Tensile extension tests have been carried out to examine mechanical responses of polymer glasses under the influence of small molecule additives that plasticize the polymers by lowering their glass transition temperatures Tg and speeding up their α relaxation times. It is shown that incorporation of 4% triphenyl phosphate (TPP) into poly(methyl methacrylate) turns a brittle PMMA at 70 °C into a ductile glass, capable of significant cold drawing, as expected according to the conventional wisdom. However, despite the evidence that the same TPP also reduces polystyrene's Tg and increases the segmental mobility, the ductile PS turns brittle at 70 °C upon addition of 4% TPP at the same low drawing speed. This counterintuitive behavior is also found in the pair of TPP and poly(styrene–acrylonitrile). Thus, the present observations require us to incorporate new ingredients into the classical Eyring-type interpretation of plastic flow in a glassy polymer.


This study identifies the factors contributing to womens decision to terminate their pregnancy in Bangladesh. Using a comparative study design abortion seeking practices were studied among 4240 women including women with 1423 wanted pregnancy 726 unwanted pregnancy 1288 women who were accepted for menstrual regulation (MR) and 175 women who were rejected for MR. These women were interviewed using a structured questionnaire to collect information. Findings revealed that over 40% of the women who sought pregnancy care pregnancy termination care and MR do not know about MR; 50-60% of the women who sought MR or pregnancy termination were not using any contraceptive during 6 months of the index pregnancy. Those who sought unsafe induced abortions and were hospitalized for abortion complications were the most vulnerable victims of unsafe abortion. They were relatively older; some were very young and pregnant for the first time; mostly uninformed about general affairs as well as about MR; predominantly rural residents belonging to lower socioeconomic status and with a low literacy levels. Majority of these women knew the indigenous providers in their communities. Although over 60% of these women thought of terminating their pregnancy within 8 weeks of gestation they took time to contact a provider which increased their gestation period and led to multiple risk of complications. By comparing the characteristics of women who received MR and those who were admitted for serious abortion complications it has been observed that MR does not reach those with higher parity less educated and poor women.


Vehicle dynamics have very complex characteristic and nonlinear behaviour. Vehicle dynamics are decomposed of many internal and external components which influence vehicle stability. External components come from environment such as wind forces, surface coarse of road, lane bend or sudden maneuver, which will change the value of vehicle stability parameters, i.e. yaw rate and sideslip. Both are influenced by the longitudinal velocity change and are difficult to be measured by installed sensors in vehicle. For driving convenience and high safety performance, the vehicle stability parameters must be controlled. Researches and experiments directly on the vehicle bring quite expensive cost and huge time consuming. Therefore, before doing experiments to the real vehicle, simulation is taken. Simulation needs model of vehicle dynamics that are approaching real vehicle dynamics. In this paper, instead of using simple vehicle model, the replication of the vehicle dynamics has been taken from CarSim multi-degree of freedom vehicle model. CarSim's vehicle model C Class Hatchback Sprungmass 2012 is used in this simulation. All vehicle parameters are already provided by CarSim. Vehicle model run along defined part of vehicle track of Universitas Indonesia. At certain bend lane, the obtained data consists of steering angle, longitudinal forces to all four wheels, yaw rate and side slip angle. Two-stage Least Square method has been applied to those data in order to estimate vehicle dynamics. The estimated model was validated upon another data. The result shows that the estimated vehicle model could represent in approaching real vehicle dynamics. The estimated model has perfect controllable and observable characteristic. The model is stable and its eigenvalues is inside unit circle.


This work investigates the use of Neural implicit representations, specifically Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF), for geometrical queries and motion planning. We show that by adding the capacity to infer occupancy in a radius to a pre-trained NeRF, we are effectively learning an approximation to a Euclidean Signed Distance Field (ESDF). Using backward differentiation of the augmented network, we obtain an obstacle gradient that is integrated into an obstacle avoidance policy based on the Riemannian Motion Policies (RMP) framework. Thus, our findings allow for very fast sampling-free obstacle avoidance planning in the implicit representation.


I. INTRODUCTION Human rights activists have long lamented the failure of international human rights law to address widespread abuses by the private sector. As multinational corporations (MNCs) have reached ever further into poorly regulated markets, the resulting human rights violations have drawn increasing public attention. Initial responses to human rights concerns have resulted in a patchwork of disconnected, toothless initiatives. Five years ago, the Secretary General of the United Nations designated John Ruggie as Special Representative on Business and Human rights (SRSG) to bring new focus and energy to human rights efforts. The framework proposed by John Ruggie (the Ruggie Framework) represents a milestone in the business and human rights debate. A great deal of literature has been generated over the course of the five-year mandate of the SRSG, but the major innovation, the Ruggie Framework, has yet to be explored in any real detail. This article describes the evolution of the business and human rights debate leading up to the Ruggie Framework and then takes the concrete case of Texaco in Ecuador--the impact of its operations and the struggle to hold the company accountable--to illustrate the emerging consensus around business and human rights and its implications. Texaco's history in Ecuador provides a fertile case study that involves the sector (extractive industries) that draws the most human rights attention; brings a range of issues and actors to the forefront; and is live, heated, and pertinent. This "dry run" with the Framework is intended to highlight the utility of having a common baseline--even in its incipient state--to consider concrete cases of corporate human rights abuses, with an eye to the eventual development of global standards on business and human rights. II. BACKGROUND ON BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS International human rights law was conceived and enshrined in the post-World War II era of powerful nation states. (1) Human rights treaties, in line with international law generally, were aimed squarely at states and took little account of other actors. It was assumed that state governments constituted the gravest threat to human rights, and held the capacity to protect and ensure human rights. Accordingly, with narrow exceptions, (2) the legal obligations imposed by human rights treaties were understood to fall exclusively on states. (3) Corporations, like private citizens, were accountable only to domestic law. (4) This legal system has failed to keep pace with the changes brought by globalization. The number of MNCs has risen exponentially over the past forty years, increasing five-fold from 1975 to 2001, to reach more than 80,000 today. (5) These MNCs have pushed their way into the far reaches of emerging markets, many with governments lacking either the capacity or willingness to exercise oversight. (6) To the extent that international law has addressed this phenomenon, it has largely served to fuel it through an elaborate network of investment treaties aimed at protecting corporate rights and placing restraints on sovereign prerogatives. (7) These trends have produced a yawning "governance gap." The mainstream human rights movement, rooted firmly in liberal Western legal ideology, was slow to pick up on the human rights implications of this gap. (8) Through the 1970s and 1980s human rights groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Federation of Human Rights were narrowly focused on state actors and civil and political rights. (9) The sort of issues that occupied these groups--torture, extrajudicial killings, freedom of expression--were dominated by government action, and there was little need or incentive to address corporate actors directly. The first significant effort to apply human rights to MNCs came instead from newly independent, developing countries. (10) Many of these governments viewed MNCs as a threat to their sovereignty and independence. …


Compared with a priori-like algorithms, algorithms based on vertical data structure and lattice theory presented by Zaki can improve the running speed with an order of magnitude, and these algorithms are very suitable for mining low support and long patterns. The Eclat algorithm is used as the prototype for discussion of the problem of association rule mining with item constraints. It is proved in theory that with the introduction of item constraints, Eclat+ could greatly improve the efficiency and speed of association rule mining, and the Eclat+ is compared with some other related algorithms.


Understanding and reasoning over time is a critical enabling technology for intelligent machine behavior. Actions, states, and observed events can be modeled within the context of temporal events and their relationships. This enables the construction of temporal patterns that may be used by cognitive radio systems to proactively adapt and reconfigure themselves based on situational state. By providing a common temporal reference system, experiential knowledge can be shared between radio systems through the abstraction and propagating temporal patterns. Temporal reasoning can also be used to extend the robustness of radio environment maps. This paper explores qualitative and quantitative temporal reasoning within a radio system. A key aspect is a compact representation and efficient computation of transitive relationships within a digital processor.


To overcome the shortcomings of the traditional network learning mode,a new real-time interactive learning system based on the Android platform has been developed for teachers and students in universities. This system mainly contains two blocks of inquiring and mobile learning,and due to the real-time and convenient characteristics of mobile technology it can offer a freer and more intelligent interactive learning platform for teachers and students whenever and wherever needed.


Results are presented from simultaneous planar laser induced fluoresence (PLIF) measurements of CH-radical concentrations and particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements of velocity fields to assess the relative dynamical importance of dilatation due to heat release in exothermic reacting turbulent shear flows. The measurements are obtained in the far-field of an Re = 18,600 axisymmetric turbulent jet diffusion flame, with a pure oxygen coflow to eliminate fluoresence interference from soot and soot precursors. Various effects contributing to the resolution of the PIV measurements indicate the resulting data to be more than adequately resolved to discern the velocity gradients and associated dilatation. Distributions of the resulting two-dimensional dilatation and vorticity fields were conditioned on the presence of CH to assess their differences inside and outside the reaction zones. Results clearly show an increase in positive dilatation values inside the reaction zones as a consequence of exothermicity. Proper scaling of these heat release effects indicates that significantly larger dilatation values will be present in traditional hydrocarbon-air turbulent jet diffusion flames.


A survey of urine mercury levels of the traffic policemen was conducted in Guilin City,involving 44 urine samples taken from traffic policemen and 128 urine samples from the average people of three districts of the City for Hg comparison. Result of the urine assay and analysis showed that the policemen who had higher Hg levels were those working at the posts the traffic was heavier and the working hour was longer. The traffic policemen's urine Hg content in average(2.372±0.657)μg/L was 6.82 times as high as the value of ordinary people(0.348±0.193)μg/L. By using method of independent sample t-test to compare traffic policemen with ordinary people and to compare the traffic policemen with the policemen working in office,it was found that the difference between both of the two groups were significant;besides,Hg content(2.429 ±0.628) μg/L in male's urine was a little bit higher than that(2.114 ±0.722) μg/L in female's urine; however,it seemed that there was no significant difference between the male and female. In addition,using of unleaded gasoline has led to reduction of lead level in the atmosphere,but mercury pollution remained no change.


A grating-structured interface of a poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and n-type [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM)-based bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) photovoltaic (PV) cell was designed and fabricated to obtain a desirable thickness distribution of the deposited bathocuproine (BCP) buffer layer to efficiently utilize its potentials. As a master mold of the grating-structure, a commercially available recordable digital versatile disc (DVD-R) substrate was employed. The grating-structured surface of the P3HT:PCBM layer was successfully produced by duplication from a poly(dimethylsiloxane) secondary mold using the spin cast molding technique. From morphological observations of the grating-structured surface covered with vapor-deposited BCP, we roughly estimated the ratio of the BCP thickness at "walls" to that at "top" and "bottom" regions to be ∼0.5. The grating-type BHJ PV cell with a 5-nm-thick BCP layer exhibited the maximum power-conversion efficiency (ηp) of 3.51%. Compared with the conventional flat-type BHJ PV cell with a 20-nm-thick BCP layer, the performance of the grating-type BHJ PV cell with a 20-nm-thick BCP layer was remarkably improved, owing to the contribution of the wall side contact, which provides a lower-barrier path of the electrons toward the cathode through the thinner BCP layer.A grating-structured interface of a poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and n-type [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM)-based bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) photovoltaic (PV) cell was designed and fabricated to obtain a desirable thickness distribution of the deposited bathocuproine (BCP) buffer layer to efficiently utilize its potentials. As a master mold of the grating-structure, a commercially available recordable digital versatile disc (DVD-R) substrate was employed. The grating-structured surface of the P3HT:PCBM layer was successfully produced by duplication from a poly(dimethylsiloxane) secondary mold using the spin cast molding technique. From morphological observations of the grating-structured surface covered with vapor-deposited BCP, we roughly estimated the ratio of the BCP thickness at "walls" to that at "top" and "bottom" regions to be ∼0.5. The grating-type BHJ PV cell with a 5-nm-thick BCP layer exhibited the maximum power-conversion efficiency (ηp) of 3.51%. Compared with the convention...


OBJECTIVE To study the dose-effect relationship of theophylline treatment for premature infant with apnea for clinical application of apnea in premature infant.METHOD The concentration of serum theophylline and dose detected by fluorescence polarization immunoassay(FPIA) were analyzed in 67 cases of premature infant with apnea in the last two years.RESULTS The theophylline concentration was positively correlated with the dose.However,there were significant differences along individuals.The proper maintenance dose with good clinical effect was(2.9±0.8) mg·kg-1·d-1.The corresponding trough concentration was(4.3±1.1) mg·L-1.Theophylline trough concentration showed no relationship with the corrected gestational age(P0.05).Meanwhile,the maintenance dose of theophylline was significantly correlated with corrected gestational age(P0.05).CONCLUSION It is suggested to monitor the serum concentration and carry out individual administration in the clinical application of theophylline in the treatment of apnea in premature infant.It is recommended to maintain serum theophylline trough concentration in the 4 mg·L-1.


Let (W, S) be an arbitrary Coxeter system, y ∊ S*. We describe an algorithm which will compute, directly from y and the Coxeter matrix of W, the interval from the identity to y in the Bruhat ordering, together with the (partially defined) left and right actions of the generators. This provides us with exactly the data that are needed to compute the Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials P x, z , x ≤ z ≤ y. The correctness proof of the algorithm is based on a remarkable theorem due to Matthew Dyer


Every interactive system has a functional part and an interactive part. However the software engineering and the human-computer-interaction communities work separately in terms of methods, models and tools, which induces duplicated efforts and increased inconsistency risks. This problem is all the more obvious in the case of mixed reality systems which are more complex. We endeavour to treat this problem by proposing a design method, which couples the functional kernel and the interaction design. Our proposals describe the functional aspects of such systems starting from the preliminary study and down to the analysis. They allow designers to design classical interactive systems or mixed reality ones if necessary. They respect certain principles, which seem relevant to us, according to their utility and their usability.


As an important human-machine interaction component in the ship damage control system, the analog display board has a large number of indicator lights arranged on the board. But meanwhile, the indicator lights are in different working states and need to be controlled by multiple driving circuit boards. Thus, the application of RS485 bus communication can effectively solve the problem of communication between the controller side and multiple driving circuit boards. And the multiplexing of output ports on each driving circuit board will be regarded as a pragmatic approach to solve the numerous indicator lights that are in different working states on the board.


Objective To study clinical characteristics and the levels of inflammatory cytokines in patients of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease(COPD) combined with skeletal muscle atrophy.Methods The general clinical features and serum inflammatory cytokines were compared among the control group,the non-atrophic COPD group and the atrophy COPD group and the measured of the correlations were analyzed.Results COPD combined with skeletal muscle atrophy suffered a long period,with high dyspnea and a decrease of exercise tolerance.Compared to those in the control group and non-atrophic COPD group,weight,body mass index,fat mass,fat mass index,fat free mass,fat free mass index and lung functions were all significantly decreased(P0.01,for each),but serum IL-8 and TNFa significantly enhanced(P0.01,for each) in patients in the atrophy COPD group Serum IL-8 and TNFa negatively correlated with exercise tolerance,body compositions and lung functions.Conclusions Patients of COPD combined with skeletal muscle atrophy were suffered long years of COPD.Both of exercise tolerance and lung functions was reduced and body compositions were changed in these patient.The increased inflammatory serum cytokines TNFa and IL-8 are correlated with COPD combined with skeletal muscle atrophy.


Departures from ideality in concentrated pure electrolytes are described in the framework of the primitive model of ionic solutions in which the solvent is a dielectric continuum, using the mean spherical approximation (MSA). It is shown that both the activity coefficient of the salt and the osmotic coefficient can be parametrized with the use of two parameters, which are functions of the concentration (ranging from 0 up to the saturation point). The parameters are chosen on the basis of their physical relevance. Results from two different sets are presented. A linear dependence for these parameters is found in the molality range typically between 2 and 6 mol kg–1.


Provision of quality and equitable healthcare is one strategy towards the realization of universal healthcare for all. Whereas many nations have enacted various policies to narrow the gap of access to quality healthcare between rural and urban populations, between the poor and rich, and among various cohorts in the society, the role of policies in financing healthcare seems to influence access and equity to quality healthcare in many developing nations. 340 health professionals in the Ada-Foah Municipality of Ghana were sampled for the study. The study aimed at verifying how funding of medical activities impacts on the sustainability of quality healthcare services in Ghana. Findings of the study revealed a statistically significant relationship between healthcare funding and its sustainability in Ghana. It was further ascertained that government policy statistically moderates the relationship between healthcare financing and sustainability. The study finally discussed its contribution, theoretically and practically.
KEYWORDS: Public funding, private funding, donor support, healthcare sustainability, government policy.


A prototype for a new generation of cosmic-ray detectors is to be installed at the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina later this month.


Rich in history and tradition, in architecture and gastronomy, Lucca (pop. 85000) is a jewel among Tuscan towns. Those fortunate enough to visit it are likely never to forget its circle of walls - wide enough to host on their summit a tree-lined walking and biking lane, that used to be open even to motorized vehicles - its fabulous olive oil, and its numerous churches. Lucca is known as "la citta dalle 100 chiese," "the city of one hundred churches," a testament to the historically intense religiosity of its inhabitants. Some see in this abundance of sacred space an occasion for rejoicing in the palpability of the divine presence, while others relate it to an oppressively conservative mentality and, as one consequence of this, to the fact that the Lucchese consume more psychotropic drugs than the inhabitants of any other Italian city.1 Within all these contradictions, and embracing many of them, Saint Gemma Galgani was a Lucchese saint. Born just outside of Lucca, in Camigliano-Borgo Nuovo, on March 12, 1878, she moved with her family within the walls of the town itself at one month of age and, with the exception of a year in nearby Camaiore (arguably, the most "normal" year of her life, during which she had an occupation, friends, and suitors), she spent all of her short life in Lucca. Gemma Galgani died in Lucca on April 11, 1903.2 In Gemma's sainthood as in her life, a special role is played by space - as geographical region or area - and place, also, like space, a physical environment, but usually one that has been given a function. If the town of Lucca is a place, it is found within a larger space and it holds spaces within it. So also the houses Gemma inhabited, the churches she frequented, are places because they are where people live and pray, but they are spaces, for example, familial and divine, homely and sacred. Though she remained within Lucca, Gemma's homes were many, as were the churches that gave her a spiritual abode. We could perhaps call her, evoking the epithet of her hometown, the saint of one hundred places. Having many homes and many churches in the life of the person, if not in that of a city, means having no home, and no church - no room of her own, no favored pew, no privacy in practical or spiritual matters. Place, in Gemma's spirituality as in her life, gives way to the more undetermined space. Still, Gemma never managed to stay in the space she longed to inhabit: a convent and, in her last years, specifically a Passionist convent. Home, church, convent ... all female spaces, all places where women are more present, where they are often in charge. The bourgeois family that was Gemma's environment, the feminized nineteenth-century Catholicism that was her religion, the women-only convent she sought to enter ... these locations affirm a gendered notion of space and place, of spaces and places, even as they reject the dwelling of someone who was, to all three sites, an effective outsider. Lucca, Gemma, Spirituality Finding Gemma in Lucca today is neither terribly easy nor, if one knows where to start, especially difficult. A poetic visitor might be content with seeing the soul of Gemma, whose spirituality is usually compared to that of her medieval predecessors, in the historically specific feel of the city, which preserves its medieval layout and many of its medieval buildings. Equally lyrical would be to see a reflection of Gemma's preference for personal privacy and seclusion in the very walls of Lucca, which surround and enclose the perimeter of the old town. More practically, Gemma's religious conservatism could be regarded as an example of the social conservatism of Lucca itself. But I was hoping for a more substantial encounter with my daughter's namesake saint. Disappointingly, the city is much more devoted to its patron Saint Paolino, an early Christian martyr, than to this modern young woman, and within its walls the most important churches are dedicated to Saint Martin, Saint Michael, and even the relatively obscure Saint Frediano, a sixth-century Irish bishop who died in Lucca. …


This paper shows how three commonly occurring types of deviations from clinical study protocols (missing values, deviations of planned measurement intervals, and outliers) may be taken into account within a statistical framework. The techniques are described for a linear explanatory model, but they could be of considerable use in a more general nonlinear context as well.


Objective To investigate the mechanism for resveratrol to improve the insulin sensitivity in diabetes mellitus.Methods Male Wistar rats were randomly divided into normal control group(NC,n=15) and diabetic group(DM,n=40) induced by STZ and high-fat diet.Diabetic rats were randomly divided into diabetic control group(DM-C,n=15) and diabetic group treated with resveratrol(DM-T,n=15).Then DM-T group was given intragastric administration with resveratrol at the dose of 50 mg/(kg·d)-1 for 11 weeks.FBG,fasting serum insulin(FIns),triglyceride(TG),total cholesterol(TC),insulin sensitivity index(ISI) and other biochemical parameters in each group were measured.The protein expressions of PPAR-γ and GluT-4 were determined by Western blot..Results At the end of the 17th week,compared with NC group,DM-C group showed higher FBG and TG,lower ISI,lower protein expressions of PPAR-γ and GluT-4 in the adipose tissue.Compared with DM-C group,DM-T group showed lower FBG,higher ISI.Integrated density(ID) showed higher protein expression of PPAR-γ of DM-T group in adipose tissue as compared with DM-C group.Integrated density(ID) showed higher protein expression of GluT-4 of DM-T group in adipose tissue as compared with DM-C group.Conclusion Resveratrol could increase the protein expressions of PPAR-γ and GluT-4 in adipose tissue,decreases FBG and improves insulin sensitivity of diabetic rats.


District heating systems represents one of the ways by which the European
 Union is trying to reach set goals in energy efficiency and security field.
 These systems allow the use of different energy sources including local
 energy sources such as waste and biomass. This paper provides economic
 viability assessment of using these fuels in the district heating system.
 Economic evaluation is based on regression analysis from data of existing
 plants and on the locally dependent data. Some of parameters that are
 dependent of local parameters are price and available fuel quantity,
 therefore these values are separately modelled; biomass as a function of
 location of the plant while municipal waste as a function of location and the
 time changes in waste quantity and composition which depend of socio-economic
 trends and legislation. This methodology is applied on the case of district
 heating plants in the City of Zagreb where internal rates of return are
 calculated for four considered scenarios. Results indicate that waste powered
 plant can improve its profitability by co-combusting other local wastes while
 economic viability is achieved by introduction of region wide waste
 management system. Reducing plant capacity, based on prognosis of waste
 generation, showed that these plants can be competitive with biomass plants.


FACING THE CAREER/FAMILY DICHOTOMY: TRADITIONAL COLLEGE WOMEN'S PERSPECTIVES Lisa M. Leavitt Department of Counseling Psychology and Special Education Doctor of Philosophy This qualitative study explored the experience of 32 traditional college freshmen women as they sought to choose a career with the idea of balancing career and family in the future. A traditional woman was defined as a woman whose central value system and cultural mores emphasize homemaking and childrearing as their primary role. Guided interviews were conducted to obtain in-depth descriptions of participants' experience. The interviews were transcribed and interpreted using a synthesis of qualitative methods based on Kvale's method. The six themes were as follows: 1. The concept of balancing careers and family life is not being discussed or addressed. 2. Participants saw their mothers' influence as the most significant in helping them come to their present decision about career and motherhood. 3. Education and a career are viewed as separate entities. 4. Participants reported experiencing both guilt and ambivalence over wanting both a career and a family. 5. Participants saw career and motherhood as mutually exclusive. 6. Participants thought of their ideas as being mainstream whether they wanted to work or stay at home while raising a family. The findings suggested that much more needs to be done in terms of encouraging discussion and providing forums for further exploration, to help resolve some of the ambivalence and confusion traditional women experience in trying to balance family and career. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The writing of this dissertation has been a rewarding journey which, while it has taught me much about the academic world, it has taught me a great deal more about myself. It is a journey I could not have undertaken alone, and there are many without whom it would not have been possible, and who have greatly influenced me at every step along the way. I express my deep gratitude to my committee chair Aaron Jackson for his belief in my ability to complete this dissertation. I thank him for his patience, guidance, support, friendship, and mostly his ability to inspire and encourage me throughout this process. I am grateful to my committee members, Ellie Young, Melissa Heath, Tim Smith and Steve Smith, each of whom has shared their individual strengths, both academically and personally, and who have been more than willing to help and offer support. I am thankful for the support of my cohort, Roger Belisle, Jo-Anne Collier, Laura Hoffman, Melissa Smith and Brian Sneed, who made the journey worthwhile. I am very grateful to my family for their support not only on this journey, but on my journey through life. I am thankful to my siblings and their spouses, Melanie Sandgren, Timothy and Dana Leavitt, Matthew and Shannon Hawkins, Anthony and Suzanne Pericle, Nathan and Natalie Cobb, Thomas and Vanessa Sutton, and Jessica Leavitt, for their never ending encouragement, and love. Most importantly I am grateful to my parents Vance and Marquitta Leavitt. I thank them for the example they set of the importance of a strong work ethic and a job well done. I thank them for their love and support in ways too numerous to mention. I will be forever grateful for their encouragement, their vision, and the belief they had in my ability to become Dr. Leavitt long before I believed it myself.


Objective To establish a high performance liquid chromatography method for determining aristolochic acid in Herba asari.Methods The composition of Herba asari were extracted by Soxhlet extraction method.The content of aristolochic acid was determined by HPLC.Results A good linearity was obtained as the contents of aristolochic acid A within the range of 0.0034-0.0170 μg and the average recovery rate was 98.27% with RSD 1.16%.The content of aristolochic acid was different in the species and producirg area of asarum with the highest in Asarum sieboldii Miq.Conclusion This method is simple and easy with good reproducibility,can be used to control the quality of aristolochic acid in traditional Chinese medicine.


A research report submitted to the
Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg,
in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree
Master of Arts (History of Art) by coursework and research report
March 2017


Vehicular mobility traces are datasets of vehicle location records in a region with high spatio-temporal precision. The access to this sensitive information can threaten the safety and privacy of drivers, given that the analysis of this data makes it possible to discover other contextual and latent information, such as daily home routes or workplace's address. To prevent this, many obfuscation and anonymization techniques have been proposed to mitigate the problem of user location privacy. In this work, we analyze an anonymization technique called mix-zone, which selects urban regions that promote the simultaneous anonymization of vehicles by changing their current pseudonym. We show how information about drivers' behavior in a city, such as their road preferences, can be used to reidentify their trajectories. To do this, we present a simple and efficient re-identification technique that uses only two georeferenced points as input data. We validate our technique with a real dataset of taxicabs, being able to re-identify up to 100% of the anonymized trajectories.


Objective To observe the inhibitory effects of matrine,oxymatrine and sophordine on expression of CD91 and CD13 and secretion of TNF-α in macrophage RAW264.7.Methods Macrophages were cultured in 6-hole plate and coverslip was prepared.Then macropages were cultured one day with different concentrations(0,12.5,25,50,100,200 mg/L) of matrine,oxymatrine and sophordine;the expression of CD91 and CD13 by immunohistochemical dyeing was analyzed by Image-Pro plus system(Media Cybemetic,Inc.,6.0 edition).Meanwhile,the levels of TNF-α in the culture medium of macrophages were examined by ELISA.Results Matrine,oxymatrine and sophordine could all inhibit CD91 and CD13 expression in macrophage RAW264.7,and the inhibition varied with the concentrations of matrine,oxymatrine and sophordine;the inhibitory effect of matrine was the most prominent one.Moreover,matrine,oxymatrine and sophordine also inhibited the secretion of TNF-α.Conclusion Matrine,oxymatrine and sophordine can greatly inhibit expression of CD91 and CD13 and secretion of TNF-α in macrophage RAW264.7.


Abstract. Precipitation is a key type of dynamic geographic phenomena. With time changing, precipitation areas can move, merge, split or disappear. Based on existing research methods, this paper applies a kinetics-based GIS method to analyze precipitation patterns in US mainland area. Annual precipitation data of 1950 and 2010 in small spatial resolution are selected for analysis. Three major dynamic changing types are considered for analysis: divergence, rotation and deformation. Objects to analyze transitions are designed, and displacement of precipitation area is calculated. After applying kinetics-based algorithm in precipitation data, conclusions can be made that there are some significant pattern changes in some key areas of US, such as east coast, west coast and Mississippi river area. Dynamic precipitation pattern changes of divergence/convergence, rotation and deformation in different areas of US mainland are analyzed and compared.


: The philosophy of nations across the globe is to value and take pride on what is local. But in some areas of Egypt, you may find local community see what is local as of lower worth and value. A percentage of the new generations that is not few are not proud of their local urban heritage. According to Paul Oliver's conception of tradition and focusing on the concept of "Handing Down" to provide a crucial key to understanding traditional architecture and built environments where it explains the actual process of transmission from one generation to another. The research aims to demonstrate the concept of tradition and heritage and how heritage conservation movement evolved. It tackles two cities as case studies, the leading city is Bologna in Italy and then discussing a potential city, Fuwa in Egypt, which can follow the steps of the European project. Paul Oliver's debate initiates many questions, such as, what happened to the "Handing Down" process of tradition or in other words, heritage in the community of Fuwa. Also, the research discusses how urban regeneration as a strategy can be a tool of reviving tradition and heritage.


The audio sound in today's vehicles is to ensure every seat an equally high quality. It is the goal that virtually all inmates hear the same audio signal in the same quality and the same volume; in complex systems with stereo or surround effect. As a rule, however, only the volume can be roughly balanced at current commercial devices, between "right" and "left" and between "front" and "rear". A finer volume adjustment for each seat is not possible. The novel acoustic device for producing audio signals now allows the integration of sound sources in the vicinity of the headrest of a vehicle seat, allowing an individual volume control, without the other occupants to disturb excessively in a vehicle. Any monitoring of the other inmates is significantly reduced. The headrest itself contains no speakers and offers good design options for the accident protection and style. The acoustic near field with the headrest is generated by a sound-conducting. The speaker is located such. As in the backrest or under the seat, and the sound line ends in the headrest. As sound conduit acoustically tuned pipes are used, the connector is adapted to the acoustic impedance of free space.


Rotary machinery is widely used in various types of engineering systems ranging from simple electric fans to complex machinery systems such as aircraft. A reliable online condition monitoring system is very useful in industries both as a quality control scheme and as a maintenance tool. In quality control, the early detection of faulty components can prevent machinery performance degradation and malfunction. As a maintenance tool, machinery health condition monitoring enables the establishment of a maintenance program based on an early warning. This can be of great value in cases involving critical machines (e.g., airplanes, power turbines, and chemical engineering facilities), where an unexpected shutdown can have serious economic or environmental consequences. Condition monitoring is an act of fault diagnosis by means of appropriate observations from different information carriers, such as temperature, acoustics, lubricant, or vibration. Vibration-based monitoring, however, is the most commonly used approach in industries because of its ease of measurement, which also will be used in this study. Fault diagnosis is a sequential process involving two steps: representative feature extraction and pattern classification. Feature extraction is a mapping process from the measured signal space to the feature space. Representative features associated with the health condition of a machinery component (or subsystem) are extracted by using appropriate signal processing techniques. Pattern classification is the process of classifying the characteristic features into different categories. The classical approach, which is also widely used in industry, relies on human expertise to relate the vibration features to the faults. This method, however, is tedious and not always reliable when the extracted features are contaminated by noise. Furthermore, it is difficult for a diagnostician to deal with the contradicting symptoms if multiple features are used. The alternative is to use analytical tools (Li & Lee, 2005, Gusumano et al., 2002) and data-driven paradigms (Isermann, 1998). The latter will be utilized in this work because an accurate mathematical model is difficult to derive for a complex mechanical system, especially when it operates in noisy environments. Data-driven diagnostic classification can be performed by reasoning tools such as neural networks (Rish et al, 2005, Uluyol, 2006), fuzzy logic (Mansoori et al., 2007, Ishibuchi & Yamamoto, 2005), and neural fuzzy synergetic schemes (Wang, 2008, Uluyol et al., 2006). Even though several techniques have been proposed in the literature for machinery condition monitoring, it still remains a challenge in implementing a diagnostic tool for realSource: Fuzzy Systems, Book edited by: Ahmad Taher Azar, ISBN 978-953-7619-92-3, pp. 216, February 2010, INTECH, Croatia, downloaded from SCIYO.COM


The aim of this study was to compare the effects of four weeks of high intensity aerobic training and circuit training on body composition in physically active men. The two groups were monitored with the use of Polar H7 heart rate sensors, connected with the Polar Team heart rate detection system (Polar electro Oy, Kempele, Finland), while for the evaluation of body composition the Tanita Analyser MC-780MA was used (Tanita, Tokyo, Japan). The results obtained showed that the aerobic training group (AT) showed significant differences in BMI (Table 2, Δ=0.2), body mass (Table 2, Δ=0.9), fat mass (Table 2, Δ=0.9), and fat mass percentage (Table 2, Δ=0.9), except in the lean mass (Table 2, Δ=0.0); the circuit training group (CT) also showed a significant reduction in all body composition parameters (Table 2), including lean mass (Table 2, Δ=0.3). There were no significant differences in body composition parameters between the AT and CT groups (Table 2) after the training program, except for lean mass, which increased significantly only in the CT group (Table 2, Δ=0.3). In conclusion, the present study suggests that high-intensity aerobic training or high-intensity circuit training produces similar benefits in improving the body composition in physically active men, even when their diet is not controlled.


A recent consensus conference organised by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh recommended opportunistic pulse checking of people over 65 years by GPs, followed by electrocardiography for those with an irregular pulse.1 The aim is to identify people at an increased risk for stroke …


Inorganic polyphosphate(Poly P), is a linear chain of tens or many hundreds of phosphate residuals linked by high-energy phosphoanhydride bonds, and widely exist in prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Many researches demonstrated that Poly P can affect the virulence of bacteria, and help bacteria to survive in nutrient-deficient environment. Poly P has been identified to be related with the RNA transcription in nucleolus of eukaryotes. Poly P can also promote cell differentiation and modulate inflammatory response. Additionally, Poly P is related to mineralization and demineralization of vertebrate bones. Poly P is the activator of mitochondrial permeability transition pore. This review is aim to summarize the impacts of Poly P to microorganism or mammal, and get more attention for the importance of Poly P.


In order to keep up with the increasing demand of fuel-efficiency in the transportationindustry, the interest of making the vehicles as lightweight as possible is steadilyincreasing. One of the way ...


With the advances of server virtualization technology, virtual machines (VMs) are widely used to provide various services, where live VM migration becomes an important tool to manage these services. Especially, with the increasing trend of owning multiple datacenters by a single company, live VM migration across datacenters enables the administrators to carry out globally optimized resource control and management like cloud bursting [2]. Generally, migrating a virtual machine requires to copy the disk and memory from one server to another, and update the network to forward packets to the new location. Pre-copy strategy are usually used for disk and memory copy to reduce the service downtime. Ideally, two aspects of optimization can be used to improve the migration performance. The first is from the view of host, e.g., optimizing the algorithm that decides when to stop the pre-copy stage or eliminating redundancy of data transmissions through compression. The second is network based optimization, e.g., selecting the best path for data copy or optimizing the network update process to reduce service downtime. However, as best as we know, most previous works [1, 2] only focus on the host based optimization, leaving the potential of network based optimization unexplored. The reason is the control of routing and network updating is distributed on every single forwarding device under traditional network architecture, making it hard to implement network based optimization. However, with the advances of Software-Defined Network (SDN) and the trend of its ubiquitous deployment in datacenters, it is able to control traffic forwarding and network update by running programs on the controller, which brings the opportunity to implement network based optimization.


Abstract The goal of this article is to analyse the distribution of American movies in Italy in the central part of the twentieth century (1930–1996), using methods derived from both social sciences and quantitative history. For this goal, I will apply Pierre Bourdieu's 'serial history' to the Italian local market, also following Franco Moretti's quantitative work on literary industries, so as to detect some historical patterns.


Introduction. The present study is of a complex nature and is devoted to the assessment of the main directions of the development of auxology in Russian anthropology. To a large extent, this work is a continuation of the review of the activities of the laboratory of auxology of the Anuchin Research Institute and the Museum of Anthropology of Moscow State University [Godina, 2010]. At the same time, the main directions of work are considered and described in more detail not only directly by the auxology laboratory, but also by other working groups of the same Institute, the Department of Anthropology of the Faculty of Biology of Lomonosov Moscow State University, as well as other academic institutions. Materials and methods. Specifically, in this part of the work, articles devoted to the comprehensive assessment of the processes of growth and development of children from birth to 3 years old, which were published in the «Moscow University Anthropology Bulletin» from 2009 to 2022, were used as a source of information. Results and discussion. The studies conducted in this area affect a large number of aspects of physical development in infancy and early childhood – for example, factors influencing these processes (evolutionary, climatic, geographical, ethnic and genetic factors, constitutional features of mothers, circumstances of intrauterine growth) are analyzed on representative samples. Special attention should be paid to the work on the evaluation in comparative and secular aspects of growth processes and indicators of sexual dimorphism of children under 3 years of age in the countries of the former USSR. Conclusion. Despite the difficulties in working with a rather specific contingent, the fact that these works, together with the results obtained, lead us to conclude that this stage of ontogenesis is represented to a large extent in the works of domestic anthropologists, which allows us to use these data both in the field of interdisciplinary and interdepartmental research.


The purpose of this research was to examine the perspectives of academicians on distance education activities during the pandemic from various aspects. The research study was carried out using a case study design, which is one of the qualitative research methods. The perspectives of 24 academicians working at a state university were explored, and the data collected through an online platform using a structured interview form were analyzed by utilizing the content analysis method. The findings were reported in the form of themes, sub-themes, and codes, supported by participant expressions. Results indicated that academicians faced infrastructure-related problems during the pandemic process, which arose from various aspects. They expressed that distance education applications would be appropriate to use, especially in social sciences, theoretical courses, and crowded classrooms in the post-pandemic period. However, using distance education in math, sciences, and engineering may be inconvenient and create an inequality of opportunity. Academicians also stated that they experienced technical issues during the distance education process, open-to-abuse exams, low participation in classes, and problems in accessing education for students. They emphasized that encountering cases of cheating and plagiarism regarding the measurement and evaluation processes is an important deficiency. Furthermore, academicians made suggestions regarding distance education applications such as maintaining the hybrid teaching model, examining the practices of leading universities, introducing a new model, integrating virtual classroom applications into the process, or introducing existing interactive systems into the system.


Introduction The outcome of older adults with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) using standard curative-intent chemotherapeutics remains dismal because of increasing risks of treatment-related mortality and therapeutic resistance associated with advancing patient age, accumulation of medical comorbidities, and changing disease biology. As a result, current expert guidelines, e.g. by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), recommend that these patients should receive investigational therapies. Still, investigational therapeutics typically exhibit response in only a subset of patients, and factors such as age or cytogenetics are often insufficient to predict treatment success with high accuracy. Here, we utilized BH3 profiling, a method for assessing mitochondrial functionality in apoptosis signaling, as a biomarker strategy for identification of patients likely to exhibit clinical response to an investigational regimen of a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor, vorinostat, in combination with gemtuzumab ozogamicin (GO), an immunoconjugate consisting of an anti-CD33 antibody and a toxic calicheamicin moiety. Cytotoxic effects of these agents have been shown to involve mitochondrial pathways of apoptosis, providing the scientific rationale for our study.

Patients and Methods Thirty-one adults aged 60 years or older received treatment with vorinostat and GO for newly diagnosed AML ([NCT00673153][1]). For 26 of these patients, pretreatment peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) or bone marrow (BM) aspirate specimens were available. Blinded to outcomes, we analyzed these specimens by flow cytometry-based BH3 profiling. This assay indirectly measures induction of mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization in response to treatment with BH3-only peptides, including activators (e.g. BIM) and sensitizers (e.g. NOXA, PUMA, BAD, HRK, BMF) as a surrogate for the function of Bcl-2 family proteins. Findings from these profiling studies were then correlated with disease characteristics and treatment outcome.

Results BH3 profiling was technically successful in 23 of 26 tested specimens. Log regression analyses indicated a correlation between priming with NOXA, a selective modulator of the anti-apoptotic protein Mcl-1, and response to induction therapy (i.e. achievement of complete remission [CR]/CRp vs. resistance; p=.027). Using the area under the receiver operating curve (AUC) to quantify the accuracy of outcome prediction, the % priming achieved with NOXA yielded an AUC of 0.83 (95% CI: 0.65-1.00; p=.00042). After adjustment for age, the AUC associated with NOXA priming increased further (AUC=0.88 [0.75-1.00]). The % priming with NOXA was also statistically significantly associated with the duration of overall survival (OS; p=.027), with an AUC of 0.87 (0.64-1.00; p=.0017). Patients in the highest tertile of NOXA priming exhibited a median OS of 453.5 days vs. the other patients median OS of 132 days (p=.12 Mantel-Cox).

Conclusion Our data show that the degree of priming indicated by NOXA identifies Mcl-1 dependence that is associated with response and outcome of vorinostat/GO in older adults with AML. This finding would be compatible with a pivotal role of Bcl-2 family protein-mediated mitochondrial depolarization for the clinical efficacy of GO and vorinostat, consistent with previous in vitro studies. Importantly, Mcl-1 -dependence as indicated by BH3 profiling of NOXA response may predict response to investigational therapeutic regimens for AML and, if integrated as predictive biomarker, may improve patient outcomes through identifying subsets of patients likely to respond to treatment with HDAC inhibitors and immunoconjugates including calicheamicins when given in combination.

Disclosures: Pierceall: Eutropics: Employment, Equity Ownership. Lena: Eutropics: Employment, Equity Ownership. Blake: Noel Blake: Employment, Equity Ownership. Elaschoff: Eutropics: Consultancy. Cardone: Eutropics: Employment, Equity Ownership.

 [1]: /lookup/external-ref?link_type=CLINTRIALGOV&access_num=NCT00673153&atom=%2Fbloodjournal%2F122%2F21%2F1305.atom


Lung cancer complications are the leading cause of death in lung cancer patients. This study aimed to describe the prevalence of stent placement, indications for stent placement, success and complication rates, and prognosis of airway stent placement in patients with lung cancer. Malignant central airway obstruction (MCAO) is one of the significant complications. Insertion of airway stent can restore airway patency in more than 90% of patients with MCAO. Airway stent placement is indicated in patients with extrinsic lesions, obstruction of ≥ 50%, have patent airway below the obstruction, and are not in the terminal state. The technical success was reported to be very high and consistent with the range of 95-100%. Early complications were relatively rare; however, up to 87% of long-term complications were reported. Stent placement is a risk factor for lower respiratory tract infection, an adverse prognostic factor in lung cancer survival. Airway stents should be indicated and used with caution and discretion. With the advancement and development of technology, various materials and types of airway stents are being developed to minimize adverse outcomes.


The immediate response to Three Mile Island (TMI) among the general public was one of increased awareness of the problems of nuclear power and increased opposition to it.'.' The response of scientists and engineers might be expected to differ from that of the general public. Technical people are more likely than are laymen to understand the technical issues involved in the accident, and they probably were more interested in the general topic of energy before the accident. The problems of nuclear power have been discussed fairly well in the technical community for some time, and opinions for or against atomic energy seem to have been set before the accident so there may not have been a great shift in opinion afterward. On the other hand, the magnitude of the accident and of the media coverage given to it may have been sufficient to alter all but the most firmly set opinions. In order to explore this topic with the limited resources at hand, I wrote to several prominent scientists who had taken public positions for or against nuclear power well before TMI. I will use their responses to answer three questions. First, has their alignment in favor of or against nuclear power changed? Second, of those who changed, to what did they attribute their change-to TMI or to some other cause? Third, whether or not these scientists changed, how do they interpret TMI in the context of their current beliefs about nuclear power? These men are not typical of the rank and file of the scientific community, but they do serve frequently as spokesmen and opinion leaders for the community. One would like a survey of the broader scientific community as well, but that was beyond my resources. In the period 1975-76, there was a battle of petitions for and against nuclear power,3 which provided a convenient pool of prominent scientists who had taken public positions on the issue well before TMI. One petition was circulated by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), an antinuclear group based in Cambridge, Mass. It said, in part: . . . the country must recognize that it now appears imprudent to move forward with a rapidly expanding nuclear power plant construction program. The risks of doing so are altogether too great. We, therefore, urge a drastic reduction in new nuclear power plant construction starts before major progress is achieved in the required research and in resolving present controversies about safety, waste disposal, and plutonium safeguards. For similar reasons, we urge the nation to suspend its program of exporting nuclear plants to other countries pending resolution of the national security


WHEN an archaeologist requires to record the stratification in the walls of a trench or cutting he usually does so by having drawings and photographs made. These may be studied at leisure but are, at best, merely reminders of the appearance of the original because they are one stage of interpretation away from it. Detailed below is a method by which the actual section can be transferred and then transported to workshop or study where photographs and drawings may be made in familiar and less cramped surroundings. In trenches where drawing is impracticable for lack of space this method could prove invaluable.


A multidisciplinary team of scientists at SUNY, Stony Brook is assessing the feasibility of using blocks of waste material from coal fired power plants for underwater construction, including building artificial fishing reefs. Experiments over the past five years, both in the laboratory and in the sea, suggest that coal waste blocks are environmentally acceptable in the ocean. On September 12, 1980, a 500-ton reef was constructed in the Atlantic, consisting of 15,000 solid blocks of stabilized FGD sludge and fly ash from coal burning power plants. The blocks were fabricated in collaboration with Conversion Systems, Inc. (Horsham, Pennsylvania) at a commercial concrete block plant. In preparation for block fabrication, a combination of different coal waste mixes, stabilization additives, and curing procedures were screened to develop candidate mix designs. Experiments were conducted at research fsei1ities of the Besser Company in Alpena, Michigan to develop methods of successfully forming coal waste blocks with block making machines. The demonstration disposal reef is being monitored to assess environmental impacts which may occur and their relation to structural integrity and chemical properties of the coal waste blocks. Blocks are tested ultrasonically in the sea and also returned to the laboratory for compressive strength measurements. After almost two years in the sea, gradual increases in strength have been documented. The progress of biological colonization is also monitored and compared with existing reefs in the area. The fish, benthos, and encrusting organisms are sampled and analyzed for uptake of block components. Data from fish tagging surveys have indicated significant increases in the resident populations of various species of fish and lobster.


Thermal accommodation coefficients have been determined for a variety of gas‐surface combinations using an experimental apparatus developed to measure both the pressure dependence of the conductive heat flux and the variation of gas density between parallel plates separated by a gas‐filled gap. Effects of gas composition, surface roughness and surface contamination have been examined with this system, and the behavior of gas mixtures has also been explored. Results are discussed in comparison with previous parallel‐plate experimental studies as well as numerical simulations.


Introduction: Infantile digital fibromatosis, also known as Reye tumor, is a rare, as ymptomatic, benign nodular proliferation of fibrous tissue, which occurs almost ex clusively in the dorsolateral region of the fingers and toes. This article reports a case of infantile digital fibromatosis. Case report: This case was diagnosed by clinical, im aging, and histopathological examination. The patient presented at the Orthopedic Department of our hospital, with a 4-year history of a painless, erythematous nodular lesion on the second toe of the left foot. On physical examination, a deformity of the second toe caused by a nodular, erythematous, painless lesion of approximately 1.5 cm diameter was noted; the lesion did not result in functional changes. Ultrasound examination revealed a solid, hypoechoic nodule involving the extensor tendon in the middle phalanx of the second toe. The initial diagnosis was fibroma or synovioma.


The invention relates to the technical field of feeds and particularly relates to a ram feed enriched with vitamin A. The feed is prepared from the following raw materials in parts by weight: 80-100 parts of corns, 15-18 parts of sorghum, 18-20 parts of cottonseed meal, 10-20 parts of carrots, 8-10 parts of purple sweet potatoes, 2-3 parts of silkworm chrysalis powder, 5-6 parts of dandelions, 4-5 parts of portulaca oleracea, 5-6 parts of elm leaves, 15-25 parts of folium mori, 4-5 parts of eriobotrya japonica seeds, 2-3 parts of beef liver meal, 4-5 parts of spinacia oleracea, 4-5 parts of sweet potato rattans, a suitable amount of table salt and 0.2-0.5 part of a phagostimulant. According to the ram feed provided by the invention, the types of the raw materials are rich and the nutrition is sufficient; any chemical is not added; the raw materials including the eriobotrya japonica seeds, the beef liver meal and the like contain vitamin A, so that the quality of seminal fluid of rams can be enhanced, the sperm motility rate is improved and the breeding benefits are improved.


ABSTRACT The balance of power among interprofessional healthcare teams influences their effectiveness. In this study, the researcher assessed the factors that influence power dynamics in interprofessional healthcare teams and the approaches they can use to address these dynamics. The study was based on a quantitative analysis of a total of 11 studies. The study's outcome regarding the factors influencing power dynamics in interprofessional healthcare teams indicates that there are five groups of factors associated with these dynamics: team-related factors (unbalanced allocation of space and time and respect for medical hierarchy), role allocation-related factors (lack of recognition, lack of delineation of duties, lack of confidence in the skills and competencies of others), communication-related factors (nature and tone of communication, receptivity, and responsiveness), trust and respect, and individual-related factors (teamwork skills and positive team attitude). The researcher also noted that the strategies that can be adopted to address the factors associated with power imbalance include a collaborative approach, an open-door policy, direct communication, education and mentoring, and a merit-based approach when assigning leadership roles to team members.


Bluetongue (BT) is a noncontagious disease caused by an Orbivirus of the family Reoviridae. Bluetongue virus (BTV) is transmitted by arthropods of the genus Culicoides and its distribution worldwide is restricted to regions that contain competent vectors. This study was to describe the distribution and seroprevalence of BTV infection of sheep in Ilam province of Iran by competitive ELISA, and BTV was diagnosed by RT-PCR and nested PCR, by targeting S7 segment. BTV infection was widespread in the province as 104 of 237 (43.88%) of the sheep sera evaluated contained antibodies to BTV. This genome segment was sequenced and analyzed in three samples as a conserved gene in BTV serogroup. The phylogenetic evaluation showed that I9, I84, I90 viruses were very similar to west BTV strains from US, Africa and Europe. These viruses were categorized with BTV4 from Turkey.


DS evidential theory may give improper results in strong conflict evidence,and the value acquisition process for Vague set is always highly subjective,thus constraining their use in information fusion application.To solve these problems,a new algorithm based on DS evidential theory combined with Vague set is presented.First,the confidence function obtained within DS evidential theory framework is transformed into the Vague set formats,in which a new thought based on focused degree descending assignment is put forward.Then,optimal dots are computed within Vague set framework.Finally,the fusion result is obtained by comparing distances from optimal dots.Simulation results show the availability of this new information fusion algorithm.


A methodology is presented to optimize the performance of an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) using Design of Experiments (DOE). 8 different feed forward back propagation (FFBP) ANNs were developed and tested according to the L8 full factorial orthogonal array. The 3 parameters tested were: Number of Hidden Neurons, Learning rate, and Momentum; each one having two levels. By utilizing the analysis of means (ANOM) and the analysis of variances (ANOVA), the optimum levels of ANN parameters were determined. The developed ANN was applied for predicting cutting forces and average surface roughness in turning Ti-6Al-4V alloy.


We present a theoretical study of the properties of the a1(1260) axial-vector resonance in a cold nuclear medium. In the vacuum, the a1(1260) resonance is generated dynamically from the interactions of a pseudoscalar and vector meson (rho pi and K barK*) in a coupled channel chiral unitary approach. Medium effects are implemented through the modification of the rho and pi propagators at finite nuclear density from well established microscopic many-body calculations. The in-medium pion spectral function accounts for the coupling to N-hole and Delta-hole excitations including short range correlations, whereas the in-medium rho incorporates modifications of its virtual pion cloud as well as direct resonance-hole excitations. The resulting in-medium a1(1260) exhibits significant broadening with increasing density as reflected in the rho pi scattering amplitude. The possible relation of our results with partial restoration of chiral symmetry in nuclear matter is discussed in terms of in-medium Weinberg sum rules.


Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can differentiate into diverse cell types including adipogenic, osteogenic, chondrogenic and myogenic lineages. In the present study, we demonstrated for the first time that sphingosylphosphorylcholine (SPC) induces differentiation of human adipose-tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hATSCs) to smooth-muscle-like cell types. SPC increased the expression levels of several smooth-muscle-specific genes, such as those for α-smooth-muscle actin (α-SMA), h1-calponin and SM22α, as effectively as transforming growth factor β (TGF-β1) and TGF-β3. SPC elicited delayed phosphorylation of Smad2 after 24 hours exposure, in contrast to rapid phosphorylation of Smad2 induced by TGF-β treatment for 10 minutes. Pretreatment of the cells with pertussis toxin or U0126, an MEK inhibitor, markedly attenuated the SPC-induced expression of β-SMA and delayed phosphorylation of Smad2, suggesting that the Gi/o-ERK pathway is involved in the increased expression of α-SMA through induction of delayed Smad2 activation. In addition, SPC increased secretion of TGF-β1 through an ERK-dependent pathway, and the SPC-induced expression of α-SMA and delayed phosphorylation of Smad2 were blocked by SB-431542, a TGF-β type I receptor kinase inhibitor, or anti-TGF-β1 neutralizing antibody. Silencing of Smad2 expression with small interfering RNA (siRNA) abrogated the SPC-induced expression of α-SMA. These results suggest that SPC-stimulated secretion of TGF-β1 plays a crucial role in SPC-induced smooth muscle cell (SMC) differentiation through a Smad2-dependent pathway. Both SPC and TGF-β increased the expression levels of serum-response factor (SRF) and myocardin, transcription factors involved in smooth muscle differentiation. siRNA-mediated depletion of SRF or myocardin abolished the α-SMA expression induced by SPC or TGF-β. These results suggest that SPC induces differentiation of hATSCs to smooth-muscle-like cell types through Gi/o-ERK-dependent autocrine secretion of TGF-β, which activates a Smad2-SRF/myocardin-dependent pathway.


In the course of our ongoing search for serendipitous high-redshift Lyα emission in deep archival Keck spectra, we discovered two very high equivalent width (W ≳ 450 Å, 2 σ) Lyα emission-line candidates at z ~ 3 in a moderate dispersion (λ/Δλ ≃ 1200) spectrogram. Both lines have low velocity dispersions (σv ~ 60 km s-1) and deconvolved radii r ≈ 1 h kpc. We argue that the lines are Lyα and are powered by stellar ionization. The surface density of robust, high equivalent width Lyα candidates is estimated to be ~3 ± 2 arcmin-2 per unit redshift at z ≃ 3, consistent with the recent estimate of Cowie & Hu. The Lyα emission-line source characteristics are consistent with the galaxies undergoing their first burst of star formation, i.e., with being primeval. Source sizes and velocity dispersions are comparable to the theoretical primeval galaxy model of Lin & Murray based on the inside out, self-similar collapse of an isothermal sphere. In this model, star formation among field galaxies is a protracted process. Galaxies are thought to be able to display high equivalent widths for only about the first few times 107 yr. This time is short in relation to the difference in look-back times between z = 3 and z = 4 and implies that a substantial fraction of strong line-emitting galaxies at z = 3 were formed at redshifts z ≤ 4. We discuss the significance of high equivalent width Lyα-emitting galaxies in terms of the emerging picture of the environment and the specific characteristics of primeval galaxy formation at high redshift.


A general and efficient one-pot synthesis of a novel class of methyl 1-alkyl-4-(diethoxyphosphoryl)-5-oxopyrrolidine-3-carboxylate 2 is presentedfor the first time. This approach is based on the Michael addition of dimethyl 2-(diethoxyphosphoryl)-3-methylenesuccinate 1 toprimary amines. Application of the α-phosphono-g-lactams obtained forthe preparation of α-methylene-g-lactams is also reported


In the United States, there is a continued interest in factors that contribute to school improvement. The problem is that teachers and administrators within our schools possess little information on 'distributed leadership systems' which engage teachers in leadership activities toward sustainable school reform. Instructional Leadership studies using successful rating scales (e.g. PIMRS, VAL-ED) have shed light on what behaviors lead to school improvement. Little is known about how and why leadership behaviors are engaged. Through a lens of distributed leadership, this study proposes the creation of an instrument for measuring instructional teacher leadership behaviors conducive to building school capacity for improvement (ITLRSBSC). Results of the proposed study have implications of assisting institutions measure leadership engagement distributed among all its educators.


Most of current methods for systems behavioral specifications are suitable only for small systems. Behavioral requirements engineering of large-scale software systems using current Formal Description Techniques (FDT), is complex and difficult. In general, when the scale of the system grows linearly, the number of states (in FSM-based methods) grow exponentially. Therefore, much research continues on introducing new techniques for eliminating (or at least reducing) this problem. The introduction of Viewcharts is a considerable step in this direction. Work on the semantics of Viewcharts, however, is limited to its semantics via translations to Statecharts. We believe that due to the visual nature of the Viewcharts formalism, a graph theory based semantics is more suitable to establish a sound foundation for the formalism. Furthermore, since FSMs are more established and have stronger foundation than Statecharts, we prefer an FSM-based semantics. In this paper we provide a semantics for Viewcharts based on solely FSMs and graph theory.


Stripes of vertically aligned carbon nanofibers (VACNFs) have been used to form membranes for size selectively controlling the transport of latex beads. Fluidic structures were created in poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) and interfaced to the VACNF structures for characterization of the membrane pore size. Solutions of fluorescently labeled latex beads were introduced into the PDMS channels and characterized by fluorescence and scanning electron microscopy. Results show that the beads size selectively pass through the nanofiber barriers and the size restriction limit correlates with the interfiber spacing. The results suggest that altering VACNF array density can alter fractionation properties of the membrane. Such membranes may be useful for molecular sorting and for mimicking the properties of natural membranes.


The present invention relates to a power / semiconductor chip package and a method of manufacturing the same, including the decoupling capacitor for the reduction of the ground noise of the high speed, the net corresponding to the power to the chip mounting of a semiconductor chip mounting board (net, for example, example is formed plate-power electrode connected to the circuit wire), the circuit surface of the semiconductor chip and plate ground electrode of a flat plate shape made of a conductive metal material on the other side is attached, for the net (such that the ground electrode plate corresponding to the ground is connected to the circuit wiring), and a dielectric layer between the power electrode plate and the ground electrode plate is formed is characterized in that the formation of the decoupling capacitors. The invention herein of the same configuration, etc. The dielectric constant of the power / ground terminal and a decoupling capacitor is to minimize the parasitic resistance / inductance component by so that it leads to the shortest path, and the ground electrode plate and the area of the power electrode plate and a dielectric material of a semiconductor device adjustment may be by providing a decoupling capacitor optimization for each semiconductor element to make the capacitance of the decoupling capacitor can be adjusted in the semiconductor die package is to have a power / ground noise characteristic suitable for high speed operation.


OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effect of double trigger in patients with a previous cycle with less than 65% of mature oocytes compared to the captured oocytes, in a normor-responding population with induction of ovulation with recombinant or urinary hCG. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A prospective cohort study, conducted in patients diagnosed with infertility, treated with in vitro fertilization, evaluated at the Mexican Fertility Center (Hospital Angeles Lomas) between 2017 and 2019. The treatment was carried out in the same patient, in whose previous conventional cycle with antagonist scheme and induction of ovulation with hCG had suboptimal ovarian response and oocyte capture with less than 65% in M2 phase (Group 1). Subsequently, a second cycle was performed with the same scheme of gonadotropins and induction of ovula- tion with double shot: 1 mg triptorelin acetate + 5000 IU of urinary hCG 40 and 34 hours prior to capture (Group 2 or double trigger). Percentage and quantity of oocytes captured in M2 phase were evaluated. CONCLUSIONS: The prospective studies are required to elucidate the aforementioned recommendation of the "double


Investment in information technology (IT) has been growing rapidly and one key reason for investing in IT is to improve information quality (IQ). Timeliness is an important IQ dimension that often needs to be improved for decision making. Especially in the era of big data, timeliness becomes more valued because of challenges of massive data size and high dimensionality. Many financial analyses require timely data to support time-critical decision making. In this paper, we develop a novel index method and effective query algorithms to reduce latency of querying high-dimensional data. The effectiveness of point, range, and similarity queries implemented using our methods is evaluated using a high-dimensional testbed conducted using real world financial data. Results show that our method outperforms existing methods in query speed of three types of queries frequently used in financial decision making.


This study is aimed to understand whether there are differences of student's study achievement between the USAge of jigsaw cooperative study model with the USAge of team games tournament (TGT) study model, also to understand which one is more effective between both of two in the progress of student's study achievement development. This research is quasi experiment. Free variable in the research is jigsaw cooperative study model and teams games tournament and as the bond variable is student's study achievement. The population in the research are all of grade IV students of MBS Elementary School of Bantul Regency Year of Study 2010/2011, sample that used are grade IV students of Kembang Putihan Elementary School, Guwosari Elementary School and Sungapan Elementary School. In the research, there is 2 experiment class namely Jigsaw class which is treated with cooperative study of jigsaw and team games tournament (TGT) class which is treated with cooperative study of team games tournament (TGT). Method that used in the data obtaining are documentation, test, and observation, whereas data analysis uses t-test. The result of the research shows that cooperative jigsaw study model is more effective compared with the cooperative team games tournament (TGT) study model. It is shown with calculated t as much as 2,196 larger than t-table = 1,99 for a = 5%, it means there is study achievement's differences between cooperative jigsaw study model with cooperative team games tournament (TGT) study at grade IV students of year of study 2010/2011. in the other side, based on the study achievement score of the students, it is shown that cooperative jigsaw study model have ability to give better student's study achievement score with average score 80,82 higher than the USAge of cooperative team games tournament (TGT) study model that is 75,05


The study aimed to present a proposed guide to activate benchmarking to improve academic programs at King Khalid University in the light of some international models, by identifying the level of activation of benchmarking in improving the academic programs at King Khalid University, and the level of availability of the requirements for its activation. The study relied on the descriptive (survey) approach, and the questionnaire as a tool for data collection, as it was applied to the study population, which is (196) members of the program accreditation teams at King Khalid University. The results showed that the level of activation of benchmarking as an improvement tool for academic programs at King Khalid University in light of Some global models were average, with an arithmetic mean of (1.78), the harmonization stage came in the first place, with an average level of activation, with an arithmetic mean of (1.84), and the analysis stage came in the second place, with a medium level of activation, with an arithmetic mean of (1.77), while the planning stage came in the last rank, with an average level of activation, with an arithmetic mean of (1.72), and that the level of availability of the requirements for activating benchmarking as an improvement tool for academic programs came at an average level, with a general arithmetic mean of (2.25). In light of the results of the study, the researcher recommended adopting the application of the proposed procedural guide, establishing a benchmarking unit within the organizational structure of the university, promoting an organizational culture that supports competition, and holding training workshops for members of accreditation teams in the field of benchmarking.


Purpose – This comment aims to join the discussion raised by Peng et al. regarding the social responsibility of international business (IB) scholars in the case of Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDI), and to provide a subject overview about it.Design/methodology/approach – In response to Peng et al.'s paper, this comment focuses on three issues, i.e. the myth of Chinese OFDI, round‐tripping, and state‐owned enterprises (SOEs).Findings – Owing to a short period of accumulation, the scale of Chinese OFDI stock is small compared to the global total. However, with its momentum, it may become a threat in the long term. Apart from round‐tripping, tax havens such as Hong Kong have multiple functions for Chinese companies to invest in. Although the size of foreign investments conducted by private companies remains small, their role in Chinese OFDI should not be ignored.Research limitations/implications – The arguments made in this comment are mainly built upon the data from the official publications,...


Abstract The paper presents some aspects of the juridical terminology in the Second Bulgarian Empire: the appellations of the titles of the hierarchical system and those of the administrative services. The use of the statistical methods offers some impressive results in regard to the correlation between the terms of Byzantine origin (translated or transliterated from Greek) and those that derive from Bulgar language, either purely Slavonic terms or ones of other derivation. About three quarters of the terminology derives from the juridical language of the Eastern Roman Empire! These results might be supported by the observations on the fiscal terms, the appellations of the territorial units and so on. Needless to say that these results are not unexpected — they confirm again the affiliation of the mediaeval Bulgaria to the East Roman or byzantine civilisation.


Significance Social support promotes drug abstinence. We incorporated this cardinal feature in our community-reinforcement model using rewarding social interaction. We found that social choice-induced abstinence prevented incubation of methamphetamine craving, an effect associated with activation of PKCδ-expressing neurons in CeL and inhibition of CeM neurons. In contrast, incubation after forced abstinence was associated with activation of CeL SOM-expressing neurons and CeM neurons. Here, using novel short-hairpin RNAs, we showed that the inhibitory effect of social interaction on incubation was mediated by activation of CeL PKCδ, leading to inhibition of CeM neurons. In contrast, incubation after forced abstinence was mediated by activation of CeL SOM, leading to activation of CeM neurons. Dissociable central amygdala mechanisms mediate abstinence-dependent expression or inhibition of craving. We recently reported that social choice-induced voluntary abstinence prevents incubation of methamphetamine craving in rats. This inhibitory effect was associated with activation of protein kinase-Cδ (PKCδ)-expressing neurons in central amygdala lateral division (CeL). In contrast, incubation of craving after forced abstinence was associated with activation of CeL-expressing somatostatin (SOM) neurons. Here we determined the causal role of CeL PKCδ and SOM in incubation using short-hairpin RNAs against PKCδ or SOM that we developed and validated. We injected two groups with shPKCδ or shCtrlPKCδ into CeL and trained them to lever press for social interaction (6 d) and then for methamphetamine infusions (12 d). We injected two other groups with shSOM or shCtrlSOM into CeL and trained them to lever press for methamphetamine infusions (12 d). We then assessed relapse to methamphetamine seeking after 1 and 15 abstinence days. Between tests, the rats underwent either social choice-induced abstinence (shPKCδ groups) or homecage forced abstinence (shSOM groups). After test day 15, we assessed PKCδ and SOM, Fos, and double-labeled expression in CeL and central amygdala medial division (CeM). shPKCδ CeL injections decreased Fos in CeL PKCδ-expressing neurons, increased Fos in CeM output neurons, and reversed the inhibitory effect of social choice-induced abstinence on incubated drug seeking on day 15. In contrast, shSOM CeL injections decreased Fos in CeL SOM-expressing neurons, decreased Fos in CeM output neurons, and decreased incubated drug seeking after 15 forced abstinence days. Our results identify dissociable central amygdala mechanisms of abstinence-dependent expression or inhibition of incubation of craving.


The local economy development is badly in need of the support of culture and tourism. Culture is considered as the soul of tourism, so only the tourism resources with culture can be equipped with lasting charm. However, tourism is the important foundation of cultural development, which is able to promote the development of cultural industry. Cultural tourism industry which combines culture and tourism will inevitably better explore local culture, strengthen local tourism, and promote the local economy adjustment and economic transition. Therefore, integration of culture and tourism has become the vital direction of local economy transition and development. This paper analyzes the relationship between culture and tourism, lists the promoting effects of integration of culture and tourism on local economy development, and puts forward local economy developing strategy in view of integration of culture and tourism.


Abstract This study examines the impact of the interaction of the firm variables market share and scale, and the industry conditions of concentration and growth, on the market value of 225 closely held, micro-market share manufacturing firms. The results suggest that the market value of small firms with micro-market shares benefits from the presence of large firms in concentrated industries. The study also found support for the hypothesis that the impact of concentration and scale economies on small-firm performance varies according to industry growth.


The detection of outliers has become increasingly important for the control and monitoring of large-scale networked systems such as transportation and smart grids. Data from these systems, such as location traces or power consumption, are collected from individual agents, and are often privacy-sensitive. Furthermore, the networked nature of these systems results in the data of different individuals being correlated with each other. In this paper, we use the concept of differential privacy to design a privacy-preserving algorithm for outlier detection in correlated data. We determine analytic formulas to evaluate the performance of the proposed differentially private algorithm, and we analyze the trade-off between privacy level and detection accuracy. We illustrate our methodology using an example based on outlier detection in household electricity usage data.


In the present work, a numerical analysis is performed to investigate the threshold intensity dependence on gas pressure in laser spark ignition of the H2 plasma. The analysis considered the experimental measurements that were carried out by Yagi and Huo [Appl. Opt. 35, 3183 (1996)]. In their experiment, H2 in a pressure range of 150–3000 Torr is irradiated by a focused excimer laser source using a 96 cm lens at a wavelength of 248 nm and a pulse duration of 20 ns. The study, based on a modified electron cascade model [K. A. Hamam et al., J. Mod. Phys. 4, 311 (2013)], solves numerically a time-dependent energy equation for the distribution of the electron energy as well as a set of rate equations that describe the change in the formed excited molecule population. This model enabled the determination of the threshold intensity as a function of gas pressure. The validity of the model was tested by comparing the calculated thresholds with the experimentally measured ones. Moreover, the calculation of the ele...


The behavior of story‐isolated structures during an earthquake is highly affected by the characteristics of the isolation system and its location along the height of the building. Interaction between the super‐structure and the sub‐structure with mid‐story isolation as nonlinear connector makes the mid‐story isolation building even more complicated during the earthquake excitation. In this paper, two different identification techniques are applied to identify the time‐varying dynamic characteristics of the mid‐story isolation building using the ambient vibration test data as well as the earthquake response data. For the ambient vibration measurements, the recursive stochastic subspace identification method is used, whereas for the earthquake response data the recursive subspace identification is used. Comparison on dynamic characteristics of the story‐isolated building from the results of identification is made, and the effect of nonlinear behavior of the mid‐isolation system to the response of the building during the earthquake is discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Objective: To construct a cDNA Library of Gardenia jasminoides Ellis.Method: Total RNA was extracted from the leaves of Gardenia jasminoides Ellis.The SMART technique was used to synthesize double-strand cDNA.After digested by Sfil restriction enzyme,the cDNA was ligated to pDNR-LIB vector.The plasmids were transformed into E.coli DH5α by electroporation.The quality of the cDNA library was tested by PCR.Result: The titer of the cDNA library is estimated to be 2.63×105cfu/ ml.The recombinant percentage of the library was determined as 86.7% by random screening fifteen clones.Fourteen inserts that longer than 400bp were sequenced and analyzed,the possible full-length cDNA sequences account for 64.3%.Conclusion:A cDNA Library from the leaf of Gardenia jasminoides Ellis was constructed;it provides an effective tool to obtain the gene information of Gardenia jasminoides Ellis.


Computer aided design of molecules has the potential to disrupt the field of drug and material discovery. Machine learning and deep learning in particular, made big strides in recent years and promises to greatly benefit computer aided methods. Reinforcement learning is a particularly promising approach since it enables de novo molecule design, that is molecular design, without providing any prior knowledge. However, the search space is vast, and therefore any reinforcement learning agent needs to perform efficient exploration. In this study, we examine three versions of intrinsic motivation to aid efficient exploration. The algorithms are adapted from intrinsic motivation in the literature that were developed in other settings, predominantly video games. We show that the curious agents finds better performing molecules on two of three benchmarks. This indicates an exciting new research direction for reinforcement learning agents that can explore the chemical space out of their own motivation. This has the potential to eventually lead to unexpected new molecular designs no human has thought about so far.


Soy germ is one of the richest phytoestrogen sources and thus has many benefits for health such as improving bone density, cardiovascular health, cancer prevention, and menopausal treatment. In addition, phytoestrogens are reported to act as antioxidants, removing reactive oxygen species and thereby preventing oxidative damage in living tissue. Phytoestrogens in soy germ include isoflavone compounds and their derivatives: daidzein, genistein, glycitein, daidzin, genistin, glycitin, acetyl daidzin, acetyl genistin, acetyl glycitin, malonyl daidzin, malonyl genistin, malonyl glycitin. Isoflavones aglycone forms comprise only about 2 – 5 % of total isoflavones, however, they express more biological effects than the others. The objective of this study was to compare the antioxidant activity among three extracts: purified isoflavone aglycone extract, crude isoflavone aglycone extract and total phytoestrogen extract. The IC50 values of DPPH free radical scavenging capacity of purified isoflavone aglycone extract, crude isoflavone aglycone extract and total phytoestrogen extract were 0.763 ± 0.016; 3.345 ± 0.076; 6.142 ± 0.050 mg/ml, respectively. The IC50 values of reducing power activity of purified isoflavone aglycone extract, crude isoflavone aglycone extract and total phytoestrogen extract were 1.248 ± 0.024; 3.961 ± 0.172; 9.385 ± 0.272 (mg/ml). As our result, the ranking order of the antioxidant activity (from highest to lowest level) was purified isoflavone aglycone extract > crude isoflavone aglycone extract > total phytoestrogens extract.


The 'risk society' is characterized by the search for the external (i.e. reassuring) forms of security, and to handle the citizens' crime-related fears became a high-priority criminal policy issue. The intention to moderate crimerelated fears the criminal policy has crossed its competence borders both "upwards" and "downwards" and blurs the responsibilities of police forces, national defense and social services. The field of crime control (e.g. war on terrorism, execution of sanctions) proved to be an excellent site for the development of high technologies, as well as in the security industry and property protection. The crime prevention scene with several players generates conflicts as well, as it also blurs the borders of "public" and "private". New means of control yields higher-level production, brings up a number of information, but heightens producing the dangers concerning the competences of criminal law and human rights. *** In David Garland's opinion, it would not be possible to handle threats without providing security and rules, or exercising control but we would not be able to utilize our opportunities either. By now, however, the requirement of security gained key importance both in the United Kingdom and in the United States of America, says Garland in his book published in 2001.1 A "risk society"2 operates on the basis of principles that differ from those of earlier societies. It is a new approach to the recognition and handling of risks is unfolding. The disharmony in the modernity of the 21st century first became tangible in the area of road transport when, besides the technical advantages provided by motorization, some less favorable consequences such as the increase in the number of deaths caused by road accidents, or environmental damages, also surfaced.3 The situation is that the acceleration of technical development does not only involve higher standard production but it also means the multiplication of threats. Ericson and Haggerty worked out a new model that foregrounds the knowledge work dimension of the police and its


The recovery is described of the uranium from shale mined at Schaentzel with a U content of 285 ppm. Recovery is by alkaline attack with a solution of 25 g/l Na/sub 2/CO/sub 3/ at 75 deg C followed by absorption of the dissolved uranium by an anionic Amberllte resin, IRA 410. Final recovery is by elution with a solution of M NaNO/sub 3/. These treatment tests determine the capacity of the resin in the case of the above solutions, verify the effects of recycling on this capacity, and finally, provide figures on the consumption of reactive and efficiency of attack and uranium recovery. (auth)


An automobile intelligent auxiliary control system performance for comity pedestrians is analysed. For safety reasons, a car safety distance model which can distinguish pedestrians at the front zebra crossing line is proposed. The important features of the active protective comity pedestrian integrated control system are derived, which can accurately identify pedestrians or cyclists in front of you and distinguish safety behaviour characteristics. According to the system feedback, active protection measures are adopted. A control system based on the combination of infrared radar probe ranging system and image processing recognition system is studied. The innovative research on car avoiding pedestrians focuses on both the behaviour characteristics of the driver and the pedestrian. Dual protection of longitudinal anti-collision comity pedestrians and horizontal pedestrian protection early warning protection can be carried out through the system. The intelligent auxiliary control system is a control system that can ensure the safety of pedestrians at non-traffic signal intersections. The system embodies more intelligent and humane, and also provides innovative ideas for the research and development of new products.


The following analysis investigates the delamination of an elastic membrane which on one side adheres to a smooth substrate while the other side is attached to a rigid cylindrical shaft. When the shaft is pulled perpendicularly from the substrate, this system is equivalent to the blister test of Malyshev and Salganik (International Journal of Fracture Mechanics, 1, 114 (1965)) and a solution is derived using the principle of minimum potential energy. Delamination can also be caused by rotating the shaft, which may be induced by a shear load and/or moment applied to the free end. For this more complicated system, an approximate solution is obtained from upper and lower bounds on strain energy that are derived from stationary principles with restricted deformation and stress fields, respectively. Beyond their applicability to blister tests, these results are relevant to the emerging study of biologically-inspired adhesives, as membranes constitute a critical attachment structure for a variety of wall-clinging organisms.


This bachelor work is devoted to the methods of financial analysis. The first part is devoted to the theoretical solutions of financial analysis and the description of the basic indicators of financial analysis. The second part is concerned with the application of certain ratio indicators to a specific company, followed by an analysis of the results, and the elaboration of particular recommendations for the management of the company in the sphere of financial planning.