Reduction of exhaust emissions is a major research task in diesel engine development in view of increasing concern regarding environmental protection and stringent exhaust gas regulations. Simultaneous reduction of NOx emissions and particulate matter is quite difficult due to the soot/NOx trade-off and is often accompanied by fuel consumption penalties. Towards this aim, automotive engineers have proposed various solutions, one of which is the use of alternative gaseous fuels as a supplement for the commercial liquid diesel fuel. This type of engine, which operates fuelled engine. The majority of the dual fuel diesel engines operate on the fumigation principle where the liquid diesel fuel is partially replaced by gaseous one fumigated into the intake air. One of the gaseous fuels used commonly in compression ignition engine is natural gas, which has a relatively high autoignition temperature and moreover is an economical and clean burning fuel. The high auto ignition temperature of natural gas is a serious advantage against other gaseous fuels since the compression ratio of most conventional DI diesel engines can be maintained. Moreover the combustion of natural gas produces practically no particulates since natural gas contains less dissolved impurities (e.g. sulfur compounds). Previous research studies have shown that the natural gas-diesel fuel dual fuel combustion in a CI engine environment, compared to conventional diesel fuel operation, suffers from high specific fuel consumption, and high carbon monoxide (CO) and unburned hydrocarbons (HC) emissions. Compression ratio and diesel fuel injection timing are two engine parameters, which can influence considerably the combustion process inside the combustion chamber of a dual fuel CI engine. Hence, in the present study, a theoretical investigation is conducted using an engine simulation model to examine the effect of the aforementioned parameters on performance and exhaust emissions of a natural gas/diesel engine. Predictions are produced for a light-duty, medium-speed, dual fuel (natural gas/diesel) compression ignition engine performance characteristics and NO, CO and Soot emissions at specific engine operating point (load & engine speed), by using a comprehensive two-zone combustion model. The main objective of this comparative assessment is to elaborate the relative impact of each one of the above mentioned parameters on engine performance characteristics and exhaust emissions. The conclusions of this study may be proven to be considerably valuable for the application of this technology on existing DI diesel engines.


The memory-function approach is applied to the relativistic two-particle problem. We thus obtain integral equations similar to the Bethe-Salpeter equation, taking all retardation effects fully into account and eliminating the relative time variable. The formalism is studied for scalar Klein-Gordon fields as well as for spinorial Dirac fields. For both cases the memory function and the integral kernels are calculated for a given model explicitly. The scalar-scalar model of Cutkosky is treated in detail and numerical binding energies are obtained, very close to those of the original Bethe-Salpeter equation, thus showing the extreme importance of retardation effects. As an example for Dirac fields the memory function for a proton-antiproton pair interacting via exchange of a ..pi../sup 0/ is established.


Background: In health care, there's an increase in the use of eHealth, such as video calling. In combination with traditional face to face treatment, eHealth is deployed to reduce the increasing costs in health care and to work even more customer-oriented. A combination of face to face treatment and eHealth is called blended-care. Yet little investigation has been done on the implementation of video calling in health care. In this study, the pre- and post-implementation of video calling in a part of a health institution is studied, with the purpose to determine whether there is support among the employees to implement video calling, and what the prerequisites are for a good implementation.
Methods: This qualitative research is done at Careyn, a big social organisation for physical and mental health care. First, a post-implementation study has been done on video calling at the wijkteams of this organisation, where an implementation of video calling was unsuccessful. This study was based on the Technology Acceptance Model. Next, a pre-implementation research has been done on video calling at the thuisbegeleiding of this organisation. These studies are done by interviews with five employees of the wijkteams and seven employees of the thuisbegeleiding. Based on the outcomes, prerequisites are formulated for a good implementation of video calling at the thuisbegeleiding.
Results The outcome of the research is that there is sufficient support at the employees of the thuisbegeleiding to implement video calling. Furthermore, the employees of the wijkteams who have worked before with video calling have a markedly positive attitude towards implementation, even if they have had bad experiences before. Mainly because of technical reasons, implementation of video calling at the wijkteams has appeared to be unsuccessful. Additionally, the demand for video calling didn't come much from the people who have to work with it (bottom-up), but implementation was mainly top-down. Finally, the employees were not enough educated to work with video calling and there was no clear communication between management and the workplace. Recommendations: For a good implementation, it is important that the prerequisites are being complied. These are, besides the important aspects of time and money, also education, implementation based on the demand from the workplace and a clear communication between management, ICT-helpdesk and the staff. Also, for the implementation of video calling, it is recommended to survey what the needs of the individual colleagues are and to respond to it.


In this paper, modeling and control are investigated for a multi-cable mooring system. The mathematical model of the system is described as partial differential equations (PDEs) via the Hamilton's principle. Control is designed at the top boundary of the mooring lines based on the Lyapunov's direct method to suppress the vessel's vibrations. Adaptive control is developed to handle the system parametric uncertainties. With the proposed boundary control, uniform boundedness of the system is achieved. Simulations are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control.


This paper analyzes students' experience with Cogent, a virtual economy system used throughout the 4 years of a B.S. degree in a Technology major. The case study explains the rules of the Cogent system and investigates its effectiveness to motivate students to learn. Using focus groups and interviews, we collected qualitative data from students about their experience and perceptions of Cogent. The results indicate that Cogent played an encouraging and motivational role for these students and suggest potential for the successful design and implementation of meaningful gamification systems to promote student motivation and engagement within an educational context.


BIOMATERIALS
Polymer nanoparticles have been explored for more accurate delivery of drugs to improve efficacy and reduce toxicity within the body. For tissues lacking vasculature, such as articular cartilage, the challenge is to get the drug through the dense extracellular matrix (ECM) via a


Speckle noise is inherent to synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. Since the degradation of the image due to this noise results in uncertainties in the interpretation of the scene and in a loss of apparent resolution, it is desirable to filter the image to reduce this noise. In this paper, an adaptive algorithm based on the calculation of the local statistics around a pixel is applied to 1-look SAR imagery. The filter adapts to the nonstationarity of the image statistics since the size of the blocks is very small compared to that of the image. The performance of the filter is measured in terms of the equivalent number of looks (ENL) of the filtered image and the resulting resolution degradation. The results are compared to those obtained from different techniques applied to similar data. The local adaptive filter (LAF) significantly increases the ENL of the final image. The associated loss of resolution is also lower than that for other commonly used speckle reduction techniques.


Pulmonary lymphangioleiomyomatosis (PLAM) is a rare disease of undetermined cause that almost exclusively occurs in women of child‐bearing age and is characterized by distinct clinical, radiologic, and pathologic findings. PLAM is usually fatal unless treated with hormonal manipulation or lung transplantation. Primary diagnosis usually requires open lung biopsy to demonstrate the characteristic hamartomatous smooth muscle proliferation. To date, cytologic diagnosis of LAM has been limited to an ancillary role. Herein, we report the diagnosis of this neoplasm in a recurrence in an abdominal lymph node using fine‐needle aspiration. Diagn. Cytopathol. 1998;19:458–461. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


The resource allocation problem to support scalable-video multicast for wireless relay networks is complex due to the existence of the relay station. In this paper, we consider the resource allocation for SVC multicast over two-hop wireless relay networks to maximize the total system utility of all users where the system utility can be a general non-negative, non-decreasing function. We model the problem in three-layer structure (choice elements, action elements, and user elements) to cope with the joint dependency and overlapping phenomena. We formulate the problem as Cascaded Coverage Problem (CCP) and propose a greedy algorithm with polynomial time complexity. Simulation results show that our algorithm keeps good performance as compared with the optimal result. We also evaluate the influence of different user distribution types and the number of relay stations.


Yunyouyou Xia,1, 2, ∗ Suhua Jin,1, ∗ Werner Hanke,3, 4 Ralph Claessen,5, 4 and Gang Li6, 7, † 1School of Physical Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 200031, China 2ShanghaiTech Laboratory for Topological Physics, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 200031, China 3Institut für Theoretische Physik und Astrophysik, Universität Würzburg, D-97074 Würzburg, Germany 4Würzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat, Universität Würzburg, D-97074 Würzburg, Germany 5Physikalisches Institut, Universität Würzburg, D-97074 Würzburg, Germany 6School of Physical Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 201210, China 7ShanghaiTech Laboratory for Topological Physics, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 201210, China


Background: Higher levels of receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa-β ligand, i.e., RANKL, were reported among periodontitis patients compared with their healthy peers. This study aimed to measure the salivary level of RANKL among waterpipe smokers and to find the possible correlation between salivary level of RANKL and clinical periodontal parameters. Materials and Methods: This study is a cross-sectional study involving 89 (49 waterpipe smokers and 40 nonsmokers) participants. The whole unstimulated saliva samples were collected for quantitative determination of RNAKL using a human RANKL enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kit. Plaque index, gingival index, bleeding on probing, periodontal pocket depth (PPD), and clinical attachment level (CAL) were recorded for each participant. Mann–Whitney U-test was used to detect any difference between groups at P < 0.05. Spearman correlation coefficient test was used to test the association between variables. Linear regression was used to investigate the cause-and-effect relationship between the associated variables. Results: In a comparison, RANKL, PPD, and CAL showed statistical differences (P < 0.05) between waterpipe smokers and nonsmokers. RANKL was found to be positively associated with CAL, and approximately 62.8% of CAL in this study sample could be explained by RANKL. The regression equation was CAL = 1.744 + 0.004 (RANKL). Conclusions: The salivary level of RANKL was positively related to CAL in this study sample.


At present, the traditional construction method of engineering measurement relies on the cooperation of many people, who need to manually level the measuring instruments to measure and set them point by point, which has low construction efficiency and cannot meet the application requirements of modern engineering construction measurement. Therefore, it is necessary to develop mobile measuring robots. This paper mainly studies the model, operation flow, measurement accuracy, and data stability of the mobile measuring robot. The results show that the mobile measuring robot has high measurement efficiency, measurement accuracy, and data stability, and can replace the traditional survey for measurement construction.


In the present paper, features of high‐charged macroions screening by microions are analysed in classical asymmetrically charged complex plasmas. We consider a two‐component electroneutral system of classical macroions and oppositely charged microions in a spherically symmetrical electroneutral Wigner–Seitz cell with a central macroion in its centre. The present paper is devoted to a problem of a relation between the effective macroion charge and an initial one with regard to a non‐linear screening effect and microions correlations. We show how this relation changes with the number of the central macroion charge value on the rise. Characteristics of two different parts of the relation between the effective charge and the initial one are calculated.


Monitoring cell culture media by traditional methods has high costs and requires significant analytical expertise and laboratory space. Surface-Enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) can offer a method for a simple and fast analysis of cell culture media under different conditions. In particular, to examine cell culture media during cell exposure to ionizing radiation deserves particular attention. In this way, useful information on the complex processes occurring during the interaction between cells, cell culture media and radiation can be obtained. We report about a SERS study of the radiation-induced changes on cell culture media that were in contact or not with human cells. SERS measurements were performed by using commercial substrates and a conventional micro-Raman spectroscopy set-up. By employing a suitable data treatment based on "wavelet" denoising algorithm and background subtraction, spectra with clear Raman features were obtained for two cell culture media that were subject to different irradiation treatments. The obtained results evidence that SERS can be used to rapidly identify and monitor chemical changes in cell culture media.


It is shown that a uniformly absolutely continuous set of finitely additive measures can be decomposed into bounded and finite dimensional parts.


In this paper, we study fault tolerant routing and broadcasting in interconnection networks based on de Bruijn graph (dBG) for constructing large scale multiprocessors networks. Our paper presents a new approach to provide fault tolerance routing and broadcasting which haven't been investigated. The proposed approach is based on multi level discrete set concept in order to find a fault free shortest path among several paths provided. In the proposed fault tolerant broadcasting, we can achieve k (network diameter) as maximum time step to finish broadcast process and there is no overhead in the broadcast message.


In the thesis we propose FT-ACL, an advanced Agent Communication Language which deals with crash failures of agents running in an open and dynamic MAS. FT-ACL provides high-level fault-tolerant communication primitives and support for an anonymous interaction protocol designed for open MAS. Moreover, the ACL satisfies a set of well defined knowledge-level programming requirements. In the thesis we provide a formal semantics for FT-ACL and a formal specification of the underlying agent architecture.


Studying the understanding of religious tolerance among students is very important for the continuity of community peace in the future. No matter the number of research that have been done, there is an unfilled gap from unexplained angles of understanding. The younger generation, especially, does not yet have the capacity to explain the solutions offered in the shortest time ahead in the life of the people. This study aims to examine and inspect critically the understanding to get the latest solutions for problem caused by the outbursts of the present multidimensional conflicts. The results of the study show that there is a tendency of students to increase their religious tolerance when they understand the meaning of religious tolerance in Islamic teachings exemplified in history by the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him). A few other students are intolerant in religion because they are more likely to be religious exclusively with a legal-style ideology that selects only black or white options over the truth. These results indicate that students are generally able to understand good religious tolerance during the course of the investigation when they understand the actual inclusiveness of Islam from different religious societies.


Abstract Based on a panel data set, we use a two-stage analysis to evaluate the effects of access to formal credit on financial efficiency of farms in northern Peru. The first stage uses non-parametric data envelope analysis to estimate farm-specific measures of financial efficiency; 28 per cent of farmers are financially inefficient and credit constraints reduce profits of these farmers by an average of between 17 and 27 per cent. The second stage uses Tobit regression to evaluate the determinants of financial inefficiency; the results point to uninsured risk as a key determinant of financial inefficiency and suggest that policies to strengthen agricultural insurance markets would likely pay large dividends in rural Peru.


The invention discloses ginger juice fermented soya beans and a processing method thereof. The ginger juice fermented soya beans are prepared from the following raw materials in parts by weight: 50 to 60 parts of original fermented soya beans, 20 to 30 parts of ginger, and 1 to 10 parts of table salt. The processing method of the ginger juice fermented soya beans comprises the following steps: preprocessing the raw materials and auxiliary materials; pickling; then packaging. The ginger juice fermented soya beans are sweet after being tasted, and particularly integrate the full and mellow fragrance of fermented soya beans and the spicy taste of ginger juice; any pigment, chemical additive, chemical mineral substances and other components are not added into the product; the raw materials used are rich in nutritional ingredients; the medical values of the fermented soya beans and juice are given a full play; therefore, the ginger juice fermented soya beans are healthy and green dietary supplements.


We summarize our current understanding of the connection between the QCD phase line and the chemical freeze-out curve as deduced from thermal analyses of yields of particles produced in central collisions between relativistic nuclei.


The identification of microbial remains on planetary bodies is an extremely challenging endeavor, requiring the utilization of novel measurement techniques and modern analytical approaches. We performed an extensive study of the chert sample from Gunflint formation (1.88 Ga) containing populations of Precambrian microfossils with a laser ablation ionization mass spectrometer (LIMS) (Riedo et al., 2013; Wiesendanger et al., 2018) intended for application in space. Chemical characterization on microscale can open a new perspective in the identification of microbial remains, where morphological features might be lost and provide additional lines of evidence towards proving biogenicity of a given putative sample. Chert from the Gunflint formation in this study is considered as a Martian analogue where remains of microfossils are mainly concentrated within circular and tubular structures, which are primarily made from collapsed cell walls entombed within silica.


Orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiplexing suffers from inter-mode interference (IMI) due to a beam axis misalignment. However, the traditional IMI cancellation method assumes that the IMI rises from all OAM modes, which results in heavy computational loads. This paper proposes an efficient IMI cancellation method for OAM multiplexing in the presence of a beam axis misalignment. In the proposed method, considering that the interference from adjacent OAM modes is dominant in such a misalignment, IMI cancellation is performed by considering only the neighboring OAM modes. This method can reduce the computational cost while retaining the transmission performance. Moreover, the minimum mean square error (MMSE) is adopted as the equalizer criterion to suppress noise enhancement. The effectiveness of the proposed method as compared with the traditional IMI cancellation method is demonstrated in terms of the system capacity and computational complexity through computer simulations.


High porosity nanocrystalline Si thin films have been deposited using a high density plasma approach at temperatures as low as 100 °C. These films exhibit the same unique properties, such as visible luminescence and gas sensitivity, that are seen in electrochemically etched Si (i.e., porous Si). The nanostructure consists of an array of rodlike columns normal to the substrate surface situated in a void matrix. We have demonstrated that this structure is fully controllable and have varied the porosity up to ∼90% (as derived from optical reflectance) by varying the deposition conditions. In particular, the impact of plasma power has been found to reduce porosity by increasing the nuclei density and therefore the areal density of columns. Humidity sensors have been demonstrated based on the enhanced conductivity of our films (up to 6 orders of magnitude) in response to increase in relative humidity. Depending on the porosity, the conductivity-relative humidity behavior of our films shows variations which can...


Background Pancreatic cancer patients remain largely unresponsive to single agent immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy. This refractory state originates from PDAC ' s unique immunosuppressive microenvironment that is densely populated by suppressive myeloid cells, exhibits poor vascularity, and is highly hypoxic. We previously showed that the hypo-xia-activated prodrug TH-302 (Evofosfamide) reduces intratumoral hypoxia through a tissue remodeling process, initiates tumor vasculature reorganization, and sensitizes aggressive, spontaneous murine models of prostate cancer to ICB. 1 In a clinical trial testing the combination of TH-302 with cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein (CTLA-4) blockade (NCT03098160) a subset of metastatic, immune checkpoint blockade refractory patients showed prolonged progression free survival. 2 While these studies highlight hypoxia as thera-peutically tractable, we lack complete understanding of the contribution of the tumor vasculature to hypoxia reduction therapy, as well as the downstream consequences of hypoxia reduction on the cellular composition of the tumor microenvironment and the associated sensitivity, or lack thereof, to immunotherapy. We hypothesized that anti-angiogenic therapy and Evofosfamide could cooperate to normalize tumor vasculature and diminish hypoxia. Methods TH-302 and a vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-2


The article is devoted to the study of the institutionalization of verbal aggression in rap battling as common social practices that have their own social institutions. Verbal aggression is considered from the point of view of the Sociocultural approach as one of the tools of personality adaptation, contributing to the development of communication skills and helping to satisfy the self-actualization need. The material of the study is videos of rap battles that took place on national sites and gained from 3 million views.


Abstract Graphite-aluminum (Gr-Al) metal matrix composites (MMC) possess several attractive mechanical and thermal properties, but use of these materials has been limited, partly because they are e...


The equations governing the operation of three open-cycle cooling systems are simplified to make them amenable to analytical examination. Closed-form expressions are then derived for the cycle coefficients of performance and sensible and latent capacities. The relative sensitivities of these parameters to system variables are then derived.


Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) geofoam has been used to construct earthquake resilient infrastructure in areas with high seismicity becaus e of its extremely low mass density and relatively high compressibility when compared with traditional backfill materials. The primary applications of EPS in North America include constr uc ion of light-weight embankments over soft soils, construction/reconstruction of steepene d slopes and placement of EPS as a lightweight backfill against retaining walls and buried structures. This paper summarizes recent research conducted at the University of Utah regard ing the seismic design and construction of EPS geosystems to improve the resiliency of embankm ents, slopes and buried pipelines. This research includes: (1) assessment of the seismic s tability of free standing EPS embankments subjected to large, nearby earthquakes and (2) deve lopment and construction of EPS cover/backfill systems to protect buried steel pipe lines from potential rupture caused by seismically-induced permanent ground deformation (e .g., tectonic faulting, subsidence, liquefaction, land sliding, etc.). The assessment of (1) was performed for free-standing embankment similar to that used on the I-15 Reconst ruction Project in Salt Lake City, Utah. The evaluations suggest that interlayer sliding may be initiated in some cases and the amount of sliding displacements depends on the amplitude and lo g-period characteristics of the inputted strong motion. Therefore, shear keys or other stru ctural/mechanical restraints are recommended for free-stand EPS embankment systems w here the seismically-induced sliding displacement is potentially damaging to the geosyst em. Regarding (2), full-scale experiments show that a light-weight cover system consisting pr ima ily of EPS block and an overlying flexible pavement cover offers significant benefits in protecting buried steel pipelines from the damaging effects of permanent ground displacement t hat often disrupts urban roadways in seismically active regions.


Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to give a better knowledge of water resources in the region of Ben Azzouz, and to improve the actual water management through harmonization between the various human communities needs. Design/methodology/approach – After an overview of the geology and hydroclimatology of the study area, the work will be to identify the factors involved in the water balance in the quantitative assessment of groundwater resources, to define areas of use and to estimate water needs for different uses. Findings – The study of the area shows two distinct water reservoirs: the deep aquifer composed of fractured limestone, sands and gravels, and surface massive dune sand aquifer. The impermeable formations are the metamorphic basement and overlying flyschs nappes. Because the average rainfall is relatively high (∼708 mm/year), the region is known by its agricultural vocation and, therefore, most of surface water is assigned to irrigation. The second potential water consumer is population wi...


Background/purpose: Drug‐induced phototoxicity is a non‐immunological inflammatory skin reaction, caused by concurrent topical or systemic exposure to a specific molecule and ultraviolet radiation. Most of phototoxic compounds absorb energy particularly from UVA light leading to activated derivatives, which can induce cellular damage. This type of adverse cutaneous response can be reproduced, in vitro, using human skin models. In this study, we investigated the ability of human reconstituted epidermis Episkin® to assess skin phototoxicity of weak phototoxic compounds such as 6‐methylcoumarin and ofloxacin, compared to a strong one, chlorpromazine, and two negative controls (sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS), sulisobenzone).


Hydrazinium nitroformate (HNF) is the salt of hydrazine (N2H4) and nitroform (HC(NO2)3). Nowadays there is interest in HNF dissolved in a solvent/fuel combination. This is a promising propellant to replace hydrazine that is currently commonly used for thrusters for attitude control of satellites. TNO PML, APP and Delft University of Technology cooperate on the development of HNF based monopropellants in the Netherlands. One important aspect is the ignition of the HNF based monopropellant. The state-of-the-art hydrazine thrusters use catalytic ignition, which is a reliable, simple ignition method. Within this study the application of catalytic ignition for HNF- based monopropellants has been investigated. This paper presents the results of some scanning experiments with HNF/water and a catalyst. Experiments with ten different catalysts are performed in a batch reactor. In this reactor the monopropellant is injected on a catalyst bed at a certain temperature. Experiments are performed at catalyst preheat temperatures of 100 °C and 140 °C. The pressure and temperature changes are measured. The results of the tested catalysts were compared with one another. The absolute pressure increase was used to discriminate between the different catalysts and select the most promising ones for further research. This research showed that catalytic ignition seems a very promising method for an HNF based monopropellant. Catalytic activity of iridium and rhodium on alumina has been demonstrated at pre-heat temperatures of around 100 °C to 140 °C in comparison to 200 °C pre-heat temperatures applied in hydrazine thrusters. Catalytic activity of Shell 405 has been qualitatively demonstrated at room temperature. These results have shown that current state-of-the-art catalytic ignition technology used for hydrazine thrusters could very well be applicable for the ignition of future non-toxic HNF monopropellants with minor modifications. © 2003 by Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands.


Abstract Current state-of-the-art statistical machine translation (SMT) relies on simple feature functions which make independence assumptions at the level of phrases or hierarchical rules. However, it is well-known that discriminative models can benefit from rich features extracted from the source sentence context outside of the applied phrase or hierarchical rule, which is available at decoding time. We present a framework for the open-source decoder Moses that allows discriminative models over source context to easily be trained on a large number of examples and then be included as feature functions in decoding.


A complex testing system was designed for flame spectrum and image detection based on the standard flame and the discrete equipments,i.e.SR-5000 infrared spectrometer,AvaSpec-2048 UV spectrometer and high-speed color CCD telecamera.With the button panel and the operation software,any discrete equipment can be operator independently,or more equipment can be operated simultaneously and the UV infrared image data can be acquired synchronously.The indication of oscilloscope shows that the synchronization delay is shorter than 50ns.As a result,the flame spectrum of the whole wave-band and the image corresponding to every flame spectrum data were obtained in the experiments.


This paper provides new evidence on how interest rates are linked to corporate cash policy in the presence of financial frictions. Using both time-series and firm-level data for US public and private manufacturing firms, we find a negative correlation between cash holdings and the interest rates for large/unconstrained firms. We find no evidence of such a relation for small/constrained firms. Our results can help reconcile the contradictory findings of previous studies and suggest that financial constraints play an important role in the adjustment of cash to changes in interest rates. We introduce a simple model in which firms differ in their cost function of external finance, where the constrained firms' highly curved cost function drives a steeper cash demand, leading to their lower cash-interest rate sensitivity.


In this review the surface structures of plants and microorganisms are briefly compared, the role of plant walls in recognition and communication events in pathogenesis and the changes occurring in walls as part of the plant's defence mechanisms are considered. Pathogenesis-related proteins with hydrolytic action on pathogen walls and the callose response are briefly discussed. Finally, wall-related phenomena in non-pathogenic associations between plants and microbial symbionts, exemplified by Rhizobium-root hair and mycorrhizal fungus-root associations are described.


A series of α‐ and β‐pyran naphthoquinones (lapachones) have been synthesized and evaluated for their in‐vitro antibacterial activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis strain H37Rv (ATCC 27294) using the Alamar‐Blue susceptibility test; the activity was expressed as the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) in μg/mL. The synthetic methodology consisted of the formation of methylene and aryl o‐quinone methides (o‐QMs) generated by Knoevenagel condensation of 2‐hydroxy‐1,4‐naphthoquinone with formaldehyde and arylaldehydes. These o‐QMs then undergo facile hetero Diels–Alder reactions with dienophiles in aqueous ethanol media. Some naphthoquinones exhibited inhibition with MIC values of 1.25 μg/mL, similar to that of pharmaceutical concentrations currently used in tuberculosis treatment. These results justify further research into the value of these quinones as part of an original treatment for tuberculosis.


Kenneth J. Rosenthal, MD, explains the advantages of an add-on sulcus-based IOL for correcting refractive errors in eyes that have undergone cataract surgery with in-the-bag IOL implantation.


Reflection of deuterium from carbon is measured by a technique based on the rise of partial pressure caused by the reflected particles. Data are presented for 32–2000 eV per deuteron incident energies and as a function of angle of incidence. The data are consistent with previous determinations at energies above 1000 eV. A systematic difference in energy dependence is found when the measurements for reflection of deuterium are compared on a reduced energy scale with MARLOWE computer simulations of hydrogen reflection.


In this study we investigated the effects of SF 6 and CF 4 plasma pretreatments on the adhesion and junction leakage characteristics of the selective CVD W films by SiH 4 reduction of WF 6 on the Si substrate. The SF 6 plasma pretreatment performed in situ prior to W deposition to remove the polymer films in contact holes results in enhacement of the adhesion of W films to the Si substrate but degradation of junction leakages due to vertical and lateral Si consumptions. The CF 4 plasma pretreatment performed as the last step of the reactive ion etching for contact window opening produced the W/Si contacts of good adhesion, low contact resistances and low junction leakages for thin W films, while it produced the W/Si contacts of poor adhesion and high contact resistances fir thick W films. The selective CVD W films deposited by the three step process of SiH 4 reduction/in situ annealing/SiH 4 reduction was found to have both good adhesion and low junction leakage characteristics


Values of sisterhood and reciprocal support amongst black women are powerful tools that empower community. Black women have always played a significant role as mothers and culture bearers, trying, at the same time, to fill the role of absent emasculated disempowered black men, due to social oppression and low economics. In a marginalized community where men were deprived form the very roles that would make them feel like real men, disempowered by social and economic forces, and rendered unable to enact their roles as providers and protectors, women had to take the initiative and take care of their houses, children, and even the men, resisting whatever social, economic, racial, or gender circumstances bound. Not only did African American women sustain their lives, but also the culture and identity of their ethnicity: ―From the enslavement period to the contemporary times, African American women's resistance has been a necessary aspect of survival not only for the women themselves but for the entire community‖ (Rodriguez 95). It is such resistance to the main-stream culture norms and values that allowed an African American race to exist. If black men suffer from racism, and white women complain about sexism, it is African American women who undergo a ̳triple jeopardy': racism, sexism, and classicism, or what Deborah K. King terms ̳multiple jeopardy'. King suggests that, these oppressive components are interdependent, not incremental, and that one factor does not supplant another; rather, they coexist. For king, the modifier ̳multiple' does not just suggest ̳several' and/or


Background: Acute psychotic disorder is a psychiatric disorder that occur for 1 day to less than 1 month which cause a difficulty to difference between the sense of reality. Insomnia is a difficulty in starting and maintaining sleep to reach adequate sleep needs, both quality and competition. Acute psychotic disorder causes some changes in neurotransmitters which cause sleep disorder, especially insomnia.
Purpose: To examine the relationship between insomnia and Acute Psychotic Disorder in RSJ dr. Radjiman Wediodiningrat Lawang.
Methods: This research included in observational analytic epidemiology draft with cross sectional design study. The sampling technique used in this research is total sampling with a total of 129. Analysis test used Chi-square test.
Results: From the description analysis obtained the highest number of patients with an age range of 17-25 years old (41 patients), and the majority of patients were found in males (87 patients). From the Chi-square test results obtained p=0,000 which means p<0,05, which means there is a statistically significat relationship between insomnia and acute psychotic disorders.
Conclusions: There was significant relationship between insomnia and acute psychotic disorder. In this case, acute psychotic disorders can increase the incidence of insomnia.

Keywords: insomnia, acute psychotic disorder


The paper presents the development of a DC motor based Wind Turbine Emulator (WTE) and its performance verification through simulation. The torque signal that represents the actual wind turbine with environmental effect was made to generate at the DC motor shaft. Particularly, the study incorporates the turbine power control strategy including the effect of stochastic and deterministic load components with the shaft dynamics. The WTE with the Wind Energy Conversion System (WECS) is studied to verify the effectiveness of the WTE in the presence of various wind characteristics.


ABSTRACT (cont.): Transgenic analysis showed that the tight regulation of cytosolic Hsc70-1 expression is essential to viability of plants and that increased BiP-2 protein levels enhanced the survival of seed after heat stress. Microarray analysis identified genes that are commonly induced or repressed in response to temperature extremes. The expression patterns of the genes in the microarray also suggested that the membrane components and the photosynthetic apparatus are primary targets for temperature stresses.


This paper investigates the influence of alternative fuel on selected butadiene–acrylonitrile rubbers used as seals in engine and fuel supply systems of postSoviet aircrafts. The conventional fuel Jet A-1, the synthetic blending component from hydrotreated esters and fatty acids (HEFA) and its blend were interacted with the sample nitrile rubbers. HEFA technology has been approved by ASTM D7655 for use in turbine aircraft engines. The effect was evaluated on the basis of changes in the nitrile rubber's volume, mass and hardness. It has been confirmed that the synthetic component containing no aromatic hydrocarbons has a different effect on nitrile rubber than the conventional fuel. When the nitrile rubbers were subjected to microscopic observations, the most frequently observed effect was washing out or dissolving of nitrile rubber surface fragments.


The absorption spectra of N-acetonyl quinolinium iodide in different solvents have been studied in the region 200 nm-1100 nm. Four bands have been observed in DMF, methanol, water and alkaline water. The bands have been assigned to different intramolecular transitions.


The chronological spread of what is taught in German Departments in the UK and Ireland has contracted over the years. Once central areas — Aufklärung, Sturm und Drang, Weimarer Klassik, Romanticism, nineteenth-century poetry and fiction— have become marginal. At the same time, the disciplinary outlook has widened. An exclusive focus on literature has given way, in most Departments, to an approach encompassing aspects of cultural and social history, as well as the newer medium of film. There is nothing unnatural or unhealthy about these developments; on the contrary. The needs of our undergraduates and the compelling drama of twentieth-century German history have been powerful drivers of change. Film— the only art invented after antiquity— was scandalously ignored for many decades, and now has its rightful place in the curriculum. Cultural and social history have reinvigorated literary studies, as well as claiming an interest in their own right. The point of raising the status of eighteenthand nineteenth-century literature in our teaching, therefore, is not to hark back to a golden age. It is to ask, instead, what, in this new context, the rich resources of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries can add to what we teach, not in isolation, but in dialogue with contemporary culture, and as a window onto a deeper German(-speaking) past. It is worth raising the question from the point of view of the profession, too. The developments outlined above have widened the gap between British and Irish German Studies on the one hand — or Auslandsgermanistik more generally — and Inlandsgermanistik on the other. Bringing the eighteenth and nineteenth century back into focus would also be a way of keeping open lines of dialogue with our colleagues in the German-speaking countries. It is perhaps worth remembering how significantly distinguished British and Irish Germanists have contributed to the study of these areas in the past. Carrying that tradition forward into the present and future is a legitimate aspiration for the English Goethe Society. This issue derives from discussions on a special panel, sponsored by the EGS, at the 2021 conference of the Association of German Studies. The panel comprised British and Irish Germanists, together with German Germanisten with experience of teaching in the British system. We sought, therefore, to


Women who drink 2-3 cups of coffee a day or more could reduce their risk of developing dementia by more than a third, say researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the US.


Background; Escherichia coli cause extraintestinal infections in both community and hospitalized patients. The prevalence of multidrug-resistant extraintestinal pathogenic E.coli has increased progressively over the past few years. Aim of this study is to determine the drug susceptibility pattern of Extraintestinal Pathogenic E.coli (EXPEC) isolated from various clinical isolates in the hospital. Methods; Various clinical samples processed by standard bacteriological procedures, E.coli isolated were included for the study. Antibiotic susceptibility testing was done by Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion method as per CLSI guidelines using ampicillin, ceftazidime, cefuroxime, cefotaxime, ciprofloxacin, norfloxacin, cotrimoxazole. gentamicin, Netilmycin and Nitrofurantoin for urinary isolates. Results; The isolates were highest among age group of >45 years with 45(45%), followed by 15-45 years 36(36%) and 0-15 years 19 (19%). Among the specimens Urinary isolates were 47(47.0%), exudate 30(30.0%), sputum19 (19%) and Blood 4 (4.0%). Nitrofurantoin was found to be the most sensitive among urinary isolates with susceptibility rate of 77%. Netilmycin showed highest susceptibility among isolates from all samples, blood isolates 100%, sputum 89%, urinary 60% and exudate 50% were sensitive . Gentamicin susceptibility among blood were 75%, exudate 72% and sputum was 32%. Ciprofloxacin showed highest susceptibility among Blood (50%) followed by urine (47%),. cotrimoxazole showed highest susceptibility among blood (50%). All the isolates were resistant to ampicillin and 3 generation cephalosporins. Conclusion; There was high antimicrobial resistant rate in extraintestinal E. coli infection with 3 gen cephalsporins, the results of this study highlights the importance of regular surveillance of susceptibility of E.coli.


Asset pricing models, originally designed for the US market, assume sufficiency of local market in capturing systematic market risk in the stock returns. The models were extended to other developed markets that are fully integrated with the US market by replacing the local market with the global market. However, the ability of these models to capture systematic risks and explain stock returns in emerging markets is undermined by emerging markets' partial integration with and structural differences from the developed markets. In these markets, relying only on local or global market is expected to cause loss of valuable return-relevant information leading to inaccuracies in the return estimates. To customize the asset pricing models to emerging markets settings, we propose combining local and global markets in the models. In this regard, we extend Koedijk et al. model by replacing global instruments with global market portfolio to propose a two-factor CAPM, and Fama & French three-factor model by adding global market portfolio as the fourth factor. We test the proposed models in three BRICS nations, China, India, and South Africa, using ten-year, monthly data from January 2004 to December 2013 on non-financial firms with positive equity holdings. We apply Fama & French double sort on size and book to market value of equity on listed firms to construct nine dependent portfolios. The sort procedure is also used to construct two portfolios—SMB and HML—used along with market portfolios as explanatory variables in Fama & French models. The test results of the models reveal differences in the behaviors of the markets studied. The Chinese market behaves like a fully segmented market wherein local market portfolio subsumes the effect of the global market in both models. On the other hand, the South African market acts like a partially integrated market where both local and global market portfolios have significant impact on the stock returns. The Indian market behaves like a segmented market in two-factor model and like a partially-integrated market in the four-factor model. Hence, we conclude that incorporation of local and global markets in asset pricing in emerging markets in necessary to insure against inaccuracies in the stock return estimates. The proposed models provide investors and investment managers with tools for gauging risks involved in investing in emerging markets and making well-informed investment decisions.


The effects of different mixed ratios and different times on compressive strength and water-sta bility of macadam with lime-fly ash were analyzed in laboratory,which have showed that the best ratio of mixing lime,fly ash and detritus is 6:12:82.In addition,a kind of solidifying admixture was added into macadam with lime-fly ash to modify the material,and the result has showed that it can further increase the compressive strength and improve the water-stability.Finally,we tested the compressive strength and the water-stability of consolidated macadam with lime-fly ash in 90 and 180 days age respectively,and con- cluded that the chemical reaction can be finished in 90 days,which provides a basis for wide application of the new solidifying admixture.


OBJECTIVE
Study on the relationship between the infection of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

METHODS
The IgA and IgG antibodies against EBV capsid antigen (IgA/VCA and IgG/VCA respectively), and anti-Z protein IgG antibodies (IgG/Z) in the sera from the patients with RA, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), and normal controls were detected by using indirect immunofluoresence and immunobloting techniques.

RESULTS
The positive rate of IgA/VCA antibody in the serum of RA patients which was significantly higher than that in SLE patients and normal subjects. The anti IgG/Z antibodies were only found in RA patients with IgA/VCA antibody.

CONCLUSIONS
The results suggested that activated EB virus may play a role in the pathogenesis of RA. It is a useful laboratory method for the clinical diagnosis of RA.


The use of clean and consistent quality grids is very crucial due to highly demanding imaging applications using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Since the TEM grids and carbon coated support materials typically tend to be hydrophobic, they need to be pretreated prior to the sample preparation and imaging stages. Therefore, the glow discharge systems are commonly used to clean the TEM grids via selective removal of adsorbed hydrocarbons, and thus, to make them hydrophilic in the reduced atmosphere of air The glow discharge treatment of TEM carbon support films modifies the wettability and results in negative surface charge (hydrophilic), which is key for the easy spread of aqueous solutions However, such glow discharge systems are known to be expensive. In this work, a custom-made and inexpensive glow discharge system was designed and built based on the design and study reported by used a vacuum for the glow discharge Top electrode and bottom electrode (D2) both having 95 mm diameter and 6 mm thickness were prepared by machining of the 6061 aluminum disc based on a drawing created in Solid Works software. The bottom aluminum electrode was then mounted on a threaded brass rod and into its position an electrically insulating and wear resistant acetal plastic washer. flexible copper wire (H) attached to the bottom electrode for full grounding, is critical for proper glow discharge application. an aluminum rod with 13.1 mm diameter, 150 mm length and threaded end was machined from a 6061 aluminum material. rod (C) specifically designed as an alternative electrode tip of the high-frequency coil (B) was then connected to the top electrode (D1). In addition, a


ABSTRACT A novel sensitive, simple and fast kinetic method for the determination of trace amounts of resorcinol (0.50 — 3.00 μg ml−1) based on its inhibitory effect on the formaldehyde catalyzed oxidation reaction of neutral red by bromate ion in acidic media is reported. The reaction is monitored spectrophotometrically by measuring the decrease in the absorbance of neutral red in an inhibited reaction at 524 nm using a variable - time method. The detection limit is 0.38 μg ml−1 and the relative standard deviation of ten replicate measurements for 1 μg ml−1 of resorcinol is 4.2%. The procedure was successfully applied to the determination of resorcinol in resorcinol - S topical cream.


OBJECTIVE We aimed to determine an effective dose schedule for intravenously administered magnesium, to establish its neuroprotective efficacy in both pre- and postischemic treatment paradigms, and to compare the neuroprotective properties of MgSO4 and MgCl2. METHODS Rats that had been subjected to the bilateral carotid artery occlusion plus hypotension model of transient forebrain cerebral ischemia received either an intravenously administered loading dose (LD) of 360 &mgr;mol/kg MgSO4 only or an intravenously administered LD of 360 &mgr;mol/kg followed by a 48-hour intravenous infusion of MgSO4 at either 60, 120, 240, or 480 &mgr;mol/kg/h. For evaluation of the efficacy of MgSO4 after ischemia, the dose (LD, 360 &mgr;mol/kg; infusion, 120 &mgr;mol/kg/h) that provided maximal neuroprotection before ischemia was administered 4, 8, 12, or 24 hours after ischemia. MgCl2 (LD, 360 &mgr;mol/kg; infusion, 120 &mgr;mol/kg/h) was administered before and 8 hours after ischemia. At 7 days after ischemia, hippocampal CA1 neurons were histologically examined for protection. RESULTS Animals that received the LD only demonstrated 33% hippocampal CA1 neuronal survival. Animals that received the LD followed by continuous infusion of MgSO4 at either 60, 120, 240, or 480 &mgr;mol/kg/h demonstrated 30, 80, 16, and less than 5% CA1 neuronal survival, respectively. MgSO4 treatment commencing at 4, 8, 12, or 24 hours resulted in 82, 71, 52, and 33% CA1 neuronal survival, respectively. Preischemic and 8-hour postischemic administration of MgCl2 resulted in 50% and less than 5% CA1 neuronal survival, respectively. CONCLUSION These results demonstrate a neuroprotective intravenous dose of MgSO4, which is effective when administered before or late after ischemia, and a previously uncharacterized dose-response curve for MgSO4.


We present a comprehensive black-hole event generator, BlackMax, which simulates the experimental signatures of microscopic and Planckian black-hole production and evolution at the LHC in the context of brane world models with low-scale quantum gravity. The generator is based on phenomenologically realistic models free of serious problems that plague low-scale gravity, thus offering more realistic predictions for hadron-hadron colliders. The generator includes all of the black-hole gray-body factors known to date and incorporates the effects of black-hole rotation, splitting between the fermions, nonzero brane tension, and black-hole recoil due to Hawking radiation (although not all simultaneously). The generator can be interfaced with Herwig and Pythia. The main code can be downloaded from http://www-pnp.physics.ox.ac.uk/{approx}issever/BlackMax/blackmax.html.


Over the past 15 yr, examples of exotic radio-quiet quasars with intrinsically weak or absent broad emission line regions (BELRs) have emerged from large-scale spectroscopic sky surveys. Here, we present spectroscopy of seven such weak emission line quasars (WLQs) at moderate redshifts (z = 1.4–1.7) using the X-shooter spectrograph, which provides simultaneous optical and near-infrared spectroscopy covering the rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) through optical. These new observations effectively double the number of WLQs with spectroscopy in the optical rest-frame, and they allow us to compare the strengths of (weak) high-ionization emission lines (e.g., C iv) to low-ionization lines (e.g., Mg ii, Hβ, Hα) in individual objects. We detect broad Hβ and Hα emission in all objects, and these lines are generally toward the weaker end of the distribution expected for typical quasars (e.g., Hβ has rest-frame equivalent widths ranging from 15–40 Å). However, these low-ionization lines are not exceptionally weak, as is the case for high-ionization lines in WLQs. The X-shooter spectra also display relatively strong optical Fe ii emission, Hβ FWHM ≲ 4000 km s−1, and significant C iv blueshifts (≈1000–5500 km s−1) relative to the systemic redshift; two spectra also show elevated UV Fe ii emission, and an outflowing component to their (weak) Mg ii emission lines. These properties suggest that WLQs are exotic versions of "wind-dominated" quasars. Their BELRs either have unusual high-ionization components, or their BELRs are in an atypical photoionization state because of an unusually soft continuum.


The research analyzes the Yi language grammar plays an important role in English grammar learning.So the contrastive analysis between the Yi language grammar and English grammar has a great meaningful guidance.That is,through the contrastive analysis,the Yi students'learning difficulties and easiness in learning English grammar can be predicted.The contrastive analysis teaching model and error analysis teaching model can be helpful in teaching the Yi students'learning difficulties,and the two teaching models will be applied in Yi students'English grammar teaching and test.


This paper attempts to account the drastic change in the relationships with that happens between de anthropologist and the interlocutors in the case of women who go from being deprived of their liberty on their return to free society ("probation"). Methodological conditions that had been established during the progress of their sentence in jail can not be sustained anymore from a methodological point of view and practical and ethical issues so we must need to think what to do with the fissures that are created and likewise the mutual responsibilities appearing that radically change the scenario of an anthropological research on this subject. This paper also emphasizes the lack of references and the lack of practical investigations. We believe that this article may help to broaden the view in such situations and act as a heuristic source for similar situations.


Objective: A recent spurt in incidence of meralgia paresthetica to 0.1-81% due to minimally invasive anterior approach to hip joint has resulted in reinterest in anatomy of lateral femoral cutaneous nerve (LFCN). Familiarity with variations in the course of LFCN will reduce the morbidity associated with orthopedic procedures around the anterior superior iliac spine (ASIS) and inguinal ligament (IL). Methods: Twenty five adult human formalin embalmed cadavers were dissected. Course and relations of nerve to ASIS, IL and sartorius muscle was noted, distance of nerve from ASIS at IL was measured and statistically analyzed. Results: Mean distance of LFCN from ASIS at IL was 1.73±1.15 cm. Differences between two sides and sexes was statistically not significant (p=0.51 and p=0.96 respectively). Inferomedial to ASIS, 94% of LFCNs crossed IL with 92% of them present within 4 cm medial to ASIS. Majority of LFCNs (90%) exited pelvis and entered thigh posterior to IL. Out of these nerves 48% were single trunks on entry into thigh, then bifurcated into anterior and posterior branches. Remaining LFCNs bifurcated proximal to IL or at level of IL. Trifurcations were seen in 6% while a rare case of pentafication was observed. In 66% main trunk/branches were present in intermuscular cleft between sartorius muscle and tensor fascia lata. Conclusions: Care should be exercised by surgeons while dissecting around IL as more than half of nerves are liable to be injured during operative procedures. This would help in better anticipation of problem, acceptance and reducing litigation.


A new method of data compression of Digital Elevation Model(DEM) which is based on the Triangle Irregular Network(TIN) is presented in this paper.In the method,the angle between triangle normal vectors is used as the measure for identifging points which should be removed,in which way the original DEM data can be compressed while the data storage space is reduced and the successive disposal speed will increase under the precondition of minimizing the loss of model precision.Furthermore,the reliability of the data compression method is analyzed to show the feasibility of the method.


A micromechanical structure comprises a substrate and a functional configuration of the substrate is disposed in at. The functional configuration comprises a ribbon, the ribbon in response to a force acting on the ribbon may be offset with respect to the substrate. The functional configuration of the base layer further comprises a conductive, the conductive substrate comprises a conductive substrate material. The conductive base material in the hardened portion includes a carbon material in sections, so that the carbon concentration in the carbon material of the conductive base material is at least 1014 / cm3, and is at least 103 times the carbon concentration adjacent to the conductive base material in the hardened portions .


A class of periodic solutions of the two-dimensional Poisson-Boltzmann system was found. These Jacobi elliptic functions reveal a tendency to self-organisation, e.g. periodic spatial distribution, for self-consistent Coulomb ensembles.


In the beginning stage of MITI micromachine project, the committee on the standardization established in Micromachine Center recognized the importance of measurement technique for the promotion and the systemization of the micromachine technology. Micromachine Center is the organizing body for private sectors working in the MITI micromachine project which started in 1991. MITI stands for Ministry of International Trade and Industry in Japan. In order to known the requirements on the measurement technologies, the questionnaire was organized by the measurement working group in the committee. This talk covers the questionnaire and its results, and some research results obtained at National Research Laboratory of Metrology working as a member in the project.


The background: Is to detection of intron twenty two mutations in the FVIIIgene in Iraqi carriers in Wasit town with Hemophilia A (classical hemophilia) that is associate Xhromosome recessive bleeding disorders caused by defect of the coagulation factor VIII (FVIII), mainly associated with F8 mutations that intron twenty two inversion is that the commonest mutations type that occur in blood disorder over the world that concerning 1/2 the patients with severe Hemophilia A have this mutations and by intron one inversion in five percent of the patients with severe hemophilia A. each inversion mutations occur solely in male and rare in females as a results of intrachromosomal recombination between homologous regions, in inversion one or twenty two, and their extragenic copy placed telomeric to the FVIII gene. Unluckily in Iraq no studies were done relating to blood disorder gene detection in carriers with intron22 mutations exclusion this study. Aims of study: Detection analyze the presence of intron twenty two mutations within the FVIII gene in ten HA Iraqi carriers families with significantly, there's a little risk for return even once the familial F8 mutation isn't known within the mother of the affected patient because of the probability of germ line mosaics within


To apply CAN-bus network to torpedo control and homing systems,we verified the data transmission of torpedo control and homing systems based on CAN-bus network via test,and designed the corresponding hardware.Attentions were paid to improve reliability of data transmission of CAN-bus network in such design sections as determining CAN-bus protocol and CAN message,planning power supply,matching CAN-bus terminal impedance,setting input-output isolation,and satisfying requirement of electromagnetic environment,etc.Experimental result shows that the CAN-bus network can meet the communication requirement of torpedo electronic system.


The paper explains the existence of excessive distortions observed in some countries. It argues that such excessive distortions can not be explained purely as an outcome of lobbying by special interest groups or simply as the political use of economic ine¢ ciency. Rather, such distortions are attributable to rent seeking in an environment characterized by poor electoral institutions hence limited or absence of electoral accountability. Rent seeking politicians can therefore distort excessively since that generates higher rents without compromising chances of remaining in power. This is demonstrated using a theoretical model in which an incumbent faces a trade-o¤ between increasing rents through higher distortions and increasing the probability of being re-elected by choosing low distortions. The incumbent can pacify political pressure (modelled as electoral manipulation) with success determined by the quality of electoral institutions. It is shown that when electoral institutions are poor, the incumbent chooses higher distortions and then manipulates the election to mantain power. The theory is tested on exchange rate distortions in Sub-Sahara Africa. Empirical results indicate that, ceteris paribus, dictatorships are likely to overvalue by between 22.4 and 26.6 percentage points more than complete democracies. They are also less likely to adjust from positions of excessive over-valuation than more democratic regimes. This provides proof that when institutions are weak, politicians maximize on rent seeking through excessive distortions and then suppress ensuing political pressure.


The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the physical devices that are embedded with Internet, electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity. This includes many different systems, for instance, healthcare, wellbeing, smart home, building, smart meters, and so on. The Internet-based technical architecture, IP-based communication protocols, and technologies are facilitating the exchange of smart object services over the insecure channels, therefore, security and privacy of the involved stakeholder is the prime concern. In this paper we analyse available IoT security in three forms: (i) security in communication, (ii) security at application interface, and (iii) data security. This paper reviews the current IoT technologies, approaches and models and finds the security gap in existing communication technologies, application interfaces, and data security. Another focus of the paper is to provide an overview of the related work in IoT, together with the open challenges and future research directions me".


The article deals with theoretical approaches and analysis the data of the empirical research of the correlation between interpersonal relationships and auto-aggressive behavior in juvenile age. The theoretical approaches to the investigated problem in terms of psychoanalysis, transactional analysis, behavioral and existential psychology were considered. It is revealed that such socio-psychological factors as the influence of a disharmonious family, dissatisfaction with interpersonal relations in a group, with friends and close people can serve as a prerequisite for aggressive behavior in juvenile age.
The article describes the results of an empirical study conducted among 60 students based on the Vinnytsia Mikhailo Kotsiubynskyi State Pedagogical University with the use of S. Pantyleev's, V. Stolin's test questionnaire of personal self-conception and Sack's Sentence Completion Test. The results of the study indicate that the majority of respondents are positive about themselves, characterized by a significant level of auto-sympathy, self-esteem and self-acceptance. However, some students do not believe in their strength, have a significant propensity to self-accusation and negative expectations of attitudes from others. They do not see the future, which testifies to the problems of psychological health of these boys and girls. These manifestations can be interpreted as indicators of auto-aggressive behavior.
The most problematic aspects of interpersonal relationships among the respondents are the relationship with father and opposite sex, which, first of all, in our opinion, is explained by the lack of a parent in the family and the laying down of a negative life scenario.


Mountains are topographic features caused by erosion after vertical uplift or mountain building. Mountain building is often confused with orogeny, which today means the formation of structures in fold belts. The common assumption that folding and mountain building go together is generally untrue. Many mountains occur in unfolded rocks, granites and volcanic rocks, so there is no direct association of folding and mountain building. In those places where mountains are underlain by folded rocks the folding pre-dates planation and uplift. The age of mountains is therefore not the age of the last folding (if any) but the age of vertical uplift. Since mountains are not restricted to folded rocks, lateral compression is not required to explain the uplift.
A compilation of times of uplift of mountains around the world shows that a major phase of tectonic uplift started about 6 Ma, and much uplift occurred in the last 2 Ma. This period is known as the Neotectonic Period. It is a global phenomenon including mountains on passive continental margins, and those in deep continental interiors. Several hypotheses of mountain building have problems with this timing. Some fail by being only able to make mountains out of folded rock at continental margins. Many translate the vertical uplift into lateral compression, but vertical uplift alone can create mountains.
The Neotectonic Period has important implications for geomorphology, climate and global tectonics. In geomorphology it does not fit into conventional theories of geomorphology such as Davisian or King cycles of erosion. Neotectonic uplift might initiate several cycles of erosion, but most planation surfaces are much older than the Neotectonic Period. The increasing relief associated with Neotectonic uplift affected rates of erosion and sedimentation, and also late Cenozoic climate.
The Neotectonic Period does not fit within plate tectonics theory, in which mountains are explained as a result of compression at active margins: mountains in other locations are said to have been caused by the same process but further back in time. This is disproved by the young age of uplift of mountains in intercontinental and passive margin positions. Subduction is supposed to have been continuous for hundreds of millions of years, so fails to explain the world-wide uplifts in just a few million years.
Geomorphologists should be guided by their own findings, and refrain from theory-driven hypotheses of plate collision or landscape evolution.


Objective: Oxidative stress (OxS) is known to contribute to late stages of aortic valve disease (AVD), but its role in early-stage valve inflammation and as a driver of valve pathology has not been investigated. Here we show that inflammation drives increased OxS via eNOS uncoupling. Using an ex vivo model of AVD, we show that targeting eNOS uncoupling with tetrahydrobiopterin or superoxide dismutase can mitigate later-stage valve degeneration by blocking the downstream effects of eNOS uncoupling. Methods and Results: We first observed evidence of eNOS uncoupling in the endothelium of calcified human aortic valve leaflets, which showed increased superoxide co-localized with cells positive for CD31 and VCAM-1, suggesting a connection between endothelial inflammatory activation and increased oxidative stress. We then showed that inflammatory cytokine TNF-α caused increased superoxide, free radicals, and hydrogen peroxide in aortic valve endothelial cells, as soon as 15 minutes after treatment. TNF-α did not...


Type of funding sources: None.

 Non-specific myocardial fibrosis (NSMF) is a heterogeneous entity with potentially significant clinical implications. We aimed to create a machine-learning (ML) based model for its prediction, based on thorough baseline investigations in a cohort of young competitive athletes with and without NSMF.

 We analysed data from 328 young athletes referred to our Sports Cardiology service for a variety of reasons. All athletes underwent an evaluation with ECG, Holter, cardiopulmonary exercise test and cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR). We identified 61 athletes with NSMF (80% male, 72% white, 65% endurance sport) and compared them with a matched group of 75 athletes with no fibrosis (controls). Athletes with NSMF were further divided into Group 1 (n=28) with minimal ('minor'=insertion point) fibrosis and Group 2 (n=33), (all other patterns, 'major') fibrosis. Selected baseline athletes' characteristics including demographics, ECG findings , exercise intensity and type, arrhythmia, echo and CMR findings were tested to train the model. Finally, we tested various machine learning (ML) algorithms to create a model which classifies the individuals under observance into two distinct classes; Class A which contains the control group plus the athletes with 'minor' fibrosis, while the second, Class B which contains the athletes with 'major' fibrosis. We created 4 different classifiers; a logistic regression classifier, a random forest classifier, a naive Bayes classifier, and a voting classifier which chooses the class predicted by the majority of the previous three.

 Given that ~75% of athletes belonged to either no fibrosis or Group 1 (class A), and ~25% to Group 2, it can be inferred that a dummy classifier who would always predict class A would achieve an accuracy of 75%. We therefore used such a classifier method, which a-priori predicts class A, as a baseline to which we compared the results of our trained classifiers. We split the dataset, trained the model, and measured its accuracy (and the accuracy of the benchmark a-priori classifier) on the test set for each classifier. Machine learning classifiers had the following accuracy classification results;
 ȃȃA-priori classifier: 75% [74%, 76]
 ȃȃNaive Bayes: 83% [81%, 85%] <0.001
 ȃȃLogistic Regression: 87% [86%, 88%] <0.001
 ȃȃVoting classifier: 89% [88%, 90%] <0.001
 ȃȃRandom forest: 90% [89%, 91%] <0.001
 Testing the models derived by machine learning, all our models significantly outperformed the benchmark method and the best accuracy was achieved by the random forest classifier with 90% mean accuracy.

 This study showed that ECG findings, demographics and comprehensive baseline assessment can be used to develop a powerful ML-based prediction model of NSMF. Testing ML-derived models, they all significantly outperformed the benchmark method and the best accuracy was achieved by the random forest classifier with 90% mean accuracy.


Abstract : Buckout's review in 1962 was the last comprehensive examination of the pilot performance measurement (PPM) literature. This annotated bibliography attempts to: (1) gather the PPM literature written subsequent to 1962 into one source; (2) describe the scenarios and measures used in collecting PPM data; and (3) summarize the major premises and findings of each article. A variety of sources including computer aided literature search were used to identify candidate articles. Ultimately all referenced material was divided into three categories: (1) objective pilot performance measurement; (2) subjective pilot performance measures; and (3) general analysis and review articles. The objective performance measure category was arranged as follows: Field Conditions, Simulator Conditions, Laboratory Conditions, and Combination of Field Conditions, Simulator and/or Laboratory Conditions. For each of the objective measure articles reviewed, the following parameters were reported: subjects, equipment, scenario, measures and summary. For the subjective measures and general analysis and review articles the author's abstract was generally duplicated. In addition to the 189 articles addressing objective performance measurement, 30 articles dealing with subjective measures and 143 related analyses and review articles are contained in the bibliography.


Pressure sensors are indispensable in wearable equipment, human-machine interfaces, and robotics. However, facile and rapid fabrication of stretch-flexible pressure sensors with good performance is still needed. In this paper, a fast-response pressure sensor used for tactile sensing on a nonplanar surface was prototyped in an effortless manner on the basis of laser-induced graphene (LIG) and a sugar-template porous Ecoflex dielectric layer. The intrinsic correlation among the structure size, material properties, sensor sensitivity and response time is revealed. The results show that the pressure sensor achieves a sensitivity of 0.04 kPa−1 with an accuracy of 3.1% within 35 kPa when the dielectric thickness is 1 mm and the LIG electrode scribing power and speed were set as 2.1 W and 70 mm/s, respectively. The limit of detection is 5.3 g, corresponding to a pressure level of 132 Pa. The response and recovery time of the pressure sensor were also characterized as 70 and 80 ms, respectively. In addition, a 3 $\times$ 3 stretch-flexible sensor array is fabricated and attached to a nonplanar surface for single and multitouch tactile sensing. The highly integrated pressure sensor is cost-effective, highly scalable, and fast response, which offers a significant opportunity for the next generation of tactile sensors on nonplanar surfaces for robots.


Abstract This three year investigation studied the validity and usefulness of kindergarten through second grade teacher judgments of students' literacy competency based on alternative assessment techniques. A group of 136 kindergarten children in a suburban/rural western New York school district were followed through second grade. Each year their teachers and principal were observed and interviewed about the standardized and alternative assessment data they used for literacy‐related evaluation, instructional and curricular decision‐making. All teachers and the principal found the alternative assessment data to be more useful than the standardized data for such decisions. When students' standardized achievement test scores were correlated with the evaluations resulting from the alternative assessments a significant positive relationship was found thus establishing a foundation for the validity of the teacher judgments for those who might have had doubts.


The rural ecological environment protection, economic sustainable development and eco-village construction need to be explored. Based on the concept of eco-village and eco-village model, the existing eco-village construction models in Shaanxi Province can be classified into four categories: comprehensive development model, modern ecological technology applied model, suburban farmhouse model and folk culture model. The issue during those models development been analyzed. Suggestions of promoting ecological village construction in Shaanxi Province been proposed.


This paper presents a slip suppression controller using sliding mode control method for electric vehicles which aims to improve the control performance and the energy conservation by controlling the slip ratio of wheel. In this method, a robust sliding mode controller against the model uncertainties is designed to obtain the maximum driving force by suppressing the slip ratio. The numerical simulations for one wheel model under variations in mass of vehicle and road condition are performed and demonstrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.


The three basic types of biological treatment systems for the control of volatile organic compounds in air streams are the following: biofilters, in which microorganisms grow on a medium, such as soil, compost, peat, or mixtures of these materials with wood chips or polystyrene particles; suspended-growth bioscrubbers, in which microorganisms are suspended in a liquid; and fixed-film bioscrubbers, in which microorganisms are attached to a packing material. Design and application of biological treatment methods for air pollution control are difficult because only limited experimental data and few theoretical models are available. This paper utilizes an engineering simulation model of a fixed-film bioscrubber to investigate the applicability, removal efficiency, operational parameters, and design requirements for gaseous waste streams. Model results indicate that the removal efficiencies can be increased by increasing the column height, decreasing the superficial gas velocity or the superficial liquid velocity, or by treating the liquid prior to recirculation to the absorber. High removal efficiencies can be obtained for compounds with relatively low values of the Henry's Law coefficient with either cocurrent or countercurrent operation. However, as the Henry's Law coefficient increases, the removal efficiency decreases and high removal efficiencies can be obtained only with cocurrent flow. Cocurrent operation is usually more efficient because stripping does not occur at the top of the column. Physical, chemical, and biological scrubbing methods can be used to control pollutants in waste gases. Physical absorp tion transfers the waste components of the gas stream into a liquid. Prior to reuse, the liquid must be regenerated or treated to remove the contaminant. One approach is to use chemical reagents to neutralize acidic or alkaline pollutants or to oxidize pollutants. Alternatively, biological processes often can be used to mineralize organic compounds, allowing the liquid to be recirculated. Such biological treatment may be more eco nomical than conventional physical or chemical treatment. Despite successes of biological treatment systems in a num ber of air-pollution control applications, only limited experi mental data and few theoretical models are available, making design difficult. This paper presents an engineering model for fixed-film bioscrubbers to predict the removal efficiency, op erational parameters, and design requirements for various gas eous pollutants. The bioscrubber modeled in this paper is a combination of a packed adsorption tower in chemical engi neering and a high-rate trickling filter or roughing filter used in wastewater treatment. Generally, there is direct recirculation of the liquid from the bottom to the top of the tower. Simu lations were conducted to determine the important factors gov erning bioscrubber performance. The results offer guidance for the future development of this technology. BACKGROUND In aerobic biological treatment of waste gases, the pollutants are degraded by appropriate microorganisms to form carbon dioxide, water, and cell material. There are three basic types of biological treatment systems: biofilters, suspended-growth bioscrubbers, and fixed-film bioscrubbers. In a biofilter, the polluted gas passes through a moist, biologically active ma terial, such as soil, compost, peat, or mixtures of these materials


Fundamental studies of three C1 molecules (CO, CO2, and CH3OH/CD3OD) adsorption on surfaces of ceria single crystals and/or nanocrystals have been carried out by using ultra-high vacuum Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (UHV-FTIRS) or near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS) spectroscopy. The oxidation states of cerium cations were determined by the core-level and valence band X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS).


As one of main natural enemies of long-horned beetle Cerambycidae of poplar tree,woodpecker(Pficidae)has marked advantages over it and plays important roles on controlling the other forests insects at the same time.By observing its living habits,traits,and control over long-horned beetle Cerambycidae and other insects,this article clarifies that it is one of the effective ways to control long-horned beetle Cerambycidae and other insects of poplar tree by using woodpecker.


The issue of zakat on income has been discussed by scholars since those days of sahabah and tabi'in until today. Among the issues are hawl (lapse of a year), nisab (the capability line for zakat contribution) and al-hawa'ij al-asliyyah (basic needs). For the case of al-hawa'ij alasliyyah, the practice of zakat institution in Malaysia is to directly convert the exempted amount of personal, spouse and children, which is similarly performed by Lembaga Hasil Dalam Negeri (LHDN). The practice has raised a question among scholars. They argue whether the exempted amounts are exactly representing the costs of al-hawa'ij al-asliyyah which are required by shariah. Thus, this paper aims to explore the discussion of shariah on al-hawa'ij al-asliyyah with the specific items which has been conferred in classical fiqh and investigate the suitable items which is currently customized in daily life. The study applied a library research methodology by gathering the data from classical fiqh which investigated the opinions of scholars across of four major mazahib. The analysis of the data was done through content analysis and only the selected opinion was considered. The study found that the Hanafi Jurists among those scholars who strongly propagate the inclusion of Hawa'ij alAsliyyah in zakat calculation. The idea is about to serve the meaning of being wealthy and rich where the group has first to fulfill their basic need before paying the zakat, the study also found that the suitable amount to be exempted for al-hawa'ij al-asliyyah should be referred to the standard used in calculating the CPI (Consumer Price Index) as for the current application in Malaysia. The amount should be flexible in order to cater the unexpected need such as hospitality, education and others.


Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are common diseases in pediatric age groups. The emergence of bacterial strains that exhibit resistance to specific antimicrobial agents has led to several therapeutic challenges. This study aimed to evaluate the frequency and antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of common types of bacteria isolated from urine samples of patients with urinary tract infections in Karbala Teaching Hospital for Children. The study was conducted between September 2021 and January 2022. The susceptibilities of antimicrobial agents were determined using the Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion technique. Positive cultures from 56 patients were included in the analysis. Escherichia coli and Proteus spp. were the most common organisms identified in pediatric patients suspected of a UTI (50% and 14.3%, respectively), while Raoutella ornithimolytics and Enterobacter sp. represented 7.14%. Other bacteria like Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus saprophyticus, Acinetobacter baumannii, Serratia spp., and Kluyvera spp. represented 3.6%. The sensitivity of E. coli isolates to imipenem, amikacin, and chloramphenicol were 92.9%, 85.7%, and 78.6%, respectively. Proteus spp. isolates solely exhibited susceptibility to amikacin and nalidixic acid. The current study concluded that E. coli was the most frequently arising underlying pathogen UTI in pediatric patients. In this clinical setting, the organisms identified exhibited high susceptibility to imipenem, amikacin, and chloramphenicol.


The brief research stories describe the development and use of tools for public life studies. They are told in retrospect and, as far as possible, from the field where tools are often developed and adapted to the individual situation. Emphasis is on the selection, development and use of tools rather than on the results of the individual studies. Some references are the description of a segment of a larger study.


the wider, media-saturated environment. Cultural studies takes its rationale and much of its ur gency from the problems of cultural authority posed by this unprecedented predicament. By stressing cultural politics, or dispersing politics into the everyday, cultural studies distinguishes itself from the plethora of purely intellectual moves towards interdisciplinarity. To think through cultural studies in this way is to bring it closer to its literary origins: to the breaks and continuities among Stuart Hall, Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, and the earlier, formative moment of Scrutiny; to the attempt to bring literary criticism and close reading to bear on the newer, popular forms of communication; to the social and historical study of literature and culture. It is also to begin to imagine how other, nationally inflected geneal ogies for cultural studies might be devised, refracted through different academies, diverse intelligentsias, dis tant struggles. Yet to position the literary as cultural studies' point of departure, however accurate historically, is to risk turning literary studies into an anachronism or a way station, a small step in a developing transdisciplinary logic, rather than to recognize in it a source of tension or resistance, an irritant that raises uncomfortable questions of time and value. In this light the literary becomes the other of cultural studies, recalling the new field to the measured responsibility of cultural criticism, slowing down the frenzied pace of reading, and demanding something more than a merely "diagnostic" or "paraphrastic" approach to texts—to cite J. Hillis Miller's helpful formulation (Il lustration [Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992] 17). Indeed, since the shelf life of all manner of writings today seems increasingly compressed, this argument is perhaps now more compelling than ever. But such nostrums, whether Leavisite or deconstructive, fail to give due weight to the way in which cultural studies has expanded the text's interpretive horizons and restored the multifarious acts of reading to their many and various publics. Cultural studies has accented the context or the social relations of reading. Because the technologies of textuality and representation have long since outstripped any solely literary determination, read ing can no longer be imagined as a singular encounter between subject and text but must instead be reconceived as a historically variable bundle of norms, codes, capaci ties, and techniques whose precise configuration at any time (including the forms of agency and effectivity that reading supports) remains a topic for detailed examina tion. In cultural studies there can be no general, uncontroversial answer to the question of what it means to read or how reading is accomplished, no matter how final the pedagogical solutions of close reading may sometimes deceptively appear to be. Cultural studies has been criticized for its presentist bias and has even been deemed to have failed because of its alleged inability to deal with traditional, and especially premodern, cultural works historically or aesthetically. This is the burden of Colin MacCabe's recent critique, for example ("The Case for the Consortium," Critical Quarterly 38 [1996]: 3-12). Yet the study of reading and interpretation is surely the site where ethnography and cultural history have begun to intersect and where the frontier between cultural studies and the new histori cisms has become increasingly fuzzy. In this interdisci plinary terrain the literary will inevitably come to occupy what will seem to many scholars a peculiarly unconge nial place, but they may be consoled on finding the new locale furnished with a far more heterogeneous range of literary materials and a more inclusive notion of literary culture than they had expected. There is, however, no guarantee that the literary can be preserved as a discrete theoretical object once its constitutive practices of read ing and writing have been moved into the volatile and multidimensional domain of cultural representation, where it is anyone's guess what the concept of literature will look like. Perhaps this is one reason that discussions of the prospects for cultural studies regularly close with a call for better and considerably updated maps of the cultural landscape. But without a greater willingness to undertake more-demanding intellectual journeys, to im provise and experiment in hazardous conditions, another cartography will count for nothing.


A single-way reducing glass solar vacuum heat-collection tube is glass casing tube with one open end. A metal support card is used to support positioning by external glass and to form one - way reducing and double layer glass casing tube with one end being closed and another end being opened; setting reflection and focus mirror on outer glass tube for reflecting light to inner glass tube with energy conversion film board and blocking air cartridge container on outer tube wall with tip seal after jacket layer is vacuumed.


【Objective】 To study the preventive effect of licorice flavonoids (LF) on hyperglycemia and hyperlipemia of experimental diabetic rats induced by feeding high-fat and high-sugar diet combined with low-dose streptozotocin (STZ) injection,and to elucidate its possible pharmacological mechanisms.【Methods】The rats were divided into four groups,namely as control group,control treatment group (CLF),model group and preventive treatment group (PLF). Rats in control group and CLF group were fed with normal diet,while rats in the other two groups were fed with high-fat and high-sugar diet. Meanwhile,rats in CLF and PLF groups were administered with 300 mg(/kg body.d)of LF. Rats in control and model groups were administered with solvent (1.2-propanediol). 6w later,the model group and PLF group were injected STZ (35 mg/Kg). 6d later,the body weight,levels of the fasting blood glucose (FBG),triglycerides (TG),total cholesterol (TC),high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C),low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and total antioxidation capability (T-AOC) of all experimental animals were examined. Liver,kidney,fat around kidney,epididymis and epiploon were weighed. Liver index,kidney index and the relative weight of abdominal adipose tissue were calculated. 【Results】LF preventive treatment significantly inhibited the increase in levels of FBG,TG,TC,LDL-C and liver index,it also significantly increased the levels of T-AOC and inhibited the decrease in body weight and relative weight of abdominal adipose tissue.【Conclusion】 LF is effective in preventing occurrence of experimental diabetes in rats.


Sub-Saharan Africa is faced with many challenges. It is a region bulging with resources but cursed with incredible political and economic greed. With a vast ethnic diversity and an often misconstrued cultural lifestyle, which puts the region on the marginalization line. From a historical context, the impact of colonialism has haplessly set the environment for low leadership standards. The background setting for Sub-Saharan Africa's economic underdevelopment is uninhibited corruption that exists within Sub-Saharan African societies. This institutional corruption takes a triangular cause - cultural, economic and political; each, together with so many other factors threaten Sub-Saharan Africa's socio-economic development.


Over the last few years the Mozambican mobile market has been remarkably dynamic. The unique roll-out and market strategy of the latest entrant, Movitel, a joint venture between the Viettel Group of Vietnam and Mozambique's SPI, has led to dramatic competitive outcomes in the Mozambican mobile market. Movitel launched in 2012 and has focussed on its rural supply chain by rolling out 153 shops, 12 600 agents and points of sales, and nearly 4 000 direct sales staff in the country's rural villages. Movitel's supply chain covers 85% of Mozambique's rural population and more than 70% of the whole country's population. The success of a third entrant into an entrenched duopoly market is unprecedented in Africa. It is therefore necessary to understand how it affects the incumbent operators and if Movitel's model is sustainable.


This paper deals with the magnetic model of an interior permanent magnet synchronous motor, whose parameters are computed using finite element analysis. As known, in unsaturated conditions the motor inductive parameters and flux linkage call be univocally determined. Conversely, under saturated operation, different choices may be adopted to define them. Various models are examined, with the purpose to individuate the most effective for a prediction of the motor and speed capability. Attention is devoted to the performance at base speed as well as in the flux-weakening region. Comparison with tests confirms the good agreement with the results obtained by finite element analysis.


Mining activities affect a landscape in different ways, including by the formation of subsidence troughs, which after being inundated form wetlands and lakes. The development of new mining reservoirs may give a unique opportunity to study the early stages of colonization by various freshwater communities, including phytoplankton. Our paper presents the results of phycological research undertaken in newly formed subsidence reservoir near the coal mine "Bogdanka" (Polesie Lubelskie) a few months after its filling with water. The reservoir represented a unique, rare limnologic type due to the fact that it disappeared as a result of intended melioration works in the autumn of the same year. The study focused on morphometric measurements of the episodic reservoir, determination of general physicochemical parameters of water, and qualitative and quantitative structure of the phytoplankton community, was undertaken in five separated basins. A total of 80 algal taxa were determined. Most of them belonged to euglenoids (Euglenophyta-36) and green algae (Chlorophyta-26). Among euglenoids, most species were represented by Trachelomonas genus (14), while among green algae, most species were assigned to Scenedesmus genus (8). Several rare species were found, including: Scenedesmus bacillaris Gutw., Dinobryon petiolatum Willen, and Trachelomonas botanica Playfair. Green algae and euglenoids also had major contributions to the total phytoplankton abundance, which �


Weedy species invasions are a huge problem in rangeland and natural areas as they degrade the quality and quantity of forage for livestock and reduce biodiversity. Weed suppression using native grasses is an ecologically driven method of weed management, representing an opportunity for low-input and management over long temporal scales if these systems can be successfully established. A systemic literature review was conducted to explore the interactions between native grasses and weeds, and revealed the potential of native grasses to provide a reduction in weed presence through interactions with other biological communities. We proposed the merging of agronomic and breeding techniques with restoration efforts such as using specialized seeding techniques to establish native grasses in these systems. A generalized planning framework for land managers is also presented, emphasizing the consideration of functional traits for competitive advantage against weeds and germplasm availability as the main considerations for species selection. Management strategies that provide advantages to native grasses such as land clearance and strategic disturbances were also discussed. Suppression can occur through a variety of mechanisms including direct competition with weeds, indirect interactions through trophic levels of arthropods and grazers, and human-induced disturbances. From our results, we believe that native grasses can potentially play an important role in efficacious weed suppression if utilized tactfully.