Eu(Dbm) 3·Phen and Eu 0.8 Ln 0.2 (Dbm) 3·Phen(Ln: Er 3+ , Y 3+ ; Dbm: dibenzoylmethane; Phen: phenanthroline) complex powders and their doped silica gels have been prepared. Their photoacoustic(PA) spectra have been detected and interpreted for the first time. In the region of ligand absorption, the PA intensity decreases for Eu 0.8 Er 0.2 (Dbm) 3·Phen, Eu(Dbm) 3·Phen and Eu 0.8 Y 0.2 (Dbm) 3 ·Phen respectively. While for Eu(Dbm) 3·Phen and Eu 0.8 Y 0.2 (Dbm) 3·Phen doped silica gels, the reverse is true. It is found that the PA intensity bears a correlation with the energy transfer processes of the complexes. The additions of Er 3+ , Y 3+ ion change the relaxation processes of the complexes and the relaxation processes of ternary complexes are different in the two kinds of solid states. The changes of fluorescence spectra turn out to be complementary to the PA spectra. The luminescence properties of the complex powders and their doped silica gels are interpreted in depth from two aspects: nonradiative process and radiative process.


Islamic human resource practices and organizational performance: some findings in a developing country: Ilhaamie Abdul Ghani Azmi Article information: To cite this document: Ilhaamie Abdul Ghani Azmi , (2015),"Islamic human resource practices and organizational performance: some findings in a developing country", Journal of Islamic Accounting and Business Research, Vol. 6 Iss 1 pp. Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JIABR-02-2012-0010


This study addresses the extended processing region for the use of Frit 320 and also considered changes in the processing region due to updates in the sludge composition.


ABSTRACT Mandatory family dispute resolution for parenting matters has been in place in Australia for over a decade. The rationale for introducing this requirement was that it would provide a more time, cost and outcome effective option for resolving such matters. The aim of this research has been to explore the implications of compulsory family dispute resolution as practiced in the most prevalent form of facilitative mediation. Analysis of recent research, reviews and court cases highlights the need for further evidence to determine whether intended outcomes are being achieved and to advise on strategies for resolving critical issues inherent in current FDR arrangements.


A single-mode fiber (SMF) acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF) with a wide tuning range of 300 nm is demonstrated. The SMF used here has six air holes in the cladding region that causes a larger difference between higher-order modes' indices compared to those of a conventional SMF. A single resonance peak for the coupling to the first higher-order modes is appeared in the transmission spectrum of SMF AOTF over the wavelength range 1.3–1.6 µm.


The article deals with a boundary value problem in a rectangular area for a third-order degenerate equation with minor terms. The study of such equations is caused by both a theoretical and applied interest (known as VT (viscous transonic) – the equation can be found in gas dynamics). Imposing some restrictions on the coefficients of lower derivatives and using the method of energy integrals, the unique solvability of the problem is demonstrated. The solution of the problem is sought by separation of variables (Fourier method), thus two one-dimensional boundary value problems for ordinary differential equations are obtained. According to the variable y we have the problem on eigenvalues and eigenfunctions for a second-order degenerate equation. The eigenvalues and eigenfunctions are found. Eigenfunctions are the first-order Bessel functions. In order to obtain some necessary estimates the spectral problem reduces to an integral equation by constructing the Green's function. Hereafter, Bessel inequality is used. The possibility of expansion of boundary functions in the system of eigenfunctions is also shown. In order to obtain the necessary a priori estimates for the solution of one-dimensional boundary value problem with respect to the variable x and its derivatives, the problem reduces to a second-order Fredholm integral equation, with the help of Green's function. The estimates of Green's function and its derivatives are obtained. Fredholm equation is solved by the method of successive approximations, and the necessary estimates for this solution and its derivatives are obtained. The formal solution of the boundary value problem is obtained in the form of an infinite series in eigenfunctions. In order to prove the uniform convergence of the last series composed of the partial derivatives, first using the Cauchy–Bunyakovsky inequality, the series consisting of two variables is decomposed into two one-dimensional series, and then all of the obtained estimates mentioned above and estimates for the Fourier coefficients are used.


Thank you for reading archaeological history of the ancient middle east. Maybe you have knowledge that, people have search hundreds times for their favorite novels like this archaeological history of the ancient middle east, but end up in harmful downloads. Rather than reading a good book with a cup of tea in the afternoon, instead they are facing with some infectious bugs inside their desktop computer.


Sustaining outstanding recreational opportunities and natural resource conditions are primary goals for public land managers. Research has shown that even at low visitation levels, resource degradation is an inevitable consequence of recreational use (Leung and Marion 2000). A principal challenge for land managers is to eliminate avoidable impacts and minimize unavoidable impacts while providing for high quality recreation experiences. Visitor education has often been cited as a preferred and more appropriate response to reduce resource impacts or improve visitor experiences on protected public lands (Manning 1999; Roggenbuck 1992). Visitor education is considered a light-handed management response, while regulations more directly curtail visitor freedoms and site management alters the natural setting (Stankey and Schreyer 1987). The national Leave No Trace (LNT) program targets visitors engaging in human-powered recreational activities on public lands with educational information on low impact outdoor skills and ethics. It's mission is to promote and inspire responsible outdoor recreation through education, research and partnerships. The program has experienced substantial growth over the past two decades through the support of the four national land management agencies, Leave No Trace, Inc., recreation equipment and clothing manufacturers and retailers, and hundreds of volunteers. Through a diverse array of literature, training opportunities, and public outreach messages, the LNT program is reaching millions of outdoor recreationists annually. But how effective is this program in conveying low impact practices and ethics and do visitors who receive such messages modify their behavior to reduce resource impacts or improve the experiences of other visitors? Which visitor education approaches are most effective? This paper seeks to provide some answers to these questions by reviewing what we've learned from research on the efficacy of visitor education efforts on protected public lands. Unfortunately, very few studies have specifically targeted LNT educational efforts, though findings from similar educational efforts are generally applicable.


In this letter, delay-dependent stability criterion for linear time-delay systems with multiple time varying delays is proposed by employing the Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional approach and integral inequality. By the N-segmentation of delay length, we obtain less conservative results on the delay bounds which guarantee the asymptotic stability of the linear time-delay systems with multiple time varying delays. Simulation results show that the proposed stability criteria are less conservative than several other existing criteria.


This article aims to understand and identify that Cirebon Province has not yet been formed, even though there has already been a discourse on the formation of Cirebon Province, marked by the establishment of the Cirebon Province Expansion Committee (P4C) since 2009. In order to approach this problem, the theory of political elite from Geatano Mosca is used, the theory explains that elite action is a form of the will of the community, so that it is understood that there is a link between community views and actions taken by political elites. Data is collected through the observation of the actions of political elites in the regions of Cirebon Regency, Cirebon City, Indramayu Regency, Kuningan Regency and Majalengka Regency, and conducting interviews with the community in the Cirebon Regency, Cirebon City, Indramayu Regency, Kuningan Regency and Majalengka Regency. Data analysis was carried out qualitatively using data reduction, data presentation and drawing conclusions. This study concludes that until 2019 the local political elite of Kab. Majalengka and Kab, Kuningan still did not agree to join the Cirebon Province, while the political elite of Kab. Cirebon, Cirebon City and Regency, Indramayu agreed to form the province of Cirebon, the decision of the political elite turned out to be in accordance with the perception of the people who refused or supported joining to form the Cirebon Province.


Investigations were carried out to study the effect of post harvest treatments and packages on storage life (Mangifera indica L.) cvs. Sendhura and Neelum in the Department of Horticulture, Faculty of Agriculture, Annamalai University during 20162018. The experiment was carried out by adopting Randomised Block Design with thirteen treatments with three replications. Fruits which were treated with aqueous solution of calcium chloride and calcium nitrate at (1%, 1.5%, 2%) respectively for five minutes and stored under room temperature for 12 days. The stored fruits were analysed after 3th, 6th, 9th and 12th days of storage. The results revealed that polythene packed fruits recorded significantly lower PLW as compared to other treatments. The fruit treated with calcium chloride 1.5 per cent and polythene packaging was found most effective in extending the shelf life of mango cvs. Sendhura and Neelum fruits with excellent fruit quality upto 12 days.


Purpose: To present our experience of successful management of rheumatoid corneal melt and perforation with different strategies. Method: Case reports Results: Case 1: A 77-year-old man with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) presented large size paracentral corneal melt and perforation following pterygium excision. He underwent an emergency scleral patch graft with conjunctival flap and visual acuity improved from counting finger to 6/30 after 6 months follow up. Case 2: A 53-year-old woman presented peripheral ulcerative keratitis with small size perforation and RA was diagnosed at the same time. She was successfully treated with therapeutic contact lens (TCL) insertion. Case 3: A 70-year-old woman with RA presented paracentral corneal melt and perforation. Corneal reepithelialization was achieved within one week by emergent amniotic membrane transplantation (AMT) and therapeutic contact lens coverage. Conclusion: RA-associated corneal melting often has a poor visual outcome and may lead to corneal perforation and should be treated more aggressively. The scleral patch graft with conjunctival flap offers an effective treatment for large peripheral corneal perforation. The TCL is an alternative good choice for small corneal perforation. The AMT promotes a stable and rapid reconstruction of corneal perforations.


Unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) have gained increased popularity as their innovative uses continue to expand across various fields. Despite their numerous beneficial uses, drones have unfortunately been misused, through many reported cases, to launch illegal and sometimes criminal activities that pose direct threats to individuals, organizations, public safety and national security. These threats have recently led law enforcement agencies and digital forensic investigators to pay special attention to the forensic aspects of drones. This important research topic, however, remains underexplored. This study aims to further explore drone forensics in terms of challenges, forensic investigation procedures and experimental results through a forensic investigation study performed on a Parrot AR drone 2.0. In this study, the authors present new insights on drone forensics in terms of forensic approaches, access to drone's digital containers and the retrieval of key information that can assist digital forensic investigators establish ownership, recuperate flight data and gain access to media files.


The problem of decision functions quality in pattern recognition is considered. An overview of the approaches to the solution of this problem is given. Within the Bayesian framework, we suggest an approach based on the Bayesian interval estimates of quality on a finite set of events.


An approach to speaker's emotion recognition based on several acoustic feature types and 1D convolutional neural networks is described. The focus is on selecting the best speech features, improving the baseline model configuration and integrating in the solution a gender classification network. Features include a Mel-scale spectrogram and MFCC-, Chroma-, prosodic- and pitch-related features. Especially, the question whether to use 2-D maps of features or reduce them to 1-D vectors by averaging, is experimentally resolved. Well-known speech datasets RAVDESS, Tess, Crema-D and Savee are used in experiments. It appeared, that the best performing model consists of two convolutional networks for gender-aware classification and one gender classifier. The Chroma features have been found to be obsolete, and even disturbing, given other speech features. The f1 accuracy of proposed solution reached 73.2% on the RAVDESS dataset and 66.5% on all four datasets combined, improving the baseline model by 7.8% and 3%, respectively. This approach is a serious alternative to other proposed models, which reported accuracy scores of 60%–71% on the RAVDESS dataset.


This project looked into the live TV production procedures and standards in the United Kingdom by using various documents that provided precise technical information which is used by broadcasters such as BBC, BT Sport, Channel 4, Channel 5, ITV, Sky, S4C and TG4 and looks into the areas of live television production being conducted at CCI TV. It included a survey for television audiences in Bahrain in order to find the views of the audiences. This project also looked into historical information of television in the United Kingdom which helped in the evolvement of television which is seen today and also looked into the history how television evolved in the Arab Middle East. The project also looked at live programming broadcasted on Bahrain TV to discuss some of the issues found in live television broadcasting, in order to improve and also introduce some technical and creative elements of live television production which are not found in television in Arab countries.


This activity aims to provide a basic theory of how to compile financial statements for entities that do not hold accounting information systems, provide skills to utilize available technology to conduct financial statement preparation, and introduce the types of information technology used in tax reporting. Currently the industrial world has entered the Industrial era 4.0 graduates from education providers must have technology-based competencies in order to be able to have competitiveness and keep up with the times. Industries that are running domestically, should be able to be carried out and carried out by local workers by increasing their capacity. So that they are not just occupying low positions


In this paper, we analyze security weakness of 4-Way Handshake in IEEE 802.11i and propose fast and secure 2-Way Handshake mechanism. Compute PTK(Pairwise Transient Key) using sequence number instead of random numbers in order to protect Replay attack and DoS attack. Also, proposed 2-Way Handshake mechanism can mutual authenticate between mobile station and access point and derive PTK using modified Re-association Request and Re-association Response frames. And, compare with others which are fast and secure Handoff mechanisms.


Virtual Enterprises (VEs) are an appropriated cooperation alternative and a way of gaining competitive advantage for enterprises. In this context, a promising form to extend the formation process of VEs is performing new product search and development. This proposal is being developed in a Brazilian project called VIRTEC Virtual Organization of Technology. In order to develop Virtual Products, the partners competencies are described in a matrix that correlates the respective competencies of each one. Depending on the complexity caused by the wide number of members, this article proposes the implementation of a computational system to deal efficiently with all the required information for the Virtual Product development.


The article discusses current empirical research on workplace violence and the experience of victims in the police and prison system. It looks at risk factors and directly related multilevel correlations, in combination with a (dys)functional organizational structure and leadership, that were discussed at a seminar held at a prison in Bremen. It finds that more practical research is needed to properly understand and explain this broad subject.


Studies of the Earth with the ATS-5, ATS-6, and SCATHA spacecraft led to the development of several simple tools for predicting the potentials to be expected on a spacecraft in the space environment. These tools have been used to estimate the expected levels of worst case charging at Jupiter and Saturn for the Galileo and the Cassini spacecraft missions. This paper reviews those results and puts them in the context of the design issues addressed by each mission including the spacecraft design mitigation strategies adopted to limit differential charging. The model shows that shadowed surfaces in Earth orbit can reach /spl sim/25 kV or higher in worst case environments. For Galileo, spacecraft-to-space potentials of /spl sim/900 V were predicted in shadow. Since such potentials could produce possible discharges and could effect low energy plasma measurements, the outer surface of Galileo was designed to rigid conductivity requirements. Even though the surface of Galileo is not entirely conducting, after 27 orbits no adverse effects due to surface charging aside from limited effects on low energy plasma measurements have been reported. The Saturnian environment results in spacecraft potentials to space in shadow of /spl sim/100 V or less. Although the overall surface of the Cassini spacecraft was not entirely conducting and grounded, it is shown that only in the most extreme conditions, is it expected that Cassini will experience any effects of surface charging at Saturn.


Sepsis can be caused by a bacterial infection in the human bloodstream, upon which the immune system is over‐activated causing hyper‐inflammation throughout the body. One of the molecules in Escherichia coli (E. coli) that is thought to contribute to the over‐exuberant immune response is peptidoglycan‐associated lipoprotein (PAL). PAL binds tightly to peptidoglycan in the E. coli cell, but has been shown to be released from E. coli under certain conditions. We propose that modulating the PAL‐peptidoglycan interaction would have an effect on E. coli's ability to release PAL. Here, we describe an enzyme linked immunosorbent assay in which we measure and quantify changes to the PAL‐peptidoglycan interaction. Preliminary data suggest we were able to dramatically decrease binding of PAL to peptidoglycan with a single amino acid change in PAL.


The invention relates to a novel processing method of gingered Mangnolia officinalis. The novel processing method comprises the following steps of: pretreating materials, carrying out closed accumulation for sweating, carrying out uniform stirring and covered moistening with ginger extract liquid after sweating, frying with slow fire, carrying out covered moistening, and then placing in a manner of layer-by-layer to carry out demisting. The Mangnolia officinalis treated by adopting the Chinese herbal medicine processing method is high in effective ingredient content, Mangnolia officinalis mist occurs on the surface, and the Mangnolia officinalis with mist is superior to the gingered Mangnolia officinalis and raw Mangnolia officinalis in the pharmacopeia on the anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects.


Objective Analysis of anus preserving operation for low rectal cancer and study the effect of clinical application.Methods In our hospital from 2011 April to 2013 May for treatment of patients with low rectal cancer in 60 cases as the personnel of the study,divided into two groups(group A,non anus preserving anus preserving group),each group of 30 patients with anal sphincter preservation group,patients were given anus preserving for low rectal cancer,non anus preserving group to implement the non anus preserving operation,operation results were observed in the two groups the patient clinical.Results After the corresponding after surgical treatment,the two groups of patients with clinical symptoms were obvious change,compared with the anus preserving group treated patients results,anal function and non anus preserving group of patients,the difference was not significant,P0.05;anus preserving group the incidence of complications,perioperative treatment indicators are better than non anus preserving group with a difference of two between group obviously,P0.05,with statistical significance.Conclusion With the help of anus preserving operation for low rectal cancer patients,a significant clinical effect,can reduce the incidence of complications,improve the quality of life,worthy of popularization.


The standard pericardial drainage using underwater seal glass bottles for open-heart surgery patients is inconvenientand sometimes shortage. There are research articles and evidences showed that urine drainage bag can be usedas an alternative of underwater seal glass bottles. The purpose of this descriptive study was designed to evaluatethe results of pericardial drainage bottled substitution with urine drainage bag in open-heart surgery patients duringpostoperative period in Buddhachinaraj Phitsanulok Hospital, between March and October 2008. Duration of thedrainage, length of stay, postoperative complications, and nurses' satisfaction were reviewed. The mean removalof the pericardial drainage was 41.6 hours. The mean postoperative hospital stay was 12.2 days. Postoperativecomplications occurred in 5 patients and dead 1 patient in 15 hours after surgery from sepsis and acute renalfailure, but they were all not related to the drainage system. Nurses were rather highly satisfied with urinarydrainage bag using 84.4%. The results of this study suggests that urinary drainage bag is efficient, safe, welltolerated, and provides better mobility. It is a feasible alternative in pericardial drainage after open-heart surgery.


A programmable prefetch mechanism is presented for prefetching instructions for a processor executing a program, and in particular a non-procedural program such as object-oriented code. The prefetch mechanism includes prefetching instructions from memory which are sequential instructions from where the processor is currently executing in a sequence of instructions of the program, and when the prefetching encounters a new update prefetch stream (UPS) instruction, the prefetching includes executing the UPS instruction and subsequent thereto, branching to a new memory address for prefetching of at least one non- sequential instruction from memory for execution by the processor. The UPS instruction can be inserted into the program at compile time and when executed causes the loading of a prefetch buffer in the prefetch mechanism which in one embodiment includes a set associative array of x,y address pairs. When an incremented prefetch address is matched to an x address of the array, the prefetching branches to the new memory address y paired with the matching x address in the prefetch buffer. In this manner, cache misses associated with unconditional branches to non-sequential instructions are avoided.


1 The Changing Phenomenology of War and Terrorism 2 International Armed Conflicts 3 Non-international Armed Conflicts 4 Conduct of Hostilities and Terrorist and Counter-terrorist Acts 5 Individual Criminal Responsibility for Acts of Terror or Terrorism 6 Status, Detention and Treatment of Terrorist Suspects 7 Scope for Revision of IHL for the Regulation of Terrorism and Terrorist Acts


Getting pricing on sweeper brushes is Marc Chimento (R) of Hy-Tech Property Services, Midlothian, Va., who stopped by to discuss his needs with Rob Hill (L) and Peter Gurney of United Rotary Brush, Lenexa, Kan. SealMaster, based in Sandusky, Ohio, always has a big presence at the National Pavement Expo. The company is an NPE 2011 sponsor.


Objective:To compare the feasibility of nasal and oral balloon dilatation to treat cricopharyngeal achalasia.Method:Sixty stroke and traumatic brain injury patients with dysphagia were randomly divided into the experimental group for 30 cases and the control group for 30 cases.The control group was given nasal balloon dilatation,the experimental group was given oral balloon dilatation,the two groups were supplemented by swallowing electrical stimulation therapy,indirect and direct training method.50 days later,compare The increased number of heart rate and patients acceptance rate were observed and compared after underwent the operation for 50 days.Result:The increased number of heart rate was significantly lower than the control group,and patients acceptance rate of experimental group was significantly higher than the control group,there were statistically significant differences(P0.05).Conclusion:Oral balloon dilatation is more feasible than nasal balloon dilatation.


That's it, a book to wait for in this month. Even you have wanted for long time for releasing this book small animal clinical diagnosis by laboratory methods 5th edition; you may not be able to get in some stress. Should you go around and seek fro the book until you really get it? Are you sure? Are you that free? This condition will force you to always end up to get a book. But now, we are coming to give you excellent solution.


The utility model relates to vehicle speed-change mechanism. A plurality of counter shaft gears are fixedly and coaxially arranged on a counter shaft; a plurality of output gears which are corresponding to and meshed with the counter shaft gears are coaxially pivoted on an output shaft parallel to the counter shaft; a gear shift lever axially move into the axial blind hole of the output shaft; a plurality of clamping elements respectively move into the corresponding clamping grooves of the output gears, the through hole of the output shaft and the groove of the gear shift lever; when the gear shift lever moves causing one of clamping elements is pushed and limited in the clamping grooves and the through hole by the pushing part of the gear shift lever and clamped with the corresponding output gear, the other clamping elements are separated from corresponding clamping grooves and are not clamped with corresponding output gears. The utility model has the advantages that the effect of gear shift can be achieved by utilizing simple and uncomplicated parts, the smoothness of the gear shift is improved, and has easy assembly and low manufacture cost.


This study aims to find the effect of corporate social responsibility toward company's repution mediated by customer satisfaction, this study was conducted at PT. Coca Cola Amatil Denpasar by using qualitative research. The datas were gained by spreading questioner to 120 consumers of PT.Coca Cola Amatil product in Denpasar city. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the datas. The results show CSR has positive and significant effect toward company reputation. Customer satisfaction has positive and significant effect toward company reputation. And customer satisfaction was eligible to act as mediation variable in the effect of CSR toward company reputation .


Text mining aims at deriving high quality information from text in an automated way. Text mining applications rely on Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools like tagger, parser etc. to locate and retrieve relevant information in an application specific manner. Most of these NLP tools however have been designed to work on clean and grammatically correct text. Presently, many organizations are interested to derive information from informally written text that is generated as a result of human communication through emails, or blog posts, web-based reviews etc. These texts are highly noisy and often found to contain mixture of languages. In this study we present some analysis on how noise introduced due to incorrect English affects the performance of some of the NLP tools and thereafter the text mining applications. The text mining application that we focus on is opinion mining. Opinion mining is the most significant text mining application that has to deal with noisy text generated in an unregulated fashion by users.


Because of the partial double bond character of the amide bond and the voluminous substituents there are some energetically preferred conformations of the N-Benzylamides which can be pointed out by pmr. In the temperature interval from = 100°C to + 100°C the pmr spectra show a change of pmr signals, which is typical for the transition from the slow exchange to the rapid one. The torsional barriers determined by the pmr total line shape technique lie between 140 and 54 kJ mole". PCILO calculations yield the syn/anti-periplanare conformations with respect to the rotation around the amide bond as the most stable conformation); in agreement with the experiment. The calculated barriers lie between 85 and 50 kJ mole 1 . In the abscnce of an assignable repulsion between the substituents adjacent to the amide bond the calculated energy differences for rotation around the other bonds lie essentially under the barrier of the amide bond (AE ~ 15 kJ mole"). Otherwise the level of the barrier is so high that a free rotation can be excluded.


Identification of syntactic categories of speech that known as POS tagging are among the most fundamental operations in natural language processing. POS taggers are one of the important tools that should be considered in this regard because of their widespread use in natural language processing tasks. The first problem for designing Persian POS taggers systems is the extraction of probabilistic and statistical information as well as practical features from the Persian text corpus files. In this study, the probabilistic and statistical features and information obtained were used with a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network with longer-term memory and were trained and tested. In the present study, to increase the accuracy, measures such as increasing the length of dependency on the previous words and bidirectional word assessment for the LSTM neural network were taken. To assess, the results were compared with those of other methods, with the best accuracy obtained with the two-word dependency with the bidirectional LSTM network. The accuracy rates of 98.1% was received using previous 5 words. Comparing the state-of-the-art results, the proposed scheme has better accuracy in all condition of POS tagging.


The paper identifies the regional research inequalities in six states of the European Union, and shows that decentralization of science and R&D would contribute to the enhancement of regional cohesion and should became a priority of economic strategies.


This article argues that Abdulrazak Gurnah's By the Sea (2001) is unusual in contemporary fiction in that it suggests a way in which the lost past can be recuperated, both in the sense of being reclaimed and in the sense of healing past conflicts. The primary means by which this is shown to happen is through a dialectical encounter between the hitherto opposing groups or ideologies. The novel uses migrant distancing from the African past to ameliorate the pain experienced in that past and the close encounter between the two protagonists, Saleh Omar and Latif Mahmud, with long and bitter family histories, to explore how a dialectical relationship can be developed. By having to reframe past assumptions, each character must change not only his way of thinking about the other, but also about the past and himself. The theory used in the paper is mostly Hegelian, but also psychoanalytic.


Blood transfusion requirements were reviewed for a consecutive series of 25 patients undergoing elective pulmonary endarterectomy (PEA) between August 2005 and March 2009 in our institution. Patients were divided into two groups based on the implementation of a bloodtransfusionalgorithmthatcombinedantifibrinolytic therapy,intraoperativebloodsequestration,bloodsalvageandlack ofcorrectionofcoagulationparametersintheabsenceofongoingbleeding.Despitesimilarperioperativecoagulationprofiles inthetwo groups,theintroductionofaconservativebloodtransfusionalgorithmwasassociatedwithasignificant increaseinthenumberofpatients receiving no homologous blood products. Of 16 patients who underwent surgery after the introduction of the algorithm, nine (56%) required nohomologousbloodproductsandfive (31%)requiredoneortwounitsofhomologousredbloodcellsonly.Theinternationalnormalized rationormalizedwithinsixto12hoursafterdiscontinuationofcardiopulmonarybypasswithouttransfusionoffreshfrozenplasmaor platelets in 13 of the 16 patients. In conclusion, a conservative blood transfusion strategy allows PEA to be safely performed with no or minimal blood product transfusions in a majority of patients despite deep hypothermic circulatory arrest.  2011 Published by European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery. All rights reserved.


This protocol describes the process of passaging human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) for feeder-free culturing of hPSCs using Accutase or ReLeSF Protocol overview A. Accutase B. ReLeSR General Notes: For this protocol, hPSCs refers collectively to hiPSCs and hESCs. All described procedures have been tested and work equally well for hiPSCs and hESCs. Until otherwise indicated, feeder-free hPSCs are routinely grown in a humidified cell culture incubator under "low" oxygen conditions. We have successfully maintained hPSCs using either 3% O2 (3% O2, 5% CO2) or 5% O2 (5% O2, 5% CO2) conditions. We have routinely maintained feeder-free cells in either mTeSR-plus or StemFlex, however these two mediums are not interchangeable. Pick one and stick to it. We have routinely maintained feeder-free hPSC cultures on VTN, Matrigel and Geltrex coated cell culture plates without observing obvious differences. We have routinely passaged feeder-free hPSCs using either Accutase (as single cell suspension) or ReLeSR (as cell aggregates) without observing obvious differences.


Abstract Background Vitamin D prevents deficiency rickets, but its prescription must be weighed carefully! Objective We report a rare case of iatrogenic toxic hypervitaminosis D in a child with vitamin D resistant rickets…! Methods We admitted a two-year-old girl, presenting signs of rickets resistant to the usual then therapeutic doses of vitamin D3. Vitamin D2 in oral suspension is then ordered in addition, for a few weeks until the onset of hearing loss motivating her hospitalization in pediatrics. Results Biological and radiological explorations revealed renal failure with threatening arterial hypertension, as well as diffuse and severe arteriosclerosis on Doppler signal. Eviction (stopping vitamin D in all its forms), symptomatic and conservative management by (converting-enzyme inhibitors) and hydration allowed a progressive blood pressure normalisation, arteriosclerosis disappearance (undetected by Doppler signal and by angio-scan) along with a gradual normalising of the kidney function; all this over a period of 2 years The girl actually had hypophosphatemic rickets, and oral phosphorus (syrup) was also prescribed Conclusion Vitamin D is potentially toxic with sometimes severe renal risks (lithiasis, nephrocalcinosis), and hypercalcemia might be severe, especially if renal function is impaired. Blindly treating any rickets with vitamin D can be adventurous and might expose the child to serious morbidity.


The dogma of rapid sequence intubation suggests that the benefits of positive-pressure ventilation for preventing hypoxia during intubation are not


tructural composite lumber (SCL) is a generic name for a group of products withinawidevarietyofengineeredwood products. SCL includes materials like laminated veneer lumber (LVL), parallel strand lumber (PSL), and laminated strand lumber (LSL). SCL is composed of either wood veneers or strands that are mainly oriented longitudinally, dried to a low moisture content, and bonded by a resin. As a result of the manufacturing process, defects, like knots and slope of grain found in solid sawn lumber (SSL), areeither eliminatedorat leastdispersed. SCL is more homogeneous than SSL and shows less variability in measured properties, resulting in higher design values. The major advantage of SCL is availability of relatively large sizes in combination with high strength, uniformity, and straightness. In general, allowable stresses are highest for SCL, followed by glued-laminated (glulam) timber and SSL. However, the same may not be true for shear strength. Historically, shear strength of SSL and SCL have been determined from small specimens, known as shear blocks. However, Gupta et al. (2002a) showed that shear strength of SSL from shear blocks is lower than the shear strength of SSL based on full-size torsion tests. Even though the shear block specimen was designed as a pure shear specimen, previous studies (Radcliff and Suddarth 1955) have shown that it is not; it has stress concentration at the re-entrant corner and bending stresses. Several investigators (Rammer et al. 1996, Riyanto and Gupta 1998) have used various bending test setups to determine the shear strength of wood. However, in a bending test setup, shear stresses are affected by the presence of other stresses, as has been shown by previous studies (Mandery 1969, Riyanto and Gupta 1998). Torsion is the only test method that produces pure shear stresses in the specimen and may be used to determine shear strength of various wood products. Therefore, the objective of this study is to perform a finite element analysis (FEA) of the full-size SCL subjected to torsion in order to enhance the understanding of torsion theory using orthotropic material properties, and to compare FEA results with experimental results.


In the recent times the study of signal propagation models are under continuous reviewand currently a lot of work is being done on prediction of path losses associated with different kinds of environments, but the exactness of each model deployed is valid only for a small frame of fixed parameters which are the fundamentals of it. An exact radio propagation model is important for coping up with new challenges of the field of communication like: appropriate design, deployment, and service management strategies for any wireless network. It thereby becomes important for the purpose of signal coverage prediction, data reception, performance parameters, reception schemes, analysis of signal attenuation under different environments and in determination of the optimum location for the purpose of installation of base stations. Therefore the majorpurpose of this work is to survey various residential path loss prediction models along with few other models and to probe the accuracy of some widely used outdoor propagation models which are applicable for900MHz and 1800 MHz band such as Free space model, Egli model, Okumura model and COST 231 Hata model, ECC model, Bertoni's model on the interfacial regions of Dehradun. Probing studies requires field measurement which is done in the sub-urbanized zone of the concerned region. Some base stations operating at GSM 1800 MHz band were selected for the measurement in the particular area. Finally the models were verified against the field measurement in order to find out most suitable model for the region.


INTRODUCTION: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO ASK, "WHAT IS TIME?" CHAPTER ONE: TIME AND CHANGE CHAPTER TWO: IDEALISM AND EXPERIENCE CHAPTER THREE: TIME AND SPACETIME CHAPTER FOUR: DOES TIME PASS? CHAPTER FIVE: THE ARROW OF TIME CHAPTER SIX: IS TIME TRAVEL POSSIBLE? CHAPTER SEVEN: TIME AND FREEDOM CHAPTER EIGHT: COULD THE UNIVERSE HAVE NO BEGINNING OR END IN TIME? EPILOGUE: IS "WHAT IS TIME?" THE WRONG QUESTION?


Authorization protocols play a foundation role in web security. There is a risk that the data may be changed in places where it is transmitted in the unencrypted form, for example, in a proxy server. The vulnerabilities of payload spoofing aren't thoroughly re-searched. Existing authorization protocols for large payload implement the "Filling the Buffer"method and its subtype "Buffering to File". Through simulation, it was found that the second subtype "Buffering to Memory"is not ideal for requests with large payloads. In previous papers, a "chunking"method was developed for authorizing HTTP requests with efficient payload verification. However, it was found that in an operation queue environment,the system is prone to falling into the critical mode, which became a subject of further study.This paper aims to reduce the harmful effect of critical modes.Analysis of signing methods for authorization using a parallel architecture based on queuing theory has shown that the "chunking"method is the most promising.The developed methods for ranking authorization protocols for large requests and identifying critical modes made it possible to experimentally determine the conditions for the manifestationof the advantages of the studied methods of signing the payload in different modes and to study the effect of the intensity of the incoming data on the transition of the system to the critical mode. Conducting a computer experiment, the dependencies of the multithreaded write speed on the number of threads for the "chunking"and "buffering to file"methods were obtained depending on the number of threads and the data transfer rate. The parallel processing of the digital signatures of requests has improved the performance of the system, keeping the sequential processing of data. The study of the influence of the intensity of the incoming data on the transition of the system to the critical mode makes it possible to calculate the limitation of the system load. Thus, the goal of reducing the harmful effect of critical modes and ensuring greater reliability and speed of the system is achieved.


Questionnaire investigations were conducted to find the overall benefits gained by safe agro-food(fishery food) certification carried out in China.The questionnaire towards local certification agencies of safe agro-food(fishery food),aquaculture enterprises,and consumers were conducted respectively.This part reports the findings of the questionnaire investigation to local certification agencies of safe agro-food(fishery food).The results showed that the certification of safe agro-food(fishery food) has gained significant social benefit and some ecologic and economic benefits.


Introduction: Zech. 6:9-15 is the central hinge1 linking the two halves of the prophet's diptych composition, the axis between the night visions (1:7-6:8) with their introduction (1:1-6) and the burdens (9:1-14:21) with their introduction (7:1-8:23). Each half is itself a diptych having a hinge section, Zech. 3:1-10 for the visions and 11:1-17 for the burdens. Common to the three hinge passages is a focus on the figure of the coming Messiah and in particular on his priest-king office.


This research has been undertaken to find if product, service and information qualities influence customers satisfaction with Bangladeshi leather products in Bangladesh. Bangladesh s leather product industries are the second largest contributor to the national GDP. The country itself has a large consumer. Customer satisfaction has increasingly become in concern of the business conglomerates in Bangladesh. Previous research has empirical evidence that product, service and information quality influence customer satisfaction. This research is a benchmark to understand how these factors together impact customer satisfaction. Research shows that all these exogenous latent constructs have a significant positive impact on customer satisfaction. The article theoretically contributes to the existing literature by testing a hypothetic deductive model among 384 customers in Dhaka City. Variance-based statistical tools (particle least squared equation model) were used to test the hypotheses. The result of the study arises a convincing case for the entrepreneurs of Bangladeshi leather products manufacturing industries regarding taking due attention to improving the product, service and information quality.
KEYWORDS: Customer satisfaction, Leather industries, Product quality, Information quality, Service quality, Bangladesh.


woman's role in housing and settlement development that emerges from the case studies is one of extreme difficulty. Women are capable of contributing to the resolution of their individual and community housing problems and yet their contribution is often invisible both to planners and to their menfolk. As wives and mothers in nuclear families they suffer from their gender roles within the household, as heads of households they suffer from the sexual division of labour which limits their incomes and their access to official housing schemes. Women need to struggle to improve their housing conditions and yet the different form of their housing needs is usually neglected in architectural design and in planning decisions. Ultimately, this book is much more about women than it is about housing. I suppose that this is inevitable given the neglect of women in the proliferation of writing on housing and human settlement in the Third World. Unfortunately, the emphasis on women per se means that we learn too little about certain aspects of the housing situation. For example, with one partial exception in the chapter on Guayana, there is nothing on rental housing, despite the fact that more urban women probably rent accommodation in the Third World than own it. We also learn little about the role that women play, or do not play, in the design of selfhelp housing. The emphasis on women and their undoubted problems also leads to occasional exaggeration. The triple role of women is constantly emphasised (although surely not every woman performs a triple role at least as defined here?), but all men by implication seem only to have a single role. The proportion of women-headed households also seems to have increased surprisingly: it is claimed that' in urban areas, especially in Latin America and parts of Africa, the figure exceeds 50 per cent' (p. 14). I suppose this element of exaggeration must be accepted after all this book seeks to convince women of their strategic gender needs — but it does slightly weaken confidence in the scholarly virtues of the book. However, these are minor blemishes on a useful contribution to an important topic. We do need to know more about gender relations in the home and about the role of women in the housing process. This is one step on the way.


Due to the advancement in information technology and the boom of micro-blogging platforms, a growing number of online reviews are posted daily on product distributed platforms in the form of spontaneous and insightful user feedback, and these can be used as a significant data source to understand user experience (UX) and satisfaction. However, despite the vast amount of online reviews, the existing literature focuses on online ratings and ignores the real textual context in reviews. We proposed a three-step UX quantification model from online reviews to understand customer satisfaction using the effect-based Kano model. First, the relevant online reviews are selected using various filter mechanisms. Second, UX dimensions (UXDs) are extracted using a proposed method called UX word embedding Latent Dirichlet allocation (UXWE-LDA) and sentiment orientation using a transformer-based pipeline. Then, the casual relationships are identified for the extracted UXDs. Third, the UXDs are mapped on the customer satisfaction model (effect-based Kano) to understand the user perspective about the system, product, or services. Finally, the different parts of the proposed quantification model are evaluated to examine the performance of this method. We present different results of the proposed method in terms of accuracy, topic coherence (TC), Topic-wise performance, and expert-based evaluation for the proposed framework validation. For review quality filters, we achieved 98.49% accuracy for the spam detection classifier and 95% accuracy for the relatedness detection classifier. The results show that the proposed method for the topic extractor module always gives a higher TC value than other models such as WE-LDA and LDA. Regarding topic-wise performance measures, UXWE-LDA achieves a 3% improvement on average compared to LDA due to the incorporation of semantic domain knowledge. We also compute the Jaccard coefficient similarity between the extracted dimensions using UXWE-LDA and UX experts-based analysis for checking the mutual agreement, which is 0.3, 0.5, and 0.4, respectively. Based on the Kano model, the presented study has potential implications concerning issues and knowing the product's strengths and weaknesses in product design.


Recently, the notation of the order induced by uninorms (t-norms, nullnorms) has been studied widely. In this paper, we study on the direct product of uninorms on bounded lattices. Also, we define an order induced by uninorms which are a direct product of two uninorms on bounded lattices. Also, we investigate properties of introduced order


Computational requirements often limit the assessment of uncertainty in complex environmental models. Monte Carlo–based techniques such as generalized likelihood uncertainty estimation (GLUE) and Bayesian uncertainty assessment are limited in applicability because of their heavy computational demands. This paper presents a computationally efficient method that combines automatic calibration using function‐approximation‐based global optimization with importance weighting for assessing parametric uncertainty in model outputs for computationally expensive models. We call this method automatic calibration and uncertainty assessment using response surfaces (ACUARS). The bias introduced during optimization because of oversampling of high goodness of fit regions of the parameter space is corrected using a multidimensional cell‐declustering technique. The proposed method is applied to two hypothetical examples in enhanced bioremediation of chlorinated ethenes in groundwater that differ in computational requirements and the number of parameters that were calibrated. The results from the simpler example in which uncertainty of three model parameters in model outputs was considered showed that for a given acceptability threshold and a given number of permissible model simulations, ACUARS finds many more representative parameter sets than GLUE. GLUE produced only half the number of acceptable parameter sets for uncertainty assessment, even after 10 times as many simulations as ACUARS was performed for GLUE. Further, the median output of ACUARS predicted the true value of the outputs more closely than GLUE. For a more complicated numerical example, where noisy data were used for calibration of seven model parameters, GLUE required 2400 simulations to find 31 acceptable parameter sets, while ACUARS found 46 acceptable parameter sets in only 300 simulations for a moderately stringent threshold. This enabled a more accurate estimate of uncertainty by providing closer estimates of the true outputs.


S100 calcium binding protein A14 (S100A14), a new member of S100 calcium binding protein, has been rarely studied and its structure and function are still unclear. In this study, a credible model of human S100A14 (residues 12-102) was built based on the molecular structure of human S100A13 (Swiss-rot Q99584, PDB ID:1YUR_A). Protein sequence alignment showed some mutations in Ca-binding domain in the C-terminal, which suggested the C-terminal might not be able to bind Ca. While most of the Cu/ Zn binding sites of S100 protein family were conserved in S100A14, strongly suggesting its binding affinity to Cuand Zn. Compare to S100A13, the secondary structure showed there was a longer extension in the helix I and helix IV of S100A14. An unique site Trp (S100A13: W77), reported to play an important role in the interaction between S100A13 and cytoplasmic membrane, was also exist in S100A14 (W85), which suggested S100A13 and S100A14 might have common biological function. Though the monomer structures of S100A13 and S100A14 were quite similar, the strong difference between their C-terminals indicated S100A14 might have its functional uniqueness since the functional specificity of S100 proteins mainly attributes to the C-terminal sequence variation. Keywords-S100A14; molecular modeling; structure analysis


Sustainable business development is connected with environmental impact, natural resources and people. This makes the location a crucial factor for the operation of a business. Therefore, a combination of both geo-spatial data analysis and traditional economic evaluation of companies are advantageous. The consideration of geolocation is beneficial with calculations for process optimizations and cost efficiency as well as ecological and social compliance. Since integrating geospatial methods into economics is a rather new interdisciplinary approach, it seems necessary to establish innovative teaching concepts for the education of experts in this field. Creating and testing such new teaching concepts based on playful learning is the idea behind the ERASMUS+ project SPATIONOMY ("Spatial exploration of economic data—methods of interdisciplinary analytics"). An interdisciplinary team of teachers educates an interdisciplinary assembled group of international students. Hence, the fields of economics/business informatics and geography/geomatics are represented by participants and staff. Based on initial lessons about basic knowledge in the connected subjects, the central elements of the teaching concept are case studies and a simulation game, each with interdisciplinary challenges. The principal aim of the project—to educate students to become specialists in spatial economics—could be achieved. This paper aims to present, evaluate and discuss the methodological approach as well as the results from the application of the simulation game. The results show that the gamification of education is worthy. Simulation game-based learning appears to be more playful and experiential compared to traditional teaching approaches. Further research in this area should focus on the students' engagement evaluation and attitude towards sustainable behaviour in their own business.


A key element in the government's attempt to get Americans to accept nuclear deterrence strategy in the 1950s and 1960s was the campaign for civil defense, especially the building of private fallout shelters, as a form of civic duty. A critical approach to the campaign "in the pragmatic attitude" reveals that the campaign really was the site of several competing texts, including mass‐media narratives and pacifist social movement discourse resisting civil defense. The public debate over civil defense programs reveals cultural contradictions between some of these texts and the practices of everyday life, especially the tension between competitive individualism and cooperative community.


Traditionally in Algeria, sea cucumbers were only exploited on a very small scale, mainly as bait for fishing. There are no official data on the exploitation status of sea cucumber stocks along the Algerian coast. However, for some years, there has been clandestine networks that fish for and sell sea cucumbers, specifically for the benefit of the Chinese communities established in Algeria, and perhaps for export. Information collected from fishers and snorkelers indicate that exploitation started in 2013 on the western and central coast, before extending to the entire Algerian coast. The harvesting of sea cucumbers is still an artisanal activity but is growing rapidly and is capable of extracting significant amounts of these benthic animals, estimated at a few tens of kilograms wet weight per day and per person. Hence, the urgency of setting up a national management strategy for the nascent fishery, which, if we rely to the exploitation scheme already observed in other regions of the world, will soon face important challenges in terms of resource preservation and environmental impact.


Management process is a continuous activity that requires the achievement of the essential objectives of the entity. This involves knowing and understanding how should be implemented major functions of management to ensure the desired performance. Accounting, as part of the management process, specifically contribute to the value of the entity. In this paper we want to present how accounting acts as a consultant to managers, helping them in decision making process.


A 32-year old female diabetic patient presents with 2-day history of pain in her mouth. A complete history, physical findings, picture of lesion, differential diagnoses and management is detailed.


Wireless sensor network applications typically integrate, within the same network, a variety of sensing devices including those for imaging, sound and temperature. In these settings, multiple flows of packets with different requirements in terms of transmission rates, bandwidth and jitter demands may be initiated towards the sink. Uncontrolled introduction of traffic from sources can cause network overload in areas of the network where the paths of the different flows interfere with each other. Such interference effects may result in congestion which leads to high packet loss and excessive delays. In this paper, we present CoBRA, a framework which incorporates distributed, cluster-based mechanisms to address the problem of congestion by enforcing rate control, for supporting multiple classes of traffic in sensor networks. Towards this goal, CoBRA periodically estimates the collective traffic load and, based on the current conditions, allocates and adjusts rates to sources on per-cluster bases. While doing so, CoBRA takes into consideration interference effects and rate requirements of concurrent flows. We have applied two different rate allocation policies using our framework and, through extensive simulation results we demonstrate its feasibility, effectiveness and performance advantages over traditional approaches


The position of words was very awkward in the Ming Dynasty,that were not only compared with poems and article in old literature field,but also unprecedented than the novel and opera in popular literature.This paper explores the reason for clues to discass the evolution and development of words in Ming dynasty,and discriminates similarities and differences of the poem and the word.


Objective: Adults with serious mental illness face unique social challenges. Deficits in social cognition and social isolation can impede one's ability to engage in meaningful relationships, which can negatively impact a person's recovery. While the literature has established the proximal effects of social skill interventions, the extent to which the treatment effects generalize to clients' everyday lives is less conclusive. The objective of this study was to explore the literature and identify the existing social skills interventions for adults with serious mental illness and to understand the techniques used to promote generalizability beyond the clinical context. Research Design and Methods: A scoping review methodology, using the Arksey and O'Malley framework, was applied. Medline, PsycInfo, and Embase and relevant journals were searched to retrieve articles between 1995 and 2021 that reported on social skills interventions with a follow-up period or mention of transfer of skills. Results: Interventions for social skills training were classified into six categories: social cognition training, traditional social skills training, virtual reality, integrated social skills training, CBT-based training, and contextual social skills training. Four primary themes of potential generalizability techniques used in social skills interventions were identified as: a) targeting cognition, b) facilitating and supporting social opportunities, c) engaging clients' inner social networks, and d) ensuring goals are concrete and client-centred. Conclusions: For skills training to impact personal recovery and social functioning of adults with serious mental illness, it is necessary to incorporate generalizability into interventions to ensure skills transfer from the clinical setting to their daily lives.


Advanced ceramic materials such as Si3N4 and SiAlON are reviewed here with particular reference to their synthesis, properties, and applications in various sectors such as transport and defense. It is noticed that synthesis by the simultaneous carbothermic reduction and nitridation (CTR) is relatively easy and economical. The products thus obtained by CTR, have unusual combination of unique properties, viz., high strength at higher temperature, chemical inertness, wear resistance, etc. , and therefore they are very much useful in high-tech areas. In addition, some of the leading manufacturers of Si3N4/SiAlON are listed in this paper. Ceramic whisker growth mechanism and its importance in improving the mechanical properties of ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) are also discussed. This paper is mainly intended to cover important properties like structural, mechanical, oxidation/corrosion and wear resistance of Si3N4 and SiAlON.


Linear prediction has been widely used in speech coding. However, a large amount of calculation is necessary for parameter extraction by the autocorrelation method, so it is not suited for hardware implementation. This paper proposes a new analysis method, involving iterative method in the lattice circuit for successive K parameter approximations. In the iterative method, the improved hybrid algorithm was found best, from the viewpoint of high speed convergence for speech. For pitch extraction, partly divided average magnitude difference function (AMDF) method was used. Using these two methods, a vocoder was developed which requires only a small amount of calculation and is suited for hardware implementation (e.g. LSI). Good speech quality was obtained.


Nucleoside analogues of uridine, 5-bromo-, 5-iodo-, and 5-fluorouridines, thymidine and cytidine were prepared by condensing appropriately substituted 2,4-dimethoxypyrimidines with an acyclic side chain in the form of a benzoylated halo-ether, and subsequent removal of the protecting benzoyl group in base. The 2′-O-p-tosylates of these nucleoside analogues could then be modified to 2′-halo-, azido-, and amino derivatives. Many of these compounds are competitive inhibitors of uridine phosphorylase in vitro, the most active being 5-methyl-1-(2′-hydroxyethoxymethyl)uracil.


This paper proposes a robust vehicle detecting method by using Adaboost and CLAHE(Contrast-Limit Adaptive Histogram Equalization). We propose two method to detect vehicle effectively. First, we are able to judge rainy and night by converting RGB value to brightness. Second, we can detect a taillight, designate a ROI(Region Of Interest) by using CLAHE. And then, we choose an Adaboost algorithm by comparing traditional vehicle detecting method such as GMM(Gaussian Mixture Model), Optical flow and Adaboost. In this paper, we use proposed method and get better performance of detecting vehicle. The precision and recall score of proposed method are 0.85 and 0.87. That scores are better than GMM and optical flow.


Abstract Skolem (1956) studied the germs at infinity of the smallest class of real valued functions on the positive real line containing the constant
$1$
 , the identity function
${\mathbf {x}}$
 , and such that whenever f and g are in the set,
$f+g,fg$
 and
$f^g$
 are in the set. This set of germs is well ordered and Skolem conjectured that its order type is epsilon-zero. Van den Dries and Levitz (1984) computed the order type of the fragment below
$2^{2^{\mathbf {x}}}$
 . Here we prove that the set of asymptotic classes within any Archimedean class of Skolem functions has order type
$\omega $
 . As a consequence we obtain, for each positive integer n, an upper bound for the fragment below
$2^{n^{\mathbf {x}}}$
 . We deduce an epsilon-zero upper bound for the fragment below
$2^{{\mathbf {x}}^{\mathbf {x}}}$
 , improving the previous epsilon-omega bound by Levitz (1978). A novel feature of our approach is the use of Conway's surreal number for asymptotic calculations.


The BR (Ba River) basin is one of 9 main river basins in Vietnam. In the past 20 years, natural hazards such as flood and inundation have been complex and increased dramatically in both frequency and intensity in the BR basin. Recently, there have been approximately 198 large and small operating reservoirs which lead to increase natural hazards in the river basin. An Khe reservoir, one of big reservoirs in the upstream of the Ba river, impacts significantly on flooding in the downstream. This paper uses hydrological model to simulate the flows as a basic for the safety operation of An Khe reservoir in order to prevent the downstream floods. The results indicate the Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient higher than 0.8 is stable and reliable parameter.


Background: Sometimes the fetus suffers some abnormalities that damage its physical and mental growth. There have already been some indications for legal abortion and in fact, since 2005, some other conditions have been added in the Islamic republic of Iran under certain conditions. Objectives: This study was aimed to study the fetal causes of legal abortion referred to the Fars province forensic medical centers from 2007 to 2013. Methods: This is a descriptive-analytic retrospective study. The subjects included are the cases referred to the forensic medicine centers in Shiraz, Iran, during the years of 2007 and 2013. There were 1,664 samples in total and the sampling was done upon census. The variables of demography, midwifery, mother's disease, fetal disease and reasons for abortion were considered in the checklist of the questionnaires. The gathered data was analyzed by SPSS, version 16. Results: The highest frequency of abortion was observed and 31.5% related to mothers between the ages of 25-30. In 79.6% of the cases, abortion certificates were issued for fetal causes, 35.25% for thalassemia major and 23.4% for neural system congenital disorders. Consanguineous marriage accounted for 60.8% of abortion cases and 83.42% had an abortion before the fourth month of their pregnancy. Furthermore, in about16.58% of the cases, an abortion certificate was issued for mother's distress and constrictions. Approximately 36.75% of the couples had a family history of thalassemia and 17.65% of them already had a child with congenital abnormality. Conclusions: The most frequent causes of fetal abortion licenses were due to the thalassemia and congenital malformations of the nervous system.


The present invention bears a cobalt and calcium in the titania carrier, the inorganic pigment (CoO / CaO @ TiO


Women in that traditional male bastion, the newspaper business section, are underrepresented as sources and subjects of stories, even when the business staff writers or editors are women.


The motivation for landmine and UXO detection is introduced. A modern radar approach using multi-static and polarimetric synthetic aperture radar is outlined. Measurement results are shown and dicussed.


The objective of this study was to describe the sonographic characteristics of squamous cell cancer (SCC) and adenocarcinoma (AC) of the cervix using transvaginal ultrasound.


: Objective: To find out the existence of correlation between Helicobacter pylori (HP) infection and unstable angina Methodology : This study is descriptive and case controlled which was carried out from January, 2016 to December, 2016 at Services Hospital, Lahore. Participants ' serum HP- IgG levels were measured in CCU of the hospital. 96 patients (56 years as mean age) having Unstable Angina were selected for blood sampling during the course of study. The criterion was in accordance with American Heart Association. Blood sampling of 96 participants, whose mean age was 56 years, having no cardiovascular disease was carried out. Obtained blood samples were stored at twenty degrees centigrade. Serology findings were evaluated in connection with Unstable Angina. Chi squared test was used to analyze the collected data. Calculation of ninety-five percent confidence intervals and odds ratio was carried out after gender and age adjustment. Results : Seventy-nine cases (82.3 %) with UA and fifty-five cases (61.1 %) in the control group demonstrated a +ve anti HP-IgG. Three was odd ratio along with 95 % CI: 1.9 – 4.3. Significant association was found between UA and HP-IgG positivity. No significant dissimilarity in terms of age and sex was found in HP-IgG positivity in cases and controls. Conclusion : This study has shown association between UA and seropositivity of HP-IgG.


Developing a low-carbon economy is critical to cope with challenges incurred by global climate change. Decarbonisation of power generation plays an important role in CO2 emission mitigation. CO2 capture and storage (CCS) has been identified as a family of critical low carbon technologies, which allows the continued utilization of fossil fuels. However, the development of CCS is greatly restricted by the expensive cost issues in economy perspectives. On this basis, the main topic of this paper is focused on assessing the introduction of carbon capture systems in power plants. By examining the operation mechanism of carbon capture plant, a simplified bi-state operation pattern of carbon capture system is identified and defined. The "flexibilities" of carbon capture systems are equivalently taken as a series of "call options", and could be evaluated in a real option approach. Then, overall assessments integrating the values of call options are carried out. In order to illustrate the proposed approach, a numerical case is studied based on a typical coal-based carbon capture plant.


This think tank study† concluded, first, that the basis for the shift to a hydrogen economy is already underway, and is currently proceeding in two major phases. The first phase is to produce hydrogen H2 by striping carbon from petroleum . Phase 2 is reduction to practice of nuclear fusion . 5


Two and a half years ago, on the occasion of the second meeting on Cicilia which was held in Istanbul1, I had the opportunity of once again examining two of the most interesting speeches of the Bithynian sophist Dio of Prusa2. These speeches, which were delivered to the general assembly of the Cilician metropolis Tarsus, offer the possibility of tracing the elements of the social and political situation of this great town and of the territory of the Roman province of Cilicia, in the period from the Flavians to the first years of the reign of Trajan. From this point of view, no other written text of the first to the beginning of the third centuries of our era can be compared with these Dionean lOgoi, which provide first hand information about the internal enmities between citizens and non-citizens, the external feuds with other towns of the province, or the troubled relations with the Roman governors3. In any case, there are, in this same period, many other "literary" texts –in the broad sense of texts preserved thanks to a manuscript tradition, besides any other consideration– which can be profitably scrutinised in order to obtain more evidence about our region, its towns, and its geographical and environmental elements. Therefore, today I'd like to propose some reflections upon a selection of this kind of texts, excluding in particular the Christian ones (since one of our colleagues is going to speak on Paulus of Tarsus), with the aim of recovering the idea(s) of Cilicia of which each text can be considered the bearer. Indeed, none of these testimonies have the immediacy of Dio's speeches, which build up a vivid, though biased, picture of a dramatic moment in the history of the region. On the contrary, they are all embedded –so to say– in some particular context, which will have to be filteredin order to arrive at the result we are interested in.


La telemedicina: sfida e opportunita per l'Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli - During the last years of the 20th century the Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli was involved in a significant innovation of the clinical process. professor Ardigo was a key player in that workplan of innovation, frequently driven by the development of Information and Communication technologies. Telemedicine represents a perfect example of his enthusiastic effort for the deployment of new technologies at the service of the citizen. Keywords: telemedicine, orthopaedics, information, communication, technologies, citizen. Parole chiave: telemedicina, ortopedia, information, communication, technologies, cittadini.


Single‐ and dual‐band bandstop filters with U‐shaped resonators are proposed. First, short and open U‐shaped resonators are coupled to a main transmission line to obtain second‐order stopband performance with two transmission zeros in the stop band and two reflection zeros in the passband. In contrast to traditional second‐order bandstop filters, the two different resonators are coupled to both sides of the microstrip line so that the commonly used quarter wavelength distance between resonators is eliminated. Secondly, open and short U‐shaped stepped impedance resonators are employed to obtain dual‐band bandstop filters in a compact size. Both filters are prototyped and measured. Good agreement between simulated and measured results demonstrates the reliability of the design method. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 59:1362–1365, 2017


We propose an online multiple object tracking algorithm that exploits optical flow and convolutional features to handle noisy detections as well as frequent occlusion. To achieve robust tracking, we develop a data association method that deals with tracking scenarios of increasing difficulty. For easy scenarios, we use motion affinity to associate detections with objects. For ambiguous situations, we propose to use an appearance model based on convolutional features and correlation filters to complement template matching methods. For difficult cases where objects are under heavy occlusion, we carry out occlusion analysis, which exploits the relationship between targets and occluders to predict potential object locations. To deal with noisy detections, false positives are detected and removed on both raw detection and tracklet levels, while missing and inaccurate detections are recovered or corrected via short-term tracking. Experimental results on two benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed online algorithm performs favorably against the state-of-the-art methods.


This paper will describe a new surface boosting system AutoBooST® used as an artificial lift, it can be defined also as a surface auto gas lift system, fully automated and self-powered with real time monitoring and optimization of well production. Sonatrach and Expro Gulf with its partner Innovative Production Services (IPS) have introduced this technology in Hassi Messaoud field to increase oil production from the low wellhead pressure wells located away from the central facility where gas lift network is already deployed, as well as the remote fields.
 AutoBooST® operating principle is to separate the oil, water and gas at well level and re inject the separated gas into the well hence it is a system using the well associated gas as a gas lift and fuel gas of the unit which makes the unit fully autonomous with no external gas source nor energy requirement as the unit generates the necessary power to run all the utilities. Produced gas is recycled in a closed loop, therefore gas will be accumulated along with the operation and provides a wide range of gas rate to perform optimization of the gas lift injection parameters versus the produced oil. During the optimization or once optimum rate is set the excess of gas is diverted to the export line via an automated control valve.
 For down hole part, two options were used for the gas injection point either down hole circulating device SSD or SPM to allow gas lift injection from annulus to production tubing_ unloading valves are not required since compressor discharge pressure can reach 160 bars_ or run concentric tubing 1.66 inside the production tubing as velocity string.
 AutoBooST® application was very successful and gave an increase of production from 50% to 150%, particularly at well HMD-A with an increase from 2m3/h (301 bpd) @ Qginj = 0m3/d to 11 m3/h (1658bpd) @ Qginj = 23000 m3/d during the optimization phase then the well was set to produce at 6 m3/h (904 bpd) considering reservoir management aspects.
 As in conventional gas lift the production increase depends mainly on the well and reservoir parameters hence candidate well selection is the key factor. AutoBooST® application was already extended to target two to three wells with one package knowing that a current unit max compression capacity is 25000 to 40000 m3/d which is prone to improvement, however it is possible to use several units at manifold level to cover a large number of wells which will make a remote mini gas lift station.
 AutoBooST® is proven successful technology; it is an ideal solution for remote wells and fields. In addition to the production application it can be used to evaluate the gas lift conventional project prior to major investment decision.


The canon of Chinese literature is so huge and intimidating that it's hard to know where to start. And thanks to the difficulty of the Chinese language, only the most serious scholars can read the classics in their original form.Luckily there are some excellent English translations of great Chinese novels,offering you the chance to widen your reading horizons and learn about the culture of the country you're living in.Here are five classics


Abstract The building of four new settlements by the British Fisheries Society on the coast of the Scottish Highlands at the end of the eighteenth century was designed to stimulate the fishing industry, an industry which had long been seen as one of the main potential vehicles for Highland development. Part of the aim was to create new settlements where the inhabitants would derive the great part of their livelihood from fishing in a region where most of the people were poor and depended much on their crofts (smallholdings). Problems in communication and organisation were met in developing new settlements in remote locations, and Lochbay (in Skye) never developed very far. Even so Tobermory, Ullapool and Pulteneytown (adjacent to Wick) all became relatively big settlements. Ironically neither Tobermory nor Ullapool had any sustained success in fishing; and although Pulteneytown became a boom town based on fishing in the first half of the nineteenth century, its success was little to do with the efforts of the British Fisheries Society. None the less Tobermory has for two centuries been the main centre of the island of Mull, and today Ullapool has a healthy economy dependent on the modern tourist trade; and while Lochbay had a measure of success as a crofting township, Pulteneytown has now become a problem settlement with the withering of the trade in cured herring.


A flux pump (FP) exciter injects dc current into the high-temperature superconducting (HTS) field coils of an HTS rotating machine without a slip ring and current leads. When designing a large-scale HTS generator with integrated FP exciter, the coil inductance, field current, and time constant need to be optimized for better performance of the machine. In this paper, a 12-MW HTS wind power generator with integrated FP exciter was designed. The essential parameters of a 12-MW HTS generator were optimized using the Taguchi method, targeting the minimization of weight and volume of the generator, the length of HTS wire, and the inductance. In particular, the FP exciter was adopted for supplying dc current to the HTS field coils without the power supply and the slip ring. The magnetic field distribution was analyzed using the 3-D finite-element method. The induced dc current and charging and discharging times of the FP exciter were compared with the metal current leads, for confirmation of the effectiveness of the FP exciter. The detailed results of the HTS generator design were discussed in detail.


Drug rash with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms (DRESS) is a severe drug hypersensitivity reaction [1]. Sulfonamides, antiepileptics, allopurinol, minocyclin, diltiazem, vancomycin and β-lactam antibiotics are the most common elicitors. Symptoms include fever, skin rash, facial oedema, organ involvement such as hepatitis or interstitial nephritis, pneumonitis and myocarditis. Lymphadenopathy and splenomegaly may occur. DRESS syndrome is characterized by the presence of eosinophilia and atypical lymyphocytes in blood. The syndrome occurs within 1–12 weeks after initiating drug treatment [2]. Mortality is around 10%, most often due to liver failure. Drug-specific circulating T-cells seem to play a central role in its pathogenesis [3].


Novel energy storage solutions need flexible, stretchable and transparent energy storage solutions to enable Morph and similar futuristic concepts. Nanotechnologies, like growth of carbon nanotubes (CNT) on different conductive substrates and assembly of such structures in battery-supercapacitor electrodes can yield to remarkable increase in power density and energy. Portable consumer applications need also to be low cost and have fast or scalable process for manufacturing. Futuristic concepts urge drastically enhanced power and energy density compared to evolutionary route - current Li-ion battery development has been only 6-9% yearly increase with conventional development of more conductive cathodes and enhanced conduction electrolyte solutions.


An aspect little studied by the historiography regards to the role that the scientific expeditions played to the Science History. These expeditions gave a glance of the Brazilian way of living and specially of the captaincy of Espirito Santo to Europe and helped to build the Brazilian social representations by Europeans, while they set up a notion about the imaginary and how people worked to tame the land and turn it as their needs. Upcoming the science at a contextualized point of view, the purpose of this paper is to present a panel of scientific expeditions undertaken to the Espirito Santo Capitaincy from the sixteenth century to the late nineteenth century, by imperial times, and, in this approach, to highlight the ideological reasons of the mechanisms that led to the occurrence of such expeditions. After the analyses of the travel reports and narratives produced, we realized that the Brazilian Science History was based on the European point of view which influenced the constitution of its cultural diversity. Maybe many of the prejudice against Brazil that has still existed until today originated from these expeditions.


The performance of complex manufacturing systems in fast-moving and competitive environments is directly influenced by the scheduling and control of production, which need to cope with systems complexity and stochastic behaviour as well as to handle internal and external dynamic influences. In this context, cyberphysical systems and industry 4.0 concepts and technologies, which allow the real-time availability of system state data and the interconnectedness of information and material flows, can support the enhancement of scheduling and control processes. In this direction, the adaptive scheduling and control of dynamic production systems by means of hybrid simulation and optimisation approaches, which can take advantage of system state data visibility, possess great scientific and industrial relevance. This work aims to report the state of the art in simulation-based optimisation of dynamic production systems supported by cyber-physical systems. The research systematically analyses the published literature and outlines main trends as well as the current gaps, discussing future prospects for the adaptive scheduling and control of production systems. It was substantiated that systems with greater complexity, dynamicity and randomness impel the application of simulation-based optimization approaches supported by cyber physical systems and industry 4.0 concepts and technologies.


Whether the equity incentive system,as a long term incentive,has played its due effect is concerned and debated long-term by theory and practice.To test the effectiveness of equity incentives,domestic and foreign scholars had done a lot of research on the relationship between equity incentive and corporate performance,but the conclusions are not uniform.Most foreign studies confirmed that equity incentive is related with corporate performance.But in the past domestic empirical research,the major conclusions are that equity incentive and corporate performance are not related.In addition,the conclusions of Chinese and Western countries are quite different,mainly because of the different capital market environment.


Abstract The series of compounds, η 5 -C 5 H 5 FeCOCNL (L = PPh 3 , PPh 2 ,Me, PPhMe 2 and PMe 3 ) and η 5 -C 5 H 5 NiCNPPh 3 , has been prepared and characterized. Addition of the shift reagent Eu(fod) 3 produces downfield shifts and first order coupling patterns in 1 H and 13 C NMR spectra and allows the determination of conformational effects and rotational barriers. Evidence for preferred conformations in η 5 -C 5 H 5 FeCOCNPPh 2 Me and η 5 -C 5 H 5 FeCOCNPPhMe 2 resulting from rotation about the FeP bond is presented. Conformations in which the phenyl rings are oriented adjacent to the cyclopentadienyl ligand appear to be favored. Maximum barriers to rotation about the FeP and PC bonds are estimated at 8.0 and 7.6 kcal respectively. The mechanism of interconversion of right and left handed helicies in the arylphosphine complexes is discussed and a number of possible pathways are proposed. A method of assigning resonances of diastereotopic nuclei to particular nuclei is presented.


Microwave induced thermoacoustic tomography (TAT) is an imaging modality based on the thermoacoustic effect. For considering the safety and comfort, the microwave radiation power and imaging time are both preferred to be less. However, it results in an issue of artifacts and noise due to sparsely spatial sampling and relative lower SNR of TA signals. Aiming to overcome this problem, deep learning-based method is an emerging technique. In this work, we evaluate the artifact removing performance of a network based on fully dense U-Net architecture. The results show that FD U-Net network could effectively remove the artifacts from the TA images and improve the image quality.


We studied the effect of nitrous oxide on the bispectral index and 95% spectral edge frequency of the electroencephalogram in 20 patients undergoing lumbar surgery under general anaesthesia combined with epidural administration of 5 mg morphine. Anaesthesia was induced with propofol and sufentanil, and maintained with sevoflurane in air/oxygen adjusted to keep the bispectral index between 40 and 60. One and a half hours after the start of surgery, nitrous oxide was administered in a randomised sequence of concentrations (20, 40 and 60% end‐expired). Under steady‐state conditions, mean (SD) bispectral index and spectral edge frequency decreased as end‐tidal concentration of nitrous oxide increased, from 47.7 (4.3) and 15.6 (1.3) at 0% nitrous oxide to 39.8 (6.3) and 14.3 (1.8) at 60% nitrous oxide. A negative correlation was found between nitrous oxide concentration and bispectral index (r = −0.48; p < 0.01) and spectral edge frequency (r = −0.39; p < 0.05). We conclude that this dose‐dependent decrease in bispectral index and spectral edge frequency induced by nitrous oxide may reflect the level of analgesia associated with the anaesthetic regimen.


This report presents an assessment of the performance of Residual Heat Removal (RHR) and Containment Spray (CS) pumps during the recirculation phase of reactor core and containment cooldown following a Loss-of-Coolant Accident (LOCA). The pumped fluid is expected to contain debris such as insulation and may ingest air depending on sump conditions. Findings are based on information collected from the literature and from interviews with pump and seal manufacturers. These findings show that for pumps at normal flow rates operating with sufficient Net Positive Suction Head (NPSH), pump performance degradation is negligible if air ingestion quantities are less than 2% by volume. For air ingestion between 3% and 15% by volume, head degradation depends on individual pump design and operating conditions and for air quantities greater than 15% performance of most pumps will be fully degraded. Also, small quantities of air will increase NPSH requirements for these pumps. For the types and quantities of debris likely to be present in the recirculating fluid, pump performance degradation is expected to be negligible.


Controlling the solid-state polymerization of organic molecules to form crystalline materials remains a challenge for the synthetic chemist. In an effort to control reaction pathways through topochemistry, we have compressed the 1:1 naphthalene–octafluoronaphthalene cocrystal, C10H8·C10F8. This starting material displays a unique structure wherein the molecules are aligned in a nearly sandwich-like π–π stacking arrangement because of the inverse polarities of naphthalene and its perfluoronated derivative. This stacking arrangement and the use of fluorine as an sp3-templating functional group creates favorable interactions between the molecules along the crystallographic a axis, providing topological control over the reaction pathway at high pressure. Reaction of C10H8·C10F8 along the molecular stacking axis to form polymerized sp3 rods with single-crystalline order was confirmed through in situ single-crystal X-ray diffraction and infrared spectroscopy, as well as GC–MS analysis of the recovered polymeriz...


Transistors with $2\mathrm{D}$ materials hold the promise for extreme gate length scaling enabled by the very thin channel, hence ultimate electrostatic control. However, to date, little has been demonstrated as channel defectivity impacts SS and variability. Here we report the demonstration of short channel transistors with $\mathrm{I}_{\text{OFf}}\leq 10\text{pA}/\mu \mathrm{m}$ for ultra-scaled devices, $\mathrm{I}_{\text{ON}}/\mathrm{I}_{\text{OFF}} >10^{7}$, low median $\text{SS}_{\min}$ of 68mV/dec, and low VT variation with Pelgrom slope ($\mathrm{A}_{\text{VT}}$, a variability index) of $2.2\text{mV}-\mu \mathrm{m}$. This is similar to sub-10nm fin width $(\mathrm{W}_{\text{fin}})$ Si FinFETs $(\text{EOT} =0.8\text{nm})$ with $\mathrm{A}_{\text{VT}}=2.5\text{mV}-\mu \mathrm{m}$. The statistical analysis has been performed on more than 15000 devices, with smooth monolayer Mos2 deposited via MOCVD and an in-situ surface smoothening method, which precisely controls monolayer thickness and uniformity.


Introduction: Worldwide, expanding human activities continue to be a threat to many large-bodied species, including jaguars. As these activities continue, it is critical to understand how home range sizes will be impacted by human-modified landscapes. Objective: To evaluate the importance of protected and unprotected land on home-range size across their range. Methods: We used home range data from 117 jaguars in several habitat protection categories and human biome types. We used a Generalized Linear Mixed Model to test home range and spatial overlap with conservation categories and human biomes. Results: Most home-ranges were in Jaguar Conservation Units (62 %), followed by Protected Areas (21 %), Indigenous People's Lands (10 %) and Jaguar Movement Corridors (3 %), where 76 % of the jaguars lived inside one the first three conservation types. However, outside of conserved land, Rangeland, Cropland, Seminatural land and other human biomes were also important (24 % of the individuals). Jaguars in Rangeland, Cropland and Seminatural land had the largest home ranges. Conclusions: Although conservation land was dominant, human-impacted lands appear to play a considerable role in satisfying the spatial requirements of jaguars.


AIM To investigate the correlations between age, height, weight, and Lumbar2-4 bone mineral content (L2-4 BMC) , L2-4 areaI bone mineral density (L2-4BMD) in early adolescent ankylosing spondylitis. METHODS Thirty-one male adolescent outpatients with early AS were included. L2-4BMC and L2-4 BMD were assessed at the Iumbar2-4 spine using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry ( DEXA) with Lunar DPX-IQ device and age, total body weight and height were obtained. Correlation and multiple regression analyses were performed. RESULTS Age (A, y) ,height (H, cm) , weight (W, kg) , L2-4BMC and L2-4 BMD were (17. 56


Digital Optical Recorders are suited for mass data logging and storage of text, pictures and other forms of non-moving images. Most of the recorders developed until now, have been designed for computer-room environments. However, a number of applications will require recorders to be used in non-benevolent environments. Hollandse Signaalapparaten B.V. (Signaal) has developed a robust industrial version of the Digital Optical Recorder and aims at the business of complete systems (including DOR as an archival medium) for storage and retrieval of data, images and documents in heavy duty and special professional applications. Because of the system approach, emphasis is put on the development of an intelligent controller for adaptation to a variety of host computers.


Research has painted a pessimistic picture of students' second language (L2) writing skills in secondary education. One innovative tool that may help students foster their L2 proficiency, including writing ability, is in-class debate. Debate is commonly associated with oral communication and argumentation skills. However, debate may also offer advantages as an effective vehicle for L2 writing instruction. This study evaluates the effect of a debate intervention on the writing competence of Dutch secondary-school stu- dents. The intervention consisted of a number of speaking and writing activities, including case writing and note taking. The study, which employed a pretest–posttest design with a control group, involved 8 classes at 3 secondary schools in the Netherlands ( N = 146). To measure the effect of the intervention, we analyzed 2 opinion writing tasks produced by the students: just prior to the first debate (pretest) and approximately 10 weeks later (posttest). We used a variety of measures, tapping into different aspects of writing performance, including fluency, syntactic and lexical complexity, accuracy, and cohesion. Multi- level analysis of the data revealed that the students in the intervention group significantly improved on a number of measures in comparison to the control group.


Experimental and analytical studies were performed to examine the environmental behavior of hafnium and its utility as a neutron poison for the disposition of weapons-grade plutonium in Yucca Mountain. The hydrolysis of hafnium was investigated by potentiometric titration in solutions of varying ionic strength to determine the stability constants for the first four monomeric hydrolysis products. The specific ion interaction theory is used to extrapolate these results to infinite dilution. The solubility of hafnium hydroxide and a meta-stable hafnium carbonate solid phase are studied via solubility experiments using ICP-AES. An upper bound for the stability constant of the first carbonate complex is determined. The solubility of hafnium oxide is investigated via solubility experiments using neutron activation analysis, which is also used to investigate the complexation of hafnium by silicates. The potential for a near field criticality incident resulting from the disposition of weapons-grade plutonium at Yucca Mountain is examined using two integrated chemistry and transport models, which are then fed into an MCNP model of the near field at the Yucca Mountain repository. These models are used to predict the effective neutron multiplication factor for the system as the waste package degrades over time. Using the integrated degradation and criticality models, the long term criticality behavior of the proposed WGPu host phase ceramic is examined, as well as the utility of hafnium as a criticality control element for the disposition of weapons-grade plutonium.


A chimney model for the Galaxy is presented and its underlying physical principles are explained. The crucial point of the model is that the Galactic disk and halo are connected by chimneys which are a consequence of superbubbles bursting out of the disk forming these collimated structures through which the global mass and energy exchange flows from disk to halo. For canonical Galaxy parameters, the chimney phase is found to be associated with a mass flow rate of 0.3-3 solar masses/yr and a global power input of 10 to the 40th to 10 to the 42nd ergs/s. 72 refs.


The authors discuss the existence of multiple solutions of the system of fractional boundary value problems of the formwhere , is a parameter, , and are, respectively, the left and right Riemann–Liouville fractional integrals of order , and is a given function. Using critical point theory, sufficient conditions are found under which the above problem has at least two or infinitely many nontrivial solutions.