The idea of the smart home has been discussed for over three decades, but it has yet to achieve mass-market adoption. This thesis asks the question Why is my home not smart?
It highlights four main areas that are barriers to adoption, and concentrates on a single one of these issues: usability. It presents an investigation that focuses on design,
prototyping and evaluation of mobile interfaces for domestic environments resulting in the development of a novel framework.

A smart home is the physical realisation of a ubiquitous computing system for domestic living. The research area offers numerous benefits to end-users such as convenience,
assistive living, energy saving and improved security and safety. However, these benefits have yet to become accessible due to a lack of usable smart home control
interfaces. This issue is considered a key reason for lack of adoption and is the focus for this thesis.

Within this thesis, a framework is introduced as a novel approach for the design, prototyping and evaluation of mobile interfaces for domestic environments. Included
within this framework are three components. Firstly, the Reconfigurable Multimedia Environment (RME), a physical evaluation and observation space for conducting user
centred research. Secondly, Simulated Interactive Devices (SID), a video-based development and control tool for simulating interactive devices commonly found within
a smart home. Thirdly, iProto, a tool that facilitates the production and rapid deployment of high fidelity prototypes for mobile touch screen devices. This framework is evaluated as a round-tripping toolchain for prototyping smart home control and found to be an efficient process for facilitating the design and evaluation of such interfaces.


Based on the concept of computational quasi stability, the computational stability of the explicit difference schemes for the forced dissipative nonlinear evolution equations is analyzed, then the computational quasi stability criterion is obtained. It provides a new thought and the theoretical basis for designing a computationally stable difference scheme for the forced dissipative nonlinear atmospheric equations.


Carbon-protected metallic nanoparticles(nickel and cobalt)composites were prepared by the pyrolysis of the mixture of soluble starch and metallic acetate in N2 flow via an easy green synthetic route.The obtained samples were highly stable in air.Reducing agent was not used in the experiments.The as-synthesized samples were characterized by XRD,TEM,and N2 adsorption-desorption analysis.The results of N2 adsorption-desorption analysis indicated that the obtained samples possessed mesoporous structures and high BET surface areas.


The article is devoted to the topic of the most current interests - renewable energy development. Alternative sources of energy play an increasingly significant role in the development of the whole energy power use in different countries. Russia is more and more focusing on this field to decrease in energy consumption and the mutual penetration of natural and technological components. The current instruments of support in the field of renewable energy are presented on the level of the Russian Federation as well as on the chosen regions - Saint Petersburg and Leningrad region. The paper observes the Governmental program for support of the development of renewable energy in Russia. The information about types of the alternative sources of energy that are more used in St. Petersburg and Leningrad region is summed up. Best practice in current cases of acting projects on the territory of the chosen regions is accumulated. It was concluded that the most efficient way to use alternative sources is in its combination, but not individually.


Following a rather shaky start, the use of qualitative
methods is now gaining increased acceptance within the field of health research. Further progress will have to be made, however, before qualitative research can enjoy the status and respect of other approaches which rely more on techniques of quantification and measurement. It is therefore important to gain a proper understanding of what
qualitative methods can contribute to health research, including some agreement on what constitutes rigorous work in this field.
Certainly qualitative research seems to hold out a number of
possibilities within the area of palliative care. This paper therefore seeks both to map out something of the history, development and content of qualitative methods, whilst also suggesting ways in which such methods might be used in the service of palliative care research. It will be argued, however,that qualitative research cannot be judged simply as a set of techniques for data collection and analysis. It also comprises a particular way of seeing and a
framework for a certain kind of research ethics in which subjective experience is acknowledged and harnessed. Accordingly, it presents researchers with a wide range of practical, political and moral dilemmas - some of which do not arise within other research traditions. Such an argument reveals that, despite lingering claims to the contrary, qualitative methods are no 'soft' option


Professor Jonathan Baker is one of the leading antitrust thinkers of our time. During the past three decades, Baker's voice has been a prominent force in the antitrust discourse and the evolution of antitrust policies. Baker's new book, The Antitrust Paradigm,1 is an informed, thoughtful, and provocative antitrust manifesto that every antitrust thinker should read. The Antitrust Paradigm calls on antitrust to address the "market power paroxysm" in America— namely, the growing prevalence of oligopolies and monopolies in the economy.2 The "substantial and widening market power" in the economy, Baker writes, has produced significant social costs: economic disparities have been soaring, business dynamism has declined, the national economic growth has slowed down, and the confidence in democratic institutions has eroded. Baker recognizes that technological change contributed to market concentration in numerous industries, but places much of the blame on the Chicago School. To restore the competitive character of the U.S. economy and reverse unhealthy trends, Baker proposes to reinvigorate antitrust enforcement. Baker's operational recommendations focus on the relaxation of judicial premises that are excessively favorable to antitrust defendants, including "the assumptions that markets self-correct, that the harms from unwise judicial precedents outweigh those of market power, and that antitrust institutions are subject to manipulation by complaining competitors."3 Another set of recommendations that Baker advances addresses changes in the economy that, according to Baker, require modernization of antitrust standards. The key changes that Baker discusses are increased market concentration, a growing use of algorithms to replace human decision making, and the unique characteristics of digital platforms. Additionally, Baker points out that, although antitrust applies to buying power, present enforcement standards and norms neglect problems with buying power, thereby resulting in anticompetitive effects in upstream markets, including labor markets. Baker does not spell out what standards could or should replace the existing ones, and for good reasons, I believe. Informed reforms must begin with a consensus about the problems that should be addressed. The Antitrust Paradigm offers an excellent overview of present problems. The "antitrust paradigm" is Baker's normative prescription for U.S. competition law: a national


In the wake of rising gonorrhea cases amidst high background chlamydia rates among AI/AN populations, 1,2 multiple Indian Health Service (IHS) Areas have been faced with the need to expand sexually transmitted disease (STD) services to accommodate increased demand and disease burden. 3–6 National recommendations include chlamydia screening of young sexually active women ages 25 and under, and some service Areas have expanded this screening recommendation to include men, broader age groups, and additional infections, depending on local morbidity. 7–10 Screening for gonorrhea among women tends to follow that of chlamydia as the widely used Nucleic Acid Amplification test (NAAT) for chlamydia is automatically paired with a gonorrhea test. However, within IHS Areas that do not have screening recommendations for asymptomatic men, diagnosis following symptomatic presentation or referral as a partner to a female case remain the predominant gonorrhea and chlamydia identification measures among males.


The contemporary Odontology cannot be restricted to just identify cavities, but must be interested in an early diagnosis of caries lesions. Varied and modern methods of caries detection are being developed, aiming to turn the diagnosis of dental caries more accurate. The conventional methods are most used for detection, however, the association of methods offer better results to the clinician. The purpose of this paper was to do a literature review and to compare the methods of caries detection, based on radiographic methods, laser fluorescence and electric chain.


In this paper, we analyzed the pulse responses for both periodically perfect conductors and reflected plate in the dispersion media, and investigated an influence of depth of dispersion media or width of periodic perfect conductor.


T HE PURPOSE OF THIS PAPER is to review signi.fi-cant research that has not previously been digested in recent English-language texts. and bibliogra.phiess.a.4. In general, only findings published during 1963, 1964. and 1965 are considered. The reviewers' principal sources were the major world journals in wood science and technology, Forestry ./Jbslr«ls, and penonal communication with researchers known to be active. Only papers of research nature were reviewed. The reviewers recognize and regret that limits of time and linguistic ability have probably resulted in omissions and misinterpretations. After some debate, it was decided to proceed by abstracting individual papers and arranging the abstracts under subject-matter categories. This procedure gives the reader more information about individual studies than would be possible in a narrative account and hence should aid him in identifying contributions of special interest. The subject-matter heads are listed in the box on this page. While any general appraisal must reflect individual biases, their survey left the authors with some strong impressions. For one thing, the total research effort seems to be accelerating, with increased. numbers of workers active. The-198 references attest the fact. For another, a substantial amount of recent research is being put into application. Thus the work of Plough (1962), McKenzie and Franz (1964), and St. Laurent (1965) on the principle of inclined cutting has seen application in 1966 through the development and installation of an oscillating-knife-veneer lathe by a major forest products manufacturer in the United States. Abrasive belt machining, while meagerly reported in English-language archival journals, has made striking progress in recent years, with applications primarily in the particleboard and plywood industries. Some trials on solid wood have been reported by Ward (1965). This year will see accderating use of chipping headrigs in the United States. The benefits inherent in two industrial designs of peripheral-milling headrigs are discussed by Pease (undated-19M?) and Dobie and McBride (1964), while a modified end-milling configuration is described by Wretne (1965). Koch (1964) continued his 1955 and 1956 work on chip formation during rotary cutting by exploring three configurations of chipping headrigs (cover photo). Of these three, '9nly the shaping lathe configuration has not yet been applied to industrial headrig designs. Further, research is extending into areas that have been largely overlooked. The paper by Ward-. rop and Addo-Ashong (1965) on anatomy in relation to me(:hanical failure was particularly illuminating. Knowledge of the disk defibration process has been furthered in …


Software support for disaster management requires approaches for flexible and generic processes. The "ministory approach" provides those properties and is therefore an appropriate concept to address the challenges of disaster management. This paper focuses on the implementation of the mini story approach in the context of disaster management. It presents the concept, design and the mapping strategy as well as implementation details of the Dynamic Disaster Management System Component. This includes details on required design decisions and selection of appropriate technologies. The resulting Dynamic Disaster Management System Component is able to provide the required flexibility for task handling and the management processes in case of disaster.


This work aimed to study the effect of adding skim milk powder (SMP) and whey protein concentrate (WPC) to probiotic mozzarella cheese. Pasteurized cow milk was heated to 55 °C and divided into five parts: PMC1 (control), PMC2 (1% SMP), PMC3 (1.5% SMP), PMC4 (1% WPC), and PMC5 (1.5% WPC). After mixing powders in the respective concentrations in the treatments, the milk was cooled to 35 °C, and Bifidobacterium bifidum culture (5%) was added. Proximate analysis, calcium, soluble nitrogen (SN), total Bifidobacterium bifidum count, cheese yield, hardness, and meltability tests were carried out at 0, 14, and 28 days of storage. The mozzarella cheese samples with WPC added had higher acidity, total solids, and protein content than the mozzarella cheese samples with SMP added and the control samples during storage. The addition of WPC led to a significant increase (p < 0.05) in the count of Bifidobacterium bifidum during storage at 5 °C. The cheeses with WPC added had increased meltability, higher hardness, and higher browning on pizza compared to those of the mozzarella cheese with SMP added. A sensory evaluation showed that the addition of WPC increased sensory scores, compared to the addition of SMP. As storage time progressed, there was a significant (p < 0.05) increase in the Bifidobacterium bifidum, meltability, and sensory scores of PMC in all treatments.


Late blight, caused by the oomycete Phytophthora infestans, is one of the most important diseases affecting tomato and potato production worldwide. In Thailand, the disease is widespread in the north and northeast, especially in the Chiang-Mai and Tak provinces. The mating type, metalaxyl sensitivity, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplotype, RG57 fingerprinting, and microsatellite were used to characterize the P. infestans populations. The study revealed that the P. infestans of tomato isolates in Thailand are of the same lineage as those from 1994 until 2002. The clonal lineages that were found in the potato populations have changed since 1994. The changes in P. infestans isolates in the potato populations have likely been the result of the import of seed potatoes to Thailand. Furthermore, the P. infestans populations in potatoes show resistance to metalaxyl, whereas those from tomato isolates show sensitivity to fungicides. The reasons for the different responses can be attributed to (i) the use of metalaxyl, (ii) the host preferences of P. infestans, and (iii) the migration of new genotypes from infected potato seeds.


We analyze heat transfer characteristics of steady electroosmotic flows with an arbitrary pressure gradient in two-dimensional straight microchannels considering the effects of Joule heating in electroosmotic pumping. Both the temperature distribution and local Nusselt number are mathematically derived in this study. The thermal analysis takes into consideration of the interaction among advective, diffusive, and Joule heating terms to obtain the thermally developing behavior. Unlike macro-scale pipes, axial conduction in micro-scale cannot be negligible, and the governing energy equation is not separable. Thus, a method that considers an extended Graetz problem is introduced. Analytical results show that the Nusselt number of pure electrooosmotic flow is higher than that of plane Poiseulle flow. Moreover, when the electroosmotic flow and pressure driven flow coexist, it is found that adverse pressure gradient to the electroosmotic flow makes the thermal entrance length smaller and the heat transfer ability stronger than pure electroosmotic flow case.


This article explores the tension between decisional arbitrational principles and the arbitrator's basic sense of fairness, specifically, the possible conflict between the jurisdiction construction principle, requiring the arbitrator to look to the contract and not to exceed nor to contradict its language when rendering an award, and Arbitrator Daugherty's Test 7 for just cause, requiring that the appropriateness of discipline be determined in light of mitigating or extenuating circumstances—that is, be judged against the backdrop of the seriousness of the infraction and the quality of the employee's service record. It details how some arbitrators have resolved such conflicts and provides some guidance to practitioners confronted by the very sensitive issue of fairness versus strict constructionism.


The variety of positive laws governing the age limit for marriage is of particular concern to family law scholars. Harmonization of law can be done when looking at how the actual social character of the community in relation to the issues raised, namely finding the minimum age limit for marriage. The sociological-anthropological approach of law is used in this harmonization of law because the two blades actually use descriptive optics in viewing a problem. It is worth paying attention when determining the age limit must refer to several factors which are not only legal factors but also other factors and in order to provide legal certainty, justice and legal benefits, there must be an adjustment to the age limit, especially for children, for other laws and regulations.


Action recognition is a key algorithmic part of emerging on-the-edge smart video surveillance and security systems. Skeleton-based action recognition is an attractive approach which, instead of using RGB pixel data, relies on human pose information to classify appropriate actions. However, existing algorithms often assume ideal conditions that are not representative of real-world limitations, such as noisy input, latency requirements, and edge resource constraints. To address the limitations of existing approaches, this paper presents Real-World Graph Convolution Networks (RW-GCNs), an architecture-level solution for meeting the domain constraints of Real World Skeleton-based Action Recognition. Inspired by the presence of feedback connections in the human visual cortex, RW-GCNs leverage attentive feedback augmentation on existing near state-of-the-art (SotA) Spatial-Temporal Graph Convolution Net-works (ST-GCNs). The ST-GCNs' design choices are derived from information theory-centric principles to address both the spatial and temporal noise typically encountered in end-to-end real-time and on-the-edge smart video systems. Our results demonstrate RW-GCNs' ability to serve these applications by achieving a new SotA accuracy on the NTU-RGB-D-120 dataset at 94.1%, and achieving 32× less latency than baseline ST-GCN applications while still achieving 90.4% accuracy on the Northwestern UCLA dataset in the presence of spatial keypoint noise. RW-GCNs further show system scalability by running on the 10× cost effective NVIDIA Jetson Nano (as opposed to NVIDIA Xavier NX), while still main-taining a respectful range of throughput (15.6 to 5.5 Actions per Second) on the resource constrained device. The code is available here: https://github.com/TeCSAR-UNCC/RW-GCN.


The conventional literature on the military generally believes that military, non-competitive regimes have a tendency to spend more for national-security purposes and less on welfare provision. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate why do Argentina and Brazil, military non-competitive regimes, have tendencies similar to those of Western democracies where the state's economic expansion extends beyond that required by strictly economic considerations? In contrast to the rational-comprehensive or 'technocratic' model which is often assumed to predominate in bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes an analysis of social and economic policies in Brazil and Argentina highlights the essentially political nature of the policy process in non-democratic regimes.


Since there are few reviews in the U.S. of books on competition law in the European Community, I thought that short reviews of several of the outstanding works in the field might be helpful. This is not a comprehensive list, and some excellent and helpful works are excluded. 1 I have selected mainly practitioners' books, but also a students' book that explains the basic ideas underlying the subject in a jurisdiction where competitors are still protected and it is dangerous to rely too heavily on the concepts widely accepted in the U.S. I have also included books dealing specifically with mergers and procedure. I have tried to indicate shortly the reasons for using each work.


The reasons for urea crystallization in the SCR urea pyrolysis system are analyzed, and system design, flow field control, equipment selection, process water and compressed air quality requirements and other aspects are optimized and selected, in order to improve the urea crystallization of pyrolysis furnace Phenomenon to effectively prevent and provide targeted countermeasures. In the process of pyrolysis of urea to produce ammonia, a slight deviation will easily form crystals. In severe cases, pipeline blockage and insufficient ammonia supply in the system will occur. However, based on the feedback of multiple application projects in the past ten years, there has not been a situation that has affected the operation of the pyrolysis system due to serious urea crystallization, and as long as the system design, flow field control, equipment selection, process water and compression Optimization and selection of air quality requirements and other aspects can effectively prevent and control the phenomenon of urea crystallization. The urea pyrolysis ammonia production system is a safe and effective source of ammonia, which can ensure the long-term safe and stable operation of the SCR system, so it will be more and more widely used.


A general approach toward the synthesis of all four monomeric building blocks of the ribonucleoside amino acids 3'-amino-5'-carboxymethyl-3',5'-dideoxy nucleosides in their protected forms is described that will facilitate the development of amide-linked RNA mimics.


Rough Set explore knowledge and simplify knowledge through attribute simple and decision rule simple.But it is one NP-hardness for attribute simple, one that is to attribute invite simple and decision rule invite simple to can only realize through the heuristic algorithm.The method of measuring of the attribute importance is provided at first, then the simplifying of condition attribute is explained, three optimal problems of the minimal algorithms of a decision table are investigated, and this algorithm through a instance has been proved.


During a routine mitral valve repair with coronary revascularization in a 65-year-old man, venous return was suddenly interrupted. The venous cannula was rapidly removed, revealing a large thrombus obstructing its lumen. Prompt recognition of the problem and replacement of the venous cannula resulted in uneventful recovery of the patient.


SINCE many will find the investigative approach of our group somewhat unusual, I shall first attempt to elucidate the factors necessitating the procedure which we have followed. At the time we started our study on plasma volume expansion, certain unquestionable facts had been established. The first was that shock was frequently associated with decreased plasma volume and the second was that any substance which would expand and maintain plasma volume would often bring about relief of shock. The third established fact was the practical consideration that most of the substance used previously resulted in storage of the material in the body or in functional impairment of one or more organs. To reach a solution in this problem it was necessary to find a substance which was capable of remaining in the blood stream, maintaining the vascular volume, and eventually being excreted or metabolized. Glycogen appeared to answer our demands, and


ABSTRACT Priscilla Ann Schaffer died from complications of Parkinson's Disease on 18 November 2009. Priscilla was a colleague and a friend, as well as being a stellar member of the virology community. She was a longtime Journal of Virology reviewer, a member of the editorial board, and a frequent contributor. Her energy and enthusiasm for virology, her students, her colleagues, and life in general were exceptional. She will be missed. Her colleague Donald Coen has prepared a memorial celebrating her life and accomplishments. Lynn W. Enquist Editor in Chief, Journal of Virology


DNA Methylation is a process by which cell assure the regulation of gene expression. Improved methods of detecting methylated sites are needed, instead of experimental methods which are very expensive and time consuming. In this paper, metaheuristic techniques namely; Genetic Algorithm, Artificial Immune System, and Hybrid Immune Genetic Algorithm are implemented to solve the problem of feature selection and select the susceptible CpG sites from dataset. Reducing the dimensionality of the dataset by applying previous algorithms resulting the following sets. After running the three algorithms many numbers of iterations, the average number of CpG sites determined by each algorithm is found to be less than 10% of the original dataset size. A new signature set was created by gathering all the common CpG sites from the three generated sets. Its size is equal to 0.1% of the original dataset size. Then it is used to generate the proteins regulatory network.


Due to the limitation of topographic conditions and the need of function, the buried depth and span of underground engineering often vary greatly, so it is of great significance to study the influence of the ratio between depth and span on the stability of surrounding rock of tunnel. This paper deduced a formula of surrounding rock pressure by combining with Terzaghi theory and studied the law of surrounding rock pressure changing with ratio between depth and span systematically. The results show that: 1Under the condition of grade IV surrounding rock, the surrounding rock pressure of rectangular cavern increases with the increase of ratio between depth and span. When the ratio between depth and span reaches 2, the surrounding rock pressure gradually tends to be stable. 2 When the ratio between depth and span is less than 2, rectangular cavern is prone to failure through to the surface in the limit state. When the ratio between depth and span is greater than 2, the pressure arch effect appears above the cavern vault. Therefore, the ratio between depth and span equaling to 2 can be used as a reference standard to divide the depth of rectangular cavern.


This research analyzed the effect Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) have on the levels of exports, imports, and trade balance of six Western Balkan countries (Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, and Serbia). The impact of FDI was measured using panel data for 2000–2018 for the analyzed countries, estimated using a fixed effects specification. We found that an increase in FDI as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had a positive and significant effect on the level of exports and imports expressed as a percentage of GDP, although the effect on imports was greater. Furthermore, when we assessed the impact of FDI on the trade balance of the analyzed countries, we found that FDI had a significant negative effect on the level of the trade balance expressed as a percentage of GDP. These results can be attributed, among other reasons, to the fact that FDI causes an increase in aggregate demand in the short run, which, in developing and middle-income countries, cannot be covered by the domestic market; thus, the demand for imports increases more rapidly than the capacity to increase exports.


The Internet is an electronic, global, and interactive medium, and each of these properties has consequences for the kind of language found there. The most fundamental influence arises out of the electronic character of the channel. Most obviously, a user's communicative options are constrained by the nature of the hardware needed in order to gain Internet access. Thus, a set of characters on a keyboard determines productive linguistic capacity (the type of information that can be sent); and the size and configuration of the screen determines receptive linguistic capacity (the type of information that can be seen). Both sender and receiver are additionally constrained linguistically by the properties of the Internet software and hardware linking them. There are, accordingly, certain traditional linguistic activities that this medium can facilitate very well, and others that it cannot handle at all. There are also certain linguistic activities which an electronic medium allows that no other medium can achieve. How do users respond to these new pressures, and compensate linguistically? It is important to know what the various limitations and facilitations are. A well-established axiom of communication states that users should know the strengths as well as the restrictions of their chosen medium, in relation to the uses they subject it to and the purposes they have in mind. People have strong expectations of the Internet, and established users evidently have strong feelings about how it should be used to achieve its purposes. However, it is not a straightforward relationship.


A method is disclosed for generating 2D reconstruction images in the scope of image post-processing from a 3D image data set of a study object recorded particularly by use of a magnetic resonance device. In the method, the position of the 2D reconstruction layers in which the 2D reconstruction images lie is defined with the aid of layer position information which defines the position of individual 2D recording layers in which 2D layer images are recorded after recording the 3D image data set of the study object, or have already been recorded, and which is optionally stored in an operating mode for automatic layer position adaptation, or with the aid of layer position information defining 2D reconstruction layers which is stored in an operating mode for automatic layer position adaptation.


A new method for the determination of oleanolic acid(OA) and ursolic acid(UA) in Ligustrum lucidum Ait using accelerated solvent extraction(ASE) combined with capillary zone electrophoresis(CZE) has been developed.The effects of important operational parameters,such as extraction temperature,time,pressure and cycle,on the performance of ASE were investigated and optimized.Extraction temperature and cycle times influenced the extraction efficiency considerably,and no obvious effect of extraction time on efficiency was observed.Interestingly,the results showed extraction pressure played an important role in the reproducibility of the extraction process.The optimum extraction conditions included an extraction pressure of 6.9 MPa,an extraction temperature of 100℃ and a static extraction time of 5 min with 2 cycles.The parameters influencing the separation efficiency of capillary electrophoresis were observed,and the optimum buffer system was 40 mmol/L borax,1 mmol/L beta cyclodextrin,pH 9.5 and 6% methanol.The good linearity was obtained for oleanolic acid and ursolic acid in the range of 10~200 mg/L and 10~160 mg/L,respectively,with the correlation coefficient over 0.996.The limits of detection ranged from 3.2 mg/L to 3.0 mg/L,and the recoveries from 93 to 97%.The contents of OA and UA in L.lucidum extracted by ASE were compared with that from Soxhlet and sonication extraction.


In his previous work, the author proved that the canonical decompositions of hyperbolic fibered two-bridge link complements are layered. This implies that they admit taut structures. In this paper, we completely determine, for each hyperbolic fibered two-bridge link, whether the canonical decomposition of its complement is veering with respect to the taut structure.


Abstract Congeneric species are critical for understanding the underlying ecological mechanisms of biodiversity maintenance. Ecological mechanisms such as conspecific negative density dependence, species differences in life‐history stages related to habitat preference, and limiting similarity are known to influence plant fitness, thereby influencing species coexistence and biodiversity. However, our understanding of these phenomena as they apply to coexistence among coniferous species is limited. We studied two congeneric Pinus species, Pinus armandii (PA) and Pinus tabulaeformis (PT), both of which are common pioneer species typically succeeded by oaks (Quercus), in a 25‐ha warm temperate deciduous broad‐leaved forest. Here, we addressed the following questions: (1) How do population structures and distributions patterns of these two Pinus species vary with respect to different life‐history stages? (2) Does intra‐ and interspecific competition vary with respect to three life‐history stages? And (3) What are the relative contributions of topographic and soil variables to the spatial distributions of the species across the three life‐history stages? In addressing these questions, we utilized the pair‐correlation function g(r), redundancy analysis (RDA), variance partitioning (VP), and hierarchical partitioning (HP) to identify habitat preferences and conspecific negative density dependence at different life‐history stages from small to large trees. The results revealed that in both Pinus species, individuals in different life‐history stages were subject to significant habitat heterogeneity, with a tendency for small trees to be distributed at higher latitudes that may be represents climate‐change‐driven migration in both species. In addition, the effects of conspecific negative density dependence on PT were stronger than those on PA due to limited dispersal in PT. Furthermore, we found that interspecific competition was weak due to the species differences in resource utilization and preference for key habitats. Our study shows that congeneric Pinus species avoids competition by exploiting distinct habitats and provides insight into forest community structure.


Liberalisation has been a focus of developing countries' policies; Malaysia adopted trade reforms since mid-1960s, and financial liberalisation was initiated during the late 1970s. This paper investigates the impact of economic liberalisation (financial and trade liberalisation) on Malaysian economy, over the study period of 1970 to 2016. This paper also aims to assess income convergence club between Malaysia and other ASEAN counterparts. The liberalisation analysis uses the bound testing approach of cointegration by Pesaran et al. (2001) while the Phillips and Sul (2007) methodology was employed to analyse convergence. The findings suggest that economic liberalisation play a significant role in promoting economic growth, while the application of Philips and Sul method shows that Malaysia converges with other ASEAN countries with regards to income convergence. Additionally, the convergence findings further support the notion that economic liberalisation promotes economy growth.


THE formal opening of the spacious new home of the Barrow-Agee Laboratories, Inc., at 121 to 125 South Front St., Memphis, Tenn., which was held June 2, marked the twentysecond anniversary of service to industry. Several hundred visitors inspected this efficiently planned laboratory covering 12,000 feet of floor space. G. Worthen Agee and E. R. Barrow on May 1. 1917, organized the firm. From a small laboratory in the Falls Building, Memphis, they moved to larger quarters in 1924, where they remained until their move into the new home. During this time, branch laboratories were established in Shreveport and Opelousas, La., Jackson, Miss., Greenville, Miss., and Cairo, III. Cottonseed and its products were the firm's primary interest, but in 1926 they opened an engineering department. The main laboratory, occupying the second floor and the basement of the three-story building, is divided into two sections—cottonseed and its products and allied materials, and materials used in construction ...


Objective To study the dynamic of resistance in commensal rodents and it's management strategy in Zhanjiang,Guangdong province. Methods Based on the resistance monitoring data and density of commensal rodent ( Rattus flavipectus and Rattus norvegicus ) to reveal the variation law. Results The resistant population of R.flavipectus was fundamentally evoluted after anticoagulants used for 17 years, the resistance individual rate was 17.7% ( 10.6% 33.3% ), which was significant differences ( P 0.05 ) between different areas or different rodents in the same area. Conclusion R.flavipectus has fundamentally developed resistant to anticoagulants in Zhanjiang, it was suggested that we must pay more attention to rat resistance monitoring, according to this resistance dynamic and development of the resistance, integrated preventive management against rats including reasonable drug used should be applied.


A method for enhancing of nuclear structures (1, 13, 26) on both sides outer layers (11, 24, 31), characterized in that the core structure (1, 13, 26) from a continuous channels (4) forming Faltwabenstruktur, and that before the application of the outer layers (11, 24, 31) for forming at least one local reinforcing zone (7, 21, 29) at least one mold body (5,6) in a top (3) and at least one mold body (5,6) in the opposite bottom (2) is introduced the Faltwabenstruktur and connected thereto, said mold body (5,6) each having a shape adapted to the shape of the Faltwabenstruktur form.


In Nietzschean thought there is a permanent tension between culture and life; both move, many times, in contradictory directions. According to Nietzsche, culture always wins, because it has the Apollonian dimension on its part, that is, that defined, clear, refined way in which it is expressed, understands and transmits what is narrated. The beautiful form is just a way of appearing from the deeply transcendental; it is the tip of a gigantic iceberg called life. Nietzsche is a vitalist thinker, committed to human expression, consisting of wanting, for love of oneself, the same thing that life wants, that is, directing its actions toward the suspension of judgments about the most convenient, most appropriate, politically correct, forms of cutural life. Childhood has an abundance of life pushing to get out--it is the Dionysian latency that does not want to succumb to the Apollonian commitment; it is life without a name, the force that devastates the encystment of form. It is life and childhood in tension, a childhood we think we know and at the same time a childhood that will never match those names we give it. Frequently the impulse for capture and closure mobilizes our adult interest, we approach childhood by naming and assigning roles, we are shaping the account we give of it. The impulse is converted into a pulse, a cadence, a recording, a ticking; Cronos appears, being acquires a permanent form, becoming gradually fades away.


Superscalar out-of-order cores deliver high performance at the cost of increased complexity and power budget. In-order cores, in contrast, are less complex and have a smaller power budget, but offer low performance. A processor architecture should ideally provide high performance in a power- and cost-efficient manner. Recently proposed slice-out-of-order (sOoO) cores identify backward slices of memory operations which they execute out-of-order with respect to the rest of the dynamic instruction stream for increased instruction-level and memory-hierarchy parallelism. Unfortunately, constructing backward slices is imprecise and hardware-inefficient, leaving performance on the table. In this article, we propose Forward Slice Core (FSC), a novel core microarchitecture that builds on a stall-on-use in-order core and extracts more instruction-level and memory-hierarchy parallelism than slice-out-of-order cores. FSC does so by identifying and steering forward slices (rather than backward slices) to dedicated in-order FIFO queues. Moreover, FSC puts load-consumers that depend on L1 D-cache misses on the side to enable younger independent load-consumers to execute faster. Finally, FSC eliminates the need for dynamic memory disambiguation by replicating store-address instructions across queues. Considering 3-wide pipeline configurations, we find that FSC improves performance by 27.1%, 21.1%, and 14.6% on average compared to Freeway, the state-of-the-art sOoO core, across SPEC CPU2017, GAP, and DaCapo, respectively, while at the same time incurring reduced hardware complexity. Compared to an OoO core, FSC reduces power consumption by 61.3% and chip area by 47%, providing a microarchitecture with high performance at low complexity.


Drawing on a range of literary and cultural sources, the author explores the fact that very few debate poems written between 1200 and 1450 reach any conclusion. He suggests that an aesthetics of irresolution may have governed the creation and reception of a broad array of medieval literature.


It has been reported that delinquents of superior intelligence differ from those of average and below average intelligence in their psychological, social, criminal and educational characteristics (Burt, 1944; Simmons, 1956 and 1962; Caplan and Powell, 1964; Cowie et al., 1968). Simmons has suggested that bright delinquents are more likely to be emotionally disturbed. He describes the boys at an Approved School for highly intelligent boys as suffering generally from 'deep emotional disturbance', and maintains that 'the emotional disturbances which turn an intelligent child into a delinquent have usually been far more severe than they would have been in a less intelligent, less sensitive one'.


AbstractRecovery from adverse noncancer health effects may occur in some circumstances after cessation of exposure or after adaptation to continuing low-dose exposure. In this overview, factors that influence the reversibility of toxic effects of environmental chemicals are presented, using examples derived from toxicity to the reproductive system. Aspects that must be considered include exposure scenario, stage of the life cycle at which exposure occurs, and the nature of the toxicity. Selected categories of reproductive effects are considered briefly with respect to potential for recovery. Finally, the incorporation of reversibility into risk assessments is discussed


We report the application of nanoparticle incandescence induced by low-power, near infrared focused laser beams to microfabrication. Microstructures have been successfully etched and sintered in polymeric matrices in which microclusters of different nanomaterials were incorporated.


This study was done to determine whether the use of reference values obtained in children with idiopathic short stature (ISS) improved the clinical value of serum insulin‐like growth factor I (IGF‐1) as a tool for diagnosing GH deficiency (GHD) in prepubertal children.


A novel raw starch digesting glucoamylase from Rhizopus microsporus var.chinensis was purified by sequential ammonium sulfate precipitation,aqueous two-phase systems (ATPS),DEAE-650M chromatography and Bio-Rad Prep Cell.The protein performed a ralative molecular mass of 52×103 estimated by SDS-PAGE.The purified glucoamylase behaved the maximum activity at pH 4.5 and was stable between pH 3.5 to 6.5.Furthermore,the enzyme exhibited the maximum activity at 75 ℃.The amino acid sequences of three peptides from the purified enzyme were analyzed by LTQ (Liquid chromatographyion trap mass spectrometry),and those peptides compared with that of reported glucoamylase amino acid sequence in NCBI was similar in some extent.


) regulate the induction of long-term synaptic plasticity (Mulkey and Malenka, 1992; Artola andSinger, 1993), a modification of synaptic strength thought to bethe basis for learning and memory in the brain (Bliss and Col-lingridge, 1993; Malenka and Nicoll, 1999; Bliss et al., 2003). Atglutamatergic synapses, [Ca


FIELD: polymer production. SUBSTANCE: invention relates to ionomer mixture, in particular to low-hardness partially cross-linked thermo-softening and elastomer polyolefin mixtures. Mixture comprises C2-C10-olefin polymers with grafted monomers containing at least one carboxylic group or carboxyl-derivative group and I and II-group metal ions. C2-C10-olefin polymers are polyolefin mixtures including 100 wt parts of heterophase polyolefin composition containing crystalline polypropylene and elastomer fraction of ethylene/propylene copolymer with ethylene content 40 wt % and 0-250 wt parts of elastomer polymer. Mixture may further contain reinforcing fillers, pigments, dyes, antioxidants, stabilizers, blowing agents, and other ingredients. EFFECT: reduced hardness while preserving satisfactory properties and middle and high temperatures and improved elastomer and touch characteristics. 5 cl, 9 tbl, 22 ex


Within COMRISK subproject SP7, a risk assessment of the coastal defence system in Ribe/ Denmark has been performed based on the state-of-the-art of flood risk analysis methods. The flood risk has been defined as the product of the flooding probability and the expected consequences of flooding. This paper describes the detailed hazard analysis by which the overall flooding probability of the Ribe defence system has been achieved. Results of sensitivity analyses regarding the assessment of uncertainties for input parameters and models used, the consideration of other special constructions such as one sluice and three outlets as well as an approach of dividing the defence system into 'homogenous' sections with respect to governing load and resistance parameters are also described. Furthermore, the paper provides information about the vulnerability analysis, which has been performed to evaluate the consequences in case of flooding. Relevant damage categories, comprising vulnerable assets or non-material values, have been selected and valued together with the derivation of depth-damage functions for each damage category. Seven breach and inundation scenarios have been defined to assess the range of expected damage due to flooding in the flood prone area. Finally, risk values have been assessed.


Cold metal transfer (CMT)-based wire and arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) of Ti-6Al-4V alloy has been investigated to manufacture walls with two different building strategies. This study focuses on the influence of the application of thermal treatments on the resulting microstructure and mechanical properties. Deep microstructural analysis revealed different grades of growth of lamellae α phase after several thermal treatments at different temperatures, which lead to different tensile mechanical properties and better strength and ductility balance compared to the as-built condition. Results are compared with equivalent forged and casting standards and the state of the art for WAAM of Ti-6Al-4V alloy. At temperatures of 920 °C, anisotropy was maintained and elongation increased by 70% while yield strength and UTS was slightly decreased by 8%.


The transportation community is changing. Basic tenets of highway programs that have been around since the beginning of motorized transportation are no longer reliable. The funding bedrock of highway construction and maintenance -- taxes on petroleum-based fuels -- already has proven inadequate in the face of factors such as improved engine efficiencies, decreased travel brought on by the economic downturn, and a hesitance by leaders to increase the per-gallon tax rate or endorse other broad-based revenue enhancement alternatives. And an even greater technological challenge to that funding approach is looming: increased use of transit and electric cars. This article presents the perspective of several leaders in the transportation community on how to address this "new normal" and meet the unprecedented challenges of change. The importance of developing sustainable solutions, engaging the public's attention on transportation issues, identifying performance measures, intraorganizational communication and innovative organizational change are highlighted.


This study explored the relationship between peer support, strategies used to cope with interpersonal stressors, and social skills among 4th and 5th graders. Instruments were the Social Support Appraisal Scale, the Self-Report Coping Scale, and the Teenage Inventory of Social Skills. Results showed that children used different coping strategies by the level of peer support. Children with more peer support were more active in seeking social support and in solving peer conflict. Children with more problems in peer relationships used more avoidance strategies such as internalization and externalization. Children with a high level of social skills were more likely to use approach strategies in peer conflict while children with a low level of social skills were more likely to employ avoidance strategies. Internalization was the most important strategy in explaining inappropriate peer relationships. For girls, social skill was the most essential variable in their peer relationships.


This article searches through the sense of administrative practice and holds that it is objective. A philosophy of praxis was held here to be the main assumption of management research. The discussion is based on the characterization of the research matter. In the place of the natural sciences subject matter, inanimate and independent from men' will, comes in the management practice with an objective meaning in the organizational context. This objective meaning is the result of the logic of the administrator's objective situation. Which means, of course, the organization's purposes, structured net of social relations and system of management and organizational practices. And this turns the management practice axiology into something real and linked to its efficiency and effectiveness. And so management practice becomes a factor for the regulation and controlled change of organizations. To look scientifically at a practice is to create the conditions under which it will change through a description, explanation and prescription dialectics.


By combination of centrifugal partition chromatography (CPC) and common separation methods, twelve known bases were isolated and characterized from the first chemical investigation of Neolitsea konishii (H.) K. & S. They belong to isoquinoline alkaloids of four types: eight aporphines, nornuciferine (1), N-methyllaurotetanine (2), laurolitsine (3), boldine (4), laurotetanine (5), isoboldine (6), actinodaphine (7) and corytuberine (8); two proaporphines, stepharine (9) and glaziovine (10); one benzylisoquinoline, reticuline (11); and one morphinan, pallidine (12). Among these, compounds 3, 6 and 11 are abundant and will be modified for pharmacological tests. The content of various alkaloids in the plant is useful as a basis for chemotaxonomy.


Objective The study is to analyze the occurrence features of adverse event following immunization(AEFI) in Futian district of Shenzhen.Methods The AEFI data of 2009-2010 were collected through the China Information System for Disease Control and Prevention.The descriptive methodology was used in the study.Results 394 AEFI cases of 2009-2010 were reported.65.74% cases were ≤2 years old.The ratio of male and female was 1.28∶1.79.44% cases happened within ld after vaccination.In the classification of AEFI cases,59.14% cases were common vaccine reactions,14.65% were rare vaccine reactions and 18.27% cases were coincidental event.The first three clinical manifestations were fever,redness and nodule(57.11%),allergic eruption(19.54%)and aseptic obscess(5.08%).394 AEFI cases were all with good prognosis,with no sequelae and died.The first three vaccines were measles attenuated live vaccine(17.51%),DTwP(15.99%),InfV-Sp(14.47%).The estimate reported incidence of different vaccines were 28.53~1 495.00 per million doses.Conclusion Sensitivity and quality of AEFI monitor in Futian district were improved greatly in 2009-2010,and all the monitoring indicators had reach the standard,but the estimate reported incidence of vaccines was still lower than WHO′s expected incidence,so the work still needs to be strengthened.


Objective:To investigate the influences of treatment with captopril combined with cordyceps preparation (CP) on microalbuminuria (MA) of early diabetic nephropathy (DN) in Ⅱ type diabetes. Methods: 38 patients with Ⅱ type diabetes were randomly divided into two groups,captopril combined with CP group (A group, n =18) and captopril alone group (B group, n =20).Before and after therapy the rates of urinary microalbumin excretion (UAE) of 24 hours and creatinine clearance were detected.Results:In A group the total effective rate (94 4%) for decreasing UAE was significantly superior to that (65 0%) in B group ( P 0 05),meanwhile the CCr in A group was significantly lower than that in B group ( P 0 01).Conclusions:The treatment with captopril combined with CP for early DN is able to decrease the MA and to delay the progression.Its curative effect is obvious.


According to the design philosophy of interorganaziong workflow,after supply chain business was analyzed,a scheme of supply chain workflow model is proposed by message sequence charts ad Petri nets.In this scheme,integrated and optimized business process system was constructed in supply chain to ensure full cooperation among business partners and their autonomy and improve the competition of all supply chains.An example is also given to analyze this model.


This paper attempts to establish the importance of Civic Education as a veritable instrument for promoting sustainable development in the Nigerian Society. The paper examined civic education and sustainable development, relationship between them and proffers solution on the use of Civic Education Curriculum for knowledge acquisition, skill development and value cultivation as irreducible elements for promoting and achieving sustainable development in the Nigerian Society.  Civic Education is, therefore, seen as an effective instrument for sustainable development through the production of responsible citizens who will maximally contribute to building a useful society. The paper points to the fact that going by the interconnections between Civic Education and sustainable development, Civic Education remains a necessary condition for sustainable development in Nigeria. It, therefore, recommends balanced teaching of Civic Education to reflect the Cognitive ( Knowledge ) Psychomotor ( Skill ) and Affective ( Value ) element of functional rational Citizenship capacity building for societal development.
 The need to emphasize the use of Value education techniques as basic requirement for addressing the deficiency of the existing teaching methods in the school system which are predominantly teacher centered content transmission driven.
Keywords: Civic Education, Instrument, For Achieving, Sustainable Development.


It is now a standard practice to compute the carbon profiles in the surface layer of workpieces with the aid of so-called diffusion computers and to control the furnace atmospheres based on the computed data. The add-on module hardness profile, too, is an indispensable aid for the majority of users. In practice, however, it can be found in some cases, that the computed profile does not correspond correctly to that actually achieved on the workpieces. This is caused by the fact, that the quality of the computed data in best cases achieve only that of the entered and measured data. This paper shows the influencing parameters and explains the anticipated deviations for assumed errors.


In September 2011 the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) sought from the United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state consisting of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem; areas which have been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six Day War. In the preceding months campaigning gained momentum, speculation increased as to the outcome and hopes of an end to occupation and a solution to the conflict as a whole were raised. However, while it is easy to get carried away with the symbolism of a Palestinian state being recognised by one of the world's most respected bodies, there are a number of considerations which must be kept in mind. At best this bid for full United Nations membership is a symbolic step in the right direction towards conflict resolution. However, irrespective of whether it is successful, it will not provide an instantaneous end to occupation nor will it put an immediate end to the grave violations of international law by Israel which persist. Even Chief Palestinian negotiator, Dr Saeb Erekat, has cautioned that "it is just the beginning of a long way towards Palestinian statehood… it does not aim at delegitimising any state, but to delegitimise and isolate the Israeli occupation." This paper explores in detail the potential successes and shortfalls of the statehood bid.


This paper presents the development of the US political realism from the period between the two World Wars to the Cold War era included. It underlines how the US realist international theory developed, in opposition to the liberal thought, from the pessimistic anthropological premises rooted in the European classical political thought. Then the paper analyzes the theoretical impact of the nuclear threat on the US realist reflection about human nature in order to inquire tentative developments of this tradition of thought.


Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to clarify agricultural services into five categories, including agricultural materials supply service, financial service, technical service, machinery service and processing and sales service, and to examine the effect of agricultural services on cost saving of rice production in China.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on a three-year panel data set covering 3,421 rice farmers in 12 Chinese provinces collected from the state rice industry experiment stations' fixed watch points of China Agriculture Research System, a stochastic frontier model which takes the price vectors of input variables into cost function is developed by stochastic frontier analysis method in the study.

Findings

There is a deviation between the actual cost and the minimum cost on rice production in China due to the loss of cost efficiency, whose score is 0.7983 at the mean. Agricultural services can help improve cost efficiency, thus contributing to cost saving. Specifically, the effect of technical service on cost saving is the highest, followed by processing and sales service, machinery service, financial service and agricultural materials supply service.

Originality/value

The results of this paper are of great significance to the effectiveness and efficiency of the targeted agricultural services and indicate implications for policy improvement under the context of clear upward trend of agricultural production costs.


A triterpene saponin was extracted from the barks of Pseudorix kaempferi for the first time,and determined to be dammar-24(25)-ene-3β,6α,12β,20(S)-tetraol-20-O-β-D-pyranoglucoside on the basis of NMR analysis.The chemical shifts of this compound were completely assigned using 2D NMR spectroscopy.


AlGaN/GaN high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) have been extensively applied for high power applications at high frequencies. To further improve the device performance, field plates and passivation layers are commonly integrated with the device technology. This paper is to investigate the effects of surface passivation thickness on the electrical performance of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs with slant field plates fabricated using deep-UV technology. As a benchmark, the device without nitride passivation exhibited a peak transconductance of 214 mS/mm and a breakdown voltage of 122 V with an output power of 5.0 W/mm at 8 GHz. For the passivated devices, it is observed that the existence of the silicon nitride passivation layer helps to improve the DC characteristics of the devices in terms of the lower drain current collapse, higher maximum DC transconductance, and higher maximum drain current. RF wise, the devices with passivation suffer from lower fT and fMAX due to the increase in the gate capacitances. However, an improvement of RF output power was observed for devices with passivation layer thickness up to 300 nm.


Current and voltage harmonic levels in LV grids depend not only on the harmonic emission of non-linear loads, but also on the characteristics of the grid and the voltage distortion of the upstream grid. Based on several measurements, it was found that Colombia and Germany have considerable differences in the current harmonic emission of electronic devices and voltage distortion in the LV-grids. These differences are the result of different regulation methodologies and the characteristics of the grid. Detail measurement campaigns are needed in both countries in order to verify the voltage and current harmonic levels, and to analyze the network efficiency and hosting capacity in terms of harmonics.


From the design stage of a specific structural project, achieving a high level of safety is desired for structures, necessary to withstand dynamic actions that could have destructive effects on the resistant structure. In order to obtain the optimum level of safety against dynamic actions different types of isolation systems are placed into the structural system. The most commonly isolation method used is the base isolation method through which a disconnection between foundation and superstructure can be achieved. The isolation method presented uses special mechanical systems which are able to consume an amount from dynamic actions energy through their action. This study presents a base isolation method for building structures along with an overview of the different system solutions used to achieve the desired objective: ensuring a high level of safety for a bridge or viaduct structural type during a seismic event.


We experienced two cases of myocarditis diagnosed by endomyocardial biopsy, a 58-year-old man admitted because of palpitation, shortness of breath, cough and shock, and a 41-year-old woman with fever, cough and anterior chest pain. They had symptoms simulating common cold and cardiac symptoms, and were complicated with congestive heart failure. Moreover, abnormal ECG findings, cardiac enlargement on chest x-ray, reduced left ventricular function on UCG, elevated serum enzymes and inflammatory changes were observed in both patients. The diagnosis of myocarditis was established by endomyocardial biopsy.


The objective of this study was to assess safety of misoprostol in women with prior caesarean section undergoing a mid-trimester pregnancy termination by labour induction. All the terminations performed between 14 and 24 weeks of gestation were induced by using 400μg of intravaginal misoprostol. The same dose of intravaginal misoprostol was repeated every 6 hours for a maximum of five doses. Main outcome measures were severe haemorrhage requiring blood transfusion, post-abortal infection, retained placenta and uterine rupture. We found that misoprostol is a safe drug for induction of labour in women with prior caesarean section undergoing a mid-trimester pregnancy termination.


Traditional inorganic semiconductors are the foundation of modern electronics. These materials are widely used in computing and optical devices (such as lasers, LEDs, cameras, etc.), but they are limited in functionality by their particular set of material properties. In particular, traditional crystalline inorganic semiconductors are not well suited for large area or flexible electronics applications. This limitation has driven the development of a new generation of thinfilm semiconductor materials. Thin-film semiconductor materials are ideal for solar energy conversion because they have the potential for cost effective large area fabrication. Promising next generation photovoltaic devices have been demonstrated using organic photovoltaics (OPVs) and dyesensitized solar cells (DSSCs). OPVs are a promising technology because they are inexpensive, strong absorbers. However, it is challenging to produce efficient OPVs due to the excitonic nature and poor charge transport characteristic of these materials. DSSCs are hybrid devices that combine the strong absorption of organic semiconductors with the good charge transport of inorganic metal-oxide semiconductors. Devices based on thin-film, low mobility, excitonic materials are governed by fundamentally different physical processes than traditional inorganic devices. In this thesis, we develop physical models to analyze the performance of devices based on organic/organic and hybrid organic/inorganic heterojunctions (HJs). These models are based on interface dynamics at


has amassed and recorded an extraordinary collection of facts, impressions, and data related to the Guadalcanal Campaign. Jersey uses the information he has collected to describe the campaign through the impressions of individual participants from both sides as recorded in their contemporary written records or as recalled many years later. The result is an intensely personal view of the campaign as experienced by its participants. Starting with the initial Spanish contact with the Solomon Islands in 1568, Jersey describes the European economic activities and colonial administration, setting the stage for the initial Japanese reconnaissance in 1941. He describes the Australian colonial administrative structure and provides the names of the officers and resident missionaries. As he introduces each participant, Jersey gives the reader some background information, a short bio, unit origin, and recent history. Every person and unit Jersey could identify as having been engaged in the Guadalcanal Campaign is included in the narrative. The level of detail is overwhelming. Jersey names not only the major military units but each and apparently every component, regular and ad hoc. He includes names of commanding officers, staff officers, and subordinate officers, down to the squad and individual weapon team level. Excerpts from letters, diaries, official after-action battle reports, messages, and postwar interviews provide a description of the battles as each participant experienced them. From initial contact through every engagement, Jersey alternates Japanese soldiers' descriptions of the campaign with those of the American Marines and sailors. Each description includes a relatively short period of time so that the combat is described, battle by battle, from several perspectives—first Japanese, then American. Interspersed with personal observations are statistical data, geographical and topographic locations, and technical descriptions of equipment. The cumulative effect of this technique is that the reader develops a sense of the campaign as experienced by the individual combatants. Hell's Islands focuses on the land battles on Guadalcanal, although some references are made to the campaign's naval and air aspects. The alternating individual views of combat engagements and conditions make it difficult for the reader to integrate and develop a macro sense of the campaign and its progress. The lack of maps renders much of the detailed tactical descriptions confusing at best and often incomprehensible. Compounding the problem is Jersey's inconsistent use of Japanese and American designations for the same topographical features, names of rivers, and compass directions. The narrative is so compelling that the reader feels a need to understand the situation on the ground, but without a map locating the positions described in the narrative, some readers will be frustrated. There are also some inconsistencies of nomenclature and military jargon. Richard B. Frank's Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle (1990, Random House) is a much more comprehensive and understandable description of the campaign for those who want to understand the why, where, and how of it. Hell's Islands is a treasure trove of individual Guadalcanal combat experiences and is a good source for those who want to know the who and the what of it.


Ablation damage to solid targets with high heat flux impulses is generally greater high-energy electron beam heat sources compared to low-energy plasma guns. This sensitivity to incoming particle kinetic energy is explored with computer modelling; a fast-running routine (DESIRE) is developed for initial scoping analysis and is found to be in reasonable agreement with several experiments on graphite and tungsten targets. If tokamak disruptions are characterized by particle energies less than {approximately}1 keV, then we expect plasma guns are a better analogue than electron beams for simulating disruption behavior and testing candidate plasma-facing materials.


This study investigated an apparent dilemma suggested by previous research on faculty orientations toward students and academic standards. Some research suggests that encouraging faculty to be student-centered is an effective way to increase student learning and development, while other research indicates that being student-centered leads to lenient grading and lower academic standards. Information was obtained from 134 institutions based on a longitudinal data set from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, providing a nationally representative cohort of college freshmen who completed questionnaires upon entry in 1985 and agai:1 4 years later in 1989. Faculty data were obtained from a Higher Education Research Institute survey of teaching practices. Student-centered evaluation methods were considered to be student presentations, student evaluations of each others' work, and weekly essay assignments. Using a series of multiple regression analyses predicting undergraduate grades, it was found that student evaluation practices and the ways in which faculty viewed their orientations toward students were not significantly related to institutional average grades. Faculty views of student-centeredness were also unrelated to institutional grades. (Contains 40 references.) (SW) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** Does being student-centered lead to lower academic standards? Faculty orientations and undergraduate grading practices Eric L. Dey, Sylvia Hurtado, Gloria Thomas Walker, and Mark A. Byrd Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education University of Michigan A paper presented at the forum of the Association for Institutional Research Boston, Massachusetts Address information: Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education 2117 School of Education Building University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1259


ABSTRACT Specific demographic changes that occurred in the New York City metropolitan area during the 1980s are described, and the challenges and opportunities facing the city in the 1990s are explored. The 1980s saw the greatest increase in the diversity of the city in its history, but sharp inequality, running along racial and ethnic lines, persists in spite of increasing diversity. This inequality has resulted in a polarization by race, and to some extent, ethnicity, that can be seen in the high occurrence of residential segregation. The persistence of residential segregation and the rise of the underclass have severe intergenerational consequences. These two phenomena conspire to perpetuate educational segregation. Many city communities are permeated by the underclass, and are poorest in resources and quality. Coupling increased educational requirements of the economy with the deteriorating educational achidvement of the poorest city residents has worsened the income of racial and ethnic minorities. The challenge of the 1990s is to correct this spiral and lessen educational and economic gaps. By focusing directly on raising educational levels, while removing the bias in employment, the economic situation of disadvantaged ethnic and racial minorities can be directly improved. (Contains 14 tables and 53 references.) (SLD)


Background: Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is the most widely used and researched recent variant of cognitive behavioral therapy and has been shown to increase quality of life in people with chronic illnesses, including multiple sclerosis (MS). However, few MS health practitioners are trained in ACT. This study evaluated a 2-day ACT training workshop for Italian psychologists working with people with MS.


In the design of a manufacturing system, the design specification is often suggested by a design team. Managers are interested in verifying that this specification will satisfy the production requirements. Because the future production environment will likely differ from the one assumed, it is important to determine in which situations the suggested design becomes unacceptable. This paper suggests an approach that allows determining which uncertain parameters are important and which combinations of these parameters can lead to an unacceptable design. This approach combines several methods, namely, simulation, bootstrapping, and metamodeling. The methodology is explained and illustrated through a stochastic simulated manufacturing system, which includes uncertain parameters related to the arrival and the processing times of jobs. This example shows the conditions under which the system does not meet the requirements.


Investigated directly proportional dependence of the energy end mass of a physical object on the strength of the vortex gravitation, which created the object.


OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to evaluate how ambient light and interactive adjustment of density and contrast affect the detection of catheter fragments when interpreting bedside chest radiographs on soft-copy displays.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
A total of 131 catheter fragments were superimposed over 10 bedside chest radiographs obtained with storage phosphor technology. Images were displayed on a clinical intensive care unit viewing station (color cathode-ray tube monitor, 21 inch [53 cm], 1280 x 1024 matrix) and were independently evaluated by five radiologists. The number of catheter fragments per image varied between 12 and 14, with an approximately equal distribution in high- and low-absorption areas. Detectability of catheter fragments was assessed under subdued and bright ambient light conditions with and without interactive adjustment of window width and level.

RESULTS
Under subdued light, the detection rate of catheter fragments was significantly higher than under bright light (51.8% vs 56.6%, p < 0.05). Interactive window setting adjustment significantly increased the detection rate from 52.5% to 60.8% (p < 0.05) under subdued light and from 47.9% to 55.6% (p < 0.05) under bright light. With adjustment of window settings, the difference between the detection rates under subdued light (60.8%) and under bright light (55.6%) did not reach statistical significance.

CONCLUSION
Detection of catheters on soft-copy display is significantly decreased by bright ambient light, an effect that can be largely compensated for by means of interactive adjustment of window settings.


A SURVEY AND ANALYSIS OF MARITAL AND RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES AMONG FIRST-GENERATION CHINESE SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS IN NORTH AMERICA by John Kam-Hong Lee Adviser: Peter Swanson ABSTRACT OF GRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCHOF GRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH


Organizations large and small continuously strive to improve strategic decision-making. Strategic decision-making (distinguished from operational decision making) involves making substantial investments of resources over long periods of time before results are evident. These decisions are made using quantitative and qualitative information - experience, intuition, and subjective assessment. These are people decisions, not decisions made by machines.So, how can data interfaces be designed to support these most critical decisions of the organization?This case study looks at approaches taken with one R&D (research and development) client to address their key strategic decisions: whether to move research efforts into the next stage of development or cancel the project. We will discuss how we've used web-based interface technologies to create visual metaphors for data including: visualizing time, collaborating, and modeling scenarios. We'll also demonstrate approaches to embedding more abstract constructs like decision theory, statistical analysis, and competitive advantage into these interfaces.


Malicious encrypted traffic poses a great threat to cyber space owing to its ability to bypass traditional traffic detection schemes. Malicious encrypted traffic detection is a challenging task and has attracted researchers' attention nowadays. Specifically, the detection task is subject to difficult feature mining and unsatisfactory results. Therefore, a mining policy based detection scheme is proposed, which mines more efficient features based on a rule based mining strategy and achieves well learning effect with machine learning algorithm-LightGBM. In this scheme, raw traffic is parsed to log files with Bro and features are extracted based on connection-tetrad. Accordingly, the rule-based feature mining strategy is proposed based on several rules. Then features are fed to LightGBM to train a detection model. A set of experiments show that the feature mining strategy is effective and our work improves malicious encrypted traffic detection effect.


Thin films of Copper sulphide were deposited on gla ss substrates using chemical bath deposition techni que at room temperature from the aqueous solution containing different concentra tion of copper sulphate between 0.05M and 0.15M. Th e effects of the copper concentration of the chemical bath on structural an d optical properties of the amorphous thin film wer e investigated and discussed. The optical absorption and transmission of the thin films were observed between of 330-1100nm taken at room temperature. The optical band gaps of the as-synthesized copper sulp hide thin film for various concentrations were meas ured. The surface morphology has been observed using scanning electron microscop y (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The resu lts obtained from AFM demonstrated that the reflectivity was closely rela ted to the surface roughness of the film. High surf ace roughness has a strong scattering effect on light and lowers the reflectiv ity. X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns show that cry stallinities of the films are dependent on the copper concentration in the soluti on.


Summary (1) A saline extract of the liver of fetal guinea pig possesses greater hemolytic activity than a similarly prepared extract of maternal liver, as determined after 4 hours incubation at 38°C. (2) The activity, for the most part, is due to a heat-sensitive agent and, to a lesser extent, to a heat-resistant substance. (3) The lytic action of such extracts is not species-specific. It will lyse red cells from the same fetus, as well as those from the mother or from another species.


The use of growth hormone and estrogen has a long and often controversial history in the manipulation of growth. Pharmacologic interventions to increase growth in short children are increasingly common. We believe that the usefulness of growth-promoting treatments depends on well-designed studies that assess both the effect on height and the functional benefit of height gained. In this issue of the Journal, Ross et al. report the results of a unique, placebo-controlled trial of growth hormone treatment, with or without early low-dose ethinyl estradiol, on adult height in Turner's syndrome, which is characterized by short stature and hypogonadism.1 This randomized . . .


a simple box rnocle.l has been developed in order to determine pollutant concenh?tions in excess in street canyon" lt is based. on the balance between emission and exihange at roof level. The turbulences produced by the haffic.and the wind speed at roof leveli are taken, into account. Several data sets [ave been used to detennine sorne model parameters and to evaluate t]re nrcrdeli performances. Comparison with pedestrian meastued values is shown and discussed' T.INTRODUCTION Pollutant col.rc.entrations obsen'ed at kerbside into under-ventilated streets may be several time higher that the vatrue observed at roof level, which represents the urban background pollu.tion concentration. To calculate the pollutant in excess, several microscale clispeision models have been developed with different levels of complexity: empirical or statistic.al, box" Caussian, CFir lsee Vardoulakis S. et al 2003). At low wind s.peeds, the ventilation of tbe street clecrieases, and the pollutant accumulation is stronger. The street ventilation tends to be controlled by the verticaX turbu1ent diffusion and by the mixlng; at roof level. Under such cifcumstances and for regulatory purposes, the utilisation of a box modil is a gsod cornpromise between more sophisticated street canyon rnodels (as OSPM, ADMS, M1MO.-") and empirical or statistical approaches. More, the box rnodel is based on the idea of a well mtlxed volume, so it is easy to take into account other pollutant transformation processes_as chemistry or'particle agglomeration. So the ainr of this work is to develop a simple box model in order to calculate the pollutant in excess inside street canyons. With this model, the mixing at roof level is supposed to be driven by a characteristic time t which is a ftrnction of the traffic Nv and the wind speed Uwind at roof level' Two research projects have been realized on street pollution modelisation, TRAPOS dealing with hrrbulence and pollgrion inducirlby traffic (TRAPOS, 2001) and Street Emission Ceiling (SEC) which has analysed the potrlutant in ixcess in several European cities (Moussiopoulos, 2004,2005). They provided time series ofobservations that are useful for model vatidation. In the present work, some TRAPOS NOx data have used to determine the fimction r = fl.N*un", U,;n6)"-A,fterward the box rnodel has been applied to calculate the Nf)x concentrations inside three other rir""ir'of d*op*n cities, the same which have been already analysed duri,ng the SEC project. Comparison wilh pedestrian meazured values is shown and discussed. 2. MODEL DDSCRIPTION At moderate and high wind speed, the pollutant …


Abstract Background BEACON-Neuroblastoma is a randomized phase II trial to assess the activity of backbone chemotherapy regimens for children with RR-HRNB and to determine if inhibiting angiogenesis with bevacizumab adds to the activity of this chemotherapy. Methods Patients aged 1-21 years with RR-HRNB with adequate organ function and performance status were randomized in a factorial design to: temozolomide (T) versus irinotecan-temozolomide (IT) or topotecan-temozolomide (TTo), with or without bevacizumab (Bev). The Bev randomization (Bev versus no-Bev) had two parts: Part 1 had a 2-stage Minimax Jung design with overall response (OR) as primary endpoint. Part 1 success criterion was ≥4 more responses in Bev arm compared to no-Bev. Protocol was amended to incorporate Part 2 (40 additional patients), including progression-free survival (PFS) as co-primary endpoint. OR was defined as complete or partial response (CR, PR) by RECIST (INRC for patients without measurable disease). OR and toxicity data for the Bev randomization is reported. Results For Part 1 (n = 106), 17 of 52 pts on Bev had responses [33%] and 8 of 54 pts on no-Bev had responses [15%]. The trial success criterion for the primary endpoint of ORR was met. Including Part 2 (total n = 154), 21 of 77 patients on Bev (7CR, 14PR) and 13 of 77 patients on no-Bev (1CR, 12PR) had responses. Response data was not available for 6 patients; 13 patients not assessable for response (discontinued before first assessment) were considered to be non-responders. OR rate [with 90% CI] was 27% [18-35%] for patients on Bev and 17% [10-24%] for patients on no-Bev. In subgroup analysis, there was no interaction between T, IT and TTo and treatment with/without Bev (heterogeneity test, p = 0.8). 86% Bev and 58% no-Bev patients had grade ≥3 toxicities as per CTCAE v4.0; the most common grade ≥3 toxicities associated with Bev were platelet count decrease and anemia. Conclusions Bev reached the Phase II success criterion for OR within Part 1 of the trial when added to temozolomide-based chemotherapy in RR-HRNB. The toxicity profile for Bev is acceptable. Longer follow-up is needed before assessing whether it impacts PFS or overall survival. Clinical trial identification NCT02308527; EudraCT: 2012-000072-42. Legal entity responsible for the study University of Birmingham. Funding Roche. Disclosure L. Moreno: Honoraria (self), Travel / Accommodation / Expenses: Celgene; Honoraria (self), Advisory / Consultancy: Novartis; Advisory / Consultancy: AstraZeneca; Advisory / Consultancy: Roche; Advisory / Consultancy: Bayer; Advisory / Consultancy, Travel / Accommodation / Expenses: Amgen; Advisory / Consultancy, Travel / Accommodation / Expenses: Mundipharma; Licensing / Royalties, I am member of Siopen Executive Committee, Siopen receives royalties for the sales of dinutuximab beta: Eusa Pharma. D. Valteau-Couanet: Advisory / Consultancy, Travel / Accommodation / Expenses, Licensing / Royalties, Member of Siopen Executive Committee, SIOPEN receives royalties for the sales of dinutuximab beta: Eusa Pharma; Research grant / Funding (institution): Ophelia; Travel / Accommodation / Expenses: Jazz Pharma. K. Nysom: Advisory / Consultancy: Bayer. N. Gerber: Research grant / Funding (institution): AbbVie; Research grant / Funding (institution): Loxo; Research grant / Funding (institution): Novartis. R. Ladenstein: Honoraria (self), Advisory / Consultancy, Speaker Bureau / Expert testimony, Research grant / Funding (institution), Travel / Accommodation / Expenses, Licensing / Royalties, Royalties to the institution for dinutuximab beta: Apeiron; Honoraria (self), Advisory / Consultancy, Speaker Bureau / Expert testimony, Research grant / Funding (institution), Travel / Accommodation / Expenses, Licensing / Royalties, Royalties to the institution for dinutuximab beta: Eusa Pharma; Honoraria (self), Advisory / Consultancy: Boehringer Ingelheim. A.D. Pearson: Honoraria (self), Advisory / Consultancy: Boehringer Ingelheim; Honoraria (self), Advisory / Consultancy: Genentech. All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.


The primary focus of this study was to determine the effect of portfolio assessment on final examination scores of EFL students' writing skill. To determine the impact of portfolio-based writing assessment 40 university students who enrolled in composition course were initially selected and divided randomly into two experimental and control groups. A quasi-experimental research design was adopted in this study. In order to appraise the homogeneity of the experimental and control groups Comprehensive English Language Test (CELT) was employed at the beginning of the study. The pre-test was applied to both the experimental group and control group. Later in the study, a post-test of dependent variables was implemented for both groups. Data analysis was carried out by SPSS 16 statistical computer program .The statistical techniques being applied were the Levene statistic of One-Way ANOVA and the Paired-sample T-test. The results of the study revealed that that students whose work was evaluated by a portfolio system (portfolio-based assessment) had improved in their writing  and gained higher scores in final examination when compared to those students whose work was evaluated by the more traditional evaluation system (non-portfolio-based assessment).The findings of the present study highlighted the fact that portfolio assessment could be used as a complementary alternative along with traditional assessment to shed new light  on the process of writing.


Western thought has long assumed the need for procedural fairness when a person is under threat from official action. In the common law, the decision-making body (whether a formal court or merely an arm of the executive) is required, first, to give notice of the allegation and allow the affected party to put on evidence and submissions in rebuttal (audi alteram partem) and, second, to conduct itself fairly—that is, without bias. The following article addresses the history and present condition of the first of these arms, viewed at critical points in development.


Reinforcement learning has great potential to solve robotic controlling tasks for different environments. Proximal policy optimization (PPO) is one of the most efficient algorithms of reinforcement learning, which implements three neural net-works during the training and inference. However, the practical applications of reinforcement learning algorithms in robots are limited by the computational complexity of the neural networks. An accelerator for PPO is proposed based on high level synthesis (HLS) in this work, which accelerates both training and inference. The proposed accelerator design is implemented on Ultra96-v2 FPGA board with Pynq system and is suitable for different robotic applications. The proposed accelerator design on programmable logic (PL) achieves 16.8x improvement in the training process and 12.4x in the inference compared to processing system (PS). Meanwhile, the proposed accelerator runs at a similar speed with PC while achieving a 93.3% power reduction.


This book presents both an overview and representative applications of a theoretical framework that has attracted increasing interest in recent years. The framework, whose name serves as title of the book, distinguishes itself from most other approaches to syntax in two respects. First, unlike familiar versions of both transformational grammar (TG) and relational grammar, it is "monostratal", allowing only one level of syntactic representation and hence not employing transformations. Second, the theory is highly formalized, surpassing virtually all mainstream work in the precision and detail of its formal statements. Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar is organized into ten chapters. As a concession to readers who may not be accustomed to the sometimes difficult formalism that the authors employ, most chapters postpone the more demanding formalizations until the final section. Chapter 1 introduces the reader to some of the basic tenets of Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG): its monostratal character, the relationship between syntax and semantics (a version of the approach that posits a separate semantic rule to interpret the constituent formed by each syntactic rule), and the question of psychological reality (which is set aside as partly irrelevant and partly premature). The next four chapters of the book present the basic mechanisms and architecture of the theory. Chapter 2 outlines a theory of syntactic categories, which are taken to be sets of feature specifications. A 3rd person singular accusative NP, for instance, has the partial characterization in (1), with each feature (the symbol to the left of the comma in the angle bracket) taking as its value either an atomic symbol (such as -+-) or a category.


Cultivating talents with applied competence meeting the demand of regional economy has been considered the obligation of local university.Scientific practice teaching system has been a prerequisite and a powerful guarantee for an excellent class talents training.Construction of practice teaching system comprises optimizing the practice teaching system,perfecting practice teaching content,improving the practice teaching condition,exploiting the practice teaching resources,building teachers group construction.The appraising system is also necessary for the practice teaching system.


This work utilizes selected features of the discrete Fourier transform (DFT). The signal of the test is a pseudo-random sequence of ternary levels, which is an anti-symmetrical sequence. The three levels are mapped by an odd sinusoidal signal of proper period. The output of the system contains odd or even harmonics or both, depending on the system kernels. This feature of recognizing the response of the system in the frequency domain is utilized in the separation of these responses. The least mean square algorithm (LMS) is used in this work for estimating both the first and second kernels after some modification and the error functions are presented as a convergence surface.


BACKGROUND
Intraocular findings in sarcoidosis were described by US studies with 35 % anterior uveitis, 25 % posterior uveitis and 20 - 30 % for late complications in case of first presentation. We report on the spectrum and diagnostic possibilities in 38 German patients.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
38 patients (68 eyes) aged 11 - 58 years (average 42.7 y), who suffered of intraocular manifestations in histological confirmed systemic sarcoidosis (1987 - 1997), were completely evaluated retrospectively. For additional diagnostic tools fluorescein angiography, optical coherence tomography, nuclear magnetic resonance tomography and measurements of angiotensin-converting enzyme, lysozyme and calcium in serum were performed.

RESULTS
15 patients (22 eyes = 32.4 %) had anterior uveitis: granulomatous keratouveitis (10 eyes), granulomas of the iris (6), granulomas of the trabecular meshwork (3) and 22 patients (42 eyes = 61.8 %) an intermediate and posterior uveitis: granulomatous perivasculitis (18 eyes), cystoid maculopathy (8), pars planitis (6), neuroretinitis (4), optic neuritis (3), choroiditis (3). Late complications in case of first presentation were found in 22 patients (39 eyes = 57.4 %): posterior synechiae 14 x, secondary glaucoma 10 x, cataracta complicata 8 x, optic atrophy 6 x, intraocular calcification 1 x.

CONCLUSION
Compared to previous studies with heterogeneous ethnic composition, intraocular inflammations with confirmed sarcoidosis in German patients show more than 60 % involvement of the posterior segment. We may speculate on the reasons for these discrepancies as being due to ethnic reasons, age and long-term follow-up. In case of typical ocular signs of sarcoidosis, treatment should be started immediately even without histological confirmation. In some cases histological confirmation is successful 8 years after first presentation.


Many companies and brands have launched limited edition products that are limited in quantity or in sales time, and marketing campaigns with scarcity messages, emphasizing on scarcity. These strategies are intended to increase the perceived value of their offerings, which have resulted in a huge popularity among the consumers who want to feel distinguished from others through their buying experience. Evidence from previous research on the effect of scarcity has shown that scarcity increases the actual value of products. As human wants are unlimited while resources are virtually limited, people tend to value scare goods more than readily available ones (Lynn 1991). As designed for a limited quantity for a predefined time to maximize the effect of scarcity, limited edition products are the result of combining marketing strategy and consumers' desire to have a unique design that contributes to their distinctiveness from others (Balachander and Stock 2009). Limited edition, once signature for a luxury brand, is now frequently launched not only by SPA (Specialty store retailer of Private label Apparel; e.g. H&M, UNIQLO, TOPSHOP, 8ight Second) but also by others as its market size is growing in tandem with popularity and consumption in the retail market. As limited edition means a new product launch as a part of line extension while scarcity message is a persuasive marketing tool at the point of sales, research is needed on both of scarcity and limited edition. In particular, limited edition products recently launched by retailers assume similarity to the concept of existing brands from the perspective of line extension, and therefore their approach may be a marketing tactic to ensure higher odds of success in launching new products and to enhance brand images. In this regard, this study focuses on limited edition, predicting the impact of a new product launch as limited edition on consumer evaluation and interactions between different variables that can influence the effect of limited edition such as the concept of the mother brand itself, similarity of the concept between the mother brand and a limited edition product, scarcity heuristics related to limited editions. Previous research has shown that the more similarity a limited edition product shares with the mother brand, the more favorable consumers become toward the product (Boush and Loken 1991) and the more influence their * Ph.D. Candidate, Korea University ** Professor of Marketing, Korea University *** Professor of Marketing, Sungkyunkwan University


This paper investigates two different architectures of a 5 th order electro-mechanical sigma-delta modulator: a feed-forward (FF) architecture and a multiple-feedback (MF) architecture. And a comparison was performed in terms of stability and noise shaping ability, sensitivities to parameter variances due to fabrication tolerances and loop gain, and nonlinearity in feedback force. Both architectures were modeled in Simulink and investigated at system level. The results show that: a) both architectures are stable and achieve the similar noise floor level of -170dB within 250Hz in the ideal condition; b) both architectures have good ability in fabrication tolerance; c) the performance of the MF architecture will degrade heavily with the loop gain decreasing and become unstable if the loop gain beyond one optimal value, while the FF architecture is insensitive; d) the FF architecture controls the proof mass well and achieves better SNDR, whereas the MF has a 56dB degradation in consideration of nonlinearity in feedback force.