[Objective] To explore the relevance between sheep growth hormone(GH)gene polymorphism and growth traits,so as to improve the overall growth rate and economic benefits.[Method] A total of 69 sheep in Ningxia Province were used as experimental animals.The GH gene polymorphisms of Tan sheep were genotyped by PCR-RFLP.The association between the GH gene and growth traits including birth weight,35-day weight,three-month weight and the six-month weight was also analyzed.[Result] Two kinds of GH genotypes,namely,AB and BB were detected.The genotype frequencies were 0.348 1 and 0.651 9,respectively.The frequencies of A and B allele were 0.181 1 and 0.818 9,respectively.The results of correlation statistical analysis showed that the relevance between AB genotype and growth traits in Tan sheep reached a significant level(P 0.01).[Conclusion] AB genotype was the preponderant genotype affecting the growth rate of Tan sheep.


The Scalogram model is one of the easiest regional planning methods. Using this model, we can create a matrix to specify which settlements are in better conditions. The model has applications both in human respects and natural regional plans. The model is a mathematical and statistical method in ranking the members of a cluster with respect to the index of development based on which necessity and priority of measures can be decided upon. Therefore, units of a region as well as the impact index and factors are ranked for development. In this research, the districts of babul town are investigated based on factors of population, employment, literacy, services, and the like, followed by tables, conclusions, and suggestions.


Background: The free-form of vitamin D has been used by many researchers as an index of vitamin D status in health and disease. Several methods are there to estimate free, total, and even bioavailable vitamin D.
Objective: The present work was carried out to measure free vitamin D using a special formula suggested by Bikle and Schwartz in 2019, which includes the vitamin D binding protein (VDBP). The results will be used to evaluate the vitamin D status in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), and its relation to the disease progression.
Methods: Sixty-four patients with T2DM and 73 healthy subjects, all from Baghdad city, were enrolled in the current study from March to October 2020. For each participant, fasting blood glucose, hemoglobin (HbA1c), insulin resistance HOMA-IR, and body mass index (BMI) were measured in addition to the total vitamin D and VDBP. Moreover, free vitamin D was calculated by the formula of Bikle & Schwartz.
Results: There were highly significant correlations between total vitamin D and absolute values of free vitamin D or its percentage. The difference in total vitamin D was significant between patients and healthy controls with no significant change in VDBP, free and bio-available vitamin D, while free vitamin D% was higher in the patient's group. Correlations between vitamin D and each of BMI, fasting glucose, HbA1c, and HOMA-IR were not significant; however, there was a negative correlation with BMI and fasting glucose in the healthy control subjects only. The Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis of vitamin D in the diagnosis of diabetes mellitus was poor.
Conclusion: Total vitamin D can represent vitamin D status, but it cannot be used as a factor for diagnosing T2DM. However, it could be of importance to change the glycemic status.


Three fertilizer treatments,urea,organic fertilizer and a mixture of the two,were studied in an experiment to determine the spatio-temporal variability of soil microorganisms and total N,using equal-nitrogen technique and soil-column method.The results show the order of the number of microorganisms under the three treatments is as follows: combined-fertilizer treatmentorganic fertilizer treatmenturea treatment.In all the treatments,the maximum number of bacteria in a single soil layer occurs in over wintering stage,and that for fungi is in the booting stage.The number of actinomycetes increases with growth,and reaches the maximum during mature stage.The number of bacteria,fungi and actinomycetes in 20~40 cm soil layer is highest,followed by 0~20 cm layer,and least in 40~120 cm soil layer where a decreasing trend with increasing soil depth over different growth stages of winter wheat is observed.Soil total N content decreases with increasing soil depth in all the treatments at all growth stages of winter wheat,while that for 0~20 cm soil depth decreases as growth of winter wheat advances.Total N content along soil profile has the biggest range under combined-fertilizer treatment,followed by organic fertilizer treatment,and finally urea treatment.The highest proportion of total N in 0~20 cm and 0~40 cm soil layers to that in the entire 1.2 m soil layer is observed under combined-fertilization treatment.Correlation analyses results show that with the exception of the number of bacteria,fungi and actinomycetes in urea treatment at jointing stage and the number of actinomycetes at anthesis stage,the number of bacteria at filling stage under organic fertilizer treatment,the number of soil microorganism is significantly(P0.05 or P0.01) corrlated with total N content under the three treatments at all growth stages.


The rapid casting process,which is an integration of rapid prototyping and the casting process,is introduced.the expandable patterns,die of expandable patterns,pattern,pattern plate,casting mould,casting cores and mould shells can be made directly or indirectly by rapid prototyping,then the metal castings can be manufactured rapidly by conventional casting technology.By introducing the principle of the rapid prototyping into the moulding process,the binders and catalyst are sprayed on the moulding sands or ceramics powders,the casting mould can be obtained after curing and coated by refractory coating,then can be used for pouring of liquid metals.Rapid casting processes can increase the production efficiency and is suited for the small batch of various complicated components.Hence,it has a good prospect.


in this paper, we investigate the relationship between the types of supply chain governance structure and the per - ceived relationship performance of ghanaian fresh fruit and vegetable exporters concerning their business with European importers. Using the principal component and regression analyses based on data obtained from 101 interviews with expor - ters in ghana, we show that relationship performance is a multi dimensional construct with economic and behavioral rela - tionships as the two main dimensions. The study reveals that whereas the economic relationship performance is influenced by the type of governance structure used, the behavioral relationship performance is not. Thus, the economic dimension of the relationship improves as the firms adopt a more coordinated type of governance structure. We conclude that both the exporters and the importers can improve their economic performance and enhance efficiency in the supply chain if they adopt a more coordinated supply chain governance structure type if there are appropriate mechanisms for equitable distri -


Chariff Realty Group is proud to offer this investment opportunity for sale at 1121 NW 40th St, Miami, FL 33127 in Allapattah, Miami. Located within Opportunity Zone, this income-producing property is an ideal asset.


The non-monotonous kinetics of "photobleaching" effect in chalcogenide glass fibers, induced by sub-gap light at 77 K was studied The mechanism, a system of rate equations and computer simulation results are presented.


A simple and efficient protocol was developed for culturing Cu-tolerant and Cu-accumulating plants via pre-adaptation to Cu during plant tissue culture. We induced multiple shoots from begonia (Begonia evansiana Andr.) leaf explants on MS medium supplemented with naphtaieneacetic acid and benzyladenine. After 3 months, small plantlets were transferred to MS medium supplemented with for pre-adaptation to Cu and cultured for 5 months. Then, these plantlets were individually planted in pots containing artificial soil. An additional 500 mg of Cu dissolved in 1/4 strength MS solution was applied to each pot during irrigation over the course of 2 months. We planted pre-adapted and control begonias in soil from the II-Kwang Mine, an abandoned Cu mine in Pusan, Korea, to examine their ability to tolerate and accumulate Cu for phytore-mediation. Pre-adapted begonias accumulated Cu/g dry root tissue over the course of 45 days. On the other hand, non-Cu-adapted controls accumulated only Cu/g dry root tissue. To enhance Cu extraction, chelating agents, ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA)-dipotassiun and pyridine-2,6-dicarboxylic acid (PDA), were applied. While the chelating agents did not enhance accumulation of Cu in the roots of control begonias, EDTA application increased the level of Cu in the roots of pre-adapted begonias twofold (to Cu/g dry root tissue). Because pre-adapted begonias accumulated a large amount of Cu, mainly in their roots, they could be used for phytostabilization of Cu-contaminated soils. In addition, as a flowering plant, begonias can be used to create aesthetically pleasing remediation sites.


A masquerade attack is any attack in which the attacker is able to make the target system believe they are someone they are not. One particularly dangerous example of a masquerade attack occurs when an attacker uses an unattended, unlocked computer workstation. Recent studies have demonstrated that analyzing the manners in which a user manipulates a graphical user interface can be used as an effective means of authentication. We present the results of a study into the use of GUI manipulations in combination with Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) as a basis for identification.


This paper analyzes on the features of the system of family-based heat measurement of radiant heating from low-temperature hot water floor, and probes into the arrangement form, the heat measure and the calculation of heat load of this system.


Load Frequency Control (LFC) has become of crucial importance in modern power systems on account of varying demand and generation trends. To maintain the frequency variations and minimize the tie line power fluctuations, various soft computing techniques have been used for fine tuning of PID controller in LFC problems. This paper presents a comparative analysis of various swarm optimization-based intelligent algorithms for LFC problems. From simulation results obtained via Simulink (MATLAB), the frequency variations in each area, tie-line power fluctuation profile as well as the convergence trend for each algorithm has been analyzed in this paper. Besides various system parameters such as percentage overshoot, settling time, rise timeand steady state error, different performance indices have also been computed against each swarm intelligence-based algorithm.


This meeting brings together ~900 international scientists to discuss the latest research on fungal genetics. Sessions of particular relevance to DOE include lignocellulose degradation, cellulose conversion to fermentable sugars, fermentation of sugars to fuel molecules. Other sessions cover fungal diseases of biomass crops (miscanthus, corn, switchgrass, etc.).


This article proposes an efficient federated distillation learning system (EFDLS) for multitask time series classification (TSC). EFDLS consists of a central server and multiple mobile users, where different users may run different TSC tasks. EFDLS has two novel components: a feature-based student–teacher (FBST) framework and a distance-based weights matching (DBWM) scheme. For each user, the FBST framework transfers knowledge from its teacher's hidden layers to its student's hidden layers via knowledge distillation, where the teacher and student have identical network structures. For each connected user, its student model's hidden layers' weights are uploaded to the EFDLS server periodically. The DBWM scheme is deployed on the server, with the least square distance (LSD) used to measure the similarity between the weights of two given models. This scheme finds a partner for each connected user such that the user's and its partner's weights are the closest among all the weights uploaded. The server exchanges and sends back the user's and its partner's weights to these two users which then load the received weights to their teachers' hidden layers. Experimental results show that compared with a number of state-of-the-art federated learning (FL) algorithms, our proposed EFDLS wins 20 out of 44 standard UCR2018 datasets and achieves the highest mean accuracy (70.14%) on these datasets. In particular, compared with a single-task baseline, EFDLS obtains 32/4/8 regarding "win"/"tie"/"lose" and results in an improvement of approximately 4% in terms of mean accuracy.


Teaching and learning mathematics in South Africa (SA) is characterised by serious challenges because the pass rate in Mathematics is always below the expected level. The introduction of the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) ushered in new hope that the situation would improve. However, teachers still encounter challenges when they use English as the medium of instruction because learners fail to comprehend the challenging mathematical concepts presented to them in a language which is not their home language. This paper investigates how code-switching can be used as an empowerment strategy to help learners improve their performance in mathematics. Qualitative research methods were used to collect data and the findings reveal that code-switching can be successfully used to facilitate teaching and learning. Keywords: bilingual; code-switching; mathematical expressions; multilingual; paragon; perimeter


XDQRAP (eXtended Distributed Queuing Random Access Protocol) MAC protocol is one of many solutions proposed by IEEE 802.14 Working Group in order to de-ne a common background for broadband/multimedia residential services emerging in a near future based on HFC (Hybrid Fiber Coax) access networks. In this paper we rst present an improvement of such a protocol in order to deal with round trip delays larger than the slot time, preserving the excellent performance of through-put and delay of XDQRAP protocol and avoiding to increase the complexity of the access mechanisms. Finally, a methodology for CBR support is exposed, analyzing the cell delay variation time for diierent slot allocation policies.


The mechanical properties, i.e., the tensile strength, tensile modulus, elongation at rupture, and tensile energy absorption (work of rupture), of a dry-formed network of cellulose fibers are shown to be substantially improved by impregnation of the network with organic solutions of poly(vinyl acetate) (PVAC). With the exception of the tensile strength, the improvement of the mechanical properties in the dry state is, however, dependent not only on the polymer content, but also on the interaction between the solvent and the cellulose fibers constituting the network. A solvent which interacts strongly with cellulose produces a stiffer and less ductile network than a more inert liquid. It is suggested that this effect is the result of a change in the cellulose network structure itself. The solvents used in this study were methanol, acetone, ethyl acetate, chloroform, and toluene.


This report discusses the project that aims to give political visibility to the farmers from Queimados-RJ in association with the City Hall, which does not define in its Master Plan the ruralzone. The team from the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro has been doing a socio--economic and environmental survey with families, from plot to plot, identifying the producingpublic to foment actions that benefit it. The inaccuracy of information makes it difficult to accessagroecological public policies, such as Rural Extension and Institutional Markets. The ruralenvironment consists of a settlement and five other locations, with agro-ecological farmerstrading in the surrounding area. An expansion projection of the industrial district of Queimadosto the settlement area and the uncertainties of permanence in the place has discouragedresidents from investing in their plots, causing the team to also perform an educational workregarding the rights and duties of residents in areas of land reform.


This study investigated the traumatic brain injury (TBI) caseload of a community brain injury service based in a rural area. The total number of referrals received (N = 534) were reviewed over a four and a half year period. Two hundred and seventy six TBI cases were identified. TBI caseload was compared to national and projected local figures as well as findings from a study that investigated community neurorehabilitation teams' caseload. The main findings were that young males made up a high proportion of cases, less TBI cases were identified than suggested by national figures, and older adults made up a higher than expected percentage of the caseload. These findings may have significant implications for the longterm development plans of community-based brain injury rehabilitation services.


In this paper, the finite difference time domain method in spherical coordinates is used to analyze a microstrip conical antenna with a dielectric electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) structure as substrate. The voltage standing wave ratio, matched impedance, maximum gain as well as far-field radiation patterns, are presented. Our study suggests that the microstrip conical antenna on EBG substrate holds sufficient potential as a low-profile antenna with very wideband and high gain characteristics. A time domain study has shown that the antenna distorts the excitation pulse in a moderate way. These features make the proposed antenna suitable for both ultra-wide band systems and as wind-band scan antenna.


From the 10th to the 15th centuries, the counts of Comminges developed their important domain and resisted the ambitions of their powerful neighbors. Alliances, treaties, marriages, wars, everything has been good to preserve their goods. These counts played happily with their personalities, their strengths, their weaknesses, their malice. They supported the economic and social development. The population gradually migrated from the mountains to the plain, first with the help of the Church and the creation of the "sauvetes". Then the liberality of the counts allowed the construction of numerous "bastides" in the 13th century. The county families provided the majority of the Commingeois bishops and reinforced the importance of the Secular Church. By their permanent support to the Regular Church, they favored the establishment of large monastic and templar domains, the development of as much farming land. The progressive close up with the raimondine city of Toulouse, placed the County under his protection after the crusade by the Albigensians in 1218. The war against the English, the devastations of the Black prince in 1355 opened the last page of this story, accompanied by calamities that left in 1453 a bloodless Comminges in the hands of the King of France.


Hardware-based courses, like Robotics, require a lot of laboratory practice. Traditional laboratory exercises on a robotics course are held in a robotics laboratory equipped with proper hardware. Today, besides this kind of traditional laboratories, modern trends are virtual and remote laboratories where simulators are used. In this paper our experiences on the Robotics course, at the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering in Skopje, with respect to using both traditional and modern laboratories, is presented. This Robotics course is introduced and in more detail the hands-on activities students have on the course are described. We have observed that students' hands-on experience in the laboratory improves their overall score on the course. The results of their performances that support this statement are given in this paper. Also their hands-on experience improves their ability and skills for their independent work on robotics projects. Some examples of the students' projects are presented here.


Asparagus racemosus (A.R.) root extract administered orally with the dose of. 30 mg/100 gm body weight daily for 20 days, to the virgin adult female albino rats. On gross examination the effect of the drug showed mammary gland getting prominent, vaginal opening dilated and more numerous blood vessels around the genital organs. The whole uterii of the treated group were found significantly heavier (p<0.001). Microscopic examination of the treated group revealed the hyperplasia of glandular tissue of the mammary gland. The various layers of the wall of vagina and uterus revealed thickening and dilated blood vessels. Compact comification of the vaginal epithelium and other findings, in treated group of animal, indicating the estrogenic effect of the drug. The findings suggest dose related phytoesterogenic action of A.R. root extract. Therapeutic use of A.R., in human as feminine tonic to promote the development of secondary sex characters in young female.


Name of journal:World Journal of Gastroenterology Manuscript NO: 73845 Title: Hepatocellular adenoma: Where are we now? Provenance and peer review: Invited Manuscript; Externally peer reviewed Peer-review model: Single blind Reviewer's code: 03731081 Position: Peer Reviewer Academic degree:MD Professional title: Professor Reviewer's Country/Territory: Russia Author's Country/Territory:United States Manuscript submission date: 2021-12-05 Reviewer chosen by: AI Technique Reviewer accepted review: 2021-12-06 22:23 Reviewer performed review: 2021-12-08 05:59 Review time: 1 Day and 7 Hours


Objective To explore the clinical efficacy of comprehensive nursing intervention on patients with alcohol withdrawal syndrome in clinic. Methods 60 cases of alcohol withdrawal delirium tremors were randomly divided into the integrated nursing intervention group (the research group) and the general nursing intervention group (the control group), with 30 cases in each group. On the basis of drug therapy, the general care, psychological care, cognitive behavior modification, health education and other measures were adopted in the research group. Only the general nursing measure was given in the control group on the basis of drug therapy. The efficacy was assessed using the alcohol withdrawal syndrome scale, self-rating depression scale (SDS), self-rating anxiety scale (SAS), and clinical global impression (CGI). Results The scores of the alcohol withdrawal syndrome scale and clinical global impression (CGI) in the 14th day in the research group were(2.56±0.70) and (3.10±0.20), respectively, which were significantly lower than those of the control group. And the scores of the self-rating depression scale (SDS) and self-rating anxiety scale (SAS) in the 14th day also were significantly lower than those of the control group. There was a statistical meaning (P < 0. 01 ).Conclusions The integrated nursing intervention in combination with the drug therapy contributes to the curative effect of alcohol withdrawal syndrome patients, and to consolidate their rehabilitation effects.

Key words:
Alcohol;  Withdrawal syndrome;  Nursing intervention


We examine the impact of ambiguity, or Knightian uncertainty, on the capital structure decision, using a static tradeoff theory model in which agents are both ambiguity and risk averse. The model confirms the well-known result that greater risk—the uncertainty over outcomes—leads firms to decrease leverage. Conversely, the model indicates that greater ambiguity—the uncertainty over the probabilities associated with the outcomes—leads firms to increase leverage. Using a theoretically based measure of ambiguity, our empirical analysis presents evidence consistent with these notions, showing that ambiguity has an important and distinct impact on capital structure. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance.


This paper presents a comparative study of turbulence models performance in prediction the oscillating characteristics of naturally excited jet flows. The unsteady averaged Navier-Stoks equations for turbulent incompressible flow and five variant turbulence closures are used in this study. The software, FLUENT 6.3.26, was employed for solving the governing equations. Computational results compared with reported experimental data. The standard k-ε and SST k-ω models clearly showed better results than the others. The accuracy of standard k-ε model decreases with decreasing the nozzle inlet velocity and it failed to predict the minimum excitation velocity (kinetic energy) in the fluidic nozzle.


Abstract : The AN/PRC-44(XN-1) is a uhf radio system designed to provide two-way voice communications between personnel roving the flight deck and a fixed command center in the island of an aircraft carrier. The PRC-44 components consist of a transceiver and battery worn by the roving personnel at the waist, and a cloth helmet with earphones in muffs featuring liquid-filled cushions and a boom-mounted microphone (noise cancelling, dynamic). The nonwearable components provided are a receiver for use in the island and a battery charger. Acoustically, the PRC-44 is a good system; speech is intelligible when both talker and listener are in 125 db jet noise. The packaging around the waist is too bulky, mainly due to the large battery that the vacuum tube, uhf circuitry requires. A major deficiency of the PRC-44 system is that it is not designed to handle communications from one man on the flight deck to another, although 18 per cent of the messages in flight deck operations are of this kind. (Author)


Expression features of mouse parotid secretory protein (PSP) in postnatal development of parotid glands have been researched in mRNA level. The copies of PSP mRNA were 4.79E+06~1.32E+08, which were102 times higher than that of glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH, 1.32E+04 copies) in different developmental stages. Messager RNA levels of PSP shifted with developmental stages: increased from birth to 3 weeks of postnatal, reached its peak at 3 weeks, then decreased; at last it kept at a even level at 12 weeks


element for Americans. However, Shyamalan does not invest this child with any extraordinary powers or unique characteristics, nor any special signs or symbols. Rather, he is an ordinary boy with a gift for seeing the tortured souls who are condemned-by their own choice it would seem-to walk the Earth. Shyamalan's is a more natural approach to life after death, eschewing a separated heaven/purgatory/hell for an interactive unity of current and former life.


Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, we assess the relationship between track placement in high school and long-term postsecondary and occupational outcomes among young adults in the United States. We find that young adults in the college-prep track are most likely to earn a college degree. Young adults in the vocational are more likely than those in the college-prep track to have a vocational premium for short-term earning levels. Otherwise, those in the vocational premium in earnings are eventually eclipsed by the academic premium. We also find that some personal characteristics, such as trace, gender, and social class, intersect with the relationship between track placement and our outcome variables. Our findings have theoretical and practical implications for academic tracking and long-term educational and labor market outcomes.


For the estimation of 4-D parameters (carrier frequency, azimuth, range, and polarization) in near-field narrowband sources, a new method based on fourth-order cumulant was presented, which used a polarization sensitive array and the multiple-rotational invariance to estimate 4-D parameters of sources. Without spectral peak searching or parameter pairing, the method can be applied to additive Gaussian noise environments. Furthermore, this method can reduce the loss of array aperture effectively by using a non-centro-symmetric array. The effectiveness is verified by the computer simulations.


The minority opinion of the ruling of the Constitutional Court of Korea stated that Civil Law Article 1008 on the inheritance portions of a special...


The configurational phenomenology of kinks and phonons is examined in the case of a discrete phi 4 chain in the displacive limit. Due to the existence of a lattice, an exact description of phonons in the whole Brillouin zone in terms of asymptotic phase shifts is not possible; it can be shown, however, by means of a simple numerical calculation that the change in the phonon density of states due to the presence of a kink obeys two simple sum rules. This enables one to justify a configurational phenomenology for the discrete lattice, which is in full agreement with the exact (transfer integral) results.


Driving style evaluation system for a motor vehicle, the driving mode is configured to calculate an evaluation index (DSEI) index according to the following summary: Fuel Economy Index (FEI), which indicates the driving style of the motor vehicle driver from a fuel savings point of view, and the corresponding index is calculated based on pre-summary index portion and said corresponding portion of the index is calculated based on a combination of physical quantities, and wherein the pre-summary and partial indices weighted by a weighting factor corresponding dynamic.


PURPOSE
This study compares the health status of gender nonconforming transgender adults with gender-binary transgender peers (i.e., transgender men and transgender women).

METHODS
We performed a retrospective analysis of the 2014-2016 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.

RESULTS
After adjustment for sociodemographic characteristics, proxies for healthcare access, health conditions, and health behaviors, gender nonconforming transgender adults were at increased odds, compared with gender-binary transgender peers, of self-reported poor or fair health and self-reported limitation in any way in any activities because of physical, mental, or emotional problems.

CONCLUSIONS
Gender nonconforming transgender adults experienced worse self-reported health disparities than gender-binary transgender peers.


Fabry-Pérot resonant cavity antennas are investigated from a leaky-wave point of view, and the physics of the leaky waves responsible for the directive beams is explored.


This paper presents selected field measurement results of wind effects on a super-tall building in Hong Kong during the passage of Typhoon Hagupit in September 2008. For comparison purposes, the building's dynamic responses were re-calculated based on the high-frequency force-balance (HFFB) model data obtained in the design stage of the building and the newly identified structural dynamic properties from the field measurements. This provided an excellent opportunity to evaluate the accuracy of the model test results and the adequacy of the techniques used in wind tunnel tests. The comparison of the wind tunnel predictions and the full-scale measurements revealed that the measured acceleration data were consistent with those obtained in the model tests.


After the Soviet Union and Eastern upheaval,international and domestic anti-socialist counter-current surged forward wave upon wave, inconstant persons declared quit the party.In this situation,South Africa,under the pressure,carefully analyzed the reasons for the Soviet Union and Eastern upheaval,thinking not Marxism-Leninism was outdated,nor has socialism been an "end",but the error model which departed and abandoned Marxism-Leninism was outdate.Based on the understanding,South Africa's confidence on socialism faith became stronger.Meanwhile,South Africa's Communist Party realized that only by strengthening the party construction,can the revolution and construction be achieved,It strengthens the party construction in many ways,such as guiding its ideology,organization,the working class vanguard nature,style construction,ideological and political education,as well as inter-party relations.


Aims and methods We present a review of our use of the Ilizarov apparatus in a non-acute NGO hospital in Cambodia specialising in limb reconstruction. Frames are applied without on table image intensification. A retrospective case-note analysis of Ilizarov apparatus use for all indications was conducted. 53 frames were applied between November 2005 and October 2011. Indications for application were chronic open fracture, osteomyelitis, fracture malunion, infective and non-infective non-union, bone lengthening, primary bone tumour resection, ankle fusion, congenital deformity or pseudarthrosis, chronic hip dislocation, or a combination of the above. Results Median delay in presentation was 104 weeks for all indications (range 4–864). Median treatment length was 21 weeks (3–76). The most frequent complication was pin-site infection. This occurred in 18 patients (34%). Return to theatre occurred in 21 patients (40%). Indications were frame adjustment, pin addition or removal, addition of bone graft or re-osteotomy. Failure of union occurred in three patients. These rates are comparable with those published in both Asian and Western literature. Conclusions Our data demonstrate the versatility of the Ilizarov apparatus and its importance in limb reconstruction in a developing world setting. Our centre relies on it as a cost-effective tool for traditional and novel indications. In our centre the apparatus is applied without x-ray control and is maintained without a dedicated outreach pin-site care programme. Despite this our complication rates are comparable with western literature. We therefore recommend it as a safe and cost-effective tool for use in other developing world settings.


Carbon (δCV PDB) and oxygen (δOV PDB) isotopic ratios of recent lake sediments (n=33) and lithological samples (n=6) were obtained to investigate of carbon source and hydro climate changes in Lake Acı göl Basin. Recent lake samples were collected as surface (n=15), core (n=13) and shallow core samples (n=5). Discrete samples, totally 13 samples, were collected every 5cm of core from recent lake sediments. The δOV PDBvalues of 33 samples from different sediments and lithology (n=6) varied between -9.7h and 6.2hδCV PDB values of all samples ranged between -5.1h and 2.1hL̇ithology samples have negative oxygen isotope values changing between -9.7 h and -1.3h and carbon isotope values varying between -5.1 h ile 2.1hδCV PDB and δOV PDB isotope core data are positive ranging between 0.9h and 0.8h and 2.8h and 6.2h respectively. Lithology samples have negative δOV PDB isotope values due to the their calcite contents. Recent surface lake sediments samples collected different location of lakes and classified as covered always (CAbLW) or covered seasonally (CSbLW) by lake waters. The δOV PDBand δCV PDB values of CSbLW sediments vary between -1.9 h and 4.9h -2.0 h and 0.6 h respectively. In contrast to, CAbLW sediments have negative δCV PDBvalues ranged between -3.7h and -0.9h and positive δOV PDBvalues changed between 1.3h and 2.8hṪhe positive δOV PDBvalues of CAbLW sediments indicate that carbonate precipitation occurs under evaporation effect. The strong positive correlation identified between δOV PDBand δCV PDBfor each distinct group of sediment sample. The correlation coefficient between the δOV PDBand δCV PDB is 0.67, 0.87, and 0.78 for CSbLW, CAbLW and core samples, respectively. The strong correlation for each sediment group indicates that lake basin has a closed basin system and carbonate precipitation occurred from saturated lake water. The extreme δOV PDBand δCV PDBanomaly were obtained at 4-6cm and 30-32 cm, and 18-22cm and 22-26cm range of the core samples, respectively. The positive δOV PDBanomaly along the core samples indicates that lake basin has always semi arid-arid climate. However, the extreme anomaly of δOV PDB in core samples reveals that in this sedimentation range lake basin has a severe drought climate and high saline environment.


The first fully operational mid-IR (3–5 μm) 256×256 IR-FPA camera system based on a type-II InAs/GaSb short-period superlattice showing an excellent noise equivalent temperature difference below 10 mK and a very uniform performance has been realized. We report on the development and fabrication of the detecor chip, i.e., epitaxy, processing technology and electro-optical characterization of fully integrated InAs/GaSb superlattice focal plane arrays. While the superlattice design employed for the first demonstrator camera yielded a quantum efficiency around 30%, a superlattice structure grown with a thicker active layer and an optimized V/III BEP ratio during growth of the InAs layers exhibits a significant increase in quantum efficiency. Quantitative responsivity measurements reveal a quantum efficiency of about 60% for InAs/GaSb superlattice focal plane arrays after implementing this design improvement.


A letter Nelson wrote to R. E. Lee nearly one year into his presidency at Washington College, in which he comments on the much-improved condition of the school. The letter is brief and describes quotidian elements of Lexington and the University, yet provides a perspective on life and exemplifies the immense respect General Lee both commanded and evoked in the faculty and students.


Growing social insecurity makes monitoring of public places a modern day necessity. As a consequence, the popularity of public surveillance systems increases. The security of such surveillance systems plays a critical role as their compromise has both a technical and social impact. On the other hand, the complexity of surveillance systems is growing as the system architecture and application has to fulfil various requirements of ever demanding project scenarios.This paper concentrates on the security issues of modern surveillance systems, highlighting the complex security issues involved with heterogeneity of hosting networks, storage sub-systems and various requirements for the development of software application. We begin with explaining the techniques used in video surveillance, whilst providing basic understanding of the functions and demands of monitoring applications. In order to develop a secure surveillance system it is essential to fully understand the main security risks and have knowledge of probable attacks on these systems. A review of security threats is given.We propose the classification of security issues at various architectural levels including a review of the mechanisms to be applied.  Based on this, classification the deployment examples are provided.The introduction of the main factors building up the complexity is provided and the list of security risks encountered during the implementation is given.  We will also propose the overview of possible solutions and provide a general conclusion on the security of future surveillance systems


The ability to achieve ubiquitous connectivity and run powerful 'Apps' on today's Smart phones requires a front-end radio able to handle tremendous data rates; and that, requires access to the full bandwidth owned by service providers. Once, the front-end radio consisted of a single power amplifier (PA), filter/duplexer, a switch and a low noise amplifier (LNA). Early on, a cell phone might be able to access 2 or 3 frequency bands. Today, the iPhone 7 accesses 23 to 24 GSM, CDMA and LTE frequency bands, while the Galaxy flag ship phones from Samsung have 16 bands (not counting the GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and NFC radios). Power amplifier, Low noise amplifier and switch functions can be combined-important for cost and size — but, proliferation of usable bands has driven up filter count. New bands are being created (opening up more frequency spectrum) and more challenging; existing bands are now being combined in what is called Carrier Aggregation. This requires better performance from the filter and also drives filters to become smaller as handset manufacturers struggle to add more filters into a limited space. This has created (in just a few years) a whole new billion dollar industry focused on building high quality ultra-miniature filters; An industry where better quality filters enable better wireless communication, which-in turn-drives the technology to build better filters.


Based on investigations on highway construction projects in Chongqin City and Guizhou Province,the environment impact characteristics of highway constructions were analyzed.Some shortages in EIA and environmental management were analyzed and several new environment management opinions were put forward:1.carring out dynamic management with whole procedure of highway construction; 2.paying attention to separating effect to wild animals,landscape resources conservation,environment supervision during construction period,ecological benefit,and providing more environmental data; 3.handling the envionmental problems with new techniques in the expressway construction; 4.broadening the knowledge in environment of highway workers and environmental managers and raising the level of education.


The invention relates to a detection device of output signals of an SAS (Serial Attached Small Computer System Interface). The detection device of the output signals of the SAS comprises a board body, an SAS female connector, an SAS male connector and first to fourth groups of SMA (Serial Microprocessor Array) connecting heads, wherein the SAS female connector is used for being connected with the SAS of electronic equipment, and the SAS male connector is used for being connected onto the SAS of a system; when the first group of SMA connecting heads are connected with an oscillograph to test a pair of output signals of the electronic equipment, the second group of SMA connecting heads are connected to the third group of SMA connecting heads so that the electronic equipment is in communication with a server connected to the system; and when the second group of SMA connecting heads are connected with the oscillograph to test the other pair of output signals of the electronic equipment, the first group of SMA connecting heads are connected to the fourth group of SMA connecting heads so that the electronic equipment is in communication with the server connected to the system. The output signals of the SAS of the electronic equipment can be accurately detected by the detection device provided by the invention.


Metal-ferroelectric-insulator-semiconductor (MFIS) capacitors with Nb-doped BiFeO3 (BFO) ferroelectric layer and HfO2 insulator layer have been fabricated. The purpose of Nb doping is to improve the ferroelectric properties by reducing the leakage current; the insulator layer is to suppress the inter-diffusion and reaction between the ferroelectric layer and silicon substrate. In this study, the process parameters include the Nb doping concentration, Ar/O2 ratio during sputtering, RTA temperature, and HfO2 thickness. The surface morphology and crystalline phase of annealed films were analyzed by AFM and XRD, respectively. Moreover, the electrical properties of the MFIS capacitors were characterized through capacitance-voltage (C-V) and current-voltage (I-V) measurements. AFM and XRD techniques indicate that the crystallization of annealed films increases as RTA temperature. C-V and I-V measurements reveal that the ferroelectric memory performance can be significantly improved through Nb doping and O2 incorporation in the BFO films due to Fe-site substitution by Nb atoms and reduction of oxygen vacancies. Moreover, for amorphous HfO2 insulator layers, the memory window increases with HfO2 thickness due to reduction of charge injection. However, on the other hand, a thicker HfO2 layer results in a larger voltage drop across the insulator layer, which may dominantly narrow down the memory window. The maximum ferroelectric memory window is 2.98 V obtained from a sweep voltage of ± 8 V for the samples with 40-nm-thick HfO2 insulator and RTA temperature of 600 ℃. This good ferroelectric memory performance of the MFIS structure shows its feasibility for nonvolatile memory applications. Keywords: BiFeO3, Ferroelectric, HfO2, Metal-ferroelectric-insulator- semiconductor


Aming at the advanced forming method about fine blanking,its definition is introduced.The fine blanking has particular advantages by comparing with the traditional punch.At the same time,based on the current situation and developing direction of the fine blanking in China and abroad,the differences are compared.At last,the developing trend and solving methods of the fine blanking in China are prospected.


The purpose of this paper is to examine teachers' attitude and teachers' needs concerning the use of electronic-portfolio assessment in ESP courses in some Institutes of Higher Education in Shiraz, Fars province. Thirty five teachers of institutes of higher education participated in this study.  In an attempt to investigate teachers' attitude towards electronic-portfolio assessment in ESP courses, survey questionnaire concerning the use of student portfolio assessment was employed. Findings of the present study revealed that teachers still needed help in utilizing all steps of student portfolio assessment. Findings also indicated that this study provide valuable guidelines and implications for educational authorities in universities in order to help ESP teachers meet their needs and develop their performance on the use of student portfolio assessment especially E-portfolio assessment.


Single channel Blind Source Separation (SCBSS) is a challenging problem for several real-world practical applications. The existing SCBSS methodologies depend upon the properties of the sources present in the mixture and hence do not remain truly blind. Also, the solutions are found to be suboptimal and limited in application. In this paper, we present an SCBSS methodology using a state-parameter estimation approach to eliminate the constraints on the source signals such as statistical independence and frequency disjoint spectra. A Dual Square Root Unscented Kalman Filter (D-SRUKF) estimator has been proposed, which demonstrates higher numerical accuracy and improved stability compared to the widely used Dual Extended Kalman Filter (D-EKF). Simulations have been performed for separating mixed signals with overlapping spectra such as speech and biomedical signals. The proposed methodology demonstrates higher Signal-to-Interference Ratio (SIR) and Signal-to-Distortion Ratio (SDR) when the current methodologies even fail to separate the sources. The results also show that the proposed DSRUKF SCBSS is 15% more accurate than the state-of-the-art D-EKF SCBSS and has higher stability owing to the square root formulation of D-SRUKF source estimator.


The volatile organic compound (VOC) emitted in car is dangerous to the human's health. The types, emission source, toxicity and determination methods are discussed in this paper. It is very necessary to establish the standard rules of VOC in car. During the manufacture of cars, the environmental friendly materials and new technology should be used to decrease the emission of VOC.


Playing sports alone does not develop character, and sports in a corrupt context will develop bad character, but sports played according to God's plan develops character that honors and glorifies God and develops people who have a deeper understanding of how God works in their lives and how they can serve God even after their playing days are over." Posting about the morality of supporting football as well as ethics in football from a Christian perspective from In All Things an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world. http://inallthings.org/why-we-should-watch-football/ Posting is part one of a response to Martin E. Marty's article of January 26, 2015, Football and Ethics which can be found at https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings /football-and-ethics-martin-e-marty. Part two can be found at http://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/faculty_work/141/


The epithelial sodium channel (ENaC) is expressed in kidney cortical collecting duct (CCD) cells and regulated by aldosterone (aldo). Aldo increases ENaC expression, apical membrane density and the expression of regulatory proteins responsible for delivering and maintaining ENaC at the cell surface. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) that pair to mRNA of coding genes to direct their post‐transcriptional repression present ideal candidates to facilitate aldo's action.


In this paper, the frequency-dependent effective permittivity concept is applied to construct a frequency-dependent (lossy) Smith-chart to analyze microstrip structure characteristics. The proposed algorithm depicting the dynamic permittivity of the microstrip structure directly leads to a convenient and modified Smith-chart representation that includes the frequency-dependent influence of fringing field and the lossy characteristics cohesively. The efficacy of the model is illustrated with an example concerning a microstrip patch antenna for wireless LAN applications. Relevant simulations show that the input impedances calculated from the model are more accurate than those from the previous model in the literature by comparing to the measure results, as illustrated with an example of a patch antenna. This model is compatible for CAD efforts with MATLABtrade facilitating fast and user-friendly implementations. Further, as far as the author knows of, this is the first attempt in depicting the characteristics of a microstrip antenna via Cole-Cole diagram format


since its introduction in the classic paper by Gaar et al. ([2][1]), determination of the microvascular filtration coefficient, K f, has become a popular approach for quantifying the lung microvascular barrier. The method entails establishing a sustained step increase of the left atrial pressure to


The agglomeration health output effect of the medical service industry in the era of big data is an important part of the agglomeration innovation of medical resources. This paper used the regression model of data mining to set up the fixed effect model and system GMM model to study the relationship between the agglomeration of medical service industry and resident's health level, based on the panel data of 31 provinces of China from 2003 to 2017. The results show that the health outcome of the medical industrial agglomeration is positive and different in provinces. The influence of medical service cluster on residents' health level in the eastern region fails the significance test, while the medical service cluster in the central and western regions can significantly improve residents' health level. And, this effect is also related to the characteristics of medical resources, economic development, demographic characteristics, and other heterogeneous factors. On this basis, the paper puts forward policy suggestions to promote the market structure of the medical industry from the aspects of strengthening synergies and policy guidance.


The magazine A Violeta appeared in 1916, in Cuiaba, capital of Mato Grosso, deriving from the Literary Bosom "Julia Lopes" and was one of the most useful magazines of the State and of Brazil. The magazine circulated since 1916 up to 1950, approximately, and was configured as a meaningful vehicle of divulgation about feminine and feminist causes. The column "Chronica" was published during the 34 years that the magazine circulated and registered a lot of events of the cuiabana and mato-grossense society, which helps us to understand many facets of "cousa grauda" – the History.


The base–promoted elimination reactions of 1,1,1-trichloro-2,2-bis(dimethoxyphenyl)ethanes were investigated. The bis(3,4-dimethoxyphenyl)ethane was found to be more reactive than the bis(2,5-dimethoxyphenyl)ethane and the latter more reactive than the bis(2,4-dimethoxyphenyl)ethane. Kinetic data relative to 1,1,1-trihalo(chloro or bromo)-2,2-bis(3,4-dimethoxyphenyl)ethanes show that the tribromo reacts faster than trichloro derivative and that the reactions are general-base promoted with Bronsted β values of about 0.6. A kinetic isotope effect, with kH/kD ratio ranging from 3.5 to 5.7, for the base-promoted elimination reaction of 1,1,1-trichloro-2,2-bis(3,4-dimethoxyphenyl)ethane was found. Tunneling occurs for methoxide and ethoxide ion-promoted eliminations. Activation parameters for alkoxy-promoted elimination show a similar trend for chloride and bromide derivatives. The data collected seem to confirm that there is contiguity between E1cBirr and E2 mechanisms. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Increasing wire delays and memory capacities motivate new ways of designing 12 and 13 caches. NUCA (non-uniform cache architecture) has received considerable attention in the last few years. While most of the prior NUCA-based efforts have focused on data placement, data replacement, and migration related issues, this paper studies the problem of data search. Specifically, it proposes and experimentally evaluates several data search schemes for NUCA L2 caches that exhibit different performance-power trade-offs. These schemes are based on predicting the next ring (set of banks) to be accessed in a NUCA L2, and checking the banks in that ring first. In this work, we present the details of these prediction schemes, and compare them to two alternate approaches: searching all rings in parallel, and searching rings sequentially, starting with the one that is closest to the CPU.


The current article analyzes the discourse of two French trainee teachers who teach French as a foreign language at Nucleo de Linguas Estrangeiras, the language institute of the State University of Ceara. Being subjects of a research conducted by Farias (2011), they participated in a dialogic and reflexive process of docent activity analysis, called self-confrontation. By doing so, we aimed at analyzing the linguistic-discursive marks in order to observe if there was the establishment of several space-times or chronotope in the discourse of the protagonists, during the process of self-confrontation. We used the theories developed by Bakhtin and the Circle on dialogism and on chronotope, the studies of Vieira and Faita (2003), Clot et al.(2000), Amorim (2012) and Machado (1995; 1998).  In our results, we could  evidence, from the analysis conducted, the various forms oflinguistic-discursive manifestations of chronotope in the discourse of the research participants, such as the use of verbs and adverbs to mark time and space of the enunciation scenes analyzed by the docents.


We present a statistical approach for identifying important input features in single hidden layer feedforward neural networks trained via backpropagation. Our approach involves the simultaneous comparison of saliency (importance) measures of candidate features to the saliency measure of a known noisy feature using a hypothesis test for the equality of means. Applying a Bonferroni-type test statistic, we are able to screen the entire feature set to within a specitied degree of statistical confidence. We demonstrate the reliable identification of noisy features for a modified version of 'Fisher's Iris' problem and a real-world discrimination problem containing a feature which contributes little to classification.


The system goal is fixed as the choice and optimization of passenger travel-transfer station.Then the inquiry method of all kinds of travel schedules is proposed and Railway Passenger Travel Aided Decision System(RPTADS) is developed with WEBGIS.The aim of the system is to provide the query result to passengers,and the optimal route will be displayed on the map intuitively,which makes the synchronous connection reality between the text inquiry result and the map specific display.In addition,the timetable database of railway passenger transportation can be renewed timely by background decision software according to line conditions.


The synthesis and mesomorphic properties of a methacrylate-containing ferrocene monomer bearing two flexible chains at the 1,1'-positions and the corresponding side-chain homopolymer are described. Both polymer and monomer showed enantiotropic smectic C and smectic A phases. The liquid-crystalline phases were fully characterized by means of X-ray diffraction experiments. Dilatometric measurements pointed to a head-to-tail molecular arrangement of the monomeric units within the smectic A phase. The results described in this report confirm that ferrocene-containing thermotropic side-chain liquid-crystalline polymethacrylates respresent a valuable family of metallomesogenic polymers.


The article presents the stages of generating the model of multi-level regulation of oxygen delivery in the presence of ischemic heart disease. Ranking of the mechanisms involved in the compensation of abnormal cardiac function was performed. Significance of erythropoietin and the factors modulating its effectiveness was determined for different types of disease.


should read Maupassant's Boule de Suif. There is a lot of imprecise language. Why call Imperial Germany "pseudo-constitutional" (p. 2)? Its brand of limited monarchy is precisely what many continental Europeans thought of as 'constitutional,' as opposed to parliamentary or democratic government. We are told that "the Party was co-terminous with the state" (p. 130), but that "by and large the Party and the civil service remained distinct" (p. 132). And the identification of workers with the Third Reich in its last years must be ascribed to something other than their embourgeoisement (p. 201). Despite its wealth of information and shrewd comment, the book shows an opportunity lost. The author has read widely, even if not always in the best sources. It is not an original book, but that does not matter. That there is a vast demand for a work that will explain Nazi Germany to the non-specialist reader was shown by the sales of William Shirer's amateurish The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. A good synopsis of how the Third Reich functioned is more important than reading another fifty microfilmed security reports. But synoptic is not the word that The Twelve-Year Reich suggests to the reader's mind.


Abstract Drawing has been inextricably entwined with architecture since ancient times. Today, architectural drawing is moribund if not already dead, replaced by technologies that encode and store design information in digital databases. This change has taken place with unbelievable rapidity, especially viewed from an historical perspective. This paper examines how drawing has affected our fundamental ideas about architecture and what effects its demise may have on architecture in the future. The aim is to appreciate what drawing has meant for architecture and to assess the latter's drawing-less prospects, hence a "prospective requiem". 4 Form-making without Form Making 8 component of experiential learning, as is the case with pilots, equipment operators, and military personnel. Closing Points While a cloth object is a direct adaption of the special-effects tool into architectural form-making, similar results can be achieved with other software tools, such conceptual massing with finite element analysis in Revit Structures Extension or Inventor. However, these tools lack the bidirectional feedback mechanism that dynamics-based tools such as cloth can offer. Bidirectional relationship between an input and output is critical because individual parameters not only can be used to drive design, but also can be informed by it. These output values can be passed for further manipulation or used to validate design. The examples discussed above point to the need for better bidirectional relationships between parameters used in design, and particularly a greater understanding of how to handle systems of multiple parameters and complex evaluation criteria. While present architectural software seldom provides bidirectional functionalities with abilities to comprehensively redefine design at any stage of its development, the lessons learned from SFX software could be applied to set or the expectations ffuture BIM software. These lessons can also point to software functionalities that are particularly effective in "mentoring" students and facilitating their learning. Digital tools, through their ability to interactively simulate design, allow for developing forms of virtual experience that could, to some extent, compensate for the lack of real-life experience. Finally, parametric and quantitative approach to design problems can help students to navigate difficulties with prioritizing various design criteria and developing authentically comprehensive projects.


The invention discloses an electronic device and a process method applying screws with adjustable structures. The electronic device applying the screws with the adjustable structures comprises a metal structure, an internal circuit and a plurality of screws with adjustable structures. Each screw comprises an upper surface, a lower surface and a screw pile, wherein the lower surface is connected with the screw pile, a coarse structure is arranged on the lower surface, when the screws are locked in the metal structure, the coarse structures damage an insulation layer on the metal structure so that the metal structure is electrically connected with a grounding part in the internal circuit. The invention also provides a process method applying the screws with the adjustable structures. Therefore, during manufacturing, the step of removing the insulation layer on the surface of the metal structure of the electronic device can be saved, so that static electricity is released to the metal structure through the screws by the grounding layer of the internal circuit of the electronic device to amplify the whole grounding body, thus manufacture cost is reduced and time required for manufacturing is decreased.


The utility model discloses a split-type mobile phone protective case. The protective case comprises a case body mainly composed of a top border, a bottom border, a first side border and a second side border. At least one ends of the first side border and the second side border on the same side are provided with snap connectors. The snap connector is internally provided with a groove. Two ends of the top border and/or the bottom border are provided with slots for accommodating the snap connectors. The slot is internally provided with a hook to cooperate with the groove in the snap connector. The first side border and the second side border are integrated with the top border and the bottom border through the grooves and the hooks. While the split-type mobile phone protective case provided by the utility model is in use, the components are put at corresponding positions of a mobile phone, and are assembled by snap connection, so that the protective case is convenient in assembly and disassembly.


T o avoid the pirfalls of u i n g a convenrional paper-and.pencil rocial dirrancc measure with young children, a cognirive.manipulstive lark war devised to avoid absvacrnerr and confusion of rapping more rhan one dimension. Such have marked written rcchniqucr riore Bagardus (1933) firrr iotroduced his insrrument. Before each o f 120 elementary privare-school children in rhe Uoired Sates and Canada (10 boys and 10 girls at each of Grader 2, 4, aod 6) a colored plasric square war placed. The child war told that chis was America (for American children) or Canada (far Caoadian children). On the banam left-hand corner of the square was laid a quarrer-circle of a differenr color, represenring the child's city, and on this a rectaogle of a third color reprereariag rhe child's neighborhood. A little matchstick man was then placed in the neighborhood arm ro represent rhe child. Each of rhrec other matchstick men, reprereoring a Canadian, Chinese, or Rurriaa child, war then broughr our and placed i n rhe counrry area S war asked,


Background: There are many evidences that low-level laser therapy (LLLT) may stimulate nerve regeneration. Objective: The aim of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of LLLT in enhancing functional recovery in children with Bell's palsy (BP). Subjects: Twenty patients with BP of axonotemetic type were included (thirteen males and seven females). They ranged in age between 12 and 15 years old. They were randomly divided into two groups of equal number, study and control. Methods: The severity of BP was assessed by "House-Brackmann grading scale". Also, facial symmetry was measured at rest by using tape measurement. Both groups received physical therapy program. Additionally, the control group received placebo laser while the study group received continuous infrared (IR) laser 830 nm, 100mW with dose of 6.0 J/cm, at five points overlying the main facial trunk and four motor branches of the facial nerve. The study continued for four week, three times / week, every session continued for 60 minutes. Results: The results revealed no significant difference between the study and the control groups after treatment, neither in House-Brackmann grades nor in facial symmetry measurement. Conclusion: It can be concluded that infrared laser, with the parameters used in the current study, was not effective in improving functional outcome in BP.


The present invention relates to a method for decoding video signals. The method includes the following steps: obtaining prediction mode information of a current block, the prediction mode informationspecifying whether the current block is an inter-frame encoding block or an intra-frame encoding block; exporting an intra-frame prediction mode of the current block by responding to a condition thatthe current block is the intra-frame encoding block; on the basis of the intra-frame prediction mode of the current block, determining a scanning type of the current block; on the basis of the scanning type of the current block, obtaining a transformation coefficient; performing inverse quantization on the transformation coefficient; determining whether a transform type of the current block is DCT (discrete cosine transform) or DST (discrete sine transform); and on the basis of the transform type, performing inverse transformation on the inversely quantized transformation coefficient, and determining the transform type by being independent from the intra-frame prediction mode.


IT IS WELL established that diabetes is a primary cause for the development of kidney disease accounting for 40% of all new cases. In 1997, there was an estimated 16 million people with diabetes (approximately 5 million undiagnosed) with an expected increase of 165% by the year 2050. Diabetes management and control of underlying complications should be an ongoing priority. However, keeping abreast of new approaches, medications, monitors, lancets, and syringes can be challenging. There are millions of Web sites, articles, and resources available, but between journals and diabetes, who has time to read everything? Included in this Product Update is a overview on the most recent advances and resources available in diabetic care.


Digital texts can be made accessible to children with developmental dyslexia by presenting them in a simplified layout, using suitable fonts, or using text highlighting that is synchronized with audio. However, the impact of this last method on readability (as measured by eye movement) for children with developmental dyslexia remains unknown; it is unclear whether the color and length of text highlighting influences readability. We examined these issues in two experiments with seven children with developmental dyslexia (aged 7–14 years). In the first experiment, we clarified the relation between readability and text highlighting with synchronous audio by measuring the eye movements of children with developmental dyslexia. Readability was determined using the frequency of eye fixations. In the second experiment, we determined which styles of text highlighting best supported digital text reading among children with developmental dyslexia. Digital texts were created using different text highlighting colors and band lengths, and then were read using Apple iBooks on a 9.7-inch Apple iPad Air. We observed that children with developmental dyslexia found it easier to read along when audio was synchronized with text highlighting, particularly for the highlighting style that used a blue band for whole sentences. The second experiment showed that children with developmental dyslexia found it particularly easy to read digital texts that were highlighted with blue or yellow bands, both for single sentences and for single words. The method of presenting visual information for reading might help children with developmental dyslexia read more easily.


War weapons and Wushu equipment had been a historical stage of combination.With the scientific and technical development,war weapons have a fundamental change,Wushu equipment also changed,the final result is Wushu equipment from the weapons of war,embarked on the way of national fitness development.Through using the method of literature,logical analysis and observation,this paper makes analysis on it.


Several side effects have been reported during treatment with vemurafenib, including multiple benign lesions and, less frequently, atypical melanocytic proliferations and second primary melanomas.


The tsunami disaster caused severe and wide reaching devastation along the west and east coastal area of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam Province. Afterward, Indonesian Government published a map of tsunami disaster prone area where North Aceh District has a high and medium level of tsunami disaster risk. Unfortunately, this area is lack of disaster management. Thus, it was becoming a challenge to provide mitigation facilities.The purpose of this study is to determine the optimum evacuation buildings at the minimum distance from the residential areas as well as evacuation shelters and minimum aid distribution time in order to mitigate tsunami disasters in the future and create a resilient community.This study also sight to answer the following questions: first, where is the best location to build the evacuation facilities referring to minimum distance from villagers' houses to the candidate of evacuation building/site? Second, where are the optimized evacuation shelters that will be becoming temporary residences for the refugees after disaster? Last, which is the optimized route for distributing aid to refugee in shelters referring to the shortest travel distribution time?After identified the problems of this study, it is continued by identified the study area which divided into five zones. Thereafter, it identified the villagers' houses and the possible building to be proposed for evacuation building. Data used in this study are distance from villagers' houses to evacuation buildings/sites and to evacuation shelters, population data, land use and infrastructure data. Those data are analysed referring to linear programming through VBA as the calculation tool by quantitative and qualitative method. Evacuation building for Krueng Matee and Beuringen (Zone 1) will be built in three sites which total distance is 54,311.58 meter. Meanwhile, the second site and Masjid Attaqwa in Gampong Sawang as Zone 2 is the most optimized place to build evacuation building referring to the summation of distance, 35,287.98 meter. In Zone 3, constructed evacuation shelter is tents in Gampong Pie. Whilst Zone 4, RISHA will be developed in Gampong Pulo. Moreover the shortest route to distributing the aid to both shelters is Alternative 4. The routes are from logistic center in Blang Peuria to Shelter 1 in Gampong Pie and then continue to Shelter 2 in Gampong Pulo through national road network. The return route is via national road network from Shelter 2 in Gampong Pulo to logistics center in Blang Peuria. The calculated time is 47.3208 minute for each trip.


Deer damage has been a problem, to a greater or lesser extent, in Ballinglen forest for the past fifteen years. Up to 1980, the main species affected was Sitka spruce, and although severe bark stripping occurred in many cases, by and large the trees survived and recovered...


Wetlands provide many benefits, including flood attenuation, groundwater recharge, water-quality improvement, and habitat for wildlife. As their structure and functions are sensitive to changes in hydrology, characterizing the water budgets of wetlands is crucial to effective management and conservation. The groundwater component of a budget, which often controls resiliency and water quality, is difficult to estimate and can be costly, time-consuming, and invasive. This study used a GIS approach using a digital elevation model (DEM) and the elevations of lakes, wetlands, streams, and hydric soils to produce a water-table surface raster for a portion of the Itasca Moraine, Minnesota, U.S. The water-table surface was used to delineate groundwatersheds and groundwater flow paths for lakes and wetlands, and map recharge and discharge rates across the landscape. Specific conductance and pH, which depend on the hydrological processes that dominate a wetlands water budget, were measured in the field to verify this modeling technique. While the pH of surface waters varied in the study area, specific conductance increased from 16.7 to 357.5 μS/cm downgradient along groundwater flow paths, suggesting increased groundwater interaction. Our results indicate that basic GIS tools and often freely available public-domain elevation datasets can be used to map and characterize the interaction of groundwater in the water budgets of lakes and wetlands, as exemplified by the Itasca Moraine region. Combining this with grid cell-by-cell water balance provides a means to estimate recharge and discharge, thereby affording a way to quantify groundwater contribution to and from lakes and wetlands. Applied elsewhere, this cost-efficient technique can be used to assess the vulnerability of lakes and wetlands to changes in land use, groundwater development, and climate change.


Currently the relevance of the topical search engine results is low,which can not satisfy the needs of the professional users.In order to provide a solution to tackle the problem above,this paper takes LIS Blog for example,constructing the LIS Blog Search Engine based on the open source search engine-Nutch.


There is an observable trend in Spanish contemporary fiction to reveal the logic behind the creation of a new paradigm of reality. According to Gianni Vattimo, Daniel Innerarity, and Jean Baudrillard, this paradigm, initially described as a spectacle, ends up occupying the space of everyday life. Within this framework, the counter-nostalgic and "thinking" novel adds to the communicative function of language a destabilizing intent that allows the novelist to scratch the protective surface that prevents the subject from having contact with him- or herself and with his or her surroundings.


This practice-based study explored the relationship between text-based messages and audio-based communication within the contemporary urban environment. Issues relating to signage overload and urban movement were identified at an early stage in this study, and pedestrian wayfinding was then selected as a form of communication that allowed for exploration of all the key issues.

Two practice-based approaches to the research were developed that utilised both analysis and experimentation. Initially informal and then subsequently structured investigations of text and audio-based communications in real environments were conducted. Subsequently structured case studies were undertaken in carefully selected external environments, whence a series of charts and macroscopic drawings were produced facilitating data collection and analysis by the researcher. Analysis of findings indicated that whereas in interior public spaces the combination of text and audio in messages was relatively well established, there were few examples of wayfinding design that employ a combination of text and audio design currently existing within the external environments investigated in the case studies. It was also indicated that signage overload and visual clutter made pedestrian wayfinding problematic in the urban environment. Speculative design proposals investigate possible solutions to these issues. From this practical and theoretical basis guidelines have been derived with a view to supporting practitioners in this new area.


The experiment indicates that under general temperature, acid and anaerobic condition, adding rational nutrient and electron supplier, with J13 bacteria from mining water adopting consequent culture in high density, pulp leaching in advance, microbe immobilization and enhance energy transmitting, which the leaching time is 3 days. The rate of metal leaching is Co 95.2%, Ni 97.5%, Mn 95.8%, Cu 81.2%. The same experiment was carried out on land magnetic ores, the leaching time is 9 days. Thus, a new method is set up that under the enforce bacteria of two ores are coupled and reduced to leach the valuable metals from oxide manganese ore.


Purpose To identify concepts important to understanding the experiences of adults with focal onset seizures (FOS) and evaluate clinical outcome assessments (COAs) for measuring these concepts in clinical trials of treatments for FOS. Methods A search of published qualitative research, clinical trials, and approved product labels for FOS treatments was performed to develop a conceptual disease model (CDM) of patients' experience of living with FOS. Concepts of interest (COI) were selected, and a second literature search was conducted to identify COAs measuring these concepts. Ten COAs were selected and reviewed to document their development process, evidence of measurement properties, and methods for interpreting change scores using criteria proposed in regulatory guidelines for patient-reported outcomes to support label claims. Results Concepts identified from the published literature (13 articles, 1 conference abstract), 24 clinical trials, and 8 product labels were included in a novel CDM. Impacts on physical, cognitive, and social and emotional function were chosen as COI for evaluating treatment outcomes for FOS; the additional concept of social support and coping strategies was chosen to understand patients' lived experiences. From 51 unique COAs identified, 10 were selected based on their potential coverage of the COI; some symptom severity and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) COAs covered multiple COI. Of these 10, 8 COAs evaluated impacts/limitations on physical function, 8 measured social and emotional impacts, and 5 assessed social support and coping strategies. While most assessments had gaps in evidence validating their measurement properties, 2 COAs measuring symptom severity and 1 COA measuring HRQoL had evidence confirming their potential utility in clinical trials to support label claims. Conclusion This research provides insights into the experience of patients with FOS and identifies COAs that measure concepts considered to support endpoints in clinical trials for FOS.


We have witnessed the rapid development of information technology in recent years. One of the key phenomena is the fast, near-exponential increase of data. Consequently, most of the traditional data classification methods fail to meet the dynamic and real-time demands of today's data processing and analyzing needs--especially for continuous data streams. This paper proposes an improved incremental learning algorithm for a large-scale data stream, which is based on SVM (Support Vector Machine) and is named DS-IILS. The DS-IILS takes the load condition of the entire system and the node performance into consideration to improve efficiency. The threshold of the distance to the optimal separating hyperplane is given in the DS-IILS algorithm. The samples of the history sample set and the incremental sample set that are within the scope of the threshold are all reserved. These reserved samples are treated as the training sample set. To design a more accurate classifier, the effects of the data volumes of the history sample set and the incremental sample set are handled by weighted processing. Finally, the algorithm is implemented in a cloud computing system and is applied to study user behaviors. The results of the experiment are provided and compared with other incremental learning algorithms. The results show that the DS-IILS can improve training efficiency and guarantee relatively high classification accuracy at the same time, which is consistent with the theoretical analysis.


Hoca,the protagonist in Orhan Pamuk's third novel The White Castle,is a significant figure. First,he is an allusion to the Father of Turkey Ataturk and Osman Empire. Second,he is a crazy,self-abased and impatient man,a manifestation of the mentality of a non-West or weak civilization on its way towards"being self"and "becoming others". Third,he is an exponent of such philosophical ideas as"the role of identity"and "the universal desire to be others". All these constitute the most important message of Hoca: the love of twin brothers,a new form of relationship between East and West. This is also the ultimate theme of The White Castle.


The purpose of this study was to examine string teachers' (kindergarten-12th grade [K-12] school teachers, private lesson teachers, and collegiate teachers) practices and attitudes regarding their primary string instrument. Research questions included string teachers' practices and attitudes regarding modeling on their primary string instrument inside the classroom and string teachers' practices and attitudes regarding playing their primary string instrument outside the classroom. American String Teachers Association members (K-12 string teachers, private lesson teachers, and college-level string teachers) responded to a researcher-constructed questionnaire (N = 419, response rate = 37%). We found that most participants: (a) claimed to model for students many times a week to many times a day (86.04%); (b) believed benefits of modeling include being an effective teaching tool and positively affecting student motivation and student engagement; (c) reported playing their instrument outside the classroom at least a couple of times a week (75%); (d) reported performing at least one concert a year (94%), with 54% performing over 11 times a year; and (e) reported continuing music making because it was part of their identity (76%) and to keep skills sharp in order to model for students (59%). Findings from this study suggest that music making is an important aspect of string teachers' (K-12 inservice teachers, private lesson teachers, and college teachers) personal and professional lives, connecting music making with their identity and perceptions of string student learning.


Against the macro background of the political developement and exploration of the West of China,and in nelation to the current situations of the economy and society in ethnic communities,this article discusses the goals and key points of the amendments of the Law of regional national autonomy at the very beginning of the new century.It also presents specific measures and suggestions to perfect the law of regional national autonomy from the following perspectives,such as law propagation,forming of a complete set of laws and regulations ,and legal supervision.


To enable consistency in sense of perspective to be retained easily between each object in an image and overlaid information, for example, an OSD or other graphic information, upon stereoscopic image display. A disparity information set creation unit (122) creates a disparity information set for a predetermined pixel position on the basis of a disparity map. The predetermined pixel position is, for example, the pixel position at which the disparity information value is the highest, that is, the pixel position perceived to be closest. The disparity information set includes position data indicating the relative position with respect to the entire image, and the disparity data for that position. The disparity information set is synchronized spatially with stereoscopic image data. This disparity information set is independent of the resolution of the stereoscopic image, and independent of the monitor size and the display resolution of the monitor. At each period obtained by equally dividing the broadcast program period of a predetermined broadcast program hierarchically, the disparity information set creation unit (122) creates a disparity information set. The disparity information set is temporally synchronized with stereoscopic image data.


Today's world is a smart world we live in and Smart Phones have a major contribution in it. A smart phone is now a very common device that everyone carries with them all the time. Smart phones have enabled us to perform various tasks while using a single device. Considering this phenomenon we can exploit the idea of remote-controlling a door with the help of a smart phone. Physical keys and a lock are the basic requirements for a door. However managing these keys has become cumbersome. To overcome this, we present a solution which is a smart and a secure way of remote-controlling the door using a smart phone.


This paper compares Zhaozhou Zen and Life Zen,aiming to find their interrelations and similarities.The author proposes that they both are the inheritance and development of the Liuzu Huineng essence of meditation technique.To some degree,Life Zen is the recurrence of the essence of Zhaozhou Zen.


Native bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea) are diverse and effective pollinators, responsible for the majority of plant pollination in natural and degraded ecosystems. Despite this critical role, little is known about patterns in native bee biodiversity, community dynamics, and expected variation between habitat types, particularly in the absence of human disturbance. Such knowledge could help detect population trends and guide conservation in natural and altered landscapes. We surveyed the bee and plant communities over two flowering seasons across four distinct habitat types (Alluvial, Live Oak Woodland, Blue Oak Woodland, and Grassland) at Pinnacles National Park, a protected hotspot of native bee diversity, to 1) update the inventory of park bee biodiversity; 2) identify patterns in bee abundance, richness and community composition; and 3) evaluate whether habitat type is an indicator of native bee dynamics. We collected 52,853 bee specimens, and increased the Pinnacles species inventory from 398 to 479. While habitat type was not related to bee abundance, richness, or even floral richness over a season, species composition varied significantly among habitat types. In alluvial habitat, bee species composition was more unique, tightly defined, and related to distance between sites than in other habitat types, suggesting these areas may serve as nesting refugia, particularly for some oligolectic species. Further examination of these patterns may clarify the value of protecting alluvial habitats at Pinnacles and beyond.


Novel salts of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) modified by grafting with poly(acrytic acid) (PAA) were prepared using salts of amines and Na salts of amino acid analogue, as well as of alkali and alkali earth metal. Changes in hygroscopicity, tensile properties, bending rigidity of fabric, electrostatic property, and thermal stability by the grafting and the salt formation were investigated.In the case of amine and alcohlic amine salts, moisture regain were reduced due to the steric hindrance, in adsorbing site for water molecule, in the presence of bulky alkyl groups attached to nitrogen atom. For the samples reacted with alkali metal salts, hygroscopicity increased with ionic strength of metal. By alkali metal salt formation, tensile strength decreased by 25% in comparison with that of PAA-grafted PET. On the other hand, fibers reacted with novel salts retained the tensile strength same as that of PAA-grafted PET. Moreover, PET fabrics modified as mentioned above showed slight decrease of bending rigidity. The activation energy for thermal degradation reaction was estimated by moltiple heating rate method by thermogravimetry. It was elucidated that the thermal stability of the above samples was generally reduced except the sample reacted with Ca ion.


On 16 January 2014, a suspected case of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) was reported in Gochang, Jeollabuk-do, located in south-western part of Korea. It had occurred sporadically some parts of Korea by 2015 and two cases were reported in 2016. The country had previously experienced four major epidemics of HPAI in the years of 2003/2004, 2006/2007, 2008, and 2010/2011, and the type of all the isolated viruses was H5N1. From 2014 to 2016 epidemic, however, the virus type was identified as H5N8. During last 3 years, the outbreak of H5N8 had 3 waves (January 2014, September 2014, and September 2015). In this study, in order to understand epidemiological features of H5N8 HPAI virus, analysis were performed at three stages: country level, farms level and within farm level. Data were collected from the farm visiting sheet written by the animal controller of local veterinary service, and interviews with farmers. And we also considered spread patterns farm to farm and compared with previous H5N1 outbreaks. It was assumed that the virus was introduced into Korea through migratory birds which flied from high latitudes during the winter. At the initial phase of the outbreak, most farms, which were confirmed to be infected with HPAI H5N8 virus, were located in the vicinity of migratory bird habitats along the West Coast. It was supposed that the virus was transmitted between farms through the movement of farmers, visitors, vehicles and materials. HPAI H5N8 virus showed the differences of death patterns between chickens and ducks, very clearly. At the last phase of the outbreak, it occurred mainly on commercial ducks and Korean traditional broilers. It was assumed that the virus was introduced into Korea through migratory birds, and the major transmission routes between farms were movement of farmers, visitors, vehicles and materials. Although we were not easy to eradicate this virus because H5N8 virus has milder clinical signs and longer period of virus shedding, in comparison with previous H5N1 outbreaks, we are effort to eradicate this virus in many ways.


A commentary to a study which examined parents' concepts of child impairment and disability is presented. The labeling of disabled children by society and within the health service have a negative effect on the level of care received. There needs to be a shift towards participatory health care which recognizes the expert knowledge possessed by parents in relation to their child's needs.


Peter Noack (41) has been appointed Regional Manager for the Southeast European subsidiaries of HOCHTIEF Projektentwicklung GmbH. The jurist has worked in Prague as general manager of HOCHTIEF Development Czech Republic s.r.o. since late 2003. In 2009, he also took over the management of HOCHTIEF Development Austria GmbH and HOCHTIEF DEVELOPMENT ROMANIA S.R.L. His extended responsibilities will now include HOCHTIEF Development Hungary Kft. Noack will coordinate the companies' activities throughout Southeast Europe. Peter Noack studied law at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. Prior to joining HOCHTIEF Development, he worked for seven years at Rodl & Partner in Nuremburg and in Prague. He is fluent in German, English and Czech, and proficient in French.


Linear transform adaptation techniques such as Maximum Likelihood Linear Regression (MLLR) are a popular and effective family of methods for speaker adaptation. MLLR estimates transform parameters for Gaussian means and variances using a maximum likelihood (ML) objective function. This paper discusses the use of an alternative discriminative objective function for linear transform estimation, which is an interpolation of the maximum mutual information (MMI) objective function and the ML criterion. This Discriminative Linear Transform (DLT) more directly reduces the word error rate of the adaptation data than MLLR and assuming good generalisation will also reduce test-set error rates. The implementation of DLT estimation is discussed and test-data recognition results compared to those from standard unconstrained MLLR (mean and variance adaptation) using the 1994 WSJ/NAB spoke 3 non-native adaptation task. The results show that relative reductions in word error rate between 7% and 19% can be obtained by using DLTs.


A new electropolishing system designed for a completed low-beta niobium superconducting cavity with integral helium vessel was installed and operated at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). The design was based on that used for the electropolishing of 1.3 GHz 9-cell elliptical cavities for the global ILC development effort at ANL, with the addition of direct water cooling to the cavity surface. This design also allows for repeated chemistry on the cavity, if needed, without producing the rougher surface associated with buffered chemical polishing.


Abstract : Interactive visualization allows scientists and engineers to analyze massive data sets in new ways. They can prune useless data, identify important features, and see the science behind the data. We address computational tasks of image generation, dynamical visualization, and interactive manipulation and quantitative querying. The data sets comprise of scalar fields (volumetric histological scans of spinal cord injuries), vector fields (numerical simulation of turbulent flows) and tensor fields (Reynolds stresses produced by vortices in the flow). Image generation is the core of visualization. Dynamical visualization brings out time dependent features that are hard to recognize in static images. Interactive manipulation and querying allows users to focus and quantify key features in large data sets.


A systematic design methodology for finding CNN parameters with prescribed functions is proposed. A given function (task) is translated into several local operations, and they are realized as stable states of the CNN system. Many CNN parameters (CNN genes) with the same functions can be easily derived by using this design methodology. A genetic algorithm based CNN gene design methodology is also proposed. Two new genetic "activation and inactivation" operations are introduced to generate CNN genes effectively. Many useful CNN genes can be obtained systematically from known genes by using these genetic operations. Furthermore, the signal propagation property for activated and inactivated CNN genes is studied.


With the ever-increasing concern about the energy and environment crises, aluminum alloys are becoming increasingly desirable in the automotive, aerospace, construction and other related industries due to their high specific strength. Various heat-treatment–stamping integrated techniques have been invented to address the formability challenge of aluminum alloy sheets. Electric field affects the heat treatment process of aluminum alloys. In this paper, a device for application of electric field during the heat treatment was developed. The maximum dimensions of specimen are determined via observing the distortion of metal sheets after quenching in cool water. The high-temperature resistant pure nickel wire gains a high-voltage proof performance by wearing bowl-shaped porcelain tubes, and is used to connect electrodes to power supply. The high-voltage resistant mica plates are bolted together to fill the gap between the specimen and electrode. This device was then used in a common commercial furnace to study the effect of electric field applied during the heat treatment on mechanical properties of AA 6082 sheets. It is found that electric field could enhance mechanical properties of AA 6082. The application of electric field has a potential to lower the cost of heat-treatment–stamping integrated techniques.


Asperger Syndrome (AS) is an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)which
impairs social relations and deeply alters their language skills causing their inability
to use or to understand pragmatic language. Both of them interfere in school life and
tasks. The overall aim of this study was to find out in which of the tasks belonging to
the academic subject of Science, the boy or girl with an AS condition has difficulties
and quantify them, as well as to obtain useful information about scholar
development and to compile all the teaching strategies a Science teacher could use to
help the AS student in her/his classroom. Data were gathered from a representative
test amount of students in secondary education with an AS condition using a survey.
They were also obtained from various interviews made to Science teachers. Data
analysis confirmed that the most important difficulties for these students in the
Science subject are those related to the reasoning and understanding of notions, or
those that need good practical ability. Finally, a methodological proposal was
included to provide science teachers with the best teaching strategies for helping AS
students.


The authors study the interfacial adsorption phenomena of the three-state ferromagnetic Potts model on the simple cubic lattice by the Monte Carlo method. Finite-size scaling analyses of the net adsorption yield evidence of the phase transition being of first order and kBTC/J=1.8166(2).


The Enshu coast is located on the Southern side of Honshu island (Japan). The West part of the coast, so-called Omotehama, spans from Irago Cape to the mouth of the Tenryu river. Key features of the coastline include a relatively flat coastal zone from the Tenryu river mouth to the Hamana (or Hamanako) Lake system, and some sandstone cliffs from the Hamana Lake towards Irago Cape, the Akabane fishing harbour and the Irago Cape which marks the entrance of the Ise Bay. The Enshu coast has been adversely affected by typhoon-generated high waves and tides, and severe tsunamis.