Antarctic islands and in Greenland, where Chrysomelidae are missing, even if present there during the Pliocene. Still many species of weevils remain to be described, among the endogeous, myrmecophilous, floricolous species. Symposia on Leaf Beetles, originally organized every four years, now perhaps every two years, together with International and European Congresses of Entomology, or independently, generally are published later in books, which tend actually and only very recently to be published electronically. Many international publishers were responsible for those books and we are indebted to many specialists and co-editors. There were also regular annual meetings of chrysomelid specialists in the United States, correlated with the Entomological Society of America meetings, grouping often part of the specialists from the previous symposia, the next one probably coinciding with the International Congress of Entomology in 2016. Annual meetings of chrysomelid workers were also held in Japan each year. One chrysomelid symposium was organized in Patiala, India, with 29 papers in March, 1989. Sporadic chrysomelid symposia are also held with French and Belgian workers in Paris or elsewhere, in Costa Rica, with Wills Flowers, as in 1995, etc. Regular meetings take place each year in Germany together with the meetings (58 actually) of German-speaking coleopterists. Many European chrysomelidologists attend it also. Those German meetings actually are held in Beutelsbach (Fig. (Fig.1),1), on a hill, in a charming country inn, with a big meeting room and all video facilities. There were also meetings on Chrysomelidae in Pretoria, Republic of South Africa, connected with the local Entomological Society, in Milano, Italy, in Uberlandia, in Brazil, in 2005, etc. The Academia Sinica in China has been and is an active centre of leaf beetle research under Shi-xiang Chen (Fig. (Fig.2)2) and his successors. The death of Chen in 1988 was a big loss for the chrysomelidologists, but new generations have taken up the torch.

Figure 1.

View of the venue of the meetings of the German-speaking coleopterists, Landgut Burg vicinity of Beutelsbach, 24.10.2009, southwest Germany (near Stuttgart, photo: M. Schmitt).

Figure 2.

Prof. Shi-xiang Chen (5.11.1905 – 25.1.1988), from a booklet of the Chinese Academy of Sciences 1992.

So, progress of our knowledge on the Chrysomelidae, on taxonomy, distribution, physiology, biology has been relatively fast the last 30 years. A Newsletter, devoted to leaf beetles, Chrysomela, was founded in 1979 by Terry Seeno and Eric Smith. It is still alive, now entirely in colour, with a new editor, Caroline Chaboo, and that has been also a stimulant for all chrysomelid lovers.

The enormous Georg Frey Collection of beetles (originally housed on the Frey estate in Tutzing) is now in Basle Museum, Switzerland. The Frey Chrysomelidae were initiated in Munich by Jan Bechyne, and most of those beetles are authoritatively identified, but unfortunately a general collection, a former UN dream, has never been made assembling all world insect types. Those types are mainly in the primary museums in London, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Moscow, Basle, Washington, Honolulu, Canberra, Beijing, Brussels, Tervueren, Tokyo, Pretoria, Maracay, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and several other big or smaller collections. Due to possible damage in the mail, saving collections staff time and to hastened receipt, museums now try to send excellent digital photographs instead of the specimens themselves. On the spot, examination, remains always possible. Jesus Gomez-Zurita for instance visited the National Museum of Prague (with Achard collections) to see the Bechyne Timarcha types in 1997. Which resulted many excellent papers on the genus, its classification, and many molecular biology studies.


In the natural world, seeds grow into plants, and the seed diversity ensures significant vegetation heterogeneity. Here, we show the growth of colloidal structures from starting seed nanoparticles by controlled radical polymerization, which resembles the natural processes of plant growth from seeds. Specifically, nano-/microsized architectures with a surprising diversity can be "grown" from snowman-type Janus nanoparticle seeds (JNPS) by atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) technique. The current approach aims at concentrating ATRP initiators asymmetrically in the bulk of one JNPS lobe. After the initiating of the polymerization, the addition of monomers promotes JNPS growth into asymmetric nano-/microcolloidal architectures. Depending on the types of the JNPS and on the growth conditions, the grown architectures could adopt dish-, basket-, cocoon-, flower-, helmet-, mushroom-, dumpling-, and pumpkin-like geometries. Additionally, the surfaces of these grown architectures could be controlled to hav...


Technological advancement in the setting of atrial fibrillation (AF) ablation has decreased radiation exposure and complications associated with the procedure. Yet, transseptal puncture (TSP) remains a challenging step that necessitates accurate guidance. We describe our experience performing TSP under electroanatomic (EA) guidance.


The objective of this paper consists in describing and analyzing the position of organized, institutionalized religions in the Czech Republic. It focuses on the role of organized religion in the public sphere of the Czech society, and it pays particular attention to the role of the Roman Catholic Church. The principal aim of this paper consists in describing the secularization in the Czech society, both on the micro (individual level of secularization), and the macro level (societal level of secularization). The juxtaposition of the two levels reveals a discrepancy: the individual level of secularization may be considered relatively high, whereas religion persists on the societal level and comes to be publically discussed on several occasions. The juxtaposition of the two levels of secularization is based on the theory by Karel Dobbelaere. It is based on Dobbelaerei¯s thesis on the need to distinguish the diversity of the processes connected to secularization on various levels of the society. The paper aims to provide explanatory theoretical framework for the seemingly paradoxical situation when religion continues to play a non-negligible role within the highly secularized Czech society on the societal level. The description of the individual level of secularization in the Czech Republic in this paper is based on the recent censuses carried out by the Czech Statistical Office. The available statistical data reveal a high level of individual secularity within the Czech society: the indicators of religiosity in relation to the organized forms of religion (religious proclamation, religious affiliation and church attendance) are decreasing. Nevertheless, organized religion continues to influence the public sphere of the Czech society, as the cases of the legal fight over the ownership of St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague and the Church Property Restitution Bill reveal. The results of the analysis are discussed in relation to the concept of secularization and to the concept of collective memory. The concept of secularization explains the tendencies towards separation of the state and religion and also the decrease of the importance of religion on the individual level. The concept of collective memory provides an explanation for the attempts of the secular state to preserve and strengthen the role of religion.


. We introduce and study a multivariate function that counts nowhere-zero flows on a graph G , in which each edge of G has an individual capacity. We prove that the associated counting function is a piecewise-defined polynomial in these capacities, which satisfies a combinatorial reciprocity law that incorporates totally cyclic orientations of G


In this work, oil-in-water emulsions (O/W) were prepared successfully by membrane emulsification with pore size membrane. Sunflower oil was emulsified in aqueous Tween80 solution with a simple crossflow apparatus equipped with ceramic tube membrane. In order to increase the shear-stress near the membrane wall, a helical-shaped reducer was installed within the lumen side of the tube membrane. This method allows the reduction of continuous phase flow and the increase of dispersed phase flux, for cost effective production. Results were compared with the conventional cross-flow membrane emulsification method. Monodisperse O/W emulsions were obtained using tubular membrane with droplet size in the range corresponded to the membrane pore diameter of . The final aim of this study is to obtain O/W emulsions by simple membrane emulsification method without reducer and compare the results obtained by membrane equipped with helix shaped reducer. To indicate the results statistical methods, type full factorial experimental designs were evaluated, using software called STATISTICA. For prediction of the flux, droplet size and PDI a mathematical model was set up which can describe well the dependent variables in the studied range, namely the run of the flux and the mean droplet diameter and the effects of operating parameters. The results suggested that polynomial model is adequate for representation of selected responses.


Brazilian multinationals (BrMNs) have enhanced their positions among the world ́s largest companies. As they grew up in a protected and closed economic environment, focusing mainly on the large Brazilian market, it has been argued that most of those firms lack a truly global mindset (GM). Furthermore, their internationalization trajectories have tended to prioritize less psychically distant markets (Latin countries, for instance). Therefore, GM and psychic distance seem to play a relevant role in their global expansion, imposing challenges to their achievements abroad. In order to examine the influence of GM and psychic distance on the performance of BrMNs ́ subsidiaries, we carried out a survey involving a set of 64 parent companies and 76 subsidiaries. Empirical analysis employed hierarquical linear modeling, in order to explore interactions between headquarters' and subsidiaries' data. BrMN ́s GM scores suggest that: a) although, unexpectedly, most firms have scores above medium, only a few are "fully globally minded"; b) firms are in different stages regarding GM; furthermore, some have higher strategic GM than cross-cultural GM (and the converse); c) some firms, the "domestic market oriented" ones, have fairly low scores; d) regarding strategic GM, some companies lack international commitment, even concerning the development of a network of relationships abroad; e) finally, some BrMNs companies face constraints concerning crosscultural GM that involve skills in foreign languages, cultural sensitivity, and local adaptation. Not surprisingly, most subsidiaries (59.2%) are located in the three less psychically distant regions: Latin America, Latin Europe, and Portuguese speaking Africa. A noteworthy aspect is the concentration of BrMNs ́ subsidiaries in North America (27.6%). This study employed hierarchical linear modeling to examine multilevel effects involving GM, psychic distance, and performance. This approach enabled examining interplay between headquarters and subsidiaries, providing further insights that are not possible through the single level approaches that are frequently employed in GM research (e.g. Arora et al., 2004; Nummela et al., 2004). In this case it was possible to observe that a parent company ́s cross-cultural mindset is related to the performance at the subsidiary level. Global mindset dimensions do not seem, however, to diminish the challenges imposed by psychic distance on Brazilian subsidiaries. Although our results show that some of the most internationalized Brazilian companies have a high global mindset, a closer look reveals that the stages of GM development may vary greatly amongst firms. Furthermore, it seems that there is still much to be done, especially regarding cross-cultural competences. In fact, this study has highlighted that such dimension may have a role in the achievements of BrMNs abroad, affecting their subsidiaries ́ performance positively. Psychic distance, in turn, impacts it even more, but negatively (Could this be a specific characteristic of late movers?).


This text can be considered an overview of the organization and actions implemented in Quilombola School Education in the State of Minas Gerais, by the State Department of Education, from 2015 to 2018. It aims to report the successful actions implemented, which pointed out ways for the development of studies on Quilombola School Education, based on dialogues and planning from the diagnosis presented by the Multidisciplinary Working Group - established to ascertain the main demands of this type of teaching. Therefore, the axes of raising demands were listed, relating them to public policies as a potent instrument of identify strengthening.  The positive impact of this state quilombola construction schools for students, as the pedagogical representativeness and specificity has been putting into practice at these schools, situates and presents this educational modality as a field of resistance and struggle to promote equity. In fact, we intend to indicate ways to make the construction of an anti-racist and emancipatory school education.


Digital height models (DHM) covering larger areas can be generated by means of optical or synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images taken from space. An overview of the sensors and the characteristics of generated height models is given. With very high resolution optical satellite stereo pairs a system accuracy of 1.0 ground sampling distance (GSD) standard deviation can be reached. Of course this is not the accuracy of a DEM, which is also influenced by interpolation and includes areas with limited contrast and vegetation, leading to lower quality. In addition, the difference between digital surface models (DSMs), describing the visible surface, and digital terrain models (DTMs), describing the bare ground, has to be respected. The same problem exists for SAR images used by either interferometric SAR (InSAR) or by radargrammetry if no InSAR configuration is available. It has to be ascertained whether existing regional or nearly worldwide DEMs can be used instead of especially produced elevation models. The SRTM DEM and ASTER GDEM are both available, free of charge via the Internet, but their resolution and accuracy are limited. Higher resolution DEMs, such as the SPOT DEM (also named Reference 3D) or NextMap, are not free of charge and they do not cover the whole earth. This will also be the case for the TanDEM-X height model, which will be available in 2014. If more detailed DEMs are required, they can be determined by automatic image matching of very high resolution satellite imagery.


We have applied disorder-sensitive high-energy ion scattering together with the C-V method to an interface study of Al2O3/InP, which was prepared with well-controlled molecular beam deposition. Low interface state densities (the minimum value near the midgap is ∼1×1011cm-2eV-1) have been obtained in the present work. Measurements of the interface disorder for these samples suggest that there is a correlation between the interface state density and the interface disorder. It is necessary to lower the interface disorder to obtain low interface state densities.


Much concern has been expressed about disturbing domestic developments associated with the "War on Terrorism" that represent some erosion of American values - the general theme being that if the terrorists lead us to abandon or compromise some of our fundamental freedoms then they have won. However, there is an older theme in American political history that has been neglected: a national preoccupation with foreign affairs leads to bearing heavy burdens in national security and expands the power and capabilities of the state at the expense of the citizens. National security concerns tend, over time, to enlarge the threat to America from their own state and various elements in their society. This emerges more sharply when the nation is at war because then domestic support for government intrusions into or impositions on the lives of the citizens grow markedly, as do impositions by certain private entities. This trend seems inherent in many of the capabilities that are being developed to maintain US dominance in information warfare and expand the "Revolution in Military Affairs" of which it is a part. To identify what we may be up against and better understand the possible responses to it, this paper examines past instances of developments of this sort.


We present a novel realization of Starobinsky-type inflation within Supergravity using two chiral superfields. The proposed superpotential is inspired by induced-gravity models. The K¨ahler potential contains two logarithmic terms, one for the inflaton T and one for the matter-like field S , parameterizing the SU (1 , 1) /U (1) × SU (2) /U (1) K¨ahler manifold. The two factors have constant curvatures − m/n and 2 /n 2 , where n , m are the exponents of T in the superpotential and K¨ahler potential respectively, and 0 < n 2 ≤ 6 . The inflationary observables depend on the ratio 2 n/m only. Essentially they coincide with the observables of the original Starobinsky model. Moreover, the inflaton mass is predicted to be 3 · 10 13 GeV. n and m of T in the superpotential and the K¨ahler potential. We show that imposing a simple asymptotic condition on n, m and n 11 , a Starobinsky-type inflationary potential gets generated, exhibiting an attractor behavior that depends only on the coefficient n 11 , which determines the curvature of the SU (1 , 1) /U (1) K¨ahler manifold. Moreover, this model of inflation preserves a number of attractive features: (i) The superpotential and the K¨ahler potential may be fixed in the presence of an R -symmetry and a discrete symmetry; (ii) the initial value of the (non-canonically normalized) inflaton field can be subplanckian; (iii) the radiative corrections remain under control; and (iv) the perturbative unitarity is respected up the reduced Planck scale


EDITOR,—It seems a surprising omission from the Waldocks' recent commentary 1 on the future of microsurgical instrumentation not to have mentioned contamination with specific reference to transmissible spongiform en-cephalopathies (TSE). It is known that prion protein is not reliably destroyed by most disinfection or sterilisation procedures, including autoclaving at a temperature as high as 138°C for an hour. 2 Although more eVective methods, such as exposure to combinations of alkali and heat, are being developed 3 they may require instruments to be particularly durable. Also fine, and particularly, toothed instruments require thorough cleaning before sterilisation by current procedures, to avoid retention of tissue. Although there is no clear evidence of the transmission of TSE from one patient to another by ophthalmic surgery other than through corneal transplantation, 4 the only extant Department of Health guidelines state that any instruments used on patients with Creutzfeldt-Jakob (CJD) or suspected of this condition must be destroyed. Patients with classic sporadic CJD are predominantly in their 60s and may come into contact with ophthalmologists because of cataract, glau-coma, and macular degeneration or because of visual symptoms caused by their condition. 5 The number of individuals in the UK who are incubating variant CJD (vCJD), believed to be the human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), is unknown. Prion protein has been shown to be present in the tonsils and appendices of its victims; the possibility of it being present in the eye, and particularly in the retina and optic nerve of apparently healthy individuals, must unfortunately be entertained. The Department of Health has identified neurosurgery and oph-thalmology as areas of particular risk, though arguably many forms of routine surgery could, in theory, pass on prions from one patient to another via contamination of instruments. The only certain way to avoid the as yet unquantifiable risks of ophthalmic (or any set) surgical instruments as vectors of transmissible disease is for them to be disposable. Even then, the temptation to reuse disposable instruments for cost containment will be present. The Medical Devices Agency has already issued guidelines on devices that touch the eye, in particular contact lenses, though the full implementation of these recommendations is not possible without the eye services grinding to a halt. Nevertheless, there are situations when disposable instru-mentation could be implemented—for example , eye banking, without compromising standards or indeed increasing costs, by saving on tracing and autoclaving. We agree that surgeons, …


"That Was the Wild East" presents critical insight into popular film culture and art house cinema in Germany from 1990-1999. It examines box-office hits and cult films, such as the "Trabi comedies" and unification farces, which delighted local and international audiences, but which have been granted scarce critical attention up to this point. The first detailed account of the representation of German unification on film to appear, either in English or German, this work provides valuable and engaging source material otherwise inaccessible to non-German readers.In her focus on a range of "unification films," Leonie Naughton analyzes impressions of unification fostered in films from the East and West, along with the comic and tragic anxieties these films attribute to life in the "new" Germany. The ways in which German filmmakers represented unification throughout the 1990s are discussed with reference to a broad range of recent German films, and Naughton examines both divergent and convergent cinematic impressions of life in a recently unified Germany by 1990s filmmakers.Those interested in film studies and film history, German history and culture, as well as German unification and recent developments in German cinema, will find this book especially appealing.Leonie Naughton is a research associate, The University of Melbourne, Australia.


As the P-type iterative learning control algorithm is sensitive to the initial error and the output error disturbance, and the PD-type iterative learning control algorithm can easily amplify the noise and reduce the robustness of the system,a PD-type iterative learning tracking control algorithm for repetitive nonlinear time-varying systems with any desired output and bounded disturbances is investigated.By using the desired trajectory,the desired control and tracking error expectations memorized in the process of iterative learning,the learning controller is designed based on the variable batches of forgetting factors.Based on theλnorm theory and the Bellman-Gronwall inequality,the necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of the learning gain are discussed,and the uniform convergence of the control algorithm is analyzed to ensure that the batch error of the closed-loop tracking system is bounded.The robustness and the dynamic performance of the system are improved by the algorithm.Simulation on the tracking control of the single-joint robot arm illustrates the effectiveness of the proposed method.


Recent significant research on wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has led to the widespread adoption of software-defined WSNs (SDWSNs), which can be reconfigured even after deployment. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient routing algorithm for SDWSNs. In this algorithm, to make the network to be functional, control nodes are selected to assign different tasks dynamically. The selection of control nodes is formulated as an NP-hard problem, taking into consideration of the residual energy of the nodes and the transmission distance. To tackle the NP-hard problem, an efficient particle swarm optimization algorithm is proposed. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm performs well over other comparative algorithms under various scenarios.


ABSTRACT Bulgaria signed the European Union accession treaty in 2005. Accession caused an increase in the volume of inward foreign direct investment flows (IFDI). We analyse World Bank BEEPS firm-level data for 2007 to understand the characteristics and performance of foreign firms in Bulgaria. Regression analysis reveals that foreign firms are larger, have lower capital-to-labour ratios, are more likely to export and are more likely to locate in Sofia. However, foreign firms have had limited success in Bulgaria. They do not exhibit higher sales growth and, in manufacturing, carried out lower capital investment in machinery than domestic firms. The numbers of visits from tax officials is the same for domestic and foreign firms in manufacturing, and lower for foreign firms in the service sector. However, firms with higher exports-to-sales ratios and higher absolute sales were subjected to a higher number of visits from tax officials. These findings suggest that a range of institutional challenges remain for foreign firms in Bulgaria.


Wedescribethedesign,fabrication,andmeasurementofa2Dbroadbandgradientindexacousticlensinair.The index of refraction is tuned by controlling the dimensions of acoustic metamaterial unit cell inclusions designed through numerical simulations. The lens was fabricated in plastic through rapid prototyping stereolithography, and measurements of the sound field show good agreement with the theoretical lens performance. The broadband performance of the lens is confirmed for frequencies ranging from 1.5 kHz to 4.5 kHz.


This study investigated the influences of the types of bundle tickets promotion strategy, scarcity messages and consumers involvement on purchase intentions. 2(Bundle ticket promotion types: price-discount vs value-added) * 2(Scarcity message: quantitative vs temporal) * 2(Involvement: high vs low) three-way mixed factorial design was composed to verify the effects of study. 150 people in their 20s and 30s residing in Seoul and Daejeon have responded to the survey and total of 132 responses were analysed. Data analysis was done with SPSS 19.0 program and three-way ANOVA, simple interaction effects and simple main effects analysis were conducted. The results of this study are as follows. First, there was significant difference between price-discount promotion and value-added promotion in terms of purchase intentions. Second, there was significant interaction effect between scarcity message and types of bundle ticket in terms of affecting purchase intentions. Third, the differences of purchase intentions based on both scarcity message and involvement, and types of bundle ticket and involvement were not significant. Lastly, the effects of scarcity message, bundle ticket promotion, and involvement on purchase intentions were significantly different. This study presents more enhancing sales promotion which is efficient and multi-dimensional marketing strategy plans that can sells tickets for performances more effectively, and expands from limited research areas through empirical analyzing about tickets for performances.


This paper introduces the calculation method of the magnetic field which is generated in ring core of secondary winding by the current which flows in U-primary conductor of current transformer. The calculation formulas are derived. The method of improving magnetic field of core is given.


In this paper we proposed a theorem, which gives a sufficient and essential condition of n-extensible graph. A detailed proof of this theorem is given.


Objective To investigate the effet of uribe brooklyn and edaravone in treatment of acute cerebral infarction fruit. Methods From January 2010 to January 2013, 66 patients with acute cerebral infarction were divided into the control group and treatment group of 33 patients, two groups were given lower blood pressure, hypoglycemic, maintain water and electrolyte balance, prevented complications and other treatment. Control group was given edaravone injec- tion 30 mg in 250 mL of 0.9% saline infusion, once day, total 14d; treatment group combined with uribe brooklyn 0.15 PNA units in 0.9% saline 100 ml static drops, once day, total 14 d. The efficacy of two groups of patients were com- pared. Results The total effective rate of the treatment group was 93.9%,the total effective rate of the control group was 75.8%, the effect was compared between two groups, the treatment group were significantly better than control group(P0.05). After treatment 3 months, ADL scores of the two groups patients significantly improved in the treat- ment group compared with the control group; After 14 days of treatment, NIHSS score of the treatment group was signif- icantly lower than the control group, and the NIHSS of the treatment group compared with the control group decreased more significantly(P0.05). Conclusion Uribe brooklyn and edaravone in treatment of acute cerebral infarction have no significant adverse reactions, can significantly improve the patient's symptoms and improve daily living, it is the pri- mary hospital and applied widely.


Neutrophil aging is the process through which neutrophils released from the bone marrow into circulation acquire specific phenotypic and functional changes over time. After neutrophils age in circulation, they return to the bone marrow or other organs for clearance. Aged neutrophils are highly proinflammatory and can potentially contribute to tissue injury if their return to and clearance within the bone marrow is dysregulated. We have found that the development of pulmonary fibrosis in mice is associated with decreased numbers of aged neutrophils within the bone marrow compared to non-fibrotic mice 21 days after induction of fibrosis, indicating that neutrophils are not returning to the bone marrow for clearance after aging in circulation. Indeed, we observed a corresponding increase in the numbers of aged neutrophils in peripheral blood and bronchioalveolar fluid (BALF) of fibrotic mice compared to non-fibrotic mice, supporting the idea that pulmonary fibrosis prevents neutrophil migration back to the bone marrow after aging. Pulmonary fibrosis is a disease characterized by aberrant wound healing and lung and vascular injury. In accordance with this, we have observed increased levels of extracellular DNA and neutrophil elastase in plasma and BALF of mice 21 days after induction of fibrosis. These products are released in high levels by aged neutrophils during the formation of neutrophil extracellular traps, suggesting that aberrant aged neutrophil behavior may contribute to lung and vascular injury in pulmonary fibrosis. Our study seeks to understand the role of neutrophils in fibrotic disease progression by evaluating how fibrosis may alter the trafficking of aged, highly proinflammatory neutrophils.
 Supported by grants from NIH (R35 HL144481, F31 HL152509) and the Scleroderma Foundation (Arnold Postlethwaite, M.D. Memorial Pre-Doctoral Summer Fellowship Award)


A large number of transit systems have begun selling monthly transit passes during the last decade without the benefit of data on who buys transit passes, what effect buying a pass has on transit travel behavior, and how many bus trips per month are taken with a pass. This paper documents these characteristics of transit pass purchasers by using a large-scale data base collected after the introduction of a monthly transit pass in Atlanta, Georgia. The quantitative information presented can provide useful input to transit officials who are planning to start a transit pass program or who may want to evaluate and possibly modify an existing one. In general, the findings show that pass purchasers tend to reflect the characteristics of frequent transit users. Thus, those purchasing passes include relatively more women and minorities and those with lower incomes and fewer automobiles available. There exists, however, a large number of frequent transit users who have not bought a monthly transit pass. On average, the monthly transit pass was used to make about 52 one-way transit trips per month compared with the breakeven-price level of 40 one-way trips. Thus, significant savings can be realized by using passes compared with paying cash fares. Although two-thirds of the bus trips are made for commutation purposes, about two-thirds of the new trips taken after buying a pass were for nonwork purposes. Basically, this was because pass buyers were already frequent users of the system for traveling to and from work.


The Segmented mirror technology has become natural choice for any optical telescope larger than 8 meter in size, where small mirror segments are aligned and positioned with respect to each other to an accuracy of few tens of nanometer. Primary mirror control system with the help of edge sensor and soft linear actuator maintains that alignment which changes due to gravity and wind loading. For any segmented mirror telescope edge-sensor plays very critical role. It should have very high spatial resolution (few nanometer), large range, multidimensional sensing, high temporal stability as well as immunity towards relative change in temperature and humidity. Though capacitive sensors are widely used for this purpose, however, their inherent sensitivity towards humidity and dust make them unsuitable for telescopes operating at humid low altitude regions. Whereas, inductance based sensors, working on the principal of mutual inductance variation between two planar inductor coils, produce promising results in such a situation. Looking at stringent requirements, design and development of a planar inductive sensor is a challenge. As a first step toward sensor development, we have explored the design aspects of it. The inductive coils are first simulated and analyzed using electromagnetic FEA software for different coil parameters. The design considerations include optimization of coil parameters such as geometry of coils, trace densities, number of turns, etc. and operational requirements such as number of degree of freedoms to be sensed, range of travel, spatial resolution, as well as required sensitivity. The simulation results are also verified through experimentation. In this first paper we report the design and analysis results obtained from FEA simulations.


Rodents or Deer eating on your garden year after year? Make them stop! Take control of your garden again with these 5 Wildlife Control Tips for the home garden.


This paper is concerned with the problem of quantized H∞ control for discrete-time networked control systems (NCSs) with random communication packet losses. By choosing appropriate Lyapunov functional, sufficient conditions for the existence of quantized H∞ controller is derived, such that the closed-loop discrete-time networked control systems is asymptotically mean-square stable and preserves a guaranteed H∞ performance. An improved design criterion for quantizer is formulated in the form of sector-bounded, it might be simple in designing quantized H∞ controller. Finally, numerical examples are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.


Abstract Project work represents a significant component of most Bioscience degrees. Conscious that students are not necessarily given adequate preparation for their final year project, we have investigated two core elements in the 3rd year of a 4-year Honours programme. One element, an investigative project on aspects of insect biology, has run for several years. The second, an Experimental Design course, was run for the first time in 2003, in order to support the development of key skills for bioscience graduates. The present paper describes a multi-stranded evaluation of these core elements. Significantly increased marks were seen in the Insect Projects in the years after the Experimental Design course was introduced. It is clear from our analysis that the students valued the Experimental Design course, believing that it had made them better able to design experiments and critique the experiments of others. We therefore conclude that the Experimental Design course is, at least in part, responsible for students' improved performance in the Insect Projects. However, we do not believe that this is the only factor that has made the students engage with the Insect Projects more successfully than in previous years. From in-depth student interviews we identify a number of features of project work that are likely to enhance student engagement and motivation. Finally, we present some of the students' conceptions of their prior experiences of experimental work that, we believe, give an indication of why students do not always value the opportunities to undertake experimental work that their courses offer them.


The sprint discipline involves training to paddle in racing kayaks and canoes. The Cobourg Dragon Boat & Canoe club offers paddlers the opportunity to train in: K-4, K-2, K-1 (kayaks for 4, 2, and 1 paddler(s)), C-4, C-2, C-1 (canoes for 4, 2, and 1 paddler(s)) and war canoe (C-15) which holds 14 paddlers and a steersperson.


OBJECTIVE:To evaluate the effects of intervention on the irrational use of drugs in our hospital.METHODS:The typical cases of irrational use of drugs were screened by the supervision platform of clinical medication.After confirmed by pharmacy department,quality control office of medical department,2 models of intervention management were carried out,i.e.the model of publicity and education(MPE)and the model of publicity and education combined with administrative management(MPEAM).RESULTS:Comments of outpatient prescription,the case number of irrational use of drugs,index of antibacterial use were all improved significantly.The qualified rate of prescriptions rose to 96.40% from 90.08%,92.30%.The proportion of non-standardized prescriptions decreased from 6.50%,5.20% to 2.40%;that of inappropriate prescriptions decreased from 3.08%,1.99% to 1.10%;and that of extraordinary prescription decreased from 0.33%,0.50% to 0.11%.The rate of irrational drug use dropped from 15.35%,10.12% to 3.87%;the ratio of correct use of antibacterial increased from 78.02% to 85.40%;and that of prophylactic medication away from indication decreased to 11.10% from 21.12%(P0.001).CONCLUSIONS:Both of the models have some effect to improve rational use of drugs,but MPRAM is much better than MPE.The supervision platform of clinical drug use combined with comprehensive intervention measures can improve the rational use of drugs.


Time is an important indicator of workflow performance. Time performance of a workflow can be improved by optimizing the resources configuration of the workflow. The specialization/generalization level and the number of resources are two aspects of the resources configuration. A method was proposed to optimize those aspects in order to improve the workflow time performance with cost constraint. The method is based on a nesting genetic algorithm (GA) which extends the classic GA. The average throughput time of workflow instances was used as the indicator of workflow time performance. Some examples were given to illustrate the feasibility and validity of the method.


In order to treat polymers in oil recovery wastewater from poly flooding,a batch reactor with numerous lamp-houses was developed,and the degradation of polyacrylamide(PAM) by O3/H2O2/UV processes was studied in this reactor.Besides,the effects of operating parameters were investigated.It was found that PAM was degraded efficiently by O3/H2O2/UV processes,and the degradation rate of PAM was in direct proportion to the PAM concentration.In addition,both O3and H2O2 had optimum dosages,and the degradation rate didn't increase when O3 exceeded its optimum dosage,but the degradation rate decreased rapidly when H2O2 exceeded its optimum dosage.When the H2O2 dosage exceeded 27.8 mg/min,the degradation rate of PAM by O3/H2O2/UV was less than that by O3/UV.Moreover,the apparent reaction rate increased with the increasing UV dosage,and decreased along with the increasing pH.


OBSERVATION On January 2001, B.A aged 35, was referred to our department for irradiation of undifferentiated nasopharyngeal carcinoma, and revealed by epistaxis and cervical mass. The initial examination revealed a firm and mobile middle left jugular-carotid lymphadenopathy measuring 4×2 cm. The initial CT scan of the nasopharynx detected a thickening of the posterolateral wall of the nasopharynx filling the Rosen Muller dimple and the Eustachian tube and infiltrating the choanae. The parapharyngeal fat, the base of the skull and the endocranium were respected. The extension check-up (chest X-ray, abdominal ultrasound and bone scan) was normal and the tumor was classified T3N1Mo (TNM 1997). The patient underwent 3 cycles of chemotherapy (CT) based on adriamycin and cisplatin with partial clinical and radiological response followed by locoregional cobalt-60 radiation at a dose of 74 Grays (Gy) in 37 fractions (2 Gy / fraction; 5 fractions / week) on the nasopharynx and cervical lymph nodes initially invaded. Prophylactic irradiation was delivered to the rest of cervical areas at a dose of 54 Gy. The treatment was completed in September 2002. The patient was regularly monitored at the consultation and the follow-up clinical examinations found radiation induced cutaneous sclerosis grade 3 (RTOG) .In September 2014, 12 years after the end of the locoregional radiation, the patient consulted again for a left latero cervical mass who had appeared and had been growing up since 3 months. The CT scan of the nasopharynx and neck showed an expansive process infiltrating the left muscular structures. This process is heterogeneous with necrotic zone non enhanced by the PDC. A biopsy of this mass was practiced and the histological examination revealed a malignant tumor proliferation made of fusiform cells corresponding to a grade II sarcoma. The radiation fields were reviewed and we concluded that the tumor occurred in the irradiated area. A new check-up was ordered and returned negative. The decision of the multidisciplinary meeting was to begin a CT before a new evaluation.


An improved raisin harvester including a front fork for sliding under a raisin laden tray, a draper web situated above the fork for engaging the trays and sliding them along the fork to a conveyor mechanism having a tray receiving end located at the upper end of the fork, running shoes extending downward from the conveyor mechanism, a wheeled chassis having a frame to which an assembly including all of the foregoing is pivotally attached, a shaker mechanism attached to the frame so as to be situated under the discharge end of the conveyor mechanism, a hydraulic jack for adjusting the tilt of the fork, conveyor and draper web assembly, a hydraulic power system for driving the conveyor, draper web, shaker tray and hydraulic jack, a tow bar for attaching the harvester to a tractor or other motive implement which pulls the harvester, and a trailer hitch to which a carriage for raisin receiving receptacles may be attached.


In this work, dense non-isothermal plasma was considered. Dense plasma presents a great interest in both theoretical and practical areas of research and is actively studied in laboratory conditions (thermonuclear reactors, gas discharges, etc). In dense plasmas interparticle interactions play an important role, therefore, the models of interaction between particles have been used to study properties of such plasma. Different potentials [1-2], considering variety of effects such as the screening effects at large distances, the quantum-mechanical effects at small distances like diffraction and symmetry, have been used. The symmetry effect appears only in electron-electron interactions due to Pauli exclusion principle, when influence of different directions of spin of electrons is accounted for. The effects in non-isothermal plasma can also be significantly influenced by the difference between temperatures of electrons and ions [3]. Pair correlation functions obtained on the basis of these interaction potentials were compared with the results of classical mapping and computer simulations [4]. Thermodynamic properties were calculated using pair correlation functions.


In Part I of this series, I provided a brief overview of the preaching careers of the four Anghcan preachers here under consideration-Hugh Latimer, John Jewel, Richard Hooker, and Lancelot Andrewes-plus giving brief attention to the variations in their homiletical techniques. I also analyzed their concept of the Bible, which concept is fundamental to their exegetical methods. Herein I will continue the analysis of these methods under the subheadings of "Allegory," "Typology," "Literal Exposition of Scripture," "Other Exegetical Practices," "Use of the Church Fathers," and "Attitudes to Antiquity."


On the basis of concluding the definition of porcelain painting and its technique, this article analyzes the mode of combination of porcelain and furniture, and the possibility of applying porcelain painting in furniture, so as to extend the cultural connotation of modern inertial design by applying this new decoration material. Index Terms - Porcelain, Porcelain Painting, Furniture China has a long history of porcelain culture. Chinese porcelain boasts for its cultural deposits and unique manifestation, and become a brilliant achievement which is famous across continents. (1)The porcelain works nowadays are no longer regarded as articles for everyday use or artistic decorations, but a carrier of the long history of Chinese nation. The porcelain art has been developing with the modern art movement.


Reprint requests: Anthony Marmarou, Ph.D., Department of Neurosurgery, Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center, 1001 East Broad Street, Suite 235, P.O. Box 980508, Richmond, VA 23298-0508. Email: firstname.lastname@example.com OBJECTIVE: The precise incidence and prevalence of idiopathic normal-pressure hydrocephalus (INPH) is not known, and evidence-based clinical diagnostic criteria have not been developed previously. This report contains evidence-based guidelines for clinical diagnosis of INPH that are intended to facilitate future epidemiological studies of INPH, promote earlier and more accurate diagnosis, and ultimately improve treatment outcome. METHODS: The criteria for the diagnosis of INPH are based on evidence from the medical literature, supplemented as necessary by expert opinion. From 1966 to 2003, 653 publications on "normal-pressure hydrocephalus" were cited in MEDLINE, including 29 articles that met the more stringent criteria of including "idiopathic normalpressure hydrocephalus" in their title. Additional studies were considered that explicitly identified INPH cases and/or specified the criteria for a diagnosis of INPH. Studies were graded according to the class of evidence and results summarized in evidentiary tables. For issues of clinical relevance that lacked substantive evidence from the medical literature, the opinions of consulting experts were considered and contributed to "Options." RESULTS: Evidence-based guidelines for the clinical diagnosis of INPH have been developed. A detailed understanding of the range of clinical manifestations of this disorder and adherence to practice guidelines should improve the timely and accurate recognition of this disorder. CONCLUSION: It is recommended that INPH be classified into probable, possible, and unlikely categories. We hope that these criteria will be widely applied in clinical practice and will promote greater consistency in patient selection in future clinical investigations involving INPH.


Exchange of notes constituting an agreement recognizing the right of Norwegian nationals in Spain and Spanish nationals in Norway to vote in municipal elections (with annex). Madrid, 6 February 1990


Ethical reflection can be of use to any actor in the academic and research world, involving different responsibilities: scientific integrity, general or disciplinary – questions relating to ethics committees, research ethics, or even broader responsibilities relating to the uses and possible impacts of the work undertaken. This last type of concern has been taken into account under the vague notion of responsible research and innovation (RRI), which includes ethics at all levels, and therefore scientific integrity, but also participation and open science. However, it is not easy to combine ethics, participation and openness. This perspective thus proposes a renewal of the reflection on the categories of responsibility and integrity in Research and Innovation (R&I), as well as on the conditions of possibility of ethical participation, in regard to the publics involved, the operating modes and the purposes targeted and included in its operationalization.


The invention discloses a measuring device for perpendicularity and planeness of a vertical type rail and a measuring method thereof, and belongs to the technical field of measurement of the perpendicularity and planeness. The measuring device for the perpendicularity and planeness of the vertical type rail comprises a measuring unit and a positioning unit. The measuring unit comprises a total station or a theodolite or a gradienter. The positioning unit comprises a measuring rod, a connecting piece and a magnetic base. The measuring rod is fixed to the upper surface of the magnetic base through the connecting piece. The planeness of the bottom face of the magnetic base is smaller than 0.005 mm. The measuring method includes the steps of assembling, absorbing, zero returning, measuring unit position selection, eyepiece observation, adjusting, measuring point replacement and rail debugging. According to the device and the method, the measuring unit and the positioning unit are arranged in a separated mode, the positioning unit achieves accurate positioning through the measuring rod and attraction by the magnetic, and the purpose of accurate measuring of the perpendicularity and planeness in any space without being affected by external factors can be achieved.


Entourages in uniform spaces, being binary relations, may be easily described by polarities (i.e. Galois connections between power sets) and axialities (i.e. residuated pairs between power sets). Here we consider this in the pointfree context of the category of frames, establishing characterizations of uniformities in terms of either the quantale of Galois connections or the quantale of residuated pairs. In virtue of this we conclude that frame uniformities may be thought of as either a family of polarities or as a family of axialities. The latter is precisely Fletcher-Hunsaker's approach to frame uniformities, showing that Galois connections rather than entourages are at the root of this approach. Then we prove that the equivalence between the somewhat different approaches to uniform frames of Fletcher-Hunsaker and Picado is a consequence of a very general phenomenon on Galois connections. Besides, we present a categorical description for the composition of Galois connections that justifies its definition.


The aim of this study was a retrospective evaluation of the reproductive health of the male staff of the Kalinin and Kursk nuclear power plant (NPP). Material and Methods. Fertility indices were used for the evaluation of the reproductive health status (ability to have children) and the health status of their offspring. For the assessment of the fertility there were used data concerning the marital status, childbirths and radiation doses received by males, obtained from the questionnaires, developed as part of this study. The data about the health of newborns was obtained from information copied from the individual cards of pregnant history cases and infant history case. In total, in the study there was analyzed data on the marital status of 679 men from Kalinin and 631 men from Kursk NPP, as well as data on the 735 and 813 newborn in the families of staff of the Kalinin and Kursk NPP, and data on 1438 and 1284 pregnant women respectively. As control groups there were used data about health of newborns and pregnant women of cities of Udomlya and Kurchatov. The combined groups included 1549 newborns and of 2718 pregnant women. Results. Infertile marriages due to the male infertility accounted for 7.3% of the Kalinin NPP personnel, and 2.5% -of Kursk NPP personnel. The incidence and complication rates of the pregnancy in families of Kalinin and Kursk NPP staff are comparable with those in the control group of pregnant women and were 75.7%, 61.6% and 71.0%, respectively. Adverse pregnancy outcomes (spontaneous abortions and early neonatal death of the newborn) were recorded in 6.9%, 0.1% in the families of the personnel of the Kalinin NPP and 8.9%, 0.2% in the families of the personnel Kursk of the NPP complying with the control values of 7.6% 0.2%, respectively. The frequency of the birth of the health child corresponds to control values as 73.6% of the families of the personnel of the Kalinin NPP, amounting to 65.3% in the families of the personnel of the Kursk NPP and 69.7% in the control group. The relative risk of birth of a child with congenital malformations RR = 0,84 in the families of staff at Kalinin NPP and RR = 1.0 - at Kursk NPP. Conclusion. No impact of occupational exposure on the reproductive health was revealed for the male staff both at Kalinin and Kursk NPP.


To bridge the semantic gap between low level feature and human perception, most of the existing algorithms aim mainly at annotating images with concepts coming from only one semantic space, e.g. cognitive or affective. The naive combination of the outputs from these spaces will implicitly force the conditional independence and ignore the correlations among the spaces. In this paper, to exploit the comprehensive semantic of images, we propose a general framework for harmoniously integrating the above multiple semantics, and investigating the problem of learning to annotate images with training images labeled in two or more correlated semantic spaces, such as fascinating nighttime, or exciting cat. This kind of semantic annotation is more oriented to real world search scenario. Our proposed approach outperforms the baseline algorithms by making the following contributions. 1) Unlike previous methods that annotate images within only one semantic space, our proposed multi-semantic annotation associates each image with labels from multiple semantic spaces. 2) We develop a multi-task linear discriminative model to learn a linear mapping from features to labels. The tasks are correlated by imposing the exclusive group lasso regularization for competitive feature selection, and the graph Laplacian regularization to deal with insufficient training sample issue. 3) A Nesterov-type smoothing approximation algorithm is presented for efficient optimization of our model. Extensive experiments on NUS-WIDEEmotive dataset (56k images) with 8×81 emotive cognitive concepts and Object&Scene datasets from NUS-WIDE well validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.


The factors of formation and the dominant types of xenophobia in Russia during the period of the 9th - early 20th century has been considered in the article. The characteristic of the main types of xenophobia and their dependence on the set of cultural, historical, socio- political, socioeconomic factors in the development of the Russian society during the analyzed period of history has been presented. The author concludes that xenophobia in the Russian history performed as an adaptive defense mechanism of ethno-religious identity and an effective way for integration and mobilization of society at the time of crisis or external threat as well as political technology that uses "images of strangers" for the manipulation of mass consciousness.