In this article, the position control problem of electro-hydraulic servo systems with feedback signal transmission delay is studied. In order to improve the control accuracy of the system, a hybrid controller which combines a delay observer, a nonlinear disturbance observer and a backstepping controller is proposed. The controller has the characteristics of compensating the delay of signal transmission, restraining the uncertain disturbance of control systems and high control precision. In order to verify the stability and validity of the proposed hybrid controller, a single-degree-of-freedom electro-hydraulic shaking table is used to verify the experimental results. The experimental results show that the proposed controller has better control effects than proportional integral derivative and backstepping controller.


Some marine mammals, particularly killer whales (orcinus orca) that use sonar transmissions for communication become deaf to those frequencies when kept in captivity as a result of reflections off of the walls of their tanks [Ellis, 1982; Harrison et al., 1994]. The objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of passive methods to reduce the intensity of sounds in the 16 to 20 kHz range, the peak range broadcast by killer whales. Nitrogen was pumped into a fiberglass test tank using a system of parallel tubes with evenly spaced pores. An underwater speaker produced white noise which was recorded by a hydrophone. Recordings with and without the presence of nitrogen bubbles were compared. Though bubbles increase ambient noise in low frequencies (below 1kHz), they attenuate high frequencies by as much as 45 dB. The effects of curtain spacing will also be discussed. This is an ongoing research project funded by a grant from the Richard Stockton College.


From the standpoint of insulin therapy for diabetes mellitus, an understanding was sought as to how metabolic activities changed in response to a daily administration of insulin. In this paper adaptive responses such as changes of body weight, food intake, blood glucose and insulin concentration were observed in alloxan diabetic rats administered insulin (1I.U./100g of body weight/day) for long period. 1) Daily administration of insulin to alloxan diabetic rats brought a more significant gain in body weight (4.4g/day) during a 5 week period than that of a saline solution only (2.4g/day). 2) The administration or non-administration of insulin to alloxan diabetic rats showed no significant -difference in their food intake . 3) The effect of insulin on a high glucose level in the blood maintained only for 90 minutes after injection. 4) Endogenous immunoreactive insulin in the blood showed rather a low level in alloxan diabetic rats with insulin than those without insulin. (Received October 17, 1972)


Abstract : The report is a detailed description of the Harvard CAI Laboratory, including its history, organization, functions, staffing, programs and support. Discussed are materials relating to CAI in general, such as psychological research, modes of instruction, advantages and implementation of CAI. Reviewed also are specific projects of this facility. A complete annotation is presented of programs developed for the IBM 1400 series and S360 and the SDS 940 computer systems. Detailed in these program abstracts is such information as subject matter, target population, length of program, instructional logic, instructional language, computer, input/output devices and auxiliary equipment. (Author)


The macro-scale distribution of secondary precipitates in friction-stir-welded 2519 aluminium alloy was studied. It was found that precipitation pattern essentially varied within the stir zone in terms of volume fraction, size, and even preferential concentration of the particles, either at grain boundaries or within the grain interior. This effect was attributed to local variations in welding temperature and cooling rate, which led to complex precipitation phenomena including coarsening, dissolution, and partial reprecipitation. Specifically, the precipitation coarsening was most pronounced at the weld root due to the lowest welding temperature being in this area. On the other hand, the highest welding temperature at the upper weld surface enhanced the dissolution process. The reprecipitation phenomenon was deduced to be most prominent in the weld nugget due to the slowest cooling rate being in this microstructural region.


Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Aleppo, Aleppo, Syria; Online Research Club (https://www.onlineresearchclub.org/), Nagasaki, Japan; Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, United states; Department of Medical Laboratory Science, College of Health Sciences, University of Human Development, Sulaimani, Kurdistan, Iraq; Baxshin Research center, Baxshin Hospital, Sulaimani, Kurdistan region, Iraq; Can Tho University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Can Tho, Vietnam; School of Tropical Medicine and Global Health, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan


After the discovery of the stele of"Haotai Wang",there have been many kinds of annotations for more than 130 years, Rong Xi,Jin Yufu,Yang Boxin all carried on the complementary interpretation on defective parts of the stele,especially the complementary interpretation about the first line of the third surface,some scholars thought that was the annotations of"thinking oneseff clever","causing the human to be deceived".According to the scholars' records and the textual research of related data,we thought that three scholars' complementary interpretation based on Qi Danshan's cherished rubbings and Wang Zhixiu's poems and articles.


With the economic and social development, the demand for talents in our country grows exponentially. In the context of quality education, we should pay more attention to the quality of talent cultivation while paying attention to the number of talent cultivation. Under the new situation, the traditional teaching mode has become the fetter of teaching development. In the college English classroom, the interactive relationship between teaching and learning can exert the enthusiasm, initiative and creativity of students, which has become one of the important factors to promote the quality of English teaching. Therefore, college English teachers should adopt positive teaching methods and strategies to permeate the concept of teacher-student interactive relationship between teaching and learning to the teaching of college English, and actively promote the interaction of teachers and students in college English classroom. This article starts from the necessity of the interaction relationship between teaching and learning in college English teaching and puts forward some strategies to construct the interactive relationship between teaching and learning in college English teaching from several aspects, so as to improve college English teaching quality. Situation Analysis of Interaction between Teaching and Learning in College English Teaching The Knowledge Levels of the Teachers need to be Improved As the main body of English teaching, the knowledge level of teachers is directly related to the level of teaching quality. In English teaching in China, English teachers with high professional quality are still very scarce. The vast majority of English teachers' knowledge system is incomplete. With the progress of the times, the teaching of English should also advance with the times. What teachers need to do is guide students so that those students who are interested in English can improve their understanding of English knowledge and lay a good foundation for them to enter society. It also requires teachers to prepare the most representative cases to carry out teaching activities during lesson preparation. Teachers can also organize after-school study groups to consider some contents students are interested in as topics of discussion and organize study groups to conduct in-depth research and discussions to enhance students' interest. However, nowadays the levels English teachers in colleges and universities in our country still fail to achieve such a level, and the teacher's knowledge system needs to be further improved. The Multimedia Teaching Resources Are Scarce Computer-aided instruction originated in the United States in the 1960s, and later developed in our country. Until now, the way of computer-aided instruction is still not universal in major colleges and universities. Although China's economy develops rapidly, its investment in education is relatively small, which is specifically reflected in the extent of the use of multimedia facilities. However, there is a great difference between the use of multimedia facilities in English teaching and other disciplines. English requires not only classroom teaching but also multimedia teaching to achieve the goal of teaching. However, due to the backwardness of multimedia facilities in colleges and universities in our country, multimedia teaching has not been popularized in many teaching links. If teachers can use multimedia for teaching, the motivation and enthusiasm of student learning will be stimulated. At the same time, multimedia teaching can bring the most advanced cultural information to the classroom. Learning a foreign language does not mean to just learn the grammar and sentence patterns. The multimedia teaching can make up for such defects, which can integrate the sound, images, pictures together, making the teaching content more three-dimensional and more visual. 7th International Conference on Education and Management (ICEM 2017) Copyright © 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Advances in Economics, Business and Management Research, volume 53


is a powerful distributed processing model for large datasets. Hadoop is an open source framework and implementation of MapReduce. Hadoop distributed file system (HDFS) has become very popular to build large scale and high performance distributed data processing system. HDFS is designed mainly to handle big size files, so the processing of massive small files is a challenge in native HDFS. This paper focuses on introducing an approach to optimize the performance of processing of massive small files on HDFS. We design a new HDFS structure model which main idea is to merge the small files and write the small files at source direct into merged file. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme can improve the storage and access efficiencies of massive small files effectively on HDFS. KeywordsMapReduce, HDFS, Big data, Cluster


We present a case of multiple familial trichoepithelioma associated with milia. A 11-year-old girl had symmetrically distributed, multiple, skin-colored papules on her face, some of which were pinhead sized whitish papules. Her mother and relatives had a similar skin lesion on their face. The histological findings of these lesions showed the typical findings of trichoepithelioma and those of milia.


Even now, seventy years after publication, the significance of Becker's article "Der Islam als Problem"1 is still very difficult2 to realize completely. The article is short but it presents a historical and cultural perspective more dense in meaning than many thick volumes could be. It was an attempt to bid resolute farewell to a great number of previous conceptions about the nature of the Muslim religion, which had acquired an almost axiological status


Since the occurrence of pseudoalbuminuria after ingestion of iodoalphionic acid (Priodax)1and Monophen (2-[4-hydroxy-3,5-diiodobenzyl]-cyclohexane carboxylic acid)2was reported, another cholecystographic medium, Telepaque (3- [3- amino- 2,4,6- triiodophenyl]-2-ethylpropanoic acid), has been employed successfully. Telepaque is a solid containing 66.68% iodine, while iodoalphionic acid contains 51.5% and Monophen 52.2% iodine. Experiments with animals at the Sterling-Winthrop Research Institute have shown that Telepaque, taken orally, is eliminated mainly by the gastrointestinal tract but to some extent by the kidneys. As a fairly high incidence of pseudoalbuminuria was found after ingestion of iodoalphionic acid and Monophen,2study of Telepaque was undertaken to determine whether the small amount of this drug eliminated through the urinary tract was sufficient to cause pseudoalbuminuria. Chemical examination of the substance showed that it readily dissolved in water. When the solution was acidified, a flocculent precipitate appeared, and, when it was alkalized, the precipitate disappeared. Over 100


2089 Background: Around 5% of patients with breast cancer (BC) develop leptomeningeal metastasis (LM). Incidence of LM may increase. The aim of this study was to report the outcome of patients diagnosed with BC LM.

METHODS
96 consecutive female BC patients diagnosed with LM were prospectively followed up in our institution from 2007 to 2010. Characteristics and outcomes of patients were reported. Correlations between characteristics and overall survival (OS) were analyzed using usual statistical methods (Kaplan Meier, Log-rank, Cox).

RESULTS
Median time between BC and LM was 42,5 months. BC were invasive ductal carcinoma in 72%. Estrogen and progesterone receptors were detected in respectively 61,5 and 43% of the tumors. HER2 expression was observed in 26,5%. 24% were triple negative. At LM diagnosis, median age was 52 and median Performance Status (PS) was 2. CSF cytology and cerebrospinal MRI were positive in respectively 72% and 87%. Median time between LM diagnosis and 1st intrathecal (IT) was 3 days. 80 LM patients received IT liposomal cytarabine (ventricular device in 55%) associated with systemic treatment in 52 cases and whole brain radiotherapy in 12 cases. Clinical stabilization or improvement was observed in 46%, CSF response in 37%, MRI stabilization or improvement in 67,5%. 12 patients were staying alive. Median OS of the whole cohort and the 80 treated patients were respectively 2,8 and 3,5 months. Initial PS was the mainly variable correlated with OS (p<0,0001). Median OS of the whole cohort was 5 months in 0-2 PS patients (n=56), 24 days in 3-4 PS patients (n=40). Median OS of the treated patients was 5,6 months in 0-2 PS patients (n=50), 31 days in 3-4 PS patients (n=30). Other significant predictors of survival were: RP and triple negative status RP (p=0,01/p=0,004), time between LM diagnosis and 1st IT injection (p), systemic and IT treatment (p<0,0001/p=0,0002), radiotherapy (p=0,0076), clinical, cytological and MRI responses (p<0,0001/p=0,0366/p=0,0343).

CONCLUSIONS
Our results confirm the importance of an early diagnosis and the interest of the association of IT and systemic treatment in treating BC LM.


The article cones on one aspect of cerebral palsy court litigation, namely the ubiquitous non reassuring CTG tracing interpretation and the jurisprudential weighting allotted to it. Such litigation contributes to a massive financial drain of National Health budgets and may inflict crippling financial punishments on doctors. The author delves into a number of UK court cases, where medical malpractice is alleged to be the cause of the cerebral palsy and analyses these weightings which, overall give the impression of equivocity in such CTG weighting. Due consideration is given to the fact that the court hearing may have taken place decades after the actual birth management being analyzed, and this may have a bearing on the case e.g. decision as to prefer caesarean section or vaginal delivery in breech presentation. Two cases center around such breech delivery while a third case analysis the possibility of unconscious court misdirection by the plaintiff 's counsel, himself wrongly over-weighting the importance of a possibly non-reassuring CTG when much bigger issues were at stake. One case of clear, jurisprudential non equivocity is concluded. The author stresses that court litigation should be wary, not only of the inherent defects associated with CTG (such as the low sensitivity and high interand intra-observer error rates of interpretation), but also of the very weighting to be allotted to the CTG itself. Only then, would the role affected by CTG in cerebral palsy litigation help in the fair swing of the scales of justice.


Spectral properties of random matrices are important in various fields from Physics, Mathematics to Signal Processing and Computer Science. The typical assumption is that of independent entries (up to a symmetry class) under which the Four Moments Theorem[Tao-Vu] shows universality of Wigner Semicircle Law. In this work, we consider a model of random graphs (matrices) where a number of small (finite) subgraphs are inserted in an initially empty graph. We show that despite the fact that our model exhibits strong local dependencies the limiting spectral distribution is again the Wigner Law. Our result along with the universality of Wigner law argues against using Spectral Statistics for distinguishing network models.


One of six 2-alkylamino-4,6-dimethylnicotinamides afforded a conglomerate, and subsequent X-ray crystallographic analysis revealed that the compound crystallized in the monoclinic system, the space...


This second edition of Statistics Using Stata: An Integrative Approach continues to capitalize on the versatility and power of the Stata software package to create a course of study that links good statistical and data science practice to the analysis of real data. It also bene fi ts from to and to including psychology, health, and policy Stata provides both a menu-driven and command-line approach to the analysis of data and, in so doing, facilitates the smooth transition to a more advanced course of study in statistics.


Community question answering (CQA) sites such as Yahoo! Chiebukuro are known to be very useful resources for automatic question answering (QA) systems. However, CQA users often post questions expecting not some general truths but rather opinions of different people. We believe that a QA system should act according to these different question types. We therefore define two question types based on whether the questioner expects subjective or objective answers, and report on an automatic question classification experiment. We achieve over 80% weighted accuracy using uni-gram and bi-gram features learned by Naive Bayes with smoothing. We also discuss the inter-annotator agreement and its impact on automatic classification accuracy, as well as what kind of questions tend to be misclassified.


Ultimately, the authors find decisions about expenditure on training depends on employers' interests, values and commitments. If new policies are to be effective and build upon enterprises' commitment to training, it is critical they align with employers' needs, and receive enterprise commitment. For government, a key strategic policy goal is to improve employers' perception of the value of training to increase levels of expenditure.


T cell or T lymphocyte is a type of lymphocyte (a subtype of white blood cell) that plays a central role in cell-mediated immunity. T cells can be distinguished from other lymphocytes, such as B cells and natural killer cells, by the presence of a T-cell receptor on the cell surface. The several subsets of T cells each have a distinct function. The majority of human T cells rearrange their alpha and beta chains on the cell receptor and are termed alpha beta T cells (αβ T cells) and are part of the adaptive immune system. Specialized gamma delta T cells have invariant T cell receptors with limited diversity that can effectively present antigens to other T cells and are considered to be part of the innate immune system. T cells are often used to stimulate the immune system to destroy tumors, which was called T cell Immunotherapy. The T cells may already target tumor cells. Alternatively, they may be genetically engineered to do so. These T cells, referred to as tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL), are multiplied using high concentrations of Interleukin-2, anti-CD3 and allo-reactive feeder cells. They are then transferred back into the person along with administration of IL-2 to further boost their anti-cancer activity.

 In the present book, twelve typical literatures about T cell immunotherapy published on international authoritative journals were selected to introduce the worldwide newest progress, which contains reviews or original researches on medical science, immunology, cytology, ect. We hope this book can demonstrate advances in T cell immunotherapy as well as give references to the researchers, students and other related people.


High attack-angle vanes have been proposed as a means of maintaining sediment in suspension in rivers and streams. Laboratory and computer studies have, up to now, been unable to describe how the flow mechanism actually works in the sediment-suspension mode. A turbulent-flow tracer has been used to study model vanes in a small water channel at the University of Bristol. The sediment-suspension capabilities of such vanes becomes evident from their highly swirling non-symmetric Karman vortex-type wakes. The wake patterns have been analyzed using video recordings and frame-counting software. Using the video frame rate as a time base, Strouhal numbers and velocities in the vane wake can be extracted by following the movement of particular tracer strands.Copyright © 2002 by ASME


We propose an algorithm for the sampling of the posterior distribution in Bayesian inference problems. The algorithm builds on the Transitional Markov Chain Monte Carlo (TMCMC) method with independent MC chains following the manifold Metropolis Adjusted Langevin transition kernels (mMALA). The algorithm combines the advantages of population based sampling algorithms -- global exploration of the parameter space, parallelizability, reliable estimator of evidence -- with the advantages of Langevin diffusion based Metropolis-Hastings MCMC -- efficient exploration of local space. Here, we use a bias free version of the TMCMC algorithm, namely the BASIS algorithm. We show that the proposed sampling scheme outperforms the existing algorithm in a test case of multidimensional Gaussian mixtures and the posterior distribution of a Bayesian inference problem in an 8 dimensional pharmacodynamics model.


For minimizers in a geometrically nonlinear Cosserat model for micropolar elasticity of continua, we prove interior Holder regularity, up to isolated singular points that may be possible if the exponent $p$ from the model is $2$ or in $(\frac{32}{15},3)$. The obstacle to full continuity turns out to be the existence of certain minimizing homogeneous $p$-harmonic maps to $S^3$. For those, we slightly improve existing regularity theorems in order to achieve our result on the Cosserat model.


The paper describes a subsampling and PSK (Phase Shift Keying) based watermarking scheme which can resist the permutation attacking. In recent years, a series of subsampling based watermarking schemes have been proposed, but in 2005, Lu etc. proposed a permutation attacking algorithm which can effectively destroy this kind of subsampling based watermarking schemes. In this paper, we proposed a subsampling and PSK based watermarking scheme which can resist the permutation attacking. In our method, the watermark information is embedded into the average values of the phase of the DFT coefficients which are in the different subimages. Experimental results show that our scheme can resist the permutation attacking effectively, and it can also resist some common signal processing attacking successfully.


To test the assumption that each grass species will maintain its individual seasonal-growth trend when grown in a mixture of species, plots were established in 1952 on irrigated land at the Experimental Farm, Lethbridge, Alberta. Smooth brome grass, orchard grass, and creeping red fescue were grown alone, and in all combinations with each other and with white Dutch clover. Seasonal growth trends and yields of each species, alone and in associations, were compared for five clipping harvests in 1953 and 1954. Total yields of mixtures were also compared, and the contribution of each species was considered. Per cent protein of the separated species was determined in 1953 Competition between species in the mixtures prevented the weaker competitors from exhibiting their individual characteristics Orchard grass was the strongest competitor, bromegrass was next, and creeping red fescue was the weakest. White Dutch clover was almost completely dominated by orchard grass, and affected to a lesser degree by the othe...


This paper is a comprehensive analysis of the foreign ownership structures of U.S. multinational firms. Though the vast majority of foreign subsidiaries are ultimately wholly-owned by their U.S. parents, the way these entities are arranged within the firms' ownership structures varies considerably from simple to highly complex. The structures receive public attention because of their role in tax planning, but no academic study to date investigates the trade-offs involved in designing them jointly, or documents what the structures look like for typical firms. This paper begins to fill this gap. After establishing a basic taxonomy and a set of key facts about the structures, we look inside the black box of complex firms to investigate what forces drive internal ownership choices. We find evidence of several distinct tax motives, but also uncover a number of non-tax factors, including internal financing costs and expropriation risks.


Students volunteer service activities is an important activity Students practice the socialist core values, not only benefit students in the cultivation of personal qualities, but also conducive to building a harmonious socialist society. In this paper, the importance of volunteerism for the students' socialist core values are analyzed and studied the main ways to volunteer service as a carrier of socialist core values training, hoping to provide a useful reference for the students' socialist core values.


Using various junction space-charge techniques, annealing, and simulation, a metastable defect in 6H SiC have been characterized. We suggest a configuration coordinate diagram with three configurations, where two of them can only exist when the defect is occupied by one or more electrons. The thermal ionization energies for the different configurations were measured and the thermal barriers for two of the transitions have been determined. It is also shown that the transformation process is governed by electron capturing to the defect.


Epigenetic modification influences reprogramming and subsequent development of somatic cell nuclear transfer embryos. Such modification includes an increase of histone acetylation and a decrease of DNA methylation in transferred donor nuclei. Histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi) such as trichostatin A (TSA) and valproic acid (VPA) have been known to maintain high cellular levels of histone acetylation. Hence, the treatment of HDACi to NT embryos may increase efficiency of cloning. Indeed, TSA treatment has significantly enhanced the developmental competence of nuclear transfer embryos in several species including pigs (Zhang et al. 2007 Cloning Stem Cells 9, 357-363; Li et al. 2008 Theriogenology 70, 800-808). Valproic acid, another type of HDACi, has often been used to assist reprogramming of somatic cells into induced pluripotent stem cells in mice. In the present study, we tested the potency of VPA compared with TSA on the enhancement of in vitro development in porcine nuclear transfer embryos. Reconstructed embryos were produced by transferring nuclei of adult ear skin fibroblasts into enucleated oocytes. After electrical activation, these embryos were cultured in PZM-3 containing no HDACi (control), 5 mM VPA, or 50 nM TSA for 24 h, and another 5 days thereafter without HDACi. At least 3 replicates were conducted for the following experiments. The rates of cleavage were not different among the VPA, TSA, and control groups. However, the rate of blastocyst development was significantly higher (P < 0.05) in embryos treated with VPA than in those treated with TSA and without HDACi (125/306, 40.8% v. 94/313, 30.0% v. 80/329, 24.3%). Differential staining of inner cell mass (ICM) and trophectoderm (TE) also supported the beneficial effect of VPA treatment in NT embryos. Compared with the control group, the number of TE cells was significantly increased (P < 0.05) in the VPA and TSA treatment groups (79.3 ± 7.4 v. 74.6 ± 9.2 v. 40.0 ± 6.7). Moreover, VPA treatment significantly increased (P < 0.05) the number of ICM cells compared with the control (15.6 ± 1.7 v. 10.8 ± 2.6), whereas no differences were observed between the TSA treatment and control group (12.9 ± 3.0 v. 10.8 ± 2.6). The present study demonstrates that VPA enhances in vitro development of nuclear transfer embryos, in particular by an increase of blastocyst formation and the number of ICM cells, suggesting that VPA may be more potent than TSA in supporting developmental competence of cloned embryos. However, long-term effects of different HDACi in the development of nuclear transfer embryos, including any adverse outcome from destabilizing epigenetic condition, remain to be determined by further in vivo embryo transfer studies.


A 12-year-old boy presented to Medical Department with aphasia since birth and left lateral rectus palsy for fiveyears. His MRI brain revealed bilateral frontal and lacunar infarcts. A coagulation screen was carried out which showedraised homocysteine levels in the blood. Subsequent urinary homocysteine levels were also raised. He was diagnosedas a case of homocystinuria. He was started on folic acid and vitamin B6 therapy and called for follow up after 4 weeks.


Abstract : The objective of the Navy Laboratory Interactive Graphics Study (nligs) was to define the interactive graphics needs of the Navy laboratories in the present and in the future. In this study, interactive graphics refers to the minicomputer-based turnkey interactive graphics systems (MTIGSs). The seven Navy laboratories formally requested a total of 110 work stations under NLIGS. The application areas are documentation and drafting, mechanical design and layout, integrated circuit design, design and fabrication of printed circuit boards, and tape preparation for numerical control machines. The recommendations of the NLIGS are that $10M in funds be identified over a 2-fiscal-year period to procure a Navy laboratory MTIGS, that a support organization be established to increase overall system productivity, that a productive study be initiated to develop the methods of monitoring system productivity, that each Navy laboratory submit an interactive graphics implementation plan, and that a national graphics information interchange standard be pursued. (Author)


With the advanced in communications technology and the popularization of cloud computing, the IoT developments, designs and applications will be widely used in our life to make it easier and more convenient. Currently, the development of IoT is an open issue, integrating its horizontal and vertical applications into our daily life via the ubiquitous wireless sensors and integrated cloud computing services, thus making the communication between humans and the world of things more intelligent. These applications could be highly diversified, covering such issues as Healthcare, Smart City, Smart Home, Smart metering, Smart mobility and Smart Energy and designed to meet the needs of different services. This will be a technological paradigm and ideal human life scenario in the future. This huge variety of applications thus calls for a reasonable and efficient framework for its management platform to provide the services corresponding to each application. This paper proposes a token-oriented based framework for the management platform featuring the classification of services and authority management, namely a token-oriented based structure for the various applications to facilitate the coordination between IoT and cloud computing, so that their services could be more elastic and reliable.


This illustrated chapter describes the role of research in typography and graphic communication and in information design, that is relevant to the design and use of materials for children's reading. By 'design' in this context we mean 'typography' (which is the visual organisation of type and pictures on paper or screen), and 'process' (the ways in which design is developed in order to make sure that what is designed works for its intended reader group). We summarise issues that designers consider when they are producing reading materials for beginning and emerging readers, including the constraints imposed by technology. We suggest ways of engaging with users of e-books so that their needs can be considered. We conclude by summarising the typographic parameters that are likely to benefit children's reading.


We develop a mathematical model describing the dynamics of trust relationships among multiple entities. Those entities may represent individuals, businesses, or political organizations, or a combination of these. We model all reciprocal trust relationships, including self-trust (or internal trust), and examine the interaction of eight primary factors: actual performance, expected performance, variation in both actual and expected performance, tolerance thresholds, cooling period after performance failure, relational influence among organizations, and leadership clout. Exercising the model, we find that each of these factors may have a different impact on the trust dynamics of the system as a whole. Some of the factors lead to system stability and others to system breakdown. Cycles of trust and distrust are observed. These results may have some implications for business and governmental organizations, and we outline some areas of future research that might further advance our understanding of these dynamics.


The utility model relates to packing plastic bottle field, aims to provide a kind of lightweight Packaging Bottle embryo bottom structure.This kind of lightweight Packaging Bottle embryo bottom structure adopts at the bottom of olive, interior outside at the bottom of olive is all formed by three sections of circular arcs and is smoothly connected, first paragraph circular arc is for completing from the bottle wall thickness even variation to bottle embryo body at the bottom of bottle embryo, the bottle wall thickness of second segment circular arc and the 3rd section of circular arc is the bottle wall thickness at the bottom of bottle embryo, and the bottle wall thickness at the bottom of bottle embryo is 0.8 ~ 0.85 with the ratio of the bottle wall thickness of bottle embryo body, the bottle wall thickness of bottle embryo body is consistent.The utility model, by the shape bottom change bottle embryo, improves the plastics distribution of bottle, and is conducive to the adjustment of blowing technology, again reduce weight simultaneously, save raw MAT'L, reduce the packing cost of product.


Watson's finest qualities an ability to absorb, and in the same gesture nuance, received critical opinion, for instance: 'While the Parisian department store has received much scholarly attention of late, the trajectory of the bibelot requires taking into consideration the more archaic market forms which coexist with the department store, forms which are not wiped out as quickly as Zola implies in (...) All bonheur des dames' (p. 13). Having positioned her analysis in the light of Bourget's interpretation of the bibelot, she goes on to invoke Bourdieu's notion of the 'logic of practice'. This 'lends itself beautifully to the literary &dquo;uses of uncertainty&dquo;' (p. 28), not least to make a distinction


This chapter examines the experiences of four native English-speaking preservice teachers in a faculty-led study abroad program in South Korea. It elucidates the ways in which these preservice teachers experienced personal and professional growth with an increasing critical awareness of the power imbalance embedded in English language teaching in the global context. Data were collected via students' weekly online discussion posts, electronic portfolio artifacts, and focus group interviews. Findings indicate personal and professional growth in participants' self-perceptions as a result of at least two fundamental aspects of the program: 1) the intentionality with which participants were exposed to a critique of English language teaching in the Korean context and 2) the residential nature of the experience, which provided intensive peer collaboration among practicum participants. The chapter concludes with recommendations for implementing a TESOL practicum abroad as a meaningful and consciousness-raising opportunity for preservice teachers' professional development. Taking the TESOL Practicum Abroad: Opportunities for Critical Awareness and Community-Building among Preservice Teachers


Although intramolecular agostic interactions between transition-metal centers and pendant C-H bonds are well-characterized, there is less evidence for the coordination of free hydrocarbon C-H bonds to transition-metal moieties. Such complexes of alkanes are of great importance due to the intense current interst in homogeneous alkane activation reactions. The authors present evidence for an intermediate methane complex in the reductive elimination of methane from a rhenium methyl hydride.


The fluorescent anion receptor 7 based on a quinoline backbone and on amide and urea side chains is prepared and fluorescence titrations in chloroform reveal a high affinity for fluoride (K a =14400 M - 1 ) over chloride (K a =3100 M - 1 ) and bromide (K a =640 M - 1 ).


: Event-based cameras are a recent non-conventional sensor which offer a new movement perception with low latency, high power efficiency, high dynamic range and high-temporal resolution. However, event data is asynchronous and sparse thus standard machine learning and deep learning tools are not optimal for this data format. A first step of event-based processing often consists in generating image-like representations from events, such as time-surfaces. Such event representations are proposed with specific applications. These event representations and learning algorithms are most often evaluated together. Furthermore, these methods are often evaluated in a non-rigorous way (i.e. by performing the validation on the testing set). We propose a generic event representation for multiple applications: a trainable extension of Speed Invariant Time Surface, coined VK-SITS. This speed and spatial-invariant framework is computationally fast and GPU-friendly. A second contribution is a new benchmark based on 10-Fold cross-validation to better evaluate event-based representation of DVS128 Gesture and N-Caltech101 recognition datasets. Our VK-SITS event-based representation improves recognition performance of state-of-art methods.


From this point of bidders' parallel collusion,this paper studies the second - price sealed bidding optimal public pricing strategy.First,this paper gives the bidding price and the profit distribution mechanism of the conspiracy alliance. Second,this paper analyzes how the presence of conspiracy alliance affects the bidding strategies and the expected profit,and reveals the relationship between the number of collusion and the total revenue.Finally,this paper obtains the relationship between the number of collusion members and the optimal public reserve price,and points out that the tenders should prevent collusion by reducing the public reserve price.


From the perspective of contract enforcement and financial conversion, we can find that China's financial deepening is suffering from the lack of trust and high cost of financial conversion. The two indices, θ and Ψ, show that there are still some disadvantages in China's financial deepening, which have led to the loss of national welfare, the inefficiency of economic growth and conversion between savings and investment, etc.. The process of China's financial deepening will be accelerated if contract enforcement is promoted by institutional construction and financial conversion cost is cut down by financial innovation.


We use Owen's (1988, 1990) empirical likelihood method in upgraded mixture models. Two groups of independent observations are available. One is z1, ..., zn which is observed directly from a distribution F(z). The other one is x1, ..., xm which is observed indirectly from F(z), where the xis have density ∫p(x|z) dF(z) and p(x|z) is a conditional density function. We are interested in testing H0: p(x|z) = p(x|z; θ), for some specified smooth density function. A semiparametric likelihood ratio based statistic is proposed and it is shown that it converges to a chi‐squared distribution. This is a simple method for doing goodness of fit tests, especially when x is a discrete variable with finitely many values. In addition, we discuss estimation of θ and F(z) when H0 is true. The connection between upgraded mixture models and general estimating equations is pointed out.


In this paper we introduce results of clinical-psychopathological and neurological investigation of 179 children with congenital heart disease. We have identified risk factors of development of mental disorders the leading ones of which are pre-, perinatal impairing factors leading to early organic impairment of central nervous system. Presence of severe hemodynamic disturbances and hypoxemias worsens cerebral organic failure, contributes to formation and complication with the age of organic cognitive and asthenic disorders.


Objective: To elucidate the possible relation between mitochondrial gene expression and placental dysfunction. Methods: We measured the activity of cytochrome c oxidase and the expression of cytochrome oxidase subunit I in mitochondria from human placentas of women whose gestations were appropriate for gestational age (AGA) and those with preeclampsia. In addition, the amounts of normal mtDNA and deleted mitochondrial DNA were examined in the two groups by Southern blot analysis and polymerase chain reaction, respectively. Results: Cytochrome c oxidase activity and expression of cytochrome oxidase subunit I were significantly lower in the preeclamptic group than in the AGA group. There were no differences between the groups in the amounts of mitochondrial DNA. In addition, no mutant mitochondrial DNA with a 4977-base pair deletion was detected in the two groups. Conclusion: These results suggest that reduced expression of the mitochondrial gene is involved in placental dysfunction in preeclamptic pregnancy.


Hard disk drives have evolved rapidly with computer miniaturization into highly compact and integrated electromechanical systems. Hard drives contain many precision mechanical parts which may prove useful in the design of small precision robots. The advantages of parts taken from hard disks include low cost, miniaturization, high quality, and for some applications, cleanliness. We report the results of engineering tests on flat coil head positioning actuators taken from hard drives of sizes ranging from 5.25' to 1.8' media diameter. We also perform a simple analysis which suggests that requirements for torque per unit mass are lower for small robot arms. The results suggest ways that hard disk actuators can be utilized in mini robotic designs and points the way towards improved versions of these designs for robotic purposes.


The female of the cicada species 'Popplepsalta aeroides' Owen and Moulds is described. Features which differentiate 'P. aeroides' from 'P. rubristrigata' (Goding and Froggatt) are included.


Abstract:Researchers posit that many students attending under-resourced schools often lack the opportunity to learn essential skills to handle the academic demands of studying at the postsecondary level. The lack of and access to science resources contributes to the deficit in knowledge and skills of incoming freshman Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) majors at postsecondary institutions. Given the longstanding legacy of discrimination and oppression experienced by African American youth, it is important to examine the ways the pandemic may deepen the existing educational debt. This exploratory case study aims to provide a pathway for understanding the impact of interventions on STEM retention in postsecondary institutions that address deficits resulting from disruptions in K–12 and alternative pedagogical practices that emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic.


Ecological and biological sciences rely on the characterisation of populations of interacting individuals. Random walks are standard in modelling the stochastic nature of individual movement, growth and death. Due to the computationally burdensome task of stochastic simulation, it is routine to employ mean-field assumptions to derive approximate continuum limit descriptions of these kinds of stochastic models. Bayesian parameter inference is especially prohibitive for random walks since expensive likelihood-free methods are required. Conversely, the approximate continuum limit description yields a closed-form likelihood. However, for parameter regimes where the mean-field approximation is inaccurate, statistical inferences are biased. We propose that, despite this bias, the approximate continuum limit may still be exploited to accelerate Bayesian inference for expensive random walk models. Specifically, we extend sequential Monte Carlo sampling algorithms for approximate Bayesian computation. Our methods utilise samples from the continuum limit posterior as a precondtioner to inform efficient sampling from the target posterior for the random walk model. The resulting methods are demostrated to be effective at significantly reducing the number of expensive stochastic simulations while maintaining accuracy in parameter and uncertainty estimates.


Aim: to identify the influence of touching in the process of caring for children with special needs in the perception health professionals. Method: the sample consisted of eight professionals of the Integration Center for Children with Special Needs in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul. Results: the content analysis arose the following categories: perceptions of caregivers with regards the influence of touch as a communication tool between the special child and the professional; the perception of the caregivers regarding the influence of touch on the welfare of the child and the perception of the caregiver regarding the influence of touch on the rehabilitation of the special child. Conclusions: the results showed that touch is a tool that influences the well-being of children and is portrayed by being a communication tool that approach the professionals into the children, enabling the creation of a positive bond and favoring the rehabilitation.


The globally nomadic Reconceptualising Early Childhood Education (RECE) Conference affords scholars from around the globe regular opportunities to come together in diverse geographical locations and cultural contexts with an overall common purpose to "challenge and dismantle traditional assumptions about childhood and theory and/or feature new directions in research, policy and practice in early childhood education and care (ECEC)" (RECE 2014, 2015, 2016 Call for Proposals, p.1).  Conferencing in a diversity of global settings also provides the local researchers, practitioners, and critically minded early childhood education community members access to presentations, provocations, and an expanding reconceptualist conversation and community that may otherwise be limited or completely unattainable on this international scale. We are excited to share this body of work from these post-graduate students from Aotearoa New Zealand.


© 2020 ARTMargins and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology https://doi:.org/10.1162/artm_e_00269 We, the editors of ARTMargins, wish to express our solidarity with the antiracist protests taking place around the world, triggered by the killings of African Americans by police in the United States. We stand alongside our Black colleagues and students fi ghting against white supremacy and racial inequality, and we support the ongoing mass movements demanding racial justice and concrete social change from within the public health uncertainty of a global pandemic. We take the opportunity to restate here, forcefully and unequivocally, that Black Lives Matter. • • •


The purpose of this study is to analyze the readiness of the potential economy at the developmental areas in West Bogor and to formulate a developmental economy strategy to actualize in the implementation of autonomy development. In general, the result showed that the western region of Bogor has an economic potential that can be developed, therefore it can be made as one of the main factors in the recommendation to become an autonomous district. Western Bogor region has a few growth centers to draw the growth of the region. Growth and service centers are still accumulating in urban areas resulting in a gap caused by the intensity of linkages between urban areas and rural areas in which are relatively limited.The selected strategy priorities are: (1) the development of industries that support the agricultural aspect (agro-industry) as an effort to optimize the utilization and managingsustainable natural resources by utilizing the potentials Bogor Regency has (economic conditions, government policies Bogor Regency, geographical location) as well as cooperation with private sector / other, (2) Finding and promoting the image of commodity and regional superior products that provide value-added (GDP and PAD) for the local community using the criteria of potential value-added direct a commodity / product for poor families, and (3) creating a conducive business climate to support local capacity building by expanding the local tax base and expand the productive sectors of the economy of the people.Implications of policy directed as social, cultural, political, institutional, or spatial aspects of the development budget and policy. Furthermore, the basic sector analysis should be done at sub-district unit so that it can be seen a leading sector per district based on income (GDP) per district.Keywords: Growth and service centers, local economic potential, regional development.


This article proposes a multi-agent simulation model to examine how different operational environments and incentive mechanisms affect the collective performance of complex humanitarian response systems. Using the UN Humanitarian Response Depot (UNHRD) system as an example, a stylized model of one service provider, two member organizations and multiple humanitarian crises is developed to illustrate the changing uses of four alternative relief goods sourcing options, namely: i) own storage for own items ii) UN storage for own items iii) stock-swaps and iv) white stock uses. Under the plausible assumption that the past success of sourcing options influences member organizations' future resource allocation, the model indicates that the additional buffer stock capacity offered by horizontal cooperation induces undesirable system dependency: while it gives member organizations more flexibility to meet highly stochastic demands under uncertainty, it also encourage them to store less of their own relief goods as a result. This tendency was particularly notable under a flexible budgeting regime, highlighting the further need to understand and evaluate the details of the decision-making heuristics of individual member organizations.


Although cryptocurrencies have garnered enormous public attention in recent times, extensive fluctuations in their prices have deterred prospective investors. Due to the
 absence of a centralized valuation authority, the credibility of cryptocurrencies as a viable investment vehicle remains elusive. Building on attention theory, this study posits that prospective investors of cryptocurrencies are likely to search online for information before deciding whether to make a commitment. We hence investigate the effects of Google search on the return and risk of 268 cryptocurrencies over 181 trading days.
 Results indicate that the Google Search Volume Index (SVI) of a given cryptocurrency
 exerts significant and positive impact on its price and turnover.


The transformation of innovative research ideas to production systems is highly dependent on the capability of performing realistic and reproducible network experiments. In this work, we present a hybrid testbed to advocate high fidelity and reproducible networking experiments, which consists of network emulators, a distributed control environment, physical switches, and end-hosts. The testbed (1) offers functional fidelity through unmodified code execution on an emulated network, (2) supports large-scale network experiments using lightweight OS-level virtualization techniques and capable of running across distributed physical machines, (3) provides the topology flexibility, and (4) enhances the repeatability and reproducibility of network experiments. We validate the fidelity of our hybrid testbed through extensive experiments under different network conditions and compare the results with the benchmark data collected on physical devices. We also use the testbed to reproduce key results from published network experiments, such as Hedera, a scalable and adaptive network traffic flow scheduling system.


In this paper, we develop the approach proposed by N.V. Logvin to consider a region (economic analysis) as a meso-social-economic system.


Abstract The increasing institutionalization of environmental movement organizations (EMOs) across Europe has given them improved political access and increased resources but it has created new problems for EMOs and their interlocutors alike. As constructive contacts have developed with more powerful actors, official and corporate, so relations between EMOs and activists have become increasingly problematic. Frustration at the increased moderation and caution of established EMOs contributes to organizational and tactical innovation among activists. This and the anxiety of EMOs to respond to the popularity of the radical direct action of environmental activists such as anti‐roads protesters has in turn made problematic the reliability of EMOs in the eyes of those responsible for the formulation and implementation of policy. This article outlines the rationale for the major EC‐funded cross‐national study of the transformation of environmental activism (TEA) which commenced in March 1998.


This paper presents a new method of frequency characteristic measurement for ac drives connected to a dc trolley-wire. The input part of a drive is composed of an input LC filter. The LC filter is a naturally almost undamped circuit and any change in the circuit (e.g. voltage drop or constant power taken from the circuit) causes dangerous capacitor voltage oscillations. This method helps to find dangerous resonant frequencies of the whole traction drive and it allows finding possible danger oscillations of the dc-link voltage appearing due the motor drive operation. Furthermore a method for dc-link capacitor voltage stabilization has been designed and employed in the permanent magnet synchronous motor drive. The stabilization effect of this method is verified in a using the direct torque control of the permanent magnet synchronous motor by simulations as well as by experimental evidence at a laboratory prototype of the traction drive with rated power 10 kW using the frequency characteristic measurement.


In order to improve students' abilities to handle clinical problems,a model of discussion-based clinical teaching was established and compared with traditional clinical teaching.The teaching effects of the new clinical teaching mode were evaluated comprehensively in three aspects: the students' subjective evaluation,the teaching supervisors' subjective evaluation and evaluation of the students' test results.


This book is about the exhaustion of fossil fuels and the disposal of toxic waste. It is about global warming and rainforest depletion too even though Bruno Latour never says a word specifically about these environ mental controversies. His agenda is to provide a new philosophical founda tion for 'political ecology'. The project is surely ontological, as Latour dispenses with such useless distinctions as things versus humans. It is also epistemological, as Latour knocks scientists off their pedestals as privileged purveyors of truth. The narrow academic world of Science and Technology Studies (STS) which Latour has done so much to cultivate is presented here as the foundation on which the survival of the planet precariously rests. He asks nothing less than this: can we ever figure out how to live together in one common world? Politics of Nature is fresh and programmatic, extending in new direc tions themes explored sometimes cryptically in We Have Never Been Modern (Latour, 1993). The book will disappoint those looking for an empirically grounded analysis. Unlike Aramis (Latour, 1996) or The Pasteurization of France (Latour, 1988), 'data' in Politics of Nature come in the form of aper?us, asides, and casual readings of the global media. Predictably, the book is full of schematics designed to show how science and politics must be ripped out of their comfortable interpretations and reorganized into new boxes and ovals for greater potency. Latour hopes to rescue democracy by escaping from the modernist illusions that have made it impossible. He returns readers to Plato's allegory of the cave. Inside the cave is darkness here is society, with its


The paper presents methodological bases for designing object-oriented processes as applied to industrial design via the targeted activity and system approach to make production efficient for the petroleum industry. Possibilities of introducing scientific advancements into practice have been overviewed.


Purpose: the article is aimed at studying the present state and current trends in RD providing tax reliefs; regionalization and clusterization; support of SMEs; development of universities' research potential; stimulating cooperation between research institutions, just as between research institutions and industrial firms. Among crucial trends of change there were: RD state research institutes' RD attempts to copy some US innovation development experience. It was shown that the reforms implemented, though get some increase of R&D activity of commercial firms, are not effective enough, according to some experts, because of bureaucratization and sometimes come down to creation of new bureaucratic institutions or their merging.


Amphiphilic block copolymer PSt-b-PAA was synthesized by means of the atom transfer polymerization(ATRP).Polymerization was confirmed by means of 1H NMR and GPC,and the structure of the block copolymers were characterized.Amphiphilic block copolymers was in ionic liquid 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate() form the micellar solution.The formation of polymer micelles in ionic liquid was observed with transmission electron microscopy(TEM).When the hydrophobic chain length was fixed,the shape of micelle self-assembly mainly depended on the length of hydrophilic chain.Amphiphilic copolymers in ionic liquids can self-assemble into micelles can be controlled structure,and such micelles can be applied in many fields.


A C‐linked isostere of β‐D‐galactosylated hydroxynorvaline has been prepared in eight steps from per‐O‐benzylated galactopyranolactone. Addition of a homoallylic Grignard reagent to the lactone, reduction of the resulting hemiacetal with triethylsilane, and a Wittig reaction with Garner's aldehyde were key steps in this synthesis. The C‐linked building block was then incorporated at position 264 into the fragment CII(256–270) from type II collagen by solid‐phase synthesis using a combination of the tert‐butoxycarbonyl (Boc) and 9‐fluorenylmethoxycarbonyl (Fmoc) protective group strategies. Deprotection of the benzylated C‐linked galactosyl moiety was achieved simultaneously with cleavage of the glycopeptide from the solid phase by using triethylsilyl trifluoromethanesulfonate in TFA. Helper T‐cell hybridomas obtained in a mouse model for rheumatoid arthritis responded to the C‐linked glycopeptide when presented by class II MHC molecules. However, 10‐ to 20‐fold higher concentrations were required as compared to when O‐linked β‐D‐galactosylated hydroxynorvaline or hydroxylysine (Hyl) were present at position 264 of CII(256–270). Thus, replacement of a single oxygen atom by a methylene group in the carbohydrate moiety of a glycopeptide antigen had a substantial influence on the T‐cell response. This reveals that T cells are able to recognize the carbohydrate moiety of glycopeptide antigens with high specificity. Finally, the results suggest that structural modifications of β‐D‐Gal‐Hyl264 in CII(256–270) may give altered peptide ligands that can be used for induction of tolerance in autoimmune rheumatoid arthritis.


The phonon dispersion curve of SmS under pressure was studied by inelastic x-ray scattering around the pressure-induced valence transition. A significant softening of the longitudinal acoustic modes propagating along the [111] direction was observed spanning a wide $q$ region from ($\frac{2\pi}{3a},\frac{2\pi}{3a},\frac{2\pi}{3a}$) up to the zone boundary as SmS becomes metallic. The largest softening occurs at the zone boundary and stays stable up to the highest measured pressure of 80 kbar while a gradual hardening of the low $q$ modes simultaneously appears. This phonon spectrum indicates favorable conditions for the emergence of pressure-induced superconductivity in SmS.


Abstract Purpose To explore professionals' and service users' experiences and perceptions of interprofessional collaboration and coordination for service users with complex and severe mental health issues. Design and Methods A qualitative study involving semi‐structured interviews of professionals and individual interviews of service users. Data were analyzed by thematic analysis. Findings Participants described challenges and suggested improvements concerning Distribution of roles, responsibilities, and tasks; Communication; and Knowledge and attitudes. Practice Implications Mental health nurses and other professional helpers should have a particular focus on common aims, clear division of roles, planning and timing of interventions, and communication with other professionals and service users.


Treatment of Secondary Syphilis by the Hypodermic Injection of Corrosive Sublimate.?Dr. Lewin, after disposing of the non-mercurial treatment of syphilis as little better than a crotchet, proceeds to show that, of all means of employing mercury, that illustrated in this paper is the best. lie has employed it for more than two years at the Berlin Charite; and both he, his colleagues, and his patients,


In case when fire resistance of a steel frame is verified in seismic regions, it is important to understand effect of seismic design on fire resistant design, to improve both seismic and fire resistant performance. The main purpose of this paper is to clarify relationships between an input amount of fire proofing material and a seismic structural resistant margin, which is given by a quotient of horizontal load-bearing capacity divided by required horizontal load-bearing capacity of the steel frame. To estimate minimum value of the required fire proofing material volume, genetic algorithm (GA) analyses are conducted. From minute investigation of the parametric numerical results, it was clarified that the fire proofing material volume can be reduced in the case of steel frame with the large seismic structural resistant margin, because the redundant seismic frames have the high collapse temperatures and large thermal capacity of the large cross-sectional area members.


The French Caribbean society is an amalgam and a mosaic of racial groups and peoples that originated from Europe, Asia, Africa and, of course, from some other parts of the world. It is, therefore, normal that such racial groups find it extremely difficult to integrate and act as one people who have the same destiny. This is made worse by the fact that even the blacks, who constitute the most deprived set of people in the Caribbean Islands, can hardly come together to fight a common cause simply because they lack a collective memory about their past. Many intellectuals, writers, philosophers, poets such as Aime, Cesaire, Edouard Glissant, Leonard Sainville, Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphael Confiant, Maryse Conde from these Islands have been trying, in their various ways, to reconstruct the African past of their people as a means of making them chart a new course in their effort to develop their islands economically, socially, politically and culturally. Maryse Conde is one writer who feels that this can be made possible by making the people know about Africa. Through such knowledge, they would be able to develop a collective memory and, thus, be better placed to solve problems of anguish and alienation that confront them in their society. This paper tries to capture this state of affairs in Maryse Conde's numerous works. But to be more precise it restricts itself to Segou , her historical novel par excellence . Key Words: Caribbean society, amalgam, racial groups, history, collective memory. Global Jnl of Humanities Vol.2(1&2) 2003: 45-50


The purpose of the Science and Technology Implementation of Nata de Coco Business Owners is toincrease the income of the Nata de Coco business owners through education and training on productprocessing as well as on the management of their business. The idea of implementing science andtechnology for Nata de Coco entrepreneurs stemmed from the fact that nata de coco entrepreneurs weregenerally less skilled in processing nata de coco products. The products were less hygienic and were not marketed under their own trademark. The specific target in IbM's activities was the increasing income of the nata de coco businessmen. The method used to achieve this goal was a collaborative method throughvarious trainings, intensive facilitation, hands-on practice, monitoring and evaluation. The outcome ofIbM's program was the production of nata de coco's distinctive, varied, hygienic, and delicious productsso that the sales turnover and the nata de coco craftsmen income continue to increase.


The equations of motion describing all physical systems, except gravity, remain invariant if a constant is added to the Lagrangian. In the conventional approach, gravitational theories break this symmetry exhibited by all other physical systems. Restoring this symmetry to gravity and demanding that gravitational field equations should also remain invariant under the addition of a constant to a Lagrangian, leads to the interpretation of gravity as the thermodynamic limit of the kinetic theory of atoms of space. This approach selects, in a very natural fashion, Einstein's general relativity in $d=4$. Developing this paradigm at a deeper level, one can obtain the distribution function for the atoms of space and connect it up with the thermodynamic description of spacetime. This extension relies on a curious fact that the quantum spacetime endows each event with a finite area but zero volume. This approach allows us determine the numerical value of the cosmological constant and suggests a new perspective on cosmology.


Differentially expressed genes between rice male sterility mutant ws-3-1,induced by space flight,and Texianzhan 13,it's original indica rice variety,at the meiotic stage were analyzed by cDNA suppression subtractive hybridization(SSH).Forward-and reverse-subtractive libraries were constructed by using cDNAs from Texianzhan13 or ws-3-1 as tester.By using library screening with Southern blotting,109 and 104 positive clones with different transcriptional abundance between Texianzhan13 and ws-3-1 were selected from the forward-or reverse-subtractive libraries respectively.Northern blotting analysis was performed to compare the transcription level between ws-3-1 and Texianzhan13,and difference in expression abundance was found in five cDNA clones.The differences in the expression of these genes and their relationship with male sterility were discussed.


are often seen and make interpretation more difficult. Some are not understood on the basis of physiology and clinical implication. For others, no pathological substrate or epileptic condition explains these patterns. Background activity refers to the EEG rhythm corresponding to the patient's age and state of consciousness. The alpha rhythm is in the range of 8 to 12 Hertz (Hz), has a sinusoidal waveform, blocks with eye opening and alertness and is usually pronounced in posterior regions1. In 1947, Goodwin first called attention to a slow alpha variant rhythm, which predominates in the occipital and adjacent posterior areas2. Ten percent of normal subjects' EEG contained alpha variant rhythm. Another source reported it in 0.8% of asymptomatic people3. When it has once been observed, it may be expected to reappear more or less regularly in EEG recordings. Alpha variant can be fast, corresponding to twice the usual alpha frequency, or slow. The slow alpha variant has a frequency half of the alpha rhythm, usually in the range of 4-5 Hz. It is the definition of a harmonic pattern4. It could be, but not invariably, synchronous and symmetrical. The notched appearance waveforms can be more or less continuous while alternating with the regular alpha activity, or even paroxysmal. They often show a strong blocking to eyes opening and, as a rule to photic stimulation, being replaced by a driving effect. It is thought to represent a physiological variation of the basic cortical rhythm. According to Goodwin, in a few cases, the alpha variant rhythm ratio was 3 to 1 and on rare occasions 4 to 1 compared to the basic rhythm2. However, he did not provide any EEG sample and that has never been reported thereafter to our knowledge. We therefore present the first EEG sample of a rhythm showing the usual pattern of the slow alpha variant, but with a rhythm ratio of 1 to 3.


The use of learning media is one of the efforts that can be used by teachers to increase students' learning motivation. One of the learning media that can be used is video-based learning media. This study aims to determine the effectiveness of video-based learning media on the learning motivation of class X students of SMA Negeri 3 Samarinda. The subjects in this study were students of class X A as the experimental class and XE as the control class. The type of research used is experimental research with posttest only control group design. Based on the results of the study, it was found that video-based learning media had an effect on the learning motivation of class X students at SMA Negeri 3 Samarinda. This can be seen from the results of the posttest and the results of observations as supporting data. The difference in posttest scores in the experimental class was superior when compared to the control class. The test used in this study is the Mann Whitney test as an alternative to test the research hypothesis and it can be concluded that H0 is rejected or Ha is accepted, which means that video-based learning media is effective on the learning motivation of class X students at SMA Negeri 3 Samarinda.


Considering the lack of chemical control about the prevention and cure of insects in the field,for improving the effect of the prevention and cure with the combination of computer vision and biological control.Local features techniques,which measure the similarity of the different objects in interest-points space with Euclidean distance by extracting interest points of objects,are introduced to recognition of insects according to the recognition of the natural enemies of Aphis Gossypii Glover.Two methods of local features technique based on SIFT(scale invariant feature transform) and SURF(speeded up robust features) are discussed,and the experimental result show that the method based on SURF is more efficient,faster and well robust.


A 31-years-old white male presented with progressive right-sided chest pain and hemoptysis for 2 weeks. Physical exam revealed reduced breath sounds in the right lower lobe. Computed tomography (CT) scan of the chest demonstrated a 5.8 3 4.9 3 4.5 cm bulky right subcarinal paraesophageal posterior mediastinal mass engulfing the bronchus intermedius and extending through the pulmonary vein into the body of the left atrium. Positron emission tomography scan demonstrated intense fluorodeoxyglucose activity in the mass suggesting malignancy. Abdominal and pelvic CT showed no metastasis or lymph nodes. A CT-guided biopsy was suggestive of basaloid lung carcinoma though thymic carcinoma could not be ruled out. EUS revealed a 4.0 3 4.8 cm mass abutting the left atrium along with a 1.8 3 2.5 cm intra-atrial thrombus (Fig. 1). A subcarinal lymph node measuring 3.0 3 1.8 cm was also seen. EUS-FNA cytology of the subcarinal lymph node revealed lymphocytes and CAM5.2, CD5-positive neoplastic cells. The patient underwent induction chemotherapy followed by right thoracotomy with resection of paraesophageal mass, complete thoracic lymphadenectomy, right lower lobectomy, and partial left atriaectomy with subsequent reconstruction of left atrium with myocardial patch. Biopsy from resected tissue showed a lobulated epithelial tumor involving the lung and myocardium (Figs. 2a and b). Most of the tumor exhibited a basaloid histology with foci and small nests of keratinization reminiscent of Hassal's corpuscles and had lymphocytic infiltration. Immunoperoxidase stains were positive for cytokeratin (Fig. 2c) and p63 but negative for CD5, CD57, CD117, CD20, CD45, TTF-1, CAE, CEA, S-100, chromogranin, NSE, and CAM5.2. Pathologic examination was consistent with thymic carcinoma. He subsequently underwent concurrent chemoradiotherapy though chemotherapy had to be discontinued halfway through the treatment course due to increased toxicity. He had complete relief of symptoms and was leading an active life at the time of last follow-up 2 years after treatment. Follow-up CT scans were negative for metastatic disease.


Lipid-lowering treatments (LLTs) require both adherence and persistence to the treatment regimen long-term to maximise treatment benefits. Small molecules require self-medication daily but therapies such as evolocumab are labelled for self-medication every 2 weeks or monthly. Limited data exist concerning the long-term persistence to evolocumab in routine clinical practice.

 Using data from the HEYMANS registry, the objective of this analysis was to evaluate persistence and discontinuation of evolocumab in Europe.

 HEYMANS was a prospective registry including adults initiating evolocumab treatment in routine clinical practice in 12 European countries between August 2015 and June 2020. Originally designed to have up to 12 months of follow-up, the protocol was amended (February 2018) to extend follow-up for up to 30 months. Patients yet to complete 12 months follow-up at this date, were followed up for up to 30 months. Therefore, we analysed evolocumab discontinuation separately for the two time periods: 0–12 months (all), 12–30 months (subset).

 Of the 1951 total patients, 30 patients discontinued participation in the study before 12 months (evolocumab use still ongoing at study discontinuation). Therefore, evolocumab use status was determined for 1921 patients at 12 months. Of these, 1781 (92.7%), remained on evolocumab at 12 months of follow-up (Figure). At 12 months, LDL-C levels were reduced from baseline by a median of 58% (Q1, Q3: 41%, 69%). In total, 1136 patients were eligible for extended follow up after protocol amendment. Of these, 137 patients discontinued study participation before 30 months of follow-up (with evolocumab ongoing). Therefore, evolocumab use status was determined in 999 patients, of whom, 92.2% (921) remained on evolocumab treatment at 30 months of follow-up (Figure). The reductions in LDL-C levels seen at 12 months were sustained throughout the study, with patients continuing to achieve median LDL-C reductions of 58% (Q1, Q3: 42%, 70%) from baseline at 30 months of follow-up.

 In this real-world study, representative of European practice, of patients who entered the extension phase, the proportion of patients who remained on evolocumab up to 30 months exceeded 90%, and treatment was associated with sustained LDL-C reductions. These data suggest that the self-administration regimen of evolocumab is both feasible and acceptable in general populations, providing long-term sustained, reductions in LDL-C with likely associated health benefits.

 Type of funding sources: Private company. Main funding source(s): Amgen (Europe) GmbH


A growing interest in the measurement of constructs in international settings and the comparison of people in different countries and cultures on these measures has led to greater sensitivity to issues of conceptual equivalence and differences in cultural norms. Such issues are relevant not only when languages and cultures appear to be very different, but also when individuals from different countries share the same language. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem (RSE) scale was chosen as the measure of interest in the present study because it is one of the most widely used measures of self-esteem worldwide. A total of 543 American, 1443 Canadian, and 300 New Zealand university students completed the RSE. Results indicated that the factor structure of the RSE was essentially unidimensional for each country. All items showed factor loadings greater than .40 in each country. Item-level analyses only revealed the presence of significant differential item functioning (DIF) for one item. Overall, these findings suggest that the RSE can be used to to make comparisons of selfesteem across American, Canadian and New Zealand students. Introduction The Rosenberg Self-Esteem (RSE) Scale is one of the most widely used measures of selfesteem worldwide so it is surprising that relatively little research has explored cross-national differences on this measure. To date, only two studies appear to have compared English versions of the RSE across different countries (Feather, 1998; Lennon, Rudd, Sloan, & Kim, 1999). Feather (1998) found that American students had significantly higher self-esteem scores when compared to Canadian and Australian students. Lennon and colleagues (1999) found that Caucasian American female students had significantly higher scores on the RSE than Korean and Singaporean female students, and African American students had significantly higher self-esteem scores when compared to all three other groups. These findings from previous research must be interpreted with caution because there has been no psychometric evidence to support the cross-national generalizability of the RSE. Heine, Lehman, Markus, and Kitayama (1991) have argued that self-concept research has been largely based on a North American perspective and one cannot assume that our ideas about self-concept will generalize to other social and cultural settings. Whether an instrument is cross-nationally invariant is a key concern when extending theories and their associated constructs to other countries (Hui & Triandis, 1985). Assuming that a measure is functioning equally for all groups without supporting empirical evidence


This qualitative, exploratory research study is positioned within the field of Family Language Policy (FLP). Contextualised in bilingual Malta, where Maltese is the majority language, the study inquires into the effects of a plurilingual family language programme on the language ideologies within English-speaking Maltese families. The programme was followed by four such families over a four-week period, during which data were collected via the participants' weekly entries into semi-structured family language journals. Upon the programme's completion, a second set of data was collected via one-off, semi-structured, family focus group interviews, for the purpose of triangulation. The findings highlight interrelated issues across the macro, meso and micro levels of language ideology, contributing to existing research by postulating the potential of a family language programme to prompt ideological shifts in support of heritage-language engagement, transmission and maintenance.


Clothing is an indispensable item in human life. Since the types and names of clothing are various, sometimes texts are not enough for searching the desired clothing item. The method of searching pictures through pictures has been widely used in many online shopping platforms. In order to help customers find similar clothes accurately, we crawl images from some online shopping websites to build a new dataset to conduct clothing retrieval task. We also propose a new clothing retrieval neural network model, which integrates the advantages of Triplet Network, Perceptual Loss and Capsule Network, and extends the triplet sample learning mode to add multiple negative samples for training. In our proposed model, Vision Transformer and two newly proposed attention mechanisms are applied to the Capsule Network to strengthen the features in each capsule. The Perceptual concept helps the model to extract color and texture features, and connect them. Our newly modified loss function can help the model retrieve better results. The overall training does not need landmark annotation which makes model increase complexity. In the experiments, our model is compared with other state-of-the-art models and shows better performance.


If $k<n$, can one express the majority of $n$ bits as the majority of at most $k$ majorities, each of at most $k$ bits? We prove that such an expression is possible only if $k \gtrsim n^{4/5} = n^{...


In this paper we present a new approach for time series forecasting, called Maximum Length Weighted Nearest Neighbor (MLWNN), which combines prediction based on sequence similarity with optimization techniques. MLWNN predicts the 24 hourly electricity loads for the next day, from a time sequence of previously electricity loads up to the current day. We evaluate MLWNN using electricity load data for two years, for three countries (Australia, Portugal and Spain), and compare its performance with three state-of-the-art methods (weighted nearest neighbor, pattern sequence-based forecasting and iterative neural network) and with two baselines. The results show that MLWNN is a promising approach for one day ahead electricity load forecasting.


Generally speaking, nasals are described äs voiced sounds. However, several languages have voiced—voiceless contrast of nasal sounds. It is known that Burmese is one such language and the Opposition between voiced and voiceless nasals Stands in a parallel position with the one between aspirated and unaspirated consonants in regard to some grammatical functions. The verb with a voiceless nasal initial is the "transitive", "active" or "causative" correlate of the verb with an ordinary voiced nasal initial (Okell 1969). We previously analyzed voiceless nasals in Burmese by making use of the sound spectrograph (Dantsuji 1984), and confirmed that voiceless nasals in Burmese consist of voiceless nasal friction portions and voiced murmur portions. However, we could not differentiate places of articulation by spectrum analysis of the voiceless nasal friction portions. Durational analysis suggests that there is a tendency for the duration of voiceless nasal friction portion of the alveolar voiceless nasals to be slightly shorter than that of the bilabial and velar voiceless nasals. This is, however, not statistically significant in a strict sense. In this respect, Ladefoged (1971) pointed out that "voicing began shortly before the closure was released and these sounds should be called partially voiced äs opposed to fully voiced". Our data show that the voiced portion forms the latter 25 ~ 29% of voiceless nasals and it is quite shorter than that of murmur portions of ordinary voiced nasals in Burmese (p < 0.01). From the spectrum analysis of voiceless nasal friction portions of voiceless nasals, we have been able to find spectrum peaks around 0.5, 3 and 6 kHz but these are not significant for distinction of places of articulation. In this respect, Ohala (1975) pointed out that "the noise spectra of all voiceless nasals will be alike and will


WHOLE-CELL RECORDINGS OF PARALLEL-FIBER AND CLIMBING-FIBER EPSCs FROM PURKINJE CELLS IN RAT CEREBELLAR SLICES D. J. Perkel. S. Hestrin, P. Sah* & R. A. Nicoll Depts. Physiol. and Pharmacol. UCSF, San Francisco. CA 94143-0444. TO investigate the conductances underlying the two different types of excitatory input to Pwkinje cells we used whole-cell recording in thin (100-250 !.lm thick) sagittal slices of adult rat cerebellum. Cells were visualized directly using Nomarski optics, and debris overlying the soma was removed with a large "cleaning" pipette (Edwards et al., 1989, Pflueers Arch, 414:600). Recohling pipettes contained (mM): 140 CsF, 10 NaCI. 10 HEPES, 10 EGTA. Eleclrical stimulation of the white matter caused an all-or-none excitatory post-synaptic current (EPSC) that displayed paired-pulse depression. Stimulation of the molecular layer, on the other hand, resulted in a gradcd EPSC that exhibited paired-pulse facilitation. Both EPSCs showed reversal polenlids around 0 mV, and were entirely blocked by application of the non-NMDA receptor antagonist CNQX (10 pM). When the cell was voltage clampcd at -40 mV andlor bathed in Ringer containing no added ~ g ~ + , neither typc of EPSC was affected by the NMDA-reccptor antagonist DL-APV (50 !J.M). We conclude that both types of EPSC are mediated entirely by non-NMDA receptors. Bath application of NMDA (100 did not evoke an inward current, even . . in ~ ~ 2 + f r c e Kinger or at a holding potential of -40 mV. Superfusion of aspanate (0.1 I mM) caused an inward current, but this was blocked by 10 pM CNQX. Non-NMDA receptors thus sppcar to mediate a11 the elecuophysiological cffecL< of ehc~wtory .mino-ac~ds on Purkinjr cAls.


Most large rivers in the upper Columbia Basin are strongly snowmelt dominant, and are sufficiently cold in winter that they remain snowmelt dominant even in a substantially warmer climate. Figure 1, below, for example, shows that while the warmer portions of the Basin in the U.S. experience substantial losses of snowpack as the climate warms, most of the watersheds in Canada's portion of the Basin in BC retain their snowmelt-dominant character in the simulations even at the end of the twenty-first century.


: Virtual locomotion is an enabling ability for many tasks in virtual environments (VEs) and denotes the most common form of interaction with VEs. In this paper we present a novel omnidirectional walking-in-place (WIP) locomotion system, which we designed to work in small laboratory environments and is based entirely on consumer hardware. We present our hardware and software solution to 360 degrees omnidirectional tracking based on multiple Kinects and an Oculus Rift head-mounted display (HMD). Using this novel setup we improved on the related work by evaluating leaning as a novel parameter of WIP interfaces. Inspired by observations of changing leaning angles during fast or slow locomotor movements in the real world, we present the Leaning-Amplified-Speed Walking-in-Place (LAS-WIP) user interface in this paper. We present the results of an experiment in which we show that leaning angle can have a positive effect on subjective estimates of self-motion perception and usability, which provides novel vistas for future research.


Starting from Rules A and B of a previous paper (I), it is shown that the grand partition function can be evaluated in terms of the statistical averages of the occupation number in momentum space. The final formulation is in terms of a simple variational principle. The procedure represents a concise and complete separation of the effect of the BoseEinstein or Fermi-Dirac statistical character of the particles from the dynamical problem. In the case of Bose statistics, this formulation makes possible a systematic computation of all thermodynannic functions near the BoseEinstein transition point in the gaseous phase. Applications to a system of hard spheres are discussed. (auth)


Objective To study the clinical value of peripheral blood DNA in the diagnosis of solid neoplasias.Methods Blood DNA was extracted with commercial "genomic DNA extraction kit" and detected with lanthanode fluorescent.The samples from 58 patients with various types of cancer were dectected,14 patients with benign tumors and 38 healthy individuals.Results The mean DNA fluorescence intensity in the cancer patients was 345.645±28.004,while that in healthy individuals was 276.152±29.442(P0.001) and that in benign tumors patients was 307.191±27.344(P0.05).There is no statistical significance in various neoplasias and difercnt stages.Conclusions Peripheral blood DNA fluorescence spectra analysis is valuable to the diagnosis of solid neoplasias.Further clinical studies should be performed to confirm the result of peripheral blood DNA fluorescence spectra.


Distal nail thickness was measured using an electronic micrometer and both distal and proximal nail ultrasound times were recorded in 20 volunteers (10 male, 10 female) aged 20–39. The fingernail ultrasound velocity was 2.26 times; 103 m/s (subject range 2.03–2.69) (analysis of variance technique). The proximal ultrasound transit time was greater than distal ultrasound transit time. In three volunteers, five micrometer and one distal midline ultrasound measurement of five nails were repeated on 10 occasions over 2 weeks. For the micrometer readings the average coefficient of variation was 5.3% (SD ± 2.4%)3 and for the ultrasound reading the average coefficient of variation was 4.0% ((SD ± 1.3%).


This video reviews classic syndromes associated with increased leukemia susceptibility and highlights pediatric patients who may be at increased risk for an inherited leukemia predisposition and should receive additional work-up.


Decreased left atrial appendage emptying velocity (LAAV) is a known predictor of LAA thrombus in atrial fibrillation (AF). The aim of our study was to identify which of the clinical risk factors for LAA thrombus are associated with decreased LAAV.


Because of difficulty in determining residues of pyrethrins quantitatively in the presence of high concentrations of the usual synergist, piperonyl butoxide, the evaluation of the residual behavior of the readily analyzed piperonyl butoxide alone has heretofore been thought to be adequate for most residue studies with pyrethrins-piperonyl butoxide mixtures. The residual behavior of the pyrethrins has been thought to parallel that of the piperonyl butoxide component of such mixtures.

By the use of chromatographic techniques in conjunction with colorimetric procedures, the residual behavior of the pyrethrins and of piperonyl butoxide on stored wheat have been compared. The pyrethrins have an apparent residue half-life of 5.8 weeks in contrast with that of 9.0 weeks for piperonyl butoxide.


Tension control used in cold rolled sheet pickling production is introduced.The relation between tension and current and the way of transform are discussed.The commonness and specialty of tension control used in equipments are discussed in detail.


This paper addresses a dynamically stable humanoid walking pattern generation system that can update the pattern at a short cycle such as 40 [ms]. Frequent update of the pattern enables a robot to reflect change of moving direction and upper body posture with short delay after the change of the command input. It also enables a robot to change the walking pattern according to the change of measurable applied force. Moreover short cycle generation is useful in constructing a system that reflects motion status modified by sensor feedback to the motion generation layer in order to maintain consistency of dynamics. Preview control theory is adopted to decide horizontal torso trajectory that realizes desired ZMP trajectory. The proposed system is implemented on a full-size humanoid HRP-2. Walking pattern is updated at every 40 [ms] with reflecting the current modified torso position in the system. Walking control is successfully carried out by the implemented system. Then an experiment of generating and executing walking pattern while variable force is applied to the hand is shown. The system generates walking pattern reflecting the force sensor information at the wrist while walking


This study proposes two models of addictive buying behaviour. The first model assumes that childhood experiences of parental discord influence depression and low self-esteem which, in turn, increase addictive buying behaviour in adulthood. The data were obtained from questionnaires completed by 149 subjects (college students, Chicago residents, and members of Debtors Anonymous). Testing the first model indicates that parental discord is indeed positively related to depression and addictive buying, and that depression is related negatively to self-esteem and positively to addictive buying. The second model indicates that addictive buying is positively related to depression and low self-esteem.


There were a number of systems of settlements in Madras Presidency when the East India Company assumed administrative charges at the end of the eighteenth century. The Company government did not know which system was suitable and should be adopted for the whole of the Presidency. It initiated permanent settlement in 1802 in some areas, and found it unsuitable to be applied to other regions. Thus, it began a series of experiments in different districts in order to find a suitable system of settlement. These revenue experiments finally led the Company government to adopt the ryotwari system in many regions. It is these revenue experiments that the present article examines in relation to Chittoor district, and brings out the factors responsible for changing government policies during the period of experiments. The study shows how the settlements made with different types of landlords led to the formation of separate groups in rural areas and, in turn, planted the seeds of factional politics in the later period in the present Rayalseema region, which roughly coincides with the erstwhile ceded districts. It also throws light on the policy of discrimination against the cultivators, which led to a deterioration in the conditions of these people.


Social work education has historically been grounded in professional practice but recent discussions have urged a reconsideration of social work as a science. Social work is progressively doing more intervention work, service systems research, implementation research, and translational research which are elevating research standards to new levels of sophistication. Because social work is also receiving greater recognition at the federal level, it seems that now is the appropriate time for the profession to review how education is done and the place that social work as a science should hold in our doctoral programs. This article critiques current literature and finds that the term social work as a science is frequently missing in the language and terminology of the social work encyclopedia and desk reference, but the term evidence-based practice replaces or makes up for missing references. Some of the key social work organizations also lack the emphasis on social work as science in the framework of their mission statements. Alternative possibilities are given in creating new mission statements, designing curriculum for doctoral education, and revamping accreditation standards for required graduate and undergraduate social work education.


This article aims to provide a civil legal perspective of the most important aspects of the modification of obligations in the Spanish Civil Code. First, conceptual difficulties are explained. Next, different aspects are examined, with special consideration of the problematic aspects. Finally, several lines of reform are pointed out.  Published online : 02 December 2014


This paper investigates the task space trajectory tracking control of uncertain flexible-joint (FJ) robot with time-varying output constraints. Different from most of the existing results, nonlinear state-dependent functions (NSDF) are employed to cope with output constraints, and an exponential observer (EOB) is utilized to approximate the uncertain kinematics. Radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) is designed to approximate the uncertainty of system dynamics, and only one parameter needs to be adjusted, which can greatly reduce the computational burden. Based on the backstepping method and the command filter (CF), an adaptive trajectory tracking controller is proposed for FJ robot. It is proved by Lyapunov synthesis that all signals in the closed-loop system are bounded and the output tracking error converges to a small neighborhood near zero and the output does not exceed its constraints. Finally, the simulation results of a two-link FJ robot system are utilized to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control method.


We present ASCA observations of the radio-selected BL Lacertae objects 1749+096 (z=0.32) and 2200+420 (BL Lac, z=0.069) performed in 1995 September and November, respectively. The ASCA spectra of both sources can be described as a first approximation by a power law with photon index Γ~2. This is flatter than for most X-ray-selected BL Lacs observed with ASCA, in agreement with the predictions of current blazar unification models. While 1749+096 exhibits tentative evidence for spectral flattening at low energies, a concave continuum is detected for 2200+420: the steep low-energy component is consistent with the high-energy tail of the synchrotron emission responsible for the longer wavelengths, while the harder tail at higher energies is the onset of the Compton component. The two BL Lacs were observed with ground-based telescopes from radio to TeV energies contemporaneously with ASCA. The spectral energy distributions are consistent with synchrotron self-Compton emission from a single homogeneous region shortward of the IR/optical wavelengths, with a second component in the radio domain related to a more extended emission region. For 2200+420, comparing the 1995 November state with the optical/GeV flare of 1997 July, we find that models requiring inverse Compton scattering of external photons provide a viable mechanism for the production of the highest (GeV) energies during the flare. In particular, an increase of the external radiation density and of the power injected in the jet can reproduce the flat γ-ray continuum observed in 1997 July. A directly testable prediction of this model is that the line luminosity in 2200+420 should vary shortly after (~1 month) a nonthermal synchrotron flare.