it was investigated that the finite-sized light beam transmitting through a thin dielectric slab would experiences four non-geometric effects, such as goos-hanchen-like (ghl) displacement, angular deflection, modification of waist width,and longitudinal focal shift. necessary conditions were advanced for the ghl displacement to be backward. the experimental observations of the backward ghl displacement in the microwave region were reported for the first time. these novel phenomena will have potential applications in optical devices and integrated optics.


Orbital debris in the millimeter size range can pose a hazard to current and planned spacecraft due to the high relative impact speeds in Earth orbit. Fortunately, orbital debris has a relatively short life at lower altitudes due to atmospheric effects; however, at higher altitudes orbital debris can survive much longer and has resulted in a band of high flux around 700 to 1,500 km above the surface of the Earth. While large orbital debris objects are tracked via ground based observation, little information can be gathered about small particles except by returned surfaces, which until the Orion Exploration Flight Test number one (EFT-1), has only been possible for lower altitudes (400 to 500 km). The EFT-1 crew module backshell, which used a porous, ceramic tile system with surface coatings, has been inspected post-flight for potential micrometeoroid and orbital debris (MMOD) damage. This paper describes the pre- and post-flight activities of inspection, identification and analysis of six candidate MMOD impact craters from the EFT-1 mission.


Abstract The thermal and mechanical properties of Liquid Crystal Monomers (LCM) could be reinforced by a discrete amount of Liquid Crystal Polymers (LCP) with compatible mesogenic moieties to establish a supramolecular homogeneous composite for improvement of LCM materials in display devices. Moreover, a homogeneously dispersed LCP may induce an enantiotropic transition in monotropic LCM compounds. In this work, we studied the blends of a flexible nematic LCP with two LCM compounds as model systems. The results indicate that homogenous reinforcement of LCM with LCP is a valid concept and could lead to improvements in mesogenic, thermal, orientational and mechanical properties of LCM materials for application in LCD devices.


Ocean and coastal acidification is an emerging issue caused by increasing amounts of carbon dioxide being absorbed by seawater. Changing seawater chemistry impacts marine life, ecosystem services, and humans. Learn what EPA is doing and what you can do.


### Sickle cell anemia neurologic complications

The collaboration aims at exploring the relationship between the cerebral vasculature and neurologic complications in Tanzanian children with sickle cell anemia (SCA). Cerebral vasculopathy in internal carotid, middle, anterior cerebral, and posterior


This paper commences with a general review of head injuries and then goes on to some aspects of the biomechanics of head injury and the tolerance of the head to impact.


Necrotizing myopathy with pipestem capillaries defines an immune-mediated disorder of skeletal muscle characterized by minimal cellular infiltration, muscle fiber necrosis, and microangiopathy with complement membrane attack complex (MAC; C5b9) deposition. Thickened, hyalinized ("pipestem") vessels, ultrastructurally embedded in amorphous material, and capillary loss are further features.1 The rare patients reported showed proximal weakness and high creatine kinase,1,–,4 frequently associated with myalgia. They presented with other symptoms suggesting autoimmune disorders (including cerebral vasculitis) or cancer and an overall unfavorable prognosis,1,2 despite the response of muscle symptoms to immunosuppressive treatments. A pathophysiologic concept to link these multiorgan symptoms is not known, possibly because only one sample outside muscle has so far been taken for comparison of histopathologic features. That skin probe showed "mild fibrosis and lymphocytic perivascular cuffs in superficial dermis."2

A 57-year-old normotensive, nondiabetic man presented with rapid onset edema of the distal legs, dysesthesia, loss of ankle reflex, and bilateral foot drop (Medical Research Council grade 0). Proximal and upper limb strength and reflexes were intact. Neurophysiologic examination demonstrated loss of compound muscle action potentials (CMAPs) of both peroneal nerves and the left tibial nerve, reduced CMAP amplitude of the right tibial nerve, and loss of sensory nerve action potentials of both sural nerves. Neurography of the right median and ulnar nerves showed normal results. Needle myography showed abnormal spontaneous activity and only a few recordable muscle unit potentials in the tibialis anterior …


Genetic selection for improved feed efficiency and lean growth in pigs has resulted in reduced intramuscular fat content. The aim of this study was to evaluate growth performance, carcass traits, and meat quality in genetically lean immunocastrated pigs grouped based on divergent Warner-Bratzler Shear Force (WBSF) values. The WBSF values of the longissimus lumborum (LL) muscle were obtained from a previous trial evaluating 4 diets, 6 replicates per diet, and 3 pigs per pen, summing up to 72 Large White immunocastrated male pigs. Pigs (initial BW = 28.44 ± 2.95 kg) were fed diets containing either 1.5% soybean oil (CON) or 3% soybean oil (SO), canola oil (CO), or fish oil (FO) in a 98-d study. The original dataset was used to segregate pigs into 2 treatments: high (5.4 to 4.3 kg) and low (3.8 to 2.8 kg) WBSF. The SO diet did not show extreme values for WBSF and was not included in the resulting dataset, which comprised 2 treatments (high- and low-WBSF), 3 blocks (CON, CO, and FO), and 6 replicates per treatment (12 experimental units). No significant differences were observed for growth performance between WBSF groups. When compared with low-WBSF pigs, high-WBSF pigs tended to have decreased (P = 0.07) backfat thickness and intramuscular fat content in the LL and greater (P = 0.09) carcass lean percentage and cooking losses. Oleic acid concentration was less (P = 0.05) in the LL intramuscular fat of high- than low-WBSF pigs. There were statistical tendencies for decreased (P = 0.06) total monounsaturated fatty acids and increased (P = 0.09) total polyunsaturated fatty acids concentrations in the LL intramuscular fat of high- than low-WBSF pigs. In conclusion, immunocastrated male pigs with tender meat had improved nutritional attributes of pork, with no effects on feed efficiency and carcass traits.


Abstract : The Reinforced Plastics Group of the Plastics Institute sponsored a two-day conference on 'New and Improved Resin Systems' in London on 18-19 September, 1973. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss recent developments in resins and resin technology and how these are being and might be applied in practice. Among the resins discussed were fluorinated epoxies, vinyl esters, furanes, polyimides, Friedel-Crafts resins, rubber reinforced resins, and fire retardant resins. In addition, developments in silane coupling agents were discussed, and one paper was presented on studies of the effect of water on carbon fiber-rpocy composites. This report reviews some of the papers given. (Author)


In this paper, an efficient numerical scheme based on uniform Haar wavelets is used to solve the non-planar Burgers equation. The quasilinearization technique is used to conveniently handle the nonlinear terms in the non-planar Burgers equation. The basic idea of Haar wavelet collocation method is to convert the partial differential equation into a system of algebraic equations that involves a finite number of variables. The solution obtained by Haar wavelet collocation method is compared with that obtained by finite difference method and are found to be in good agreement. Shock waves are found to be formed due to nonlinearity and dissipation. We have analyzed the effects of non-planar and nonlinear geometry on shock existence. We observe that non-planar shock structures are different from planar ones. It is of interest to find that Haar wavelets enable to predict the shock structure accurately.


Due to the recent global trend toward stricter restrictions on both greenhouse gases emission and energy consumption, there is an emerging attention on electric vehicles (EVs). It is anticipated that proliferation of EV will be expanded rapidly in the near future. Accordingly, there is a need to analyze the consumer preferences for the EVs as the basic data for developing the relevant industries' strategies in the newly emerging market of EVs or establishing the government policies to popularize EVs. This paper analyzes the consumer preferences for the EV on the basis of the stated preference data from consumers in Korea. A conjoint method and a mixed logit model using the Bayesian approach were used to estimate the preferences of consumers. The stated preference data of the conjoint method is collected through a face-to-face survey conducted in June 2009. The consumer preferences on the key attributes that affect the choices of EV are estimated by a mixed logit model. Marginal willingness to pay is calculated to quantitatively analyze the consumer preferences on the key attributes. The results of this paper show that the consumers have greater preference for EV with swappable battery rather than unswappable battery, and for lump-sum payment rather than installment of the subsidies.


In order to trace the various stages in connection with the forma tion of airscrew sound, model airscrews were rotated by means of an electric motor on an isolated concrete stand, and the pressure-variations at a number of points lying at various distances (5 cm. to several metres) from the blade were determined, using condenser-microphones of various sizes (14, 33, and 75 mm. in outer diameter), and the con figuration of the air in the vicinity of the revolving airscrew accurately determined. The directional properties of the sound were studied in detail for two-bladed and four-bladed airscrew models of different shapes. The peculiar directional property of the airscrew sound can be explained to some extent by the peculiar aerial configuration around the blade. The first part of our present experiments, namely the results relating to the aerial configuration around theblade is now in press, while it is hoped that the second part, dealingwith the directional properties, will also be published in detail inthe Report of the Aero nautical Research Institute at no distant date. A few years ago, C. F. B. Kemp" studied the directional proper ties of airscrew sound with an actual aeroplaneplaced on the ground, the engine noise being silenced by a silencer. Our present results are however not in exact agreement with those foundby him. It should be added that after the present experiments were concluded, it came to our notice that, quite recently, similar experiments relating to the directional properties of airscrew sound were conducted by E. Z. Stowell and A. F. Deming 2) Seeing that their experimental method was essentially the same as ours in that a microphone, together with a suitable electrical filter, were employed to determine the spatial dis tribution of sound, our results which agree in the main with theirs, but differ in some respects. will be briefly given here. Stowell and Deming experimented with only one actual airscrew, rotated by an electric motor, while in our experiments, models of three two-bladed and two four-bladed airscrew were used. In Kemp's experiment as well as in that of Stowell and Deming, the fundamental tone was always found to be the strongest, while such was not the case in our experiment. We found that the directional property differs somewhat with the shape of the blade as well aswith the number of blades, so that the difference between our results and those of the other investigators just mentioned may be attributed chiefly to this cause. The difference in tip-speed, which, in our experiment, was


The paper briefly analyzes the track circuit-based train control system and its problems existing in shortening the interval of between the current speed train and urban rail traffic lane, including in increasing the volume of information transmission. It also gives an introduction of moving block(MB) technology, discusses advantages of MB as compared to the conventional train control modes, describes communication systems in the wireless communication based train control system, including studies on their characteristics, structure, technical scheme, anti - interference and data security.


One osseous head of a gorilla (tied cranium and mandible) was CT‐scanned every 1 mm in the frontal plane. The osseous head was 28,4 cm long. The adulte male specimen was probably prepared late in the 19th century. The CT‐scan was a Siemens Somatom definition AS one with 64 bars. The acquisition was performed with an helicoidal mode, then reconstructions of the cross‐sections were obtained in the horizontal (orbito‐meatal = Frankfurt's plane) : 259 ; frontal : 364 and sagittal planes : 212. External view under several incidences : 14 were also reconstructed. The two pieces were tied by a vegetal rope allowing an aperture of 30 degrees. The teeth were tied at their collar by a thin string. Each tooth was entire and present in its place. The anatomical, topographical and architectural data were very numerous. We acknowledge Mrs Domenica Scalisi and Mr Alain Piffault.


Modulation identification becomes difficult because of the inter-symbol interference caused by the multi-path fadings. A new modulation identification algorithm based on the improved outer-product decomposition method was proposed for multi-path channels. The blind channel identification and blind equalization based on the improved method was first used. Then,the higher-order cumulant features of the equalized symbols were calculated for modulation identification. Comparing with the existing methods,the improved outer-product decomposition approach is robust to the noise when the channel is over-estimated,moreover,the modulation identification method can recognize more modulation types with higher performance. Simulation results prove the efficiency of the new identification algorithm.


Mary Moders Carleton aka Henrietta Maria de Wolway, the 'German Princess' (1635-73), was the subject of a sensational trial at the Old Bailey in 1663 in which she successfully defended herself against charges of bigamy and imposture brought by her new husband, John Carleton, an eighteen-year-old lawyer's clerk. Even before the trial began, the incarcerated 'German Princess' was the talk of London; her acquittal confirmed her as a figure of scandalous celebrity with a reputation for formidable arts of persuasion and argument under duress. By all accounts, Mary played the part of a distressed and victimised foreign aristocrat - alienated from her just position and possessions - very well indeed. The prosecution, on the other hand, bungled their case. They managed to furnish a witness to Mary's first marriage in Kent but failed to deliver the husband, a shoemaker by whom she was said to have borne two children who died in infancy. Claims that Mary had already been tried for bigamy in Kent and that she was well known for her fraudulent adventures there as 'quality in disguise' were dismissed as hearsay by the judge. There was luck in it, and legal nicety, but if Mary had not performed impressively, the verdict might well have gone against her. It was her talent for passing as a wronged gentlewoman and a 'stranger' newly arrived in London that allowed Mary to cut such a compelling and mysterious public figure. Indeed, Mary went so far as to claim that it was John Carleton, her young husband, and his family who had tricked her into marriage and then prosecuted her under false pretences: [I]f any be deceived, I am. My lord, If that they could have been insured that I had been the person as to Estate, that they imagined me to be, your Lordship should not have been troubled... they would have been contented to have practised concealment, in case I had had more than one husband. Instead of this defamation that I am loaded with, my Lord, my crime is, that I have not an Estate, or at least such a one as they imagined it to be.1 Mary presented herself to the court as what she was - from a meritocratic standpoint and in terms of the romance plot she had adopted: quality without an estate. She refuted the charge of bigamy with a series of double entendres and apercus like something spoken by an actress in one of the modish city comedies playing at London theatres:2 My Lord, they brand me for marrying of a Shoo-make, and another sad piece of Mortality, a Brick-layer. My lord, My Soul abhorreth such a thought, and never was accomodated with such Condiscention, to move in so low an Orb. My Lord, by all that I can observe of the Persons that appear against me, they may be divided into two sorts; the one of them come against me for want of Wit, the other for want of Money.3 That this daughter of a Kentish musician called Moders, probably raised in the immigrant Dutch community in Canterbury, was able to pass 'en Princesse', as she later put it, owed much to her own talents and industry. At a time when the unsettled relation of merit and commerce to social value and prestige was a matter of constant, everyday debate, Mary was a case in point. Well-spoken, charming, highly literate and plausibly accoutred, she had taken advantage of the unusual opportunities for education and 'finishing' that seemed to have come her way through her musician father's genteel connections. The character of 'the German Princess', which Mary was able to flesh out in great detail in person and in print, was probably based in part on a woman Mary encountered at Dover and in whose service she travelled to Cologne; in part on her knowledge of romance conventions; and in part on the ubiquity of similar stories of dispossessed, exiled and often impoverished aristocrats returning from exile in the early years of post-Restoration London.4 Mary's scandalous celebrity began with her imprisonment in London on charges of bigamy but, interestingly, it was news of her previous scams outside the capital, delivered in the form of a letter to her new husband's family, that precipitated Mary's arrest. …


Whether distinct national 'varieties of capitalism' will survive in an increasingly globalising economy has become one of the most hotly debated issues in comparative political economy since the early 1990s. The major question in the academic debate is whether the institutional configurations of national political economies are increasingly converging on the market-oriented Anglo-Saxon model, whether the different varieties, in particular the continental European model of coordinated ('Rhenish') capitalism, will continue to evolve in path-dependent ways, or whether a growing 'hybridisation' of domestic institutional frameworks will occur. The latter term indicates that processes of institutional change may result in a melange of old and new, Anglo-Saxon and continental European elements. Our article seeks to enrich the debate on the 'hybridisation' of the German corporate governance system in both an empirical and a theoretical sense. Empirically, we are focusing on the rules which shape the distribution of influence and control over company policy among different groups of stakeholders. We perceive German corporate governance regulation as an institutional element of Germany's coordinated capitalism. We assume that conflicts over the design of the regulatory regime suggest conclusions about the willingness of important actors to defend or reform existing structures. A national system of corporate governance regulation can be described as comprising three dimensions of corporate control. First, internal corporate governance mechanisms operate within the institutional framework of the firm. Within the corporation, the board of directors constitutes the main device for monitoring management. Second, external control is exercised by market forces and outside actors. The main external control mechanism is the capital market in the form of the market for corporate control. Third, located at the interface between internal and external corporate governance, between supplying information about the financial situation of a company to corporate insiders and to outside investors, is the accounting system. National corporate governance systems differ with New Political Economy, Vol. 13, No. 4, December 2008


A recent paper (Woong Sung Lee 2020 Phys. Educ. 55 023002) demonstrates how to build a low-cost Arduino-based system to measure temperature down to 77 K. The idea is interesting, and the paper has several merits, however we have found considerable mistakes. In our comment we point out what the problems are and show solutions too. We think that our analysis can help the reader to see what should be considered for proper operation and to see how the related methods can be useful concerning STEM education also. Our contribution can support reliable and accurate temperature measurement without calibration.


Nuclear magnetic double resonance experiments were performed on the strongly coupled two-proton system (AB) in 2-chloroacrylontirile to study the spin relaxation processes. The single resonance parameters of the AB spectrum are (operating frequency 100 MHz): |vA - vB|=9.85±0.1 Hz and J AB=2.8±0.1 Hz. Frequency-sweep double resonance spectra were obtained by irradiating each of the four transitions at different strengths of irradiation in the range 0.015 Hz to 2.35 Hz. These spectra were analysed by using the 'Bloch approximation' in the rotating frame for the 'high' irradiation strengths and the 'simple line' approximation for the 'low' irradiation strengths. The analysis showed that the proton relaxation in this molecule can be described by interaction with isotropic random fields of nearly equal strengths at the two nuclei with no appreciable correlation between them. Internal dipole-dipole interaction is not a significant mechanism (at room temperature). It is shown that for analysing 'low' irradiation...


Friedrich Hayek denied that the concept of social justice had any practical meaning in a modern society. He claimed that it can be justified only in those societies in which there is a strict order of preference. This was not the case in a capitalist society. Thus, the concept itself is a typical example of what Hayek called the animistic way of thinking. Using Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944), Law, Legislation and Liberty (1973-79) and The Fatal Conceit (1988), I critically investigate his social and political theories with special attention to this concept.


Insider threats refer to actions by trusted individuals that directly or indirectly bring harm to the organization or expose the organization to external risks. Insider threat detection research and mitigation approaches have over-relied on technical solutions that tend to miss the human behavioral aspects of the problem. This paper focuses on approaches to assemble knowledge about insider threats and to apply this knowledge in support of insider threat assessment. This information can help organizations set up or improve existing insider threat mitigation programs by promoting a greater understanding of insider threat variables of concern; facilitating sharing of the knowledge base of insider threat indicators across organizations; raising awareness of the need to examine behavioral factors in addition to the more traditional focus on technical indicators; and discussing methods and challenges in acquiring and applying expert knowledge of insider threat indicators to facilitate decisions about responding to threat assessment alerts.


The statistics only scratch the surface. The full financial impact of fraud and abuse cuts much deeper into the tissue of the nation's economy. Decreased profitability at health plans triggers the need to raise premiums. These higher rates raise operational costs for employers, forcing them to either increase the price of goods and services, or pass along the additional costs to employees by making them pay more for their coverage through higher co-pays and out-of-pocket expenses. In the end, consumers are financially stretched on multiple fronts, including higher insurance premiums, co-pays, and deductibles and increased prices for goods and services. As a result, it is estimated that insurance fraud ends up costing each U.S. household $940 per year. 2


Some organisms (snout otterclam Lutraria rhynchaena, granular ark Anadara granosa, corrugated lucine Austriella corrugata and lyrate Asiatic hard clam Meretrix lyrata) were chosen as subjects of this research because of their high bioaccumulation, their sedentary life and their filter feeding habit. Concentration of total mercury in the water was detected at 3 positions: Lan Ha bay - Cat Ba island, Hoang Tan commune - Quang Ninh province, Dong Bai commune - Hai Phong city. Result of this research showes the different levels of accumulation in tissues of 4 species but they are lower than MOH's allowable value (0.5 micrograms/g). The bioaccumulation factors (BAF) of corrugated lucine Austriella corrugata, Granular ark Anadara granosa, Lyrate Asiatic hard clam Meretrix lyrata and Snout Otterclam Lutraria rhynchaena were 1.344, 344, 333 and 158 respectively. These factors show that accumulation total mercury in 4 species of mollusca is in natural tendency.


it's a program which is made for calculating the Copart's and IAAI's
final prices after the bidding like the Taxs and Local shipping from
the auction yard to the international port.


Conscious Consumption' and Activism: An Empirical Reevaluation of the Apolitical and Distracted Consumer Margaret M. Willis Advisor: Juliet B. Schor Reader: Natalia Sarkisian This thesis empirically examines the long-standing critique that consumption i s inherently apolitical and a distraction from civic and political involvement. T his image of consumers has been particularly salient in current debates about 'conscious consumption' motivated by ecological and social justice issues. Whether buying or ganic or fair-trade actually displaces activism has remained unsubstantiated. Based on the results of an online survey administered to a group of individuals who identify as conscious consumers, regression analyses were conducted to isolate the relations hip between conscious consumption and formal and informal activism for over 1700 respondents. The results of the analyses reveal that higher levels of consiste ncy in conscious consumption practices are significantly related to greater so cial and political involvement on ecological and social justice issues, even when controlling for prior levels of involvement. Respondents also reported higher overall participation rate s in general when compared to pre-existing data on nationally representative sa mpl . Consumption is not displacing involvement and activism among these conscious consumers, suggesting that conscious consumption may be an integral element of broa der action for many. Conscious Consumption 1 'Conscious Consumption' and Activism: An Empirical Reevaluation of the Apolitical and Distracted Consumer Conscious consumption, understood as choices to reduce or alter consumption that are conscientiously made and motivated by values, has a contested role in both public and scholarly discourse. What has been called the "New Consumer Movement" (Schor 2011a) is comprised of individuals and organizations committed to the belief that conscious consumption can effect change in sustainability and social justice movem ents. However, the legitimacy of consumption as such is undermined by the long-standing portrayal of consumption as either inherently apolitical or as individualizing and distracting from broader political aims. The aim of this paper is to reasses s these deep assumptions about consumption using the results of a survey about the consumption and political practices of a group of conscious consumers in the US. ... According to Schor (2011a), the "new consumer movement" (NCM) is comprised of both individual consumers and organizations that are attempting to change the patte rns and culture of consumption, and has goals that substantially overlap with ecological sustainability movements and social justice movements (which themselves are often united in their goals and growing more so). To reach the goals of sustainability and justice, the NCM is "address[ing] both the volume of consumption, and the particular choices of products and patterns of consumption made by individuals and households" (Schor 2011a: 3). 1 Among other goals, such as changing fast-paced life styles by reducing work time and re-valuing relationships and community. Conscious Consumption 2 There is much debate, however, over the NCM's claim that changes in consumer culture and practices can effect the kind of far-reaching change that consci ous consumers are seeking. Specifically, critics claim that conscious consumption will fa il because of the individualizing nature of consumption – that conscious consumption displaces political activism and therefore distracts attention from the need for institutionaland policy-level change (as in Maniates 2002). Without institutional or policy change, changes in individual practices may not really be able to have an impact given that individual practices themselves become constrained by the institutional and policy structures. Others go further to claim that consumer action in the marketplace i s not only individualizing – it is inherently incapable of being political or effecting change because of the ability of the market to apply the same capitalist logic to the consumer ' dissent by turning it into a profitable market niche (Heath and Potter 2004; Smith 1998; Holt 2002). In these critiques, which will be discussed at greater length below, it is assu med that the consumer will not be able to decipher or challenge the "false promises" of the m ark ter and that the consumer will not think about sustainability after leaving the checkout aisle. These doubts about the efficacy of conscious consumption emerge from pervasive theories about the nature of consumer culture and the underlying relationship between consumption and other forms of political and social activism. These theories, which will be explored in the following pages, have been hugely influential in scholarly literat ure as well as in the current public discourse, including leftist and liberal critiques (Soper 2004). Whether conscious consumption actually distracts from or displaces other forms of political and social activism remains an open, empirical question. There is a dear th of 2 The terms "activism," "action," "involvement" are u sed synonymously throughout the paper. Conscious Consumption 3 empirical research on the phenomenon of conscious consumption and its interaction with more traditional political and social involvement (Stolle and Hooge 2003), particular ly in the US. Broad swaths of alternative or political consumer practices have been e mpirically investigated in other countries focusing in part on the relationship between the cons umer practices and other forms of social and political engagement (Andersen and T obiasen 2004; Forno and Ceccarini 2006). Research on US populations has been limited largely to smaller-scale qualitative research on particular genres of consum ption (e.g. Thompson and Coskunner-Balli's 2007 ethnographic research on a small community supported agriculture group). While this research contributes to our understanding of the meani ng of conscious consumption among certain groups, there is to date no quantitative empirical work on the overall trends within a group of conscious consumers, particularly with respect to the contested relationship between consumption and traditional or informal political participation. This research project seeks to fill this gap in the literature. Based on survey data collected from an online listserv of individuals who are, to varying extents, inter ested in conscious consumption and issues of sustainability, descriptive statistics and re gression analyses are used to explore the relationship between conscious consumption and political or social involvement, and to assess whether acts of conscious consumption displace or coexist with broader activism on issues of sustainability and soci al justice among the respondents. This work is not assessing the veracity of the green or ethical claims of pr oducts and whether businesses are profiteering from well-intentioned (but 'misled') consumers who will buy their "green-washed" products (for example, Michael Pollan's 2001 wor k Conscious Consumption 4 on "Industrial Organic," or Seidman's 2007 work on monitoring). Nor is this work able to assert in any other way that conscious consumption is an effective route to chang e. Rather, the focus of this paper is to assess the long-standing assumptions about consumption that have come to be prominent in the critique of conscious consumption. The Case Against Consumption There are deep cultural and theoretical obstacles to taking consumption seriously as a political or social change-related act. The view that consumer culture is a diversion rather than an active or resistive force itself repeats throughout critica l scholarly literature. Scholarly work has long had a productivist bias (for example, the wor k of Karl Marx), where production is taken seriously and consumption is positioned as lesser: less useful, less rational, less masculine (Sassatelli 2007). 3 From a Frankfort School perspective, Adorno and Horkheimer (1944) proffered their influential analysis of t he "culture industries," in which corporations grow more powerful as consumers lose t heir capacity to resist through the "circle of manipulation and retroactive need" a nd m ss production of culture: consumption homogenizes as it distracts from real issues of powe r. In Galbraith's (1958) description of the dependence effect, he argued that consumer s' wants are entirely created by producers. These portrayals of manipulated consumers often underlie the view that seeking social or political change through the market is ineffective. The ability of t he market to co-opt consumer resistance trumps the ability of the consumers to resist (e .g. Frank 1997; Holt 2002). As Holt notes: 3 Of course, while production is prioritized in soci ety, it needs consumers. Consumption is alternatel y denigrated and a duty, creating a "schizoid" unders tanding of consumption that is pervasive (Slater 19 97, p. 33; Sassatelli 2007, p. 118). Pro-consumerist visi ons have a presence in the literature as well (e.g. Twitchell 1999) but are tangential to the discussio n here. Conscious Consumption 5 Consumers are revolutionary only insofar as they assist entrepreneurial f irms to tear down the old branding paradigm and create opportunities for companies that understand new emerging principles... They never threaten the market itself . What has been termed 'consumer resistance' is actually a form of marketsanctioned cultural experimentation through which the market rejuvenates itsel f. (2002: 89) This perspective envisions consumers as inherently lacking political agency i n the marketplace. It is important to note, however, that some parts of the New Consumer Movement would not consider "tear[ing] down the old branding paradigm and creat[ing] opportunities for companies that understand new emerging principles" to be such a bad outcome if those new emerging principles lead to greater sustainabili


The aim of the article is an attempt to define the term "glossary" in a new way. "Glossary" is codified as a dictionary explaining difficult, outdated, rarely used and unknown words in an old or foreign-language text, or words put at the end of scientific or popular science texts. In this, its prescriptive function is emphasized. In lexicographical compendia, the other definition is evoked. In accordance with it, the glossary is identified with a dictionary compiled for a translation machine. Observation of current language use has shown that there are a few other ways of understanding the term "glossary." Its main function is now a descriptive function. For the sake of methodology, the article discusses the most common language behavior in this regard. Glossaries found in fantasy texts are characterized in detail because they fulfill a special role in the creation and perception of this type of literary work. The main idea in the article is the argument that every product of a culture (a text) carries a fixed cultural pattern here: a perpetuating pattern. A glossary has been identified as paratext, hence its description is put forth with the tools used in the field of text studies and linguistic enre.


Background: Interleukine-2 is a multifunctional cytokine, considered a central regulator of host resistance against a variety of pathogens and has been recently demonstrated to exert an active role in the pathogenesis of periodontal diseases. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of scaling and root planning on level of IL-2 in serum and saliva of patients with chronic generalized periodontitis, in relation to clinical parameters.
Materials and Methods: A total of 50 subjects were enrolled, of which 25 had chronic generalized periodontitis and 25 periodontally healthy subjects as control. The clinical parameters included: gingival index, pocket probing depth, clinical attachment level and bleeding on probing. The level of IL-2 in serum and saliva was estimated by using enzyme linked immunosorbent assay kit at baseline and after 4 weeks of the treatment (scaling and root planning).
Results: Mean IL-2 level in serum and saliva of patients with chronic periodontitis at baseline(382.15± 96.02 and 501.82± 88.08 ng/L) were significantly higher than in controls (10.98± 3.04 and 20.89 ± 7.16 ng/L; p=0.001) respectively. Post-periodontal therapy, IL-2 levels in serum and saliva increased significantly (534.18 ± 127.70 and 710.87 ± 198.15; P= 0.001.) compared to basal levels, as well as to control group (p< 0.001). Statistically significant positive association was found between salivary IL-2 level and the pocket depth in the chronic periodontitis post therapy (r = 0.45, p= 0.02).
Conclusion: Short-term nonsurgical periodontal therapy leads to in a significant improvement in clinical periodontal parameters and a marked increase in IL-2 levels


COVID-19 induced CORONA is the biggest tragedy not only in medical terms,but it has also raised alarms for the economy as a whole, because of the unprecedented "Lockdown" situation which has beenin place for about 2 months.
Under the complete lockdown situation,less than a quarter of India's $2.8 trillion economy is functional. Up to 53% of businesses in the country will be significantly affected. The Indian economy is expected to lose over ₹32,000 crore (US$4.5 billion) every day during the complete lockdown period.


This paper summarizes an analytical approach to the solution of the H2/11 optimization problem. It is shown that the case where T,, # T,, does not necessarily result in finite impulse response (FIR) solutions for both T,, and Tmr. It is conjectured that the solution to the general SISO (or MIMO one block) H2/11 problem will result in an FIR sequence for T,,, but not necessarily for Tzw. Based on this conjecture, a numerical approach to the solution is developed which is capable of solving (exactly) for the optimal H2/11 compensator using a finite truncation level. The numerical method is demonstrated with a SISO F-16 aircraft example.


This review of the literature addresses scientific and methodological concerns o research with children from various racial and ethnic backgrounds in the United States. It first identifies three major demographic trends: (1) the increasingly multiethnic and multilingual nature of American society; (2) the increasing number of children in poverty; and (3) the increased risk of needing special education services when conditions of poverty and racial and language diversity exist. Specific challenges to researchers are discussed, including the relationship among race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender. The importance of epistemological considerations is also noted, especially considering issues of race categorization, ethics, and human values. Issues raised by the underlying assumptions of quantitative research methodology are noted, including sampling, instrumentation, and measurement. The importance of the mutual support of research and practice is stressed. (Contains 50 references.) (DB) ********************************************************************* * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** Research with Multicultural Learners 1 U S DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Oer,e 04 Educatronar Research and imprr semen! EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER IERICI Ci&hrs document has Peen reproduced as recerved horn Ihe person or organrietron orrgrnatrng d O Mmor changes have been made to rrnprove reproduchon Quaid), e Pornts 01 vrew or opnrons staled.. thrsdoCu mem do not necessanly represent odrcrai OE RI posrhoh or policy Scientific and Methodological Concerns in Research: Perspectives for Multicultural Learners Cheryl A. Utley, Ph.D. Juniper Gardens Children's Project Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies University of Kansas Festus E. Obiakor, Ph.D. Division of Psychology and Special Education Emporia State University "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY 0_ 0-V1 TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC1" Some contents of this work were presented at the July, 1995 Office of Special Education Programs Project Directors' Conference in Washington, DC. BEST COPY AVAILABLE 2 Research with Multicultural Learners 2 Scientific and Methodological Concerns in Research: Perspectives for Multicultural Learners Cheryl A. Utley hnd Festus E. Obiakor American society is complex and culturally pluralistic. To treat its heterogeneity as if it simply reflected different degrees of compliance with one cultural standard is to misunderstand its true nature. We must begin by acknowledging the integrity of the diverse social-cultural frames of reference and understanding them on their own terms....We must take account of the cultural diversity of the nation's children as it bears on their attainment in our schools. (Boykin, 1986, p. 87) There is an increasing awareness that several major trends surrounding the demography of the United States population have intersected to bring issues related to race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender to the forefront in research with multicultural children. Rodriguez (1990) noted that the first major trend influencing the schooling of children is that society is becoming more increasingly multiethnic and multilingual. Earlier, Pallas Natriello, and McDill (1989) analyzed projected data by the U.S. Bureau of the Census and reported that the number of Caucasian students is expected to decline about 13% from 1982 to 2020. For Hispanic-American youngsters, ages 0to 17-year olds, trends show that they will increase from 5.9 million in 1982 to 18.6 million in 2020 The population of African-American youth, under the age of 18, is projected to rise from 9.3 million in 1982 to 11.9 million in 2020, an increase of 22%. The second trend is that du:ng the period of 1984 to 2020, estimates showed that the number of children in poverty will substantially increase from 14.7 million to 20.1 million (Pallas Natriello, & McDill, 1989). Our educational system will be responsible for teaching approximately 5.4 million more children in poverty in 2020, than in 1984. Additional data indicated that children living in single-parent homes will increase from 16.2 million in 1984 to


98 December 2003 Randall Rhea's CD-ROM course on RF filter design is titled "Filter Design by Transmission Zeros." It sounds like a narrow subject for filter geeks, but actually it is a well spent hour for anyone wanting a good overview of what filter design is all about. The course is not a lengthy math lecture, but a tour of how to efficiently design lumped component filters. The course loads quickly on Windows 95 or higher. If you want to run this course at work, be sure to bring in your headphones as Mr. Rhea not only talks you through every slide but also has QuickTime video introductions and summaries. The course consists of 48 main slides and about 35 slides of exercises. Note to Noble Publishing: a spell checker is a good thing, as exercises is misspelled in the main menu. On a positive note, that is the only mistake I found in the one-hour course. I found the course much better than a videotape because it was easier to navigate and had interactive exercises at the end. The exercises were not so easy to skip around in because the computer insists on the user answering each question before proceeding This course takes a tour of RF filter design from the history of the design methods through to final element values in a layout. Users should not expect this course to teach them the mathematics of filter design, the four references given will do most of that. The course feels like Randall Rhea is personally taking you through the design of several different filters. While a bit of math is shown at the beginning, most of the course consists of showing an engineer how to build a filter to meet specifications with the fewest components. Extensive use is made of Eagleware products to do all of the calculations. This course may seem to some like a tour of using S/Filter and the Genesys software suite. Undoubtedly this course would be an excellent way for someone using the Genesys software products to get acquainted with filter design. However, the bottom line is that, within an hour, someone who knows very little about filter design will be shown how to realize a filter to meet arbitrary specifications with the minimum number of components. The user will also learn how to compensate for layout parasitics, finite component Q, check for manufacturing yield, and incorporate standard component values.


Scores obtained from latency-weighted testing correlated significantly with projective incomplete-sentence scores (0.55) but not with paper-and-pencil scores (.05) in assessing professional suitability. The latency-weighted scores provided increased diagnostic value in responses to interest-inventory items.


An analytical solution to separate P-waves and S-waves in vertical seismic profile (VSP) wavefields is derived using combinations of certain terms of the formal solution for forward VSP modeling. Some practical applications of this method to synthetic seismograms and field data are investigated and evaluated. Little wave distortion is recognized, and the weak wavefield masked by dominant wavetrains can be extracted with this method. The decomposed wavefield is expressed in the frequency-depth (f-z) domain as a linear combination of up to the third-order differential of traces, which is approximated by trace differences in the practical separation process. In general, five traces with single-component data are required in this process, but the same process is implemented with only three traces in the acoustic case. Two-trace extrapolation is applied to each edge of the data gather to enhance the accuracy of trace difference. Since the formulas are developed in the f-z domain, the influence of anelasticity can be taken into account, and the calculation is carried out fast enough with the benefit of the fast Fourier transform (FFT).


This empirical study is conducted on the price-interest relations under China's different monetary standards.The result supports Friedman's assertion that the break from Gibson paradox to Fisher effect is due to the change of monetary standard.Under commodity standard,the variability of purchasing power of money is high in short term but stationary in long term,while under fiduciary standard it is low in short run but non-stationary in long run.The root is the fiat money has no effective anchor.It attributes to growing human impatience and short-term biased behavior.Sustainable economic development and internationalization of RMB require credibly anchoring fiat money.


Publish/subscribe (pub/sub) message brokers are typically operated with multiple tenants and multiple topics per tenant. Messages sent by a producer to a topic are received by consumers who subscribed to the same topic. In many applications, topic hierarchies are a desired property. This is especially the case for geospatial applications in which regions are composed of smaller-scale regions. However, most message brokers do not support hierarchies natively. HTABroker demonstrates how a light-weight processing function deployed to an extensible message broker overcomes this limitation for several geospatial index systems.


The methanogen electron carrier F420 was extracted from a methanogen cell culture, Methanobrevibacter ruminantium, and separated from other cell components by a single anion exchange chromatographic process. The extent of separation was determined spectroscopically. The fluorescence lifetime of F420 at pH 7.5 is ~4.2 nanoseconds.


Abstract The abnormal increase of glass-transition temperature (T g) and the deviation of thermal expansion coefficient from the simple additivity relationship in a two separate phase system having different Tg, s were explained by the thermal stress originating from the difference of the thermal expansion coefficients of the two component polymers. Among the two T g, s of the blend system, the higher Tg was increased and the lower Tg was decreased compared with the original T g s of the component polymers in some cases. The spherical shell model composed of three layers was adopted to interpret such phenomena of the blend system. These three layers were numbered 0, 1, and 2 from the outer layer. The component polymer of the layer 0 was assumed to be the same as in the layer 2. In this model, vs, which is defined as the volume ratio of the sphere 2 to the sphere 1, represents the mixing state of the two component polymers. The thermal expansion coefficients of the whole system and the layers 0, 1, and 2 w...


As an important branch of semantic Web,the semantic desktop can be used to automatically extract the metadata of desktop documents when users are working with their PCs. The metadata can be used to record the characteristics of documents including the general characteristics and the characteristics related to user actions,which is helpful for retrieval. This paper provides a new document retrieval method based on conceptual graphs in the environment of semantic desktop. This new method effectively builds a document indexing structure for helping fast retrieval by using the metadata provided by the semantic desktop. According to experiments,the time performance is improved compared to the previous algorithm of the projection based on the inference process. The experimental results prove the feasibility of the approach as for retrieval time performance.


Background . Ultrasound occupies an important place among many therapies in physiotherapy. The process of ultrasound treatment in physiotherapy consists of the contact interaction of the ultrasonic emitter with the surface of the skin of the patient's body. The issue of patient safety remains relevant to this procedure. Thus, in everyday clinical practice deviations of the accuracy of the initial acoustic parameters of the ultrasound apparatus from the nominal ones were observed. This can either lead to an inadequate effect of the ultrasound on the patient's body or may lead to an excessive effect of the ultrasound on the patient. In the first case, the patient does not receive the necessary dose of ultrasound for treatment, and as a consequence, ineffective treatment and disappointment of the patient in this method of treatment may be observed. In the second case, there is a risk of injury to the patient, which poses a threat to the safety of his health during the procedure of ultrasound therapy. Objective. The purpose of the paper is development of a technique for evaluating the initial parameters of ultrasound therapy apparatus for practical application in the development and improvement of ultrasound therapy apparatus. Methods. The study measured the input and output parameters of a piezoelectric element that is included in the emitter of the experimental ultrasound therapy apparatus. Results. As a result of these studies, a calculation technique was developed and the value of the ultrasound intensity of the test unit of the adaptive ultrasound therapy apparatus was determined. Conclusions. A technique for calculating the initial intensity of ultrasound for ultrasound therapy apparatus has been developed, which makes it possible to use them in the development of new ultrasonic emitters for physiotherapy.


In light of the so-called "oceanic complex" characteristic of the literary world and imagination of Ivan Turgenev, one of his finest novels Spring Torrents plays the role bridging two stages in the evolution of this complex. In fact, the novel is representative of the works displaying Turgenev's "oceanic complex" in that it not only includes a plethora of watery motifs such as sea, abyss, swimming, submerging, drowning, etc., but it also contains the themes of love and death. It should not be overlooked, however, that Spring Torrents is fundamentally different in its aesthetic and poetic terms from Turgenev's other works revealing the "oceanic complex." As shown in its title, especially, the water motif that flows through the surface and deep structures of the novel does not simply support the writer's psychological vision as revealed in the "oceanic complex" or the "oceanic feeling." Furthermore, it works as the main force forming and driving the narrative plot of the novel. In other words, the water motif works as the key device forming, driving and controlling the narrative plot, as the multi-layered structure in the frame story of Spring Torrents becomes unified in an organic whole. Finally, it is also one of the essential aesthetic elements in the creation and description of the Russian femme fatale Polozova and the Italian beauty Gemma, each of whom represents the demonic and the divine. Paying close attention to the special 'watercourse of narrative' that flows through the inner and outer stories of Spring Torrents and at the same time permeates through the personal stories of its main characters, in this article I will analyze the significant function and meaning of the water motif in the multilayered structure of the novel.


The cotton species,Xin Luzao 33,was tested through field plot experiments at the Water-saving Irrigation Station of Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural and Reclamation Science in 2012. The effects of fertilization levels were evaluated on the uptakes of nitrogen,phosphorus and potassium by cotton,dry matter accumulation and yield under mulched drip fertigation. There were five fertilization levels of N- P2O5- K2O( 150- 60- 30,200- 80- 40,250- 100- 50,300- 120- 60,350- 140- 70 kg·hm- 2,as F1,F2,F3,F4 and F5,respectively) and the irrigation level was set as 100% ETc( the crop evapotranspiration). Results showed that the dry matter accumulation,the uptakes of N,P2O5,K2 O and their uptake rates were elevated with the increase of fertilizer amounts,which reached maximum values at the F4 level. Cotton yield had a tendency to become increased with escalation of fertilizer amount,but there were no significant differences between F3,F4 and F5. The AEN,AEP,AEK and PEP at the F3 level were significantly larger than those at the F4 and F5 levels. In terms of fertilizer saving and ecological sustainable development,the F3 level with N- P2O5- K2 O of 250- 100- 50 kg·hm- 2was suggested be the optimal fertilization application. This study could provide valuable information for improving the management of cotton under mulched drip fertigation in Xinjiang.


The paper discusses our studies of oil pollution due to natural hydrocarbon seeps on the seafloor in the South-Eastern Black Sea. The patterns of surface oil pollution of the South-Eastern Black Sea are analyzed and described. Trajectories of oil slicks from seabed seepages are analyzed on the base of satellite remote sensing data for 2010–2017. The quantitative assessment of inter-annual, seasonal and spatial variability of natural oil pollution of the region of interest is performed. Maps of oil pollution risks of sea surface and shores in the South-Eastern Black Sea are created. The precise estimation of the actual seafloor source location is made on the base of satellite data. The impact of dynamic and circulation processes and natural factors (current meandering, vortical activity, and wind patterns) on the stretching, spread, and disappearance of oil films is discussed.


This paper describes one of the aspects of the panel method to analyze the aerodynamic characteristics of a sedan. The linear vortex panel method has been developed to simulate the ideal flow over a two-dimensional arbitrary car and, it also calculates the aerodynamic load on the body. By satisfying the boundary conditions on each control point, our linear algebraic equations are obtained. The results are sensitive to the distribution of the panels over the body thus the body is broken up equally into very small panels. After solving the set of equations, the vortices strength is obtained and the pressure distribution for the upper and the lower surface of the body is calculated. The impact of the angle of attack on the aerodynamic behavior of the intended car is investigated and it is found that the lift coefficient increases with the free stream angle from -4 to 4. The accuracy of the results has been determined by checking them against the standard CFD data. The pressure distribution trend is found very much in confirmation with the CFD results, however, a discrepancy at the rear end is observed. Therefore, it can be concluded that this method does not seem practical for geometries with steep slopes in the rear part of the car. Finally, both methods are applied to the other modified geometries with lower slopes at the rear section and the results compare well with the fluent.


In Epic of the Dispossessed, Robert D. Hamner offers an insightful, well-researched analysis of Omeros, the masterful epic poem by 1992 Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott. Rich and various, Omeros is an innovative extension of the epic tradition. Despite Walcott's insistence that he violates the formula - he notes his autobiographical presence in the poem and the absence of classical heroic figures and epic battles - the poem incorporates fragments of all the definitive characteristics of the genre. Hamner establishes that through its self-reflexive textuality, Omeros complements the time-honored tradition of the epic by giving voice to the marginalized peoples of the New World. Hamner briefly explains his perception of the epic tradition and its viability in contemporary literature. He examines Walcott's writing career and traces his development of devices, themes, techniques, and a narrative style essential to epic poetry. Although Walcott could not have fully anticipated Omeros, a retrospective view of his writing reveals the consistent accumulation of the skills and broad scope required for such an undertaking. Hamner attempts also to show that Walcott has incorporated into his personal style not only the more obvious aspects of his formal education but also uniquely West Indian cultural material and forms of expression. Hamner describes Omeros as an epic of the dispossessed because each of its protagonists is a castaway in one sense or another. Regardless of whether their ancestry is traced to the classical Mediterranean, Europe, Africa, or confined to the Americas, they are transplanted individuals whose separate quests all center on the fundamental human need to strike roots in a placewhere one belongs.


Software itself is not hazardous, but since software and hardware share common interfaces there is an opportunity for software to create hazards. Further, these software systems are complex, and proven methods for the design, analysis, and measurement of software safety are not yet available. Some past software failures, future NASA software trends, software engineering methods, and tools and techniques for various software safety analyses are reviewed. Recommendations to NASA are made based on this review.


The conventional design-spiral approach to basic ship design is replaced by a genetic algorithm in which convergence toward target value is sought of an object function to optimize globally a broad combination of key design variables including the principal hull dimensions, general arrangement and material steel grades, as well as the frame and stiffener spacings and scantlings. The algorithm is applied first to minimizing the weight of a hatch cover, and it is found through an exercise that the best version of the algorithm is that which lays weight on searching the immediate vicinity of designs that promise high performance. The refined version of algorithm is then applied to optimizing the design of a double hull tanker, with 40 independent variables adopted for global optimization. It is shown that, with appropriate formulation of the object function and of the constraints, accurate design optimization is obtainable at the initial planning stage of hull design.


Purpose : This study was undertaken to find two things. One was to reveal the infection route of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) that causes serious nosocomial infection through epidemic study, and the other was to seek preventative methods through blocking the dispersion. Materials and Methods : We cultured MRSA obtained by nasal cavity swabbing, from 82 doctors and 219 personnel in our hospital, between September 1997 and August 1999. In addition, swabs were taken from the nasal cavities and surgical sites of 57 orthopaedic surgery patients, who were free of wound infection. In this practice, we use the disc test for drug sensitivity, and pulse-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) to separate colonies. Results : MRSA was discovered in 8 doctors (10%) and in 13 personnels (6%) by nasal cavity sabbing, and these included 3 orthopaedic surgeons. MRSA was also found in the patients'group, there were 23 (40%) from nasal cavities and 14 ones (25%) from surgical sites. Their PFGE types of MRSA were of A type, which were also identified in two orthopaedic surgeons. Summary : We noticed that nasal cavitiy infection could occur by cross infection between doctors and patients. Surgical wound infection may occur by infection from the nasal cavity. This study underlines the importance of MRSA infection and management.


For a Galois extension field K of a field F, the fundamental theorem of Galois theory states that the subgroups of the Galois group G=Gal(K/F) correspond with the subfields of K containing F. If the subfield L corresponds to the subgroup H, then the extension field degree of K over L is the group order of H, |K:L| = |H| (1) |L:F| = |G:H|. (2) Suppose F subset E subset L subset K, then E and L correspond to subgroups H_E and H_L of G such that H_E is a subgroup of H_L. Also, H_E is a normal...


This paper offers a formal model of the temporal behavior of Ancient Greek participles in their functions as elaborations, frames and independent rhemes. We model how they differ from each other and from main clauses, focusing in particular on the phenomenon of narrative progression. The theory integrates LFG and CDRT, using Glue semantics.


Demand response (DR) programmes are considered as elegant solutions to supply the permanent growth in energy demand. The residential building sector accounts for a significant amount of this growth. By means of their elastic behaviour in energy usage, residential consumers can manage their energy consumption for cost savings by participating in DR programmes. A substantial part of energy consumption in a residence is due to heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) loads. As an HVAC load, air conditioners have high ownership rates and are energy-intensive appliances. This study, therefore, presents a cost and comfort effective energy management scheme based on consumer flexibilities for air conditioning systems in a residential building community on DR purposes. Three different pricing mechanisms under two different scenarios are employed to analyse the benefits and effectiveness of the proposed scheme. Furthermore, a strategy is performed to fairly allocate the cost savings of the community among consumers. The obtained results verified the efficacy of the proposed scheme in providing cost-saving, peak load reduction, and desired thermal convenience.


This biography explores the life and work of Denis Johnston, barrister, theatre director, film-maker, pioneering television producer, war correspondent, essayist and celebrated playwright. In this work, Bernard Adams draws upon Johnston's copius and intimate diaries, letters and uncompeted autobiography deposited in Trinity College, Dublin, cataloguing the "untidy museum" of his subject's past. He brings light to the extraordinary secret life of a complex, self-doubting individual.


In this article, two methods for solving mean-field type optimal control problems are proposed and investigated. The two methods are iterative methods: at each iteration, a Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation is solved, for a terminal condition obtained by linearizing the cost function. The terminal condition is updated by solving a Fokker-Planck equation. The first method can be seen as a gradient method and uses in an essential manner the convexity of the set of probability distributions. A convergence result for this method is provided. The second method incorporates a penalization term and provides feedback controls. We test the methods on four academic examples.


^ In most laboratories in the North American Continent and in England, the older methods of Maintaining bacterial cultures by constant subculturing in suitable media have of recent years been largely superseded by the method of rapid freezing and dehydration in vacuo. As early as 1896, Martin suggested the possibility and Procedure involved in the preservation of guinea-pig complement in the dried state. Noguchi, in 1907, dried complement and amboceptor on filter paper. Shackell, in 1909, dried pomplement in the frozen state and showed that *t could be preserved for months. Karsner and Collins, in 1919, applied Shackell's method for the preservation of various sera and, in 1923, Hartley and his associates reported the dehydration of complement by distilling off the H20 in vacuo. In 1931, Craigie dried complement in the frozen state by means of a vacuum desiccator and more recently Elser and his co-worker (1936) showed conclusively that biological Materials could be dehydrated from the frozen state. This method was admirably developed by Flosdorf and Mudd (1935) in the University pf Pennsylvania and resulted in their dry ice jyophile apparatus' by means of which many biological materials could be preserved for several months without any detectable deterioration. The same investigators, in a later communication, in 1938, described a new process where the condensation of water vapour in a low temperature bath (dry-ice methyl cellosolve Mixture) is replaced by the use of an inexpensive chemical desiccant (the Cryochem process). The method has been very profitably employed for the preservation of various anti-toxins, guinea-pig complement, human plasma for purPoses of transfusion, normal and convalescent human sera, enzymes, viruses, bacteria and Miscellaneous proteins. . The procedure and apparatus to be described M this communication are a modification of the Cryochem process' described by Flosdorf and ^ludd in 1938. This has been successfully emPloyed in the preservation of bacterial cultures though it can be used for preservation of sera, Protein solutions andother labile biological Materials with equal success.


the Abstract: Fish balls are common food in southern China and Chinese communities mostly cannot resists from "fish paste". Asian meatballs differ significantly in texture from their European counterparts. Many machines have been introduced to assist in making the fish ball in the market. However, the existing machine is expensive and not affordable for household chores. It is not suitable to be placed at home and it is difficult to be handled, as well. Therefore, this project is intended to overcome the stated problem by designing and developing a fish ball maker machine. ball's quantity.


Eudora Welty's ''A Worn Path,'' first published in Atlantic Monthly in February, 1941, is the tale of Phoenix Jackson's journey through the woods of Mississippi to the town of Natchez. The story won an O. Henry Prize the year it was published and later appeared in Welty's collection The Wide Net. Since then, it has been frequently anthologized. At first the story appears simple, but its mythic undertones and ambiguity gives a depth and richness that has been praised by critics. Welty has said that she was inspired to write the story after seeing an old African−American woman walking alone across the southern landscape. In "A Worn Path," the woman's trek is spurred by the need to obtain medicine for her ill grandson. Along the way, Phoenix encounters several obstacles and the story becomes a quest for her to overcome the trials she faces, which mirror her plight in society at large. The story is one of the best examples of Welty's writing, which is known


The physical models such as the grain shearing (GS) model or Biot model predict the grain size dependency of the sound speed and attenuation for a water saturated porous media. To study this grain size dependency, we performed the experiment in a laboratory tank containing water saturated glass beads for various grain sizes at a frequency of 100kHz. In this paper, a comparison between the laboratory result and the GS model and Biot model will be presented for various mean grain sizes at the frequency.


Turning the Internet into a multi-path environment could solve many difficulties network operators are facing today. There are already solutions to configure an IP network to offer multiple partially disjoint paths towards the destination. In this demo, we focus on the performance of how MPTCP can distribute the traffic along these paths. When the routes are not fully disjoint their throughput could be limited by some bottleneck links. Because of this dependency finding the maximal throughput in MPTCP may call for solving a complex maximization problem. Through constructing an example network as an illustrative model of real network conditions, we show, how complicated the underlying optimization problem MPTCP may face, and through measurements, demonstrate how the various congestion mechanisms deal with finding a solution.


This report synthesises existing characterizations of nonlinear laminar/turbulent flow in rock fissures and rockfill into a coherent numerical form. In this form, nonlinear flow laws have to be introduced into the finite element method to solve the resulting nonlinear differential equations. 9 refs., 8 figs., 4 tabs.


The Witt theory of fields of characteristic p gives a structure theorem for extension fields which are Galois with a cyclic Galois group of order p. This is essentially an additive theory, and hence can be extended without significant change to commutative rings of positive characteristic. The purpose of the present note is to carry out this extension. More precisely, we show the existence of a commutative algebra En, free of rank p n over the ring An of polynomials over the integers in n variables, such that if R is a ring of characteristic p, En ® R is a cyclic Galois An ® R algebra of rank p , and if S is any cyclic Galois K-algebra of rank p there is a homomorphism from An to R such that En ®Afl R is isomorphic to S. Except for some minor technical details, the arguments here are the same as in the classical theory for fields. All our rings and algebras are commutative. Z will denote the integers and p SL fixed prime number; An denotes the polynomial ring Z[Xo, * * ,X n_i] . We assume the reader is familiar with the construction and basic properties of rings of Witt vectors (see, for example, [2, p. 124] ). For a ring R, Wn(R) denotes the Witt vectors of length n over R; elements of Wn(R) are n-tuples (r0, " * ', rn-i)If R has characteristic p, F denotes the endomorphism of Wn(R) given by raising each component to the pth power. By a Galois extension of a ring R we mean an R-algebra satisfying the conditions of [1, 1.3, p. 4] . Let m0, m1? • • • be the polynomials giving addition of Witt vectors, so that (oo, ' ' ', fl«-i) + (&o, ' ' ', bn-i) = (w»o(ao, b0)9 • • -, mn-i(ao, • • *, 6"_i)). Each mk is in Z[X0, Y0, * * -, Xk, Yfc], and we can write mk = X* + Yk + fk where fk is in Z[Xo, Y0, * * *, X^_i, Yk-i] • Let gk be the polynomial Yk p — Yk — (X* + fk)DEFINITION 1. Let En = An[Y0, • • -, Y"-J/(go, _1 ' % gn-i)This definition is motivated as follows: let En = En ® ZJpZ and let X(, îji be the images of Xiy Y» in En. Let x = (xo, • • *, xn-i), y = (y0,-,y"-i) in Wn(En). Then F(y) = y + x. If S is any Z/pZ algebra and if z, a in Wn(S) are such that F(z) = z + a, there is a


In 1995 a mixed-species exhibit for Eastern black-and-white colobus Colobus guereza and Patas monkeys Erythrocebus patas was developed at CERZA (Centre d'Etude et de Recherche Zoologique Augeron), Lisieux, in an attempt to provide a social and physical environment which promotes the expression of diverse and spontaneous behaviours. Colobus guereza is an arboreal species while E. patas inhabits the savannahs of Equatorial Africa. The centre of the enclosure is naturally forested and is surrounded by a clearing which blends into a strip of low vegetation around the perimeter, providing the monkeys with spatial heterogeneity over the vertical plane, thus accommodating the different habitat niches of the two species. General observations on the territorial, mother-infant and play behaviours of each group are presented here.


The boundedness of the finite Hilbert transform operator on certain weighted Lp spaces is well known. We extend this result to give the boundedness of that operator on certain weighted Sobolev spaces. (© 2004 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)


A new method was developed to synthesize nanosheet-assembled TiO2–B microflowers for Li-ion batteries. Significantly higher electrochemical performance of these microflowers compared to other TiO2–B nanostructures was attributed to their hierarchical microstructure and exposed (1 0) facets of the individual nanosheets.


The purpose of this study were to identify shopping orientation for fashion outlet consumers and its significance in influencing brand loyalty and shopping satisfaction. This study will propose results which help to better understand shopping orientation of fashion outlet consumers. A questionnaire was administered to 326 20s male and female living in Daegu Gyeongbuk during October of 2008. Data were analyzed by using Factor analysis, Reliability analysis, t-test and Regression analysis. The results of the research are as follows: First, The shopping orientation could be into 5 dimensions: pleasure tendency, fashion tendency, name brand tendency, prudence buying tendency, economic tendency. Brand loyalty were factor analyzed resulting three factors such as brand loyalty, brand care and brand knowledge. Brand loyalty factors of brand loyalty and brand knowledge had a positive effect on fashion tendency, name brand tendency. Brand care has a positive effect on name brand tendency and economic tendency. Second, Shopping satisfaction were factor analyzed resulting five factors such as product, store atmosphere, service store reputation, location convenience and price. Outlet product had a positive effect on fashion tendency, name brand tendency, prudence buying tendency and while all other factors showed a positive effect on preferences to follow trends. However, outlet price had a positive effect on only those consumers possessing a economic tendency.


A multidecadal geopotential height pattern in the upper troposphere of the extratropical Northern Hemisphere (NH) is identified in this study. This pattern is characterized by the nearly zonal symmetry of geopotential height and temperature between 35 8 and 65 8 N and the equivalent barotropic vertical structure with the largest amplitude in the upper troposphere. This pattern is named the Eurasian–Pacific multidecadal oscillation (EAPMO) to describe its multidecadal time scale and the largest amplitudes over Eurasia and the NorthPacific.Althoughnearlyextendingover theentireextratropics,theEAPMOexhibitslargeramplitudes over western Europe, East Asia, and the North Pacific with a zonal scale equivalent to zonal wavenumbers 4 and 5. The zonally asymmetric perturbation tends to amplify over the major mountain ranges in the region, suggesting a significant topographic influence. The EAPMO has fluctuated concurrently with the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO) at least since the beginning of the twentieth century. The numerical simu- lation results suggest that the EAPMO could be induced by the AMO-like sea surface temperature anomaly and strengthened regionally by topography, especially over the Asian highland region, although the ampli- tude was undersimulated. This study found that the multidecadal variability of the upper-tropospheric geopotential height in the extratropical NH is much more complicated than in the tropics and the Southern Hemisphere (SH). It takes both first (warming trend) and second (multidecadal) EOFs to explain the multidecadal variability in the extratropical NH,whileonlythe firstEOF,whichexhibiteda warming trend, issufficientfor the tropicsandSH.


A new type of I-PD controller is presented to eliminate proportional kick and derivative kick,which will cause an great change of manipulated variable and excessive overshoot of process variable with a general PID controller.Because proportional kick and derivative kick occurs when a step setpoint change is applied that causes spikes in the proportional and derivative actions of the error from setpoint,the new type of I-PD controller is to move the proportional and derivative terms into the feedback path so that they do not directly operate on setpoint changes.The implementation,background and theory of the new PID controller,and parameters tuning are discussed.Simulation studies show the effectiveness of the proposed method.


Depiction of the cellular and immune responses in the human model is critical to design rational therapies preventing/limiting cellular destruction and ultimately functional visual loss following acute laser injuries. We report the light and electron microscopy histologic findings in a controlled ocular human laser exposure. Following informed consent, the normal eye of a patient scheduled to undergo exenteration for invasive carcinoma of the orbit was exposed to both continuous wave and Q-switched lasers. Four hours prior to exenteration, argon G lesions were placed in the superior/temporal quadrant and Nd:YAG lesions were placed in the inferior/temporal quadrant. After enucleation, the retina was prepared for routine light and transmission electron microscopy. Histology of the argon G lesions showed primarily photoreceptor and RPE photocoagulation damage. Neutrophil adhesion was limited within the choroid and no neutrophils were observed in the subretinal space. In contrast, the 4 hr Nd:YAG lesions showed extensive retinal disruption, hemorrhage within subretinal and intraretinal spaces, neutrophil accumulation in the retina, and an extensive neutrophil chemotaxic and emigration response in the choroid. Severe laser injuries elicit a significant neutrophil response by 4 hr, suggesting that neutrophils should be an early stage therapeutic target.


Fournier's original description of scrotal gangrene was characterized by abrupt onset of scrotal inflammation in a previously healthy young male, rapid progression to gangrene and absence of a discernible cause. In recent reports of this condition, a predisposing factor in the form of regional sepsis or a systemic illness such as diabetes or leukaemia was identified in most patients. The pathogenesis of Fournier's gangrene is an obliterative endarteritis of the vessels of the scrotal skin secondary to infection. The infection can arise from the lower urinary tract, spread to the periurethral glands and corpus spongiosum and ultimately penetrate the surrounding fascia to involve the subcutaneous planes of the penis and scrotum. Alternatively, the infection may start in the perirectal region and penetrate the Colle's fascia, to involve the scrotum. Aggressive and early surgical excision is the cornerstone of management. Within 24–48 h of excision, the patient's general condition improves. Close monitoring of the spread of gangrene is necessary, as repeated surgery may be required. Later reconstruction of the scrotum is not difficult in most cases. The scrotal skin has a remarkable regenerative capacity and a reasonably sized scrotum can be formed from the remaining scrotal skin. Split thickness skin grafting accelerates healing. The mortality of the condition in most series has been high, varying from 13% to 45%. The better outcome for our patients (mortality: 8.3%) is probably due to early diagnosis, prompt surgical excision and familiarity with the problem.


This article presents an integrative reaction to the lead contributions by Kiselica, Lark and Paul, and Rooney, Flores, and Mercier. Following the narrative path set by these contributors, the author begins with some personal reflections regarding his own multicultural development. A theme analysis of the lead contributions, along with the author's own experiences, leads to the delineation of 31 characteristics of effective multicultural training organized in three sections: characteristics of effective trainers and mentors, characteristics of promising trainees, and characteristics of facilitative training environments. The second half of this article presents both a general and specific research agenda for multicultural counseling training in the coming decade. Building from the identified themes, research recommendations are presented in five areas: racial identity development, multicultural competency assessment, mentoring, model programs, and the role of program diversity in training effectiveness. The article closes with a general discussion of the current and evolving status of multicultural counseling research. Embedded in the proposed research agenda is a strong call for qualitative research methods.


Analyzing the risk of great epidemic disease of pigs to provide functions reference for prevention and control measures.Screen and define the risk index according to the selecting principle of appraisal criteria,which through byinvestigation, data search and expert testification.Use the Analytic Hierarchy Process(AHP) to define the evaluation index weight.Evaluation model was set up based on the operation principle of probability theory and the method of weighed synthesis in mathematical statistics.To set up system for evaluating the great epidemic disease risks of pigs,which including evaluation index system,appraisal standards of index quantifying,index weight,mathematical evaluation model,the classification standard for risks.The system of risk evaluation can be used actually.It can be a suitable and effective method of prevention and control measures in the practical applications.


(Originally published as About spatial-temporal models of natural regimes of geosystems, in Reports of the Institute of Geography of Siberia and Far East, Special Edition for the XXIII International Geographical Congress, n. 51, p. 96-103, Irkutsk, 1976. Translated by Prof. Carlos Augusto de Figueiredo Monteiro, Universidade de Sao Paulo)


The problem of aortic coarctation is especially acute in Russia. It is a fairly regular occurrence that the defect is diagnosed later in life (in teenage children or adults). There is no consensus among surgeons on the method of coarctation repair. Some surgical centers in our country still offer palliative operative care. We report Russian first clinical case of successful surgical treatment of a rare congenital anomaly persistent left fifth aortic arch coarctation with fourth aortic arch interruption in an adult patient.


Digital tomographic image reconstruction uses multiple x-ray projections obtained along a range of different incident angles to reconstruct a 3D representation of an object. For example, computed tomography (CT) generally refers to the situation when a full set of angles are used (e.g., 360 degrees) while tomosynthesis refers to the case when only a limited (e.g., 30 degrees) angular range is used. In either case, most existing reconstruction algorithms assume that the x-ray source is monoenergetic. This results in a simplified linear forward model, which is easy to solve but can result in artifacts in the reconstructed images. It has been shown that these artifacts can be reduced by using a more accurate polyenergetic assumption for the x-ray source, but the polyenergetic model requires solving a large-scale nonlinear inverse problem. In addition to reducing artifacts, a full polyenergetic model can be used to extract additional information about the materials of the object; that is, to provide a mechanism for quantitative imaging. In this paper, we develop an approach to solve the nonlinear image reconstruction problem by incorporating total variation (TV) regularization. The corresponding optimization problem is then solved by using a scaled gradient descent method. The proposed algorithm is based on KKT conditions and Nesterov's acceleration strategy. Experimental results on reconstructed polyenergetic image data illustrate the effectiveness of this proposed approach.


It has been widely admitted that morphological analysis is an important step in automated text processing for morphologically rich languages. Evenki is a language with rich morphology, therefore a morphological analyser is highly desirable for processing Evenki texts and developing applications for Evenki. Although two morphological analysers for Evenki have already been developed, they are able to analyse less than a half of the available Evenki corpora. The aim of this paper is to create a new morphological analyser for Evenki. It is implemented using the Helsinki Finite-State Transducer toolkit (HFST). The lexc formalism is used to specify the morphotactic rules, which define the valid orderings of morphemes in a word. Morphophonological alternations and orthographic rules are described using the twol formalism. The lexicon is extracted from available machine-readable dictionaries. Since a part of the corpora belongs to texts in Evenki dialects, a version of the analyser with relaxed rules is developed for processing dialectal features. We evaluate the analyser on available Evenki corpora and estimate precision, recall and F-score. We obtain coverage scores of between 61% and 87% on the available Evenki corpora.


The influence of intrinsic phytase and a microbial phytase additive on reproductive traits of sows, the composition of colostrum and milk, and on piglet rearing indices was studied. The two trials differed in the kind of grains used in the diets to give them lower (420-440 PU . kg -1 , Trial 1) or higher (1000-1150 PU . kg -1 , Trial 2) levels of intrinsic phytase. There were 3 feeding groups (34-35 animals in Trial 1 and 25 in Trial 2) in each experiment. In both trials, group 1 received the basic diet enriched with dicalcium phosphate, group 2, the basic diet without this additive (NC), and group 3, the basic diet supplemented with 500 PU . kg -1 microbial phytase. A higher number of liveborn piglets in group 3 in comparison with group 2 in Trial 2 was noted. Also, the body weight of piglets was significantly higher in groups 1 and 3 in comparison with the NC group. The microbial phytase supplement increased the concentration of zn and Cu in colostrum and of zn in sow milk, regardless of native phytase activity.


An attempt is made to evaluate all possible stress based failure criteria that have been otherwise traditionally used for ductile metals and also some other criteria popularly used for polymers. In additional some other intuitive criteria were also derived.


The expectations regarding autonomous vehicles are very high to transform the future mobility and ensure more road safety. Autonomous driving system should be able in the short term to detect dangerous situations and respond appropriately and thus increase driving safety. Understanding the intentions of drivers has recently received growing interest. A long-term prediction method based on gated unit-recurrent neural network model is proposed for the problem of trajectory prediction of surrounding vehicles. A deep neural network with Long-short term memory (LSTM) and Gated Recurrent Units (GRU) structure is used to analyze the spatial-temporal features of the past trajectory. Through sequences learning, the system generates the future trajectory of other traffic participants for different horizons of prediction. We evaluate all models with standard metric (Root mean square error RMSE), loss function convergence and processing time. After comparing the different models, our experiments revealed that the proposed GRU based models is indeed better than LSTM based models in term of accuracy and processing speed.


The amplitude $\ensuremath{\Delta}\ensuremath{\rho}(T,H)/\ensuremath{\rho}$ and temperature ${T}_{M}$, where the colossal magnetoresistance (CMR) response of ${L}_{1\ensuremath{-}x}{\mathrm{Ca}}_{x}{\mathrm{MnO}}_{3}$ manganites are maximum, are found to be controlled by the radius of the lanthanide $({L}^{3+})$ which modifies the bending of the Mn-O-Mn bond. Increasing the bond distortion lowers ${T}_{M}$ and enhances $\ensuremath{\Delta}\ensuremath{\rho}(T,H)/\ensuremath{\rho}$. Enhanced CMR arises from (1) a shift to lower temperatures of ${T}_{M}$, (2) a reduced mobility of the doping holes, and (3) an increase of the coupling between itinerant and localized electrons. The resistivity $\ensuremath{\rho}\left(H\right)$ follows an $\ensuremath{\approx}{\mathrm{BM}}^{2}\left(H\right)$ law and the parameter $B$ is also tuned by the Mn-O-Mn bond angle. The narrowing of the electronic bandwidth is the fundamental parameter controlling the observed CMR.


During Shang Dynasty time,Chinese martial arts tends to move towards mature.During that period,Wushu appeared the many kinds of different technical stratification custom military contents and the frequent military war further impelled the Shang Dynasty society martial arts skill promotion.Through to the Anyang Yin Dynasty ruins unearthed weapon,the animal bones and tortoise shells oracle inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty and the correlation literature synthesis combs,it promulgated Yin Ren by the new angle of view to esteem martial arts the active bright appearance,it also reflected the important status which occupied in the history from certain significance of Chinese martial arts culture broadly and profoundly.


A somatic point mutation in the JAK2 gene (JAK2 V617F ) is the key pathogenetic lesion of Polycythemia Vera (PV) and Essential Thrombocythemia (ET) and a significant effort is now paid to identify drugs which may be able to interfere with the JAK2 V617F mutated protein. Among others, one potentially interesting drug family is represented by the Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors (HDACi), which may modify the chromatin structure and ultimately the transcription of many genes, the cell cycle progression and the programmed cell death. ITF2357 is a new HDACi (Italfarmaco, Milan, SpA) that shows a potent anti-proliferative and pro-apoptotic activity against acute myeloid leukemia and multiple myeloma cells and little toxicity against normal hematopoietic and mesenchymal stem cells (Golay J et al.: Leukemia 2007). The most common side effects after its administration to normal volounteers and MM patients are represented by thrombocytopenia and gastrointestinal toxicity. These observations prompted us to investigate the inhibitory activity played by ITF2357 on the autonomous proliferation of cells obtained by PV and ET patients carrying the JAK2 V617F mutation and to elucidate the mechanism of action of this inhibition. We first investigated the effect of ITF2357 on the clonogenic activity of cell lines carrying or not the JAK2 V617F mutation. ITF2357 inhibited colony formation of HEL cells (an erythroleukemia cell line carrying a JAK2 V617F homozygous mutation) with an IC 50 of about 0.001 μM. In contrast, the doses of drug required to block colony formation by K562, KG1, NB4 and GF-D8 (all negative for the JAK2 V617F mutation) were 100–500 fold higher (IC 50 ranging from 0.1 to 0.5 μM). Clonogenic assays were then performed using blood mononuclear cells obtained from 4 PV and 7 ET patients, all carrying the JAK2 V617F mutation. Either in the presence or absence (EEC assay) of exogenous growth factors, colonies obtained from JAK2 V617F mutated progenitor cells were inhibited at much lower doses of ITF2357 (IC 50 0.001 μM) as compared to colonies obtained from JAK2 wild type progenitor cells (IC 50 0.1–0.25 μM). When single colonies were picked randomly and analyzed by PCR for the presence of wild type or mutated JAK2 V617F alleles, a striking reduction of mutated colonies was detected when ITF2357 was added at 0.001 μM and 0.01 μM, confirming that low doses of ITF357 allow the preferential outgrowth of unmutated over mutated colonies from the peripheral blood mononuclear cells of PV patients bearing JAK2 V617F . By Western blotting we also showed that ITF2357 treatment for 24 hours, led to virtual disappearance of total and phosphorylated JAK2 V617F in HEL cells whereas it did not affect the wild type JAK2 protein in the control K562 cell line, even after 48 hours in the same conditions. Down-modulation of mutated JAK2 V617F was accompanied by specific disappearance of p-STAT5 protein. Finally, by Real time PCR analysis of PV cells treated with ITF2357 for 24 hours, we could demonstrate that this drug does not affect JAK2 mRNA but rather it induces a significant decrease of the PRV1 gene, a known JAK2 target. These data suggest that ITF2357 down-modulates the mutated JAK2 V617F protein by post-transcriptional mechanisms and that is followed by inhibition of p-STAT5 protein and PRV1 gene expression. The specific inhibition induced by ITF2357 on cells bearing the JAK2 V617F mutation underlines its therapeutic potential as a new drug for PV and ET patients.


The change in bulk resistivity of CdZnTe (CZT) crystals was measured during infrared (IR) light between 950 and 1000 nm. The crystals are grown using one of the state-of-the-art methods either the traveling heating method or the modified Bridgman method. The change resistivity was evaluated using the steady-state current with and without light. Additionally, the change in current with both IR sources were correlated to the influence of secondary phases (SP) in each crystal using IR transmission microscopy to determine whether the number and size of the impurities has a drastic effect based on the current-voltage (IV) characteristics. SP at various depths within CZT are connected to the existence of variable depth, IR-excitable traps that lie within the bandgap. The release of these traps will significantly affect the overall current in the system. However, the current increase may not match the overall energy of the light utilized are more dependent on the size and quantity for each energy range.


The NHS's Quality and Outcomes Framework no longer offers points for patient experience. But these are a good incentive to encourage general practitioners to offer person centred care, says Geva Greenfield


DC microgrids are gaining interest due to higher efficiencies of DC distribution compared with AC. The benefits of DC systems have been widely researched for data centers, IT facilities and residential applications. The research focus, however, has been more on system architecture and optimal voltage level, less on optimized operation and control of generation sources. The latter theme is perused in this paper, where cost-based droop scheme is proposed for distributed generators (DGs) in DC microgrids. Unlike traditional proportional power sharing based droop scheme, the proposed scheme considers the generation costs of DGs and dynamically tunes their droop gradients to produce more power from less costly DGs and vice versa. The proposed scheme is fully autonomous, simple to implement in dispatchable and non-dispatchable sources coupled with storage, support islanded and grid-connected operation. Most importantly, the proposed scheme can reduce overall total generation cost in DC microgrids without centralized controller and communication links. The performance of the proposed scheme has been verified under different load conditions.


Optical properties of nonlinear PbIn6Te10 (PIT) crystal were studied for the first time within 30–1200 µm (0.2–15 THz) by FTIR and THz-TDS. It was found that PIT possesses the most attractive transparency features for efficient generation of long-wave mid-IR emission including 20–60 µm (5–15 THz) region by optical rectification. This crystal is also found useful for phase matched DFG generation into the long-wave THz region. In particular, by model study phase matched down-conversion of CO and CO2 laser lines into 130–1200 µm (0.3–2.3 THz) range is shown possible by ooe and eoe type of three wave interaction. Noncritical 90° phase matching for eoe type of interactions can be realized by selecting samples with specified composition.


We develop and test a simple hedging theory of prediction interval formation. In the presence of uncertainty, forecasters hedge their forecasts by adjusting the prediction interval based on their own (first-order) belief in a way that reflects their (second-order) belief about others' beliefs. Anchoring and adjustment leads to a positive relationship between an asymmetry measure for the prediction interval and the belief wedge, defined as the di fference between the second-order belief and the first-order belief. Using data from three experiments in which subjects are asked to forecast future stock prices, we provide empirical support for the theory.