Let R be a nonassociative ring and let --(u---()} be the set of all formal nonassociative products." In [3], Brown-McCoy has defined that an ideal2) P is a u-prime ideal, if whenever u(A, ..., A) is contained in P for ideals A, of R, then at least one of the ideals A, is contained in P. We shall generalize this concept as follows" Let 1 be any fixed subset of . An ideal P is said to be lI-ideal if whenever X() e ()(A,..., An) is contained in P, where X denotes the restricted sum and A are ideals, then A is contained in P for some , i. It is the aim of this paper to investigate l-ideals and to present some related results. In section 1, l%-systems are defined by analogy with m-systems introduced in [4]. If A is an ideal of R, a l-radical 1/(A) of the ideal A is defined to be the set o all elements r of R with the property that every l-system which contains an element of A. We shall prove that I/(A) is the intersection of all 1/-ideals which contains A. Section 2 lays definitions of 11*-ideals and lI*-radicals of ideals which are analogous to those of u*-prime ideals and u*-radicals of ideals in [3]. We shall show that always I/(A)=1/*(A) under the assumption that 1 is a finite subset of /, where II*(A) is the lI*-radical of an ideal A. In the fininal section we define a 1/-radical of the ring R, which is denoted by I(R), as the one o the zero ideal of R, and show that ll(R) has the usual properties expected of a radical. Moreover we shall show that ll(R)=(ll(R)), where Rn and (II(R)) are the total matric rings of order n with coefficients in R and ll(R) respectively. 1. H.ideals and 1Lradicals. Throughout this paper, we let 1I be any fixed subset of . The principal ideal generated by an element a of R will be denoted by (a). The complement of an ideal in R will be denoted by C(A). Lemma 1. Let P be an ideal of R. Then the following three conditions are equivalent" ( P is a lI-ideal.


In order to evaluate the composition and seasonal variations of the epilithic diatoms in Yedikır Dam Lake were studied using samples collected from the stones in the barrier area between November 2004 and April 2006. The diatom communities were diverse; 88 taxa were found, belonging to the Bacillariophyta. Cymbella minuta, Cyclotella ocellata and Encyonema silesiacum have become the most abundant organisms in the epilithon. Environmental variables together with biological data obtained during the monthly routine biomonitoring of epilithic samples in the dam were analysed to understand variability of epilithic diatom communities and their relationships with environmental variables. Moreover, cluster analysis was applied to the epilithic algal communities and the seasonal variations of the samples were classified according to their similarity levels. Speciess richness and shannon diversity of the samples which were counted were measured in monthly periods. The results of the diversity analysis and the counting did not exactly match up with each other. Multivariate analyses indicated that both the regional distribution and seasonal variation of some epilithic diatoms (e.g. Cymbella spp., Nitzschia spp., Amphora delicatissima) are mainly driven by nutrient concentrations. Furthermore, epilithic diatoms are predominantly affected by geochemical characteristics including pH and total alkalinity (CaCO3) levels.


ABSTRACT Research within the natural sciences is increasingly revealing the importance that microbial life has for human functioning. Referred to as the microbiome, the unique selection of microbial life that harbours inside the body affects human behaviours. This paper contrasts the more simplistic practices and imaginations associated with 'good' and 'bad' microbes with the more nuanced perspective offered by research with FMT users and explores what these sources say of a human microbe relationship. Through an engagement with Haraway's concept of companion species this paper first explores how a good/bad binary of microbial life is reproduced through cleaning, probiotic advertising and the technologies of antibiotics. It points to the consequent warping of the complexities of microbial life through such representations. It then engages with FMT users' experiences of FMT to develop Haraway's concept of embodied communication to corporeal communication, which describes a mode of relating between FMT users and their microbiomes. The paper then offers corporeal communication as an alternative conceptual tool that can be used by those that have not undergone FMT to better understand and appreciate the microbial self.


The energy of two orthogonally polarised pulses injected into an available multistage amplifier based on neodymium phosphate glass rods was increased from 300 to (in both pulses). The second output pulse with an energy of will be used to pump an additional parametric amplifier of a petawatt laser.


Accessible summary
• People with learning disabilities do not get to make as many choices as other people.
• This project looked at the choices people make about everyday things and about health services.
• We spoke to people with learning disabilities, their carers and Physiotherapy staff.
• We found that people with a learning disability were making choices about everyday things but felt that other people made choices about health services for them.
• We found that carers and healthcare staff need support to understand how difficult it can be to make choices, and how they can help people with a learning disability to make choices.

Summary
People with learning disabilities have fewer choice opportunities than the general population. Existing research provides some insight, but the choice-making experiences of those who do not always utilise available healthcare remains under-explored. This research explored the choice-making experiences of two groups of individuals with a learning disability: (Group 1 – Irregular attenders) those who had opted out of healthcare appointments for avoidable reasons; and (Group 2 – Regular attenders) those who had attended all appointments or not attended for unavoidable reasons. Interviews were carried out with people with learning disabilities (N = 4) and/or their primary carer (N = 13). In addition to these interviews, Physiotherapy staff participated in a focus group (Group 3). The interviewed individuals with learning disabilities described experiences of and opportunities for making everyday choices but generally identified 'others' as being responsible for making their healthcare choices. Greater understanding of the healthcare expectations and experiences of individuals with learning disabilities, carers and healthcare staff is required to support people with learning disabilities as active healthcare decision-makers.


The function of the government in employment and undertaking of the city migration of ethnic minorities is to provide preferential policy and conditions, to inculcate the market awareness of fair competition, to safeguard lawful rights and interests of the ethnic minority, to solve educational problems of children of ethnic minorities from outside, and to strengthen communication and understanding among different nationalities.


This paper investigated the phonological processes of monophthongs and diphthongs in the pronounced words present in the Buckeye Corpus and compared the frequency distribution of these processes by sex and age groups to provide a clearer understanding of spoken English to linguists and phoneticians. Both orthographic and pronounced words were extracted from the transcribed label scripts of the Buckeye Corpus using R. Next, the phonological processes of monophthongs and diphthongs in the orthographic and pronounced labels were tabulated using R scripts, and a frequency distribution by vowel process types, as well as sex and age groups, was created. The results revealed that 95% of the orthographic words contained the same number of syllables, whereas 5% had different numbers of vowels, thereby proving that speakers tend to preserve vowels in spontaneous speech. In addition, deletion processes were preferred in natural speech. Most vowel deletions occurred with an unstressed syllable. Chi-square tests were performed to calculate dependence in the distribution of phonological process types for male and female groups and young and old groups. The results showed a very strong correlation. This finding indicates that vowel processes occurred in approximately the same pattern in natural and spontaneous speech data regardless of sex and age, as well as whether or not the vowel processes were identical. Based on these results, the author concludes that an analysis of phonological processes in spontaneous speech corpora can greatly enhance practical understanding of spoken English.


The objectives of this study are to analyze air cooling energy consumption by heating load from the dock system in distribution center. CFD is used to estimate the decrement after improvement of the dock system. The dock system takes a role as a gate in distribution center. Currently, the dock system has a problem which is a chink between the car and the distribution center. This problem can cause increase of energy consumption. In this paper, decrement of dock system is focused by using the analysis of numerical method. Flow rate and air velocity through the dock system are confirmed by using commercial analysis code. Numerical analysis is performed with considering heat transfer by conduction, convection. As a result of this research, it is found that the refrigeration load through the dock system is lager than the load in wall by the conduction and outside hot air is the major cause of refrigeration load.


During the last decade it has become increasingly clear that violence against women is a more common feature than was generally assumed. The extent and specific nature of this violence make the "traditional" explanations for its occur rence insufficient. By explicitly taking into account the cultural background of this violence and the social context in which women are victimized it is possible to explain the violence and the reactions of institutions like the criminal justice system, social agencies, etc. By considering violent incidents exclusively as the individual problem of the parties involved, the essence of the problem is missed, even whilst dealing with individual cases.


OREIGN trade for the United States is both necessary and desirable. There is no disagreement on this point among bankers, business men, economists, statesmen. However, in seeking a lead for the revival of American business, attention should not be focused on foreign trade to the exclusion of domestic business. American exports have constituted only some six to eight per cent of the total sales of this country during the period of maximum exports. The domestic market is definitely under American control, to be revived if proper thought and action are taken. A clear ray of hope offers in the thought that measures looking toward business revival can be taken at home and at once.


Alley can spray mural, 1990, alley wall near Virginia and Centinela Avenues. Cartoon character and wild-style writing. Aerosol -- Dunitz, Street gallery, p. 179, #40.


The syngas produced by fixed bed gasifiers contains high quantities of particulate and tars. This issue, together with its high temperature, avoids its direct exploitation without a proper cleaning and cooling process. In fact, when the syngas produced by gasification is used in an Internal Combustion engine (IC), the higher the content of tars and particulate, the higher the risk to damage the engine is. If these compounds are not properly removed, the engine may fail to run. A way to avoid engine fails is to intensify the maintenance schedule, but these stops will reduce the system profitability. From a clean syngas does not only follow higher performance of the generator, but also less pollutants in the atmosphere. When is not possible to work on the gasification reactions, the filter plays the most important role in the engine safeguard process. This work is aimed at developing and comparing different porous filters for biomass gasifiers power plants. A drum filter was developed and tested filling it with different filtering media available on the market. As a starting point, the filter was implemented in a Power Pallet 10 kW gasifier produced by the California-based company "ALL Power Labs". The original filter was replaced with different porous biomasses, such as woodchips and corn cobs. Finally, a synthetic zeolites medium was tested and compared with the biological media previously used. The Tar Sampling Protocol (TSP) and a modified "dry" method using the Silica Gel material were applied to evaluate the tars, particulate and water amount in the syngas after the filtration process. Advantages and disadvantages of every filtering media chosen were reported and discussed.


Due to years of warfare in Colombia, humanitarian demining is more important than ever. However, practice has shown that the detection of Improvised Explosive Devices is challenging and represents a tedious task, due to the lack of reliable sensors. However, developments in the field of Ground Penetrating Radar and machine learning are opening new possibilities. On the downside, supervised machine learning classifiers require large amounts of training data that are not available until today. Therefore, we introduce a 2D-simulator for the generation of randomly behaving ground scenes, which is capable of generating training data sets in a short amount of time.


Objective: To supplement morphological and anatomical date for confirming the original plant of traditional Chinese drug "Bai Zhi" (Radix Angelicae Dahuricae). Method: Morphological observation and anatomical study were made on 4 cultivated breeds and closely related wild plants of "Bai Zhi".Result: According to morphological and anatomical characteristics discovered in this paper, 7 samples noted above could be divided into 3 groups: ① 4 breeds ("Chuan Bai Zhi", "Hang Bai Zhi", "Qi Bai Zhi" and "Yu Bai Zhi") and Angelica dahurica var. formosana ; ② A. dahurica ; ③ A.porphyrocaulis . Conclusion: In the morphological and anatomical point of view, A.dahurica var. formosana is closer to traditional Chinese drug "Bai Zhi" than others.


Employed the systematic method,this paper analyzes the characteristics of the driving gearbox′s seal system of high speed train It is included the features of the elements in the seal system and the relations among them On the basis,a variety of the measures have been put forward to improve the sealing reliability of the driving gearbox


HHE PURPOSE of this paper is to present the findings of a very limited preliminary study of the possible ways of using the numerous Census data that are now available. For the most part the analysis is limited to consumer expenditures and income. While it is plausible enough to assume that similar studies have been carried out by others, a search through the literature nevertheless indicates that the available material is very scarce.


Zakat, collected by the National Board of Zakat (Baznas) of Bandung City, has practical value for the community's welfare. This study aims to measure the effectiveness of Zakat distribution in Baznas Bandung City. This research was conducted using quantitative methods. Data sourced from the Baznas Bandung City Financial Report for the 2017-2021 period. Distribution effectiveness measurement uses the allocation-to-collection ratio (ACR) approach. In addition, this study uses a descriptive approach. The results showed that the ACR value was 94 per cent. Thus, the level of effectiveness in the distribution of Baznas Bandung City is in the Highly Effective category. Therefore, Baznas Bandung City needs to optimize the distribution of Mustahiq Zakat, which covers five program areas: Education, Economy, Health, Da'wah, and Humanity.


Using a simple structural model which consists of a massless column supporting a concentrated mass at the top, it is shown that the vertical ground motion in an earthquake can amplify the power of the horizontal ground motion, and cause greater horizontal structural displacement response. Furthermore, this amplification effect is greater for greater initial response; i.e., the response initally computed without taking the vertical excitation into consideration. Although the present analysis is based on a linear structural model, numerical computations have included large deflections so that the general trend can become more visible, and the results so obtained can provide useful guides for future investigation into the nonlinear inelastic regimes.


■ AIMS This article reports developments in the Finnish alcohol field from 1990 to 2010, focusing on changes and trends in alcohol consumption, drinking habits and alcohol-related harm. We pay special attention to changes in alcohol availability and alcohol policy and look at the factors behind changes in alcohol policies. The article will also discuss the current status and future prospects of alcohol policy and alcohol control as well as differences between Finland and the situation in the neighbouring countries with a similar alcohol monopoly. ■ METHODS Routinely collected statistical data on alcohol consumption and related harm as well as repeated cross-sectional representative population surveys will be reviewed, as will changes in alcohol policy and availability. ■ RESULTS Apart from the economic recession in the early 1990s, alcohol consumption and related harm have increased in Finland. Changes in alcohol consumption are mostly explained by changes in consumer incomes and alcohol policy measures. However, EU membership has restricted tightened alcohol control and given more room for private alcohol industry to affect alcohol policy. ■ CONCLUSIONS While increased alcohol-related harm has stopped the Finns from moving toward a more liberal alcohol policy, EU membership and private alcohol interests have made it considerably more difficult to combat alcohol-related harm with alcohol control measures.


The study aims to determine the effect of Curent Ratio, Total Asset Turnover, Debt to Equity Ratio, Net Profit Margin on ROA in property and real estate companies listed on the IDX in 2019 - 2021. Quantitative descriptive research method, collecting data using research instruments and statistically analyzed in testing hypotheses. The population was 80 companies in the field of property and real estate, a sample of 20 companies with purposive sampling technique. The results of the study found that Current Ratio is partially significant to the company's Return on Assets with a tcount of Current Ratio 0.557, ttable 2.000 (tcount < ttable) and its significance is 0.580, which is> 0.05. Total Assets Turnover partially affects the company's Return on Assets with a tcount of Total Assets Turnover 2.909, ttable 2.000 (tcount> ttable) and its significance is 0.005, namely <0.05. Debt to Equity Ratio is not significant to the company's Return on Assets worth thitung Debt to Equity Ratio 1.131, ttabel 2.000 (titung < ttabel) significance 0.268 which is> 0.05 Net Profit Margin partially affects the company's Return on Assets worth thitung Net Profit Margin 10. 509, ttable 2,000 (tcount> ttable), the significance is 0.000 which is <0.05.Current Ratio, Total Asset Turnover, Debt to Equity Ratio and Net Profit Margin are significant to Return on Asset worth Fhitung> Ftabel (29,548> 2,536).
Keywords: Current ratio, total asset turnover, debt to equity ratio, net profit margin ratio and return on assets.


ASP+Access has become the first selected scheme of application system for a lot of networks. But ASP +Access has brought some security peoblems that can't be ignored either while it has brought convenience to us. The article discusses the safety problems of ASP and ACESS databases, proposes the form of the hidden peril of safety, and puts forward some concrete measures on improving its security.


By adding extra transmission lines between 90° transmission lines at an arbitrary phase angle from the input terminal, a modified Trantanella Wilkinson power divider with a simple layout is presented. Design equations for characteristic impedances and complex isolation components are derived from even- and odd-mode analysis. Parallel and series RC circuits are chosen to realise the complex isolation components, and bandwidths are also discussed. For both parallel and series RC circuits, two experimental circuits were fabricated under the same conditions. The experimental results showed good agreement with the results of simulation.


By applying the theory of neural networks to the product cost evaluation,this paper discusses the problem of designing and training of neural networks compared with other popular methods.Experimental results are presented to show the effectiveness of the method and responsibility for the fact.


A new technique to measure the lateral distribution of both interface traps and trapped oxide charge near the drain junction in MOSFET's is presented. This technique derives from the charge pumping method, is easy to implement, and allows ready separation of the interface-trap and oxide charge components. Measurement results on n-MOSFET's after hot-carrier stressing are presented. Results are also correlated with device output characteristics.<<ETX>>


Life education is a pursuit for value of life and an existing form of education,which is to examine physical education from the view of life,to reveal the life nature of physical education,to demonstrate the need of individual life and harmonious development,to integrate life education into physical education to realize the origin regression of life.Life is the physical basis for physical education.


The damp putrescent odour of West Africa; only sixty years ago, the average life expectancy of the European was under a year. Now the expatriate as he is called, pampered and insulated, leaves his air-conditioned bedroom, drives tohis air-conditioned office in an airconditioned car: no wonder his conversation has the same chilled, homogenised quality. Instead of dying before the year is out, he's on the VC 10, Europe-bound for his hols.


Background: Obesity has increased rapidly worldwide in last few decades. According to World Obesity Federation 2018, the prevalence of obesity in UAE amongst Emirati aged 18-69 years has been reported as 32.2% vs 38.5% living with obesity vs overweight in men and 41.8% vs 29.3% living with obesity vs overweight in women. There are many myths amongst general public about obesity. Aim: The objective of the study was to address public questions through online forum regarding weight management. Methods: In this cross-sectional observational study qualitative analysis was done. It was conducted quarterly at Mediclinic City and Parkview Hospital in Dubai from August 2020-September 2021. An online zoom meeting was made available to the public. People who wanted to attend the session registered via dedicated email address. A certified dietician, endocrinologist and bariatric surgeon were available to answer peoples questions. Results: 6 online forums have been conducted. 163 (range 10-90) people attended. Three themes were constructed during data analysis. 1- Diet: what is the best diet and about caloric intake. 2- Insulin resistance or hormone imbalance is responsible for weight gain. 3- Misinformation and unrealistic expectations about bariatric surgery. Feedback from audience was: it was interactive, fun and informative session, it is good to know that it is not my fault and I need to get help. Conclusion: Our results show that patients need support throughout their weight management journey. Healthcare professionals need to be more aware of patients perceptions about weight management so that they can be addressed in consultations. We need more online support sessions facilitated by healthcare professionals. Key words: obesity, zoom meeting, weight management


Poly(p-phenylene) films were heat-treated at various temperatures up to 2800°C. Heat-treated films are stable in air and show the wide range of electrical conductivity and are remarkably enhanced by heat-treatment above 600°C, which is interpreted in terms of the carbonization. Heat-treated films yield small positive thermoelectric power. From temperature dependences of electrical conductivity and thermoelectric power for the films heat-treated above 800°C, the metallic conduction is working only in the carbonized fragments.


This data set contains four tables of information regarding the sampling of plant biomass, nitrogen, cumulative thaw degree days, precipitation, and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) information for the Colville River Delta and Point Lonely area of northern Alaska from 2011-2015.


A new method for Monte Carlo electron transport calculations has previously been outlined. Briefly, the method is as follows: the quantity of interest (e.g., x-ray photoemission angular distribution) is expanded in a complete set of orthogonal functions; the individual trajectories of the Monte Carlo sample are used to calculate the expansion coefficients; the resulting coefficients are used to evaluate a (continuous) representation of the relevant distribution. In this paper we discuss this orthogonal function expansion method at some length. A precise mathematical formulation is given to two types of expansions: expansions of the probability density of a random variable; expansions of functions defined on a stochastic process. The method as formulated is then used for several problems of practical interest. The POEM Monte Carlo electron transport code has been modified to provide expansions for the following: one- and two-dimensional x-ray photoemission angular distributions; dose enhancement profiles near high-Z/low-Z interfaces, and energy distributions for finite beams incident on an interface. A discussion is given of the applicability of the method, particularly as it relates to the specific applications. Several pathological examples are cited which indicate the discretion necessary in applying the technique. These examples serve to counterpoint the desirable properties of convergence, smoothing, and variance reduction which arise from a properly applied expansion.


The first and foremost goal United Nation emulates is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by 2015. Slum is almost synonymous with urban poverty and hunger. The word 'Slum' was originally used as the 'back slum' meaning the backyard or 'back room' and later 'back alley'. Other terms which many a times used to portray slum include, 'shanty town', 'favela', 'skid row', 'barrio', 'ghetto', and 'The hood'. Although most of these terms have a unique meaning on its own respect, they are conglomerated into defining the slum. This paper concentrate on the facts of slums in Indian context and the legal aspects associated with it and ultimately initiate some thoughts on improving slums in Urban India.


Surgical safety checklists (SSCs) are associated with reductions in postoperativemorbidity andmortality and have now achievedwidespread implementation, although thequalityof implementation remainsunclear inmanysettings.1,2 In this issue of JAMA Surgery, Bock and colleagues3 evaluate the effect of introducing an SSC in a single Italian referral hospital on30-and90-dayall-causemortality,30-dayreadmissionrate, and hospital length of stay. Bock et al3 demonstrate a statistically significant decrease inoverall surgicalmortality at90daysafter surgeryand a reduction in hospital length of stay after implementation of anSSC.Mostpreviouspublications thatexaminedsurgicalmortality focusedonthemoretraditional andwidely accepted 30-daypostoperativemortality and readmission rates. Historically, the 30-day outcomes were chosen because of difficulties with long-term follow-up and issueswith attributing death in the 30to 90-daypostoperative period to the primary surgical procedure.3 We commend the authors for choosing to focus on the 90-day postoperative all-cause mortality rate, and we are reassured that they saw a statistically significant decrease. However, we should also considerwhyno statistically significant change in the 30-day postoperative all-cause mortality rates was observed. This finding could be attributable to inherent differences in the population studied, to the case mix, or to insufficient power to detect change related to sample size. This article also highlights the ongoing challenges of checklist implementation and measurement of the impact of the SSC. First, whether SSC performance underwent direct observation during implementation and whether that observation compared with reported performance are unclear. Checklist performance appears to be measured primarily by checking whether a form was completed. Significant discordance between paper checklist completion and actual completion has been described.4 Second, 80% completion was considered the threshold for complete implementation in this study, whereas recent literature supports that full rather than partial checklist completion provides an opportunity for significant improvement of the effect of the SSC on the quality of patient care and surgical safety.5 With more effective implementation and full SSC use in every case, the improvement in outcomes seen could have been even. If the SSC is not used, it cannot help. Although some investigators question the actual impact of checklists, despite the proliferation of evidence regarding improved patient outcomes and quality of care across countries, these arguments fail to acknowledge fully the difficulty of effectively implementingSSCs ina complexhealth system.6 A focus on the systems of care and promotion of a culture of safety at the institutional level is necessary tooptimize checklist implementation and realize its full potential. Effective implementation is critical tomeaningfuluseofSSCs,whichcan lead to maximally improved outcomes.


The utility model discloses a non-environment control type open family plant factory using artificial light, comprising multiple layers of brackets, a water storage tank, a flower pot, a water-feeding pipe, a water pump, a timer, an irrigation water pipe, a return water pipe, a water absorption core and an illuminating lamp; the flower pot is connected with the water absorption core on the irrigation water pipe, and a plant in the flower pot is artificially irradiated. In the non-environment control type open family plant factory, common household flower pots and organic fertilizers are used for cultivating organic vegetables and ornamental plants for greening indoor space. The plant factory adopts open type design, and uses growth conditions of room temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide without directly controlling these environment conditions. The plants are exposed in the indoor air, present comfortable and beautiful vision, and can directly regulate and purify the air. The non-environment control type open family plant factory is simple in structure, low in cost, convenient in cultivation and beneficial for household use.


IN a recent article R. P. R. Tilley and R. Hicks' (hereafter referred to as T & H) examined the relationship between the size of supermarkets and various aspects of their operating performance. Although their article is entitled 'Economies of Scale in Supermarkets' there is in fact very little evidence which relates to this topic. Rather, they are concerned with more general relationships between size and performance. It is the purpose of this note to show that their analysis is not soundly based. As far as economies of scale are concerned it is necessary to ask two questions. Do economies of scale exist? If so, to what are they attributable ? In seeking to answer the first question a careful scrutiny of the data is necessary to reduce to a minimum the importance of any features which have differentially affected the basic information.2 Because all the supermarkets were controlled by a single company and there was a 'fairly uniform' pricing policy and no great variation in the quality of management, T & H state that it was possible to make meaningful comparisons between supermarkets. However, this is doubtful. Three factors may be mentioned which might well have a differential effect on the size-classes of supermarkets. 3 First, there are locational differences. T & H themselves point out that over half the supermarkets were situated in high streets, about a quarter were country branches and about a sixth were situated on estates. What relationship existed between these three types of location and size of supermarket.? It is likely that the larger supermarkets were concentrated in the high streets, with the estates and country regions having a high proportion of the smaller branches. Locational differences, however, may have a marked effect on the


The essence of religion is to believe in God Almighty who needs to be instilled in children from an early age. Junior High-School as education institutions for children should foster more awareness for religious fundamental. During this time, religious learning was only in the form of habituation without awareness. The problem is, how does the method teach it? An-Nahlawi, a cleric and professor of Egyptian Islamic education, introduced Qur`an-based learning methods. The more appropriate method for a fostering faith is the Kisah Qur`ani (Qur`anic story). Coincidentally, the story is favored by children or adults. In order for the Junior High-School teachers to implement this method, the lesson study approach is used. The study aims to produce a learning model of Kisah Qur`ani about the formation of faith in children in Junior High-School. Research uses a participatory qualitative approach. The first stage produces a draft model; the second is a model discussion with teachers; and the third is the model implementation in two schools. The results showed, the draft learning model of the Kisah Qur`ani was received by the teachers. Based on trials, the Kisah Qur`ani learning model is proven to improve faith cognition in children. With the theme of learning the story of Prophet Adam in QS 2/Albaqarah verses 30-34, as many as 36 children are proven to understand the meaning of faith in the Angels. Whereas before, the teachers educated the meaning of faith to pre Angels is simply to believe in the existence of this supernatural being. However, after using the Kisah Qur`ani method the teacher teaches that the meaning of this faith is to imitate the Angels who always obey Allah and His Messenger. Children can also get messages from this Qur`anic story. Besides this, the method increases children's enthusiasm in learning. They are able to pay attention and answer the questions posed by the teacher. Keywords—Kisah Qur`ani learning model; lesson study; faith's formation; Junior High-School student


Government plans to construct a double-deck tunnel under a portion of Gyeongbu Expressway that will solve traffic problems and could also be used as a flood storage facility. Divergence tunnels connect the main tunnel to the urban areas and their construction effects on adjacent structures at shallow depth need to be analyzed. This study primarily includes the numerical analysis of construction effects of divergence tunnels on utility tunnels. The utility tunnel was analyzed for three cases of volume loss applied to the divergence tunnel and two cases of the angle between main tunnel and divergence tunnel (36° and 45°). The results show that the more the volume loss was applied and the shorter the distance was between utility tunnel and divergence tunnel, the more the utility tunnel was affected in terms of induced displacements, angular displacement and stability. The worst scenario was found out to be the one where the angle between main tunnel and divergence tunnel was 36° and the distance between divergence tunnel and utility tunnel was 10 m, resulting in the largest displacement and differential settlement at the bottom of the utility tunnel. A relationship between the angular displacement and the distance to diameter ratio was also established.


Everolimus is an antitumor drug usually indicated for the treatment of breast, kidney and neuroendocrine malignancies that inhibits the activation of the mammalian Target of Rapamycin (mTOR). Despite the efficacy and success of the treatment, side effects are not uncommon, and stomatitis is quite prevalent. mTOR inhibitor associated stomatitis (mIAS) is described as ulcerated aphthous-like lesions associated with mTOR inhibitors use. mIAS may cause severe pain, leading to nutritional deficiency and general health decline, besides drug dose reduction or suspension. Clinical observation suggested mIAS to be more common among breast cancer patients. Thus, we hypothesized that exemestane could contribute to increase everolimus toxicity in the oral mucosa. We prospectivelly collected clinical data from patients who used everolimus, associated or not with exemestane, from March 2016 to September 2017, and correlated them with information regarding mIAS (date of onset, number of lesions in the oral cavity, grading). We also performed in vitro experiments with Dysplastic Oral Keratinocytes (DOK). Cells were treated with vehicle, everolimus, exemestane or the combination of everolimus and exemestane. Drug induced citotoxicity was evaluated by MTT assay and migration inhibition by scratch wound healing assay. All assays were done in triplicate. Frequencies were compared by Fisher9s exact or McNemar test. Log-rank and Wilcoxon tests were employed to compare time to mIAS development. Multivariate ANOVA was used to compare results from in vitro experiments. SPSS and Image J were used to make all statistical analysis. One hundred and thirty patients were evaluated. Mostly were females, with mean age of 60 years, and had previously treated advanced stage (IV) breast cancer. 30.3% developed mIAS. Breast cancer patients (treated with exemestane plus everolimus) had 2.29 higher chance to develop mIAS when compared to neuroendocrine tumos patients (treated with everolimus alone). In vitro experiments showed that the association of everolimus and exemestane increased cell death and migration (wound healing) inhibition of DOK in comparison with cells treated with everolimus or exemestane alone. The clinical data suggests that exemestane increases the risk of developing mIAS, and the in vitro experiments reinforces the idea that exemestane may enhance oral mucosa toxicity mediated by everolimus. Citation Format: Vladmir C. de Lima, Matheus H. de Lima, Fabio A. Alves, Glaucia N. Hajj. Exemestane worsens everolimus-associated stomatitis in cancer patients [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2018; 2018 Apr 14-18; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 4908.


Abstract Field experiments were conducted during the spring and fall of 1994 to evaluate two nitrogen (N) sources [ammonium nitrate (AN) and polymer‐coated urea (PCU)] and five levels of drip‐ or band‐applied N on the yield of drip irrigated 'Solar Set' tomatoes (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill). Early‐season yields obtained with PCU were similar to or greater than yields obtained with AN. Highest yields of large fruit early in the season were produced with 100% preplant‐applied AN or 100% band‐applied PCU. Total‐season yields were greater with AN than PCU and were not affected by placement of N. Increasing the percentage of drip‐ or band‐applied N resulted in leaf N concentrations that were inconsistent with trends in marketable fruit production; however, trends in leaf K concentration early in the season were similar to those of early‐season large fruit yields.


Monitoring the number of people in a building environment is key to achieving power efficiency, comfort, and safety in building use. The usage of fish-eye cameras in combination with neural network (NN) can provide a well-balanced compromise between price and measurement accuracy (ACC). Unfortunately, due to fish-eye camera distortion, solutions built for projective cameras may not work well. In addition, people can be counted with NN that solve different types of tasks, such as object detection or instance segmentation. As such, NN have different loss functions, and it is hard to forecast which approach could provide better performance for people counting on fish-eye images.To answer this question, the authors of this study compared YOLOv8 architecture vs Mask-RCNN under different training and pre-processing conditions. For this purpose, a custom data set was generated from different view angle cameras, and additional metrics were used apart from standard ones usually used for mask and bounding box evaluation. Experiments indicate that YOLOv8-N is a better solution as it requires fewer resources and at the same time provides top people count ACC of 95.


User involvement in developing community-based public health services has been on the agenda for decades. User involvement refers to the variety of ways in which service users or public citizens participate in the development of health services: from proving information on their needs to actively being involved in decisions about future services. Former studies found that user involvement is meaningful to the people involved and could have a favorable impact on the quality of services. Thus, it is timely to systematically identify and provide a comprehensive overview of user involvement methods used in public health studies. The aim of this scoping review is to provide an overview of the current body of empirical research where user involvement methods have been used to develop community public health services and identify its possible impact on the individual as well as services.

 A systematic scoping review of user involvement methods aiming to develop public health services followed Arksey and O'Malley, 2005 framework. Six databases: CINAHL, Cochrane Library, Embase, PsycINFO. PubMed, Scopus and ProQuest, were searched from October till November, 2019. Search terms were: user involvement, methods and health care with corresponding synonym. All hits were double screened.

 6.044 studies were identified of which 38 studies lived up to the criteria. Preliminary findings from coding and synthesizing studies have identified a variety of user involvement

 19 of the studies used complex, multi-facetted packages of methods aiming to identify needs, prioritize and formulate recommendations for future services. 19 studies used different kinds of group meetings and some used certain techniques to facilitate the process. Many reported the impact, and 13 evaluated the methods. The impact of using the methods varied from impact on individual, group, or service/political level. Final results will be presented at the conference.

 Studies on user involvement methods in developing community public health services and its impact are sparse. User involvement is privotal in developing sustainable public health community services.


CO and CO/H_2 adsorption and reaction behavior over Co catalysts with amorphous, tetragonal and monoclinic zirconia as the supports were characterized by FTIR, TPSR and Fisher-Tropsch synthesis. The results show that cobalt catalysts with different zirconia polymorphs as the supports exhibited various behavior of CO adsorption and reaction. For the Co catalyst supported on monoclinic zirconia, besides the multi terminal CO, bridged and tribridged CO appeared and were easily dissocia-(ted) at a high temperature, which resulted in the higher catalytic behavior and C~+__5 selectivity in the case of CO hydrogenation. While for cobalt supported on tetragonal zirconia, the bridged CO was more stable and CO hydrogenation was relatively less active.


In the past five years, a case for oxidative stress in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer disease (AD) has been convincingly made. That link owes most of its existence to the microscopic detection of neuronal oxidative damage. Focusing on damage not only has the advantage that stable products are studied, rather than short-lived radicals, but also that damage can be morphologically defined. This latter aspect is critical since biochemical analysis of whole tissue is mostly of the accumulated damage from normal metabolism with aging of long-lived polymers in the extracellular matrix (Figure 1). The importance of damage is that it is the result most likely to be linked to pathology. Driven by the hypothesis that oxidative damage plays a role in the aggregation of insoluble protein in the lesions of Alzheimer disease, neurofibrillary tangles and senile plaques, we developed reagents to detect protein modifications related to glycoxidation, lipid peroxidation, peroxynitrite, free carbonyls and carbonyl-modification (Figure 2).


Taking the mobility analysis of a kind of 2-DOF multi-looped hybrid driving mechanism as an example,an analytic method of mobility which suits similarly to other multi-DOF and multi-looped hybrid driving mechanisms was presented.First of all,push forward the conditions of singular configuration engendered by the mechanism according to the velocity input and output matrix of the mechanism,and then carry out analysis upon the mobility of every loop of the entire mechanism by combining with the mobility requirements of this mechanism and the sufficient and necessary conditions of mobility in single looped multi-rod mechanism.Finally,by means of synthectic analysis,the mobility conditions of hybrid driving mechanism is obtained.


Abstract This article deals with regression function estimation when the regression function is smooth at all but a finite number of points. An important question is: How can one produce discontinuous output without knowledge of the location of discontinuity points? Unlike most commonly used smoothers that tend to blur discontinuity in the data, we need to find a smoother that can detect such discontinuity. In this article, linear splines are used to estimate discontinuous regression functions. A procedure of knot-merging is introduced for the estimation of regression functions near discontinuous points. The basic idea is to use multiple knots for spline estimates. We use an automatic procedure involving the least squares method, stepwise knot addition, stepwise basis deletion, knot-merging, and the Bayes information criterion to select the final model. The proposed method can produce discontinuous outputs. Numerical examples using both simulated and real data are given to illustrate the performance of th...


At this time Russian authors of medical research works usually speak about «biopsychosocial approach». The methodology of practical realization this «biopsychosocial approach» mostly is the study of «quality of life», using such methods as WHOQOL-100 and SF-36. But this methodology (using different questionnaires) don't really study of quality of life, because don't correspondence to the WHO understanding of this idea.


By exploiting the half-cycle symmetry in the waveforms of the dual-interleaved boost converter, a small-signal, sampled-data model is developed, which includes the differential inductance of the interphase transformer and a peak current-mode controller. The model is validated by Saber simulation and experimental results from a 10-kW prototype. Significant differences are seen in the dynamic characteristics between the two operating modes: duty ratio D ≤ 0.5 or D >; 0.5. For D ≤ 0.5, slope compensation is needed to prevent subharmonic instability over an increasing range of D when the inductance ratio of interphase transformer and input inductor increases beyond 4.0. Furthermore, with D ≤ 0.5 the control-to-output transfer function becomes sensitive to the inductance ratio, whereas it is not when D >; 0.5. Also for D >; 0.5, the range of duty ratio over which slope compensation is needed reduces as the inductance ratio is increased.


We discuss a human metabolism system using the theory of stochastic differential equations (SDEs) with reflecting boundary conditions. We investigate the distribution of the process determined by the SDEs. The relation between the deterministic model introduced by Nordberg and Kjellström and our stochastic model is considered. Numerical computations are also given.


Radiation doses from diagnostic radiology constitute the largest contribution to the collective dose from all manmade sources of radiation. The health care level development in Tunisia results in an increase in the number of X-ray installations, which are functioning until now without any quality assurance program. There is no limit on medical exposure, but the aim is to ensure that the doses are kept even lower as reasonably achievable. Entrance Surface Dose (ESD) is one of the basic dosimetric quantities for measuring the patient dose and hence, an excellent tool for optimization purposes and for comparison with the international reference values. ESD value measurement for a patient is also, an essential component of quality assurance program for individual X-ray radiology departments. But, so far, no attempt has been made in Tunisia to find out the doses delivered to the patient undergoing different X-ray procedures. So, in this study, Entrance Surface Doses were performed for the most common type of X-ray examinations in two big hospitals of the capital city. The main investigated types are : chest PA and LAT, Abdomen, Lumbar spin PA and LAT. Entrance Surface Dose measurements were conducted using thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLDs) calibrated at the CNRP's SSDL using an X-Ray machine with fully characterized qualities. Before measurements, quality control tests were carried out on each radiological equipment used for the examinations. From this preliminary study of 112 patients, it was deduced that the obtained values were comparable to the internationally recommended guidance levels. These data will be useful for the conduction of a national survey and the formulation of a national guidance dose levels for incorporation in the future regulation concerning the patient protection from medical exposure.


We calculate the correction to the nuclear fission barrier produced by the atomic electrons. The result presented in analytical form is convenient to use in future nuclear calculations. The atomic electrons have a small stabilizing effect on nuclei, increasing the lifetime in the nuclear fission channel. This effect may be used to study the fission process.


High-school science is at present in a marked state of flux and change. The need for reorganization is generally felt, though the character of the reorganization which shall bring about the desired results is by no means clear. The number of sciences offered to highschool pupils has greatly increased, but as yet little sequence or logical development from one course to another has been developed. There is wide divergence in the selection of subject matter, and in the methods of its presentation. Eeorganization is also taking place within each of the individual science courses, in the effort to secure a better selection of subject matter and more efficient methods of teaching. For this reason, a brief statement of the aims and purposes of the high-school science courses, as taught in this school, and also of the principles governing the selection of material and methods of presentation, is in order.


In order to increase the capacity of next-generation telecommunication networks, fourth generation (4G) mobile communication system, modulation and symbol rate must be optimized and channel utilization maximized. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), a technology designed to resist interference caused by a radio signal's multiple paths is a potential candidate for the physical layer of 4G mobile systems. Blind channel estimation is a recent class of adaptive algorithms which is able to exploit characteristics of the transmitted signal and do not require training sequences can be implemented in OFDM wireless system to obtain best performance. The channel shortening design improves bit error rate (BER) after signal noise ratio (SNR) above 20 dB


. The durability of cementitious materials can be improved with the widespread utilization of fly ash (FA). Although FA has been available for use in cement and concrete industries for decades, there is still a practical barrier associated with its application. The difficulty stems from its wide variety and heterogeneity. The purpose of this research is to conduct both experimental and numerical investigations to achieve a better understanding of managing the variation of FA, which reflects its durability. The chemical properties and particle size distribution of FA from five distinct sources in ASEAN region were analyzed. In addition, the degree of reactivity, flow, toughened porosity, and apparent chloride diffusivity coefficients of blended FA-cement systems were studied (D a ). The Life365 service life model was executed. Using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and sensitivity analysis using linear regression, the experimental outcomes were statistically examined. Having a 15% FA replacement level resulted in a roughly 70% decrease of the D a value, extending its serviceability by around 13%. The chemo-physical processes in multi-scale structures were shown to be the most important element by statistical analysis, and the degree of response in blended FA-cement systems and its toughened porosity were found to be among the most beneficial aspects affecting its durability.


Digitalization of Public Administration, as well as Land Administration is a trend everywhere in the world nowadays. But there are a lot of opened issues in this process. How the traditional principles of land registration can be modelled in a digital environment? Should we have to change these principles, introduce new ones, or leave unchanged? There are many visions in the utilization of ICT in Land Administration as well. Do these ideas have any relation to the reality? Land Administration systems today are based on human activities (aided by computers). Are these human functions can be mapped in algorithms (artificial intelligence)? The paper deals with the mentioned issues, showing examples.


-One method that can be used is the method of edutainment, which in this learning method is presented in the learning process of children is a learning process that is fun, comfortable and amazing, so the relationship between the teacher and the child can be established. Interactions between teachers and children will generate familiarity, and friends because of the learning process is done through the game presented by media attractivea ctivities. The purpose of this study is to provide an over view of edutainment application of the method in the learning activities and identify factors supporting and application of methods of edutainment in learning activities in kindergarten Islam Nasima. This study used a qualitative method with a case study approach which focuses only on the implementation of learning TKI Nasima. Keywords--edutainment; method; kindergarten


Frontal lobe lesions have been associated with impaired complex language use. Recently, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) has been implicated in dynamic aphasia, characterized by reduced response length and grammatical complexity in open-ended sentence formulation. In the present study, we examine narrative discourse performance following right and left DLPFC damage to determine the presence of characteristics described in the research literature on localized prefrontal lesions and language. The findings suggest that DLPFC results in impoverished language at the macrolinguistic and superstructural levels of discourse rather than microlinguistic and microstructural levels suggested in the research literature.


There has been an increasing interest to develop new types of stimuli‐responsive drug delivery vehicles with high drug loading and controlled release properties for chemotherapeutics. An acid‐labile poly(ethylene oxide)‐block‐polyphosphoester‐graft‐PTX drug conjugate (PEO‐b‐PPE‐g‐PTX G2) degradable, polymeric paclitaxel (PTX) conjugate containing ultra‐high levels of PTX loading is improved significantly, in this second‐generation development, which involves connection of each PTX molecule to the polymer backbone via a pH‐sensitive β‐thiopropionate linkage. The PEO‐b‐PPE‐g‐PTX G2 forms well‐defined nanoparticles in an aqueous solution, by direct dissolution into water, with a number‐averaged hydrodynamic diameter of 114 ± 31 nm, and exhibits a PTX loading capacity as high as 53 wt%, with a maximum PTX concentration of 0.68 mg mL−1 in water (vs 1.7 μg mL−1 for free PTX). The PEO‐b‐PPE‐g‐PTX G2 shows accelerated drug release under acidic conditions (≈50 wt% PTX released in 8 d) compared with neutral conditions (≈20 wt% PTX released in 8 d). Compared to previously reported polyphosphoester‐based PTX drug conjugates, PEO‐b‐PPE‐g‐PTX G1 without the β‐thiopropionate linker, the PEO‐b‐PPE‐g‐PTX G2 shows pH‐triggered drug release property and 5‐ to 8‐fold enhanced in vitro cytotoxicity against two cancer cell lines.


LabVIEW technique is the powerful graphical programming language that has its roots in operation, automation control and data recording for the wastewater system with multiple contaminants of heavy metals; Cu, Cr, and Fe from the electroplating process. LabVIEW is a flexible language that contains large number of functions and tools. pH of wastewater is the major key of precipitation process which selected as the desired value of the treatment system. The flow rate of chemical reagents (acid and base) can be selected as the effective decision variable. The pH process dynamically behaved as the first order lag system with dead time. PI mode would be proven as the best scheme for control the fast pH process. Genetic algorithm has found the suitable stochastic technique for adaptation controller parameters of the unsteady state nonlinear process. PI genetic adaptive controller improves the performance of


Local budget is the major tool for implementing national regional policy, economic restructuring and local development implemented through conducting various business activities. But emerged and steadily deepening contradiction between the amount of income that focus es on local budgets and spending amounts that under the current legislation should be financed from this budget. Today, the size of local expenditures exceed s assigned to them and their own income nearly doubled. The a pproaches as for implementation of administrative and territorial reform in Ukraine are consider ed i n the theses. It has been d etermined that the current system of administrative-territorial structure is an obstacle for further fiscal decentralization and democratic governance. The reform ing of the administrative and territorial division and local government can not be separated in time. It has been also s ubstantiated that solving the issues of financial security budgets of local governments should begin with the consolidation of rural territory based on a database, enabling to take into account all the peculiarities of rural areas for more successful and effective implementation of administrative and territorial reform.


Background and Aims: Foreign body ingestion cases in adults are rarely encountered. We reviewed a patient who swallowed a teaspoon accidentally with minimal complaints. We aimed to investigate how proper ways of diagnosing and treating a adult patient with foreign body ingestion by a large literature review. Case report: 21-year-old male patient who accidentally swallowed a teaspoon, endoscopic extirpation is unsuccessful during the upper gastrointestinal endoscopy procedure in another hospital. A weak later, patients admitted to our outpatient clinic because of increased complaints. The vital signs, physical examination and laboratory findings were normal. Direct radiography of the abdomen was done and showed that the foreign body passed through the pylorus and was thought to be in the small bowel and confirmed with computed tomography. The patient was hospitalized for clinical observation, the patient did not want to have surgery, therefore conservative treatment was implemented. Twelve days later control abdominal radiography and computed tomography showed that the location of the foreign body was approximately in the recto-sigmoid. An enema procedure was done and during defecation the patient observed the foreign body fell into the water closet. After radiologically confirmation and normal laboratory findings, the patient was discharged. Discussion and Conclusion: When endoscopic extirpation is unsuccessful during the upper gastrointestinal endoscopy procedure and/or refuse surgery for foreign bodies ingestion such as a big metal teaspoon. We propose, in selected adult cases, closely follow-up for the foreign body to dispose via the natural way.


A high performance BiCMOS process is presented which features 40 GHz cutoff frequency, 21 ps gate delay and 20 GHz divider circuits for the bipolar part together with 0.6 mu m CMOS. Deep trench isolation is used for low collector to substrate capacitances and high packing density. Concepts to decouple the bipolar from the CMOS building blocks for an uncompromised optimization of both device types are proposed and discussed.<<ETX>>


The XPDL,XPML and BPEL4WS are all process definition languages based on the XML and provide a formal model to express the process in the enterprise business process.The analysis and comparison among the XPDL,XPML and BPEL4WS is made from the language function,structure and realization detail.


We present novel analysis and algorithms for solving sparse phase retrieval and sparse principal component analysis (PCA) with convex lifted matrix formulations. The key innovation is a new mixed atomic matrix norm that, when used as regularization, promotes low-rank matrices with sparse factors. We show that convex programs with this atomic norm as a regularizer provide near-optimal sample complexity and error rate guarantees for sparse phase retrieval and sparse PCA. While we do not know how to solve the convex programs exactly with an efficient algorithm, for the phase retrieval case we carefully analyze the program and its dual and thereby derive a practical heuristic algorithm. We show empirically that this practical algorithm performs similarly to existing state-of-the-art algorithms.


ABSTRACT An increasing interest in early detection and treatment of schizophrenic psychoses has been emerging. Extending treatment initiatives to earlier 'disease stages' creates both diagnostic and ethical problems with current nosological concepts. In this paper, philosophically-informed conceptual analysis is used to clarify the issue. The philosophical grammar of 'premorbid symptoms of schizophrenia' is examined. The basic conceptual problem concerning the early intervention approach is that the activity has to draw on locally acceptable criteria of morbidity, even though the rationale for this activity is dependent on a generally acceptable conception of psychiatric morbidity. Consequently, 'premorbid symptoms' is not an ordinary psychiatric concept and has only limited use in ordinary clinical transactions. Preventive work has to heed these limits to ensure its legitimacy. It has been shown that in the absence of valid diagnostic criteria for prodromal symptomatology, the justification of early intervention programmes in schizophrenic psychoses lies in the professional characteristics of psychiatric institutions. Keywords: Conceptual Analysis; Early Intervention; Prodromal Symptom; Schizophrenia INTRODUCTION There has been a significant upsurge in clinical research programmes focussing on early detection of and intervention in schizophrenic psychoses (McGlashan, 1996a). These programmes have been targeted towards both shortening the length of untreated psychosis and towards preventing psychotic episodes altogether (Vaglum, 1996). The following is a discussion of some of the conceptual problems relating to detection and treatment of schizophrenic patients in the 'prodromal phase', before the emergence of openly psychotic symptomatology. THE RATIONALE OF EARLY INTERVENTION It has long been known that, in retrospect, acute schizophrenic psychoses are usually preceded by long-standing psychiatric symptom formation. According to Hafner et al. (1992, 1997), 75% of first episode schizophrenic patients manifested the so-called prodromal symptoms of schizophrenia for a period averaging four years before the onset of the psychotic symptoms. The existence of the long prodromal period has given impetus to establishing preventive treatment strategies (Falloon, 1992; Yung et al., 1996a), with the hope of improving long-term prognosis, treatment compliance, and possibly preventing psychotic episodes altogether. Also, the demonstrated utility of prodromal symptoms in preventing psychotic relapses has created expectations for a similar development in primary prevention (Birchwood & Macmillan, 1993). Nevertheless, there are serious problems with this endeavour, not only the clinical ones of utility or feasibility of such intervention programmes, but also theoretical ones, related to the disease concepts involved. Three conceptually distinct groups of problems emerge from current discussions on the topic in psychiatric journals: (1) recognising prodromal schizophrenic morbidity (Falloon, 1992; Birchwood et al., 1997) (2) identifying a valid concept of schizophrenia (Hafner, 1989; Hafner et al., 1992) (3) dealing ethically and appropriately with 'at-risk mental states' (Yung et al., 1996a; Birchwood et al., 1997). IS DIAGNOSING PRODROMES THE MAIN ISSUE? When Falloon (1992) questions how to find reliable methods of distinguishing schizophrenic development, the problem of recognition is interpreted as an empirical difficulty. The same rationale is present in discussions about the risk of identifying 'false positives' (McGlashan & Johannessen, 1996b; Yung, 1996a) with the early intervention approach--thus implicitly assuming that the status of 'true positives' is not at issue. The most widespread instrument for assessing prodromal symptoms has been the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders- (DSM-) III-R criteria (APA,1987). …


1,3,4,5 Student, Dept. of Mechanical Engg., MVJ College of Engg. Bengaluru 560067, Karnataka, India 2 Assistant professor, Dept. of Mechanical Engg., MVJ College of Engg. Bengaluru 560067, Karnataka, India ---------------------------------------------------------------------***--------------------------------------------------------------------Abstract Polymeric materials reinforced with synthetic fibres such as glass, carbon and aramid provide advantages of high stiffness and strength to weight ratio as compared to conventional construction materials such as wood, concrete, steel.


We present a new precoder designed to utilize channel covariance knowledge at the transmitter to simultaneously achieve high capacity and an optimized error performance. These dispersive covariance codes (DCCs) utilize the linear construction of linear dispersion codes (LDCs) to spread information-bearing symbols in the time and spatial domains. It is shown that the linear framework permits the design of capacity optimal codes with desirable performance properties. Since DCCs utilize only statistical channel information instead of instantaneous estimates, feedback overhead is low, and the simple linear encoder simplifies codebook characterization. The DCCs are constructed to satisfy a capacity optimality criterion in conjunction with a pairwise error probability (PEP) constraint to improve error performance. Through numerical simulation, a two-stage DCC design procedure is shown to utilize statistical channel knowledge to provide significantly improved capacity and bit error rate performance over LDC codes in the presence of channel correlations.


The conformation and melting of both hexadecylammonium ion, n-CH3(CH2)15NH3+, and neutral hexadecylamine, n-CH3(CH2)15NH2, within the clay silicate galleries have been studied by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The conformational ordering of the alkyl tail in the confined system shows strong dependence on amine concentration and orientation. While the amine chains with orientation parallel to the silicate layers are in various disordered states, those with orientation radiating from the clay surface take mostly ordered conformation. Ammonium ion shows a similar trend of ordering dependence on the concentration as neutral amine, although the former has lower ordering than the latter, under the same concentration level. Temperature-dependent FTIR study shows that the melting behavior of confined amine corresponds to the chain melting process.


OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the use of a mobile health application (mHealth app) in conjunction with energy conservation management techniques will result in a decrease in fatigue for adults with multiple sclerosis. METHOD: Using a quantitative, exploratory, pre-posttest design, we examined outcomes associated with the use of the mHealth app, Pace My Day, by seven participants during one chosen task over two weeks. The app reinforced the use of energy conservation management techniques during the chosen task. Outcome measures included Modified Fatigue Impact Scale (MFIS) and Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM). RESULTS: There was a significant decrease in the MFIS scores indicating a decrease in fatigue over the two-week period t (6) =5.75, p=0.001. Additionally, there was a significant increase in satisfaction with performance of the chosen task as measured by the COPM over the two-week period t (6) =-3.359, p=0.015. CONCLUSION: The use of a mHealth app to support energy conservation management education was found to significantly reduce levels of fatigue and increase self-perceived performance and satisfaction with task execution. 2 MANAGING FATIGUE WITH TECHNOLOGY Introduction Every year, over 2.5 million individuals are diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) worldwide (Faguy, 2016). MS is a chronic, life-long disabling condition affecting nerve fibers in an individual's brain and spinal cord, significantly impacting participation in daily life. According to the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research (2017), MS symptoms range in severity, intensity, and duration depending on the extent and location of nerve damage. Fatigue is one of the most common and debilitating symptoms among individuals with MS. Fatigue is an overwhelming feeling of weariness and tiredness limiting an individual's ability to carry out everyday activities (Smith, Lai, & Cella, 2010). Additionally, decreased cognition and pain have a significant impact on the ability to engage in daily occupations due to physical limitations, exhaustion, decreased personal autonomy, and depression. The National Multiple Sclerosis Society (2016) states that MS significantly impacts individuals' ability to fully participate and engage in everyday occupations. The American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) defines an occupation as an everyday activity in which an individual participates that is both meaningful and purposeful (AOTA, 2014). Fatigue often restricts participation in daily occupations. Pharmacological and nonpharmacological interventions can be used to help manage fatigue to allow a higher level of engagement in everyday life (Tur, 2016). Pharmacological interventions include medications such as amantadine and modafinil (National Multiple Sclerosis Society, 2016). Nonpharmacological interventions include physical activity such as exercise and yoga, as well as cognitive and psychological treatments such as relaxation techniques, energy conservation management, and cognitive behavior therapy (Tur, 2016). The advancement of technology creates potential new avenues of interventions for conditions like MS. Recent advances in technology have resulted in communication and network 3 MANAGING FATIGUE WITH TECHNOLOGY technologies that are used directly by the patient. Such technologies are called mobile-health technology (mHealth), which brings communication and network technologies directly to the patient. One of the most popular forms of mHealth is incorporated into mobile smart phones as application features (apps). These mHealth apps can be utilized by both healthcare providers and patients to help monitor and manage symptoms effortlessly, track important health care information privately and conveniently, and save on growing health care costs effectively (Silva, Rodrigues, Diez, López-Coronado, & Saleem, 2015). An emerging area of practice in occupational therapy is the use of technology as a part of interventions. The role of occupational therapists (OT) are to promote health, well-being, and participation in daily activities (or occupations). OTs are able to enhance participation and optimize occupational performance through the use of assistive technology. OTs frequently include energy conservation management (ECM) techniques when educating clients on how to improve occupational performance and manage symptoms of fatigue. Combining the use of activity analysis and occupational performance education with technology may result in better client outcomes and improved adherence to self-management strategies. To examine the use of technology as part of an occupational therapy intervention with adults with MS, this study evaluated the effectiveness of a mHealth app, Pace My Day (PMD) in combination with ECM


THIS STUDY considers some of the categories commonly associated with the notion ''auxiliary'' from the point of view of Modern Hebrew. As background, a characterization of auxiliaries as syntactically and semantically DEPENDENT elements is suggested (Section I. I), and an attempt is made to show why many Hebrew studies to date have taken rather too unconstrained a view of the notion by extending it to virtually all verbs requiring an infinitival complement (Section 1.2). There then follows a review of the syntactic patterning of semantic categories typically included under the general heading of "auxiliaries," specifically Tense (Section 2), Modality (Section 3 ), and Aspect (Section 4), in an attempt to motivate the claim presented here that there is only one clear case of an auxiliary verb in Modern Hebrew-haya 'be' -as a marker of durative and perfective aspect and of conditional mood (Section 4.3). Worth noting here is the point made by Akmajian, Steele and Wasow in their recent analysis of the category AUX in universal grammar; they observe that ''an important confusion exists in the literature between the category AUX on the one hand and auxiliary verbs on the other" (1979, p.3). The concern in this present discussion is specifically with the nature and role of auxiliary


Objective
To understand the occurrence and risk factors of middle-aged people with atherosclerosis and explore the application effect of comprehensive nursing intervention in middle-aged patients with atherosclerosis.

Methods
Arteriosclerosis screening was conducted in the middle-aged population who had a health examination in the hospital in 2015 by detecting pulse wave conduction velocity (PWV). The risk factors, cognitive level of disease and compliance behavior with atherosclerosis were analyzed.A total of 580 cases of patients were randomly divided into the control group and the observation group, 290 cases of each group.The control group was treated with the routine nursing, and the observation group was treated with the comprehensive nursing intervention on the basis of the routine nursing. After 1 year, the changes of cognition level, medical behavior and arteriosclerosis of the two groups were analyzed.

Results
Among the 1 765 middle-aged patients, 580 cases of arteriosclerosis were screened out.The positive rate was 32.86%.Age, BMI, SPB, DBP, HCY and TG were associated with arteriosclerosis. The awareness rate of the two groups of patients on the causes, clinical manifestations, treatment methods, risk factors, complications, preventive measures of arteriosclerosis, as well as the following medical behaviors such as diet control, weight control, aerobic exercise, blood pressure/blood glucose monitoring and psychological adjustment was higher than that before the intervention, and the observation group was higher than the control group, with statistically significant differences (P<0.05). The PWV level of the two groups was lower than that of the control group and the observation group was lower than that of the control group.The difference was statistically significant (P<0.05). There were 64 and 14 cases of arteriosclerosis improvement in the two groups, and the difference was statistically significant (P<0.05).

Conclusion
The occurrence rate of arteriosclerosis in middle-aged people in this region is relatively high, with the increase of age, BMI, SPB, DBP, HCY and TG as the risk factors.Comprehensive nursing intervention can effectively improve the cognition level of atherosclerosis patients, follow medical behavior and prevent the progression of arteriosclerosis.

Key words:
Middle-aged people; Atherosclerosis; Risk factor; Comprehensive nursing


Recently local government and environmental protection authorities in China have turned to the water hyacinth, one of the world's worst aquatic weeds, to reduce nutrient concentrations in highly eutrophic lake waters, especially in Lake Dian in southwestern China's Yunnan Province. Although we do not reject using water hyacinth to reduce lake eutrophication, it is not a complete solution. In our view, a more complete solution requires a holistic consideration of watershed or drainage characteristics, and a solid understanding of the limnological features of individual lakes. Before the bio-geochemistry and toxicological effects of water hyacinth be thoroughly understood, applying it widely to lake restoration and overstating its practical value is not only irresponsible but also dangerous.


In this paper, we present the characteristics of high-performance strain-compensated MOCVD-grown 1200-nm InGaAs and 1300-nm InGaAsN quantum-well (QW) lasers using AsH/sub 3/ and U-Dimethylhydrazine as the group V precursors. The design of the InGaAsN QW active region utilizes an In-content of approximately 40%, which requires only approximately 0.5% N-content to realize emission wavelengths up to 1315-nm. Threshold current densities of only 65-90 A/cm/sup 2/ were realized for InGaAs QW lasers, with emission wavelength of 1170-1233 nm. Room-temperature threshold and transparency current densities of 210 and 75-80 A/cm/sup 2/, respectively, have been realized for InGaAsN QW lasers with emission wavelength of 1300-nm. Despite the utilization of the highly-strained InGaAsN QW, double-QW lasers have been realized with excellent lasing performance.


Based on the eigenfunctions of the ordinary Fourier transform(FT),this paper presents a definition of the chirp-type fractional Fourier transform(CFRFT) for continuous time signals.Some properties of CFRFT and the expressions for some common used signals are also given,which provides some implications for applying CFRFT.It is pointed out in this paper that the fractional Fourier transform(FRFT) is an extension of FT and FT is a special case of FRFT.To illustrate the application of FRFT,a swept frequency system and optimal filtering are also introduced,which can't be analyzed effectively with FT because of time varying systems involved.


ABSTACT This paper contains new research on project success and failure, including results from The Standish Group's latest CHAOS study and CHAOS University 2000. The body of CHAOS research currently spans over 30,000 project cases, the summary of which is presented in the report. This paper is an excerpt from our latest research report, "Extreme CHAOS 2001," [1] and is a continuation of our CHAOS research updated with our most recent findings.


We study the dynamical behaviors of the seismicity phenomenon in a complex seismic time series, which presently is of interest from the viewpoint of complex systems. The dynamical mechanism for the aftershock of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake is analyzed and simulated. We mainly treat the correlation and the network structure in a seismic data series. In particular, our result is compared to other findings.


With the continuous development and application of high-level science and technology, men go further and further in breadth and depth space of resources development and utilization. We would like to review the history of development of utilizing "horizontal" breadth & "vertical" depth spaces resources, and to look forward to its future, in order to observe the relation of "horizontal" between "vertical" and the relation between time and space during man's utilization of resources in a four-dimensional view. "Horizontal" and "Vertical" are "three-dimensional" reference coordinates, while history and future are the "four-dimensional" time.


Complete or partial three-dimensional reconstruction of objects from multiple angle-views, or poses, is important in several applications such as photogrammetry, machine vision, and computer-aided design. Knowledge of the pose angles and their proper ordering are required for accurate reconstruction. When these multiple angle images are acquired in random order and the angle of view information is not available the poses have to be put into proper order. This work presents an approach based on principal component analysis (PCA) for automatic ordering of random object poses. A measure based on local curvature and correlation of the estimated pose trajectory in a multidimensional manifold is also developed to assess confidence in the ordering. In addition to providing a degree of confidence for pose ordering with single cameras, this measure enhances the pose estimation accuracy in double and multiple camera systems by providing a basis for camera selection for different poses. The paper presents theoretical development and experimental results.


In this paper, optimum location for charging of electric vehicles (EVs) and its charging strategy in a modified IEEE-34 distribution system is proposed. To determine the optimum location, a 24 hour load demand is varied at given junction nodes and the corresponding voltage sensitivity indexes are determined. These indexes are derived from the inverse Jacobian matrix from the Newton-Raphson power flow analysis and aid in selecting suitable location for charging. Next, in the study, optimum charging of EVs at selected node is discussed based on real time pricing and wind power output data. The peak period gest shifted to valley period wherein real time price is low or wind output is high.


Resource management agencies must be able to integrate current research into their decision-making to effectively address climate change impacts. In this study, we investigated the capacity for climate-adaptive management by surveying the community of researchers, administrators, and field managers who are responsible for wildlife conservation in the state of Wisconsin, USA. We specifically measured differences in how these sectors perceive climate change risk, communicate, and make decisions to represent barriers in how they transmit and use research. We frame these barriers within the literature on evidence-based and adaptive management and risk psychology, as principles that underlie climate change adaptation. Almost all respondents agreed that the climate is changing (223/224), but 22% of the respondents were unsure whether climate change is negative for wildlife and field managers dominated this group (68%). Field managers also reported using components of adaptive management more frequently than did other sectors, but all three questioned the importance of one specific component: predicting the consequence of management before implementation. When seeking information, researchers preferred communicating via published literature, but managers and administrators reported a preference for in-person communication. Although only 29% of the respondents were currently involved in climate change work, 77% said they would get involved without additional incentives or direction at work. These results confirm a common pattern of barriers between research and management sectors across all scales of decision-making. Overall, results suggest that in-person and problem-based communication that is focused on real decisions and that utilizes social networks are a way to enable resource management communities to effectively confront these barriers. Published 2014. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.


The supracrustal Kerala Khondalite Belt (KKB; southern India) constitutes an important but little understood terrain in the evolution of East Gondwana. Here we report SHRIMP U‐Pb zircon and titanite ages for a suite of metasedimentary rocks from the KKB. Metamorphic ages at
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$$530.2\pm 4.4$$
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$$525\pm 4.5$$
\end{document} Ma were obtained from metapelitic and metapsammitic migmatites, respectively. These ages are interpreted to date peak metamorphism because both rock types have extensively melted under granulite‐facies conditions. A similar age (
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$$520\pm 4.7$$
\end{document} Ma) was obtained from titanite from a granulite‐facies calc‐silicate rock. These ages are within error of SHRIMP ages for granulite‐facies assemblages in Lützow‐Holm Bay, East Antarctica, the Highland and Wanni Complexes of Sri Lanka, and Southern Madagascar. We propose that this timing reflects a short span (∼10 m.yr.) of high‐temperature granulite‐facies metamorphism and concomitant widespread migmatization that marks the final stage of collision between East and West Gondwana.


We introduce a family of real random variables $(\beta,\theta)$ arising from the supersymmetric nonlinear sigma model and containing the family $\beta$ introduced by Sabot, Tarr\`es, and Zeng [STZ17] in the context of the vertex-reinforced jump process. Using this family we construct an exponential martingale generalizing the one considered in [DMR17]. Moreover, using the full supersymmetric nonlinear sigma model we also construct a generalization of the exponential martingale involving Grassmann variables.


ion serves to reduce the information content of observable or conceived phenomena by retaining only information that is essential for a particular purpose of analysis or synthesis. It is an approach to information reduction in which regions of interest are not masked, as in boundary encapsulation or rendered according to perspectives, but are mentally filtered out according to relevance. Abstraction takes the whole and represents it at a particular level of significance. It has the effect of reducing heterogeneity by reducing spurious detail and drawing out characteristic similarity. In consequence the descriptive content of a whole region or object is reduced, as is its corresponding detail of interactions at its boundary.ion takes the whole and represents it at a particular level of significance. It has the effect of reducing heterogeneity by reducing spurious detail and drawing out characteristic similarity. In consequence the descriptive content of a whole region or object is reduced, as is its corresponding detail of interactions at its boundary. 'We employ abstractions daily and tend to develop models of reality by identifying the objects and operations that exist at each level of interaction' [Booch G. 1987, p.11]. Once an understanding is gained at some level of compositional detail, previously irrelevant detail that was suppressed or unexplored may then be recognised as relevant. This triggers deeper exploration and more detailed understanding. In this way successive, nested levels of abstraction tackle manageable steps of information reduction to reveal progressively more detailed understanding. Conducted along with encapsulation of neighbouring regions, e.g., other system elements, exploration down detailed paths of enquiry can drill into detail that, for a particular purpose, exerts disproportionately high significance to the whole, i.e., decompositional paths leading to critical areas requiring particular attention. This is a risk reducing strategy that only terminates when information and understanding pass cross a threshold of tolerability, and deeper understanding becomes immaterial to a project's success, see Figure 4.17. By building of effective boundaries in conjunction with different scales of observation the mind can analytically expose or holistically compose new order at different levels of abstraction. It resolves homogeneous composition and interconnectivity from comparative heterogeneity, and thereby resolves complexity down to elementary technological sources. One level of abstraction dissolves into another as different patterns are resolved and then disappear through increased or reduced detail. Patterns are cognition's access mechanism to previously-encountered, useful-for-prediction relationships or interconnectedness. From their ability to reveal in one situation, they are stored as a reference library of spatial or/and temporal Chapter 3 REASONING ABOUT SYSTEMS 3-29 structures built according to the way the mind interprets order, cause and purpose in reality. 'Seeing' a correspondence between a distinctive arrangement and useful behaviour in a particular settings allows repeated use of the arrangement, or allows a transposition of its essence into novel situations bearing the same underlying ordered relationship. e.g., an equivalence between patterns of structure and behaviour sequence in animate and in manmade systems. Particular scaling of information content presents the mental faculties with a limited number of separate objects to represent, a limited number of relationships to build and a tractable amount of properties to consider. Switch scale of the totality, and with it resolution, and a new regime of order occurs (in both senses of 'order' – relationships and size). New information is revealed, e.g. new patterns and new properties, and the net information content to reason about is maintained at a tractable level. Rescale and re-scope by defining new boundaries, and the mind can again masters the problem solving. Overall Information content and the scale of consideration are tradable phenomena. Explicit or observer-implicit classification and description schemes, based on patterns, such as sequences, stars, trees and highways, confer a priori knowledge. Known holistic characteristics are associated with particular patterns and this again speeds the identification of patterns. Transposed from analysis to synthesis, this classification structure suggests architectural forms that are likely to confer particular system qualities. Such architecture patterns have the benefit of being understood and proven, they may be re-applied and they can express complex solutions succinctly. Subject to the rules of its various interacting forces, nature operates simultaneously on all scales: subatomic particles to subatomic particle; galaxy to galaxy. The capability to apply scale to observations of objects is essential to offset the limitations of mental processing in order to understand reality. The field of view and the granularity of detail are traded in a dynamic visualisation of reality. Such cognitive scaling provides systems reasoning with two related strategies. Applying a reductionist strategy, the extent of the boundary of consideration drives a change in the level of abstraction. The boundary of consideration is employed as an independent variable; the dependent variable becomes the level of detail. Using a mental quid pro quo, it is possible to keep the information content maintained at roughly constant levels whatever of the extent of the systems boundary being observed. These independent and dependent roles can be reversed. The level of detail is adjusted in order to detect properties not discernable at other levels of detail and the scope of consideration is reciprocally adjusted accordingly to maintain a tractable information level. Either way, this enables phenomena and patterns that only manifest themselves on some characteristic scale of observation to be detected. Moving up in scale, new properties emerge replacing those recognisable in finer detail. Moving to finer scale, the reduced boundaries of consideration cause higher order properties to be dismantled to their more basic contributing phenomena. Scaling depends on coordinated boundary redefinition and steps of abstraction. Thus scaling is in practice not a continuously adjustable parameter of observation, rather it is switched in increments according to the resolution of new patterns of information. The perception of patterns is an association mechanism. Salient and repeated orderliness is abstracted from a labyrinth of detail by selecting repeated forms of connectedness. The mind is naturally attuned to resolving and remembering significant order, and then identifying homological relationships in disparate situations. In essence, an abstraction that removes 'noise' to reveal order leads to the discernment of spatial and temporal patterns – and the information or meaning signified by that ordered structure and/or events. It learns to recognize common, underlying themes or features that recur. They recur because they have value according to purpose or intent. Order with value in one successful situations is remembered and when matched infers significance and merit in another. These powerful cognitive strategies for designing systems in a manner that relates to our reasoning about real world objects are traditional and almost subliminal in systems engineering. Being natural they have not always been well-disciplined and uniformly practiced, particularly in a coherent way across organisations and project teams. Their 'discovery' by software engineering in 60's programming was eventually accorded eminence as the 'object-oriented' Chapter 3 REASONING ABOUT SYSTEMS 3-30 analysis/design approach by the 80's, and with this came some powerful methods and supporting tools that applied beyond software implementation technology to systems reasoning generally. The methods that were (sometimes haphazardly) empirically developed and defined trace to the rationality of systems reasoning, and they have helped to impose some external methodological disciplining and structuring influences on the instinctive mechanisms of cognition that govern design analysis and synthesis. They help shift systems engineering from the mysteries of art form towards disciplined practice. Whereas much of the foregoing object thinking about the real and conceptual world is ingrained in humans, its formalisation in most disciplines has not been well developed. Its adoption and codification by software engineering, and its refinement of methods and tools under the 'objectoriented' banner, is beginning to transfer into other disciplines. Ingrained systems reasoning has been considerably strengthened and disciplined by software engineering's methodologies and automated environments, and has considerably strengthened systems engineering team cooperation. Raising it out of the subconscious, and speculating on what cerebrally drives matters, opens up possibilities for improved training and assessment of practitioners, as reflected on in §6.4.2 and system design methods as seen in §10.4.2. This depends on understanding some of the underlying cognition. In the next section, systems psychology begins to offer a window into the systems engineering mind. 3.5.2 Perceiving Reality The foregoing advances that systems psychology entails a repertoire of complexity-reducing, innate mental strategies that all individuals possess and that are employed to understand the real world. This accords with the proposition that Dennett and others have advanced: our minds have evolved to work so as to best fit us for reality and that it is genetically pre-wired to provide an enduring systems-oriented reasoning mechanism (capable of 'in-service' development). Dennett goes beyond this proposition as he attempts to build the psychological bridge between predictive cognition (a necess


This paper addresses the problem of classification of user sessions in an online store into two classes: buying sessions (during which a purchase confirmation occurs) and browsing sessions. As interactions connected with a purchase confirmation are typically completed at the end of user sessions, some information describing active sessions may be observed and used to assess the probability of making a purchase. The authors formulate the problem of predicting buying sessions in a Web store as a supervised classification problem where there are two target classes, connected with the fact of finalizing a purchase transaction in session or not, and a feature vector containing some variables describing user sessions. The presented approach uses the k-Nearest Neighbors (k-NN) classification. Based on historical data obtained from online bookstore log files a k-NN classifier was built and its efficiency was verified for different neighborhood sizes. A 11-NN classifier was the most effective both in terms of buying session predictions and overall predictions, achieving sensitivity of 87.5% and accuracy of 99.85%. Keywords—data mining, e-commerce, k-Nearest Neighbors, k-NN, log file analysis, online store, R-project, supervised classification, Web mining, Web store, Web traffic, Web usage mining.