In the Baltic Sea, Nodularia has been confirmed as the only toxin-producing cyanobacterium so far, but the role of environmental factors on nodularin production is not known yet. Hepatotoxic Nodularia blooms have been observed in almost all parts of the Baltic Sea. In these blooms, the concentration of nodularin often rises high enough to cause a health risk for animals through adverse effects on the liver. In addition to Nodularia, the blooms are dominated also by Aphanizomenon, which is not known to be toxic. These two genera are capable of forming blooms in the nitrogen-depleted water mass of the Baltic Sea in late summer due to their ability to fix nitrogen. However, they differ from each other in physiology. For example, Nodularia is absent from surface waters during most of the year, while Aphanizomenon is found all year round. In order to understand toxin production in Nodularia under different environmental conditions, we studied the effect of several growth factors on intracellular and extracellular concentrations of nodularin of two batch-cultures of Nodularia using high performance liquid chromatography (I, II). The non-toxic Nodularia strain was cultured under the same growth conditions as the toxic strains in order to reveal physiological differences between toxic and non-toxic strains (I). The growth and nitrogen fixation rates of Nodularia and Aphanizomenon under different growth conditions were studied using batch-culture experiments in order to obtain information on the co-dominance of these two cyanobacterial genera in late summer blooms (II). The three-dimensional structure of nodularin in water was determined by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and molecular dynamics simulations in order to understand the inhibition of protein phosphatases by nodularin, the mechanism underlying its hepatotoxicity (III). The taxonomy of Nodularia from different geographical origins and with different toxin production abilities was studied using several molecular methods based on the 16S rRNA gene and whole genome (IV). In addition, the morphology of strains was examined using light microscopy (IV). Nodularin concentrations under different growth conditions were studied using non-axenic (I) and axenic (II) Nodularia strains. Toxin concentrations in cells and in growth media were generally highest under conditions that promoted growth. Intracellular nodularin concentrations of the axenic Nodularia strain studied increased with increases in temperature, phosphate concentration, and irradiance (II). They decreased at low and high salinities and high inorganic nitrogen concentrations. The associated bacteria of non-axenic cultures had no effect on nodularin concentration. According to our studies, growth at different temperature, light, salinity, and phosphorus conditions as well as growth stage may have an effect on the release of nodularin from cells into the growth medium (I, II). When comparing the growth responses of the toxic strains and the non-toxic strain it was shown that the non-toxic strain grew poorer than the toxic ones under all conditions except at the lowest temperature and phosphate concentration tested (I). Nitrogen fixation of Aphanizomenon and Nodularia was often, but not always, highest under conditions which promoted the growth and lowest in cultures with poor growth. Differences in growth and nitrogen fixation rates of Nodularia and Aphanizomenon were observed (II). Aphanizomenon preferred lower irradiances (test range 2-155 μmol ms), temperatures (7-28oC), and salinities (0-30‰) than Nodularia. The different responses of Nodularia and Aphanizomenon may explain the different vertical, horizontal and temporal distribution of the two genera in the Baltic Sea. The preference of Aphanizomenon for low light and that of Nodularia for high light mirrored their vertical distribution patterns in the field; Aphanizomenon is more homogeneously distributed in the water column than Nodularia, which usually forms scum on the water surface. The ability of Aphanizomenon to grow at low temperatures shown in this study may explain why it is abundant in the water mass during most of the year. Nodularia showed a capacity to tolerate much higher temperatures than it experiences in its natural environment. The growth and nitrogen fixation rates of Nodularia were highest in the same salinity range (5 to 20‰) in which the genus forms mass occurrences in the Baltic Sea and other brackish waters. The incapability of Aphanizomenon to tolerate salinities higher than 10‰ suggests that salinity is an important factor restricting the distribution of this genus. The different salinity optima of the two genera is also seen in their different horizontal distribution patterns in the Baltic Sea: with increasing salinity from freshwater in the north to approximately 15‰ salinity in the southern Baltic Proper, the abundance of Aphanizomenon decreases while the abundance of Nodularia increases. High phosphorus and low nitrogen concentrations have been linked to mass occurrences of Aphanizomenon and Nodularia in the Baltic Sea. Similarly, in these laboratory studies, high phosphorus and low nitrogen concentrations increased the growth of Nodularia and Aphanizomenon. Furthermore, the growth was increased with the presence of accompanying bacteria. The solution conformation of nodularin was remarkably similar to the three-dimensional structure of microcystin-LR, which implies that nodularin inhibits protein phosphatases in the same way as microcystin-LR (III). Both toxins had a saddle-shaped backbone conformation, but microcystin-LR was more buckled than nodularin. In particular, the backbone fold in the conserved region of MeAsp-Arg-Adda-Glu was almost identical between nodularin and microcystin-LR. The molecular dynamics simulations, nevertheless, reveal a certain degree of sway for the trans peptide bonds. The proximal part of the Adda's side-chain was also very similar. The remote parts of Adda and Arg were not structurally defined and they were also mobile in both peptides. No groups of Nodularia strains could be recognised on the basis of cell size whereas toxin production separated the strains into two groups. In this study, nodularin production of Nodularia strains was consistent with the genotypic analysis. Therefore, this character may be useful when identifying Nodularia strains. The toxic Nodularia strains were separated from non-toxic strains by RFLP of the 16S rRNA gene, 16S rRNA gene sequencing, REPand ERIC-PCR, and ribotyping (IV). All strains were closely related despite their different abilities to produce toxin or geographical origins. The profiles of REPand ERIC-sequences indicated high genetic homogeneity among toxic Nodularia strains from the Baltic Sea. These strains were found to be different from the toxic Nodularia strains from Australia and France by 16S rRNA-based methods and by REPand ERIC-PCR. Our results indicated that two closely related Nodularia genotypes are found in the Baltic Sea. One genotype consists of only nontoxic strains. 16S rRNA gene sequencing showed that these strains were identical to the proposed type strain of Nodularia spumigena PCC 73104/1, which is not a typical N. spumigena strain according to morphological taxonomy. All the genetic markers separate the proposed type strain, and other non-toxic strains, from toxic strains. The toxic Baltic Sea strains form another genotype, which most closely fits the descriptions of Nodularia baltica and N. spumigena whereas the morphological characters of non-toxic Nodularia strains fit most closely to the description of Nodularia sphaerocarpa.


Vocational skill competition is an important means to improve the quality of education. In the process of development of vocational education, its status is increasing day by day. The government, industry enterprises and vocational colleges attach importance to the holding of vocational skill competition. This paper expounds the educational value, management value and social value of vocational skill contest, and analyzes its function and value for the overall development of vocational education, highlighting its important role.


Unconventional gas shale resources recently became a standard in the American oil and gas industry and are studied throughout the world. However, gas shales are still poorly characterised with respect to other reservoir rock types. The different parameters of organic matter (OM) in organic shales needs to be better constrained in all theircomplexity and variability. This study focuses on the influence of OM maturity on the dielectric and elastic response of shale using a hydrous pyrolysis process to increase their maturity. We then incorporated the OM in a shale-like mineral matrix that was artificially compacted under control. Elastic properties and their anisotropy were measured during compaction while dielectric measurements were acquired post-compaction. The results showed that OM affects the onset of the liquid/plastic transition of compacting sediment. The immature OM lessens the development of P-wave anisotropy. On the other end, mature OM strongly decreases the imaginary dielectric permittivity at low frequencies while it increases electrical conductivity.


Micellar behavior of amitriptyline hydrochloride in aqueous media and presence of NaCl, glucose and urea has been investigated by conductivity measurement over the temperature range 298.15–313.15 K. The conductivity data were used to calculate critical micelle concentration (CMC), degree of counter ion association to the micelle () and degree of dissociation (β) of the micelle of AMT. Thermodynamic parameters viz., standard Gibbs free energy, ΔGm , enthalpy, ΔHm , entropy, ΔSm 0 of micellization of AMT were estimated by applying the mass–action model.


IF there had been no racism in America, there would be no racial churches. As it is, we have white churches and Black churches; white denominations and Black denominations; American Christianity and Black religion. From the very beginning, American Christianity was in a quandary about what to do with Black Christians once their numbers began to grow. It seems that they were a problem inside the white church, and out of it. The Presbyterian Synod of South Carolina and Georgia addressed the subject in 1834 in this way:


The main purpose of this study was to examine the effect of "Creative drama writing program" on writing ability and writing interest of seventh grade students. The "Creative drama writing program" was based on Hayes's (1996) model. A quasi-experiment design was adopted in this study. The participants were selected from two classes in Da-Tung junior high school in Ping Tung city. One of the classes was assigned to experimental group (N = 31) receiving "creative drama writing program", the other was assigned to control group (N = 30) receiving "process-oriented writing program". The quantitative instruments employed in this study included Scale of Writing Performance for Narrative Articles and Writing Interest Questionnaire. The data collected were analyzed by one-way ANCOVA. The other instruments were "unit feedback questionnaire" and "curriculum feedback questionnaire" which were used to examine the effects of the intervention. Results are as follows: 1. The intervention had a positive impact on students' writing, as the structure scores, rhetoric scores and narrative article length of experimental group were significantly better than control group. But there was no significant effect on organization scores and convention scores between groups. 2. Regarding writing interest, experimental group scored significantly higher than control group. 3. Participants in experimental group had positive attitudes toward the program. They thought the contents of the curriculum were interesting and also helpful for improving their writing ability and writing interest. Some suggestions for writing instruction and future research are provided as well.


This paper aims at understanding why third way policy under Gerhard Schroder in Germany was failed. Since 2005, Germany was undergoing economic recession, marked by account deficit and slowing economic growth. At the same time the state had to face structural problems of welfare state such as unemployment. Why the third way proposal, failed to transformed welfare state system? This article pays attention on two structural problems; the moral hazard and non-wage labour cost. This article also shed a light on the resistance of the people towards welfare state transformation.


The present paper is aimed at showing the usefulness of supercritical fluid extraction in the removal of organic substances and zinc from the surface of a dangerous waste product, i.e. spent catalyst employed in the manufacture of vinyl acetate. The possibility of recovering active carbon (the carrier support for the catalyst concerned) so that it may be used in subsequent processes by combining supercritical fluid extraction with hydrochloric acid leaching has been demonstrated.


66 The Weasel (Mustela nivalis Linnaeus, 1766) is the world's smallest carnivore (King & Powell 2006). Despite being a predator itself, its size makes it prey for a wide range of predators, including other carnivores, snakes and raptors. There are reports of weasels being captured by the Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) (Latham 1952), the Cat (Felis silvestris catus) (Gaughren 1950) and the Common Genet (Genetta genetta) (Cugnase & Riols 1984). Also, the Weasel forms part of the diet of snakes such as the Lataste's Viper (Vipera latastei) (López-Jurado & Ruiz-Caballero 1981). The main nocturnal raptors that prey on weasels are the Barn Owl (Tyto alba), the Eurasian Eagle-Owl (Bubo bubo) and the LongEared Owl (Asio otus) (Araújo 1973, Herrera 1974, López-Gordo et al. 1977, Álvarez 2003). When weasels are active during the day, however, they are vulnerable to capture by diurnal raptors such as the Common Buzzard (Buteo buteo), the Northern Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis), the Common Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) and the Bonelli's Eagle (Aquila fasciata) (Korpimaki & Nordahl 1989, Real 1991, King & Powell 2006). This note includes eight unpublished records of weasel predation in Catalonia, over the last few years, by three diurnal raptor species: one by the Short-Toed Snake Eagle (Circaetus gallicus), two by the Bonelli's Eagle and five by the Common Buzzard. • Short-Toed Snake Eagle: 26th July 2011. UTM: 31TDG50. Parc del Montnegre i el Corredor (Barcelona). An automatic camera that was monitoring a nest of this species recorded an adult taking a Weasel to the nest to feed its chicks (record provided by F.X. Macià and X. Larruy). The predation by C. gallicus on Weasel has not been cited so far. • Bonelli's Eagle: 26th April 2009. UTM: 31TDF06. A live Weasel was seen entering a nest of a Bonelli's Eagle located on a cliff in the Garraf Massif (Sitges, Barcelona). A female raptor eagle captured the Weasel and fed it to her chicks. This event was recorded by an automatic video camera that was monitoring the reproductive activity of a pair of eagles (record provided by S. Llacuna, Barcelona Provincial Council). 11th February 2015. UTM: 31TCF17. A fouryear-old adult male Bonelli's Eagle was shot dead by poachers at Bellaguarda wind farm in Lleida. During the autopsy, the remains of a Weasel were found in its stomach (record provided by X. Parellada and Vallcalent Wildlife Centre). • Common Buzzard: the five cases involved buzzards feeding weasels to their chicks, as recorded by automatic cameras monitoring different buzzard nests (Fig. 1). 7th June 2012. UTM: 31TDG50. Argentona, Barcelona. 1st May 2013. UTM: 31TDG50. Argentona, Barcelona. Predation of the Weasel (Mustela nivalis) by diurnal raptors


Using Streptomyces fradiae as starting strains,effects of rotation speed,inoculation concentration,initial pH of fermentation liquid and temperature on tylosin production were studied.Based on single factor experiments,Box-Behnken response surface design was used to optimize 4factors.The optimum fermentation conditions were rotation speed of 200r·min-1,7.94% of inoculation quantity,initial pH7.35 of fermentation liquid and temperature of28.3 ℃.The final tylosin content was 13 572μg·mL-1,which was 19.9% more than that before optimization.


The number of people living in African cities is expected to double over the next two decades. While the need to provide adequate infrastructure, create high quality jobs and manage pollution in fast growing cities has been well studied, these studies say little about subjective quality of city life. This paper presents findings from the first large-scale quality of life perception survey covering 27 cities in 17 countries in West Africa and the Sahel. Responses from nearly 9000 urban West Africans provide an insight into perceptions of city life, local government quality, and policy priorities with the intention of giving residents a voice in the policy dialogue on the future of African cities. In addition to comparing perceptions across cities, the paper demonstrates the feasibility of an online approach to run large-scale online surveys in West African cities of different sizes and cultural contexts.


This paper analyzes the demand changes of readers in university library,expounds the main problems faced by the traditional management mode of library,and probes into the necessity and feasibility of the continuous innovation,continuous improvement and continuous extension of library service.


After moving to Hubei, influenced by a variety of elements such as cultural spread and assimilation, invention, ways of migration, their distribution, geographic environment and social transformation, the traditional culture of Miao nationality underwent dramatic changes and evolved into the present regional culture in western Hubei. The changes in traditional culture of western Hubei Miao nationality give expression to material and spiritual culture and cultural pattern.


This paper presents two recent innovations by my group in the area of metasurfaces. The first is about magnetless non-reciprocal metasurfaces and the second is about localized-wave metasurfaces. In both cases, I will show a number of novel concepts and applications.


Kothmale Community Radio (KCR) is one of five community radio stations operated by the government-funded public service broadcaster Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC). Community radio was originally introduced to Sri Lanka under an UNESCO-DANIDA 1 funded project called Mahaveli Community Radio (MCR).


The cancellation of African debt is a necessary condition for the continent's growth and development. But it is hardly sufficient. If writing off debt is to trigger economic and social progress which benefits the poor, democratisation is as essential as the elimination of debt. The announcement by G-8 Finance ministers of their intention to cancel the debt of 14 African countries, with another nine possibly becoming eligible within the year, has prompted inevitably heated debate between the economic 'mainstream', which has welcomed the decision, and a range of leftwing and social justice movements who have rejected it as a cosmetic exercise which maintains the North's stranglehold on African economies. But, amid the heated polemic, both sides agree that writing off the debt would in itself open new possibilities for African growth and poverty reduction. This apparently automatic link between scrapping the debt and ensuring a platform for increased living standards for the continent's people is, however, not as self-evident as the debate seems to assume.


In this paper, the solution of weight function of the objective function with quadratic form and reduction of orders of Riccati equation in structural control are emphatically studied by using mordern control theory. The properties of the damper gain and stiffness gain produced by control forces are studied in detail.


Monocytes, recovered from human peripheral blood by counter‐current centrifugal elutriation, effectively inhibit the production of IFN‐γ by CD3−/56+ NK cells in response to IL‐2. This study aimed at defining the nature of the inhibitory signal, particularly the importance of monocyte‐derived reactive metabolites of oxygen. It was found that monocytes recovered from patients with chronic granulomatous disease (CGD), a condition characterized by deficient NADPH‐oxidase activity of phagocytes, did not inhibit IFN‐γ production by NK cells. Further, catalase, a scavenger of hydrogen peroxide, completely reversed the inhibitory signal, whereas scavengers of the superoxide anion, hypohalous acids, the hydroxyl radical, or nitric oxide synthesis inhibitors such as L‐NMMA were ineffective. Inhibition of IFN‐γ production was operating on a pre‐translational level, as indicated by the inability of enriched NK cells to accumulate IFN‐γ mRNA in the presence of elutriated monocytes. Hydrogen peroxide, at micromolar concentrations, reconstituted the inhibition of IFN‐γ production when added to enriched NK cells. Histamine, a biogenic amine which inhibits the generation of reactive oxygen metabolites in monocytes, abrogated the inhibition of IFN‐γ production in NK cells; by this mechanism, histamine strongly synergized with IL‐2 to induce IFN‐γ in mixtures of NK cells and monocytes. The synergizing effect of histamine was specifically mediated by H2‐type histamine receptors. We conclude that: (i) the induction of IFN‐γ mRNA in NK cells is effectively down‐regulated by products of the oxidative metabolism of monocytes; and (ii) histamine effectively enhances IFN‐γ production by preventing monocyte‐induced oxidative damage to NK cells.


OBJECTIVE To analyze the distribution and drug resistance of pathogens in patients with ventilator-associated pneumonia(VAP) in the intensive care unit(ICU),and to provide a reasonable basis for the clinical use of antibiotics.METHODS The pathogens and the drug resistance of VAP in 97 patients receiving mechanical ventilation in ICU were investigated.RESULTS Among 333 strains of isolated pathogens,the Gram-negative bacteria(GNB) accounted for 69.1%,the Gram-positive bacteria 27.9% and the fungi 3.0%.Among pathogens,the most common pathogens associated with VAP were Pseudomonas aeruginosa(33.3%),Staphylococcus aureus(20.4%),Acinetobacter baumannii(16.2%),coagulase-negative staphylococci(7.5%) and Escherichia coli(6.0%).Their multiple drug-resistance to antibiotics was serious,and increased year by year.Drug sensitivity tests indicated that the GNB had lower drug-resistance to such antibiotics as cefoperazone/sulbactam,piperacillin/tazobactam,imipenem and amikacin,the Gram-positive bacteria were totally sensitive to vancomycin and linezolid,but the drug resistance to other antibiotics was severe.CONCLUSION The major pathogens in VAP are GNB which are often multiple drug-resistant.The reasonable application of the antibiotics and the monitoring of drug resistance should be strengthened to improve the cure rate.


Background:
 The relationship between sodium intake and cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains controversial, in part, due to inaccurate assessment of sodium intake. 24-hour urinary excretion over multiple days is considered the optimal method.

 Methods:
 We included individual participant data from 6 prospective cohorts among generally healthy adults with sodium and potassium excretion assessed by at least two 24-hour urine collections. Out of 10,709 participants (54% women; mean [SD] age, 51.5 [12.6] years), 571 incident CVD events (including myocardial infarction, coronary revascularization, and stroke) were ascertained during a median follow-up of 8.8 years. We analyzed each cohort using consistent methods and combined the results using random-effects meta-analysis.

 Results:
 Median 24-hour urinary sodium excretion (10
 th
 -90
 th
 percentile) was 3,270 (2,099-4,899) mg. Higher sodium excretion, lower potassium excretion and higher sodium-to-potassium ratio were all associated with higher risk of CVD events after controlling for confounding factors (all
 P
 values for trend≤0.02); there was no evidence of nonlinearity. The hazard ratio [HR] comparing top with bottom quartiles was 1.67 [95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.21-2.30] for sodium, 0.77 [0.57-1.02] for potassium and 1.72 [1.27-2.32] for sodium-to-potassium ratio. Each 1,000 mg/d increment in sodium excretion was associated with an 18% increase in CVD risk (95%CI: 5%-32%) and each 1,000 mg/d increment in potassium excretion was associated with 18% lower risk (95%CI: 6%-28%).

 Conclusions:
 Higher sodium and lower potassium intakes, measured in multiple 24-hour urine samples, were associated with higher risk of CVD in a dose-response manner. These findings support current recommendations to reduce sodium and increase potassium intakes.


The weevil Curculio chinensis Chevrolat (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) is a major cause of economic losses to growers of Camellia oleifera in China, as females lay their eggs in developing fruits and the hatching larvae feed on their seed, aborting fruit growth. Olfactory cues play a key role in the host location of this weevil. The present study focused on identifying volatiles from different parts of the host plant Ca. oleifera, namely, the leaves, fruit peel, and seeds, and testing the antennal and behavioral responses of adult Cu. chinensis to those same volatiles. Methods relied on gas chromatography, electroantennograms, and Y-tube bioassays. The results included a total of twenty-five volatiles emitted by the three plant parts, among which eight elicited antennal responses in Cu. chinensis adults of both sexes. The behavioral bioassays indicated that 3-hexenal, trans-2-hexen-1-ol, methyl salicylate, geraniol, and phenethyl alcohol were attractive to Cu. chinensis, while trans-2-hexenal and 2-ethyl-1-hexanol were repellent. Tests with different concentrations indicated that the behavioral response could be dose-dependent. Future studies should focus on field tests with blends of the attractant compounds in order to develop novel, improved control methods for field applications.


Electrical power is generated by a variety of means, but in large relies on old, well proven technology and fossil fuels. While gains are being made in upgrading the old plant and improving its efficiency, its reliance on fossil fuels will always be like a block of concrete around the legs of a sprinter. With a much shorter history renewable energy technologies are developing quickly and are making inroads into the mind-set of some of our planners. The technology to produce electricity from renewable and non-polluting energy sources is with us now and is being trialled at many sites around the world. The paper will give a short background on current fossil fuel technology, from coal and oil through to gas and combined cycle plants. It will show how renewable energy can be integrated into existing power plants as hybrid systems, such as the proposed Tennant Creek Solar Thermal Power Station and other experiences around the world. The paper will then show how we can make use of renewable energy in power plants without using any fossil fuel and what hurdles have yet to be overcome to implement this on a large scale. The paper will discuss the pros and cons of different approaches to renewable technologies such as solar, solar thermal, wind, hydro and different forms of energy storage. It will also give some examples of the costs involved to go from fossil based to power stations based on renewable fuels. It will also give an understanding of the possible markets for such renewable power plants in the SE Asian region, which includes Australia.


Peer Review has been known for its ability to motivate students to undertake the assessment in a best possible way. This forms the foundation to the practical skills of critical thinking, evaluation and self-development. However, the perception of mainly students involved in HE can be quite different. This work reports on the transition between the historical Peer Review models towards an authentic peer learning journey that utilises a critical incident method. The method educates students through story telling of past peer interactions in order to prepare them for the group work aiming to improve reflective performance and overcome liminality.


Abstract
 This chapter outlines the historical transformation of dark tourism sites from the premodern era to the present. This is done through discussing the idea of sacred journeys through pilgrimage and dark tourism. The chapter also examines the growth of dark tourism through different historical phases, and in so doing distinguishes between different 'shades' of dark tourism, and questions whether dark tourism is really 'dark'.


The quantum electrodynamics in presence of background external fields is developed. Modern methods of local quantum physics allow to formulate the theory on arbitrarily strong possibly time-dependent external fields. Non-linear observables which depend only locally on the external field are constructed. The tools necessary for this formulation, the parametrices of the Dirac operator, are investigated.


A non-equilibrium molecular dynamics computer simulation on microsegregated solutions of symmetrical diblock copolymers is reported. As the polymer concentration increases, the system undergoes phase transitions in the following order: body centered cubic (BCC) micelles, hexagonal (HEX) cylinders, gyroid (GYR) bicontinuous networks and lamellae (L), which are the same morphology reported for block copolymer melts. Structural classification is based on the patterns of the anisotropic static structure factor and characteristic 3-dimensional images. The systems in the BCC micellar (ρσ 3 = 0.3) and HEX cylindrical (ρσ 3 = 0.4) phases were then subjected to a steady planar shear flow. In weak shear flow, the segregated domains in both systems tend to rearrange into sliding parallel close-packed layers with their normal in the direction of the shear gradient. At higher shear rates, both systems adopt a perpendicular lamellar structure with the normal along the neutral direction. A further increase in the shear rate results in a decrease in lamellar spacing without any further structural transitions. Two critical shear rate values that correspond to the demarcation of different structural behaviors were found.


ABSTRACT A single catalytic site model is proposed to account for the multiphasic kinetics of oxidation of ferrocy-tochrome c by cytochrome c oxidase (ferrocytochrome c:oxy-genoxidoreductase, EC 188.8.131.52). Thismodelinvolves nonpro-ductive binding ofsubstrate.to sites near the catalytic site oncytochromecoxidasefor cytochromec, decreasing the binding constant for cytochrome c at the catalytic site. This substrateinhibition resultsinanincrease.inthefirst-order rateconstant for thedissociation oftheferricytochromec-cytochrome c oxi- dase complex, the rate-limiting step in the steady-state turn- over ofelectrons between cytochrome cand cytochrome coxi- dase in the spectrophotometricassay, yielding increasesin the initial rateaswellastheMichaelis constant-namely,multiple kinetic phases. Thekinetics ofoxidationofferrocytochrome c by mitochon- drial cytochrome c oxidase (ferrocytochrome c:oxygen oxi-doreductase, EC 126.96.36.199; also called cytochrome oxidase)havebeen underinvestigation since 1930. Two


This research had as objective develops a pre-gelatinized nutritious product, in the form of fl akes from quinoa Chenopodium quinoa Willd grains, starting from grains of the variety


The use of fibreoptic delivery of laser energy to vaporize occluding atheromatous material within arteries was first described' in 1981. Thereafter, the clinical feasibility of percutaneous laser recanalization of occluded femoropopliteal arteries in humans' was demonstrated in 1984. The past decade has seen the development of dedicated vascular lasers and catheter systems of ever-increasing sophistication and expense. But does laser angioplasty really work? Which laser system is most suitable? What are the indications for its use? What are the long-term results and how do they compare with those of conventional balloon angioplasty or surgical bypass ? Early attempts at laser angioplasty were made using bare optical fibres (200-600 pm in diameter) and continuous-wave argon or neodymium yttriumaluminium-garnet (NdYAG ) medical lasers. There was a high incidence of mechanical and laser-induced vessel perforation and the fibre created only an inadequate narrow channel through the lesion3. Development has occurred in two main areas: the use of modified fibre tips4 such as metal-capped ('hot-tip') or transparent artificial sapphire-tipped fibres, and the application of pulsed lasers. Modified fibre tips (laser probes) are less traumatic to the vessel wall and produce a wider neolumen than bare optical fibres. Nevertheless, when used with continuous-wave medical lasers, these devices still cause some degree of thermal injury to the surrounding vessel wall. However, pulsed lasers (e.g. pulsed NdYAG, dye and excimer types) produce minimal thermal injury to the vessel wall compared with continuous-wave lasers5 and, on the assumption that this might be clinically beneficial, their investigation and use for endovascular recanalization has become more extensive. The use of laser angioplasty, either as an adjunct to or instead of balloon angioplasty, has two potential advantages over conventional treatment. The major possible advantage is that occlusive lesions previously amenable only to treatment by surgical bypass may be treatable by a minimally invasive technique. The second possible advantage is that, because occluding material is removed (debulked ) rather than simply displaced, the restenosis rate after laser angioplasty may be less than that associated with balloon angioplasty alone in lesions where the latter is technically possible. This has been demonstrated in atherosclerotic animal models6 but there is, as yet, no good evidence that this is the case in humans, despite such suggestions by proponents of laser thermal angioplasty. The demonstration of benefit in terms of reduced restenosis requires a long-term prospective randomized trial of laser versus conventional angioplasty. Such trials are in progress but, until their results become available, there is no justification for using laser angioplasty in stenotic segments or short occlusions through which a guidewire can be passed easily and balloon dilatation performed with good long-term results. Of particular interest to vascular surgeons is the patient with a long femoropopliteal occlusion ( > 10 cm) for which the primary success rate of mechanical (guidewire) recanalization and balloon dilatation is relatively low7. Although immediate technical results are continually improving with increasing radiological expertise and the development of hydrophilic 'slippery' guidewires, even when primary guidewire recanalization and balloon angioplasty are possible, the long-term patency rate is generally p ~ o r ~ , ~ . For such long lesions a safe and effective minimally invasive alternative to surgical bypass would be of immense benefit. Because laser angioplasty is less invasive than surgery, its use might be justifiable in patients with a long occlusion whose symptoms may not warrant surgical intervention, for instance moderately restricting intermittent claudication, or it might be an alternative to the conventional choice of surgery for severe claudication and critical ischaemia. But do the results of peripheral laser angioplasty justify its use? Unfortunately, the literature is clouded with numerous uncontrolled and often anecdotal studies. Consequently, clinical results appear to vary widely. Strict comparisons cannot be drawn from these reports because there is a huge variation in terms of lesion length and type (stenosis or occlusion), indications for treatment, use of percutaneous or open access and performance of additional surgical procedures at the time of angioplasty, use of anticoagulants, methods and length of follow-up, and the way in which results are reported. There are no properly randomized controlled studies comparing laser recanalization with conventional balloon angioplasty or bypass surgery, nor are there adequate comparisons of the results obtained with different


Invisible Man is a novel by Ralph Ellison addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African-Americans early in the twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity. Ellison brings out the problems of identity crisis along with Marxist ideals. He focuses on how the whites manipulate the blacks and employ their division policy among the blacks so that the blacks never fight against the white oppression. Ellison criticises both the whites and the blacks in the same manner. In Invisible Man itself he criticizes the white man who tries to exploit and manipulate the black man. At the same time he criticizes the black people who meekly follow the whites without thinking of their thousands of suffering black brothers. These blacks may justify themselves by saying that it is because of the strategy and power that they are forced to follow the whites. But the blacks should know how to deal with the white if not he will exploit him. Invisible man has much to say to this world from his experiences. But the simple message "keep this nigger boy running" should be analysed closely. The whites want the blacks always running. Ellison criticises both the whites and the blacks in the same manner. In Invisible Man he criticizes the white man who tries to exploit and manipulate the black manand also criticizes the black people who meekly follow the whites.


【To improve the current waveform of diode rectifiers, we propose a new operating principle of the voltage diode rectifiers. In the conventional voltage rectifier circuit, relatively large capacitors are used to boost the output voltage, while the proposed circuit uses ones and a small reactor not boost the output voltage but improve the input current waveform. A circuit design method is shown and confirmed simulation. It explained that compared conventional PWM(Pulse-width modulated)inverter with HPWM(Half Pulse-width modulated)inverter. Proposed HPWM inverter eliminated dead-time by lowering switching loss and holding over-shooting. Output voltage and current of this paper were applied for real air-conditioner.】


This paper presents a magnetically controlled series compensation-fault current limiter (MCSC-FCL) which is composed of a magnetically controlled reactor (MCR) and a compensation capacitor. The dev...


The Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS) is the world's largest known fossil water aquifer system. It is located underground in the Eastern end of the Sahara Desert and spans the political boundaries of four countries in north-eastern Africa. NSAS covers a land area spanning just over two million km 2 , including north-western Sudan, north-eastern Chad, south-eastern Libya, and most of Egypt. Containing billions of cubic meters of groundwater, the significance of the NSAS as a potential water resource for future development programs in these countries is extraordinary. Therefore, understanding of the hydrogeochemical processes and continuous monitoring of its groundwater regionally and locally is so vital. The present study has been conducted to investigate these processes in a pilot area of Western Desert of Egypt (West El Mouhoub). To accomplish this objective, surface water and groundwater samples were collected and analyzed to estimate the chemical properties of these water samples. The ion ratios, water type, facies, hypothetical salts, geochemical diagrams were integrated with geostatistical analyses [factor analysis (FA) and correlation analysis (CA)] to characterize the hydrogeochemical processes that are controlling the Nubia sandstone aquifer system (NSAS). The obtained results revealed that, the Sabaya and Six Hills Formations represent the main aquifer horizons where the groundwater exists under confined conditions. The groundwater within these aquifer units is mainly fresh and the salinity increases from southeast to northwest direction in the Sabaya Formation groundwater. Both the hypothetical salts assemblages and the groundwater genesis confirm that there is a connection between the Sabaya and Six Hills Formations in the investigated area. The results show a chemical development from the groundwater that dominated by bicarbonate salts to that dominated by chloride salts. The main process controlling the groundwater is the rock-water interactions. total respectively). It shown that, the in the is rich in ions and this can be attributed to the


This article presents some basic instruments proposed by the European Union in order to internalize negative external effects of transport. The problem of negative externalities has gained importance all over the world and requires action in order to prevent further environmental degradation and reduce the negative influence on health and life. Poland, as a new member state of the EU where these costs are higher than in many other countries, should advance the implementation of instruments for internalization of external costs.


Game theory is used to analyze a variety of social situations with competing players and interests, such as competition between businesses and elections. However, the concept of game theory is rarely employed to examine literature work. This paper applies game theory to analyze decisions made in a renowned science fiction series, the Three-Body Problem. How is deterrence established between two entities that want to conquer each other? What about changing the context to many entities? In the context of a science fiction, this paper offers a new perspective that allows readers to understand the rationale behind decisions and consequent outcomes in international relations and deterrence. Additionally, this research employs a simple computer program to help test equilibria in various conditions.


Objectives: The primary objective of the study was to investigate the relationship between ubiquitous laptop use and academic achievement. It was hypothesized that students with ubiquitous laptops would score on average higher on standardized tests than those without such computers. Methods: Data were obtained from two sources. First, demographic and computer usage information was obtained through face-to-face interviews of 4th and 5th grade students enrolled in an ethnically diverse elementary school in Southern California. Student achievement and related data were obtained from existing school records. An unmatched case-control group design was implemented. Descriptive, bivariate, and multivariate techniques were performed on the data. Results: Overall English/Language Arts and Mathematics scores for the entire sample were 359 and 396 respectively in 2008. Students who were given 24/7 laptop computers, however, had higher scores in English/Language Arts (M = 392.7, SD = 34.98) than students without laptops (M = 338.54, SD = 39.69). In Mathematics, students with laptops had a mean of 448.1 (M = 448.1, SD = 56.83), whereas those without laptops had an average of 365.05 (M = 365.05, SD = 52.64). Independent sample t-tests showed that these differences between cases and controls were statistically significant. Conclusions: Results showed that, in general, ubiquitous laptop computers improve student performance in English Language/Arts, Mathematics, and Science. These findings contradict other studies that have shown that 24/7 laptops have no effect on student achievement. It is suggested that policy makers continue judicious use of technology in the education curriculum.


ABSTRACT. Recent scientific investigations into the physical aspects of sacred sites are providing new avenues for investigation. Human abilities to perceive extremely subtle physical parameters, which have previously been considered outside of typical sensory capacity, are being researched. It appears that people can sense differences in the physical environment and have established cultural reminders at such places. These places have been used for many purposes, including to improve health and well-being. A sense of place provides a feeling of well-being. The honoring of such locations is part of the respect and regard that exists among indigenous people and their sites of traditional healing. Reciprocity occurs in the physical closeness and the benefits derived at these locations. Some of these sites are perceived as portals for the mind to access a different level of consciousness and gain information and greater understanding from which well-being can be promoted.


The present study was conducted to evaluate the …effect of dietary selenium on growth performance and antioxidant enzymes activity in Cirrhinus mrigala for a period of 45 days. Four numbers of experimental diets were prepared, Tc for Control (0 mg organic selenium/kg of diet), T₁ (2.5 mg organic selenium/kg of diet), T₂ (5.0 mg organic selenium/kg of diet) and T₃ (10 mg organic selenium/kg of diet). The water quality parameters (temperature, DO, pH, conductivity, hardness, ammonia, nitrate and nitrite) were found to be insignificant (p > .05) among all the treatments. Superoxidase dismutase (SOD) was found to be significantly highest in T₂ (6.10 ± 0.07) when compared with the other treatments. Similarly, catalase (CAT) activity in T₁ (13.21 ± 0.13) was significantly (p < .05) different with that of Control, T₂ and T₃. Present study also revealed that 2.5mg organic selenium/kg supplemented diet (T₁) showed highest results in net weight gain (15.55 ± 1.36 g), net weight gain percentage (185.88 ± 8.98%) and SGR (2.35 ± 0.06 g) compared with other experimental diet.


This thesis focuses on three remarkable Canadian women (Lena Jolliffe, Mary Lamb and Agnes Hilliard) who lived and worked in Sichuan, China as Christian missionaries during the chaotic first half of the twentieth century. The thesis is built around three overarching themes: the experiences of these three Westerners in China who were there as missionaries, as women and as Canadians; their contributions to China; and their impact back in Canada. The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter introduces the study, provides an overview of the relevant historical context in China, and surveys the available English-language scholarly secondary source materials. Chapters Two, Three and Four deal respectively with each of the women, beginning with biographical sketches; providing overviews of the available archival materials; piecing together chronologically and thematically their individual China experiences and observations; and concluding with thematically-driven analytical overviews of their China experiences. Chapter Five thematically and comparatively revisits the China journeys of the three women. The sources on which this thesis is based are the letters and diaries of the women which have been deposited in the United Church of Canada archives in Toronto. The recipients of the letters were almost always family members or church friends. These three heroic Canadian women missionaries were effectively windows on China whose writings extend our understanding of China and its people. The thesis suggests that as missionaries, these women were more highly integrated into China than many other Westerners; that as missionary women, they were uniquely able to have direct and sustained contact with Chinese women; and that as Canadians, they were treated differently from other Westerners, occasionally serving as power brokers at the local level. These three women and their colleagues impacted upon China simply by being there as alternative role models; by their educational activities and public health instruction; and by initiating the liberation of Chinese women from their traditional restraints. They also had a significant impact upon Canada, particularly through their letters and furlough visits, which enhanced Canadian understanding of China.


A novel strategy towards the synthesis of 1,4-disubstituted 1,2,3-triazoles via C–N and N–N bond formation has been demonstrated under transition metal-free and azide-free conditions. These 1,2,3-triazoles were obtained in a regioselective manner from commercially available anilines, aryl alkenes/aryl alkynes and N-tosylhydrazines using I2 under O2 atmosphere. Broad substrate scope, milder reaction conditions, good to moderate yields and clean protocol are the notable features of the method. Moreover, this protocol is amenable for the generation of a library of medicinally important key building blocks.


This thesis is the result of my passion for Beat literature and ecological ethics. The 1950s and the Beat Generation are rarely discussed regarding the evolution of environmental ethics in the United States of America. This is an obvious intersection of two fields that could be of use to our society that today faces great environmental challenges. This thesis uses the published and unpublished works of Beat writers Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure and Lew Welch in an attempt to understand their interpretations of nature and humankind✹s role within it. It concludes that they exhibited important ecological principles in their writings and lifestyles and that we can better appreciate the evolution of Deep Ecology and eco-centrism more broadly by studying the Beats.


An efficient quadrature formula, known as the Single-Exponential (SE) formula, was proposed by Stenger for the de(cid:12)nite integral of an exponentially decaying function over the semi-in(cid:12)nite interval. The formula was derived by combining the trapezoidal formula with a SE transformation. An error bound of the formula was already given. In this study, we investigate another SE formula obtained by replacing the transformation with Muhammad{Mori's SE transformation. Its error bound was determined by theoretical analysis. Numerical comparisons of Stenger's SE formula with that of Muhammad{Mori's are given as well.


Background. Although coronaryheart disease (CHD) continues to be a leading cause of morbidity and mortality among adults in the U.S., it is possible to prevent CHD through modification ofrisk factors. The major and independent risk factors are elevated blood pressure, cigrette smoking, elevated LDL-C and cholesterol (TC), low HDL-C, diabetes mellitus, and advancing age. Primary prevention of CHD defined as risk reduction in patients without established CHD requires an assessment of risk to effectively classify patients for selection of appropriate interventions. A statistical model using the above risk factors to predict CHD risk over 10 years has been developed by the Framingham Heart Study. ' Although score sheets were also developed to help clinicians predict patient CHD risk, they require clinicians to spend time classifying several risk scores and adding them together, introducing the possibility of error. An easier way to help patients accurately identify CHD risk themselves is needed.


The high‐frequency dielectric tensor for a cold, multispecies, current‐carrying plasma is derived in straight‐tokamak geometry, including both toroidal and poloidal magnetic fields in the equilibrium. Propagation and resonant absorption of lower hybrid waves in an inhomogeneous plasma column are investigated. The earlier treatment of Grossman and Weitzner [Phys. Fluids 27, 1699 (1984)] of the resonant‐layer solutions, power absorption and energy partition, and accessibility of the lower hybrid wave is generalized to include the effects of mode propagation parallel to the magnetic field and of an equilibrium plasma current. In particular, the density gradient coupled to the finite poloidal mode number and parallel wavenumber allows the lower hybrid wave to reach the hybrid layer, unlike the case of an infinite homogeneous plasma. Finally, the eigenvalue problem is solved for a homogeneous plasma column carrying zero current, and surrounded by a vacuum region delimited by a perfectly conducting shell. The s...


IN honoring me by its invitation to address this learned gathering, the Health Research Council has set me an extraordinarily difficult task: to say in i5 minutes something coherent and meaningful about pollution of the air in the cities of New York and London, of Great Britain and the United States of America. It is tempting to use this time to speak of the immensely valuable work which is now being done on the comparison of the prevalence of respiratory symptoms among the citizens of New York and London; without it, meaningful studies on the epidemiological aspects of the effects of air pollution could not be undertaken. But this work is well known to you and it has been reported elsewhere with admirable clarity by my good friends Donald Reid and Charles Fletcher. Likewise, the important question of cardiopulmonary semantics has been studied and reported on by Doctors Meneely, Paul, Dorn and Harrison after their welcome visit to us in i960. Perhaps it is more appropriate to try to give a short account of the problems which beset those of us in Britain who work to try to display the connections between air pollution and disease. My work in this field began a mere eleven years ago. Then, with the drama of the Meuse Valley, Donora, and London 1952 to stimulate us, it was easy to deplore, in pious terms, the fouling of the air by any substance in the belief that pollution was never beneficial and could manifestly kill. There followed the Beaver Report, and in i956 the Clean Air Act became law. Smoke is, albeit slowly, disappearing from the air of Britain but we are left with other pollutants, notably sulfur dioxide, which are much more difficult to abolish and, rightly, we, as physicians, are being asked hard specific questions concerning the levels we regard as tolerable; in turn we will be told the cost of achieving purity. There is


Rapid fouling of condenser tubes in underground refrigeration plants is a frequent occurrence. It leads to low heat transfer efficiencies, with consequent serious reduction in capacity and increase in the horse-power requirement of the units. High pressures develop in the condensers, and frequent cleaning of the tube bundles is required. The cleaning operation takes up to 8 hours and in some cases results in significant loss of production.


Although word frequency is often associated with the cognitive load on the reader and is widely used for automated text complexity assessment, to date, no eye-tracking data have been obtained on the effectiveness of this parameter for text complexity prediction for the Russian primary school readers. Besides, the optimal ways for taking into account the frequency of individual words to assess an entire text complexity have not yet been precisely determined. This article aims to fill these gaps. The study was conducted on a sample of 53 children of primary school age. As a stimulus material, we used 6 texts that differ in the classical Flesch readability formula and data on the frequency of words in texts. As sources of the frequency data, we used the common frequency dictionary based on the material of the Russian National Corpus and DetCorpus - the corpus of literature addressed to children. The speed of reading the text aloud in words per minute averaged over the grades was employed as a measure of the text complexity. The best predictive results of the relative reading time were obtained using the lemma frequency data from the DetCorpus. At the text level, the highest correlation with the reading speed was shown by the text coverage with a list of 5,000 most frequent words, while both sources of the lists - Russian National Corpus and DetCorpus - showed almost the same correlation values. For a more detailed analysis, we also calculated the correlation of the frequency parameters of specific word forms and lemmas with three parameters of oculomotor activity: the dwell time, fixations count, and the average duration of fixations. At the word-by-word level, the lemma frequency by DetCorpus demonstrated the highest correlation with the relative reading time. The results we obtained confirm the feasibility of using frequency data in the text complexity assessment task for primary school children and demonstrate the optimal ways to calculate frequency data.


We modulated the grafting density (σ) of a random copolymer brush of poly(styrene-r-methyl methacrylate) on substrates to probe its effect on the formation of perpendicularly aligned lamellae of polystyrene-b-poly(methyl methacrylate) (PS-b-PMMA). Supported by coarse-grained simulation results, we hypothesized that an increase in σ will allow us to systematically tune the block copolymer interfacial interactions with the substrates from being preferential to one of the blocks to being neutral toward both blocks and will thereby facilitate enhanced regimes of perpendicularly aligned lamellae. We verified such a hypothesis by using a simple grafting-to approach to modify the substrates and characterized the thickness window for perpendicular lamellae as a function of brush thickness (or σ) on the grafted substrates using scanning force microscopy (SFM) images and grazing incidence small-angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS) measurements. The experimental results validated our hypothesis and suggested that the σ o...


This paper discusses the importance of modelling in the planning and management of an information system. The paper specifically addresses three different levels of modelling, which are referred to as macro, meso and micro models, and discusses some of the issues involved in quantifying the variables for the micro model. The paper focuses on these different types of business model and indicates how they may be used in the information technology (IT) environment.


In recent decades, the importance of cooperatives in agri-food markets has been evident. Specifically, in Spain they represent a very important part of the agri-food industry. However, there is no significant evidence of substantial differences in their management, different from the general business case. The main objective of this study is to examine how a certain organizational context influences manager decisions and perceptions. The purpose is studying whether this influence causes changes to the main conclusions of the stakeholder salience original model. The working methodology consists of carrying out an exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (from the data of 352 agri-food cooperatives in Spain) in order to test the psychometric properties of measurement scales, and the hypothesized relationships between attributes and stakeholder salience results are examined using structural equation modeling. Results show that the measurement of the stakeholder salience varies in agri-food cooperatives. The contributions of this study are to confirm that: (1) in agri-food cooperatives legitimacy is the first measurement of stakeholder salience, unlike the general business case where that is power; (2) the attribute of urgency remains unchanged from the proposed model; and (3) add to the original model the attribute of durability because of the permanence of the interest of stakeholders in agri-food cooperatives.


As an effective tool for optimization,differential evolution(DE) has aroused much interest. But the premature convergence of it often gives rise to erroneous results so should be improved. In this paper, a novel differential evolutionary algorithm (DECH) based on Chaos Local search(CLS) is proposed, which divides DE algorithm into two stages. Firstly, DECH runs with original DE model 'DE/best/1/bin' to ensure ability of global search. Secondly, DECH runs with Chaos search to ensure ability of local search. In experiments, it is proved that DECH can balance the ability of the local search and global search to keep the diversity of population. Compared with original DE and other modified DE by testing on five typical Benchmark functions, DECH has superior global convergence and robustness, which means it's suitable for solving global optimization problems.


The rich panorama of publicly available data and ontologies in the biomedical domain represents an unique opportunity for developing explainable knowledgeenabled systems in biomedical Artificial Intelligence (AI) [1, 3, 4]. Building on decades of work by the semantic web and biomedical ontologies communities, a semi-automated approach for building and maintaining a Knowledge Graph (KG) to support AI-based personalized medicine is within our grasp. However, personalized medicine also poses significant challenges that require advances to the state of the art, such as the diversity and complexity of the domain and underlying data, coupled with the requirements for explainability. We propose an approach (see Figure 1) to build a KG for personalized medicine to serve as a rich input for the AI system (ante-hoc) and incorporate its outcomes to support explanations, by connecting input and output (post-hoc). A preparatory step is Data and ontology collection and curation. This includes the selection and curation of relevant public datasets for the domain in question, the identification of ontologies referenced by the datasets, and the selection of other relevant ontologies to ensure adequate coverage of the domain and sufficient semantic richness to support explanations. Additionally, data privacy inherent to patient data should inform the decision to make part of the KG private to its data providers and the data integration process also mostly automatic to reduce the need of human involvement [2]. The first step in our approach is Ontology Matching. Key challenges are scalability and complex matching, since building a comprehensive KG requires matching multiple ontologies with hundreds of thousands of concepts, covering different domains, and with different modeling perspectives. Regarding scalability, our solution is to match ontologies iteratively, by matching and merging the largest pair of ontologies into a single one, then mapping and merging this to the third largest ontology, and so on, using complex matching algorithms to uncover rich relations across domains [6, 7]. Before the final integration of ontologies, alignments are partially validated by experts to ensure an accurate KG that can support explanations [5]. The Semantic Data Annotation process relies on the development of parsers to interpret each type of dataset, and annotation algorithms to produce an RDF version of the dataset that is semantically integrated into the KG. Finally, the Integration with the AI system ensures that the KG serves as both input to AI methods (directly or through feature generation [8]) and


Researches in the catalysts and reaction conditions for the synthesis of HFC-245fa from reaction of HCC-240fa with HF at gaseous phase, via HCFC-1233zd and HFC-1234ze intermediate, were reviewed. Development of the catalysts with higher fluorination performance at lower temperature would be the trends in this field.


Flash flood is one of the extremely destructive natural disasters in the world. In recent years, extreme rainfall events caused by global climate change have increased, and flash flood disasters are becoming the main types of natural disasters in the world. Due to the characteristics of strong suddenness, complex disaster-causing factors, great difficulty in prediction and forecast, and the lack of historical data, it is difficult to effectively prevent and control flash flood disaster. The early identification technology of flash floods is not only the basis of flash flood disaster prediction and early warning, but also an effective means of flash flood prevention and control. The paper makes a meta-analysis and visual analysis of 475 documents collected by the Web of Science Document Platform in the past 31 years by comprehensively using Citespace, Vosviewer, Origin, etc. We systematically summarize the research progress and development trend of early identification technology of flash flood disasters from five key research subfields: (1) precipitation, (2) sediment, (3) sensitivity analysis, (4) risk assessment, (5) uncertainty analysis. In addition, we analyze and discuss the main problems encountered in the current research of several subfields and put forward some suggestions to provide references for the prevention and control of flash flood disasters.


Citizenship rights are among the necessities of human society and governments make policies about them based on their anthropological foundations. The current study aims at answering the question that what roles do anthropological foundations of secular policy play in the realization of citizenship rights and what is its difference with Islamic foundations? In the present study, the latter issue has been assayed based on a comparative analysis method. The research findings show that the citizens in secular policy are condemned to natural and human law and are selfish and egotist and free from divine values; this policy believes in multifaceted essence of human beings and defends the material interests and power. Thus conceived, citizens seek to reach the utmost pleasure via the domination of reason over the religion and denial of Perfect Man. This materialistic picture of human being has caused the politics to be limited to human material rights and welfare and in this way man becomes bogged down in the swamp of carnal desires; but in Islamic politics, man is defined based on monotheism and human virtues and the world is described as the farm of otherworld. Seen from this perspective, true citizenship freedom can be merely achieved via monotheism. Moreover, all primordial aspects and needs of man are taken into account and everything is arranged for the administration of justice and regulation of individual and social affairs and human worldly and otherworldly happiness. Therefore, Islamic worldview, contrary to secularism, enjoys a comprehensive knowledge of human rights and needs. Please cite this article as: Jafari Nasab SH, Khal'atbari Limaki H. Explanation of the Role of Anthropological Foundations of Secular Politics in Realization of Citizenship Rights and Its Comparison with Islamic Foundations. Bioethics Journal, Special Issue on Human Rights and Citizenship Rights 2019; 75-91.


This paper presents a bit serial realization of the sign-LMS based adaptive filter which enjoys multiplier free weight update loop. To reduce the complexity of the multipliers that arise in the filtering process, the filter weights are represented in the so-called canonic SPT form which guarantees presence of at least one zero between every two non-zero power-of-two terms. As the filter weights are not fixed but updated in time, it is essential to ensure that the canonic SPT format is retained in the updated filter coefficients. For this, a bit serial adder is proposed that takes as input two numbers in canonic SPT and produces an output also in canonic SPT. It is further shown how the canonic SPT property of the input can be used to reduce the complexity of the adder. For the filtering part, a bit serial multiplier is developed that takes one input (i.e., data bits) in 2's complement form and the other input (i.e., weight bits) in canonic SPT, producing the result in 2's complement. The multiplication can not, however, be realized using a few fixed shift and add operations, since the position of the non-zero SPT terms in the canonic SPT expression of each coefficient changes with time. The proposed multiplier instead multiplies the 2's complement number with pairs of consecutive SPT bits of the other number. The resulting partial products can be realized using simple AND-OR logic.


This paper proposes a method of constructing modal regulator by transfer function for closed-loop system in case of presence of setting and disturbance influence. The method is simple and allows to express the coefficients of the transfer function of the regulator in terms of coefficients of the wishful polynomial closed-loop system. On the basis of this feature an optimization algorithm of these coefficients on the criterion of maximum robustness is presented.


EDITOR, - Measuring drug volume by the number of items prescribed is unsatisfactory because of the variation in the amount per item that can and does occur; we were therefore pleased to see that M Maxwell and colleagues used the defined daily dosages set by a World Health Organisation working party as their units of volume.1,2 Some countries use their own dosages - convertible to those of the WHO when necessary - to reflect national habits. We investigated whether it …


ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to explore the way religious and ethno-national identities are conflated, and how such orientations are related to national exceptionalism and xenophobia. Using data from the International Social Survey Programme's National Identity series to examine Russia as a case study, two key findings are revealed. First, the belief that individuals must affiliate with their nation's dominant religion is widespread and increasing among ethnic Russians. Second, this belief is associated with some dispositions that are particularistic and xenophobic. Discussion on the implications of these findings for post-communist society and the global civic society write large is made.


In the past, multi-rigid-body systems have been formulated by Lagrangian and Hamiltonian dynamics, the Newton-Euler method and Kane's dynamic equations. Availability of large computers and versatile software systems enables us to formulate larger systems and analyze them computationally. In such circumstances, the probability of human error grows with the size of the system. The purpose of this work is to provide state space formulations that allow verification of computational results and be able to transport Lyapunov stability results across the these dynamics disciplines. The formulations are presented with matrices for all transformations and projections.This work also investigates the constraint forces and their computation or elimination by different methods. A one-link constrained rigid body is considered first. The results are summarily extended to a three-link system. Six three-link rigid body sub modules are interconnected to describe, control and simulate many different maneuvers and activities of humans.The actuators have alpha and gamma inputs, and pull but cannot push. The control strategy is based on Evarts' "attention set,", and is applied to the movement of one arm in a computational experiment.


Both racism and sexism have proven to be intractable problems in modem industrial society. Two types of explanation, the cultural/psychological and the structural, have vied for attention in the voluminous discussion surrounding these twin issues. The present article briefly reviews the arguments of these two competing theories. It then presents some evidence that the structural or political/economic perspective may have somewhat greater utility.


We report here on experimental and numerical studies of the influence of surfactants on mineral gel synthesis. The modification of the gel structure when the ratios water-precursor and water-surfactant vary is brought to the fore by fractal dimension measures. A property of {\em polydispersity of the initial hydrolysis} is proposed to explain these results, and is successfuly tested through numerical experiments of three dimensional chemically limited aggregation.


Despite the better prognosis of melanomas localized on lower extremities, some studies have suggested that melanomas on the foot are related to a poorer survival and should be considered separately.


For the comparison of nominally equal resistors direct reading ratio sets are used, which are sometimes provided with an additional range of 10 in order to permit the comparison of resistors of the ratio 1: 10. These highly accurate instruments are very expensive. An unbalanced bridge is proposed instead, combined with a Lindeck element which permits the nulling of the bridge galvanometer. By substitution or by interchanging of the resistors to be compared the difference between two ammeter readings yields the relative deviation σ of the unknown from a known standard. For the ratio 1: 1 this deviation is given by σ = 4(ixSx - isSs/E1 where ix, is are the ammeter readings, Sx, Ss the shunt resistances used for range adaption and E1 the voltage of a constant voltage source. The errors were investigated and it was found that the accuracy and repeatability may be well within 10 parts per million (p.p.m.)


Terrorism crime,which is not formulated in Chinese Criminal Law,is the criminal behavior against civilians that intends to cause casualties so as to apply pressure on current government or international community in the pursuit of goals. Crime of endangering state security refers to the intentional acts that endanger national security of People's Republic of China,and a consensus has been reached on its crime constitution in Chinese criminal academia. There are links between terrorism crime and crime of endangering state security in terms of criminal objective,offence form,performance of harmful acts and forms of accomplished crime. However,two types of crimes differ from each other in criminal objective,specific behavior,performance of harmful acts as well as international criminal treatment.


Existing studies have extensively used temporal-spatial data to mine the mobility patterns of different kinds of travelers. Smart Card Data (SCD) collected by the Automated Fare Collection (AFC) systems can reflect a general view of the mobility pattern of the whole bus and metro riders in urban area. Most existing work focusing on mobility pattern usually ignore a special group of people who travel in abnormal patterns or mechanisms. In this paper, we focus on the evolution extreme transit behaviors of travelers in urban area by using SCD in 2010 and 2014. We have several aspects of descriptive statistics of the SCD with a view to better understanding the dynamic process and evolution of the extreme transit behavior. By combining the SCD's temporal information with the amount of travel behavior, we also propose a concept of Extreme Index (EI) based on the mixture Gaussian model to depict the extreme level of the passengers' travel pattern. According to our analysis, the normal transit behavior of the two years have nearly the same temporal distribution. Although the EI models of the two years have similar distributions, the EI model of 2010 with two peaks is more scattered than that of 2014, which has only one peak. The EI model, which assigns an EI attribute for each SCD, can be applied in further analysis of urban transit or passengers' behavior.


The aim of the study was to find a combination of machine learning algorithms and musical parameters which could automatically classify a large amount of music tracks into correct genres with high ...


An optical system was developed using commercial low-cost optical components to monitor food processes by measuring changes in optical rotation (OR) of chiral compounds. The OR signal as a function of processing time and the sample temperature were collected and recorded using a computer data acquisition system. Sucrose (1 g/100 ml solution) and distilled water were used to calibrate the instrument. Sucrose solutions (0.01 to 30 g/100 ml solution) were used to determine its sensitivity, linearity and stability. The instrument was validated by monitoring the hydrolysis of sucrose. System has been tested during a fermentation process and sugar-protein interaction as a function of temperature.


A peak in the internal friction of aluminum due to dislocations has been found well below the temperature of the usual Bordoni peak. Measurements were made from 26 to 130 kc using a reverberant decay method, and from 265 to 1075 kc using a pulse‐echo method, yielding a relaxation peak that varied with frequency over a temperature range at 21°K to 31°K. The activation energy of the peak was found to be 0.024 ev. (This research was supported in part by the Office of Naval Research.)


The frequent icing of a catenary in cold areas has seriously affected the normal operation of urban rail transit. Among many deicing methods for catenary, the thermal deicing method that uses current Joule heat to melt ice has been widely adopted due to its efficiency and safety. However, most of the thermal deicing methods are only applicable when the line is out of service, which cannot solve the icing problem of catenary during the operation period. In order to solve this problem, this article proposes a novel online thermal deicing method that takes the catenary of up and down lines as the deicing current loop. Based on the Bolsdorf theory, the deicing and anti-icing current of catenary are calculated, and the structure and control strategy of the deicing power unit (DIPU) are designed. The influence of online deicing on the traction power supply system is quantitatively analyzed by the electric network model. The accurate dynamic simulation model of the traction power supply system, including the DIPU, is established to verify the analysis conclusion. The results show that the online thermal deicing method has limited influence on the traction power supply system but achieves good deicing performance in the normal operation of the line.


Stress Engineering Services, Inc. (SES) was contracted by Pipeline Research Council International, Inc. (PRCI) to perform a study examining the long-term performance of composite repairs used for pipeline applications. The project reported here (PRCI study MATR-3-4 Long-term Composite Repair Study) included the installation of commercially available composite repair systems on pipe samples with regions of machined wall loss having depths of up to 75% of the pipe wall-thickness. Samples were fabricated using 12.75-inch x 0.375-inch, Grade X42 pipe material with each having a machined wall loss defect installed at one of three depths (40%, 60%, or 75% of pipe wall thickness). Following fabrication, the corrosion areas were reinforced with composite repairs and buried in the ground for up to ten years. The study sought to answer the question: how does the performance of a composite repair change over an extended period (up to 10 years) when subjected to environmental conditions representative of those encountered during pipeline operation? The composite repair systems were sourced from 13 different manufacturers and were installed on over 180 pipe samples prior to burial. Of these 13 reinforcement systems, four were tested to the end of the designated 10-year hold period. All samples underwent hydrostatic and periodic cyclic pressure testing while buried. Three unreinforced test samples, one of each wall loss depth, were burst at the onset of the study to provide baseline comparisons.


Sediments and rocks recovered in CRP-3 coring operations contain minute amounts of organic matter (average 0.3% TOC). TOC contents and C:N ratios are zoned systematically: those rocks encountered at depths greater than 330 meters below sea floor (mbsf) contain less organic matter and have higher TOC:N ratios (after correcting for inorganic N) than do shallower rocks. The only two samples that have TOC values greater than 1% also contain abundant granule to silt-sized particles of coal. The total sulphur contents of these rocks is very low and indicates either that only small amounts of deposited organic matter were labile, or that no source of reactive iron was present during diagenesis.


1. Impact of Research The central goal of this project is to identify cyclic thiocarbonyl molecules that are capable of efficient copolymerization with common petroleum-derived monomers (styrene, acrylates, acrylamides). Given the privileged nature of thiocarbonyl moieties as radical acceptors, it was proposed that this reactivity could be leveraged to generate a new platform for radical ring-opening polymerization (rROP) in which thioester functionality is introduced into the polymer backbone (Figure 1). If successfully used as a comonomer with petroleum-derived monomer families, these additives could serve as hydrolytically labile points on a polymer chain to produce value-added responsive and degradable materials. Our studies over the past year have focused on identifying molecules that feature a Z-group capable of stabilizing the radical intermediate in the ring-opening process, along with installing R-type functionality that lead to low energy radicals compatible with living reversible deactivation polymerization methods.


Mobile Ubiquitous Computing (MUC) is a group or collection of wireless mobile devices which forms a network temporarily and dynamically. The main application in Ubiquitous Computing is file sharing which is based on P2P (Peer to Peer) networks. The flooding based and advertisement based file sharing method in Ubiquitous Computing Network can have high overhead and low scalability which is used for connected Ubiquitous Computing Network. Another category, social contact based is implemented for the opportunistic nature of disconnected Ubiquitous Computing Network where the social issues are not considered. In this paper a novel P2P content and context based file sharing system, named PCFM is proposed for disconnected Ubiquitous Computing Network for social networks. The proposed approach has a feature extraction algorithm for identifying node features. It also includes community structure and node role assignment for designing stable node structure and an interest oriented file sharing scheme to increase file sharing efficiency. To further increase the efficiency of file sharing additional properties like prefetching of the file, completion of queries, prevention and elimination of loops, are considered. Keyword — Ubiquitous Computing Network, Social Networks, P2P Network, Content and Context based file sharing


This paper presents an improved LDPC code design for decode-and-forward relay system. Our design is based on the recent work of bilayer LDPC code structures. We introduce an irregular check node degree distribution for the lower and hyper (overall) bilayer LDPC code Tanner graphs. We derive the exact relationship between the lower and hyper graphs in terms of degree distributions (node perspective). This relationship acts as constraint to perform the density evolution. We apply the differential evolution algorithm to search for the best degree distribution for both bilayer- lengthened and bilayer-expurgated LDPC codes. We show that the performance gap of the codes is within 0.07595 dB and 0.28407 dB from the theoretical limits.


Organic and heirloom tomatoes are high-value products with growing demand but there are many challenges to successful cultivation. A systems comparison study was carried out to evaluate the production of the popular heirloom tomato 'Cherokee Purple' (Solanum lycopersicum L.) under high tunnel and open field systems in North Carolina from 2007 to 2008. Management of the high tunnel (i.e., temperature and irrigation), weather events as well as pest and disease pressure influenced crop quality and yield. The high tunnel and field systems achieved similar total yields (100 t·ha L1 ) the first season but yields were 33% greater in the high tunnel system than the field system in the second year (100 t·ha L1 and 67 t·ha L1 , respectively). Both years, the tomatoes were planted in high tunnels 1 month earlier and harvested 3 weeks earlier than the field. The accumulation of '1100 growing degree-days (GDD) was required in both systems before 50% of the fruit was harvested. Fruit cracking, cat-facing, blossom-end rot, and insect damage were the major categories of defects in both systems. Incidence of both Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus (TSWV) and Gray Leaf Spot (GLS) were lower in the high tunnel compared with the field in 2007 and 2008, respectively. Results of this study suggest that with proper management techniques, high tunnels can optimize yields, increase fruit quality, and provide season extension opportunities for high-value horticultural crops.


The theme of the study and on the exposure of human remains in museums is very topical and debated. It is a fruit of a greater attention to these particular museum specimens which present unique ethical problems. Within this debate, we want to bring the contribution of two cases occurred at the Padua University Museum of Anthropology. The first concerns the osteological human collections preserved, both those coming from archaeological excavations and the modern ones. A multi-disciplinary study for these collections has started with the aim of increasing the knowledge of these finds, providing a suitable key of presentation for future exposure. The second case linked to the Egyptian mummy wants to reflect on the importance of language in exhibiting thus particular finds: the choice of a complete and clear communication about the scientific investigations carried out on the specimen appears the best thing to do.


A serises of cobalt(Ⅱ) complexes of meso-tetrakis(2-alkoxyphenyl)porphyrin(meso-T(2-ROP)PCo) were synthesized, and meso-T(2-ROP)PCo were obtained as crystals or solids. Molecular structures of all synthesized compounds were confirmed by IR, UV, 1H NMR, MS and elemental analysis. Differential scanning calorimetry and polarizing microscope were used to probe the liquid crystal properties of the complexes. Six of the serial complexes were found to exhibit liquid crystal properties. The effects of alkoxy chains , metal ions in complexes and molecular space structure on liquid crystal properties have been investigated.


Regarding a serial number as a primary key in the database tables of the logistics information system can increase efficiency.On the one hand,that creating triggers is chosen to fulfill automotive increase of the serial number could rollback,on the other hand,the serial number may be a number type,a char type and a string type and fit respectively for database tables where data records increasing rapidly and slowly,and those serial numbers need padding on the left.It is proved that the design is available and feasible.


Based on a data provenance use case, the use of a blockchain is derived and critically evaluated. All core functions of the concept have been successfully implemented in the technical implementation of the prototype. However, the question arose as to how far the technologies are ready for productive use.


As intensive agriculture in economically developed Yangtze River Delta areas inputs excess fertilizer and N,P,K enrichments of rice water are ultrahigh,agricultural ecological environment has been seriously damaged.Field experiment was conducted by measuring the loss of nutrients from rice paddy to the water and back to the rice paddy from water,to build recycling systems engineering of rice paddy loss nutrient and supply technologic support for recycling systems engineering and healthy agricultural ecological environment.The results show that: The area of rice paddy area of 18.6 hm2,chemical fertilizer N,P,K in rice season inputs were 305.7,44.9,150.8 kg·hm-2;the rice season overland runoff water was 4 518.0 kg·hm-2,in which N,P,K losses were 16.6,0.5,9.6 kg·hm-2,accounting for N,P,K fertilizer inputs of 5.45%,1.07%,6.37% respectively;N,P,K hold-up of the pond aquatic purification plant around rice paddy are 67.8,8.1,99.7 kg,accounting for the study area N,P,K inflows of 21.84%,90.31%,55.73% respectively.Using dried water hyacinth back to rice paddy under 4 500 kg·hm-2 can reduce chemical fertilizer N,P,K inputs by 106.2,9.5,105.8 kg·hm-2.The research achievement is of positive significance to reduce pollution on agricultural production and promote sustainable development of agricultural production.


Modeling a semi-infinite soil domain has always been a challenge, especially in problems where the interaction between the soil domain and structure domain is a dynamically responsive one, as in the case of seismic wave loading. Under such conditions, researchers used various strategies to simulate, both physically and numerically, the behavior of pile foundations under seismic loading. While describing the challenges and hitherto applied strategies, two comprehensive numerical studies are described: one at behavioral state in terms of inelastic response spectrum and the other at the limiting state of collapse. Numerical Simulation of Seismic Interaction of Pile Foundation and Structure


It is possible to thin an array as well as to improve radiation pattern characteristics with an appropriate spacing function. Array thinning plays a very important role in array synthesis. To analyze the effect of thinning by considering a modulated spacing function. Using a specified spacing function, radiation patterns are evaluated for different array lengths. It is found that the near-in-side lobe level is reduced for a modulated spacing function and that the main beam width is found to remain constant. These advantages are not found in the case of uniform spacing. Even after thinning the array, the modulated spacing function is found to improve the overall radiation pattern characteristics. Although some studies are made by the researchers on thinning, the effect of thickening is not reported in the literature. In view of the above facts, intensive studies are carried out to investigate linear arrays with thickening as well as thinning. The patterns are numerically evaluated for different arrays and the radiation patterns are presented for different arrays. The investigations reveal that thickening has caused the reduction of null to null beam width without deteriorating the side lobe levels. On the other hand thinning has resulted in raising the side lobe levels as well as the beam width. If thinning is not carried out properly the resultant radiation patterns contain even grating lobes.


A novel control design is introduced for pressure control in proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells. The proposed control design is able to control the system under faults in actuators. In this design, an artificial neural network (ANN) observer is developed for online fault detection and isolation (FDI) in the pressure valves of the PEM fuel cell (PEMFC). Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is used to update ANN weights which resulted in real-time and more accurate FDI. Based on the feedback data received from the designed FDI system, a nonlinear controller is designed to compensate for the fault effects in real time. The simulation results and comparison with state of art control teckniques demonstrate the advantages of the proposed active fault tolerant controller (FTC) in presence of a fault in the actuators and its ability to detect faults and compensate for their effect in the system performance.


The thought of saving the nation through education" is one kind of the important thoughts in the modern times of China, its main idea is that the advancing of society should be achieved by education firstly, it also regards the education as the guideline for one country to promote vigorously. This paper presents that the thought of saving the nation through education" is an idea of patriotism, it stressed greatly the independence and subjectivity of education, the education could not rescue the nation, but it can make our country stronger through analyzing the reformer of landlord class and the people of foreign affairs who advocated saving the nation by developing military education, and the reformer of bourgeoisie suggested that the political reform should be carried out by cultivating people, and the main contents and characteristics of the thought of saving the nation through education" during the period of new culture movement and the times dominated by the Kuomingtang.


The Board of Directors of Stamford Tyres Corporation Limited (the "Company") wishes to announce that the Company has incorporated a wholly-owned subsidiary, Stamford Tyres Vietnam Company Limited ("STVCL") in Vietnam with an investment capital of VND20,000,000,000 (equivalent to USD1,000,000) and a total contributed capital of VND4,000,000,000 (equivalent to USD200,000). The principal activities of STVCL are to carry out import, export and distribution rights of tyres, wheels and automotive accessories.


This paper introduces the basic concepts,inference modes and algorithm of Bayesian network.It focuses on Bayesian network's clique tree propagation algorithm.The programme of the clique tree propagation algorithm is realized by employing the jtree_inf_engine module of Matlab software.By taking parking behavior analysis of Bayesian network as an example,prediction inference,diagnostic inference,causal inference and hybrid inference are carried out.The characteristics of decision-making about parking are summarized according the inference results.Research results indicate that clique tree propagation algorithm can be adopted to infer the unknown variable of the Bayesian network and to examine the relationships among the variables.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
There has been increased attention in recent years on self-employment in later life, with about one in five workers past of the age of 50 working for themselves. This study aims to build upon previous documentation of the characteristics of self-employed older adults by estimating how these characteristics vary by age.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
Using seven waves of the Health and Retirement Study with a sample of more than 12,000 working older adults, this study considers how the association between self-employment and sociodemographic characteristics; indicators of human, social, and financial capital; and risk tolerance differ between adults aged 50 to 61 and 62 years and older. Binary logistic regression and seemingly unrelated estimation are used to estimate and compare the characteristics by age group.

RESULTS
Compared to wage-and-salary work and controlling for all other factors in the models, the oldest self-employed group was more likely to identify as Black, report lower health, and receive health insurance from several sources than the younger group. Further, the older group reported lower individual earnings from work yet higher total household income (less individual earnings) and was also less likely to formally volunteer at the highest commitment levels.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
With some exceptions, these results indicate that the diversity of self-employed older adults within traditional retirement age is greater than among those before this age. Implications regarding how access to key safety net programs, such as Social Security retirement benefits and Medicare, may lead to this finding are discussed.


This paper analyzes the sailing method,the current,the fog condition,the navigation condition when the ship sails on the Kurushima Strait,and it gives the attention which should be taken during the sailing depending on the experience of passing the Strait. [


The invention discloses a super speed universal serial bus hub connected between a host computer and a plurality of elements. The super speed universal serial bus hub comprises an upstream port connected to the host computer, a plurality of element ports connected to the elements, a transaction dispatching unit receiving a plurality of packets output by the host computer, a downstream buffer temporally storing a plurality of downstream packets, a hub local packet parser receiving hub instruction packets, a traffic control unit managing the downstream packets about to be forwarded to a selected target from the plurality of the downstream packets according to the selected target and a control mode, and a forwarding unit receiving the plurality of the downstream packets output by the downstream buffer and forwarding the downstream packets to a plurality of corresponding element ports.


Formation of membraneless organelles or biological condensates via phase separation hugely expands cellular organelle repertoire. Biological condensates are dense and viscoelastic soft matters instead of canonical dilute solutions. Unlike discoveries of numerous different biological condensates to date, mechanistic understanding of biological condensates remains scarce. In this study, we developed an adaptive single molecule imaging method that allows simultaneous tracking of individual molecules and their motion trajectories in both condensed and dilute phases of various biological condensates. The method enables quantitative measurements of phase boundary, motion behavior and speed of molecules in both condensed and dilute phases as well as the scale and speed of molecular exchanges between the two phases. Surprisingly, molecules in the condensed phase do not undergo uniform Brownian motion, but instead constantly switch between a confined state and a random motion state. The confinement is consistent with formation of large molecular networks (i.e., percolation) specifically in the condensed phase. Thus, molecules in biological condensates behave distinctly different from those in dilute solutions. This finding is of fundamental importance for understanding molecular mechanisms and cellular functions of biological condensates in general.


Article Type Letter to the Editor Authors Mousavi B.1 MD, MPH, Soroush M.* MD, MPH How to cite this article Mousavi B, Soroush M. A Response to "Comment on Incidence of Cancer in Iranian Sulfur Mustard Exposed Veterans". Iranian Journal of War & Public Health. 2015;7( 3):123-125. A Response to "Comment on Incidence of Cancer in Iranian Sulfur Mustard Exposed Veterans" Article History Received: July 6, 2015 Accepted: August 19, 2015 ePublished: August 25, 2015


ABSTRACT: The objectives of this study were to assess visitors' attitudes, if visitors would be willing to pay to enter Lake Karagol, and what factors affect their decision to pay. The contingent valuation method was used to estimate the economic value of the lake by assessing willingness to pay (WTP). Double dichotomous questions were used in the survey. Respondents were first asked whether or not they would be willing to pay the starting bid. They could either answer in the affirmative (that is, accepted bid) or in the negative (that is, reject the starting bid). The average WTP for an entrance fee was found to be about USD 0.22 for all observations when zero bids were included, and about USD 4.40 when zero bids were excluded. Result of the probit model showed that respondents with a higher income, respondents who were young, and the working status of the respondents had significant impacts on the probability of the WTP.