Objective:To compare the features in the diabetic mellitus (DM) and non-diabetic mellitus (NDM) patients with peripheral arterial disease.Methods:216 cases with peripheral arterial disease were divided into two groups,the DM and NDM.The intima-medial thickness were detected on common carotid artery (CCA),carotid sinus (CS),brachial artery (BA), comon ilial artery (CIA),femoral artery (FA),profound femoral artery (PFA),superficial femoral artery (SFA),popliteal artery (PA),anterior tibial artery (ATA),posterior tibial artery (PTA) and peroneal artery (Peroneal A) through broad b and proble during the diastolic period.The distribution of pathologic change artery were analysed statistically.Results:The incidence of pathologic artery for Group DM was significantly higher than that for Group NDM (P0.01);The incidence of pathologic changes of CCS,CS and BA showed on significant difference (P0.05) between the two Groups;While the incidence of pathologic changes of CIA,FA,PFA,SFA,ATA,PTA and Peroneal A for Group DM were signigicantly higher than those for Group NDM (P0.01);Pathologic change occurred frequently in posterior wall and branch of vessles (P0.01).Conclusion:The atherosclerosis,it occurred frequently in posterior wall and branch of vessles,it in DM are more extensive than in NDM,it are more severe in artery of lower limb.


A plug-up casing type air conditioner is provided prevent heat loss and dew condensation by preventing heat energy of air from being transferred to an outer frame to an inner frame. A plug-up casing type air conditioner comprises an insulating casing including an outer plate, an inner plate and an end frame(114) having a closing part(115). A member for mounting the insulating casing to a corner frame part and a plane frame part with one touch scheme. The member includes a first fixing protrusion, a second fixing slot, a second fixing protrusion, a second fixing slot and an elastic fixing member. The first fixing protrusion is formed at one of a first frame side part(15) and the closing part facing the first frame side part. The first fixing slot is formed at one of the closing part and the first frame side part. The second fixing protrusion is formed at one of a second frame side part and the closing part facing the second frame side part. The second fixing slot is formed at one of the closing part and the second frame side part.


. The Public Works Department of Highways and Spatial Planning of South Sumatra Province is an element of implementing government affairs which is the authority of the provincial government in the field of public works and spatial planning for road and bridge affairs and spatial planning. In maintaining the quality of its employees' performance, the Public Works Department of Highways and Spatial Planning of South Sumatra Province regularly evaluate performance every 6 months. Based on the evaluation result will be determined employee who get reward and punishments. In obtaining more accurate and efficient evaluation results, a decision support system is needed that can help in providing recommendations for employees who get rewards and punishments. In this study, the WASPAS Method will be used because it can provide more accurate results with calculations that are quite simple and easy to implement. Also, this method can reduce mistakes or optimize judgment for the selection of the highest and lowest values.


A method for preparing a functionalized polymer comprising the steps of: preparing a polymer "pseudoviviente" polymerizing conjugated diene monomer with a catalyst a compound lanthanide quecomprende a methylaluminoxane and a halogen source; and reacting the polymer "pseudoviviente" with at least one functionalizing agent defined by the formula (I) ** ** Formula wherein R1 is a bond or a divalent organic group, comprising 0 to 20 carbon atoms, A is unsustituyente will undergo an addition reaction with a polymer "pseudoviviente" and Z is a substituent quereaccionara or interact with reinforcing fillers silica or black selected carbon queconsiste group aminophenyl N, N-disubstituted imine groups, cyclic amino, epoxy groups, gruposisocianato, isothiocyanate groups and amide groups, with the proviso that a, R1 and Z are substituents that noprotonen a polymer "pseudoviviente", where the functionalizing agent is defined by (a) the formula ** formula ** in which R1 and R2 are each divalent organic groups or trivalent organic groups if secombinen with R3 to form a cyclic group, and R.sup.3 is a monovalent organic group, or, if R3se combine with R2, R3 may be a divalent organic group; or (b) the formula Formula ** **


We made a study on real-time determination method for relative position using the laser-measured distance data between satellites. We numerically performed the determination of relative position in accordance with extended Kalman filter algorithm using the vectors obtained through nonlinear equation of relative motion, laser simulator for distance measurement, and attitude determination of chief satellite. Because the spherical parameters of relative distance and direction are used, there occur some changes in precision depending on changes in relative distance when determining the relative position. As a result of simulation, it was possible to determine the relative position with several millimeter-level errors at a distance of 10 km, and sub-millimeter level errors at a distance of 1 km. In addition, we performed the determination of relative position assuming the case that global positioning system data was not received for long hours to see the impact of determination of chief satellite orbit on the determination of relative position. The determination of precise relative position at a long distance carried out in this study can be used for scientific mission using the satellite formation flying.


This reference to the Sentencing Advisory Council was made by the Attorney-General and
Minister for Justice, the Hon Vanessa Goodwin MLC in July 2014. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive background in relation to the use of suspended
sentences in Tasmania. It is intended as a companion report to the Phasing out of Suspended
Sentences: Consultation Paper that sets out possible replacements for the suspended sentence
in Tasmania.


Introduction William Roush describes an Emergency Medical Service (EMS) system (ambulance service) as consisting of a "communications mechanism to initiate a response, a vehicle with personnel to provide treatment and transport, and a receiving facility to take the patient to." This definition is one that may be largely valid today but may not be so in the future. Current influences on ambulance services as systems, and the role of the ambulance paramedic as a practitioner, are likely to result in a modification of this definition in this country in the future, based on the concept of the public health model. One such example is the provision of care without transport, or referral to an alternative primary care provider. This paper discusses the application of a framework for identifying and examining these influences.


All the Corrobesch-DF-Nuklear coatings- black, yellow, blue, red and white- have been excellently decontaminable without and after radiation exposure with 3 x 105 Gy, despite the slightly higher absorbed doserate applied at KFA Jülich (DIN 55 991 requires :::;1.0 KGy/h). After a further increase to 3 x 106 Gy in the absorbed dose, with an absorbed dose rate up to 1.0 KGy/h conforming to the standard, the coatings black, yellow, blue were still excellent in their decontamination behavior. After exposure to 107 Gy all coatings irradiated at Gammaster in their irradiation room (150m3) with per manent air changes and at absorbed dose rates of 0.9- 1.0 KGy/h have been weil decontaminable, and the coatings irradiated at KFA Jülich in the 10 I vessel with discontinuous air changesandvariable absorbed doserate (0.22- 2.7 KGy/h) have still been fairly weil decontaminable only.


The SARTOM project has assessed SAR tomography and polarimetry techniques for the detection and classification of military targets under foliage or in high clutter environments. In this paper we present a summary of our results based on data acquired at L- and P-band.


In the summer of 2001, when I was newly in my role as the president of the American Counseling Association (ACA), Judy Lewis, then immediate past president of ACA, and I had an informal lobby meeting with several people during a conference. Those counselors, some of whom are represented in this special section, discussed the need for counselors to be better advocates for social justice. We also discussed the fact that many of us do not have the skills to be effective advocates. From that discussion came a task force composed of Judy Lewis, Mary Smith Arnold, Reese House, and Rebecca Toporek, whom I charged with the task of developing a set of advocacy competencies that could be used by practitioners as well as by counselor educators and students. Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (2001) standards, then and now, include a requirement that advocacy be taught, but we knew of no actual set of competencies. Now they exist. This group developed an outstanding three-dimensional model, available on the ACA Web site (http://www.counseling.org/Publications/). Although metaphors are always imperfect, they can help us remember and respond in a way that academic terminology does not always do. I have been using the metaphor of starfish, salmon, and whales to describe these competencies. The starfish represents the client/student; the salmon, the school/community; and the whale, the public arena. (Yes, I know starfish are now called sea stars because they are not really fish; however, in the story, the sea star is called a starfish, so I will stick with that term.) Let me elaborate. The story of the starfish is a familiar one. Briefly, a person walking on a beach is throwing starfish, stranded on the dry sand, back into the ocean. A passerby questions the utility of saving one starfish, given the number of stranded starfish on the beach and on beaches around the world. How could it possibly matter? Throwing another back, the person replies, "It matters to this starfish." When we help individuals, or empower those individuals to help themselves, we are responding at the individual level. It is well known that salmon in the Pacific Northwest are declining in number because of logging, dams, and power plants, among other things. Dams, even with fish ladders, block access to spawning grounds; the erosion from logging causes muddy runoff that makes water murky, affecting the ability of salmon to find their spawning grounds; and power plants discharge warm water that also affects the ecosystem salmon need to spawn successfully. …


V498 Cyg is an early-B-type binary known to show eclipses on a period of 3.48 d, and two sets of spectral lines. We present the discovery of a second set of eclipses, on a 1.44-d period, in the light curve of this object from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS ). We develop a model of the light curve to simultaneously fit the properties of both eclipsing binaries and apply this to the TESS observations. We are able to fit the light curve of the fainter system well, but the light curve fit for the brighter system is unable to reproduce either its asymmetric primary eclipse or its changing light curve shape. The available eclipse timing measurements are extremely scattered so we determine orbital ephemerides based only on the TESS data. We infer the physical properties of all four stars, estimating the masses of the components of the brighter binary to be 10 M⊙ and 11 M⊙, and of the fainter binary to be 6.5 M⊙ and 3.5 M⊙. The properties of the system may be reliably determined in future by obtaining radial velocity measurements of the component stars.


Now that the risks of climate change have been confirmed and the European States have declared their willingness to pursue ambitious objectives for producing electricity from renewable energy sources, it becomes crucial to take a look at the relative efficiency of the different incentive schemes used. Such schemes may focus on quantities – defining national targets and setting up bidding systems, or quota systems providing for green certificate trading-, or they may focus on prices-fixed feed-in tariffs. Clearly, these instruments are much the same as those used in environmental policies, with similar discussion involved in their choice. Whatever the system chosen, the role of the public authorities is quite specific: to stimulate technical progress and speed up the technological learning processes so that ultimately renewable energy technologies will be able to compete with conventional technologies, once the environmental costs have been internalised. A comparison of instruments must thus take into account the characteristics of the innovation process and adoption conditions – uncertainties regarding cost curves, learning effects – which means also looking at dynamic efficiency criteria. The authors examine the efficiency of the different incentive schemes for the development of renewable energy sources, both from a theoretical point of view by comparing price-based approaches with quantity-based approaches, and from a practical point of view by looking at concrete examples of how these different instruments have been implemented. The paper concludes that a system of fixed feed-in tariffs is more efficient than a bidding system, but highlights the theoretical interest of green certificate trading which must be confirmed through practice, given the influence of market structures and rules on the performance of this type of approach.


Background: Neuroprotection is a major therapeutic approach for ischemic brain injury. We investigated the neuroprotective effects induced by transplantation of human embryonic neural stem cells (NSCs) into the cortical penumbra 24 h after focal cerebral ischemia.


This 11th Rothkopf rankings of academic contribution to the operations research practice literature continues the series that Michael Rothkopf began in 1996 and that Ronald Fricker continued. I assess the activity of universities in the production of practice-centric operations research between 2009 and 2015 using the ranking methods of my predecessors. I further suggest an alternative measure to the two that have been in use. Finally, I provide a time-series view of the measures of contribution across a longer period extending back to the year the various measures began, the first such aggregation since the rankings' origination.


The blocking action of the local anesthetic (LA) drug bupivacaine applied to the isolated sheathed nerve trunk is potentiated by the use of alkaline media (increase in pH). There is a linear relationship between log-rate of block (min) and log-concentration of LA (uncharged concentration, mM). The linear regression equation for rate of block for slow conducting nerve fibers is steeper (faster rate of block) than that for fast conducting nerve fibers. Analysis of the effect of pH on the blocking action of LA drugs indicates the likelihood of support for our previous findings: (1) the rate of block of slow conducting fibers is faster than for fast conducting fibers, and (2) at steady-state equilibrium block fast conducting fibers are more profoundly blocked than slow conducting fibers because of a lower safety margin for transmission in fast fibers.


Electron stimulated reactions in thin GaAs oxide films have been investigated by x‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Thin oxide layers (≊0.7 nm) were grown on GaAs (111) surfaces at room temperature and excited oxygen exposures (107 L). The reactions were activated by irradiation of the oxide layer by an electron beam of extended area. The electron energy was allowed to vary between 10 and 120 eV while the current density was kept constant. The electron irradiation results in the breaking of the donor–acceptor As=O bond observed as a reduction of As2O5 to As2O3. The behavior of As2O5 and As2O3 spectra areas with the incident electron energies demonstrates that the breakage of the As=O bond is consistent with an Auger decay model. Furthermore, the electron irradiation also originates an increase of the As suboxide. However, a peculiar inhibition of the suboxide growth is produced for energies corresponding to the As and Ga 3d or oxygen 2s core level binding energies.


High school students have known as Gen Y or Z and their media using can be understand on their information-seeking behavior. This research's purposes were: 1) to analyze the students' motivation; 2) to analyze the critical thinking and academic verification; 3) to analyze the information-seeking behavior. This study used quantitative approach through survey among 1125 respondents in nine clusters, i.e. Central, East, North, West, and South of Jakarta, Tangerang, Bekasi, Depok, and Bogor. Schools sampling based on "the best schools rank" by the government, while respondents have taken by accidental in each school. Construct of questionnaire included measurement of motivation, critical thinking and academic verification, and the information-seeking behavior at all. The results showed that the motivations of the use of Internet were dominated by habit to interact and be entertained while on the academic needs are still relatively small but increasing significantly. Students' self-efficacy, performance and achievement goals tend to be high motives, however the science learning value, and learning environment stimulation were average low motives. High school students indicated that they think critically about the various things that become content primarily in social media but less critical of the academic information subjects. Unfortunately, high school students did not conducted academic verification on the data and information but students tend to do plagiarism. Key words : Student motivation, critical thinking, academic verification, information-seeking behavior, digital generation.


Various multi-hop applications in MANETs in general and VANETS in particular, use broadcasting as a method for propagating useful traffic information, paging a particular host, route discovery etc. to neighboring nodes located within a logical and geographical boundary. However broadcasting via the conventional mechanism leads to high level of network contention, and flooding at Data Link Layer which causes dropping of packets and loss of information. In VANETs the network topology is dynamically changing and self– arranging and a minor loss of packet or end to end delay may propagate in time and evolve in a chaotic scenario in real time use case. In this paper we have presented a novel routing algorithm – MARS. MARS is based on i-table approach analogous to IP-Table model as decision control mechanism in deciding the next hop node for packet forwarding. It mitigates BSP, specifically in VANET applications and scenario as we have considered the properties of VANET in our use case. A comparison of results with existing routing protocols viz. AODV and EIGRP for the defined performance metrics against that obtained with MARS in EXata Simulation environment has been shown.


Key Word : Cryptography; XOR method; JAVA ABSTRACT : Cryptography application file is created using the Java programming language. To write a Java script on the making of this application, use an editor called "Edit Plus". This application is an application that can be used to perform encryption and decryption of files. Encryption and decryption process itself using the bitwise exclusive OR (XOR) which is a method to perform encryption and decryption files. Bibliography (1994-2007) iii


Most of olive orchards growing in Spain receive excessive applications of N fertilizers (primarily soil application) without any criterion, contributing to groundwater (NO3- leaching) and atmospheric pollution. The experiment was conducted in order to study the effect of the amount and method (soil vs. soil and foliar) of urea application on leaf N concentration, yield, fruit size, tree growth, and oil content of mature olive trees (Olea europaea L.) cv. Picual. After six years of experiment, the results indicate that increasing the amount of N applied annually from 0 to 1 kg of N per tree did not result in an increase of yield, oil content or vegetative growth. However, leaf N concentration was higher when N was applied to both soil and leaves rather than only soil. Results support the hypothesis that annual applications of N fertilizer to olive orchards are not necessary in order to obtain good productivity and growth when leaf N is above the deficiency threshold. Also, N use efficiency seems to increase when urea is applied to leaves.


Introduction: The present study aimed to predict parental self-efficacy and hyper-anxiety symptoms based on the components of mindfulness in women with multiple sclerosis (MS). Materials and Methods: The statistical population of this descriptive-correlational study included all women with MS in Mashhad during March-Jun 2016 who referred for treatment to clinics, neurologists and psychological centers. The statistical sample consisted of 105 women with MS who were selected using convenient sampling method. In order to collect data, Parental Self-Efficacy Questionnaire, Beck Anxiety Inventory (BIA) and Mindfulness Questionnaire were used. Data were analyzed using multivariate regression method. Results: The results revealed that the components of mindfulness, judgment and non-reactivity can reduce anxiety significantly in women with MS. In addition, action with awareness, judgment and non-reactivity can increase parental self-efficacy (P<0.05). Conclusion: Due to the results obtained from the study, it is suggested that components of mindfulness, judgment and non-reactivity can increase parental self-efficacy and reduce anxiety among women with multiple sclerosis.


Metallic components undergo during complete lifetime complex loading conditions, which are a combination of mechanical, environmental as well as corrosive loading. The developments within the ULSAB-project allowed the enhancing of mechanical properties of steels, as for example for DP-and CP steel sorts. The corrosion resistance of high strength steels and of deep drawing steel can be only improved through coating technology, as for example through hot dipping in zinc or electrolytic zinc coating. Thermal joining of zinc coated steel sheets presents some difficulties, as the boiling temperature of zinc (907°C) is lower than the steel melting point. As a result of the eruption like evaporation of zinc, pores in the weld seam are present after solidification and the zinc coating near the weldment is spoilt and has to be reestablished. Furthermore the degassing of zinc influences negatively process conditions, as for example arc turbulences when MSG welding and wear of the electrons when resistance spot welding is performed. Even if solutions were developed, brazing of zinc coated steels with CuSi-alloys is nowadays mostly set when joining zinc coated steels. Nevertheless the high melting point of these filler materials (over 900°C) requires very restricted process strategies and damaging of the zinc coating near the brazing seam can't be avoided.ZnAl-alloy filler wires, on the contrary, allow to achieve low joining temperatures similar to the melting point of zinc in the region between 400-500°C and offer new possibilities in order to join zinc coated steels without damaging of the zinc layer. In this paper investigations regarding the set of different ZnAl-alloys (Zn till ZnAl15) for soldering zinc coated steels are reported. Investigations were performed with an Nd:YAG and with a diode laser and confirm the suitability of these alloys for joining these steel types. Mechanical behaviour is reported as well, as a further confirmation of the successfully set of Zn-Alloys for soldering applications.Metallic components undergo during complete lifetime complex loading conditions, which are a combination of mechanical, environmental as well as corrosive loading. The developments within the ULSAB-project allowed the enhancing of mechanical properties of steels, as for example for DP-and CP steel sorts. The corrosion resistance of high strength steels and of deep drawing steel can be only improved through coating technology, as for example through hot dipping in zinc or electrolytic zinc coating. Thermal joining of zinc coated steel sheets presents some difficulties, as the boiling temperature of zinc (907°C) is lower than the steel melting point. As a result of the eruption like evaporation of zinc, pores in the weld seam are present after solidification and the zinc coating near the weldment is spoilt and has to be reestablished. Furthermore the degassing of zinc influences negatively process conditions, as for example arc turbulences when MSG welding and wear of the electrons when resistance spot weld...


The impact of volatile organic compound (VOC) exposure on the electrical breakdown of GaN in the inter channel region of dual channel microcantilever heaters has been studied. Exposure to three different VOCs with different latent heats of evaporation resulted in changes in breakdown voltage of varying magnitudes that can be correlated with their latent heats. A physical model has been proposed to explain the observed shift in breakdown voltage upon VOC exposure based on changes in thermal and electrical profiles at the microcantilever apex, which is caused by the molecular interaction and amplified by its unique tapered geometry. The critical breakdown field of the inter channel GaN has been observed to reduce dramatically by almost 50 times compared to that of bulk GaN at room temperature. The inter-channel current rises dramatically at the onset of breakdown induced by VOC exposure, at specific bias voltages corresponding to VOCs, which can be utilized for detecting them with high sensitivity as well as selectivity.


The article deals with theoretical and practical aspects concerning the process of the personnel management system formation features of financial services enterprises and business entities and developing directions for their improvement. One of the totality of the components of an enterprise, as a complete production and economic system, along with the management of activities is personnel management. Basic approaches explain the meaning of the concept of «personnel management», its types and features of the formation of their system. Emphasis is placed on the latest and modern approaches in personnel management: candidate selection technologies, methods of personnel development. Based on the essence of the concept of «management», its specificity for the personnel of the enterprise is considered. The ability to develop adequate models and methods of managing them allows overcoming a large number of negative tendencies in the development of the enterprise and firm. Also, it allows entering the enterprise to a new level of production and economic activity. Key indicators are the general characteristics of the enterprise, analysis of its financial status and international economic activity. The process of formation of personnel management was investigated and problems of risk reduction during its implementation were identified. Considerable attention should be paid to strategic personnel management. In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to carry out the following research tasks: to analyze the theoretical and practical features of forming a personnel management system; analyzing the situation at enterprises and their sufficient staffing; development of recommendations on improvement of processes of formation of the personnel management system. The process of improving the head of personnel is a combination of problematic issues of the economic situation with the training of practical actions of the manager and specialist in a market economy. Combining effective


Human mobility estimation is crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic due to its significant guidance for policymakers to make non-pharmaceutical interventions. While deep learning approaches outperform conventional estimation techniques on tasks with abundant training data, the continuously evolving pandemic poses a significant challenge to solving this problem due to data non-stationarity, limited observations, and complex social contexts. Prior works on mobility estimation either focus on a single city or lack the ability to model the spatio-temporal dependencies across cities and time periods. To address these issues, we make the first attempt to tackle the cross-city human mobility estimation problem through a deep meta-generative framework. We propose a Spatio-Temporal Meta-Generative Adversarial Network (STORM-GAN) model that estimates dynamic human mobility responses under a set of social and policy conditions related to COVID-19. Facilitated by a novel spatio-temporal task-based graph (STTG) embedding, STORM-GAN is capable of learning shared knowledge from a spatio-temporal distribution of estimation tasks and quickly adapting to new cities and time periods with limited training samples. The STTG embedding component is designed to capture the similarities among cities to mitigate cross-task heterogeneity. Experimental results on real-world data show that the proposed approach can greatly improve estimation performance and outperform baselines.


Is reading worth it? Absolutely! The legendary courtroom advocate Louis Nizer once said that reading five books about famous trials can equate to the experience of actually trying a case. More recently, a magazine reported some similar advice from Earl Nightingale, the "man who founded the self-help industry in the 1950s." Nightingale counseled: "Read for an hour a day —about 4 percent of your week—in any subject you want to master. In 3 years' time, you'll be an expert in the field." Becoming an expert in the profession of arms ought to be the goal of everyone in uniform, but especially in the JAG Corps. Self-directed reading can help accomplish that goal. Accordingly, you will find below a book list that might help you gain that expertise. Most of these books are not law-related per se. Why? Well, besides the fact that I'm not smart enough to come up with a good law book list, knowing the law is often the easy part of being in the JAG Corps. What most junior (and many senior) JAG Corps people lack is a good foundation in the art of war. This list is largely aimed at rectifying that deficiency. Of course, to provide legal services in context, it is imperative that we know and understand our client. Achieving that kind of insight cannot wait for professional military education (PME) courses; in any event, PME will not alone suffice. Real military professionals make self-study of human conflict in all its dimensions a life-long enterprise. There is really no other way except personal initiative. My list is certainly not the only one. The Chief of Staff recently established a reading list for all Air Force members. This is a good starting point for your professional reading program, and it can be found online at http://www.af.mil/library/csafreading/. Some of the books appear on my list as well—I'll mark them with an asterisk.* You may find this helpful in determining where to start. Another interesting source of recommendations is the National Defense University's reading list, which has links to the other services' lists. It is found at http://www.ndu.edu/info/ReadingList.cfm. As the title suggests, this is a very subjective list. There is really no magic to it; it is a collection of books that I happen to find useful. The selections do reflect my view that many operations in the future will still find a small "footprint," where a JAG or paralegal will be functioning on staffs—perhaps as the only attorney or paralegal—and in situations where leadership ability will be sorely tested. Readability is a big qualifier as well. I've omitted many superb books (classics, in fact) solely because I thought they were too long or otherwise too difficult "reads" (even though several of the ones that made the list are challenging—for me anyway). The list is designed to give you a broad intellectual foundation in military matters; it is not, for example, aimed at providing technical answers to a lot of specific problems. Be warned, however, that some reputed military classics are missing, e.g., Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels—hey, I'm not a Civil War fanatic, so shoot me (only kidding!). Although there are many books out there about Afghanistan and/or Gulf War II, there are only two to recommend at this point (Air Power Against Terror and The Assassins' Gate). Neither one is a definitive text, but it is probably too soon to expect a considered history to emerge. (While I do find Yossef Bodansky's, The Secret History of the Iraq War fun, it isn't sufficiently credentialed to recommend.) And there are more gaps based on my personal tastes (and, unfortunately, my limited knowledge!). Consequently, it would be a good idea to gather recommendations from other people as well. Brigadier General Charles J. Dunlap, Jr.


Adaptation to climate change has become an important policy question in recent years. Agriculture is an economic activity that is most sensitive to climate change. We evaluate the dynamic effects of productivity change and individual efforts to adapt to climate change. Adaptation actions in agriculture are evaluated to determine how the climate affects production efficiency. In this paper, we use the bi-directional distance function method to measure Japanese rice production loss due to climate. We find that (1) accumulated precipitation has the greatest effect on rice production efficiency and (2) the climate effect on rice production efficiency decreases over time. Our results empirically support the benefit of the adaptation approach.


Ranu Grati's Morphometry Study Using GPSMAP 585 and GIS . In the study of pollution load capacity of a reservoir or lake, its required information such as innudation area, average of depths and innudation volume, but those data at sometimes unavailable and out of date. The aims of this research are to find out depth distribution in Ranu Grati and represent it on a map. Depth map or bathymetry map that resulted is show morphological condition that can be used for further study e.g calculation of Ranu Grati capacity for aquaculture. Area of inundation, inundation volume and average depth of Ranu Grati can be figured out by using Garmin GPSMAP 585, Sentinel 2a imagery, BingMap and GIS analysis with ArcGIS according to those mapping data. Visualization of the mapping result through 3D view is used to increase understanding Ranu Grati morphometric conditions such as for Ranu Grati carriying capacity for aquaculture etc.. The result shows maximum depth that recorded during mapping is 121, 9 m. Meanwhile, area of inundation and volume are 1.734.223,07 m 2 and 124.491.952,55 m 3 respectively.


There is no doubt that investment is important in the development and development of infrastructure, represented by various service facilities, power stations, water and sewage networks, and roads. Also, investment in the development of the industrial sector and the increase of sectoral interactions contribute to achieving human development and developing the skills of workers in the various economic sectors. Accordingly, the Kuwaiti economy is one of the most important economies in the regional region in the Middle East, as Kuwait is one of the oil-exporting countries. As the Kuwaiti economy enjoys many prominent components and factors that have contributed to attracting foreign direct investment. The reader should know that most of the natural and mineral resources that exist in Kuwait are exploited through investments, which are characterized by containing huge amounts of these resources, but most of these investments are focused on the oil sector. Therefore, investment contributes to the transfer and localization of advanced technology to Kuwait by attracting foreign investments, especially direct, which the Kuwaiti government seeks to encourage investors to invest through privileges and guarantees offered to investors, as well as the security and political stability that Kuwait enjoys. In addition to providing stimulating policies and procedures to advance the Kuwaiti economic reality. This is what makes the importance of investment in the development of the Kuwaiti economy, which depends in the characteristic of its economy on the export of crude oil.


Purpose is to determine dependences of velocities of elastic waves in isotropic rocks and anisotropic waves with orthotropic and trans-verse-isotropic symmetry upon pressure and depth to develop evaluation criteria and control rock mass characteristics and conditions in the neighbourhood of mine workings. Methods. Continuous anisotropic medium is under consideration. Group one of boundary conditions is represented by continuity of stresses, acting normally towards the boundary while transiting from layer 1 to layer 2. Group two of the boundary conditions is as follows: displacements in the process of the boundary transition are measured continuously too. The conditions are necessary to solve a Navier Stokes equation of dynamic balance of absolutely elastic medium. The experiments were carried out with the help of geoacoustic method in terms of the acoustic parameter of compressional velocity. Findings. It has been determined that compressional velocity values, anisotropy of compressional velocity, and elastic behaviour reflect regularly structural features being pressure-dependent ones. It has been demonstrated that dependence upon the stress state, anisotropy appearance/disappearance emergence takes place or a sign inversion. Qualitative dependences have been obtained to define elastic behaviour (Е, μ, G) of anisotropic formation with orthotropic and transverse-isotropic symmetry. The dependences have been obtained through compressional velocity to consider accurately the anisotropy of the rock mass while evaluating its stress state. The research results will help estimate nature of the stress distribution; identify stress concentration zones; and zones of the disturbed rock in the neighbourhood of a mine working. That will be done using acoustic parameter of compressional velocity using a method of geoacoustic control developed by the authors. Originality. In terms of the new obtained dependences, elastic behaviour of rocks (Е, μ, G) as well as acoustic parameters of compressional velocity has been determined scientifically. They are important to design and schedule mining operations. Practical implications. Being quite accurate to satisfy the demands of practical use, the obtained research results may be applied to identify digital values of elastic behaviour (Е, μ, G); to use the method of geoacoustic control of rock mass characteristics and conditions in the neighbourhood of mine workings; and to mine deposits with complex structural and mechanical properties.


Federated learning (FL) is a machine learning system that allows a network of devices to train a model without centralized data. This characteristic makes FL an ideal choice for machine learning using user data while maintaining privacy. Many applications, such as autonomous vehicles that adapt to pedestrian behavior and smart healthcare devices, require machine learning to be performed in edge computing environments. However, the performance of FL in edge computing environments has received limited research attention, and previous studies have not comprehensively evaluated heterogeneity aspects, such as system heterogeneity, statistical heterogeneity, and communication bandwidth. This study aims to fill this research gap by conducting experimental evaluations and detailed analyses of FL in edge computing environments. Specifically, we set up an experimental testbed based on the FL framework on the KubeEdge platform and evaluate the diverse effects of heterogeneity aspects on the model convergence time such as homogeneous versus heterogeneous hardware resources, balanced versus imbalanced data distributions, duplicate versus nonduplicate datasets, client participation ratio at each round, the client selection algorithm, and the communication bandwidth. Overall, this study contributes to the advancement of the field of FL by expanding the understanding of its performance in edge computing environments and providing guidelines for efficient and effective FL systems in heterogeneous environments, which can ultimately benefit various industries and domains.


Summary Leukocytic pyrogen was subjected to a five-step purification scheme, and quantitative assays for both leukocytic pyrogen and leukocytic endogenous mediator (LEM) were made. At each step of the purification scheme, the active fractions, in addition to producing fever, lowered plasma iron and zinc concentrations, elevated fi-brinogen concentrations, and caused a release of neutrophils from bone marrow. It appears, therefore, that LEM and leukocytic pyrogen are the same molecule.


A new waveform inversion for crosswell radar is formulated in the frequency-domain for a 2.5D model. The inversion simulates radar waves using the vector Helmholtz equation for electromagnetic waves. The objective function is minimized using a backpropagation method suitable for a 2.5D model. The inversion is tested by processing crosswell radar data collected in a laboratory tank. The estimated model is consistent with the known electromagnetic properties of the tank. The formulation for the 2.5D model can be extended to inversions of acoustic and elastic data.


Edge detection is the basis of taking focus,measuring tissue and3D reconstruction.In the paper,we chiefly study the methods of Snakes and region growing.Experiment shows that Snake is superior to region growing for tumor contour extraction of CT image.


Coherent π 0 photo-and electroproduction on 4 He and 12 C nuclei is investigated in the framework of a distorted wave impulse approximation in momentum space. The elementary process is described by the recently developed unitary isobar model. Medium effects are considered by introducing a phe-nomenological ∆ self-energy. The recent experimental data for 4 He and 12 C can be well described over a wide range of energies and emission angles by the assumption that the ∆-nuclear interaction saturates.


The automorphism group of a monomial code may include automorphisms induced by affine transforms of the variables used for code construction. Certain monomial codes, like Reed-Muller codes, have a lot of these automorphisms, which makes them suitable for permutation-based decoding, while other, like polar codes, in general, do not have this property. We define the condition that the code automorphism group includes automorphisms induced by certain affine transform subgroups, and describe the restrictions imposed on monomial code construction by this condition. We also consider code construction approach that yields monomial codes with given automorphism subgroup and optimized additional parameters.


In this paper, we measure human activities using frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar and enhance the conventional radar-based measuring human movement algorithm. To measure human activities, we study and apply the conventional algorithm to FMCW radar signals. The conventional algorithm is using a range spectrogram which is a result of performing 1D-FFT to FMCW radar signal. The range spectrogram reflects the magnitude of targets in each range index. According to the radar equation, the magnitude of signals reflected by the distant targets is lower than that reflected by the close targets. Radar-based quantified movements are in proportion to magnitude difference between scans. As a result, despite same movement, quantified movement of the distant target is lower than that of the close target. To solve the problem, in this paper, we propose enhanced measurement of human activity by adding the range calibration to the conventional algorithm that is unaffected by the distance.


This paper presents an improvement over a previous contour closure algorithm. Assuming that edge points are given as input, the proposed approach consists of two steps. Similarly than the previous approach, the minimum spanning tree of a partially connected graph is initially computed. Then, a morphological filter removes noisy links and finally open contours are closed by minimizing a linking cost function. Advantages of the proposed technique lie in the lack of user defined thresholds and non-dependency of edge point density. Experimental results with synthetic and real range images are presented showing encouraging results with uniform and non-uniform edge points' distribution.


This article presents a historical analysis of three eras in the history of Las Vegas gaming industry leadership: a maverick era, a mafia era, and an MBA era. Within each period, the article highlights the roles of key figures that shaped the industry's evolving landscape. The second section examines management applications that emerged from each of these periods, with a focus on four areas: (1) operating principles, (2) government relations, (3) "backlash management," and (4) the ways in which the mythologies of these eras have actually been used in the selling of the city itself. The article concludes by summarizing the successes and failures of this evolution.


Suitability maps for managed aquifer recharge (MAR) are increasingly used and hold the potential to be integrated into sustainable groundwater management plans. However, the quality of the maps strongly depends on the input data quality as well as the expertise of the decision-maker. The maps are commonly derived through GIS-based multi-criteria decision analysis (GIS-MCDA). To date, there is no common understanding of how suitability mapping should be conducted, as there is considerable variability concerning used GIS data and MCDA methodology. This study presents two web-tools that were conceptualized based on a review of GIS-MCDA studies in the context of MAR suitability mapping. The data retrieved from the review was compiled into a web-based query tool making the MAR- and MCDA-relevant information easily accessible. Based on the most commonly used MCDA practices in the assessed studies, we conceptualized and implemented a second web tool that comprises a simplified web GIS as well as supporting tools for weight assignment and standardization of the criteria. Both web tools will enable decision-makers to engage in MCDA for MAR mapping in a more structured and informed way. As the tools are open-source and web-based, they can facilitate the collaboration between multiple stakeholders and the easy sharing of results.


IntroductionLanguage learning is regarded as the cornerstone of human existence. Knowing the language can help us to express our opinions, hopes, and even our dreams (Tavil, 2009). In a foreign language context, the learning process is affected by various factors such as motivation, attitudes, anxiety, learning achievements, aptitudes, intelligence, age, and personalities, (Gardner, 1960; Lehmann, 2006, cited in Shams, 2008). Among these, affective factors such as motivation and attitude are very decisive and essential contributing. Therefore, the instructors and educators should take these factors into account. The progressive works by Gardner and Lambert since 1959 onwards are dependable proofs that these factors have a great bearing.Motivation is the driving force by which humans achieve their goals. In fact, it is the combination of effort plus desire to achieve the goal of learning the language which leads to a conscious decision to act, and which gives rise to a period of sustained intellectual and/or physical effort in order to attain previous set goals. Second and foreign language motivation has been researched in different paradigms and numerous language learning contexts in the past decades (Dornyei, 2005). As we all know, motivation is one of the most important factors that will influence students' English achievements or performance. It has a close relationship with students' success or failure in English teaching in college.Gardner and Lambert (1972) mentioned two types, or better to say, two orientations for motivation: integrative-oriented motivation and instrumental-oriented motivation. The former applies to cases when language is learned as a desire to integrate into the target language community; and the latter refers to cases where language is learned with the intention of achieving a certain external reason like getting a job. Integrative motivation refers to a wish, by a learner, to integrate into, become an accepted member of the community whose language that person is learning.Harmer (1983) categorized motivation into two major types; extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation deals with behavior performed for its own sake, in order to experience pleasure and satisfaction, such as a sense of achievement, self-esteem, pride in solving the problem, enjoyment of the class, being able to use the languages desired. On the other hand, extrinsic motivation involves performing a behavior as a means to an end and usually involves other consequences of success on the task: such as prizes for doing well, getting the job of one's choice, a higher position, gaining some certificate on a test score.Another influential affective factor influencing the success of students in learning a language is attitude. Holmes (1992: 346) states that "people develop attitudes towards languages which reflect their views about those who speak the languages, and the contexts and functions with which they are associated. Kara (2009) stated that attitudes towards learning besides opinions and beliefs have an obvious influence on students' behaviors and consequently on their performance.Wenden (1991) suggested a broader definition of the concept "attitudes". He says that the term attitude contains three components namely, cognitive, affective and behavioral. A cognitive component is made up of the beliefs and ideas or opinions about the object of the attitude. The affective one refers to the feeling and emotions that one has towards an object, 'likes' or 'dislikes', 'with' or 'against'. Finally, the behavioral component refers to one consisting of actions or behavioral intentions towards the object.Literature reviewMotivation research had received much attention in the past decade. Results of research reported by Liuoliene and Metiuniene (2006, p.96) on second language learning motivation revealed that "students' wishes and needs to work independently depend on their motivation, attitude and responsibility. …


Abstract : The purpose of this report is to present a catalogue of middle-cloud wave patterns with the prevailing synoptic weather situation and the pertinent physical information about the atmosphere in the immediate vicinity of the clouds and to analyze these patterns to explore any possible relationship between them and the concommitant state of the atmosphere that may serve as clues to their origin and for useful utilization of satellite pictures.


The article is devoted to the disclosure of the main goals, objectives and directions of supervision over the implementation of laws on countering the financing of extremist activities and terrorism. Based on the provisions of individual federal laws and regulations, the fundamental objectives of the supervision of the implementation of laws in the field of countering the financing of extremist activities and terrorism are highlighted. Along with a theoretical approach to a general understanding of the goals and objectives of the prosecu-tor's supervision, specific goals and tasks of the studied sphere of the prosecutor's supervision are identified. The author defines the directions of the prosecutor's supervision that are delimited by the objects of supervision and by the circle of tasks. The range of objects of prosecutorial supervision and the range of tasks solved in its implementation is out-lined.


In contrast to previous studies, which examine technology acceptance mainly from the perspective of healthy users in the context of information and communication technologies, this exploratory study concentrates on technology acceptance in patients suffering from coronary heart disease as well as on their demands for technical assistance. In cooperation with the Heart and Diabetes Center North Rhine-Westphalia in Bad Oeynhausen, patients' using motives and acceptance barriers towards the usage of home care medical technology was examined.


Laryngeal videostroboscopy (LVS) allows the physician to examine the vibratory free edge of the vocal fold providing direct visualization of the vocal fold surface and indirect visualization of the substance of the vocal fold. Previously in dog LVS, electrical stimulation of the superior and recurrent laryngeal nerves or painful stimuli in the lightly anesthetized animal provided the impetus for glottic closure. In this paper we present a new technique for LVS in the dog model that involves mechanical traction on arytenoid adduction sutures to achieve vocal fold adduction. This method is safe, effective, and reproducible, and the potential applications are numerous.


Several passages in the Bible explicitly describe "institutional" judicial proceedings. This study, however, focuses on eight passages which were not "declared" to be trials by their authors; nonetheless, their content, language, and apparent intentions indicate an attempt to convey the character of a juridical criminal proceeding. Close examination of the texts reveals a recurrent literary pattern, and as these texts are dialogues, this pattern is termed the "juridical dialogue". The first part of the study presents the characteristics of the juridical dialogue, by drawing a parallel between the phases of the juridical criminal proceedings, on the one hand, and the linguistic formulations used in the literary pattern, on the other. The second part focuses on the link between human dialogue and juridical proceedings; the features of a specific human discourse, the nature of which is judicial, are examined by applying sociolinguistic criteria.


Boron at levels of between 0·1 and 10 per cent. has been determined nondestructively in bulk solids such as boron-aluminium alloys by measurement of the intensity of a transmitted neutron beam. The neutrons were produced from a 300-mCi 241Am-Be source and employed in an automatic instrumental system developed for use in a control laboratory at a rate of up to thirty-six samples per hour. The accuracy of such a technique has been shown to be good and the precision is better than ±1 per cent. The method is best applied to the determination of boron in matrices that have low thermal neutron absorption or scattering cross-sections.


Prices of existing houses peaked in southern California during the second quarter of 1990 andpreceded a lengthy recession. This paper examines the response of homebuilders in a masterplanned community in the suburban Los Angeles region to the end of the boom and the onsetand deepening of the recession. There has been little research which has focused at the microlevel on builders' responses to changes in market conditions. This paper will employ data frommaster planned community home builders in Riverside County between 1989 and 1994 toexamine the dynamics of the market. This analysis sheds some light on the volatility of housingstarts not attributable to price changes in previous studies. For example, builders are found toshift to producing low cost or lower priced housing units presumably in response to changingconsumer preferences. This adjustment does not arise from design changes but simplyproducing more of less expensive product that had already been planned and curtailingproduction of higher priced houses.


Simple Summary The aim of this study was to document the effects of 12 hours' confinement in comparison with 12 h of transportation in single and wide bays, and in backward and forward positioning, on horse behavioural, physiological, laboratory and gastroscopy parameters. Behaviours relating to stress and balance occurred more frequently during transport than during confinement, and transport in a rear-facing position and in a wider bay size were associated with reduced balance-related behaviours. An increased frequency of balance behaviours, in particular loss of balance, and transport-related increases in heart rate and rectal temperature were associated with gastric ulceration after transportation. While effects of bay size and direction of travel on stress behaviours were less clear and require further study, this study suggests that adequate space and rear-facing positioning facilitates better balance and may enhance the health and welfare of transported horses. Behavioural observations, heart rate and monitoring of rectal temperature are useful to identify horses at risk for development of transport-related diseases. Abstract The regulations for minimal space and direction of travel for land transport in horses vary worldwide and there is currently no definitive guidance to promote equine health and welfare. This study evaluated the effects of bay size and direction of travel (forwards/backwards) in horses by comparing the behavioural, physiological, laboratory and gastroscopy parameters between transported and confined horses. A total of twenty-six mares took part in the study; 12 horses were confined for 12 h, and all mares underwent 12 hours' transportation, travelling in single (n = 18) or wide bays (n = 8), and forward (n = 10) or rear (n = 16) facing. Behaviour was recorded during confinement/transportation and analysed using a behaviour sampling ethogram. Clinical examination, blood samples and gastroscopy were conducted before and after confinement/transportation. The frequency of behaviours relating to stress and balance increased during transport, and horses transported in a rear-facing position and in a wider bay size showed fewer balance-related behaviours. Balance behaviours, particularly loss of balance, were positively associated with the severity of gastric ulceration after transportation and elevated muscle enzymes, while increased stress behaviours correlated with decreased gastrointestinal sounds. Heart rate and rectal temperature after transportation were positively associated with balance and stress behaviours, and with squamous gastric ulcer scores. Transportation was associated with expected increases in cortisol and muscle enzymes, but positioning and space allowance had minimal effects on these analytes. Findings suggest that transportation in a rear-facing position and in wider bays might reduce the impact of transport on horse health and welfare, and monitoring behaviour in transit and physiological measurements after transportation should be recommended. Behavioural and physiological parameters were more sensitive than haematological, biochemical or endocrine analytes to identify horses suffering from transport stress.


This paper presents the results of a study on the transition between preschool and school programs, focusing on early intervention programs for special needs children in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, and presents recommendations for policy makers in regard to trans -.tine r,ro',3razi,6 in NSW. The study was based on survey of 45 early childhood teachers and interviews within Greater Western Sydney, Australia, along with interviews of Lz' preschool, two early intervention, and two kindergarten teachers. The results of quantiLativt analyiles of data indicate that there are significant differences between the teachers' transition related beliefs and their practices on each of the identified conceptual subscales of Teaching and Learning, Family and Transition Management. Results indicated that teachers' own beliefs and practices were markedly different, and that there were teachers who were not yet aware of the 1994 guidelines for school transition programs promulgated by the NSW Department of School Education. Qualitative analysis indicated that while all teachers interviewed were positive about the idea of systematic transition processes, few had experienced them in operation. Furthermore, teachers reported a lack of communication between preschool and school programs. The paper recommends that the NSW Department of School Education hold further information sessions to ensure that all stakeholders are fully informed of the recommended transition process, and that inservice programs for early childhood teachers be given high priority. Contains 13 references. (MDM) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) X.This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it 0 Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality Points of new or opinionsstated in this document do not necessarily represent official OE RI position or policy Building the Bridges: Early Intervention to School Paper presented at First Years of School Conference Hobart, January 1996 Linda Newman University of Western Sydney, Nepean PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY L . Neu.) rrwor, TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) For all children, beginning school is a major milestone. It marks the change from a young child, to one who is beginning to grow up. The transitional period between home, pre school programs or early intervention and school, is one that requires planning and consideration. Continuity in this experience must take account of past experiences and modify new school experiences to minimise change and reduce stress (Briggs & Potter,1990). Continuity is seen as the most essential element around which effective transitions revolve and its study is important because "most educational authorities now espouse continuity in transition in their policies and highlight the importance of liaison between pre-school, home and school. In practice, the quality of transition depends largely on the quality of the physical environments provided by those authorities, the quality of the teachers who are directly involved, that is, the early childhood teachers who receive the new entrants and the pre-school personnel responsible for the children in transition" (Briggs & Potter, 1990, 17), and the quality of transition management. For children with special needs continuity is critical between the services in which they have been involved and those they will commence as they may experience stress, and disruption to their learning, and continuity ensures successful adaption to the new environment (Johnson, Chandler, Kerns & Fowler, 1986; Fowler, Schwartz & Atwater, 1991). If children have special needs there will be more services involved in transition, more careful planning is required, and the need for effective communication and continuity becomes a complex process. In recognition of these factors, transition policies and guidelines have been developed over the last few years in NSW ( Brewer, O'Neill & Ellevsen, in press; KU Children's Services, 1994; Nsw Dept. of School Ed., 1994). In recent years there has been a general growth in parental involvement on behalf of their children, as parents become more sophisticated consumers of services, knowing more about the dimensions of services that they and their children require. This growth has been parallelled in parental recognition of the need for early intervention if their child has special needs (Simeonsson & Bailey, 1990). Researchers stress the importance of family involvement in the process as being beneficial to the child, professionals, and families themselves (Johnson, Chandler, Kerns & Fowler,1986). When families approach the end of their years in early intervention, decisions must BEST COPY AVAILABLE 2 be made about school placement. A transition period ensues, which ideally, should begin twelve months before the child is to commence school. The stress of transitions can be reduced by the provision of essential information, resources and support during the transition which will ensure a higher level of satisfaction with the overall process (Fowler, Schwartz & Atwater, 1991; Rice & O'Brien, 1990). In this paper and presentation continuity will be examined between pre school (including early intervention) and school programs. A recent study of early childhood teachers' beliefs and practices about the transition to school for children with special needs will be discussed. In the presentation, teachers' perceptions of problems in the transition to school will be related to guidelines for best practice in transition. The Current Research The present study was designed to provide a snapshot of current processes of transition to school for young children with special needs in NSW. As this is a relatively new area of study, with the need for theories to emerge, both qualitative and quantitative methods were used in an attempt to provide a rich and meaningful picture of the process and the people involved in it. Anecdotal evidence and previous research (Brewer, 1995a) suggested dissatisfaction and concern amongst early childhood teachers in schools about the transition to school for children with special needs. Prominent writers in the field also call for examination of transition processes saying " the field of early childhood education needs to assess the extent to which transition planning procedures are or are not implemented, and whether their implementation makes a difference in services received" (Fowler, Schwartz & Atwater, 1991, p.143). A representative sample of 45 early childhood teachers in Greater Western Sydney were involved in the study. The teachers came from 90 services for young children approached to participate. Services nominated the teachers who would complete a questionnaire to desribe their transition beliefs and practices. The questionnaire was used to obtain information on demographic details of participants and ratings of their beliefs and practices in the conceptual areas of Teaching and Learning, Families and Transition Management. Following initial analysis of the questionnaire six elite interviews were conducted with teachers. Two pre school teachers (one Preschool one Long Day Care), two early intervention teachers and two Kindergarten teachers were selected for interviews. They were chosen from the respondents who had previously agreed to take part in further stages of this study.


The development of a new commercial aircraft is a complex process spanning several years and requiring the energies of a large number of persons, both within and outside the originating organisation. Conditions for successful growth must be just right for the design to proceed to the first major accomplishment stage—that of flyable "hardware." Conditions have to continue to be extremely favourable to reach the second stage—that of widespread airline operation. History indicates that they must be favourable to an unfortunately remote extent to reach the third stage—that of financial success for the manufacturer. Many of the conditions involved go far beyond those under the control of the manufacturer and may even be wholly unpredictable in nature. This is why the third stage is so seldom achieved, at least in a free enterprise system.


A retrofittable system for automatic reading of a utility meter (1) having a meter housing with at least one transparent meter housing part (2). The system comprises an optical sensor unit (3) adapted to detect a signal from the consumption indication of said meter (1). The optical sensor unit (3) comprises a sensor unit housing (4) adapted to be mounted on said transparent meter housing part (2) of the utility meter housing using adhesive means. The optical sensor unit (3) comprises an electrical cable connection (14) adapted to connect the sensor unit (3) to a data processing unit (8) remote from the sensor unit (3). The processing unit (3) comprises wireless transmission means adapted to transmit processed data from said data processing unit to a further remote device for further processing and/or display. Also discloses is a template (5) for aligning the optical sensor housing (4).


This study focused on immigrants' quality of daily experience, sources of well-being and future expectations. Theoretical frameworks were research on cross-cultural adaptation and studies on optimal experience. Participants were 159 first-generation immigrants, who moved to Italy from Africa, India, South America, and Eastern Europe. Data were collected through Flow Questionnaire and Life Theme Questionnaire, providing information on optimal experience and associated activities, present challenges and future goals, and on the quality of experience perceived in daily life domains. Results showed that the occurrence of optimal experiences and the features of the associated activities, as well as perceived challenges and goals were primarily connected with the life opportunities offered by the hosting country, along with participants' cultural distance and length of stay. This suggests that information on optimal experiences, perceived quality of daily life and future goals can be useful in designing programs to support immigrants' psychological well-being and socio-cultural adjustment.


Lucerne, white clover, Phalaris tuberosa [P. aquatica], perennial ryegrass, Westerwolds ryegrass, Dallis grass, maize and sorghum were grown in growth cabinets at day/night temperatures of 22.5 deg /17.5 deg C under a 12-h photoperiod and was given an excess supply of nutrient solution. Transpiration rates in terms of water loss/h g dry weight of leaves were measured over a period of 48 h and were highest in lucerne (8.0) and white clover (7.4) and lowest in maize and sorghum (both 2.2 g). Transpiration rates of the grass species were highest with P. aquatica (5.6) and lowest with Dallis grass (3.0 g).ADDITIONAL ABSTRACT:Peas, maize and sorghum were grown in growth cabinets at day/night temperatures of 22.5 deg /17.5 deg C under a 12-h photoperiod and were given an excess supply of nutrient solution. Transpiration rates in terms of water loss/h g dry weight of leaves were measured over a period of 48 h and were highest in peas (5.5) and lowest in maize and sorghum (both 2.2 g).


An imbalanced training dataset poses serious problem for many real-world supervised learning tasks. In this paper, we propose a kernel-boundary-alignment algorithm, which considers training-data imbalance as prior information to augment SVMs to improve class-prediction accuracy. Using a simple example, we first show that SVMs can suffer from high incidences of false negatives when the training instances of the target class are heavily outnumbered by the training instances of a nontarget class. The remedy we propose is to adjust the class boundary by modifying the kernel matrix, according to the imbalanced data distribution. Through theoretical analysis backed by empirical study, we show that our kernel-boundary-alignment algorithm works effectively on several datasets.


OBJECTIVE:A quantitative method was developed for the determination of baicalinin in the Xinqin granules by RP HPLC.Chromatographic conditions included ODS C 18 column,and column temperature 25±5℃,the methanol water phosphoric acid(47∶53∶0.2)used as mobile phase at the flow rate 1ml·ml 1 ,and detected at 280 nm.The standard curve was linear in the concentration range of 20~160 μg·ml 1 ,and r =0.9995.The average recovery and RSD were 99.74% and 0.72%,respectively.


Pyrolysis experiments of three rice straw samples with different moisture content were conducted using a TG-MS analyzer.The effect of moisture content on pyrolysis behavior was studied.Results indicate that moisture content played an important role in four stages of rice straw pyrolysis.The degradation reactions were delayed but enhanced by the moisture content.Most of the detected incondensable gases were favored by the moisture content,while tar components were reduced by the moisture content.Kinetic parameter was calculated.Results show good regularity,and kinetic compensation effect between the activation energy and the frequency factor were discussed.


Vestibular schwannoma is the most common tumor of the posterior fossa of the skull. Patients referred with the primary otologic symptoms such as hearing loss, tinnitus, vertigo, imbalance, and the cranial nerve palsy. Thirty-three patients were operated and treated by a team of otolaryngologist and neurosurgeon, anudiometrist, and internist. Patients'chiefcomplaint was due to 94% hearing loss and 27% tinnitus. They scarcely complain of vertigo. If a patient refers with the palsy or paralysis of facial nerve preoperation, we must think of the facial nerve schwannoma or hemangioma or congential cholestoma or malignant metastases rather than acoustic neuroma. The best way for preoperative diagnosis is audiometry, ABR (Auditory Brain Response), and SDS (speech discrimination score) with 90% success, but computer Tomography (CT) scan and MRI (Magnetic Resonance Image) are the valuable anatomic diagnostic radiographic devices. The best method of operation is translabirynthine approach (TLA), since it has the advantages such as an easy access to nerve paths and being the nearest path to CPA (Cerebellopontine Angle). Physicians ought to talk to patients about the importance of the microscopic surgery, surgical methods, and their probable diverse effects such as hearing loss, facial nerve palsy, and intracranial problems.


Intrusion detection sensors are an integral part of most physical security systems. Under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Safeguards and Security, Sandia Laboratories has conducted a survey of available intrusion detection sensors and has tested a number of different sensors. An overview of these sensors is provided. This overview includes (1) the operating principles of each type of sensor, (2) unique sensor characteristics, (3) desired sensor improvements which must be considered in planning an intrusion detection system, and (4) the site characteristics which affect the performance of both exterior and interior sensors. Techniques which have been developed to evaluate various intrusion detection sensors are also discussed.


Although deep neural networks (DNNs) enable great progress in video abnormal event detection (VAD), existing solutions typically suffer from two issues: (1) The localization of video events cannot be both precious and comprehensive. (2) The semantics and temporal context are under-explored. To tackle those issues, we are motivated by the prevalent cloze test in education and propose a novel approach named Visual Cloze Completion (VCC), which conducts VAD by learning to complete"visual cloze tests"(VCTs). Specifically, VCC first localizes each video event and encloses it into a spatio-temporal cube (STC). To achieve both precise and comprehensive localization, appearance and motion are used as complementary cues to mark the object region associated with each event. For each marked region, a normalized patch sequence is extracted from current and adjacent frames and stacked into a STC. With each patch and the patch sequence of a STC compared to a visual"word"and"sentence"respectively, we deliberately erase a certain"word"(patch) to yield a VCT. Then, the VCT is completed by training DNNs to infer the erased patch and its optical flow via video semantics. Meanwhile, VCC fully exploits temporal context by alternatively erasing each patch in temporal context and creating multiple VCTs. Furthermore, we propose localization-level, event-level, model-level and decision-level solutions to enhance VCC, which can further exploit VCC's potential and produce significant performance improvement gain. Extensive experiments demonstrate that VCC achieves state-of-the-art VAD performance. Our codes and results are open at https://github.com/yuguangnudt/VEC_VAD/tree/VCC.


Abstract Paroxysmal autonomic instability with dystonia (PAID) syndrome, a distinct entity of autonomic dysfunction, is typically seen following acute brain injury. There are no reported cases of this entity in association with Wolf–Hirschhorn syndrome (WHS). Here, we report a case of WHS whose predominant neurological manifestations were consistent with PAID syndrome.


Aspects of a wireless apparatus and a method for handling a modulated signal include a frequency generator that produces a clock signal, a first synchronization circuit that generates a first sync enable signal based on an even edge of the clock signal, a second synchronization circuit that generates a second sync enable signal based on an even edge of the clock signal, a first divider having a first initial operating condition that generates a first IQ path based on the first sync enable signal, and a second divider having a second initial operating condition that generates a second IQ path based on the second sync enable signal, wherein the first and second operating conditions are not equal when initially powered.


The present investigation was undertaken to evaluate the effect of age and level of nutrition on the cuttability of carcasses of male buffalo calves. The cut, lean and bone yields were 9.25 and 9.26 kg, 6.12 and 6.05 kg; 2.09 and 2.42 kg, respectively for right and left halves, which were significantly higher for the 16 months old as compared to those at 12 and 8 months. The level of nutrition had a significant effect on blood haemoglobin content only. The blood haemoglobin content increased as the level of nutrition increased and the 130% level of nutrition showed the highest value (13.85%).


SUMMARY Rate and extent of degradability were higher (p<0.01) and faster in Wheat offal (80.7 percent), Stylosanthes hamata (70.9 percent) and Tephrosia bracteolata (54.1 percent), respectively, than Baobab (Adansonia digitata) bark (27.7 percent) and Rice bran (26.5 percent) and increased (p<0.05) progressively as incubation periods increased.


This article describes the experiences, perceptions and attitudes of farmers in Canterbury, New Zealand, towards the use of the Internet for farming purposes. It also illustrates the appropriateness of the qualitative case study method for explaining the underlying research questions: why do farmers use the Internet? How do they find it useful? Thirty semi‐structured interviews were conducted with farmers who were randomly selected from an agricultural co‐operative's membership database. Seven major themes emerged from the data and have been labeled as the following: why farmers have started using the Internet; how farmers were introduced to the Internet; current uses of the Internet; advantages of using the Internet; problems associated with using the Internet; attitude towards the Internet and future outlook. Many farmers experienced poor phone lines that inhibited the quality of Internet service. Consequently, the interviews uncovered a widespread feeling of disgust and intolerance of the lack of regard for rural people, especially considering that agriculture is an important industry for New Zealand.


Adhathoda beddomei is used traditionally to treat various diseases. The endophytic bacteria present in the adhathoda may enhance its medicinal property.The current study concentrates to screen the endophytic bacteria from leaves of adhathoda beddomei. The surface sterilized leaves of the plant were used for the isolation of the endophytic bacteria. The isolates were identified using polymerase chain reaction using 16s ribosomal DNA (rDNA) method. Based on the similarity correlated with bacterial species and submitted to gen bank.From the obtained entophytic bacterial isolates only the pure culture was chosen for further analysis. The isolated bacteria were identified as enterobacter. The screened and isolated bacteria were concluded as enterbacter.


Autosomal recessive limb-girdle muscular dystrophy type 2B (LGMD2B) is a subtype of autosomal recessive limb-girdle muscular dystrophy characterized by an onset in late adolescence or early adulthood of slowly progressive, proximal weakness and atrophy of shoulder and pelvic girdle muscles. Cardiac and respiratory muscles are not involved. Hypertrophy of the calf muscles and highly elevated serum creatine kinase levels are frequently observed.


Landslide is a common kind of geologic hazards, which is a very serious potential threat for security operation of power system. Therefore it is valuable to research and develop a landslide online monitoring system to monitor landslide which lies very close to power tower. Based on current research, in this paper, wireless sensor network (WSN) technology is taken to build a monitoring network. Through it, some key information about landslide surface-crack width, internal layer sliding strain, sliding mass dip angle and groundwater level are measured and remotely transmitted to monitor center. Software deals with these data. And Verhulst model is applied to predict the possible time of an impending landslide, while posterior error estimator method is used to evaluate prediction accuracy. This monitoring system was installed near NO. 50 power tower of 500kV transmission Line in Mao County, Sichuan, China. Large amounts of data were obtained. Analysis results have proved its effectiveness. Introduction The area of southwest China is very important hydropower output corridor. However, it is also the high incidence area of natural disasters, such as landslides, earthquakes and so on. The mountain is prone to landslide induced by external factor, and that is the greatest threat to the safe operation of the grid. In the power industry, technology about landslides and other geological disasters has been the concern of many researchers. Paper [1] applied satellite remote sensing and geographic information system technology in the project of "Danba Kangding 500kV Double Circuit Transmission Line". Paper [2] introduced power monitoring requirements on landslide from the perspective of smart grid construction. Definition of dangerous level of landslide is proposed. Overall, Research about landslide hazard by the power sector is not very prominent. Risk assessment of power systems, monitoring technology and prediction model are still in the exploratory stage. Domestic and foreign scholars have begun more in-depth studies in the field of geological disasters. Optical fiber sensing technology, wireless sensor network technology (WSN: Wireless Sensor Network), networking technology and satellite remote sensing technology have been applied to explore in the field of landslide monitoring [3,4,5,6]. Paper [4] proposed a landslide monitoring system based on WSN and developed the device .It also designed an experiment to verify the prospect of WSN technology in the field of geological disasters research. For prediction of landslides time, Verhulst model is better than others model in the short-term and temporary slip forecasting model. Based on existing research and combined with the landslide monitoring application requirements of the project of No. 50 power tower of Sichuan Maotan II transmission line, overall program of transmission corridor landslide online monitoring based on wireless sensor network (WSN) and key technologies are described in detail. 2nd Workshop on Advanced Research and Technology in Industry Applications (WARTIA 2016) © 2016. The authors Published by Atlantis Press 804 Constitution of Landslide Monitoring System As shown in figure 1, the monitoring system consists of hardware part and monitoring center software. Hardware part, composed of terminal node and coordinator node, is mainly to complete the information's collection, storage and transmission. The terminal node, which is composed of high precision sensor and ZigBee End Device, is mainly to collect the information of landslide, such as the landslide displacement, surface crack, underground water level and rainfall information.And the coordinator node is composed of ZigBee Coordinator, TI low-power microcontroller 430, solar power system and GPRS DTU (Service Data Transfer Unit), etc. Sensors include landslide displacement sensors, surface crack sensors, piezometer sensor, rain gauge and so on. The terminal node's power is supplied by low resistance lithium battery. The coordinator node's power is supplied by the solar power system. Solar power system consists of solar battery, waterproof controller and silicon accumulator. The terminal node collects data of sensors and transfer them to ZigBee Coordinator through the wireless sensor network. Then microcontroller (MCU: Micro Control Unit) stores the data into the flash memory and sents the data to the monitoring center through GPRS DTU finally. According to the monitoring data obtained, Monitoring center can determine the condition of the landslide transmission corridor. Monitoring center also can set GPRS sender remote online (such as sending time interval, real time data acquisition interval, request, etc.). The monitoring center software visually display the displacement of landslide, surface crack, underground water level and rainfall information, and forecast the landslide displacement through the Verhulst model. If the landslide is in danger, the monitoring center software will send alarm information automatically so that the scheduling department can take measures to reduce the economic losses caused by landslide.


The purpose of this study was to investigate the contemporary Chinese young adults' family communication patterns and conflict styles. The participants in this study were 278 Chinese college students (included 200 participants from 3 universities of mainland China and 78 participants from a university located in mid-west of US). The study found that Chinese family patterns are more conformity-oriented than conversational-oriented, and there is not a specific prevalent conflict style for Chinese young adults. The Chinese young adults studying in the US reported higher scores in control conflict style than Chinese young adults studying in mainland China.


In the proton-antiproton collisions a t the Ferm ilab Tevatron collider, individual top quarks are expected to be produced by an electroweak mechanism referred to as single top production. We present here a Neural Networks m ethod of searching for single top quarks in the 106 pb~l of d a ta collected by the Collider Detector a t Fermilab (CDF) from 1992-1996. The prospects for observing single top in the current run a t the Tevatron are also discussed. In searching for single top, improvement to signal to noise can be obtained by requiring a charged lepton and missing energy from the IT' decay, as well as a Btagged je t. We conduct our search in the IT' -I1,2, and 3 je ts channels, where we impose additional selections to further reduce background contributions from QCD m ultijet (IT '+jets) processes and top pair production tt respectively. Specifically, in the W + 1 je t channel we require exactly one additional je t w ith £V > 8 G eV and [77I < 2.4, while in the \V + 3 je ts channel we require no such additional jets. After applying these selection cuts to Monte Carlo sam ples, we are able to estim ate the R un I expected contributions as: 4.2 single top events, 43.3 ± 8.4 IF + je ts events, and 7.4 ± 2.2 t t events. The signal purity is therefore 8 %. which makes the Neural Networks approach particularly suitable for the single top analysis. To distinguish between signal and background we select seven event variables w ith good separating power. These variables are: the transverse energies of the leading two jets, the lepton, ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and the neutrino: E ^ n , E ^ t2, E ^ pton, the transverse m om entum of the leading two-jet system P^3, the to ta l transverse energy in the event H r, and the product Q x r] between the prim ary lepton charge and the pseudorapidity of the h ighest-lsr non S -tagged jet. The Neural Networks used is a three-output perceptron with one hidden layer trained on M onte Carlo generated events. We use the M onte Carlo signal and backgrounds o u tp u t tem plates to estim ate the com position of the 64event R un I dataset passing our above selection. By using a simple binned-likelihood function w ith Gaussian background constrain ts to fit the data, we ob tain the following contributions: ^signal = 23.6 ± 7.7, uqCd = 36.2 ± 6.2, rtti = 7.6 ± 2.0 (events) We note th a t the fit result is approxim ately 2.5 standard deviations away from the expected value of 4.2 signal events. VVe further use this result to ex trac t a 95% C.L. upper lim it on single top cross section of 24.4 pb, roughly 10 tim es higher than the S tandard Model prediction of 2.43 pb. For Run II, we expect a single top cross section m easurem ent a t 4cr precision level w ith roughly 2 f b ~ l of data.


Multicellular life is based on the ability of cells to divide, differentiate, cooperate and die in a controlled and organised manner, generating and maintaining an organism. The temporal distribution of division, differentiation and death determines the cellular composition of the organism at any particular point in time. Like these ontogenetic events, phylogenetic development takes place with the changes in total cell numbers, the allocation of these cells to different tissues and the disappearance of certain tissues.
Fractal properties of complex networks, a result of growth, can be estimated by box counting, whereby the topological properties of the network are mapped by changing the resolution of examination, that is changing the size of the boxes used to identify and group network components. Here we develop the concept of cellular box-counting, referring to the fact that cells can be grouped on various levels of hierarchy and these various levels can be interpreted as boxes of different linear sizes. We apply the method to data representing distinct stages and groups of evolution of life and interpret the network properties of brown algae, green plants and animals. The results are in agreement with previously established values of degree exponent of biological networks and provide clues to the differences in the network organization of multicellular life.


The subsurface of a tidal-flat sediment was analyzed down to 360 cm in depth by molecular and geochemical methods. A community structure analysis of all three domains of life was performed using domain-specific PCR followed by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis analysis and sequencing of characteristic bands. The sediment column comprised horizons easily distinguishable by lithology that were deposited in intertidal and salt marsh environments. The pore water profile was characterized by a subsurface sulfate peak at a depth of about 250 cm. Methane and sulfate profiles were opposed, showing increased methane concentrations in the sulfate-free layers. The availability of organic carbon appeared to have the most pronounced effect on the bacterial community composition in deeper sediment layers. In general, the bacterial community was dominated by fermenters and syntrophic bacteria. The depth distribution of methanogenic archaea correlated with the sulfate profile and could be explained by electron donor competition with sulfate-reducing bacteria. Sequences affiliated with the typically hydrogenotrophic Methanomicrobiales were present in sulfate-free layers. Archaea belonging to the Methanosarcinales that utilize noncompetitive substrates were found along the entire anoxic-sediment column. Primers targeting the eukaryotic 18S rRNA gene revealed


The 5G wireless/mobile communication systems may adopt 60-GHz millimeter waveband as one of main operating frequencies for its advantages of higher achievable transmission rate and wider available bandwidth when compared with aged 4G/3G/2G. In this paper, a design of microstrip antenna array operating at central frequency of 60-GHz waveband is proposed where an advanced structure array consists of two Y-shaped branches connected through outside annular feeding line, while on each Y-shaped branch, there are two lines of three linearly collected rectangular patches.The proposed antenna array was simulated using HFSS (High-Frequency Structure Simulator) as a powerful software application. The simulation results demonstrates an important parameters such as resonance frequency, return losses, bandwidth, VSWR, input impedance, directivity, gain and radiation pattern. The simulation proved that the presented small size array of 27x27 mm can achieve high gain and wide bandwidth at operating 60 GHz frequency.


Since the working situation of the Japanese shipbuilding industry is changing due to the decrease of skilled workers, the production management system should be improved as suitable for skill-independent production. Under such conditions, it is important to indicate working details to non-skilled workers, which contain so-called 4W1H - Who, When, Where, What, How - including the working procedure. In this report, a working route simulation to achieve a minimum working period is carried out using the genetic algorithm (GA) for assembly welding or block painting work on a ship hull as an example. This defines the job sequence of each worker in a block. A personal computer based program (C++) was developed and applied. The calculation result of the sample data showed a good result to get optimum working route to have minimum working period.


Attachment of eosin Y onto TiO2 electrode was carried out using super critical CO2 as a solvent. The solar cell composed of an electrode which prepared under the condition of 493 K and 25 MPa in super critical CO2 , showed an efficient fill factor as high as 95% (a Xe lamp with a 517 nm band pass filter). The dye was supposed to keep its structure under such sever conditions. Super critical CO2 made possible to carry out the attachment of dye at high temperature in a uniform phase.


The barite–fluorite metallogenic belt in southeastern Sichuan is one of the most important barite–fluorite ore‐concentrated areas in China. In order to find the ore‐forming source and the mineralization age of the Fengjia and Langxi barite–fluorite deposit, we systematically evaluated the rare earth element (REE) contents and isotopic characteristics of S, Sr, and Sm–Nd. The results show that the δ34S values of barites and pyrites are high and similar to S isotopic values of gypsum in the Cambrian Qingxudong Formation (∈1q), suggesting that the sulphur source was from Cambrian evaporite strata. The initial 87Sr/86Sr ratios of fluorites and barites range from 0.708800 to 0.712999, and these values are similar to Cambrian carbonate rocks and Lower Ordovician limestone. Except for black shales of the Lower Cambrian Niutitang Formation, the Ba content of other strata was generally low. The REE characteristics of barite and fluorite have close relationships, in regard to the source of ore‐forming materials, to the Lower Cambrian Niutitang Formation black shales. Hence, we have concluded that the Cambrian carbonate rocks and Lower Ordovician limestone provide the source of calcium for mineralization and that the source of barium comes from the Lower Cambrian Niutitang Formation black shales. The fluorine contents of the Upper Sinian Doushantuo Formation and the Lower Cambrian Mingxinshi Formation are much higher than other strata, and these formations could provide the source for fluorine. The Sm–Nd isochron age of fluorites is 104 ± 11 Ma, which demonstrates that the mineralization mainly occurred during the late Yanshanian. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Acknowledgements Contributors Abbreviations Introduction Herbert Yee and Ian Storey 1. Chinese Perspectives of the China Threat: Myth or Reality? Herbert Yee and Zhu Feng 2. American Perceptions of Chinese Military Power Jonathan D. Pollack 3. Reflecting Mirrors across the Taiwan Straits: American Perspectives on a China Threat Edward Friedman 4. Russian Perceptions of the China Threat Alexander Lukin 5. The China Threat - A European Perspective Joachim Glaubitz 6. Changing British Perceptions of the China Threat, 1945-2000 Brian Hook 7. The Japanese Assessment of the 'China Threat' wenran Jiang 8. South Korea and a Rising China: Perceptions, Policies and Prospects Taeho Kim 9. Indonesia's Perceptions of China: The Domestic Bases of Persistent Ambiguity Rizal Sukma 10. Singapore and the Rise of China: Perceptions and Policy Ian Storey 11. Malaysian Perceptions of China: From Hostility to Cordiality Abdul Razak Baginda 12. Perceptions of a China Threat: A Philippine Perspective Aileen San Pablo-Baviera 13. Vietnamese Perspectives of the 'China Threat' Carlyle A. Thayer 14. The China Threat: A View from India C.V. Ranganthan 15. The China Threat: A View from Pakistan perviaz Iqbal Cheema 16. Much Ado about Nothing: Middle Eastern Perceptions of the 'China Threat' Yitzhak Shichor Index