Abstract Bioavailability of the colloidal particles is of great concern. It is because about 40% of the newly discovered colloidal agents are poorly water soluble and thus poorly bioavailable. Various colloidal technologies have been adopted to enhance the bioavailability of such drugs. In this review, advanced colloidal technologies are discussed to understand the mechanism of bioavailability enhancement of drugs, coding latest references from the literature. Additionally, advantages and disadvantages of the concerned colloidal technologies are discussed to understand the potential usage of each process. All these colloidal technologies effectively enhance the bioavailability of poorly bioavailable drugs, either by protecting them from the environment of the gastrointestinal or by prolonging their intended therapeutic effect. Furthermore, complexation of the drug molecule with potential carries, particle size reduction to nanoscale, co-crystallization and self-emulsifying drug delivery system are also discussed which not only enhance the bioavailability but also reduce the potential toxicities of the loaded drugs. It is therefore important to understand the vital colloidal technologies with their recent advancements, potential applications and future challenges, which is discussed in this review. Finally, this article concludes that the advanced colloidal technologies, including freeze-dried liposome, solid lipid nanoparticle, polymeric nanoparticle (polymeric micelles), dendrimers and solid emulsifying drug delivery systems, have the potential to achieve improved bioavailability and targeted drug delivery.


Seven members of the Civilian Conservation Corp gather on the camp's basketball court.

The photograph was taken during one of McCann's two six-month tours in the Civilian Conservation Corps located in Pineland, Texas during the Great Depression.


The use of solar energy source using Solar Water Heating (SWH) system for hot water supply is increasing due to environmentally friendly technology. The increase of the application of solar energy equipment is beneficial for technology development related to the issue of sustainable energy and green energy buildings. This study develops a SWH system for hot water supply with modification of absorber plate. An integrated V-shaped absorber plate with phase change material (PCM) energy storage in the SWH system has been installed and its performance has been investigated experimentally. Two SWH systems consisting of V-shape absorber plate with and without PCM storage are built. The V-shape absorber plate is constructed and integrated with PCM storage in the system. The experimental tests of the two SWH systems using V-shaped absorber plate with and without PCM storage have been carried-out in the same operation time with various flowrates. The temperature of the paraffin has increased until the melting temperature and has decreased with the decrease of solar radiation in the afternoon. Paraffin as PCM storage contributes to increase the outlet water temperature. The results show that the average efficiency of the SWH system with PCM storage using paraffin is higher than the one of the SWH system without PCM storage. It has increased significantly of 20%, 14% and 13% with flowrates of 0.5; 1 and 1.5 L/min respectively. In addition, the characteristics of the PCM storage are shown clearly from 16:00 to 20:00 local time. After 16:00 local time, the storage energy can be a source of heat energy to heat the water up to the end of the day.


This analysis applies a variant of organization theory, the governance approach, to the 1982 formulation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services of the parental notification rule covering adolescents who receive prescription contraceptives from federally funded family planning clinics. Uncertainties about and controversies over policy goals and technologies shaped and reflected the policy debate and the structures developed for finalizing the rule. By highlighting the role of formal and informal structure in influencing decision process and outcome, governance theory provides a conceptual language for discussing how organizations do and should cope with uncertainty and conflict, and broadens the range of possible decision structures that might be adopted.


Purpose

Quality management constructs related to management leadership and workforce involvement have consistently shown strong correlation with firm success for years. However, there is an increasing body of research based on complexity theory (CT) suggesting that constructs such as these should be viewed as variables in a complex system with inter-dependencies, interactions, and potentially nonlinear relationships. Despite the significant body of conceptual research related to CT, there is a lack of methodological research into these potentially nonlinear effects. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the theoretical and practical importance of non-linear terms in a multivariate polynomial model as they become more significant predictors of firm success in collaborative environments and less significant in more rigidly controlled work environments.

Design/methodology/approach

Multivariate polynomial regression methods are used to examine the significance and effect sizes of interaction and quadratic terms in operations scenarios expected to have varying degrees of complex and complex adaptive behaviors.

Findings

The results find that in highly collaborative work environments, non-linear and interaction effects become more significant predictors of success than the linear terms in the model. In more rigid, less collaborative work environments, these effects are not present or significantly reduced in effect size.

Research limitations/implications

This study shows that analytical methods sensitive to detecting and measuring nonlinearities in relationships such as multivariate polynomial regression models enhance our theoretical understanding of the relationships between constructs when the theory predicts that complex and complex adaptive behaviors are present and important.

Originality/value

This study demonstrates that complex adaptive behaviors between management and the workforce exist in certain environments and provide greater understanding of factor relationships relating to firm success than more traditional linear analytical methods.


Improved artificial neural network was applied to the prediction model of parallel machine tool roughness,which effectively predicted the influence on roughness by change process parameters such as machine tool feed rate,spindle speed,processing angle,machining force and number of times of machining,and etc. Results show that the steps when the training of the network controlled from 200 to400,the training sample mean square error of the entire network model is stable and convergent,the prediction error of added inspection training samples can be controlled under 5%,which satisfies the requirement of the prediction model in training. The improved neural network prediction model is proved to be feasible with higher precision when used to forecast the actual machining process.


Objective:To analysis pathological band formation and composition of right ventricular outlet tract obstruction,perfect surgical treatment.Method:The files of fifty patients with TOF were reviewed(Jan,2002 to Mar,2007) randomly.Age from 2 m to 15 years.Weight from 6 kg to 38 kg.Pathological anatomy was explored and described trans-right ventricule.Result:The antero-cephalad deviation of conal septum was the common character of all patients,and positived with aortic override.All has septal and parital extension.Os infundibulum located the inferior edge of conal septum in thirty-eight patients,low position of right ventricle outflow tract in nine patients.Hypertrophy muscle filled the right ventricle outflow tract in three patients.The parietal extension of all patients and septal extension in forty-four patients dissociated from ventriculoinfundibular fold and trabecula septomarginalis.No gap between septal extension and trabecula septomarginalis in six patients.Moderate band and trabecula septomarginalis body anteriorly displaced and squeezed conal septum in three patients.Extension band was divided.Pfo keeps patent.All patients had septo-parietal trabeculations hypertrophy,divided and excised.Conclusion:The pathological basis of right ventricular outlet tract obstruction in TOF is the antero-cephalad deviation of conal septum and its extension,coupled with hypertrophy of thesepto-parietal trabeculations.Identification pathological band property and composition exactly is the key to maintain good heart function postoperatively.


ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS MATERIALS (China), Vol 19, No 2, P 19 21 (Apr 2000) In Chinese The structure, memory principle and manufacture technology of ferroelectric field effect transistors (FFET) are presented The improvement of FFET structure design and the application of ferroelectric film on FFET are reviewed The effects of ferroelectric film, transition layer, structure and film formation technology on the memory characteristic are discussed The comments on present study on FFET and the exiting problems are also given (19 refs )


BACKGROUND
Classical electrocardiographic (ECG) criteria for left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) are well studied in older populations and patients with hypertension. Their utility in young pre-participation cohorts is unclear.

AIMS
We aimed to develop machine learning models for detection of echocardiogram-diagnosed LVH from ECG, and compare these modelswith classical criteria.

METHODS
Between November 2009 and December 2014, pre-participation screening ECG and subsequent echocardiographic data was collected from 17310 males aged 16 to 23, who reported for medical screening prior to military conscription.A final diagnosis of LVH was made on echocardiography, defined by a left ventricular mass index >115g/m2. The continuous and thresholded forms of classical ECG criteria (Sokolow-Lyon, Romhilt-Estes, Modified Cornell, Cornell Product and Cornell) were compared against machine learning models (Logistic Regression, GLMNet, Random Forests, Gradient Boosting Machines) using receiver-operating characteristics (ROC) curve analysis. We also compared the important variables identified by machine learning models with the input variables of classical criteria.

RESULTS
Prevalence of echocardiographic LVH in this population was 0.82% (143/17310). Classical ECG criteria had poor performance in predicting LVH. Machine learning methods achieved superior performance -Logistic Regression (AUC=0.811, 95% CI=0.738-0.884), GLMNet (AUC=0.873, 95% CI=0.817-0.929), Random Forest (AUC=0.824, 95% CI=0.749-0.898), Gradient Boosting Machines (AUC=0.800, 95% CI=0.738-0.862).

CONCLUSIONS
Machine learning methods are superior to classical ECG criteria in diagnosing echocardiographic LVH in the context of pre-participation screening.


 During the Colonial era Forest Departments, attracted by timber, entered into competition for control of the uplands with swiddeners, and sought to restrict them. Even after Independence, Colonial era prejudices and hostile assumptions have persisted. But in recent years perceptions are becoming more sympathetic, mainly due to scientific studies which confirm that under conducive conditions swidden systems are efficient, productive, sustainable and environmentally beneficial.


According to the problem of low outlet pressure of the water supply pumps for boilers,measures are raised,which is to modify their blade dimensions.And thus the desired effects are achieved.


A power plant's heat exchangers work under poor conditions, such as high temperature, high pressure, corrosion, mechanical stress and vibration. Especially, partial joint-weld of heat exchanger's header to stub-tube is the place where incomplete penetration flaws can easily occur. But, it is hard to evaluate the safety of the structure by conventional nondestructive testing techniques. So it is necessary to test integrity of the weld inside and to develop testing technique and equipment that can detect the flaws at the weld point in order to enhance reliability of the test result. In this study, we developed a suitable automated ultrasonic testing system that can inspect the partial joint-weld of header to stub-tube of power plant. Finally, we showed the efficiency of the automated ultrasonic-testing-system from the application.


Iron fortification of food is generally considered to be the best long-term strategy to increase iron intake and has been reported to contribute to iron intake among those consuming fortified foods (Samuelson et al. 2000, Osler et al. 1999, Subar et al. 1998a, 1998b, Olsson et al. 1997) in developed countries, where it has been practiced for many years. Wheat flours and breakfast cereals are the most commonly fortified foods, but maize flour (Layrisse et al. 1996) and milk (Olivares et al. 1989) are also fortified in some developing countries. Intervention trials have shown that condiments such as fish sauce, sugar, curry powder (Lynch et al. 1993), and salt (Nadiger et al. 1980) can be effectively fortified with iron and improve iron status.


In recent years, the environmental concern generates an high improvement in hybrid and electrical mobility technology. Several layouts are available for the electric powertrain; the most interesting is the one with four electric motors, one per each wheel. The main interesting feature of this layout is the possibility of independently applying driving or braking torques on each wheel, i.e., torque vectoring control strategies can be fully exploited. An innovative control strategy for in-wheel motor (IWM) vehicles is developed and compared with a state-of-the-art control logic by means of numerical simulations. The proposed controller can increase vehicle performance and safety in cornering both on high and low friction conditions. The controller is made of two contributions: one, for steady-state cornering, is based on optimal control theory; the second, mainly for stability control, is based on a yaw index that does not need any vehicle model or estimation.


The nineteen-fifties mark the end of the Linnaean age of the theory and criticism of the novel, with its emphasis on the definition of different species, kinds and types of the narrative genre. The one feature common to the otherwise widely divergent fictional theories of Percy Lubbock, Jean Pouillon, Edwin Muir, Wolfgang Kayser, and Kate Hamburger, to name but a few, is their aim to distinguish between types of the novel or modes of narration. My own first attempt at fictional theory in 1955, Die typischen Erzahlsituationen im Roman,l was also undertaken under the influence of this approach. Modem theoreticians and critics of the novel who are inclined to judge these earlier theoretical studies of fiction as being much too rigid for a description of the plurality of the forms of fiction, without considering the historical function of this approach in its time,2 should be reminded of what Claude Levi-Strauss observed concerning Linnaeus' relation to Darwin: "Darwin would not have been possible if he had not been preceded by Linnaeus, that is to say, if one had not already laid the theoretical and methodological bases permitting to describe and define the species which are subject to change."3 In fact the foundations were then laid for modem theories of narrative literature in which the main accent is no longer on the classification of the basic forms but on the variations and modulations of these forms, on their combinations and fusions as they appear in a particular novel or short story. In the meantime the linguistic approach to narrative texts has left its imprint on the critical scene, producing a new interest in the structure of the smaller narrative units, the sentence, the paragraph, etc. and demanding a more precise and systematic description of linguistic and literary phenomena than seemed necessary in older studies of the novel. In this article I shall try to modify my original theory of the novel and in so doing take into account the new situation. I should like to consider this modified


We are giving an overview on the oncological patients of the University Children's Hospital at Rostock, exclusively systemic malignancies and brain tumors, for the period January, the 1st 1971 till December, the 31st 1985. The analysis was done in 99 children, 54 girls and 45 boys, aged 0 till 15 years, in whom were diagnosed 30 benign, 1 semimalignant and 68 malignant tumors. We are demonstrating the results of treatment, the age and sex distribution, and the course of the disease, especially in 3 casuistics.


Past studies on Cooperative Multi-Point(CoMP) Processing/Base Station Cooperation (BSC) technique have shown its potential for system capacity improvement. However, many of the previous studies ignore a fact that in a network where multiple CoMP groups co-exist, the interference between CoMP groups would significantly decrease each of the CoMP groups' performance. To combat this Interference between CoMP groups, we propose a novel precoding technique - Maximum Eigenmode Transmission(MET) CoMP precoding, which is able to effectively combat such interference and achieves 90% better performance than the conventional method in a multi-group CoMP network.


Groundwater is often one of the significant natural sources of freshwater supply, especially in arid and semi-arid regions, and is of paramount importance. This study provides a new and high accurate technique for forecasting groundwater level (GWL). The artificial intelligence (AI) models include the artificial neural network (ANN) of multi-layer perceptron (MLP) and radial basis function network (RBF), and adaptive neural-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) models. Input data to the models is the monthly average GWL of 17 piezometers. In this study, a preprocessing of data including the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and multi-discrete wavelet transform (M-DWT) simultaneously was utilized. The results showed that the hybrid M-DWT-ANN, M-DWT-RBF, and M-DWT-ANFIS models compared to the DWT-ANN, DWT-RBF, and DWT-ANFIS models as well as than regular ANN, RBF, and ANFIS models, had the highest accuracy in forecasting GWL for the 1-, 2-, 3-, and 6-months ahead. Also, the M-DWT-ANN model had the best performance. Overall, the results illustrated that using the M-DWT method as preprocessing of input data can be a valuable tool to increase the predictive model's accuracy and efficiency. The results of this study indicate the potential of M-DWT-AI hybrid models to improve GWL forecasting.


Unlabeled-unlabeled (UU) classification (du Plessis et al. 2013) allows us to train a binary classifier from two sets of unlabeled data with different class priors. In this paper, we go beyond this scenario and try to train a binary classifier only from a single set of unlabeled data. Our key idea is to iteratively perform UU classification: We initially split the original single unlabeled dataset into two disjoint datasets and perform UU classification. We then split the original unlabeled dataset in a different way based on the obtained classifier, perform UU classification, and repeat this process until convergence. We numerically show that the classification accuracy tends to be improved over iterations. Finally, we apply our iterative UU classification method to a realworld drowsiness prediction problem and demonstrate its usefulness.


Developments in commercial vehicle lighting units are discussed. Headlamp units designed by Scania are said to be 30% more effective compared with previous units, and, in anticipation of forthcoming EEC regulations, incorporate a manually controlled levelling system to allow the headlamps to be set according to loading conditions. Lighting systems introduced by Volvo feature headlamp washer/wiper units and are mounted as high as possible to give the best dipped beam throw. The homofocal headlamp system introduced by Lucas uses a dmc plastics material for fabricating a complex reflector shape within a shallow unit; such a shape being impossible with a metal pressing. Multi-function headlamp and rearlamp designs according to possible future EEC directives are also detailed for cars. (TRRL)


EnglishINFLUENCE OF WINE COMPONENTS OVER THE METABOLISM OF Oenococcus oeni AND OVER THE POPULATION DYNAMICS DURING MALOLACTIC FERMENTATION Malolactic fermentation (MLF) in wine is carried out by certain lactic bacteria which decarboxylate L-malic acid to L-lactic and CO2. Oenococcus oeni is the most tolerant species under the unfavourable wine conditions (nutrients starvation, low pH, ethanol, fatty acids from yeasts, SO2, etc.) and the main responsible of driving the MLF. As a consequence of the MLF, the wine quality improves because the acidity decreases, the organoleptic characteristics are better and the microbiological stability of wine increases. Some biochemical parameters, indicators of metabolic cellular conditions, are the ATPase activity and the expression of stress proteins and exoproteases involved in the obtention of nitrogen. On the other hand, some unfavourable conditions for bacterial growth can modify the bacterial population dynamics during MLF by effects over species and strains of the same species. The studies performed in this work show that ATPase-membrane activity principally corresponds to an H+-ATPase, which is affected by cellular viability inhibitory concentrations of ethanol, SO2, copper and fatty acids. So, a direct relationship between growth inhibition of O. oeni in real cellar conditions and ATPase activity inhibition is stablished. The stress protein profile produced by ethanol is not significantly different from the controls one, whereas the incubation in acidic conditions or in the presence of C12 fatty acid inhibits the protein expression in general. Copper and low pH induce the overexpression of a proteinic band close to 40 kDa, as SO2 does, which N-terminal sequence shows a significant identity with the family of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenases (GAPDH). In his turn, SO2 inhibits the cytoplasmatic GAPDH activity also. Using RT-PCR, it has been shown that gene expression levels of hsp18 (the gene of a heat-shock protein found in O. oeni) as a response to the heat shock are near fifty-fold greater than in normal conditions. On the other hand, in contact with inhibitory concentrations of C12, copper or SO2, it only appears weak induction as a response to copper. About the exoprotease activity, this one is not significative in the strains studied, except for final exponential growth phase in the presence of high ethanol levels (14 %). Under conditions of nitrogen starvation, its observed a direct relationship between the bioavailability of a-amino nitrogen and growth rate of O. oeni. Different microvinification conditions were assayed using three different strains (CECT 4100 as the type strain; CR1, an strain isolated by our research group, and Vitilactic, a commercial strain). The type strain showed fewer ability for adaptation, whereas the isolated strain was the responsible for performing the FML the most times. To demonstrate that, we used Molecular Biology techniques, like specific PCR and RAPD-PCR. In cellar vinifications with normal and high levels of SO2 and lysozyme, it was observed a dominance of O. oeni species from the beginning of the alcoholic fermentation, and a different evolution of the populations in the presence of lysozyme. In all the cases, its the same strain which performs FML and it coincides with that one imposed in other campaigns and isolated by our group as CR1. catalaINFLUENCIA DE COMPONENTS DELS VINS SOBRE EL METABOLISME DOenococcus oeni I SOBRE LA SEVA DINAMICA DE POBLACIONS A LA FERMENTACIO MALOLACTICA La fermentacio malolactica (FML) del vi es el resultat del metabolisme dalgunes especies de bacteris lactics que converteix lacid L-(-)-malic en L-(+)-lactic i CO2. Lespecie Oenococcus oeni es la mes tolerant a les condicions poc favorables del vi (deficiencies nutritives, pH baix, etanol, acids grassos dels llevats, SO2, etc.) i la que habitualment realitza la FML. A part de la disminucio dacidesa, la FML contribueix a lestabilitzacio microbiologica del vi i a millorar-ne les qualitats organoleptiques. Alguns parametres bioquimics indicadors de lestat metabolic cel·lular son lactivitat ATPasa, lexpressio de proteines destres i dexoproteases involucrades en lobtencio de fonts de nitrogen. Daltra banda, algunes de les condicions desfavorables per al creixement bacteria poden influir sobre la dinamica de poblacions de bacteris lactics durant la FML, tant a nivell despecie com de soca. Els estudis realitzats en aquesta tesi indiquen que lactivitat ATPasa de membrana, deguda principalment a una H+-ATPasa, es veu afectada per concentracions inhibidores de la viabilitat cel·lular detanol, SO2, coure i acids grassos, per la qual cosa es pot establir una relacio directa entre la inhibicio del creixement dO. oeni en condicions reals de vinificacio i la inhibicio de lactivitat ATPasa. Al seu torn, letanol no produeix un perfil de proteines de membrana excessivament diferent respecte al control, mentre que la incubacio en condicions acides o en presencia de lacid gras C12 inhibeix, en general, lexpressio proteica. El coure i lacidesa afavoreixen la sobreexpressio duna proteina de membrana, de 40 kDa, aixi com el SO2, la sequencia N-terminal de la qual correspon a la familia de gliceraldehid-3-fosfatdeshidrogenases (GAPDH). El SO2 tambe inhibeix lactivitat GAPDH citoplasmatica, i per tant, el mecanisme glucolitic dobtencio denergia per part dO. oeni. Mitjancant RT-PCR, sha comprovat que els nivells dexpressio genica dhsp18 (gen duna proteina destres descrita en O. oeni) en resposta al xoc termic son fins a cinquanta vegades superiors que en les condicions controls, mentre que en presencia de concentracions de C12, coure o SO2 inhibidores del creixement, unicament sobserva una certa induccio en resposta al coure i en condicions de fase exponencial de creixement. Pel que fa a lactivitat exoproteasa, aquesta no es significativa en les condicions experimentals emprades i en les soques estudiades, excepte al final de la fase exponencial de creixement i en presencia de dosis elevades detanol (14 %). En condicions de carencia nutricional nitrogenada, sha observat una relacio directa entre la biodisponibilitat de nitrogen a-aminat i la taxa de creixement dO. oeni. Sassajaren diferents condicions de microvinificacio, amb tres soques diferents (CECT 4100, soca tipus; CR1, soca aillada pel nostre grup de recerca, i Vitilactic, soca comercial). La soca tipus va mostrar menor capacitat dadaptacio, mentre que la soca aillada simplanta en la majoria de casos. Per a comprovar-ho, sempraren tecniques de Biologia Molecular, com ara la PCR i la RAPD-PCR. En vinificacions amb concentracions moderades i elevades de SO2 i lisozim, sobserva un predomini de lespecie O. oeni ja des de linici de la fermentacio alcoholica, i una evolucio diferent de les poblacions en presencia de lisozim. En tots els casos, una mateixa soca simposa durant la FML, i coincideix amb la que shavia implantat en campanyes anteriors i aillada pel nostre grup com a CR1.


Laser–plasma interaction and hot electron generation play a crucial role in the context of inertial confinement fusion and in particular in the shock-ignition concept. Here we present a fully kinetic large-scale two-dimensional simulation studying laser–plasma interaction and hot electron generation in a relatively long and hot coronal plasma. The simulation shows saturation of the reflectivity of an intense spike pulse and absorption taking place close to a quarter critical density in particular, due to cavitation and stimulated Raman scattering. The signatures of steady two-plasmon decay are observed, but the hot electron number produced by this instability is low in comparison with the other two processes. The spectral and angular distribution of the back-scattered light is presented and the energy and angular characteristics of hot electrons due to individual absorption processes are studied.


Abstract : Chemical A13-70897Ga produced severe primary irritation of the intact skin and the skin surrounding an abrasion. It additionally produces eschars and/or necrosis of the skin on all sites of application. This chemical produced moderate injury to the cornea and, in addition, produced severe injury to the conjunctiva resulting in constriction of the palpebral fissure. (Author)


The coastal aeolian sand widely distributes in southeast coastal of China is the result of the coastal environment evolution.On the basis of chronology analysis,grain-size parameter analysis and the cause analysis of the coastal dunes,the grain-size components that is sensitive to winter monsoon intensity change were got.And the information on the climatic environmental changes in recent 1 300years was got based on the analysis of sensitive component,historical documents and geological record of peat.The results indicated that the reconstructed history of coastal environment evolution in the study area could be divided to three main phases:1)680-1100AD,the coastal winter monsoon intensity was relatively weak,yet with gradual increase in the later period,which reflected frequent storm surge activity and warm coastal environment.2)1100-1700AD,fluctuations of coastal winter monsoon intensity enhanced,which showed the strong aeolian sand activity and relatively cold coastal climate environment.3)1700AD to the current,the winter monsoon intensity fluctuations weakened,which manifested a phenomenon that coastal climate was warming during fluctuating and the storm surge activity increased gradually.


Abstract The Scops Owl Otus scops (L., 1758) is a species of European concern, which suffered a noticeable decrease in distribution in the last decades, and changes in agricultural practices have been proposed as a major threat for this owl. We studied the habitat preference of the Scops Owl by assessing the habitat occupancy of 401 territories distributed in a large area in northwest Italy, with a special focus on 98 territories located in a high-density area (Monferrato). Habitat characteristics were analyzed with maximum entropy (MAXENT) models that included both vegetational (16 land use categories) and physical features estimated from a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) (altitude, slope, hillshade). In the Monferrato area, a comparison of 2009 landcover was also made with year 1954/55 characteristics obtained from aerial photographs. In the full northwest Italy area, the Scops Owl preferred areas located at middle altitude with intermediate slope. The preferred habitats included riparian areas and pasture-grassland, while woodlands and zones with Robinia pseudoacacia shrublands were avoided. In the Monferrato area, Scops Owl occupancy occurred in sites where the landuse (croplands/vineyard mosaic) had changed little since the mid-1950s. Our study suggests that conservation activity should focus on interventions halting riparian zone transformation and subsidies promoting agricultural practices favouring pastures and grassland.


A possible explanation for the lack of fluorescence in the isolated chromophore of the green fluorescent protein found in bioluminescent coelenterates has been provided by the synthesis of model compounds and a more satisfactory structure is suggested.


Liquid film flows are classified into waveless laminar, wavy laminar, and turbulent flows depending on the Reynolds number or the flow stability. Since the wavy motions of the film flows are so intricate and nonlinear, studies on them have largely been experimental. Most numerical approaches have been limited to the waveless flow regime. The various free surface-tracking schemes adopted for this problem were used to more accurately estimate the average film thickness, rather than to capture the unsteady wavy motion. In this study, the wavy motions in laminar wavy liquid film flows with Reynolds numbers of 200-1000 were simulated with various numerical schemes based on the volume of fluid (VOF) method for interface tracking. The results from each numerical scheme were compared with the experimental results in terms of the average film thickness, the wave velocity, and the wave amplitude.


The LHCb experiment, its tracking and particle identification systems have been introduced elsewhere in this conference. Here we will illustrate the LHCb physics performance with some key measurements. More detailed results can be found in. CP violation is described in the Standard Model by a complex phase in the CKM matrix. The B meson sector is a place where theoretical predictions can be precisely compared with experimental results. LHCb will measure precisely fundamental parameters of the Standard Model like the phases argVtd = −β, argVub = −γ and argVts = −φs/2 + π. We will mesasure the B0s oscillation frequency and explore many rare decays involving radiative, electroweak and gluonic penguin amplitudes. There is also a B+c and b-baryon physics program and our trigger is designed to face unexpected decays. With all these measurements, we will over constrain the unitarity triangles in order to search for inconsistencies and to exhibit new physics. Indeed new physics scenarii propose new particles and new couplings which can modify the amplitudes of penguin and box diagrams. Physics potential of LHCb is estimated using Monte Carlo simulation. Proton-proton collisions are generated using PYTHIA 6.2 including hard QCD processes, single and double diffraction. Multiple parton interactions are tuned to reproduce the track multiplicities observed at SPS and Teva-


Objective
The prognosis of lung cancer brain metastasis is affected by many factors. This study was to analyze the incidence of brain metastasis (BM) in patients with stage Ⅱ-Ⅲ non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), undergoing radical chemoradiotherapy, and to study the factors affecting prognosis of survival. The values of DS-GPA and Lung-mol GPA, two prognostic index models, were compared in prognosis of patients with specific BM types.

Methods
A total of 98 patients with stage Ⅱ-Ⅲ NSCLC who underwent radical chemoradiotherapy were enrolled into the database of the Cancer Hospital of Fudan University, from January 2005 to December 2014. A total of 98 patients with brain metastases after treatment were screened and collected. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed on factors that may affect their survival prognosis. The survival rate was compared using the Log-rank test. The abilities of the two prognostic index models to predict survival were compared by ROC's area under the curve (AUC).

Results
The incidence of brain metastases in patients with stage Ⅱ-Ⅲ primary NSCLC after radical chemoradiotherapy was 12.6%. Univariate analysis showed that gender, brain metastasis KPS score, pathological type, initial clinical stage, gene status, TKI treatments, brain radiotherapy had an effect on patients' survival (P<0.05); multivariate analysis showed that gene status, brain metastasis KPS score and TKI treatments were closely related to survival (P<0.05). The AUC of the DS-GPA model predicted survival was 0.588, and the AUC of the Lung-mol GPA model was 0.608.

Conclusions
The gene status, TKI treatment, and KPS scores of BM patients are related to survival in this study. The two prognostic index models of DS-GPA and Lung-mol GPA have limited application value for prognosis evaluation of these patients. New prediction models need to be further validated and explored in large sample populations.

Key words:
Non-small cell lung cancer; Brain metastases; Chemoradiatherapy; Prognostic index model


95 In Insiders and Outsiders Waldren describes the cultural contact between natives and a community of foreign residents in a small Mallorcan village in Spain. The work is a longitudinal case study based on nearly four decades of participant observation which centers on the era from the early 1960s to the mid 1990s; the study is framed by a historical background of the area, the formation of the village, an account of developments over the centuries and contact with foreign visitors who came to the village in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The author provides a detailed physical description of the village, the kinship and social relationship networks of the native villagers, the structure of the overall village and its daily operational existence, adaptations to socioeconomic changes and ways in which new people were incorporated into the village. Such adaptations involved both maintenance and flexibility in concepts of identity and relationships. The dynamics in the relationship between locals and resident foreigners over the decades are described and analyzed within the framework of ongoing socioeconomic developments, particularly the tourism industry. As the full title suggests, a central subject of mutual interest, but often from different viewpoints, was the local identity and local natural assets of an unspoiled rural paradise being confronted with socioeconomic progress and opportunities that required physical and social adaptations.


Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the staple food for more than three billion people, over half the world's population. It provides 27% of dietary energy and 20% of dietary protein in the developing world. Rice is cultivated in at least 114, mostly developing, countries and is the primary source of income and employment for more than 100 million households in Asia and Africa (FAO, 2004). Of the 840 million people suffering from chronic hunger, over 50% live in areas dependent on rice production. About 80% of the world's rice is produced on small farms, primarily to meet family needs, and poor rural farmers account for 80% of all rice producers (FAO, 2004). Less than 7% of the world's rice production is traded internationally (Maclean et al., 2002) and with this small marketable surplus, prices fluctuate widely with droughts, floods, and typhoons (Hossain, 1997). Rice is the dominant crop in Asia where, in many countries, it covers half of the arable land used for agriculture (Cantrell and Hettel, 2004). The Asian continent, host to 56% of humanity including 70% of the world's 1.3 billion poor people, produces and consumes around 92% of the world's rice (Papademetriou, 1999). Nine of the top-ten rice-producing countries in 2003, namely, China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Japan are in Asia. China and India combined account for more than half of the world's rice area, and, along with Indonesia, consume more than three-fourths of the global rice production (Hossain, 1997; Maclean et al., 2002). In addition to being the world's most popular staple—cultivated for more than 10,000 years—rice provides a symbol of global unity and cultural identity for many countries where its cultivation is intertwined with religious observances, festivals, customs, folklore, and other traditions. Cognizant of this, the United Nations launched the International Year of Rice in 2004 with the theme Rice is Life, the first time a year has been dedicated to a single crop, to underscore the enormous implications of rice for human nutrition, global food security, and alleviation of poverty (FAO, 2004). Rice Biotechnology for Developing Countries in Asia


To assess the value of 2D multibreath‐hold susceptibility‐weighted imaging (SWI) for visualizing intratumoral hemorrhage of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and correlate with pathological results.


Turfgrass managers have many options for broadleaf and grassy weed control, although new chemistries for the turf market are rare, especially in the case of weeds deemed as "hard-to-control." Examples include ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea), thistle (various species), and wild violet (Viola sororia). Effective chemical control of this group is limited and cultural controls have minimal effect due to these weeds' ability to persist in growing conditions unfavorable towards turfgrass. A new active ingredient, halauxifen-methyl, available to the turf manager in both GameOn and Relzar, shows promising results on both easy-to-control and hard-to-control turfgrass weeds.


The activity of the University of Houston Group during the past year in experimental intermediate energy physics is covered. Research in this area is expanding rapidly throughout the world with the operation of the new meson facilities. This report summarizes research efforts at LAMPF, SREL, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory. The main thrusts of present research is to understand pion production in the few nucleon system, and to begin a series of experiments using K mesons as a probe of the nucleus. Work involving the difference between ..pi../sup +-/ forward scattering from /sup 40/Ca and /sup 48/Ca along with proton-proton and proton-deuteron scattering, will also be reported.


As an important water resource of Shandong Province, groundwater plays a great role in the social and economic development. In recent 20 years, the external environmental changes have consequently led to the changes of groundwater resources. The advanced recognition of variation rules and the improvement of evaluation methods could reflect the changes of groundwater resources at some degree. This paper gives a preliminary analysis about the changes of groundwater resources by contrasting the main factors and final conclusions between the first and second groundwater resources assessment. It also provides basis for the reasonable exploitation on utilization of Shandong groundwater resources.


Online news reading has become very popular as the web provides access to news articles from millions of sources around the world. As a specific application domain, news recommender systems aim to give the most relevant news article recommendations to users according to their personal interests and preferences. Recently, a family of models has emerged that aims to improve recommendations by adapting to the contextual situation of users. These models provide the premise of being more accurate as they are tailored to satisfy the continuously changing needs of users. However, little attention has been paid to the emotional context and its potential on improving the accuracy of news recommendations. The main objective of this paper is to investigate whether, how and to what extent emotion features can improve recommendations. Towards that end, we derive a large number of emotion features that can be attributed to both items and users in the domain of news. Then, we devise state-of-the-art emotion-aware recommendation models by systematically leveraging these features. We conducted a thorough experimental evaluation on a real dataset coming from news domain. Our results demonstrate that the proposedmodels outperform state-of-the-art non-emotion-based recommendation models. Our study provides evidence of the usefulness of the emotion features at large, as well as the feasibility of our approach on incorporating them to existing models to improve recommendations.


In this paper we investigate if the German implied volatility index, VDAX, could be used as a good sentiment indicator for a contrarian strategy. For such a strategy to be legitimate there must exist price inefficiencies in the market, which requires that the efficient market hypothesis does not hold. We compare broader index-based contrarian strategies with a buy and hold strategy in the German stock index DAX from 1992-2012. The results shows that the contrarian strategy performs better in bearish periods but that it does not outperform the buy and hold strategy in the overall sample period.


Abstract Sediment particles entrainment from the channel bed is influenced by flow turbulence which creates fluctuating shear stress at the bed. Sweep quadrant event is considered to be most important for entrainment of sediment particles as it exerts forces in the flow direction resulting in rolling and sliding of sediment particle. Similarly, the ejection event has been considered important for sediment transport since these events maintain the sediment particles in suspension. In this paper, the nature of bursting events and in particular, the sweep events were studied in a model of braided river with a central island. The instantaneous velocities of flow were measured using the ADV. The turbulent stresses were determined from these instantaneous velocities. Box–Cox transformation is applied to transform the original data into a normally distributed data. The velocity measurements near the braided bar were made at 12 vertical sections using an ADV. The maximum value of turbulent kinetic energy and the Reynolds shear stress was found to occur near the bed level. These turbulent parameters have greater values for scouring points, this shows that these parameters are related with the scouring near the braided bar.


Monthly measurements made at 15 stations along the axis of the upper Neuse River estuary show a highly variable degree of correlation between concentration of suspended particulate material (SPM) and attenuation of light (c) as measured by transmissometer. Coefficients of determination along transect lines ranged from 0.12 to 0.93 and calibration slopes ranged from 0.50 to 5.63. When examined on a station-by-station basis, coefficients of determination ranged from 0.21 to 0.96 and calibration slopes ranged from 1.04 to 4.94. Surface calibrations made at individual stations over the full 13-month period were the most consistent of all observations and were considerably better than calibrations made using all of the stations on a given day. Organic content, which can dominate the suspended sediment load during some months, does not appear to explain the variations in reliability of the calibrations. However, an abundance of large aggregates with time-varying size and shape distributions may be partly responsible for variations in optical properties of the sediments, and thus may confound the relationship between SPM and c in the Neuse River estuary. Time-varying calibrations to account for non-negligible changes in optical properties may not suffice in complex estuarine environments where the in situ particle dynamics are poorly understood.


This study examined European American, Latino, Asian American, and Native American parental involvement and their children's high school completion. An examination of how different family structures have an influence on a student's education was conducted. This study used the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) of 1988 and utilized a hierarchical linear model (HLM) for the statistical analysis. Social capital theory and a family ecological approach were used as the theoretical foundations. The findings demonstrated that different types of parental involvement were importantin a student's highschool completion, dependingon ethnicity. Schoolinvolvement was not significant in influencingthe level of parental involvement and the relation to high school completion. Future research should focus on understandingthe ways in which a stronger relationshipbetween families and educational systems could be developed.


15 villages in East Pakistan were used to test hypotheses on the relationship between fertility and socioeconomic status age at marriage religious affiliation and family type in this study. Fertility was found to be higher in low income groups and also higher for Muslims than Hindus. Fertility was also higher for single than for joint families and for women married below the age of 15. Regardless of the differences found in fertility levels the overall fertility level is still very high and fertility reduction must occur rapidly by 1970 to achieve the governmental goal of reduction of the crude birth rate from 50 to 40.


To improve the solubility of quercetin in water,quercetin-7-sulphate sodium was synthesized with quercetin and concentrated sulfuric acid.With yield of quercetin-7-sulphate sodium as index,single factor method and orthogonal experiment design were adopted to determine the optimal reaction condition.The solubility of quercetin and quercetin-7-sulphate sodium in water was determined.The result showed that the ratio of quercetin to sulphate was 1:6,reaction time was 3h,reaction temperature was 10℃,and the yield can reach 83.68%.Solubility of quercetin-7-sulphate in wa- ter was 940.03μg·mL~(-1),195.8 times more than quercetin.The structure of the quercetin-7-sulphate sodium were characterized by IR,elemental analysis and ~1HNMR and the quercetin was sulfonated at 7-OH in A ring.


By analyzing the core issues of reconstruction for earthquake disaster and the special status in reconstruction periods,this paper emphasizes the significance on social reconstruction and institutional reconstruction;and it discusses problems about sites decision of rebuilding,planning of reconstruction,approaches and ways of reconstruction.


Polymer bile acid resorption inhibitors with simultaneous bile acid adsorbing effect are disclosed, as well as a process for preparing the same, medicaments which contain these compounds and their use. Vinyl copolymers are disclosed which contain units of formula (I), in which R to R , d, e, f, H, L, A, Y, Z and B have the meanings indicated in the description. Also disclosed is a process for preparing the same. These compounds are suitable for treating lipid metabolism disturbances.


It is already known that a trellis code T, which is constructed by using the encoder of a convolutional code C with short constraint length followed by a delay processor and a signal mapper, is equivalent to a trellis code with large constraint length. In this paper, we derive a new lower bound on the free distance of T, which, in some cases, is better than the previously derived bound. Moreover, instead of the decoding used in earlier publications, we apply iterative decoding on both tailbiting and zero-tail representations of T to take advantage of the new lower bound and, in the meantime, to decrease the associated error coefficient caused by the decoding used in earlier publications. Comparisons among various designs of such a trellis code and some well-known coding methods are also provided.


Many eyes are currently focused on the US, where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have begun the fi rst in a series of live televised debates in the presidential race there. However, it is important not to overlook other elections with real potential to impact global health. The most important of these is undoubtedly the post of the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO). The (second) term of the current incumbent, Dr Margaret Chan, expires on June 3


Whenever the need for the safe and reliable operation of a complex system exists, a major requirement for success is the actions of the people involved. This is especially true when a time-critical response is required. In this context, the operation of a nuclear power plant is exemplary. Lessons from the Three Mile Island-2 incident show that insufficient attention was paid to the man/machine interface. Since that time, considerable effort has been directed by the nuclear industry toward the improvement of control room instrumentation, emergency operating procedures, and operator training. The improvement of the safety of nuclear power plants through the reduction of operator errors is discussed. The nuclear power plant operator's diagnostic role is analogous to that of a flight controller for a manned space flight mission. Both must be able to quickly understand and integrate large quantities of information on current system operation with background data on system design and performance.


The value of power-factor tests on bushings at higher voltages has been demonstrated. Tests at low voltages, while valuable, are inadequate. The power-factor and capacitance vs. voltage characteristics at voltages up to or above the operating voltage are important in judging the condition of the insulation. The nature of bushing deterioration and the significance of high power factor have been shown by laboratory examinations. The findings help to establish a basis for power-factor limits, and for improvements in design and maintenance.


This article presents the analysis of intercultural communication in forming professional competences. The process of studying a foreign language implies new psychological factors coming into existence. Generally, it should be taken into account since complex relationships between associations and knowledge, cognitive and affective aspects of development of young people lie in the heart of language educational process. Insufficient linguistic-sociological and cultural knowledge about foreign society in the process of translation can lead to "communicative failures" or a communicative barrier. In the process of developing the perceptive-communicative competence of future translators, the learner overcomes such intercultural barriers. Socio-ethnic barriers are based on cultural differences of misunderstanding and disbelief due to differences in the meanings of the same language units in different languages, ignorance of sign language and traditions. During the analysis of the process of intercultural communication we distinguish three levels of penetration of communicants into contacting cultures: cultural interaction; cultural understanding; cultural interconnection. Successful intercultural professional communication represents satisfactory communicative behavior in the process of mutual knowledge and understanding of relationships and consequently, involves the ability to adequately interpret and accept the sociocultural diversity of communication partners. Thus, studying the strategies of communicative behavior of English-speaking representatives, their culturological characteristics, contributes to association with foreign language speakers culture.


An apparatus and a method capable of verifying integrity of contents are provided to enable a user to verify integrity of contents while the user downloads the contents. A method capable of verifying integrity of contents comprises the following steps. Contents provided to a user are divided into a plurality of sections. Appointed secret information is coded to prevent the appointed secret information from being recognized. Information about verifying integrity of contents is inputted to the contents.


Dynamics of water quality was predicted by ARMA Models and Neural Network Models in this paper. A ARMA Model for water quality of Litopenaeus vannameiis' s ponds has been raised based on data from shrimps ponds, and the values of p and q of ARMA(p, q) were 4 and 2 respectively. Results of prediction indicated that accuracy of ARMA Model was high. Moreover, comparison of effectivity and accuracy between ARMA Model and Neural Network Models indicated that the former was better for prediction of water quality of shrimp ponds.


This study compares two high-tech firms in terms of their differences in organizational characteristics and learning activities beyond the boundaries. It finds that the larger company continuously develops new technology to achieve long-term survival through a balance between exploration and exploitation while the smaller enterprise grows quickly by leveraging focused technology and core business. The innovation-oriented firm gives more emphasis to learning beyond its knowledge boundary and the customer-oriented firm focuses on learning beyond its organizational boundary. The two firms' sustainable development illustrates two strategies to adapt to the complexity of the external environment.


Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) is a prominent research area in effective retrieval and management process for large image databases. Which was a bottleneck in reducing semantic gap issue to solve, many approaches have been proposed. Among them, Relevance Feedback (RF) is a technique absorbed into CBIR systems to improve retrieval accuracy using user given feedback One of the traditional methods to enact relevance feedback is Feature Reweighting (FRW), it is useful technique to enhance retrieval performance based on the acquired feedback from user. The assumption for previous FRW approaches are that the length of feature vectors for images are fixed and use only the information from the set of images send back in the early query result for feature reweighting. In this article, we examined systematically the proposed system with various weight update strategies and compared output retrieval results and proposed a new self order feature reweighting approach in CBIR to reduce semantic gap using relevance feedback which we experimented with COREL database with 25 different categories and each category containing 100 number of relevant images. The experimental results demonstrated the advantage of our method in terms of precision and recall. The results show the success of the proposed approach and it is shown that our perspective outperforms previous work.


The powered parachute is a special kind of soft-wing aircraft.In the face of gust,especially the steady gust,it can not adjust the aileron rudder to control flight attitude like rigid-wing aircraft,but can mitigate the gust disturbance by designing the parafoil`s longitudinal cyclical movement.The paper studied the longitudinal model of the powered parachute,introduced the method of dynamic meshes,and set three cycles of the parafoil movement with different time and oscillation.Then it dynamicly simulated the entire response in FLUENT,analyzed the aerodynamic characteristics of the cycles movement,and researched the impact on easing gust disturbance with motion parameters.The experiments show that it can effectively ease the unsteady gust interference with reasonable design of the active movement of the parafoil.


Stardust is a mission to fly by Comet Wild-2 in early 2004 and return samples of the coma to Earth. During its 120-150 km flyby of the comet nucleus, a secondary science goal is to obtain images of the nucleus using the onboard navigation camera. Due to the 40 minute round-trip light time, ground processing of navigation data to update pointing information to maintain the nucleus in the camera field-of-view is impractical. Thus, a simple, reliable, and fast algorithm was developed to close the navigation loop onboard during encounter. The algorithm uses images of the nucleus during approach to update target relative state information. This involves centroiding on the image to obtain nucleus center-of-figure data and then processing the data through a Kalman filter to update the spacecraft, position and attitude. Monte Carlo simulations were then performed to test the algorithm. These simulations incorporated errors in spacecraft initial position and in attitude knowledge to provide a "truth" model which the filter must recover from. The results of the simulations proved that the algorithm was successful in maintaining the nucleus in the camera field-of-view assuming nominal values for the error sources. Even with worst case errors, the algorithm performed successfully in over 90% of the cases.


A RAPD fragment linked to Ph-3 gene was cloned in the study.According to the sequencing result,SCAR primer was designed.A 592 bp fragment was amplified in resistant and susceptible parents,resis-tant and susceptible bulks,F1 individuals and F2 plants,and then the PCR products were digested with restriction enzyme XbaI.Susceptible genotypes and heterozygous resistant genotypes could produce respectively 261,193,95 bp and 592,261,193,95 bp bands.Homozygous resistant genotypes still presented 592 bp fragment.These DNA bands which could distinguish resistant materials,susceptible materials,F1 individuals and F2 plants successfully and they could be CAPS markers for Ph-3 gene.


Merger and acquisition has become a popular way for companies to increase their market shares. This paper focuses on the analysis of the M&A strategies of Bright Food Company. The goal is to identify the strategies made by Bright Food Company and its future goals. The whole paper uses credible sources and data from different websites. This paper reveals the reason why some M&A strategies made by Bright Food Company are not successful.


The aim of this paper is to re-examine the importance of autonomical aspects of school mathematics. First, two aspects of mathematics, empirical and autonomical, will be found in some philosophical researches. Then, some discussions in mathematics education will be organized based on these two aspects, and examples from ordinary school mathematics contents will be re-examined to show the importance of autonomical aspects even in school mathematics. Finally, compatibility of this paper with recent tones in mathematics education will be checked. Recently, it may be required that school education should be related to everyday or real situations more closely, as reflected in integrated or cross curricular, and such tones seem to influence mathematics education. For example, some tendencies showing closer relations between mathematics and real situations can be seen in the review of recent researches in mathematics education (De Corte et al., 1996). This paper will re-examine a relation between mathematics and real situations to discuss these issues soundly, and will try to show that it is theoretical or autonomical aspects of mathematics to make mathematics useful in real situations.


A model based on individual local information is proposed for social foraging swarm.The model only relies on the local information between the mutual observable individuals.The stability of social foraging behavior of intelligent swarm is studied.The simulation shows that the stable global social foraging behavior can be achieved easily.Good scalability of the proposed model of social foraging swarm can be obtained.


The phase diagram for graphene growth was obtained to understand the physics of the growth mechanism and control the layer number or coverage of graphene deposited on copper via low-pressure chemic...


Background Faecal calprotectin has been shown to be useful as a non-invasive screening test to differentiate functional from organic bowel disease, and it has been noted to be elevated in colorectal cancer. The aim of this study was to describe concentrations of faecal calprotectin in patients with oesophago-gastric cancer and investigate any potential discriminatory power of the test. Patients Faecal calprotectin was measured in samples from 39 patients with known oesophago-gastric cancer and in 191 samples from control subjects. Results The median calprotectin concentration was < 20 µg/g (range <  20–421 µg/g) in control subjects and 97 µg/g (range < 20–940 µg/g) in patients with oesophago-gastric cancer (P < 0.001). A receiver operating characteristic curve gave an area under the ROC curve of 0.84 and a sensitivity of 76.9% (95% CI: 63.7–90.1%) and specificity of 88.0% (95% CI: 83.3–92.6%) at a cutoff of 50 µg/g. Conclusion Faecal calprotectin is elevated in patients with cancer of the upper gastrointestinal tract. This study suggests that calprotectin may be promising in discriminating cancer patients from controls, but further work is required to explore any potential role of faecal calprotectin in screening for, or diagnosis of, oesophago-gastric cancer.


Agonist antibodies (Ab) can directly target costimulatory molecule on the surface of antigen-primed T-lymphocytes. Among those, tumor necrosis factor receptor superfamily (TNFRSF) agonists are attractive and some of them are currently in various stages of pre-clinical and clinical trials, including anti-4-1BB, anti-GITR and anti-OX40, albeit with limited therapeutic benefit as single agents. Here, we examined the inhibitory role of ecto-enzyme CD73 (generating adenosine) on the antitumor efficacy of agonistic anti-4-1BB/CD137 Ab therapy, as anti-4-1BB treatment preferentially drove CD73− effector T cell response within TGF-β-low tumor microenvironment. The anti-CD73/anti-4-1BB combination therapy induced tumor regression associated with enhanced antitumor CD8+ T cell responses and reduced CD4+Foxp3+ regulatory T cell (Treg) accumulation. However, the TGF-β-rich tumor milieu confered resistance to anti-4-1BB therapy with sustained CD73 expression on both infiltrating CD4+ and CD8+ T cells across several tumor models. Our study establishes a novel mechanistic link between the CD73 axis and engagement of 4-1BB and possibly other costimulatory molecules. Thus, CD73 blockade has great potential for more effective clinical targeting of TNFRSF agonists.


In English learning, writing is undoubtedly an important part and task of English teaching, as well as a weak link in college students' language learning. On the basis of analyzing the current situation of contemporary college students' English writing, this study discusses the effect of affective factors on college students' English writing, and discusses how to apply the three affective factors proposed in Krashen's affective filter hypothesis, namely, motivation, self-confidence and anxiety, to the teaching of college students' English writing, stimulate students' internal driving force for learning English writing, help students establish appropriate self-confidence, adjust their anxiety, and improve their English writing ability.


Series of natural and semisynthetic rotenoids and isoflavonoids were studied for their inhibitory activity on cyclic AMP phosphodiesterase (PDE) in rat heart. Some of the compounds showed higher inhibitory activity than that of the most potent flavonoids. The chemical transformation of the starting natural compounds failed to increase their inhibitory potency. PDE inhibition was of a noncompetitive type.


With the faster progress of aging of population,continuous supply of social pension insurance have become the essential issue of effective implementation of the new rural social pension insurance,which urgently demands the establishment of a sustainable financing mode.Through literature review methodology,this paper analyzes the different views to the new type of rural social pension insurance financing mode in the current academic circles and holds that the current financing modes have the problems such as low financing standard,unreasonable financing proportion and difficulty in maintenance and appreciation of values.According to the analysis,it concludes that a government-driven,multi-participation pension financing mode should be established,and some effective measures about how to implement the financing mode smoothly are put forward.


The security investment is a kind of investment full of hazard. When the investors put their limited funds separately into various securities, they will reap great profits through securities-combined investment in condition of risk-limited. By using the theory of Lagrange conditioned extreme value, the investors could find the best investment portfolio.


Abstract Letgbe a smooth function on R nwith values in [0, 1]. Using the isoperimetric property of the Gaussian measure, itis proved thatφ(Φ−1(Eg))−Eφ(Φ−1(g))⩽E|∇g|. Conversely, this inequality implies the isoperimetric property of the Gaussian measure.


In the modern world, a lot of things and processes, which not so long ago were treated as something from fiction, are increasingly being implemented in real life. An example of this is the automation of the process of recognizing emotions, which is no longer an unattainable technology and occupies an important place in the area of computer vision. Technologies for recognizing the emotions of facial expression can be used for various fields and purposes: from creating games and applications to more complex, such as analysis of people's mental state, discussions, marketing research, attention monitoring, driver status, robotics and so on. All this confirms the high academic and commercial potential of systems for recognizing the emotional characteristics of the person and, accordingly, brings a large number of scientists and developers, some of whom have already implemented such systems. But today their number is small and a lot of such products require special equipment and high computing performance. Another common problem is the vulnerability to blurred images and the closed nature of the system, which makes it impossible to analyze and modify the development. Therefore, the optimization of the automated process of recognizing the emotions of facial expression is needed in order to create a more stable, high quality and affordable system. The paper have description and results of the creation of system of emotion recognition, the basis of which is a convolutional neural network. The user can connect with the system through a simple interface that allows you to download the image for analysis or turn on the camera to identify emotions in real time. The practical value of this work is the developed high-quality system for recognizing the facial emotional characteristics which is ready for use and implementation in relevant fields.


L. Gilbert Carroll is Superintendent of Lumberton Public Schools, Lumberton, North Carolina. THE marriage of high-school students has given rise to many problems for which school administrators and boards of education must find solutions. Doubtless school authorities may legally take reasonable action to discourage the marriage of high-school students. What action will be held reasonable is a question upon which there is little legal precedent despite the increasing number of such marriages. In some schools married students are denied the right to participate in school activities outside their regular classwork. The question of the right of married pregnant students to participate in commencement exercises has arisen in other schools. 'There are schools in which married students are not allowed to attend school. Some school officials require married couples (husbands and wives) who remain in school to attend separate high schools. In instances such as those referred to above, the local school boards


The prevalence of diabetic retinopathy is not well studied in the Chinese pre‐diabetic population, also known as impaired glucose regulation. Hence, we investigated the prevalence of and risk factors associated with retinopathy in diabetic and pre‐diabetic subjects from Chinese communities.


This work presents a new approach called SiViFlow that simulates watercourses in real-time. The algorithm is flexible enough to be used in any type of environment and allows a river to be dynamically generated given any riverbed. The component that manages the flow is responsible for the water animation and allows the use of various techniques to simulate visual features. As all the information is dynamically generated, SiViFlow also reacts to dynamic objects that come in contact with the river, properly adjusting the course of the flow. This work helps accelerate and improve the methods of creating realistic rivers so that they can be used in video


This paper presents easy to check conditions for the existence and uniqueness of strong solutions to evolution inclusions in a Hilbert space involving a time dependent family of subgradients which are of the form The conditions for existence and uniqueness of a solution involve an assumption of Lipshitz continuity of the convex functions rather than a Lipschitz condition on the resolvents. No smoothness is assumed on the function, f.


Banks guarantee international trade through letters of credit. This paper analyzes what happens to trade when the critical role of banks as trade guarantors is compromised. Using the case of the Greek capital controls in 2015, the events around which led to a massive loss of confidence in the domestic banking system, we show that firms whose operations were more dependent on domestic banks suffered a steep decline in imports and, subsequently, exports. This operated through letters of credit, which during the capital controls period had to be backed by firms' own cash collateral rather than the bank guarantee. As a result, cash-poor firms imported relatively less. Public intervention to guarantee transactions is shown to help mitigate some of the decline in imports.


Polyhexamethylene biguanide (PHMB) is a broad-spectrum antiseptic which avoids many efficacy and toxicity problems associated with antimicrobials, in particular, it has a low risk of loss of susceptibility due to acquired antimicrobial resistance. Despite such advantages, PHMB is not widely used in wound care, suggesting more research is required to take full advantage of PHMB's properties. We hypothesised that a nanofibre morphology would provide a gradual release of PHMB, prolonging the antimicrobial effects within the therapeutic window. PHMB:polyurethane (PU) electrospun nanofibre membranes were prepared with increasing PHMB concentrations, and the effects on antimicrobial activities, mechanical properties and host cell toxicity were compared. Overall, PHMB:PU membranes displayed a burst release of PHMB during the first hour following PBS immersion (50.5–95.9% of total released), followed by a gradual release over 120 h (≤25 wt % PHMB). The membranes were hydrophilic (83.7–53.3°), gradually gaining hydrophobicity as PHMB was released. They displayed superior antimicrobial activity, which extended past the initial release period, retained PU hyperelasticity regardless of PHMB concentration (collective tensile modulus of 5–35% PHMB:PU membranes, 3.56 ± 0.97 MPa; ultimate strain, >200%) and displayed minimal human cell toxicity (<25 wt % PHMB). With further development, PHMB:PU electrospun membranes may provide improved wound dressings.


In terms of Yin - yang & five element the major target of Love Island with the main characters actually tried the results of the analysis in the process in several ways, such as the implications could be able to get. First, the academic system of Yin - yang & five element is still in the systematic analysis of the characters is that it does not take advantage. This is a character in the role of actors to convey the image is done through various means delicate. Therefore, Yin - yang & five element is the character of the framework are restricted to the analysis of the process of it certainly is not easy to do. In addition to the characters of the text can be analyzed in the plane has a disadvantage. Second, because of these limitations, the center attempts Yin - yang & five element Unlike conventional representation of the character of a tributary of the technique to be made is that there is potential. However, Yin - yang & five element character analysis can be difficult for some distance, but the point system, the logical character represented by the Yin - yang & five element technique is comparable to place.


This article examines contributions from members of the public featured in British television news coverage of the 2005 London bombings ('7/7'). Specifically, it explores how images (photographs and videos) captured by ordinary people on their mobile devices were used in the live news reportage of 7/7 and, given the current salience of commemorative journalism, how these were (re-)used in the tragedy's first year anniversary coverage. The analysis reveals broadcasters' selection of uniform, repetitive and 'sanitized' mobile media footage, as well as a tendency towards non-attribution. This article contributes to the scant body of discourse analytic research into 'participatory journalism' practices, particularly their interaction with 'traditional' forms of journalism.


Recently, object detection in natural images has made a breakthrough, but it is still challenging in oriented ship detection for remote sensing imagery. Considering some limitations in this task, such as uncertain ship orientation, unspecific features for locating and classification in the complex optical environment, and multiplicative speckle interference of synthetic aperture radar (SAR), we propose an oriented ship detector based on the pairwise branch detection head and adaptive SAR feature enhancement. The details are as follows: (1) Firstly, the ships with arbitrary directions are described with a rotated ground truth, and an oriented region proposal network (ORPN) is designed to study the transformation from the horizontal region of interest to the rotated region of interest. The ORPN effectively improved the quality of the candidate area while only introducing a few parameters. (2) In view of the existing algorithms that tend to perform classification and regression prediction on the same output feature, this paper proposes a pairwise detection head (PBH) to design parallel branches to decouple classification and locating tasks, so that each branch can learn more task-specific features. (3) Inspired by the ratio-of-average detector in traditional SAR image processing, the SAR edge enhancement (SEE) module is proposed, which adaptively enhances edge pixels, and the threshold of the edge is learned by the channel-shared adaptive thresholds block. Experiments were carried out on both optical and SAR datasets. In the optical dataset, PBH combined with ORPN improved recall by 5.03%, and in the SAR dataset, the overall method achieved a maximum F1 score improvement of 6.07%; these results imply the validity of our method.


Graphene oxide and reduced graphene oxide thin films are very promising materials because they can be used in optoelectronic devices and in a growing range of applications such as touch screens and flexible displays. In this work, graphene oxide (GO) and thermally reduced graphene oxide (rGO) thin films, deposited on Ti/glass substrates, have been obtained by electrophoretic deposition. The morphological and the structural properties of the samples have been investigated by micro-Raman technique, X-ray reflectometry, and SEM analysis. In order to study the optical and electrical properties, variable angle spectroscopic ellipsometry and impedance analysis have been performed. The thermal annealing changes strongly the structural, electrical, and optical properties, because during the thermal processes some amount of sp3 bonds originally present in GO were removed. In particular, the annealing enhances the Ohmic behavior of the rGO film increasing its conductivity and the estimated optical density. Moreover...


Objective: Unexplained weight loss is common in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Because ghrelin plays an important role in energy homeostasis, this study investigated the plasma level of ghrelin in COPD. Methods: Plasma ghrelin levels and levels of leptin, tumor necrosis factor-, and C-reactive protein were measured in 29 patients with COPD and 17 healthy controls. Body composition was assessed with bioelectrical impedance analysis. Results: Body mass index and percentage of body fat were lower in patients who had COPD than in healthy controls. Plasma ghrelin and leptin concentrations were significantly lower in patients who had COPD than in healthy controls (ghrelin: 0.25 0.22 ng/mL versus 0.43 0.24 ng/mL, P 0.013; leptin: 1.77 0.70 ng/mL versus 2.85 0.96 ng/mL, P 0.000). In contrast, tumor necrosis factor- and C-reactive protein were significantly higher in those with COPD than in controls. Plasma ghrelin (log transformed) was positively correlated with body mass index and percentage of body fat in patients with COPD but negatively correlated in control subjects. Plasma ghrelin was negatively correlated with tumor necrosis factor- and C-reactive protein in COPD. Conclusion: Plasma ghrelin level was decreased in COPD and this is different from other weight-loss diseases. These data suggest that decreased ghrelin and other factors may contribute to alterations in metabolic status during inflammatory stress in this disease. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


Ideally ordered anodic porous alumina with controlled interpore distances was formed by fabricating a resist mask using a flexible mold and subsequent anodization. Prior to forming the resist pattern on the surface of an Al substrate, Al was pre-anodized at 10 V to prepare the fine porous structure, which acts as a resist adhesive layer. After the formation of the resist mask using a flexible mold, an arranged array of cavities with Al exposed at the bottom was formed by the selective dissolution of the oxide layer at resist openings. The subsequent anodization of the sample with the cavity array generated ideally ordered anodic porous alumina because alumina holes were formed at the bottom of cavities during anodization. This process allows the preparation of ideally ordered anodic porous alumina even on a curved Al surface owing to the flexibility of the mold. In addition, this process can also be applied to the preparation of an ideally ordered anodic porous alumina with a large sample area because the Al substrate can be patterned without high pressure. The obtained sample can be used for various applications requiring an ideally ordered hole array structure.


The molecular displacements of the E→C and B→C phase transitions of stearic acid have been investigated by an infrared oblique transmission method. This enables us to determine unambiguously the three-dimensional arrangement of functional groups from intensity changes associated with the variation of two setting angles of the sample measured against the polarized incident radiation. In particular, the structural changes occurring in single-crystal specimens of double-layered polytype (Orth II) were investigated. It has been clarified that polymorphic-polytypic composite structural changes occur for the E(Orth II) single crystal; i.e., the double-layered polytype of E transforms to the single-layered one of C through two different precessional molecular displacements occurring alternately along the stacking direction of bimolecular layers


Recently Brand apartment offers to seek brand-image as each construction company that it changes brand apartment of strategy and consideration for image through marketing. It is maximized brand apartment of strategy that interior coordinator with consumers communicates design ideas can be coordinate to increase utilization of space in interior coordination. This study aims to investigate awareness and analysis about interior coordination with each spatial elements in brand apartment. It is analysed to investigated awareness and analysis about interior coordination to apply the cases about brand apartments in Wirye new town. After it is analysed to advanced researches and comparative theoretical study that survey for analysis about awareness of interior coordination in brand apartment. In correlation analysis, when family size is larger and monthly income is higher, it analyzed that is not only more interested interior coordination brand apartment with brand apartment and also it is prefer to its results. As a results, between survey analysis and case analysis by Wirye new town results compared with brand apartment with interior coordination that it is applied mainly modern style to living-room with arranged furniture, fabric, artworks first and master-room is laid furniture with color and fabric. Child-room suggested especially color with furniture and accessory through sensibility for children that kitchen, bathroom, entrance are utilization of space to enhance with lighting and accessory by directing furniture. Hereafter it expect that it will be offered to understand consumers' preference between brand apartment and interior coordination. It is improved effectiveness of case study by survey however it will be required to intensive research in interior coordination research group.


The Bell Telephone Laboratories and Dartmouth College have joined forces to provide permanent commemoration of an important event in the history of computing-the first public demonstration of remote operation of a digital computer and of computer-telecommunications integration. The demonstration was conducted as part of the 1940 annual meeting of the Mathematical Association of America. Problems were entered into a teletypewriter located in McNutt Hall on the Dartmouth campus in Hanover, N.H. They were then transmitted via standard Bell System telecommunications facilities to the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City, where they were solved on-line by the BTL Model 1 Complex Number Calculator. The results were immediately returned on-line via the same telecommunications link to the teletypewriter located on the Dartmouth campus, 250 miles away. The man behind both the demonstration and the digital computer used in it was George R. Stibitz, then a mathematician on the technical staff of the Bell Telephone Laboratories and now Professor Emeritus of Physiology at the Dartmouth Medical School. On October 24, 1980, key personnel of both the Bell Telephone Laboratories and Dartmouth joined to honor Stibitz's pioneering achievement. At a reception on the Dartmouth campus, Seth H. Washburn, a Dartmouth alumnus and BTL vice-president, presented a brass plaque commemorating this event to Dartmouth College on behalf of the Bell system. Leonard M. Rieser, the provost of Dartmouth College, accepted the plaque and pledged that it would be put on permanent display in a prominent place in McNutt Hall, the location of the original demonstration. Honors such as this are nothing new to Stibitz. His seminal contributions to the early history of computing have been recognized by AFIPS, for example, which awarded him the Harry Goode Memorial Award in 1965. In 1977 he received the IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award. The citation accompanying that award went so far as to hail Stibitz as "the father of the modern digital computer." Stibitz's collection of reports, circuit drawings, patents, correspondence, and documents related to computers of the 1937-1945 period has been placed in the collection of Dartmouth's Baker Library. An index to these papers was published several years ago under the sponsorship of the Smithsonian Institution and the AFIPS Computer History Project. (Some additional papers have been added to the collection since publi cation of the index.) Stibitz's pioneering work on computers is perhaps less well known on the Dartmouth campus than his current work, which includes projects in using computer modeling as an aid to understanding the various functions of the human body and the illnesses afflict. ing it. To many on the campus he is best known as a "computer jock" who manages to intertwine the the. oretical, practical, and recreational aspects of cornput: ing in a most delightful and personal way. (The high point of my computer history course at Dartmouth is Stibitz's annual guest appearance. Students are as often intrigued and impressed by Stibitz's current innovative projects as by his history-making work iri the 1930s and 1940s.) He has programmed his personal microcomputer (an Apple) to play music that accompanies his wife while she plays the cello. Stibitz, a mathematician, had early been struck by the ability of telephone relays (the type commonly used in telephone switching centers) to emulate the off-on operations of binary arithmetic. In 1937 he used a couple of these relays from laboratory salvage, dry cell batteries, flashlight bulbs, wire, and some strips of metal cut from an old tobacco can to build at home in the evening a binary adder-one of the basic building blocks of modern computers. He has reconstructed this model and brings it each year to his talk in my computer history course, where today's students are fascinated by the contrast between its crude simplicity and the current sophisticated machines which this binary computing circuit opened to exploitation. By his demonstrations of this simple computing circuit and its more complex successors and by his explanations of how these capabilities could be the precursors of far more capable arithmetic machines, Stibitz was able to win the support of the Bell Telephone Laboratories for successive members of what eventually became a family of digital computing machines built using telephone relays, teletypewriters, and other building blocks drawn from the existing telecommunications technology of that day. One of the reasons he was able to do so was the fact that one of the nastier practical problems faced by research personnel at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in the late 1930s was the large number of calculations that had to be made using complex numbers in order


Abstract : HF surface current radar (CODAR) data from two shore-based radar sites were collected and combined to form vector estimates of the near-surface currents in Monterey Bay from March to May 1992. CODAR-derived currents are measures of the flow in the upper 1 m of the water column. The springtime mean flow pattern in the Bay and its variability based on a maximum of 760 three- hourly observations at a nominal 2 km spatial resolution are presented. Results for each month and the canonical day are also shown. The mean patterns show strong southward flowing onshore currents (=20 cm s-1) in the outer bay and near zero mean flow nearshore and northwest of Moss Landing. The variability is, however, large with standard deviations typically twice the mean. The canonical day shows strong (=40 cm s-1) onshore flow over the entire Bay in the late afternoon giving way to a weaker reverse flow near and northwest of Moss Landing in the nighttime period. These flow patterns combine to produce the observed mean flow. CODAR data show energy at semi-diurnal tidal periods (12.3 and 11.9 hours), diurnal period (24 hours) and a longer period (17 days). CODAR data is compared to data from a moored buoy. Low-passed Lime series are well correlated. Unfiltered time series have higher correlations at diurnal and semidiurnal tidal frequencies. CODAR-derived surface currents and the winds are highly correlated at near-diurnal frequencies corresponding to the daily sea breeze forcing. CODAR, HF Surface current radar, Monterey Bay circulation, OASIS buoy, Surface currents.


This paper compares the gender politics expressed in Ringu and The Ring, paying particular attention to specific and noteworthy distinctions and crucial underlying cultural differences that structure and shape the gender politics articulated in the two films. While highlighting the divergences in the films' narratives and examining how their depictions of female characters reveal the fundamental historical, cultural, social and ideological forces that structure Eastern and Western views of femininity, women, and their roles in society, this paper argues that although both films reflect a misogynist patriarchal perspective in their depiction of evil, violent, destructive females, it is the American remake that is ultimately more conservative and reactionary in its simplistic alignment of women, the feminine and maternity with evil and monstrosity. In comparison, the Japanese original offers a more ambiguous treatment of a key female character, the mysterious and deadly Sadako, allowing her to emerge as a potential figure of resistance against conservative patriarchy, an element that is distinctly absent in the American remake.


Transport properties of the quasi-one-dimensional salt Qn(TCNQ)2 with various percentages of impurity content were measured in the temperature range 4.2-330K. Nominally pure samples show a broad maximum of the conductivity at high temperatures and a large dispersion of the conductivity at 9.1 GHz. The 9.1 GHz dielectric constant has a maximum value epsilon max=3500 at 240K and epsilon 4.2=420. In samples having a 7% impurity content (disrupting the TCNQ chains) the DC conductivity is strongly decreased, no maximum of conductivity appears and the dielectric constant is also depressed, epsilon max=450 and epsilon 4.2=130. An analysis is presented in which it is assumed that electrons move coherently in highly-conducting large segments interrupted by defects. Coherence lengths (l) are estimated from the temperature dependence of the dielectric constant. A decrease from l=110 lattice constants for the pure sample to l=16 for the most impure sample corresponds well to the impurity content of 7%.


The book addressed the testing of hypotheses in non-parametric models in the general case for complete data samples. Classical non-parametric tests (goodness-of-fit , homogenneity, randomness, independence) of complete data are considered and explained. Tests features include the chi-squared and modified chi-squared tests, rank and homogeneity tests, and most of the test results are proved, with real applicatiuons illustrated using examples. The incorrect use of many tests, and their applications using commonly deployed statistical software is highlighted and discuss.


We report the performances of a 0.7-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> InP/GaInAs DHBT developed in III-V Lab demonstrating both <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${f} _{T}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${f} _{\mathrm{ MAX}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> of 400 GHz as well as a high fabrication yield and homogeneity on a 3-inch wafer. This technology is used for the fabrication of a very high speed 2:1 multiplexing selector operating up to 212-Gb/s, establishing a speed record. A 5.4-Vpp 100-Gb/s distributed differential selector-driver, as well as a 4.3-Vpp 64-GBd 8-pulse-amplitude-modulation (PAM) (192 Gb/s) high-speed power digital-to-analog converter (DAC) were also realized in this technology.


This paper describes the architectures of a fully differential input/single-ended output wide-band high-gain current-mode comparator and amplifier. Both architectures employ a current conveyor as the primary means of current-mode operation. The proposed comparator circuit delivers extremely high gain and wide bandwidth by employing cascode complementary gain stages and feedforward compensation techniques, respectively. The closed-loop voltage amplifier, using the proposed current-mode techniques, can improve upon the gain-bandwidth product when compared to conventional voltage-mode techniques. Computer simulation results show 135 dB of gain and 100 MHz bandwidth for such an amplifier.


The Independent Curriculum requires teachers to compile teaching tools consisting of Learning Outcomes (CP), Learning Objectives Flow (ATP) and teaching modules as a mandatory task of a teacher. The teaching module is a form of learning implementation plan in the Independent Curriculum which is accompanied by student worksheets and teaching materials in it. This research uses a type of development research with a 4D model. The 4D model consists of four stages of Define, Design, Develop and Disseminate. Due to time constraints, this study did not carry out the disseminate stage. The subjects of this study consisted of lecturers from the Biology Department, FMIPA UNP, seven Biology teachers. Based on the research data, a problem-based learning biotechnology teaching module is obtained which is very valid with a validation value of 95.59%.


&NA; Dorsiflexory phalangeal osteotomy has been shown to be an effective treatment for mild to moderate hallux rigidus in short‐ to medium‐term follow‐up studies. It is speculated that the procedure alters the mechanical function of the joint and reduces the demand for hallux dorsiflexion by elevating the proximal phalanx into a more dorsiflexed position. However, it has been demonstrated that the first metatarsophalangeal (MTP) joint space and joint range of motion are reduced by the procedure, calling into question the long‐term effectiveness of the operation. This study reviewed 27 dorsiflexory phalangeal osteotomy cases at an average of 11 years postoperatively. Twenty‐one (77%) patients reported that they were completely satisfied with the results of their surgery; 4 (15%) patients reported that they were satisfied with reservations; and 2 (7%) patients reported that they were dissatisfied. The patients who were satisfied with reservations complained of interphalangeal (IP) joint pain or stiffness. One patient developed second MTP joint metatarsalgia after surgery, and in 1 patient first MTP joint pain returned at 24 months after surgery. One dissatisfied patient complained of second MTP joint metatarsalgia, and a second patient required revision excisional arthroplasty for continued joint pain. Ten patients (38%) reported stiffness of the first MTP joint, but only 2 patients reported any restriction of activity. Footwear restrictions were reported by 15 (58%) patients preoperatively and by 9 (35%) patients at final follow‐up. Dorsiflexory phalangeal osteotomy maybe a reliable long‐term treatment for grade II or moderate hallux rigidus and is a safe and effective alternative to first MTP joint fusion in joints where movement is still present and joint cartilage is viable.


Abstract Several rapid and simple methods of sexing live mature largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) were assessed: the presence or absence of a swollen reddish genital papilla, the shape of the scaleless area surrounding the urogenital opening, and the depth and angle of probe penetration into the urogenital opening. The genital papilla method was 89% successful during the spring, but only 48% successful during the fall. The shape of the urogenital opening was a poor indicator of sex (53% of the fish were sexed correctly). Probing the urogenital opening was the best single method; it provided success rates of 90% (probe depth) and 94% (probe angle). The highest rate of sexing success (98%) was realized during the spring spawning season from a combination of the papilla and probing methods. The probing methods that were used successfully in this study on largemouth bass might be used with similar success in sexing other fish species.


where theoretical consideration has enabled us to determine the value of the coefficient, In, for each solute element. The above equation for NA indicates that the movement activated by buoyancy of the remaining melt in the mushy zone plays a dominant role on the formation of A-segregates. This is confirmed by separate experiments where plate grade carbon steel with 0.043%silicon and 0.13%molybdenum has been cast in a 26 t mold, resulting in significant decrease of NA, about 1/4, in comparison with ingot of the same grade but with 0.34%silicon and no molybdenum.