Previous studies on sheep have demonstrated effects of maternal nutrition on fetal development with effects being observed on reproductive function (Rae et al. 2002 Anim. Reprod. Sci. 72, 63–71), blood pressure (Gopalakrishnan et al. 2004 Am. J. Physiol. Regul. Integr. Comp. Physiol. 287, R12–R20), and behavior (Erhard et al. 2004 Behav. Brain Res. 151, 25–35) in the adult offspring. It is known that gene expression in developing oocytes and very early embryos is influenced by their environment and some of the effects of nutrition on reproductive and other systems are likely to be expressed through such early changes (Hyttel 2000 Anim. Reprod. Sci. 60–61, 49–60). Effects of nutrition on oocyte function (i.e. before ovulation and fertilization) and resultant embryo quality have been observed (Gonzalez-Bulnes et al. 2004 Reprod. Fertil. Dev. 16, 421–435), but effects on oocyte gene expression have not been investigated. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of premating nutrition on the expression of selected genes in sheep cumulus cells and oocytes. For this purpose, 16 cast age ewes of proven fertility were used. At the time of manipulation and study, all ewes had a condition score of approximately 2.5. During the 2 weeks before slaughter, ewes of one group were fed a ration providing 0.5-live weight (n = 10) maintenance requirements and the other group 1.5-live weight (n = 6) maintenence requirements. This treatment ensured that all animals had similar numbers of potentially ovulatory follicles but different patterns of ovarian follicle maturation and, accordingly, different numbers of follicles and oocytes undergoing the final stages of maturation. The ewes's reproductive cycles were synchronized using intravaginal pessaries inserted 2 weeks before slaughter. At slaughter, ovaries were recovered and oocytes and associated cumulus cells were aspirated from all follicles >2 mm in diameter. For each ovary, oocytes derived from follicles with a diameter 4 mm were pooled separately, and stored for further analysis. Associated cumulus masses were collected and stored singly for subsequent investigations. As expected from previous observations, the number of visible follicles, the ratio of small-to-large antral follicles, and the total numbers of oocytes per ewe were similar for control and underfed ewes. Furthermore, the expression levels of the markers for oocyte growth, GDF-9, BMP-15, and c-kit, were investigated. Data were analyzed by ANOVA followed by Duncan test. Results showed no major differences between groups, independent of follicle diameter. These data suggest that the nutritional status of donor ewes did not significantly affect the expression profiles of these genes. However, further analyses on a greater panel of genes is required to rule out premating nutrition effects on oocyte gene expression. Furthermore, effects on the cumulus cell gene expression profile remain to be investigated. This work was supported by the University of Milan, FIRST 2006; Scottish Executive Environment and Rural Affairs Department.


Carrying forward and developing the three generations of central collective leadership's fine traditions of valuing and being adept at study and good study style of combining theory with practice,the Political Bureau of the 16th Central Committee of CPC has a prominent feature of institutionalizing its group study.Forty-four times of group study were carried out around the central task of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.They played an important role in not only the formation but also the enrichment through continuous learning by doing of such key theoretical innovations as the scientific outlook on development.With the method to study from strategic,historical,and global perspectives,these arrangements of valuing and strengthening study play an important leading and exemplary role in building a learning party.


Porous Ce1 - xNdxO2 - y solid solutionswere synthesized bymicrowave2induced combustion p rocess using cerium nitrate hexahydrate, neodymium nitrate hexahydrate and urea as raw materials. The powderswere characterized by X2ray diffraction (XRD) , Laser Raman spectrum, FT2IR spectrum, field2emission scanning electron micrograph ( FE2SEM) , Nitrogen adsorp tion /desorp tion and so on. XRD analysis revealed that the grain size of Ce1 - xNdxO2 - y varied between 40 and 60 nm and all the samp les had the structure of fluorite. Raman result showed that oxygen vacancy had been p roduced in CeO2 crystal lattices and the concentration of oxygen vacancy increased with Nd3 + dop ing. The result of FT2IR exhibited that the absorp tion band of Ce-O bond rose around 1 400 cm- 1 and the IR absorp tion band of 2 346 cm- 1 disappeared because ofNd3 + dop ing.From SEM, Nitrogen adsorp tion /desorp tion, it was found that the porous appearance p resented and the pore size distribution range was in 2 to 10 nm.


This paper presents a computationally efficient model for a dc-dc boost converter, which is valid for continuous and discontinuous conduction modes; the model also incorporates significant non-idealities of the converter. Simulation of the dc-dc boost converter using an average model provides practically all the details, which are available from the simulation using the switching (instantaneous) model, except for the quantum of ripple in currents and voltages. A harmonic model of the converter can be used to evaluate the ripple quantities. This paper proposes a combined (average-cum-harmonic) model of the boost converter. The accuracy of the combined model is validated through extensive simulations and experiments. A quantitative comparison of the computation times of the average, combined and switching models are presented. The combined model is shown to be more computationally efficient than the switching model for simulation of transient and steady-state responses of the converter under various conditions.


The habit of land clearing by the community has always been the reason for the fires. In an effort to address such matter, the present study was carried out to examine how the habits of Malay society in Siak Regency prior to Indonesia's independence in 1945 in terms of land clearing. Conducted through empirical methods such as interviews with traditional leaders and perpetrators of land fires who were still alive at that time, the results obtained in this line of study showed that the process of land clearing and burning carried out by Malay society in Siak in the past did not damage nature. The ancient farmers burned the land without causing air pollution and without damaging the surroundings. The responsibility and respect of the landowner for his land by monitoring and limiting the fire on his land did not affect neighboring land. And hence, land clearing rules were not only in the form of customary norms but also followed by magical elements and therefore manmade fires can be controlled.


The Mediterranean food pattern (MFP) has been identified as promoting health and preventing certain chronic diseases. The objective of this study was to determine the adherence to MFP in a sample of students in the 3rd cycle of basic education of the Terceira Island and its relationship with sociodemographic factors and weight status. Data was collected between May and June 2015. A direct application questionnaire that included KIDMED was used to assess adherence to the MFP. A total of 303 students aged between 11 and 19 years old participated in this study, mostly female (57.8%). Most students (64.4%) showed an intermediate level of adherence to the MFP and the prevalence of overweight was 33%. Boys had a higher percentage of regular consumption of breakfast cereals and fatty fruits and daily consumption of two yogurts and/or 40 g of cheese. Students who had a vegetable garden and helped to tend it or who belonged to families with additional members under the age of 18 had greater adherence to MFP. No associations were found between other sociodemographic factors and adherence to MFP. Based on these results, it is suggested to reinforce existing food education programs in schools, as well as develop other programs with a multidisciplinary approach that promotes adherence to the MFP.


Temporary vascular clamping during local ablation for colorectal liver metastases increases destruction volumes. However, it also causes ischaemia–reperfusion (IR) injury to the liver parenchyma and accelerates the outgrowth of microscopic tumour deposits. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of selective portal clamping on hepatocellular damage and tumour growth.


This paper presents the evaluation of the economic and social effect from revised nuclear power plant (NPP) planning in Thailand according to the accident of NPP at Fukushima in Japan. From the latest of Thailand Power Development Plans, 5 NPPs with totally 5,000 MW will be installed in year 2020, 2021, 2024, 2025 and 2028, respectively. After the unfortunate disaster, the NPP planning is postponed to unexpected period due to the social and safety concerns. However, the NPP is still need to be reconsidering as soon as possible which depends on many factors such as the rapid growth of power demand and energy crisis. The simulation of three feasible scenarios will be presented to guide the appropriate planning of NPP in next PDP. In addition, the economic value, performance and environmental aspect will be discussed from utilities and customer point of view, especially the industrial customer. Finally, the worst case scenario of NPP in Thailand will be evaluated in term of economic loss, performance crisis, loss of power supply and environmental aspect comparing with the electricity generation from the fossil based power plants.


Many ultraviolet (UV) experiments are conducted without ensuring that fluence is measured accurately, which may significantly affect the interpretation of the findings. This is especially evident f...


Potential safety concerns may exist with high folate/folic acid exposures combined with low vitamin B12 (B12) status relative to cognitive function; therefore, we investigated this relationship, leveraging cognitive test performance with folate and B12 biomarker data among a nationally-representative survey of U.S. older adults.

 We analyzed data from 2420 older adults (≥60 y) from the 2011–2014 NHANES. High folate status was defined as unmetabolized serum folic acid (UMFA) > 1 nmol/L or serum folate > 74.1 nmol/L. Low B12 status was defined using age-specific cut-points for serum B12 [≤429 pmol/L (in 60–69 y) and ≤370 pmol/L (in ≥70 y)] or using a combination of traditional cut-points [elevated methylmalonic acid (>271 nmol/L) and deficient serum B12 (< 150 pmol/L)]. Multivariable logistic regression models estimated odds ratios (OR) of scoring low on one of four cognitive tests: Digit Symbol Substitution Test (DSST), Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease [CERAD; Word Learning (WL) and Delayed Recall (DR)], and Animal Fluency Test (AF).

 Among older adults with low B12 status, high UMFA was associated with a higher OR of having a low score on the DSST (<34, OR 2.16; 95% CI 1.05–4.47) and high serum folate was associated with a higher OR of having a low score on the AF (<14, OR 1.93; 95% CI 1.08–3.45), only when using traditional cut-points for B12. Among those with normal B12 status, having a high UMFA was protective on the CERAD-DR, regardless of B12 status being defined using age-specific or traditional cut-points. Compared to those with normal B12 (using traditional cut-points) and high UMFA, those with low B12 and high UMFA had a higher risk of scoring low on the DSST (<40, OR 2.22; 95% CI 1.31–3.75) and AF (<14, OR 1.97; 95% CI 1.30–2.97), those with low B12 and lower UMFA had a higher risk of scoring low on the DSST (<40, OR 1.69; 95% CI 1.16–2.47), and those with normal B12 and lower UMFA had a higher risk of scoring low on the CERAD-DR (<17, OR 1.38; 95% CI 1.02–1.85); similar patterns were found with serum folate.

 In older adults, high folate was associated with better cognitive performance when vitamin B12 status is normal, whereas high folate was associated with poorer cognitive performance when vitamin B12 status is low.

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This chapter describes how social media, if correctly used, can enhance cultural, political, economic and social engagement. They also represent key communication tools for administrators to highlight the principles of openness, transparency, and to promote civic engagement. Nowadays, local governments have launched social media strategies. After reviewing necessary categories such as E-Government and E-Democracy, this chapter explores in what ways the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can benefit governance, and foster transparency, participation. The chapter describes contemporary setbacks and challenges officials at the local level which have been encountered in the implementation and development of social media. Finally, it offers an empirical approach of the utilization of ICTs by the Office of the Mayor of New York City and, therefore, describes the portal NYC.gov.


Young, greenhouse-grown tomato plants were transferred to growth cabinets where they were maintained in normal air (0.03% CO2) or in air enriched to 0.1 or 0.5% CO2. CO2 enrichment increased net assimilation rate but decreased leaf area ratio. As a result, relative growth rate was greatest at 0.1% CO2 and was less in 0.5% CO2 than in 0.03% CO2. Gas exchange measurements were made on the third true leaf of plants from different CO2 regimes. They indicated that growth under conditions of CO2 enrichment affected photosynthesis at an early stage of leaf development (leaf plastochron index (PI) = 5) but not at a later stage (PI = 10.5). The effects were linked to changes in mesophyll resistance, not stomatal resistance. At PI = 5 and under equivalent test conditions of irradiance and CO2 concentration, net photosynthesis tended to be increased following growth in 0.1% CO2 but was decreased or unchanged by 0.5% CO2. Young leaves developed in 0.1% CO2 were less subject to photosynthetic inhibition by atmospheric...


Abstract Motivation We present a multi-sequence generalization of Variational Information Bottleneck and call the resulting model Attentive Variational Information Bottleneck (AVIB). Our AVIB model leverages multi-head self-attention to implicitly approximate a posterior distribution over latent encodings conditioned on multiple input sequences. We apply AVIB to a fundamental immuno-oncology problem: predicting the interactions between T-cell receptors (TCRs) and peptides. Results Experimental results on various datasets show that AVIB significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods for TCR–peptide interaction prediction. Additionally, we show that the latent posterior distribution learned by AVIB is particularly effective for the unsupervised detection of out-of-distribution amino acid sequences. Availability and implementation The code and the data used for this study are publicly available at: https://github.com/nec-research/vibtcr. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


Posterior reversible leukoencephalopathy syndrome (PRES) is a well-known cause of seizures in the postpartum period [1]. PRES is a neurological disorder characterized by a range of signs and symptoms, with distinctive neuroimaging findings reflecting vasogenic oedema [2]. We report a case of a woman in the postpartum period who presented with first episode of seizures. She had thrombocytopenia, as well, complicating the picture. Since there was a wide range of differential diagnoses, we describe here how we evaluated the patient carefully, excluding each differential, to come to the correct diagnosis.


Tuberculosis is the commonest infectious disease in the developing world. Many diagnostic tests are devised for its detection including direct smear examination. This study was designed to corelation b/w AFB positive and patients diagnosed to have granulomatous inammation on Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology using special stains. Materials and Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional survey was done on 100 cases of granulomatous inammation consistent with tuberculosis diagnosed on ne needle aspiration cytology at the Department of Pathology, JLNMC, Bhagalpur.After reporting granulomatous inammation on giemsa staining of aspirates from FNAC, unstained slides were subjected to special stains, like ZN. Cases positive for AFB on ZN stain were noted down along with their frequency and percentages. Results: Forty-four cases (62.85%) of AFB positive smears were reported as TB while 26(37.14%) cases were AFB positive were m.tuberculosis negative . Cervical lymph nodes were the most commonly involved site (60%) and males(60%) were affected more (40%) than females. Most cases of AFB-positive smears were associated with epitheloid granuloma wth caseation necrosis (60%)followed by only caseous necrosis(30%)andepitheloid granuloma(10%). Conclusion: Special stains should be done on all granulomatous inammation cases seen on FNAC for conrmation of TB


A simple and low cost method to fabricate gas ionization sensors with CNT/Ni field cathodes on corning glasses using composite plating technique was first developed. The field emission characteristics of the initial CNT/Ni field cathode showed a low turn-on electric field E<inf>on</inf> of about 1.2 V/µm with an emission current density of 1 µA/cm2.It was found that the breakdown voltage (V<inf>b</inf>) of the H<inf>2</inf> gas was decreased as the pressure increased from 0.5 to 100 Torr. However; on the contrary, the V<inf>b</inf> of the O<inf>2</inf> gas was increased as the pressure increased. It was observed from the Raman spectra that I<inf>D</inf>/I<inf>G</inf> increased for both of the H<inf>2</inf> and O<inf>2</inf> gases. The full width half maximum (FWHM) around 1580 cm−1 was also increased for both of the H<inf>2</inf> and O<inf>2</inf> gases. Moreover, a shoulder of 1620 cm−1 appeared after the H<inf>2</inf> and O<inf>2</inf> gases sensing measurements. This phenomenon, indicating the degradation of the graphitization, was more obvious for the O<inf>2</inf> gas sensing. The fabrication of the ionization sensors with CNT/Ni field cathode was relatively simple and inexpensive and could be mass-produced.


Summary: We report the EEG changes that occurred on discontinuance of phenytoin (PHT), carbamazepine (CBZ), and valproate (VPA) in patients with active epilepsy. Discontinuation of CBZ was associated with an increase in mean frequency of dominant rhythm and reduction in amount of slow activity. Patients who had a marked increase in seizures on discontinuation of an an‐tiepileptic drug had a slower mean dominant rhythm at baseline than did patients who did not have an increase in seizures. Subsequent EEGs, during and at the end of drug reduction, showed an increase in bursts of interictal epileptiform activity (IEA) and in slow activity in patients who had a marked increase in seizures. The amount of slow activity and IEA did not alter in patients who did not have an increase in seizures. No patient developed photosensitivity.


INTRODUCTION: Ovarian cancer is the most lethal cancer among women in the United States. However, there are significant racial disparities in the timely diagnosis and treatment of ovarian cancers. It remains unknown if race is an independent predictor of adverse outcomes following treatment of ovarian cancer. The aim of this study is to determine if race is an independent predictor of adverse outcomes following diagnosis of primary ovarian cancer. METHODS: We utilized the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) 18 Registry to extract all patients with a primary diagnosis of ovarian cancer from 1998 to 2016. Our primary outcomes of interest were differences in mortality and survival (in months) among African American and White women. Propensity score matching was used to match the groups according to age, treatment modalities (surgery/irradiation/chemotherapy), laterality, and stage of cancer at presentation. RESULTS: We compared 6,801 African American and 27,204 White patients with primary ovarian cancer. Prior to propensity score matching, African American women had a higher mortality rate (56.7% vs. 53.5%; P<.001) and a lower survival rate (40.1 vs. 48.9 months; P<.001). Following propensity score matching, there was no difference in the mortality rate between the two groups (56.7% vs. 55.7%; P=.13). However, African American patients had significantly lower survival rates (40.1 vs. 49.6 months; P<.001). CONCLUSION: Racial disparities in survival following treatment for ovarian cancer persist despite adjusting for age, stage of cancer, and treatment modalities. Further research is warranted to explore patient and systemic factors such as appropriate level of care and follow up after treatment that might account for these differences.


Abstract A premature female infant with intrauterine growth restriction, microcephaly, hepatosplenomegaly and cholestasis developed hyperthyroidism on the fifth day of life. The mother had also developed hyperthyroidism during pregnancy. Real-time polymerase chain reaction was positive for rubella virus in samples from both mother (blood) and neonate (blood, nasopharyngeal swabs, urine). Immunoglobulin M antibodies for rubella virus were not found while immunoglobulin G antibodies were detected in mother's and neonate's serum. This case suggests the potential for a causal link between rubella and hyperthyroidism.


Abstract The substance here is to workshop the current problems of physical education in higher learning institutions and construct a reform and innovation machinery of sports learning style in institutions of higher learning. This paper researches the teaching system of college sports learning style based on BP nervous enlist the services, proposes a majorization network foundation hereditary compute mode for the shortcoming that BP nervous enlist the services to be prone to land oneself in the optimal regional solution, and takes 10 influence element the results of academy sports learning style as the sample features of the data set, uses the optimized GA-BP nervous enlist the services for discipline and compares the test results with the practice price and the dispatch of other algorithms. The average error of the detection of GA-BP nervous enlist the services was 1.23, and the average error rate was 1.85%, which performed better compared with other neural networks. In terms of the poundage of the influencing factors in the export multiple, the diversity of curriculum, the advancement of teaching philosophy and the science of sports skill instruction have significant effects on the amount of sports learning style in institutions of higher learning, with the weights reaching 0.1212, 0.1387 and 0.1453, respectively. The reform and innovation of sports learning style in institutions of higher learning should develop diversified physical education courses according to students' constitution bases and sports levels and impart scientific methods of the constitution and sports values of enjoying sports.


Abstract : This study was concerned with the transient performance of servomechanisms. Only those systems with a steady-state-displacement error of zero when subjected to an input-step function were considered. Specific linear and nonlinear systems were optimized by minimizing the cost functional of the integral of time multiplied by the absolute value of the error and the integral of time multiplied by the absolute value of error plus a weighting factor times the control effort squared. Resultant pole locations were evaluated to determine the existence of progressive and useful patterns. Standard forms were derived for first-through seventh-order systems. Active networks were designed using these standard forms. Step responses were evaluated in terms of the components of the cost functionals. Nonlinear and linear optimizations were compared to determine if one was superior to the other. Performance indices were compared to determine if advantages existed for the inclusion of a control cost. Conclusions drawn by previously published material were investigated for validity.


Background: The prevalence of respiratory disorders in children has steadily increased over the past decades to such an extent that asthma is now the most common chronic disease of childhood. Childhood asthma resembles a complex syndrome rather than a single disease, and includes many wheeze phenotypes, making its diagnosis challenging. Most likely, it is not a single risk factor that determines whether a child develops asthma, but several risk factors (e.g. environmental, immunological, genetic, onset of respiratory symptoms) that each make small contributions to the development of the disease. Already infancy, lung function tests are available to assess airway disease. These tests are predominantly used in patients with Cystic Fibrosis (CF), for whom preservation of normal lung function is crucial. Despite recent advances in lung function testing, several methodological issues remain unanswered. Higher quality tests are required in order to effectively study the various risk factors involved in the development of complex airway diseases
Aim: The first aim was to describe methodological issues during infant lung function testing in order to improve their quality. The second aim was to study different risk factors for asthma development, and to investigate their association with respiratory diseases during childhood.
Methods: The study was conducted within the prospective Basel-Bern infant lung development (BILD) cohort, a population-based cohort of unselected infants of Central-European origin. The survey collects prenatal data via standardized interviews and cord blood samples for the assessment of immunological and genetic information. During the first year of life, research nurses call the parents weekly to assess the occurrence of respiratory symptoms. Pulmonary function tests, as well as measurement of fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) to assess airway inflammation, are completed at 5 weeks of age, and again at 6 years of age during follow-up.
Results: We provided specific recommendations on how to improve outcomes from infant lung measurements. Furthermore, we measured airway obstruction using the interrupter technique (Rint) in unsedated infants shortly after birth, and were able to show that measurements were feasible but had a high variability. We compared Rint between term and preterm infants, and found that Rint was higher, and variability of Rint lower, in term-born infants. We assessed FeNO in healthy newborn infants, and in infants with CF. FeNO at birth had no predictive value for asthma development at school age. In CF patients, FeNO at birth was lower compared to matched healthy controls.
We could also show that polymorphisms in the chitinase 3-like 1 (CHI3L1) gene encoding YKl-40 were associated with asthma at 6 years. There was some indication that increased YKL-40 levels at birth may also be involved in the development of airway disease. We also developed a novel method to characterize the time series of prospectively assessed respiratory symptom scores during infancy. This method assesses symptom dynamics in an observer-independent manner. Using this method, we were able to identify a high-risk phenotype, which was predominantly male, and contained more infants exposed to maternal asthma, and environmental tobacco smoke. This phenotype was also at increased risk for asthma and atopy at school age.
Conclusions: Infant lung function is useful to study airway disease at an early age, and outcomes can be improved by applying minimal changes in analyses algorithms. Assessment of airway obstruction in infants is feasible, but measurements require careful interpretation due to the high variability. We found some indication that FeNO levels early in life are determined by environmental factors and the child's genetic profile. In CF patients, FeNO after birth was associated with the severity of the genetic mutation. In healthy infants, FeNO levels early in life seem to be influenced by environmental exposures.
Our findings contribute additional, relevant knowledge on asthma risk factors and their association with respiratory symptoms from birth through school age. We found associations between genetics and the immunological status at birth with asthma at school age. The development of asthma may also depend on respiratory symptoms early in life. We could show that the pattern of symptom deterioration and recovery during the first year of life determines whether or not a child has persistent wheezing until school age.


Re-assignment scheme of index in index image is called reindexing. It has been well known that index image can be reindexed without losslessness. In this paper, we introduces an adaptive rank based reindexing scheme using co-occurrence frequency between neighboring pixels. Original index image can be converted into rank image by the proposed scheme. Using the proposed scheme, a better compression efficiency can be expected because most of the reindexed values(rank) get distributed with a smaller variance than the original index image. Experinental results show that the proposed scheme achieves a much better compression performance over GIF, arithmetic coding, Zeng's algorithm and RIAC scheme.


During the past decade, excimer lasers have led the way in applying ablative material removal to micromachining applications in manufacturing industry. Recently short-pulse versions of more familiar industrial CO2 and Nd:YAG lasers have also begun to be used for this application.


It is commonly accepted that, during the design process, the characteristics of the location play a major influence leading to the design wave principle. In fact, as compared to ship design process, in case of offshore structures including the ship shaped ones, conceptual design plays a decisive role regarding the capability to safely operate at zero speed on locations in order to reach a high operational index in rough seas. This is directly linked to the limits of the accelerations due to body behaviour in waves which are clearly stated related to the comfort on board corresponding to different types of activities (intellectual work, manual work etc.). On the other hand, the above mentioned restrictions and the operational limits related to the body motions amplitudes, need to be considered. Consequently, the body geometry as well as the masses distribution solutions is mandatory to be carefully evaluated taking also into account the direct influences on the induced structural loads. To this purpose, a comparative evaluation of the Response Amplitude Operators (RAO's) has been performed for six different bodies consisting in an AHTS ship, a floating crane, a semisubmersible and a group of three pipe laying vessels. The results presented in the paper could be useful when future development of activities on a certain location is envisaged providing quantitative data as well as qualitative ones, giving reliable information depending on the geometry and mass distribution.


Fahm al-masmu' is part of Arabic linguistic studies that are not familiar to academics in Arabic language education. This unpopularity then impacts learning, so doing a descriptive study of how the planning and learning strategies of fahm al-masmu' is important. Therefore, this study aims to reveal the planning and learning strategies of fahm al-masmu'. This study is literature research, and data sources are collected from various literature that contains research content both in the form of books and journals. To assist researchers in finding and analyzing data, publish or perish and Vosviewer tools are used. The use of this platform is intended to facilitate researchers in finding data and content. The results of this study are fahm al-masmu' learning planning is carried out by considering learning objectives, students, environmental conditions that are not noisy, existing learning resources, learning media and learning methods used. Fahm al-masmu's learning planning, which is prepared by considering various aspects holistically will help achieve listening skills for students.


At present, span-based entity recognition methods are mainly used to accurately identify the span (entity) boundary for entity recognition, in which the relative position information of the span boundary and the information of words in the span region are routinely ignored. This information can be used to improve entity recognition performance. Therefore, a nested entity recognition model, which integrates the relative position information of the span and the region information within the span, is proposed. The span representation is first obtained with a triaffine attention. Then, the relative position of the span boundary and the word information in the span region, as well as the previous span representation, are fused to obtain a new label-level span representation with another triaffine attention. Finally, the span (entity) recognition task is carried out by a cooperative biaffine mechanism. Experiments were conducted on some public datasets, including ACE2004, ACE2005 and GENIA. The results show that the F1-scores achieved using the proposed method were 87.66%, 86.86% and 80.90% on ACE2004, ACE2005 and GENIA, respectively. These experiments show that the method achieved state-of-the-art (SOTA) results. Moreover, the proposed model has fewer parameters and needs fewer resources with a lower time complexity than the existing triaffine mechanism model.


Hemorrhagic fever was first encountered by western physicians when it appeared among the United Nations Forces in Korea in 1951. Osaka Army Hospital served as a center for the treatment of this disease at that time. A comprehensive study of 300 observed cases with 9 deaths has been reported by one of us (1, 2). The purpose of this paper is to present the roentgenologic observations in hemorrhagic fever. To our knowledge, roentgenograms of patients with this disease have not previously been published in the literature. Reviews of the Japanese and Russian literature (3, 4, 5) revealed reports of 491 cases of hemorrhagic fever from Manchuria and 125 cases from eastern Siberia between the years 1932 and 1944. No cases were reported after 1944 until the disease broke out in Korea during 1951. In that year, 1,016 cases were recorded among the United Nations Forces (6). During early Manchurian outbreaks, the Japanese called the disease Songo fever and other names, according to the region of occurrence, but in 19...


In this article, the problem of state observer design for a class of multi-input multi-output nonlinear systems is considered. Via state transformation and the constructive use of a Lyapunov function, the new observer design approach is addressed by introducing a parameter ϵ in the observer. Some sufficient conditions are given which guarantee the estimation error to asymptotically converge to zero under adaptive conditions. An example is included to illustrate the method.


The status quo of domestic body-building equipment industry was analyzed systematically on product quality, test system and quality supervision. Based on the reasonable discussion about domestic body-building industry comparing with the overseas, it was pointed out that the striking matters were poor technology, unsteady quality level, deficient test system and insufficient services. Meanwhile, the lack of biochemical and environmental requirements for body-building equipment was illustrated in details. And in order to strengthen safety performance, service and market competence of body-building equipment, the practicable advice proposed was to develop modern enterprise, to produce high-tech safe products, and to perfect test and supervision system.


In this thesis, the optimal bandwidth performance of periodic electromagnetic radiators and scatterers is studied. The main focus is on the development and application of methods to obtain fundamen ...


AbstractThe main purpose served by the existence of multimedia in e-libraries is to attain the transfer of data to the reader in an easy and perceptible manner. This methodology attempts to maximize the abilities of readers to assimilate information always as compared to the information assimilated from a plain text.The simplest libraries on the web are etymological and translation-oriented dictionaries. For that reason, and following the secondary and primary qualitative research, in order to perform the qualitative research multimedia elements were created and integrated into a dictionary on the Internet.


histology revealed adipose tissue with rare remnants of benign thymic tissue. He started 100 mg/day of azathioprine immediately after thymectomy, but this was discontinued 2 weeks later because of elevated liver transaminases. At our evaluation 14 months after the last BCG treatment, he remained symptomatic (Table 1). The symptoms were mild and activity dependent. Examination showed bilateral ptosis, mild orbicularis oculi, buccinator, and shoulder abduction weakness. We increased his dose of intravenous immune globulin from 0.4 to 2 g/kg/mo. Prednisone and pyridostigmine were tapered and discontinued over 3 months. Symptoms resolved except for mild right ptosis and orbicularis oculi weakness.


The association of self-fruitful rate and rate of pollen stained with 1%I2-KI of F2 of A2 cytoplasmic male sterility(CMS)and A3 CMS in Sorghum was analyzed with F2 populations of three A2CMS cross classifications(A2T×622×Jinliang 5,A2V4×1383-2 and A2V4×Jinliang 5) and three A3CMS cross classifications(A3 299×1174、A3 2457×1174、A3JW×1174).The regression equation of A2CMS F2 populations was:RT =1.188×R0.25+0.906×R0.75+0.915×R1.0,and it of A3 CMS F2 populations was:RT=0.188×R0.25+0.832×R0.75+0.933×R1.0.The regression equation of six F2 populations was:RT=0.193×R0.25+0.896×R0.75+0.949×R1.0.There was more or the most significant liner regression between RT and R0.25,R0.75,R1.0,and it was difference in cross classifications.


Based on the analysis of current condition and existing problems of China's high-tech industry and the influence of WTO on China,some proposals are presented in the paper.


The present invention relates to a structure of M + N metal cords (C-1) having two concentric layers (Ci, Ce), the metal cords (C-1) comprises the M wires of diameter d1 ( 10) a first inner layer or core composition (Ci of), where M is 1 to 4, the second spiral outer layer (Ce) of the core wire (11) composed of N wires of diameter d2 is composed of around wherein at least some of the gaps between different layers of the wires in the cord comprises a rubber filling (13), said filler rubber (13) an unsaturated thermoplastic elastomer, particularly a styrene thermoplastic elastomer (TPS), for example, SBS or SIS block copolymers. If the filling rubber overflows outside the cord after the preparation, the thermoplastic elastomer in a molten state of the application does not cause any undesirable stickiness problems; unsaturated nature of the properties of the thermoplastic elastomer and (co) vulcanizable providing a diene rubber substrate (e.g., generally calendering rubber used in tires intended to enhance the metal fabric natural rubber) excellent compatibility.


The majority of sediment transport to the world's oceans is routed via large deltas. We examine controls on delta apex location using a database of 84 of the world's largest deltas. Of the dataset, 94% of apices are controlled by either bedrock valleys (80%) or Pleistocene alluvial valleys (14%), suggesting that the principal control on modern apex development is valley exit and/or bedslope-mediated avulsion and not hydrodynamic backwater length. Valley exit control on large delta apex location may have been as important in the rock record as it is today, and should be considered as a key control on delta development. Supplementary material: Tabulated data on backwater length and apex type for studied deltas available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3469770


Output power of 770 W from a system combining five fiber lasers with 91.7% efficiency is demonstrated with spectral separation between channels of 0.5 nm and no distortions in diffracted beams.


This paper proposes a fast multiple video objects tracking method based on MBB correspondence,which focuses on speed of execution and reliability in the noise.Instead of pixel matching,MBB overlapping features in successive frames are used to build objects correspondence.The method can account for complicated relationship among objects and scene,such as appearance,disappearance,split,merging and occlusion.The reappearing object can also maintain the same label by histogram matching in the method.Experiment of NUDT and PETS2001 video data,including clutter region,multiple deformable objects,and complicated objects relationship have demonstrated the favorable performance and robustness of the proposed method.Combined with fast preprocessing,the method has less complexity and time-cost than homogeneous methods.


This study considered the application of fiber Bragg grating (FBG) to a composite material leaf spring as a vehicle loading sensing system. The loading of the vehicle by the leaf spring was calculated by the period change of the fiber grating caused by deformation of the composite material leaf spring under loading. From the experiment results, a good linear relationship between loading and Bragg wavelength shift for light. The R-squared value for the linear regression reached 0.99. The loading sensitivity is about 0.267 nm/N.


But this is a false choice: most Medicaid and SCHIP beneficiaries already receive their coverage through private health plans that contract with their states. The real issue is that Medicaid and SCHIP have established standards to ensure that children who receive coverage through private plans receive the health care they need and that public funds are spent effectively. Proposals by the Heritage Foundation and other groups would essentially eliminate those standards and protections. The choice Congress faces, therefore, is whether to maintain measures designed to ensure value and accountability for public funds.


It is impossible to describe Incheon as a single, unified impression. It is not only because of the complexity that a metropolis comes to take on but because of the hybridity that Incheon uniquely has. It can be said that such hybridity is attributed to a tremendous speed of change that Incheon did experience in the processes from port opening, colonization, national division, war, and up to industrialization. The time that Incheon began to appear as the major background in Korean literature is the modern age. Along with the port opening, Incheon came to be transformed to a modern city representing Korea, and this situation naturally made Incheon a central place in the history of modern literature in Korea. When a region appears in literature, it may function only as an index. This means that a concrete place may be inserted into a work as endemism that a mere decoration or name of a place is equipped with. The place as an index has a limitation that it cannot be connected with the context that is the concrete life or the patterns of life in that region. This article intends to examine the works where Incheon appears as 'a place as experience' intensively except for those in which it appears as an index. For this, the paper has intensively investigated the novels regarding the coastal, poor villages where the placeness of Incheon is revealed clearly. Those works have one thing in common; they take children as their main characters. The representation of children forms imaginative geography that Incheon is a new city with short history. Next, in those novels, children appear as the beings that are hardly taken care of without any special protection from adults. This creates the imaginative geography of Incheon where they have to face the monster of modernism with no special preparation. Second, Incheon is represented as hybrid space nationally. As it developed through port opening at first, Incheon showed hybrid characteristics nationally from its birth. Even today, Incheon still remains as the city showing the third highest ratio of foreigners to the total population in Korea. In Han Nam-gyu and Oh Jung-hee's novels, Incheon is described as a city thickly shaded with the US armed forces and Chinese. Third, Incheon is represented as a place playing roles as a gateway to a foreign land. In Eom Hong-seop's 「The Sea at the Dawn」, what Mr. Choi did was to carry the wicker trunks of Gyeongsang-do women sold to Dalian. And what he always thinks about is who will be the girls that will have him carry their baggage tomorrow. Lastly, Incheon is represented as a city of which major population consists of foreigners, not the natives. In 『Gwaengiburimal Children』, the social and historic background that Incheon has as a city of immigrants is revealed the most precisely. In every moment of sudden changes that took place in the modern history of Korea, the poor spread all throughout the country came to flow into Incheon. It explains that Gwaengiburimal came to be full of those evicted from their dwellings for the foreigners right after the port opening, laborers coming to the factory to find their job during the Japanese colonial era, refugees after the Korean War, and farmers at the period that industrialization was genuinely done. It describes that Gwaengiburimal is "a village of people forcibly coming from somewhere unknown" and village of "those that are poor and helpless". And this can possibly be extended to the general characteristic of Incheon.


insert of main bearings during the operation of the engine on the external speed and load characteristics and at different speeds of the crankshaft is defined. The nature and graphical dependences of the change in the temperature of the inserts on the temperature of the oil in the lubrication system at constant pressure are established. Empirical studies allowed obtaining a mathematical model in the form of a parabolic dependence, which is confirmed by the calculated correlation coefficients. The results of ICE tests at different oil pressures in the lubrication system during its operation according to the external speed characteristic were also investigated and obtained. The research has revealed that the reduction of oil pressure in the system from 0.45 to 0.25 MPa leads to the fact that the temperature of the inserts behind the bearing circle during engine operation according to the external speed characteristic increases at a frequency of 2500 min-1 at 4-50 °С, and at 6000 min-1 – at 12-130 °С. According to the results of empirical research, a linear model of the dependence of the temperature of the inserts and oil at different pressures in the lubrication system was obtained and its adeq-uacy was confirmed.


The index of international consistency is a parameter that is directly related to the comfort and security that provides a path to the users, which is based on the vertical deformations accumulated along a kilometer to a horizontal plane on a pavement. This article presents an overview of the results obtained during measurements of IRI with Profilometer Laser equipment, experimentally found that this parameter changes depending on the speed. This is because of these equipment use a sensors capable of measuring the distance between the sensor box and the pavement surface, generating in this way the longitudinal profile of the road, therefore, by using the profile is calculated the IRI by taking into account the vertical acceleration, to determine the displacement of the laser box, through double integration in time (first integration of acceleration results in speed), second integration results in displacement), for this reason the data vary depending on speed


A three-dimensional improved Fourier series method is applied to study the acoustic characteristics of the multi-body coupled cavity. The formula which used to describe the multi-body coupled cavity is based on the Lagrange energy principle. The admissible sound pressure function is generally set to the combinations of Fourier cosine series and supplementary functions which are no relations to the boundary conditions and can eliminate the discontinuous or jump phenomenon in the boundaries. All the unknown series expansion coefficients can be obtained through the Rayleigh-Ritz technique. The results obtained by presented method show good convergence and accuracy by being compared with the results of the available literatures and the finite element method (FEM). The natural frequencies of the coupling parameters are studied. The sound pressure response is investigated under the excitation of the monopole source inside the cavity with various impendence walls. In this paper, some new results are obtained on the basis of effects of various factors on acoustic characteristics, such as geometric parameters and impedance values.


AbstractIn this study, the authors examined the relationships of acculturation as measured with two subscales of cultural maintenance and cultural assimilation, Internet use, and psychological wellbeing among Chinese international students. A total of 170 Chinese international students participated in this study. Bivariate correlation analyses revealed that an individual can identify with two different cultures, minority and dominant culture. Results of multiple regression indicated that cultural assimilation was a significant predictor to psychological well-being, but not cultural maintenance. The study also found that younger Chinese international students (e.g., students pursuing bachelor's degrees) suffered significantly higher levels of stress and depression in the acculturation process as compared to their older counterparts. Implications for counseling and recommendations for future research were discussed.Keywords: Acculturation; Internet use; Psychological well-being; Chinese international students.Educational globalization creates international training opportunities for students all over the world (Hallak, 1998). Recently, an increasing number of international students choose to continue their education in the United States higher education institutions. In the 2010-2011 academic year, of 723,277 international students studying on campuses in the United States, 50% were from Asian countries, with China and India representing the two largest portions of students (Institute of International Education, 2011). China was the leading place of origin for international students, with 157,558 students from China studying in the U.S., accounting for more than 21.8% of the total international student population (Institute of International Education, 2011). The longitudinal research revealed that adopting a new cultural environment (acculturation as defined by International Organization for Migration, 2004) has a great social and psychological influence on ethnic minority individuals (Berry, 1997; Bochner, 2006; Ward, Bochner, & Furnham, 2001; Zhou, Jindal-Snape, Topping, & Todman, 2008). Empirical findings indicated that psychological problems such as depression, loneliness, and homesickness are commonly encountered by international students during the acculturation process (Chae & Foley, 2010; Brunette, Lariviere, Schinke, Xing, & Pickard, 2011; Ye, 2005). Further, a review of past research on the relationship between Internet use and psychological well-being has yielded several mixed findings. Some researchers argued that the Internet has an overall positive effect on well-being (Shaw & Grant, 2002; Wesier, 2001). Others found that Internet use has the negative influence on psychological well-being (Chen & Persson, 2002; Wang & Sun, 2009). A review of literature indicated that no studies have yet been done on the relationships of acculturation, Internet use, and psychological well-being among Chinese international students. As such, the purpose of this research was to (a) examine the relationships of these three variables (i.e., acculturation, Internet use, and psychological well-being), and (b) generate suggestions for future research in this area.Literature ReviewAcculturationAccording to Berry, Phinney, Sam, and Vedder (2006), the classic definition of acculturation originated in anthropology and was first proposed by Redfield, Linton, and Herskovists (1936); it focuses on "continuous first-hand contact" between different cultures (p. 149). More than a halfcentury later, the International Organization for Migration (IOM; 2004) revised the term acculturation as "the progressive adaptation of elements of a foreign culture by persons, groups or classes of a given culture" (p. 5). As a dynamic socialization phenomenon, acculturation was primarily described and interpreted as either unidimensional, in which individuals or groups substitute the dominant cultural identity for their original one (Gordon, 1964; LaFromboise, Coleman & Gerton, 1993; Triandis et al. …


Fault tolerance is a desirable feature in distributed high-performance systems, since applications tend to run for long periods of time and faults become more likely as the number of nodes in the system increase. However, most distributed environments lack any fault tolerant features, since they tend to be hard to implement and use, and often hurt performance dramatically. In this paper we discuss how we successfully added fault-tolerance to the Anthill distributed programming environment by using an application-level checkpoint/rollback solution. The programming model offers an abstraction where the programmer can easily identify points during the execution where the communication pattern is well defined, forming a consistent cut where checkpoints may be saved consistently without requiring extra communication, avoiding any domino effect during recovery from faults. We present the new abstractions for fault tolerance, describe how the solution was implemented and present performance results that show the efficiency of the solution with both regular and irregular applications.


ABSTRACT Oil and gas accumulation in Gulf Coast Tertiary strata is mainly controlled by regional growth faults and by salt-related structures. Salt forms the most prominent set of structures in the Houston diapir province of southeast Texas. Recent work in three study areas shows that the Tertiary growth-fault trends so well displayed along strike to the southwest continue through this salt basin as well, but have been deformed by later salt movement. In the Katy area, seismic data disclose early (pre-Wilcox) salt pillows downdip of the Cretaceous reef trend. Progradation of the lower Wilcox Rockdale delta system created a linear growth-fault trend above and seaward of the pillows. Salt stocks were injected upward from the pillows in Claiborne time and were flanked by deep withdrawal basins and turtle structures. Major oil accumulations occur over an inferred turtle structure and over deep-seated salt domes. The lower Wilcox growth-fault trend deformed by the later salt flowage is virtually unexplored, although geopressured gas production from these low-permeability deltaic reservoirs exists in adjacent areas. In Brazoria County, a major lower Frio growth-fault trend affecting the Houston delta system was deformed by later salt domes, by a salt-withdrawal basin, and by a possible turtle structure at Chocolate Bayou. A productive geopressured aquifer exists in the salt-withdrawal basin bounded by the previously formed growth faults. In Jefferson County, in contrast, salt tectonic activity and growth faulting appear to have been coeval. Early salt-cored ridges continued to rise throughout Frio deposition; growth faults occur both updip and downdip. Salt diapirism may have occurred throughout Frio time at Orange and Port Neches salt domes, but other domes such as Spindletop formed in post-Frio time. Hydrocarbons accumulated over the salt domes in growth-fault anticlines and in stratigraphic traps. Contemporaneous, low-intensity growth faulting and salt movement may be ascribed to the minimal loading imposed by the sand-poor lower and middle Frio section. Recognition that shelf-margin growth faulting preceded the development of the present pattern of domes and basins has important implication for hydrocarbon exploration. Growth faults may be migration paths for hydrocarbons; furthermore, early-formed traps, distorted by salt movement, may still be found to contain hydrocarbons. Figure 1. Regional shelf-margin trends of the Gulf Coast Basin and location of the Katy, Pleasant Bayou, and Port Arthur study areas. Map from Winker and Edwards (1983). End_Page 83-------------------------


Abstract The type material, added to the Coleoptera Section of the Canadian National Collection of Insects from 1 January 1974 to 31 December 1980, is catalogued. This new material consists of 416 holotypes, 188 allotypes and 4 neotypes; 2 species are represented by syntypes and 718 by paratypes or paralectotypes. The reference to the original description for each species is cited. All data associated with the specimens are quoted, except in the case of paratypes, paralectotypes and syntypes. Résumé Les types ajoutés à la section des Coléoptères de la Collection Nationale d'Insectes du 1er janvier 1974 au 31 décembre 1980 sont catalogués. Ce matériel comprend 416 holotypes, 188 allotypes et 4 néotypes; 2 espèces sont représentées par des syntypes et 718, par des paratypes ou paralectotypes. On y indique la référence de la description originale de chaque espèce, de même que toutes les données se rapportant aux spécimens, sauf dans le cas des paratypes, paralectotypes et syntypes.


Stored in the Archives of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is the floppy disk on which can be found the one-day average currents, the path of the Agulhas Current, CTD stations in "Live Atlas" format, SST frontal analyses (Chassignet and Olson, personal communcation) as well as
programs written in QuickBASIC which allow one to access and display these observations. The programs are stored in ASCII and
can be run under the Microsoft QuickBasic (Version 4.0 or higher). Instructions for running the programs can be found in a file
entitled "read.me" on the disk.


Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS), also called enhanced MBMS (e-MBMS) in LTE terminology, was introduced in the release 6 of the 3GPP standard to deliver multimedia content to a large group of users. The main requirement during the provision of MBMS services is to make an efficient overall usage of radio and network resources. There are two wireless transmission modes defined in LTE, i.e. Point-to-Point (P-t-P) and Point-to-Multipoint (P-t-M) transmission modes. MIMO systems promise high performance gains over conventional single antenna systems. It is expected to be an important component of the LTE particularly for the MBMS. In this paper, an adaptive MIMO scheme for E-MBMS in P-t-M transmission mode is presented and analyzed. Both spatial multiplexing and diversity techniques are focused on. Different spatial techniques are adaptively used depending on the different users' distributions in one MBMS section. Spatial diversity technique is used to enhance signal strength of the cell edge users; and spatial multiplexing technique is used to increase the data rate of the users with good signal strength. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can improve the BER performance of the cell edge users, and increase the transmit data rate and data throughput.


The potential need and science requirements for a centrifuge to be designed and flown on Space Station Freedom are discussed, with a focus on a design concept for a centrifuge developed at NASA Ames. Applications identified for the centrifuge include fundamental studies in which gravity is a variable under experimental control, the need to provide a 1-g control, attempts to discover the threshold value of gravitation force for psychological response, and an effort to determine the effects of intermittent hypergravity. Science requirements specify the largest possible diameter at approximately 2.5 m, gravity levels ranging from 0.01 to 2 g, a nominal ramp-up rate of 0.01 g/sec, and life support for plants and animals. Ground-based studies using rats and squirrel monkeys on small-diameter centrifuges have demonstrated that animals can adapt to centrifugation at gravity gradients higher than those normally used in ground-based hypergravity studies.


Preface Thyroid Hormone Transport across Blood-Brain Barriers Redox Signaling in Thyroid Hormone Action: A Novel Strategy for Liver Preconditioning Different Effect of Thyroxine on Behaviour and the Brain Serotonin Receptors of Catalepsy-Prone and Catalepsy-Resistant Mouse Strains Involvement of Thyroid Hormones in the Regulation of Mitochondrial Oxidations in Mammals and Birds Immuno-Pathogenesis of Thyroid Associated Ophthalmopathy (TAO): The Effect of Novel Treatment of TAO with Anti-TNFa and Anti- CD 20 Monoclonal Antibodies Managing Moderate to Severe Graves Ophthalmopathy: An Up-to-Date Review Thyroid Function in Infants with Mothers with Graves' Disease and Hyperthyroidism during Pregnancy Thyroid Hormone and Neuro-Astrocyte Interactions Amiodarone and Thyroid Dysfunction Effects of Second-hand Smoke on the Thyroid Index.


Abstract Past work in politically charged domains has revealed a blame-game dynamic in how historical observers think about counterfactual scenarios. Our working hypothesis, however, is that business historians will prove less ideologically polarized into rival communities of co-believers and more likely to treat disputes over causation as matters of degree. Early data indicate that, although exceptions exist, counterfactual reasoning about business history is indeed moderated by widespread faith that: (a) it is difficult to delay the advance of scientific knowledge and its translation into useful technology; (b) quasi-rational actors operating in competitive markets will bring history back onto the 'equilibrium path' quite quickly.We trace these differences to the weaker incentives for finger-pointing, the stronger influence of sociology-of-science work documenting the commonness of 'multiples' in discovery, and the predominance of economic and game-theoretic models.


Hormonal steroids such as 17α-estradiol derivatives, labelled with organometallic moieties, have been tested as markers for hormone receptor assay. Among the organometallic labels used were: Cr(C0)3 and Cr(C0)2(CS), which can be attached to the A ring of the steroid, and Co2(C0)6 and Mo2(7-15-05H5)(C0)4, which can be bonded to acetylenic groups in the 1713-position of the five-membered ring of the steroid. The new analytical approach is based on the FT-IR detection of the υ(CO) modes of the organometallic markers. The present estradiol-receptor detection level for 10,000-20,000 scans at 4 cm-1 resolution is about 100 fM, i.e., in the neighbourhood of physiological levels.


This paper describes the underlying theory and ongoing development of a general-purpose collaborative system. Rooted in the critical literary theories of Barthes and Bakhtin, the dialogic web provides a potential solution to problems of collaboration in knowledge-intensive environments.


The research on the use of coconut husk as a solid catalyst for transesterification reaction of Cerbera manghas oil into biodiesel has been done. The aim of this study is to investigate the performance of coconut husk ash for biodiesel production from Cerbera manghas seed oil. Coconut husk is prepared by burning in air to obtain potassium oxide as active phase. The coconut husk is analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The XRD spectrum shows that the peak characteristics of potassium oxide can be observed in the diffractogram. The particle size of the catalyst ranging from 1 3 μm with pentagonal structure. The coconut husk ash solid catalyst is used in the transesterification reaction of Cerbera manghas oil in a batch reactor. Biodiesel yield of 88.6% can be achieved over coconut husk ash catalyst, using a 10 wt.% of catalyst, reaction temperature at 3 hours, and a methanol-to-oil ratio of 6: 1. This solid catalyst can be separated easily from the reaction system and not soluble in methanol or methyl esters. The coconut husk ash catalyst is high potential to be developed as one of the solid catalysts to convert Cerbera manghas oil to biodiesel.


To thrive within immunocompetent human hosts, pathogenic microorganisms adapt to and resist both innate and adaptive immune responses. For example, the gram-positive bacterium Staphylococcus aureus is highly efficient at infecting humans and evading host immunity. Adding to this health burden is the emergence of multidrug-resistant strains, particularly methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA), that can cause significant hospital-associated infections (HA-MRSA) among immunocompromised patients. In addition, highly virulent community-associated MRSA strains (CA-MRSA) emerged during the past decade, causing disease in otherwise healthy individuals. Thus, new therapeutic agents and antimicrobials are needed.


With the expansion of foreign trade scale and the increasing of demand for capital of enterprise in Heilongjiang Province, we advance new demand of trade financing. However, compared to coastal developed cities, the trade financing in Heilongjiang province still has a long way to go. Because of enterprises' having not enough knowledge of trade financing, bank's lacking of creativity and imperfection of credit system, the foreign trade enterprises in Heilongjiang province have the problems of effective demand insufficiency and the obstruction of supply in trade financing. Based on the background of increasingly internationalization of financing and foreign trade enterprises' imperious demands for funds, this paper started from the current situation of trade financing of foreign trade enterprises of Heilongjiang province, explored the problems and obstacles existed in the trade financing cooperation between foreign trade enterprises and banks, proposed the conception about trade financing mode selection strategy and new enterprises' credit system for the first time. We pointed out that the bank's trade finance products and their pricing should be adapted to the actual needs of foreign trade enterprises, and stressed that the commercial banks should strengthen the risk control of trade financing and so on, in order to comprehensively promote foreign trade and economic sustainable development of Heilongjiang Province. Key Words-foreign trade enterprises; trade financing; credit system; financial innovation; Risk Control In recent years, the Heilongjiang Province international trade development is increasing, trade financing is also vigorously developing. For banks, to develop trade financing not only can absorb foreign trade enterprises' international settlement, but also lead the banks' other comprehensive trade development directly. For the enterprises, because trade financing thinks highly of the trade background's verification and both transaction parties' strength and the prestige, compared to the traditional loan business, the small and medium foreign trade enterprises are easier to obtain the fund from banks for solving shortage of capital. But in practice, because the society has not really established the perfect credit system of the small and medium enterprises, bank still have many misgivings to the small and medium enterprises when they enlarge trade financing service, even appears "unwilling to provide loans". At the same time, because the small and medium trade enterprise itself is not familiar to the new financing business and has the barriers in the application, this enormously hinders communal development of the bank and the small and medium foreign trade enterprise, and causes the banks' anticipated profit to be reduced and the loss of the good development opportunity. Therefore, we must base on two sides of the bank and the enterprise to transform the bilateral idea. The banks must try to improve their professional ability and develop the financial innovation business increasingly, overcome "unwilling to provide loans", be positive to provide the financing services which adapt to needs of the small and medium foreign trade enterprise. The small and medium foreign trade enterprise should strengthen the competition strength virtually, enhance the credit, change tradition idea as soon as possible and be in time to be familiar to and apply a lot more new financing business. This may solve the problems of "want to do but cannot do, can do but be able to do, be able to do but not elect" that the bank and the enterprise frequently meet when they do trade financing business. In addition, looking from the social environment aspect, various levels of the government must provide kinds of preferential policy to support and construct the new enterprise credit system, and the government should take the practical and effective measures to solve kinds of problems in order to realize the Heilongjiang Province trade and the economical sustainable development. I. STATUS OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE FINANCING OF SMALLAND MEDIUM FOREIGN TRADE ENTERPRISE IN HEILONGJIANG PROVINCE The trade financing in China began in the 1980s. In 1986, the China-Bank manages the bill purchased business in mainland firstly drawing on the experience of Hong Kong. In 1987, international factoring business entered into our market. In 1995, our country firstly developed forfaiting business. At the same time, the commercial bank in Heilongjiang Province also started to handle trade financing business of which the business volume are few at first that obtain much more development until the beginning of 21st century. In 2005, the branch China-Bank and the branch agricultural bank in Heilongjiang Province are in the first place and second place respectively in the amount of international settlement and trade financing business in Heilongjiang Province . In 2006, the U.S. Government work not protected by U.S. copyright China-Bank in Suifen River also succeeded handled the first trade financing business. With the fast development of Heilongjiang Province's foreign trade, the demanding market of Heilongjiang Province's trade financing will also expand increasingly. In the first half of 2008, the total amount of import and export of Heilongjiang Province adds up to 8.54 billion dollars, compared with growth of 23.5% over the same period in 2007. Of the total amount, export accounts for 5.61 billion dollars, growing 28.1% which is higher 6.2% than the national export growth rate, and import accounts for 2.93 billion dollars, growing 15.5% over the same period. Of which mechanical and electrical products and high-paying technology products achieve growth. From January to September in 2008, total exports of electromechanical products in Heilongjiang Province add up to 3.14 billion dollars, accounting for 21.3% of the province's import and export of plant [2] . The increased amount of business of foreign trade enterprises especially import and export of electromechanical and high-tech enterprises and the demand of deferred payment on buyer's market lead to a great demand for capital of foreign trade enterprises increasingly. According to foreign trade enterprise storage information statistics of China Association of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Enterprises, at present, there are more than 4,000 foreign trade enterprises in Heilongjiang Province which use internal financing, debt capital financing and bank loans, some of which large foreign trade enterprises use listed financing. However, most small and medium foreign trade enterprises' financing capital is limit, and it is difficult to issue commercial paper and bonds, so they usually choose loan financing. However, because of a higher threshold for bank loans and the long processing time, it can not resolve foreign trade enterprises short term requirements of funds. While the trade financing can provide short or long financing convenience which is related with settlement during the Bank's operation of international settlements. In the context of a real-trade, trade financing has much more advantages of financing facilities than loans. Therefore, the demands for capital of small and medium enterprises make trade financing have great potential market. However, the development of trade financing business in Heilongjiang Province and the market demand are imbalanced and there are still numerous obstacles and problems to be solved. II. PROBLEMS AND REASONS OF TRADE FINANCING OF SMALL AND MEDIUM FOREIGN TRADE ENTERPRISES IN HEILONGJIANG PROVINCE By research and the actual inspection of some banks and enterprises in Heilongjiang Province, we see that the development of trade financing of small and medium foreign trade enterprises in Heilongjiang Province is not mature enough, there are still many problems to be solved. A. The effective demand of trade financing business in Heilongjiang Province and the market potential are imbalanced The import and export value of small and medium enterprise accounts for 70% of the gross import and export value in Heilongjiang Province. Therefore, the management's level of small and medium enterprise affects the foreign trade development in Heilongjiang Province. According to the related department investigation, the finance of above 80% of county small and medium enterprise in the Heilongjiang Province is insufficient, above 90% of which are in credit blank . In the sampled investigation of non-public ownership system Industrial enterprise in Heilongjiang Province, there are above 95% of small and medium enterprise among 2121 investigated households, all of which there are 92.6% of enterprises thinking that the loans are not easy to have . This indicated that it is very difficult for the small and medium enterprise obtain capital by the traditional loan way. Trade financing takes the single trade as a background and does not think highly of enterprise's financial situation and the profession status, the admittance threshold is low and be appropriate for character of the low intelligence of small and medium foreign trade enterprise that be in favor for the small Foreign trade enterprise to obtain the fund in a short time. But according to investigation and study result of some branch bank in Heilongjiang Province, in trade financing business of this bank, business volume of small and medium foreign trade enterprises account for less than 10% of total quantity. In developed country, trade financing has already become the financing important tool for small and medium foreign trade enterprises. The Heilongjiang Province trade's fast development will also make trade financing have the broad market. However, at present, many small and medium foreign trade enterprises in Heilongjiang Province do not know and be familiar with the trade financing business, and the banks make insufficient propaganda, this will cause the small and medium foreign trade enterprise not to choose t


In software testing organization,the effective management of the knowledge of the testing process is the key to upgrading the level of software testing.An important question is how to integrate knowledge management with software testing process effectively and promote knowledge assets in the dissemination and reusing of software testing organizations.This paper gives the detailed design of function structure and system structure of the subsystem.And it also gives some key technology for implementing system.Finally,an example of the knowledge map module in software testing process is given to verify that the knowledge management in software testing is reasonable and effective.


PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To attain a reduction in drive voltage by using a metal oxide formed by anodizing an electrode as a dielectric film, and also, to attain AC-drive, regarding an electrowetting device utilizing an electrowetting phenomenon. SOLUTION: The electrowetting device includes: conductive or polar liquid material portions 4a and 4b; and an electrode 1 applying voltage to the liquid material portions 4a and 4b through a dielectric layer. In the electrowetting device, the dielectric layer is formed as an anodized portion 2 formed by anodizing the electrode, and a capacitor 6 is placed between the electrode 1 and the voltage applying unit 5. The dielectric film is made thinner and the dielectric constant is made higher, then, the reduction in drive voltage is attained, and also, the AC-drive is attained. COPYRIGHT: (C)2008,JPO&INPIT


Interoperability between different metadata schemas and data is an important issue for various semantic Web-related applications. The definitions and MPEG-7 data for multimedia content instances can't be used with other metadata standards in a semantically interoperable way. As part of an attempt to build a retrieval system that uses various metadata standards such as MPEG-7 and Dublin Core in a semantic Web environment, we first developed a method for automatically converting the MPEG-7 specification into a RDF schema (RDFS) and MPEG-7 data into RDF data. Our approach is to develop a set of conversion rules for XML Schema definitions into RDF schema definitions, rather than interpreting the semantics of individual components of the MPEG-7 specification


The abrasive mixing variables, such as the abrasive and water flow rates and the focus geometry parameters, determine the profitability of an abrasive waterjet system. In this study, the mixing efficiency characteristics in abrasive waterjet rock cutting were investigated. To demonstrate comprehensively the efficiency reduction due to collision during abrasive mixing, the chance of collision was expressed as the distance between the abrasive particles in the focus. The mixing efficiency was then assessed by utilizing the empirical relationship between the experimental results and the developed model. Based on the particle density and the velocity, the closer particles showed higher chances of collision, thus yielding a reduced cutting performance. Using the distance between particles model, the optimum abrasive flow rate and the cutting performance of abrasive waterjet systems can be estimated. This developed model can be used for the design selection of abrasive flow rate and systems for the cost-effective use of abrasive waterjets.


Dumont, Louis. Affinity as a Value: Marriage Alliance in South India, with Comparative Essays on Australia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. x + 230 pp. including references and index. $22.00. Kensinger, Kenneth M., ed. Marriage Practices in Lowland South America. Illinois Studies in Anthropology, No. 14. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984. x + 297 pp. including references and index. $19.95. Dragadze, Tamara, ed. Kinship and Marriage in the Soviet Union: Field Studies. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984. xiii + 269 pp. including brief guide to Soviet ethnographic journals. $39.95.


The objective of this research was to determine the relationship between educational technologies, social skills and decision making in university students of the Industrial Engineering School from a private university in Lima. This study was basic, its design was non-experimental and cross-sectional. The population was composed of 80 students. The survey was used as a technique and the questionnaire was used as its instrument. The questionnaire had Likert Scale questions. The results allowed determining that there is a significant relationship between educational technologies, social skills and decision making, with a significance lower than .05.


Measurment of braking distance for passenger car with ABS system is very complicated process since braking involves interaction among the driver-ear-environment. In this research, two methods for measuring braking distance for ABS equipped vehicle, which are used in KS R 1107[ISO 11835:1995 Road Vehicles - Motor vehicles with antilock braking system - Measurement of braking performance] and ISO/FDIS 21994 Passenger cars - Stopping distance at straight-line braking with ABS - Open-loop test method. respectively. Theoretical differences between two methods are analyzed, and actual measurments are made and compared. Both methods showed similar results and they showed some difference clue to the measuring conditions and method.


X-ray source (10) comprising: an X-ray tube (12) having a flange (200) which is formed so as to surround an X-ray exit window, a collimator (14) having an X-ray entrance window provided with an inlet plate (500), said collimator (14) encloses a arranged in its interior collimator (16), one provided on the inlet plate ring (610) surrounding the x-ray entrance window (502), said ring (610) receives the flange (200) of the X-ray tube (12) and a number of in the ring (610) radially formed slots (611 -615) which hold a plurality of tongue elements (621-625) which extend from the outside to the inside of the ring (610) through the slots (611-615) and a back side of the flange (200) and a sensor means (504) which is arranged in the flange (200) to detect the angle of relative rotation of the collimator (14) in respect to the flange (200).


Horsham, Pa—According to the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), healthcare practitioners involved in fatal medication errors are often left to find their own way through the devastating spiritual, personal and professional crisis that occurs. ISMP is helping to spread the word that healthcare organizations have a responsibility to support not only the first victims of the error (patient and family), but also the "second victims" (involved healthcare practitioners), who also suffer devastating consequences.


The invention relates to a preparation method of flame-retardant acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) master batches. The preparation method comprises the following steps of: adding 30 to 40 weight parts of ABS copolymer, 40 to 50 weight parts of tetrabromobisphenol A, 15 to 22 weight parts of antimonous oxide, 0.5 to 1.0 weight part of N,N-ethylene bis stearamide, 0.3 to 0.6 weight part of tetra[beta-(3,5-ditertbutyl-4-hydroxy phenyl)propionic acid]pentaerythritol ester, 0.3 to 0.6 weight part of cis-butylalkene tin maleate and 0.3 to 0.6 weight part of magnesium stearate into a high-speed mixer to mix; spraying 0.5 to 1.0 weight part of liquid polydimethylsiloxane into the mixer by using compressed air; and extruding and pelletizing by using a double-screw extruder under the conditions of the temperature of 160 to 200 DEG C and vacuum degree of 0.06+/-0.01 MPa, wherein the flame resistance can reach UL-94V-0 standard and meet the restriction of hazardous substances (ROHS) environment-friendly instruction requirement.


Ab initio molecular orbital calculations at the MP2/6-31G * level of the structure, vibrational spectra, and thermochemical properties of triphospha[1.1.1]propellane (4), diphosphabicyclo[1.1.0]butane (5), and phosphirane (6) have been carried out and compared with those of their all-carbon analogues. 4 possesses a ring strain even smaller than that of [1.1.1]propellane and is characterized by a bridgehead C-C distance of 1.63 A and a heat of formation (ΔH o f,0 ) of 560±20 kJ/mol. The observable IR bands of 4 are centered in the regions of 2291, 947, 755, and 459 cm -1 , while the first vertical UV absorption of 4 is expected at 5.3±0.5 eV


Arcuate uterus with cystic adenomyosis is a rare finding to be seen together and not reported in literature so far. The arcuate uterus is mild form of anatomic variation of uterus without any consequences on infertility outcome. Cystic adenomyosis due to repeated cyclic bleeding in the ectopic endometrial tissue in the myometrium. The MR imaging is the modality of choice for diagnosis of the both


The asymptotic synchronization problem of a class of uncertain and delayed chaotic systems is addressed with adaptive compensation designs in this paper. General uncertainties on systems and time-delays in the coupling network are eliminated by the adaptive control scheme, as well as its circuit realization are proposed. Then, an approach that is based on application of Lyapunov stability theory for the synchronization error system with adaptive parameters is introduced to prove the asymptotic synchronization result of the overall chaotic system. Finally, the proposed adaptive schemes are physically implemented by circuits and tested by simulation on a Chua's circuit network.


The title compounds were obtained by the reduction of the corresponding ferrocenyl imines, which were prepared from ferrocene and o-anisic acid chloride, followed by amination with aromatic amines. The structure of product were characterized by elemental analyses and 1H NMR.


This contribution discusses the effects of new designs for lately presented miniaturized, tunable resonating viscosity sensors. The design and fabrication for miniaturized magnetic circuits yielding high flux densities and new measurement results are presented.


With Format and characteristic of some compute-graphics in multimedia database , the author discusses some essential management of computerized-graphics under Foxpro Database system .


Cretaceous mineralization systems in China is commonly recognized as having formed in a continental environment. A Paleo-Yinshan-Yanshan, Paleo-Qinling the area encompassed by the North China platform, the Dabieshan, the Yangtze platform and Southeast China contains Cretaceous continental rocks and associated mineralization. By contrast only a few deposits of Cretaceous age have been discovered in Northwest China and Southwest China, thereby suggesting a great potential for prospecting in these areas. In eastern China, important deposits have been discovered, but it is still possible to find new economic deposits, such as the Pengjiakuang and Fayunkuang gold deposits in Jiaodong-Laiyang Basin in Shandong Province and the Changkeng gold deposit in Guangdong Province. Therefore, we suggest to prospect for new metal deposits in and around basins.


A solid‐state sensor has been developed to give a signal risetime of 1 nsec in the TPa pressure range. For applications requiring a high signal‐to‐noise ratio, the sensor is operated reliably in the switch mode with a 50‐V bias voltage. The pressure sensor can also be operated in the shock‐induced polarization mode giving 2‐nsec FWHM signals with 0.6‐V amplitude.


Since the survival of Noh theatre at the time of Zeami (1363–1443) and Kanami depended entirely upon the support of its audience, which consisted mainly of laymen, warriors and nobles, it was essential that each presentation had its own unique beauty and power enabling each performance to become an unrepeatable idiosyncratic event. In particular, Zeami demands that each performance will attain the goals of hana (the flower, i.e. a strangeness and novelty in beauty that will attract the audience) and yūgen (a mystic quality of beauty and elegance) on stage. In order to achieve these goals, he provides us with a great deal of suggestive and analytical ideas from various points of view, ranging from precise technical comments to pure metaphysical concepts.


Purpose – to work out the mathematical model of individual prognostication of risk of development of disorders of adaptation and addictive behavior of the students of junior courses of university for the improvement of curatively-diagnostic and prophylactic events of medical and social help. Materials and methods. A complex estimation of the addictive and psychoemotional status of 1076 junior students of the University is conducted through clustering distribution made by groups, using the method of binary logistic regression analysis of causal relationships, and established prognostic role of risk factors in shaping the adaptation disorders and addictive behaviors of youth. Research methods: information-analytical methods, socio-demographic methods, clinical and medical history methods, clinical and abnormal psychology methods, psychodiagnostic methods, mathematical and statistical methods. Results. It is well-proven that the students of junior courses are apt to the use of PAS (80.9%). Binary logistic regression determined the authenticity of the event depending on the values of the independent variables. The got tables of specifications allowed to expect diagnostic descriptions for this model: sensitiveness – 63.4%; specificity – 58.3%; efficiency – 60.9%; Conclusions. Binary logistic regression that is got by us is an adequate and capable working mathematical model for the individual prognosis of development of disorders of adaptation and addictive behavior.


Microwave branching filters are required as integral parts of multi-channel microwave radio relay systems. These filters must have characteristics which are difficult to attain if one attempts to extend familiar lower frequency techniques to the microwave region. A novel network configuration, through which currently anticipated requirements can be met without excessive difficulty, is described in this paper. In this configuration individual constant resistance channel dropping units are formed of appropriate assemblies of two hybrid circuits, two band reflection filters and two quarter wavelengths of line. An assembly of N channel dropping units in cascade then forms an N channel constant resistance branching network. The mechanical and electrical characteristics of a practical five channel branching filter of this type are described. As a result of experience with this prototype filter it can be stated with some safety that these requirements can he fulfilled with a network of this type. Experimentally observed impedance, insertion loss and phase characteristics were fully satisfactory. In addition the circuit appears to be flexible enough both electrically and mechanically to fulfill the various types of systems needs which may be encountered at branch points or when channels must be added or interchanged.


1. A 38-year-old man with relapsed acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) recently received induction chemotherapy that included high-dose cytosine arabinoside. He is receiving antimicrobial prophylaxis with ciprofloxacin and fluconazole. On hospitalization, he has high fever, oral mucositis, and profound neutropenia. Soon after, he develops hypotension, rash, and acute respiratory distress syndrome. Which of the following is the most likely pathogen responsible for this patient's clinical condition? (A) Viridans streptococci (B) Pseudomonas aeruginosa (C) Candida albicans (D) Staphylococcus aureus (E) Herpes simplex virus (HSV)


Nature epidemic disease reservoir of Capillaria hepatica was investigated in Xilingule district,Inner Mongolia from 2000 to 2005.Killing trap was used to trap the rodent samples in each county to examine whether the rate is infected by C.hepatica.Results shown that nature epidemic disease reservoir of C.hepatica exist in the northern and the northeastern part of the Xilinguole district with total area of 32 932 km2 in 2004 including the township of Dongwuzhumuqinqi,Abagaqi,Xilinhot,Sunitezuoqi,and Xiwuzhumuqinqi.C.hepatica can infect all of the rodent species in this area.The distribution of the Brandt's vole apparently overlapped with that of the nature epidemic disease reservoir of C.hepatica. The value of the overlap index was 1.37. On the contrary,the distributions of the rest rodent species were not correlated with that of the C.hepatica. It implied that the Brandt's voles were the main host of the human hepatic capillariasis in this area.


The purpose of the present study was to investigate in vitro effects of prostaglandin F2 alpha (PGF2α) and metamizol on the motility of diluted bull semen during short-term storage at 4 …C. In this study, 3 healthy adult Brown-Swiss bulls, each 3 years old, were used. Semen samples were collected with an artificial vagina. Samples were taken from each bull twice a week over the course of 3 weeks (6 samples per bull). One millilitre of semen was removed from each sample for the determination of semen volume, mass activity, initial motility, sperm concentration, and abnormal sperm rate. The remainder of the semen samples of each bull were diluted to a concentration of 1:10 (semen:extender) with isotonic sodium citrate + egg yolk solution. The diluted semen samples were then divided into 12 sterile tubes of equal volume (0.5 ml). Different amounts of PGF2α (0 (PGF2α-free), 125, 250, 500, 1000, and 1500 µg) were added to 6 of these samples at 37 …C. Similarly, different amounts of metamizol (0 (metamizol- free), 125, 250, 500, 1000, and 1500 µg) were added to the other 6 samples at 37 …C. After the supplementation of PGF2α or metamizol, all semen samples were stored at 4 …C. The sperm motility of the samples was examined at 0, 1, 2, 4, 24, 48, 72, 96, 120, 144, 168, 192, and 216 h. No significant differences in spermatological characteristics were determined between the bulls. Sperm supplementation with 125 µg and 250 µg PGF2α caused a statistically significant increase (P < 0.05) in the motility of diluted semen stored at 4 …C after 24 h versus diluted PGF2α-free semen. However, the supplementation with 500 µg and 1000 µg PGF2α caused significant motility decreases after 4 h, while 1500 µg PGF2α also caused a decrease after 2 h compared to diluted PGF2α-free semen (P < 0.05). On the other hand, metamizol supplementation of 125 µg and 250 µg significantly decreased the motility of diluted semen stored at 4 …C after 48 hand 24 h, respectively, while 500 µg, 1000 µg, and 1500 µg of metamizol reduced motility after 4 h (P < 0.05) in comparison to the diluted metamizol-free semen.


Robotics technology has transformed industrial manufacturing to the extent that it is difficult nowadays to imagine a modern production line without robots. With robots being very well suited to perform repetitive routine tasks which are unpleasant or dangerous for a human to do, manufacturing a product, for example a car, just by manual labour is neither efficient nor cost effective. Furthermore, some of the tasks may require high repeatability precision which industrial robots are designed for. Despite the long list of benefits, robotic technology has not been widely spread in all industries such as in the oil and gas industry. However, this trend may now change as the world's demand for fossil fuels soars, and most of the key players of the industry are looking into methods to improve and expand the production efficiency as well as take care of arising health, safety and environmental (HSE) issues. The robotic technology has the potential to offer solutions to increase the automation of physical tasks in the field while the human operators can operate the overall integrated robotics system from a safe control room away from hazardous and unpleasant areas. This paper presents a novel approach to user interface based error recovery. The approach has been implemented and tested as part of an on-site robotics demonstrator at an onshore gas processing plant. (6 pages)


We present an extensive study of the thermal evolution of the extended defects found in ion implanted Si as a function of annealing conditions. We will first review their structure and energetics and show that the defect kinetics can be described by an Ostwald ripening process whereby the defects exchange Si atoms and evolve in size and type to minimise their formation energy. Finally, we will present a physically based model to predict the evolution of extrinsic defects during annealing through the calculation of defect densities, size distributions, number of clustered interstitials and free-interstitial supersaturation. We will show some successful applications of our model to a variety of experimental conditions and give an example of its predictive capabilities at ultra low implantation energies.


PURPOSE: A charging device, an image forming device and a charging method are provided to additionally install and use a charging application, thereby implementing various charging policies in the image forming device. CONSTITUTION: A memory unit(110) stores a platform of an image forming device. When one or more charging applications are installed, the memory unit stores the installed charging applications. A display unit(130) displays information for the charging applications stored in the memory unit. When one charging application is selected among the displayed information, an image forming unit(140) performs an image forming job. A control unit(120) performs charge corresponding to a charging policy in the selected charging application. [Reference numerals] (110) Memory unit; (120) Control unit; (130) Display unit; (140) Image forming unit


We report a patient with carcinomatous meningitis secondary to carcinoma caecum. The patient presented with multiple focal neurological signs and symptoms. Diagnosis was suggested by magnetic resonance imaging and confirmed by analysis of the cerebrospinal fluid. She received whole brain radiotherapy and other supportive measures. She succumbed to her disease while she was on treatment for carcinomatous meningitis. To our knowledge, this is only the second reported case of carcinomatous meningitis secondary to carcinoma caecum with confirmatory imaging and cytology.


Pb[(Zr1/2Ti1/2)0.7(Zn1/3Nb2/3)0.3]O3 (PZT-30PZN) powder was prepared using the columbite precursor method. The phase development of calcined powder precursors was analyzed by X-ray diffraction. Dielectric and ferroelectric properties of the as-sintered and annealed samples were measured and correlated with microstructure. The morphology evolution was determined by a scanning electron microscopy (SEM) technique. The as-sintered ceramic exhibited weak relaxor-ferroelectric behavior, with a relatively low dielectric constant maximum measured at 1 kHz (K m@1 kHz) of 14 000. Annealing resulted in a transition to normal–ferroelectric-like behavior, a shift in the dielectric maximum temperature from 310°C to 300°C, and a dramatic increase of K m@1 kHz to a maximum value of 25 100 for the longer anneal. After thermal annealing at 900°C for 1 week a strong enhancement of remanent polarization (P r ) was observed.


With corrupting myths of race, identity and tradition, nationalism has again reared its ugly head - from Lithuania to Afghanistan