The coupling bionic surface is generally prepared by laser melting on the surface of a gray iron brake hub, which can allow the brake hub to achieve excellent wear resistance and fatigue resistance. The designs of most previous experiments have been based on independent units that were uniform in their distribution patterns. Although some progress has been made in the optimization of cell features, there is still room for further improvement with respect to bionics and experimental optimization methods. Here, experiments on units with non-uniform distributions of different distances were used to rearrange and combine the bionic elements. This paper is that the original uniform distribution laser melting strengthening model was designed as a non-uniform distribution model, and the heat preservation and tempering strengthening effect of continuous multiple melting strengthening on the microstructure of the melting zone is discussed. The mechanism of crack initiation and the mode of crack propagation were analyzed. The relationship between the internal stress in the melting zone and the crack initiation resistance was also discussed. In this paper, the mechanism of different spacing distribution on the surface of gray cast iron by laser remelting is put forward innovatively and verified by experiments, which provides a solid theoretical basis for the follow-up industrial application.


Vital sign monitoring is fundamental in daily patient care. Wearable technology has become an important tool in personalized medicine; however, there is a tradeoff problem between accuracy and comfort caused by the elastic textile used. Our study sought to examine the accuracy of heart rate (HR) and breathing rate (BR) monitoring as measured by iSmartweaR, a novel wearable and wireless sensor that uses the laser Doppler technique, with special focus on sex and different static postures. A total of 30 male and 23 female patients, including 23 patients with cardiovascular diseases and 30 healthy participants, were recruited. The HR and BR were measured with iSmartweaR and the gold standard method (CardioSoft and MasterScreen™ CPX) simultaneously in three static postures (supine rest, right lateral decubitus, and left lateral decubitus). The mean errors of HR and BR between iSmartweaR and the gold standard method were close to zero (0.55 and 0.71, respectively). The standard deviations of the HR error and BR error were 0.59 and 0.67, respectively. Disease, posture, sex, and measurement time did not cause clinically significant measurement errors. The overall percentage of missing data was 7.01%. The use of iSmartweaR was valid across different sexes and static postures. It is real-time, continuous and manpower-saving, and can be applied in patient care.


The discrete spectra of the transmission frequencies at 8, 14, 20, ... Hz, due to Schumann resonances are generated by electromagnetic emission from the lightning strokes and can be regarded as excitation of an AC global circuit. In thi s paper, the results of an attempt to detect experimentally these discrete signals at Kolkata (lat. 22°34'N) are prese.nted. Some frequency changes of 10% 20% about the peak values are found to be present in the observed data which may be attributed by the uncertainties arising from spatial distribution of lightning sources exciting the Schumann resonance modes.


The last decade has seen tremendous improvements in technologies for Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) management, in particular the so-called artificial pancreas (AP), a wearable closed-loop device modulating insulin injection based on glucose sensor readings. Unluckily, the AP actuator, an insulin pump, is subject to failures, with potentially serious consequences for subject safety. This calls for the development of advanced monitoring systems, leveraging the unprecedented data availability. This paper tackles for the first time the problem of automatically detecting pump faults with multidimensional data-driven anomaly detection (AD) methodologies. The approach allows to avoid the subtask of identifying a physiological model, typical of model-based approaches. Furthermore, we employ unsupervised methods, removing the need of labeled data for training, hardly available in practice. The adopted data-driven AD methods are local outlier factor, connectivity-based outlier factor, and isolation forest. Moreover, we propose a modification of these methods to cope with the dynamic nature of the underlying problem. The algorithms were tuned and tested on: 1) two-synthetic 100-patients' data set, of one-month data each, generated using the "UVA/Padova T1D Simulator," a large-scale nonlinear computer simulator of T1D subject physiology, largely adopted in AP research and accepted by the American Food and Drug Administration as a replacement of preclinical animal trials for AP and 2) a real 7-patients' data set consisting of one month in free-living conditions. The satisfactory accuracy of the proposed approach paves the way to the embedding of these methodologies in AP systems or their deployment in remote monitoring systems.


By D. W. G. Ballentyne and L. E. Q. Walker London : Chapman and Hall Ltd. Pp. 205. Price 30s. The intention of the authors of this book is to enable a reader to find out, with a minimum of interruption to his studies, what X's effect or law is ; in this they have succeeded within a limited scope. There are some 800 entries ranging from Abbe's sign condition to the Zeeman effect, each of 50–100 words or so, and " pruned free from historical and other background matter."


Technology is very important to support learning process. This study aims to reveal Kahoot Technology-Based Learning Media (X) on student learning outcomes at SMK NEGERI 8 Bekasi City (Y). This study uses a type of quantitative research with an experimental approach. The sample of this research used random sampling technique. The number of research samples was 69 students. Data collection uses valid and reliable instruments. Data analysis using simple regression. The results of the study revealed: (1) Linear Regression Equation Y = 82.341 + 0.049 X (2) Kahoot Technology-Based Learning Media has an effect on Student Learning Outcomes. (3) The significance test obtained by the equation of the F hit regression line is smaller than 0.05 thus, Y or X regression is significant Kahoot Technology-Based Learning Media has an effect on Student Learning Outcomes. (4) The correlation coefficient (rxy) = 0.621 and Fhit (Fchange) = 8.145, with a pvalue less than 0.05. Thus, the correlation coefficient X and Y is meaningful or significant. The coefficient of determination is 0.385, which means that 38.5% of the variation in the student's emotional intelligence variable.


This paper presents the development of federal public policy on business incubators in Mexico during the period of 1994-2013. We focus in particular on financial aid that has been given under the public administration and the political scheme established by every presidential term. This study uses qualitative research and analysis of longitudinal documents of three concluded presidential administrations, the most recent starting in December 2012. The result of this research show different public policies implemented by administrations and determining the type of support and guidance that regulated its management. Progressive advancement in supporting entrepreneurial projects, in which the incubators is used as a strategy to promote the development of competitive enterprises that generate jobs.


Let h be an orientation reversing homeomorphism of the plane onto itself. If X is a plane continuum invariant under h, then h has a fixed point in X. Furthermore, if at least one of the bounded complementary domains of X is invariant under h, then h has at least two fixed points in X.


In this paper we compare the uniformly minimum variance unbiased (UMVU) estimator and maximum likelihood (ML) estimator of the generalized variance in the context of natural exponential families (NEFs) on , d>1. We conjecture that for irreducible NEFs the proportionality holds if and only if the generalized variance has a specific form. In particular, we show that the estimators are proportional in the simple and homogeneous quadratic NEFs and prove that the UMVU estimator is preferable in terms of mean squared error except for the case of multinomial family.


Resistivity, magnetization, and microscopic ${}^{75}$As nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements in the antiferromagnetically ordered state of the iron-based superconductor parent material CaFe${}_{2}$As${}_{2}$ exhibit anomalous features that are consistent with the collective freezing of domain walls. Below ${T}^{*}\ensuremath{\approx}10$ K, the resistivity exhibits a peak and downturn, the bulk magnetization exhibits a sharp increase, and ${}^{75}$As NMR measurements reveal the presence of slow fluctuations of the hyperfine field. These features in both the charge and spin response are strongly field dependent, are fully suppressed by ${H}^{*}\ensuremath{\approx}15$ T, and suggest the presence of filamentary superconductivity nucleated at the antiphase domain walls in this material.


The goal of the present research is to develop a test rig for ceramic-lined steel pipes production by self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS) technique or combustion synthesis (CS). SHS is an advanced approach for production high temperature materials including refractory materials, intermetallics, and cermets. SHS process is characterized by extremely fast heating rates, high temperatures, and short reaction times. The products of SHS process are usually porous. Therefore, densification is one step of dense material processing.
One of the methods of densification is employing centrifugal force to produce ceramic lined steel pipes and functionally graded materials (FGM). The centrifugal force is the main parameter in combustion of powder reactants and melts formation. It facilitates phase separation of multi-component products during the process.
In this research the SHS-centrifugal machine is fabricated to produce ceramic-lined steel pipes from (Fe2O3 +Al) mixture. Fe2O3 and Al powders were mixed based on reaction stoichiometry. The process is based on thermite reaction of Fe2O3 and Al under centrifugal force to produce Al2O3 ceramic in the inner-most layer and molten Fe that diffuses in the steel pipe.
The complete combustion reaction was occurred at a distance of 20-30 mm from the head of the pipe to produce two layer ceramic lined steel pipes with a complete phase separation and structure formation.
Multilayer phase and structure formation, followed by phase separation occurred in this process. Products were characterized by XRD, SEM, LOM, EDX and micro-hardness.
Two and three layers formed inside the steel pipe in various points of the product. Vickers Hardness on the inner-most surface measured reached up to 26 times greater than micro-hardness of a typical pipe.
This dissertation includes 8 chapters, 42 figures, 15 tables, 32 references, in 79 pages and appendices.


purpose of this paper was to develop a usage model for interactive technologies for university marketing strategies, using a combination of the task technology fit (TTF) model and the information systems acceptance (ISA) model. Interactive technologies enables the universities to inexpensively engage their customers in one- to- one. Over the years relationship marketing has emerged as a popular new paradigm in marketing. It has been proposed as the newest mainstream school of thought in marketing, beyond the twelve commonly accepted schools, that is, commodity, functional, regional, institutional, functionalist, managerial, buyer behavior, activist, macro-marketing, organizational dynamics, systems, and social exchange. The target population of the study was universities marketing departments within Kisii County. A quantitative research design was adopted and random sampling method was used to select respondents. Data was collected by means of questionnaires. Many universities are increasingly strengthening their marketing strategies by effectively interacting with their customers. This is normally done with the help of interactive technologies, such as interactive telephone, internet and digital technologies, in an integrated manner. However, there exists no model that tries to explain the factors behind the utilization patterns of these gadgets.


In this paper we study the problem of the best approximation by linear methods of solutions to one Triebel-type equation. This problem was solved by using estimates of the linear widths of the unit ball in corresponding spaces of differentiable functions. According to the definition, linear widths give the best estimates for the approximation of compact sets in a given normed space by linear methods which are implemented through finite-dimensional operators. The problem includes answers to the questions about the solvability of the studied equation, the construction of the corresponding weighted space of differentiable functions, the development of a method for estimating linear widths of compact sets in weighted polynomial Sobolev space. In this work, conditions are obtained under which the considered operator has a bounded inverse. The weighted Sobolev space corresponding to the posed problem is determined. Upper estimates are obtained for the counting function for a sequence of linear widths, which correspond to the posed problem. One example is constructed in which two-sided estimates of linear widths are given. The method for solving this problem can be applied to the numerical solution of non-standard ordinary differential equations on an infinite axis.


The crystallization of poly(e-caprolactone) (PCL) and isotactic polypropylene (iPP) infiltrated in nanoporous anodic alumina oxide (AAO) templates was reexamined to demonstrate the importance of obtaining polymer-free, clean AAO surfaces on the nucleation, size dependence of crystallization temperature (Tc), and texture. The AAO pore diameters cover a broad range from 400 to 20 nm. When the AAO templates were completely free of any residual polymer on their surfaces, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) experiments exhibited a single crystallization peak for all the samples with different AAO pore sizes. A drastic decrease in Tc with density of domains indicated a transition from heterogeneous to homogeneous/surface nucleation. A regular decrease of Tc with pore size was observed in the low Tc regime, as a result of the volume dependence of nucleation events. The chain alignment of the two polymers infiltrated in AAO was studied by two-dimensional wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS). By comparing the ex...


Sedentary life style and high fat diet increase a risk of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, but physical activity counteracts high fat diet‐induced vascular dysfunction. Our goal was to investigate the mechanisms by which physical activity prevents endothelial dysfunction caused by high fat diet. Female mice (C57BL/6) were fed either control low‐fat diet (LF; 15% fat) or high‐fat diet (HF; 45% fat) for 10 weeks. HF mice were randomly assigned to either a sedentary group or a group given access to a voluntary running wheel (HF‐Run). HF sedentary group was divided to HF‐Lean (HF‐LN; body weight<28g) and HF‐Obese (HF‐OB; body weight>28g) group. Endothelium‐dependent dilation (isolated coronary arterioles) to acetylcholine and to flow were impaired in HF‐OB mice, but were greater in HF‐Run and HF‐LN mice compared to HF‐OB mice. Leptin‐mediated vasodilation was higher in HF‐LN compared to HF‐OB. Compared to LF, HF‐LN, and HF‐Run mice, leptin levels and insulin resistance were higher in HF‐OB mice. These results suggest that the leptin and insulin resistance caused by high fat diet were reversed by physical activity. Also physical activity prevented high fat‐induced endothelial dysfunction, which may be mediated and improved leptin and insulin sensitivity.


Time series forecasting is a hot spot in recent years. Visibility Graph (VG) algorithm is used for time series forecasting in previous research, but the forecasting effect is not as good as deep learning prediction methods such as methods based on Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Long Short-Term Memory Network (LSTM). The visibility graph generated from specific time series contains abundant network information, but the previous forecasting method did not effectively use the network information to forecast, resulting in relatively large prediction errors. To optimize the forecasting method based on VG, this article proposes the Deep Visibility Series (DVS) module through the bionic design of VG and the expansion of the past research. By applying the bionic design of biological vision to VG, DVS has obtained superior forecasting accuracy. At the same time, this paper applies the DVS forecasting method to the construction cost index forecast, which has practical significance. The five perspectives are: previous perspectives, statistical methods, machine learning methods, hybrid methods and ablation experiments.


We propose a model-independent analysis of the neutrino mass matrix through an expansion in terms of the eigenvectors defining the lepton mixing matrix, which we show can be parametrized as small perturbations of the tribimaximal mixing eigenvectors. This approach proves to be powerful and convenient for some aspects of lepton mixing, in particular when studying the sensitivity of the mass matrix elements to departures from their tribimaximal form. In terms of the eigenvector decomposition, the neutrino mass matrix can be understood as originating from a tribimaximal dominant structure with small departures determined by data. By implementing this approach to cases when the neutrino masses originate from different mechanisms, we show that the experimentally observed structure arises very naturally. We thus claim that the observed deviations from the tribimaximal mixing pattern might be interpreted as a possible hint of a ``hybrid'' nature of the neutrino mass matrix.


We have introduced a novel metro network architecture called Ultra-Dense Wavelength Switched Network (UD-WSN) [1], which enables an even fine spectrum granularity so as to efficiently accommodate low-speed metro services (e.g., 1GE/10GE services). We evaluate the performance of this type of networks with spectrum defragmentation and partial optical transport network (OTN) switching. An efficient spectrum window plane (SWP)-based heuristic algorithm and a multi-layer traffic grooming algorithm based on an auxiliary graph (AG) for the OTN-based networks are developed for routing and spectrum resource allocation. Simulation results show that spectrum defragmentation based on a small granularity (e.g., 5 GHz) can achieve a bandwidth blocking probability (BBP) close to those of the pure OTN and the OTN over dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) networks. A network with partial OTN switching capability can achieve a BBP close to the pure OTN and OTN over DWDM networks, while at a lower cost and power consumption.


The influence law of caving thickness of fracture characteristics of coal seam and surrounding rocks in fully mechanized top-coal caving face were researched by numerical simulation,combined with laboratory experiment and in-situ measurement. The results show that the fracture range of coal seam and top-coal and caving thickness have non-linear direct proportion relations,that is,the fracture range of coal seam and top-coal increase with the increase of caving thickness; the most serious fracture range of coal seam are situated in front caving face,the fracture range of topcoal is bigger than the coal seam of face,the fracture range of the tailentry is bigger than the headentry,and narrow and small coal pillars are damaged with close to the caving face,so the emphasis of entry surrounding rock support in fully mechanized top-coal caving face is gate beside gob from deformation control point of view.


123Background: Despite increasing use of cancer immunotherapies, no biomarker relevant to anti-tumor immunity has been developed in rectal cancer. The present study aims to develop a radiomic signa...


Relevant literatures were reviewed and the experiments were planned to conform to analysis of completely randomized design of 2-way classification with one observation per cell. Coconut husk fibres were extracted, treated and laminated by hand-layup method. Tension tests were conducted on replicated samples of composites of coconut husk fibre reinforced polyester matrix composites (CFRP) subjected to different environmental conditions. This study finds that, water absorption of CFRP increases with temperature and time, the average value of hygrothermal strength is the same irrespective of temperature and time with value about 12GPa, the average value of absorption is the same irrespective of temperature and time with mean value though validation is not established by the null hypothesis, hence suggesting the possibility of interaction between the sources of variation and the second order polynomial is established as predictive model for hygrothermal strength of CFRP in terms of strain.


[FIGURE][1] After the Quebec Hospital Association began stoking the province's health care fires this fall, separatism was no longer the only issue creating heat in the province. The 135-member organization stated publicly that difficult and unpopular decisions affecting patients' lives have to be


There is no security without application context. Only application context can make clear the tradeoffs between security, performance, usability and cost, and further the tradeoffs between conflicting security objectives such as confidentiality, integrity and availability. To capture application security policy we need a more sophisticated model than traditional access control provides. To this end we developed a model called UCON [2] depicted in figures 1 and 2. UCON is attribute-based but goes beyond traditional attribute-based models in that attributes are mutable and can change automatically as a side-effect of access (or usage). Moreover, UCON accommodates the notions of obligations and conditions which capture additional requirements beyond authorization. Obligations require some action such as clicking on a Agree button before access is granted. Conditions capture system and environmental attributes not directly tied to the subject or object in question. The three cornerstones of UCON, authorizations, obligations and conditions can be applied before, during and after access. The goal of UCON was to unify several different access control extensions that had been published or implemented. Thus far the applications of UCON have not required us to extend it in any fundamental way, although we continue to look for applications that stress UCON so we may discover important extensions.


Objective To prepare the curcumin-loaded colon-specific capsule and to study its in vitro release behaviors. Methods The impermeable capsule bodies were prepared by filling method, the curcumin-loaded self-microemulsifying beads were prepared by dropping method, the plug tablets were pressed by direct compression, and plug capsule was assembled with them. The factors affecting the lag-time were investigated, and the in vitro release behaviors of curcumin were evaluated. Results With the ratio of high methoxy pectin(HMP)/lactose(L) in the plug tablet and the weight of plug tablet increasing, the lag-time was prolonged. The lag-time of the capsule was obviously shortened in 0.5% pectinase citrate buffer and 5% rat cecal content solution, which indicated the capsule had the enzyme-triggered properties. Conclusion The capsule with colon-specific characteristics and a suitable lag-time could be achieved by adjusting the weight and formulation of the plug tablet.


Polymetamorphic garnet micaschists from the Austroalpine Saualpe Eclogite Unit (Kärnten, Austria, Eastern Alps) display complex microstructural and mineral–chemical relationships. Automated scanning electron microscopy routines with energy dispersive X‐ray (EDX) spectral mapping were applied for monazite detection and garnet mineral–chemical characterization. When the Fe, Mg, Mn and Ca element wt% compositions are used as generic labels for garnet EDX spectra, complex zonations and porphyroblast generations can be resolved in complete thin sections for selective electron‐microprobe analyses. Two garnet porphyroblast generations and diverse monazite age populations have been revealed in low‐Ca and high‐Al‐metapelites. Garnet 1 has decreasing Mn, constant Ca and significantly increasing Mg from cores to rims. Geothermobarometry of garnet 1 assemblages signals a crystallization along a M1 prograde metamorphism at ~650 °C/6–8 kbar. Sporadic monazite 1 crystallization started at c. 320 Ma. Subsequent pervasive 300–250 Ma high‐Y and high‐Gd monazite 1 formation during decompression coincided with the intrusion of Permian and Early Triassic pegmatites. Monazite 1 crystallized along the margin of garnet 1. Coronas of apatite and allanite around the large 320–250 Ma monazite signal a retrogressive stage. These microstructures suggest a Carboniferous‐to‐Early‐Permian age for the prograde M1 event with garnet 1. Such a M1 event at an intermediate‐P/T gradient has not yet been described from the Saualpe, and preceded a Permo‐Triassic low‐P stage. The M2 event with garnet 2 postdates the corona formation around Permian monazite. Garnet 2 displays first increasing XCa at decreasing XMg, then increasing XCa and XMg, and finally decreasing XCa with increasing XMg, always at high Ca and Mg, and low Mn. This records a P–T evolution which passed through eclogite facies conditions and reached maximum temperatures at ~750 °C/14 kbar during decompression‐heating. A monazite 2 population (94–86 Ma) with lower Y and Gd contents crystallized at decreasing pressure during the Cretaceous (Eo‐Alpine) metamorphism M2 at a high‐P/T gradient. The Saualpe Eclogite Unit underwent two distinct clockwise metamorphic cycles at different P–T conditions, related to continental collisions under different thermal regimes. This led to a characteristic distribution pattern of monazite ages in this unit which is different from other Austroalpine basement areas.


Multiculturalism has been subject to overwhelming criticism in the last decade or so. Tariq Modood asks, is it finally time to abandon the idea?


A finite element/fracture mechanics model is presented for assessing the influence of closely-spaced knots on lumber tensile strength. The important role of the model is illustrated in that strength interactions of closely-spaced knots cannot readily be assessed by other means. The two-dimensional model uses nondestructively-gathered grain angle and density data to provide a detailed description of each lumber member considered. The analysis simulates the fracture process of lumber during failure and yields a prediction of tensile strength. Predicted lumber tensile strengths correlated with measured strengths with an R of 0.76, an average error of -2% and an average absolute error of 16%. Predicted fracture patterns matched approximately one half the fracture patterns observed from tension tests of lumber. The model was applied to establish the strength reducing influence of closely spaced knots. Knots spaced as far as apart as 200 mm or more can interact to produce strengths considerably less than that based on the worst individual knot. Simple rules applicable to grading for distinguishing multiple knots that cause a significant strength reduction are not identified here, but it is shown that the finite element/fracture mechanics model provides a tool for establishing such rules.


The negative impact of COVID-19 pandemic on people with Eating Disorders (EDs) has been documented. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether a history of traumatic experiences during childhood or adolescence was associated with a higher degree of psychopathological worsening during COVID-19 related lockdown and in the following re-opening period in this group of people. People with EDs undergoing a specialist ED treatment in different Italian services before the spreading of COVID-19 pandemic (n = 312) filled in an online survey to retrospectively evaluate ED specific and general psychopathology changes after COVID-19 quarantine. Based on the presence of self-reported traumatic experiences, the participants were split into three groups: patients with EDs and no traumatic experiences, patients with EDs and childhood traumatic experiences, patients with EDs and adolescent traumatic experiences. Both people with or without early traumatic experiences reported retrospectively a worsening of general and ED-specific psychopathology during the COVID 19-induced lockdown and in the following re-opening period. Compared to ED participants without early traumatic experiences, those with a self-reported history of early traumatic experiences reported heightened anxious and post-traumatic stress symptoms, ineffectiveness, body dissatisfaction, and purging behaviors. These differences were seen before COVID-19 related restrictions as well as during the lockdown period and after the easing of COVID-19 related restrictions. In line with the "maltreated ecophenotype" theory, these results may suggest a clinical vulnerability of maltreated people with EDs leading to a greater severity in both general and ED-specific symptomatology experienced during the exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic.


This work investigates the physical insight into cross-polarized (XP) radiations from an asymmetric type microstrip patch such as a triangular geometry for-the-first-time. A thorough study over the full operating band has been executed revealing some insightful information. A gradual decrease in XP fields with increasing frequency has been identified as a peculiar behavior compared to a symmetric patch, such as rectangle, square, and circle. This new feature inspires one in investigating a new physics behind the XP generating source to explain the same. This study should help the microstrip researchers in exploring newer possibilities of dealing with improved radiations from both symmetric and asymmetric patch geometries.


As Walker Percy reminds us in his introduction, John Kennedy Toole's novel, A Confederacy of Dunces (1980), transports the medieval picaresque tradition to modern-day New Orleans, complete with allegorical settings and a picaro who "between gigantic seizures of flatulence and eructations is filling dozens of Big Chief tablets with invective" (12). In fact there are elements of the picaresque in the novel, for as Edwin Muir points out in his classic, The Structure of the Novel, the picaresque novel "take[s] a central figure through a succession of scenes, introduce[s] a great number of characters, and thus build[s] us a picture of society.... and in the picaresque novel, ancient and modern, there is generally an attempt to provide information such as a social student, or a moralist, or an intelligent newspaper would give" (32-33). Certainly this description covers much of the action of Toole's novel, but to accept it as totality undercuts his intent and the book's underlying philosophical structure. Indeed, its tie to the medieval world links the novel with a compendium of medieval types--the pilgrimage, the quest, in strange ways the romance, the anatomy--and it does so in the most medieval of ways: the allegory, or more accurately the allegory within an allegory. In creating this double perspective, Toole has drawn from the intellectual and artistic fabric of the Middle Ages to comment on the contemporary world, melding the underpinnings of medieval thought to the contexts of modern reality. Consequently, as Percy notes, in Ignatius Reilly Toole offers us a grotesque anti-hero--indeed a "slob extraordinary" (12)--who speaks to us as a picaro/questor/pilgrim ironically trailing disaster after him in the wrecks he makes of other people's lives and who ultimately must be rescued from his own folly instead of rescuing those in danger. Yet, ironically he sees himself as his own Boethius--in history an inhabitant of two worlds who was "revered as the depository of classical learning and as the educator of the modern world" (Male, 93)--and Ignatius, too, strives Boethius-like to fit his own idiosyncratic world view into the context of the late twentieth century, the timeframe to which he is consigned. Overlaying the entirety of Ignatius's perspective and his voice is Toole's own, pronouncing in different terms a consolation of sorts--his version of the only kind of consolation available for the modern age. The humor in the novel, and it exists in abundance, derives from the panorama of incongruities between action and expectations with which Toole permeates the novel. Toole spotlights the idiosyncratic nature of Ignatius Reilly's perspective on reality and balances it with the equally chronocentric--and culturally idiosyncratic--perspective of the modern reader. Clearly elements of a classical definition of irony, those incongruities arise inevitably from the clash of two mutually-exclusive world views existing concurrently in the novel: Ignatius's chosen and believed medieval world view and the reader's inherited and fondly-held contemporary world view, the two of which converge and diverge throughout the events of the novel. Indeed, Ignatius's central position in the novel focuses attention on this duality of perspective, for the readers' interpretation of Ignatius--hence our sympathy and empathy for his actions--depends to large extent on whether we read him allegorically as a medievalist might or literally as the contemporary reader is wont to do. By nature, at least to the modern reader, Ignatius is not an easy person to love; hence, he is not a protagonist who easily gains our empathy. He is lazy, abusive, self-centered, and a troublemaker and thus is intensely disliked by his companions; however, he is also the insecure, child-like, desperate dreamer who acts out his dreams and who finds protectors at every twist of his fate. To the medievalist, or at least in allegorical tradition, he is also the questor/picaro, perhaps like most a bit of a rogue, a non-conformist, a rabble rouser. …


Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) is a group of millions of devices having sensors and actuators linked over wired or wireless channels for data transmission. IoT has grown rapidly over the past decade with more than 25 billion devices are expected to be connected by 2020. The volume of data released from these devices will increase many-fold in the years to come. In addition to an increased volume, the IoT devices produces a large amount of data with a number of different modalities having varying data quality defined by its speed in terms of time and position dependency. In such an environment, machine learning algorithms can play an important role in ensuring security and authorization based on biotechnology, anomalous detection to improve the usability and security of IoT systems. On the other hand, attackers often view learning algorithms to exploit the vulnerabilities in smart IoT-based systems. Motivated from these, in this paper, we propose an innovative approach for spam detection in IoT devices using machine learning. Our technique harnesses the power of advanced machine learning algorithms to accurately identify and mitigate spam attacks, ensuring the integrity and security of IoT ecosystems. We present a comprehensive methodology that combines data collection, feature extraction, model training, and evaluation to build a robust spam detection system.


The housing industry contributes immensely to national growth, forms part of the productive economic sector and actively contributes to the gross domestic product (GDP) of a country. However, current threats and challenge have built up barriers that slow down the growth of the industry. The objectives of this paper are to identify the factors that cause the time and cost overrun of housing projects; to study the current project management practice in housing development project and its effectiveness in solving the housing development issues; to study the necessity of the project manager and application of effective project management practices and the necessity of the project manager to carry out effective project management practices so as to achieve project objectives. A comprehensive literature study and a series of case studies conducted by interviews with six prominent housing development companies in Penang were carried out. The personal interview was carried out as its effectiveness in obtaining comments and to probe opinions from the respondents. The questionnaire for this study is designed to collect data mainly on opinions, awareness and suggestions. The primary function of the structured questions is to guide the face-to-face personal interviews. The target respondents were senior project managers or persons holding a similar role in the company. Among all the factors, deficiency in project management practices is the main contributor to the low performance of housing development. The findings of this research have shown that the agreement of the necessity of Project Manager in effective project management in leading the housing project to success completion.


A radial line slot antenna (RLSA) is a nonresonant multimode waveguide slotted array. To improve the power handing capacity, we design a radial line slow wave structure which replaces a traditional dielectric sheet. At the same time, the structure of the radiator unit is redesigned and optimised. This high-power microwave (HPM) RLSA is fed from a double-layered radial line waveguide to realize the directional radiation of high-power microwave. However, the slots spirally arrayed for circular polarization give rise to serious reflection in higher order modes, which disturbs the normal antenna operation. A reflection cancelling slot is added to the conventional one and the antenna return-loss is effectively improved. An antenna operating at 9.42 GHz was designed with a length of 15 cm and an aperture radius of 27 cm. Numerical simulation results show that the calculated aperture efficiency reaches 44.8%, the reflectance is less than -20 dB, the radiation efficiency is more than 99%. Experimental measurements are accomplished for the prototype. In the range of 9.30-9.45 GHz, the reflection of the antenna is below -10 dB. The antenna gain reaches 29.0 dBi, and the axial ratio is below 1.6 dB. In addition, the high-power experiment proves that this antenna has a power-handing capacity of more than 1 GW.


Teachers in higher education have little pedagogical information to support their practice; therefore, it is essential for universities to promote formal opportunities for teachers to reflect about their practices. Does a peer instruction program for in-service teachers continuing education offered one week per semester effectively promote changes in teachers' pedagogical practices? This study aims to analyze if a week of peer instruction among teachers is an efficient program and to verify its effectiveness on pedagogical practices of teachers that experienced the program. In doing so, it also aims to point out the impressions that teachers have to improve the implemented program. For three years, the university promoted conferences and workshops on teaching practice for the teachers of undergraduate and graduate programs. The focus was on peer instruction, with a few outside and outstanding conference speakers on subjects related to teaching. After three years, teachers anonymously answered a questionnaire, which then received statistical analysis. The results were interpreted with theoretical support from Freire, Nóvoa, and Garcia. We found that more than half the teachers stated they had implemented changes in their daily practices related to the strategies they used and as a result of their students ́ learning. The study points out that peer interaction, study, and instruction favors teachers ́ reflection on their daily practice and facilitates the attitude necessary for implementing changes in their routines. Involving teachers in their continued education is as important as presenting innovative teaching methodologies. © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of Future Academy® Cognitive Trading.


Nanobiotechnology combines biological principles with physical and chemical procedure to generate nanosized particles with specific functions. Recently, a variety of nanoparticles with well-defined size, chemical composition and morphology have been synthesized by using different microorganisms. This work focuses on marine Actinomycetes which is a Gram positive bacteria that has been isolated from marine sediments from Kanathur East coast area, Chennai. Finally the screened strain that showed more activity for the production of oxidative enzyme was selected for the production of silver nanoparticles. The synthesis of silver nanoparticles by this novel strain has been characterized by X-ray diffraction(XRD),FT-IR, UV-Spectroscopy and scanning electron microscope(SEM).The molecular identification of this novel strain from the marine sediments was found as S.fradiae through 16s rRNA ribotyping. The synthesized silver nanoparticles were analysed for their inhibitory effect against B.cerus and K. pneumoniae.The synthesized nanoparticles is of high therapeutic value and can be used in drug delivery system in future work.


The present invention relates to a parking brake system. The parking brake system for a vehicle comprising: a non-rotating member; rotating the drum; brake shoe; a support member disposed between the support member side end portion of each of the brake shoes; transmission member, each of which will be made side end portion of the movable shoe interconnecting the drive member; and a parking brake operating device, which is configured to stop the vehicle during the torque applied to the wheel to the torque applied along the direction prediction, and by the turn when torque is applied to the wheel brake shoe with a brake shoe main primary brake shoe moves in a direction away from the support member, and not to be used as a brake shoe in the sub-system when the torque applied to the wheel movable shoe of a secondary brake shoe to move the brake shoe to press against the inner circumferential surface of the rotating drum.


A geometrically nonlinear theory is developed for spinning anisotropic beams having arbitrary cross sections. An assumed displacement field is developed using the standard 3D kinematics relations to describe the global beam behavior supplemented with an additional field that represents the local deformation within the cross section and warping out of the cross section plane. It is assumed that the magnitude of this additional field is directly proportional to the local stress resultants. In order to take into account the effects of boundary conditions, a restraining function is introduced. This function plays the role of reducing the amount of free warping deformation throughout the field due to the restraint of the cross section(s) at the end(s) of the beam, e.g., in the case of a cantilever beam. Using a developed ordering scheme, the nonlinear strains are calculated to the third order. The FEM is developed using the weak form variational formulation. Preliminary interesting numerical results have been obtained that indicate the role of the restraining function in the case of a cantilever beam with circular cross section. These results are for the cases of a tip displacement (static) and free vibration studies for both isotropic and anisotropic materials with varied fiber orientations.


A 50-year-old woman with a history of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) treated with methotrexate and hydroxychloroquine presented to the emergency department for evaluation of numbness and weakness of the left hand that began 12 hours earlier.


In this paper,when the case of Dongping irrigated area of Baiyin in Gansu province was researched,which was analyzed the right-to-pass adjacent land of director Xu's family,we found the prevalence of an informal order of civil law in rural areas.This civil order can play the basic role in the stability of society.There are some reasons of the existence of the informal system: they are living with neighbours from generation to generation;"the so-called good neighbour can't involve in a lawsuit".The cost of litigation and economy among the neighborhood is too high.So they prefer to make concessions to avoid trouble,to take the attitude of tolerance,and the order of their own can settle the disputes.


In response to the learning goals related to multimodal texts in the Costa Rican Spanish study program (MEP, 2017), and the lack of didactic proposals for its pedagogical treatment at a national level in secondary schools (Flores, 2019), this article's purpose is to offer a series of semiotic competencies (Tobón, 2005) that will help in facilitating the multimodal teaching-learning process in the classroom. These competencies feed on the sociocognitive approach (Tobón, 2005), and the levels of creation of meaning in multimodal texts (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001; Kress, 2010) as well as on Bloom's taxonomy for cognitive abilities (Talbert, 2019). As a result, they are presented as complex processes, for the approach, characterization, analysis, explanation, evaluation, and elaboration of multimodal texts, in specific sociocultural contexts and interactions. Based on the description of these competencies, the article condones the need to incorporate a semiotic dimension within the communicative competencies in the Spanish curriculum (MEP, 2017). It seeks to provide theoretical-methodological support to teachers to help them integrate the national curriculum's objectives related to multimodal texts to the classroom. On a final note, this proposal offers a suggestion of studies regarding reading comprehension of multimodal texts, in order to update the national didactic and curricular processes, according to the development of multiple literacies at an international level (Anstey and Bull 2006; Cope and Kalantzis, 2009b; Blanchard and Farstrup 2011; Cooper et al., 2013; Reid and Comber 2004; Walsh 2010).


Conventional small hydraulic servo valves have some disadvantages such as a complex structure, waste of hydraulic energy, and the necessity of high contamination control. That is because the valves have a two stages and modulate spool position by the amplified force of the motor. As a way to solve these disadvantages, we study to apply a particle excitation flow control valve to hydraulics.1,2) The valve features small size, simple structure, and flow-controllability including on/off control. It was confirmed that the valve can control the flow rate, when silicone oil is used as the working fluid.2) However, to open the valve under high pressure and high viscosity needs a large force. For pneumatic systems, therefore, some methods were proposed in order to decrease the opening force of valves using vibration owing to changing the direction of the force to open the valve.3,4) In this paper, we design a new hydraulic valve which is driven by perpendicular force to a direction of flow. In addition, we describe the characteristics of the prototype valve.


triamantane (3) and so forth, can be prepared by chemical synthesis. Of the higher diamondoids, i.e., those that have isomeric forms, only C2h-symmetric [121]tetramantane (4 a) has been prepared in the laboratory in very low yields. All other higher diamondoids are only accessible from raw petroleum. There are three tetramantanes (4a and [1(2)3]tetramantane, C3v-4b ) including one enantiomeric pair (P)-(+)and (M)-( )-[123]tetramantane (4c), six pentamantanes (with [1(2,3)4]pentamantane being the first exhibiting a diamond {111} surface), 24 hexamantanes (6), 12] nearly one hundred heptamantanes (7), and so forth. Thus far, diamondoids with up to 11 cages have been shown to exist in petroleum, but no other source is known, although recent studies suggest possible interstellar occurrence. The larger nanodiamonds occur as rigid rods (4a, 5c), discs (4b), 12] pyramids (5 a), and helices (4c, 5 f), exhibiting quantum confinement and negative electron affinity. They can be specifically derivatized, 11,17, 18] with electron emission properties superior to any other material making them attractive for molecular electronics. The mechanism for formation of these nanodiamonds for a long time was attributed to thermodynamically controlled carbocation rearrangements. 21] Such mechanisms enable the practical synthesis of 1–3 but they fail in the production of the higher diamondoids. 21, 22] A detailed analysis of the mechanism for adamantane formation from a single starting material shows an amazing 2897 pathways; a more limited analysis of triamantane formation through carbocation pathways indicates at least 300000 potential intermediates. Prospects for higher diamondoid syntheses by these pathways are bleak due to a lack of large polycyclic precursors, problems with intermediates trapped in local energy minima, disproportionation reactions leading to side products, and the exploding numbers of isomers as the size of target higher diamondoid products increases. With the failure of syntheses of higher diamondoids through carbocation rearrangements, attempts at their preparation were abandoned in the 1980s. Since higher diamondoids occur in relatively high concentrations in petroleum that has undergone thermal cracking (i.e., been subjected to very high temperatures due to deep burial), we began to consider that these free-radical cracking reactions might be involved in higher diamondoid formation. The uncatalyzed formation of 1 and 2 from n-alkanes under conditions of cracking was shown recently, presenting evidence that exclusively thermal pathways involving free radicals can readily compete with the typically assumed acidcatalyzed carbocation rearrangements. Such mechanistic proposals underline the notion that diamondoids are thermodynamically the most stable hydrocarbons, i.e., they are more stable than nanographenes (extended polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) of comparable molecular weight. Moreover, the relative stabilities of carbocations and alkyl radicals Scheme 1. The family of diamondoids: lower diamondoids 1–3, the three isomers of tetramantane (4), and the six pentamantanes (5). The numbers in brackets refer to the unique Balaban–Schleyer nomenclature.


With the continuous development of the economy, emerging companies in various industries are also competing for flowers, so information stakeholders in all aspects will pay more attention to the appreciability of profits when using financial statements, and accountants will be more likely to whitewash the statements. However, the occurrence of financial fraud will not only cause huge losses to enterprises, but also expose some shortcomings in various aspects of business ethics and professional ethics. Therefore, this paper analyzes the financial fraud incidents of Hongda New Materials, which then leads to various business ethics and professional ethics thinking problems such as the lack of ethics of financial personnel, the ineffective internal control system of enterprises, and the incomplete construction of industry rule of law, and gives suggestions for feasible measures.


The invention provides a self-learning method for double-clutch automatic gearbox shifting fork shifting force. The method comprises the steps that when the self-learning condition is met, gear shifting is conducted with default shifting force, and whether gear pre-engagement can be achieved or not is judged; if gear pre-engagement can be achieved through the default shifting force, the default shifting force is decreased by a first preset value, gear shifting is conducted again, and if gear pre-engagement can still be achieved, the operation that the default shifting force is decreased by the first preset value is repeatedly executed, until gear pre-engagement fails; and the last shifting force before failure of gear pre-engagement times a set safety coefficient to serve as new default shifting force, and self-learning is completed. The method can reduce noise caused by abrasion to a gear-shifting shifting fork, and the service life can be prolonged.


The success of Hunan Satellite TV's Evening News program attributes to comprehensive uses of ratings-driven commercial art and civilian population's communication skills,and unique narrative strategy.On narrative discourse,it takes the way of "saying" news rather than broadcasting mode,focusing on relaxation,colloquial and natural beauty.On narrative structure,ridicule News obviously and wonders show covertly,represent two different ways to produce text's significance.On narrative perspective,it relies on the second person's perspective,which is full of enough communication and friendliness,with the flexible narrative strategies,shortening the distance between the two sides of receive and transmit effectively.


To identify the impact of a community integrated respiratory team on early discharge after exacerbation of COPD, need for pulmonary rehabilitation and care provision in the community.

A rolling audit of all referrals to the team to identify comorbidity, complexity of disease and need for pulmonary


Conformations of a crowded neutral semiflexible polymer under confinement near an attractive wall are studied via coarse-grained simulations. We study the effects of the interplay of the length of the polymer, bending rigidity, and the repulsive crowder density on such equilibrium semiflexible polymer conformations. The length of the polymer dictates the number of distinct conformations of the adsorbed semiflexible polymer, suggesting that previous studies of short polymers are limited. The crowder density is shown to effectively reduce the bending rigidity of the polymers and at the highest crowder density considered, a crumpled wall-adsorbed polymer conformation is seen regardless of the semiflexibility. In addition, we study the role of the topology of the semiflexible polymer by comparing the results of linear semiflexible polymers with those of ring polymers. The conformational landscape of crowded ring polymers shows less diversity than that of a linear polymer and crowders are seen to affect the ring polymers differently than their linear counterparts.


........................................................................................................................ i Co-Authorship Statement............................................................................................ iii Dedication ................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... v List of Tables ............................................................................................................ xiii List of Figures ........................................................................................................... xiv List of Appendices .................................................................................................... xix Nomenclature ............................................................................................................. xx Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................... 1 1.1. The multiscale problem in structural geology studies ..................................... 1 1.2. MOPLA............................................................................................................ 3 1.2.1 The aim of MOPLA ............................................................................. 4 1.2.2 The backbone theory of MOPLA ........................................................ 8 1.2.3 Homogenization systems in MOPLA .................................................. 9 1.3. Application to the Shangdan tectonic zone in the Qinling orogenic belt ...... 11 1.3.1 The problem in the QOB studies .......................................................... 11


The invention provides a method for extracting eucommia ulmoides gum from eucommia ulmoides shells. The refined eucommia ulmoides gum is obtained through steps of fermentation, leaching, purification and the like, the purity of the refined gum is up to 99.9%, and the gum extraction rate is up to 20%. Compared with the prior art, the method has the advantages of high extraction rate, short extraction period, low cost, little environmental pollution and the like.


Interval-valued fuzzy soft set is one efficient mathematical model employed to handle the uncertainty of data. At present, there exist two interval-valued fuzzy soft set-based decision-making algorithms. However, the two existing algorithms are not applicable in some cases. Therefore, for the purpose of working out this problem, we propose a new decision-making algorithm, based on the average table and the antitheses table, for this mathematical model. Here, the antitheses table has symmetry between the objects. At the same time, an example is designed to prove the availability of our algorithm. Later, we compare our proposed algorithm with the two existing decision-making algorithms in several cases. The comparison result shows that only our proposed algorithm can make an effective decision in exceptional cases, and the other two methods cannot make decisions. It is therefore obvious that our algorithm has a stronger decision-making ability, thus further demonstrating the feasibility of our algorithm. In addition, a real data set of the homestays in Siming District, Xiamen is provided to further corroborate the practicability of our algorithm in a realistic situation.


This article was developed based on the literature review with the intention of isolating health issues which affect children aged between 0-5 years and how these issues can inform the psychosocial needs in child counselling. Counselling children is a growing area of interest in contemporary society, especially amongst members of the counselling profession. Developmental psychologists have studied children's growth and development focusing on the effect of childhood experiences in adulthood, whereas child psychiatrists have focused on mentally disturbed children. It is apparent that children with learning, social, or behavioural problems who are not classified as mentally disturbed have been largely overlooked. These represent the target clientele for psychosocial counselling. Child counselling can prevent some problem situations from becoming more serious through degeneration to delinquency, school failure, antisocial conduct, and emotional disturbance.


To improve the production performance of yak in Gannan area and find the best model of feeding and management,The local yak were improved by Datong yak and the feeding and management of yak cows and bulls were improved and crossbred calves were fed in greenhouse.After that,the rate of estrus,gestation and reproduction were improved significantly and the abortion rate and calf-yak death rate decreased greatly.Although there is no obvious difference in birth body weight and body size between calves under different feeding and management system,weaning weight at 6 months old and yearly weight of the calves in the system of full period suckling or fed in greenhouse were significantly higher than that of control calves.At the end of this experience,a good model of feeding and management of yak was found out that can be used in production.


Herein, we describe an agitated geriatric patient who suffered an adverse outcome due to treatment for agitation in an emergency setting. This led to the prompt review of the current literature on best-practice medication to use in this population. After careful review, the authors recommend olanzapine as the first-line medication for agitation due to its lower risk-averse effect profile when compared to other medications used for this patient population.


An analysis of 164 phase III breast cancer trials shows bias in reporting the primary endpoint and toxicity results, according to results of a recent study.


In the study of network security predicting,aiming at the optimization of network intrusion detection,a genetic algorithm based on support vector machine is proposed,in order to sovle the problems that the traditional intrusion detection algorithm has high accuracy and over-fitting with relatively low prediction accuracy.First,genetic algorithm is used to search optimal parameters of support vector machines.Then the optimal parameters are trained.The optimal algorithm is used in predicting model on the test set.The support vector machine is used to simulate the KDD 1999 CUP data set.The results show that the method has very good detection rate while the training time is reduced,better than the classical neural network algorithm.


This paper introduces multimedia indexing and retrieval techniques to enable the extraction of botanical characteristics for semi-automatic plant recognition. The identification of plants requires recognition and determination of plant species by using specific features such as bloom color, inflorescences, shape of blooms, number of petals and shape of leaves. Our indexing and retrieval techniques will be integrated into an existing medicinal plant database, MedPhytreg. An evaluation study finishes the paper.


On 25 November, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani officially invited incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to form a government. According to the Iraqi Constitution, the Shiite leader of the State of Law Coalition (SLC) will now have 30 days to negotiate with the major political blocs and establish an all inclusive cabinet that attempts to break the eight-month political impasse.


A new modelling method in a CAD environment for the automotiveindustry is described.Constructing mathematical models C(S,G)of'Sculpturedtype'skin in complex surfaces and solids by interpolat curves and blending,weform the WARPED modelling.The smooth sculptured-type is based on the logicof described a trajectory of two or more section points,curves and surfaces skinedalong profile curves.


A new approach for geaeraticn of Lyapunov function, due to Nagaraja aid Chalam (1974) has been applied to the redesign of first-order and second-order model-reference adaptive control systems considered earlier by Parks (1966) and Phillipson (1967). They chose the V function rather arbitrarily, whereas a systematic method is presented here for choosing an appropriate V function. In the present work, V includes all state variables, whereas in the previous work of Parks (1966), V included only error e for first-order system and e for second-order system. Inclusion of all state variables in V ensures that if the gain-parameter misalignment tends to zero, the error will also tend to zero. The same approach was applied to modified first-order and second-order systems (Phillipson 1967).


Anisotropic parameters, even if considered in a microseismic processing, are typically simultaneously inverted with microseismic event locations. This usually leads to an under-constrained inverse problem that highly dependent on prior/initial information. In this paper, we carefully processed the waveforms from perforation shots so that SV-wave arrival times can be picked in addition to Pand SH-wave arrival times. This makes the inversion wellconstrained by reducing the number of model parameters while increasing the number of observations. We applied both Maximum A posteriori (MAP) estimation and Randomized Maximum Likelihood (RML) method for anisotropic parameter estimation and uncertainty quantification. Results verified the stableness of the inversion and revealed the uncertainty and tradeoffs among model parameter. On the other hand, attenuation is generally not considered in microseismic modeling and processing. Our study found that hydraulic stimulation can lead severe seismic attenuation to reservoirs. The attenuation can dramatically change waveform characters and causes velocity dispersion. Thus, sonic logs, which are acquired at frequencies much higher than seismic data frequency should not be used directly for data processing in hydraulic stimulated zones.


The book details the "shaping process" of the ICS officer—recruitment and training. Particularly interesting is Potter's account, based on unpublished governmental files, of the difficulties the British administration had in attracting a sufficient number of European recruits. He traces the political rationale for the continuation of the ICS tradition after partition, through the vehicle of the newly constituted IAS. He details the content and consequences of recruitment and training in the IAS, which are markedly like those of the ICS, and examines the IAS in the light of the ICS tradition. Potter contends that the IAS is still informed by the norms and values associated with the ICS. This is not a surprising or a unique conclusion, but Potter's argument and evidence are compelling. Also compelling are his observations about the linkage between the maintenance of the ICS/IAS tradition and the Indian policy-making process. For instance, Potter contends that the Indian bureaucracy requires generalist administrators, administrative centralization, and an administrative class that successfully competes with political authority. The ICS/IAS tradition ensures that the state will be comparatively successful at maintaining the status quo but correspondingly less successful at innovation—hence the charge that the IAS is not suited to the demands resulting from rapid social and economic development. Less compelling are Potter's efforts to explain why independent India opted to maintain the ICS/IAS tradition. There are numerous reasons why one would have expected Indian decision makers to have abandoned it; after all, the ICS was the most visible symbol of colonialism, and its ethos was decidedly elitist and anything but democratic. Potter rather lamely contends that the Congress decided initially to keep up the ICS tradition because the "steel frame" worked to maintain order. Any reservations that Jawaharlal Nehru or others may subsequently have had were defeated by Vallabhbhai Patel's consistent and extraordinary support for the service. Similarly, we are told that efforts to reform the Indian bureaucracy since independence, through vehicles such as the Administrative Reform Commission (196570), have been unsuccessful because of IAS resistance and because the Congress (I) did not have the "political will" to see such reforms through. Absent from this analysis is a significant treatment of the other bureaucratic actors (e.g., central services, technocrats) who are central to a complete consideration of the issue of administrative reform in India. Also absent is any significant analysis of Pakistan's parallel attempts at administrative reform. Despite such reservations, India's Political Administrators is essential reading for anyone interested in India's administrative system or in British colonial history. The work is richly documented and is both readable and enjoyable.


The cycles of carbon in terrestrial ecosystems has received increasing attention worldwide. Because the balance between inputs and outputs of carbon to the soil has an important influences on the atmospheric CO 2 and global climate. With the increasing deforestation and overgrazing, the impact of human disturbances on carbon storage and fluxes have exceeded the rate and extent of effects from natural variability, this could significantly raise the CO 2 concentration in the atmosphere. Thus, accurate estimations of land use and land cover in soil ecosystem have become increasingly important for estimating the carbon balance of regions. One of the greatest uncertainties concerning the influence of human activities is changes in soil carbon stock. In this study, soil samples were collected form farmland, orchard, woodland, grassland, wasteland five different land use types. Each soil sample core was separated into 0-10, 10-20, 20-40 and 40-60 cm depth. The study revealed the difference of soil carbon pool storage and mass effect in different land use styles by the contrast analysis of total organic carbon, labile organic carbon and carbon management index in number, distribution and changes. The results showed that there were big differences for the density of Total Organic Carbon (TOC) among different land use types, which means soil organic carbon storages were different. The extent of variation of the mass fraction of TOC and LOC was increase with the increase of soil depth and 0-20 cm layer was significantly greater than 20-60 cm layer. Relative to wasteland, the density of LOC and NLOC, total organic carbon storage and carbon management index for other four land use types were higher, especial for woodland and grassland. The woodland use type and grassland use type were significantly increased the carbon management index and improved the quality of soil carbon pool. The change of soil organic carbon reserve is huge influenced by human land use.


The pipette is provided. The pipette comprises a body and a piston and a valve. The body includes a nozzle, a first chamber and a second chamber, and a channel formed in the nozzle. The first chamber is isolated from the second chamber, the channel is isolated from the first chamber and the second chamber. The piston is mounted to slide inside the first chamber and the second chamber so as to at the same time that the motion of the pistons to increase the first volume of the first chamber, reducing the second volume of the second chamber. Valve to provide communication selectively between the first chamber and the channel between the second chamber and the channel between, between the first chamber and the body outside, the second chamber and the main body outside the first chamber and the second chamber and the channel, and It is in communication with an external unit.


In modelling complex stochastic systems graphical association models provide a convenient framework. With graphical models the overall structure of association among variables is described in terms of conditional independence, and this structure can be represented graphically. Statistical methods for revealing these basic structures of association on the basis of data and expert knowledge are described. Suggestions on how to make a more detailed modelling will be made, and it will be illustrated how to implement such models in a causal probabilistic network. As an illustration a model for the incidence of fungi attacks and yield in relation to various cultural factors in winter wheat is established.


A series of test foundations damaged during a longwall mining operation were left with permanent tilt, curvature, and substantial cracking. Two of the foundations were releveled using continuous lift piers. The continuous lift piers removed the tilt and curvature and significantly reduced the width of the foundation cracks. Following the releveling of the foundations, an adjacent longwall panel was mined, resulting in additional subsidence, although of smaller magnitude. The response of the releveled foundations was monitored and compared with the response of a footing that was not releveled. Although the continuous pier system does not strengthen the structure and distortion was observed during the second event, the system permitted the deformations to be removed in a few hours. Introduction Ground subsidence due to underground mining activities is a significant problem affecting mine operators, the insurance industry, government agencies, and property owners. In the United States, damage to residential structures from underground mining is estimated between $25 and $35 million each year (Gray 1988). With approximately 5 .2 million acres of abandoned or inactive coal mines, of which 500,000 acres are in populated urban areas (Dyni and Burnett 1993), damage repair techniques applicable to residential and light commercial structures must be developed. Effective damage remediation methods can only be developed with a good understanding of the mechanisms causing structural distress. Since structures in subsidence prone areas are often subjected to multiple or recurring ground deformation events, the response of repaired structures during subsequent subsidence events must also be evaluated. Damage to structures from subsidence occurs primarily over inactive or abandoned room-and-pillar mine operations and may occur many years after the coal has been extracted. Since modem longwall techniques result in subsidence that is immediate and can be predicted with some degree of certainty, structural damage can often be reduced or eliminated by premining measures. Although damage due to longwall mining is not as significant an economic issue as damage from abandoned mine operations, the controlled nature of longwall induced subsidence provides a good opportunity to observe the mechanisms governing structural damage. The response of structures to mining induced subsidence is complex. Structural behavior and damage are dependent upon the relative properties of the foundation and underlying soil, and depend significantly on the magnitude of the ground movements. This coupling of soil and structural response is known as Soil-StructureInteraction (SSI). Monitoring full-or reduced-scale structures during subsidence has provided useful observations 'Paper presented at the International Land Reclamation and Mine Drainage Conference and Third International Conference on the Abatement of Acid Drainage, Pittsburgh, PA, April 24-29, 1994. 2Eric C. Drumm and Richard M. Bennett, Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville 3Guoming Lin, Engineer, S&ME, Savannah, GA 'David B. Raaf, President, Atlas Systems, Inc., Independence, MO 'Dean Daugherty, Atlas Foundation Repair Systems, St. Louis, MO


The trend of interacting with a second screen while watching TV has evolved over the past years with the increased usage of smartphones and tablets. One program genre in which second screen usage is common is sports. The increasing second screen usage has made it challenging to keep viewers engaged in the content being shown on the TV. A possible solution to this problem is program-specific second screen applications that serve to complement the TV content and give an added value to the viewer.This paper aims to identify usage patterns of a program-specific second screen application, used during broadcasts of live hockey games. The application consists of a feed that contains posts related to the game such as comments and videos posted by sport profiles and editors, and polls that the viewer can answer to see other viewers' thoughts about different situations in the game. Moreover, the paper analyzes what factors affect the usage patterns and discusses how the findings could be used when developing and managing the content of a feed-based second screen application during a sports game. To identify the usage patterns of the application a triangulation approach was used. Five user observations, directly followed by complementing semi-structured interviews were conducted during five separate live hockey games broadcast on TV.The results show that the usage patterns of the application are mainly affected by the excitement and the different parts of the broadcast (game time, studio analysis and commercial breaks), the different features of the application and the usage of other applications. Moreover, the results highlight the importance of feeling connected to other remote viewers of the game through the application when watching a game alone.


Until recently, the Eurasian Beaver (Castor fiber) was still under threat of extinction. However thanks to measures to protect and resettle the species, its original habitat has been restored and its population has grown to the point of regaining its former economic importance. The Eurasian Beaver was re-introduced in the Udmurtian Republic, where the beaver population had been destroyed entirely by the early 19th century. At present, the Eurasian Beaver population in the Udmurtian Republic has reached 22,5 thousand.


The simulation and expression of complicated faults is an essential technique in automatic generation of geological section.The researches of this paper are the basic theories and essential techniques of simulating complicated faults;and a series of approaches are proposed.Based on the practical geological exploration,data types are analyzed and normalized database is designed.The strata recovering technique is presented to simulate single fault.Based on topological relations between faults,the levels of complicated faults are divided.According to the levels,the relationships of strata and strata,strata and faults,faults and faults are determined.The geological sections can be generated automatically.In order to confirm the practical result of this method,some automatically generated sections containing complicated faults are presented.


In peak of power supply,records in power supply company were not timely due to the installation of transformers,which caused not to quickly know the relationships between the distribution transformer and the corresponding user,thus to influence maintenance and accident handling. Judgement device for distribution transformer was designed. Introduction was made to the design method for transformer bus side judgement device and user judgement device,the post period maintenance method put forward.


This paper describes a new method of using the Internet to develop and deliver individualized prelab and postlab questions to students in the undergraduate laboratory. The delivery platform is Microsoft NT Server running Active Server Pages (ASP). The questions are written using a word processor and use a limited set of mark-up characters. Once written, the questions are saved to a file in HTML format to allow the ASP to generate and distribute the questions to the students via a Web browser.


We describe the application of a tunable differential interferometer to the characterization of pulsed gas valves, operating in the low-pressure regime ( Torr). The spatial profile of the pressure in the gas jet has been studied for piezoelectric and electromagnetic valves in various experimental conditions, for both Ne and Ar gases. Moreover the time response of the valves has been investigated by using, for the first time to our knowledge, the third harmonic generation process. The number of third harmonic photons has been determined as a function of the delay time between a Nd:YAG pump laser pulse and the opening time of the valve, thus allowing the determination of the jet temporal profile. The time dependence of the local pressure in the jet has been studied for various gas pulse durations.


A novel and efficient photoredox/copper cocatalyzed domino cyclization of oxime esters, aldehydes and amines has been achieved, affording a broad range of fully substituted 1H-imidazoles in good yields. This synthetic...


The connection between embedded devices and Internet has become an important direction and necessary trend.The methods for realizing web server with the characteristics of high-performance,high-dependability and low-cost by embedded technology is intro-duced.Based on the uClinux operating system,the CS8900A net chip's driving program and TCP/IP protocols are designed on the embedded chip,a kind of the feasible scheme to realize embedded HTTP web sever is provided,and finally an embedded web server is rea-lized.It can be used widely in many fields such as teledata collection,industry control and so on.


The present invention, the present invention specifically relates to the treatment of asthma, for improvement or prevention a composition comprising a dogtooth violet as an active ingredient asthma treatment or prevention a composition comprising a dogtooth violet as an active ingredient comprises a pharmaceutical composition or a dogtooth violet as an active ingredient asthma may be for improving or preventing composition. Since dogtooth violet extract of the present invention not only has an excellent effect in the treatment of asthma, improvement or prevention, shall raw material dogtooth violet of the dogtooth violet extract is not a problem harmful to the human body and side-effects to be used for a long time as food, asthma and treatment of asthmatic disease , it may be useful for improvement or prevention.


There have long been diversified views on A·J·Toynbee's historiography of civilization formation in the academic circles, and most criticisms go to extremes. This article attempts to rethink the historiography of civilization formation comprehensively, and point out that his theory sumed up the history of mankind as the history of civilization, and gave a special explanation to the origin, growth and end of civilization. Except for some flaws, there is still some rationality in his exploration to particular questions of civilization formation, some being viewed as brilliant and distinctive.


The article is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of the English penitentiary discourse rendering in Ukrainian translation. The urgency of the work is due to the urgent need for a comprehensive study of penitentiary texts. The objective of the research is to outline the peculiarities of penitentiary discourse, the study of different approaches to the interpretation of this phenomenon and the formulation of the key rules of translating English penitentiary discourse into Ukrainian. This resulted in the following tasks: to clear out the notion of discourse in linguistics and its specificity; to characterize the structural features of penitentiary discourse; to study the peculiarities of terms in penitentiary discourse and to analyze translation transformations employed in rendering English penitentiary discourse in Ukrainian.The comprehensive approach to the research allowed to enlarge and extend the scope of the terminological lexes, to reveal the linguistic means of penitentiary discourse realization as well as strategies, techniques and transformations employed in rendering English penitentiary texts in Ukrainian translation. As for the lexical transformations employed, their distribution may be characterized as follows. Loan translation was used in 25 cases or 12,5 %, transliteration in 22 cases or 11,0 %, lexico-semantic replacements in 69 cases or 34,5 %, concretization in 27 cases or 13,5 %, generalization in 16 cases or 7,0 %, modulation in 23 cases or 11,5 %. As for the grammatical transformations employed, their distribution may be characterized as follows. Grammatical replacements occur in 9 cases or 4,5 %, transpositions in 8 cases or 4,0 %, the null translation or omission in 3 units or 1,5 %. The practical value of the article and its efficiency may be grounded by a great demand for the qualified study of such issues as the speech of legislation and execution. The perspective may be seen in the compilation of a thesaurus or glossary of penitentiary terms.


An approach for calculating the force on the vessel wall during plasma disruptions in tokamaks is proposed. It is mainly based on the Maxwell equations and, therefore, is general. Another essential element is the integral force balance on the plasma that strongly constrains the possible solutions. The derived expressions are valid at any disruption scenario and finally give the net forces in terms of the magnetic perturbations behind the wall. The result can be used with magnetic measurements alone. It shows that the geometrical inhomogeneity of the wall and its resistivity are the key factors determining the direction and amplitude of the force.


1 o the casual reader it might appear that the historical controversy over Pope Pius XII and the question of his silence over the destruction of the European Jews has been resolved. First prompted by Rolf Hochhuth's forceful drama, The Deputy, the controversy escalated with a fluriy of books and articles appearing in the mid-1960s. Then, when the Holy See began publishing some of its documents, a few more works appeared in the 1970s and early 1980s. This lull apparently prompted historian John Conway to observe in 1987 that "the general public has lost interest in the subject."1 This is not quite true. A recent article published in The Tablet by the producer of a BBC production on Pius XII and the Jews prompted such a response that the letters column was filled for weeks afterward with comments both pro and con.2 The issue is still very much alive. In Hochhuth's play, Pius XII is portrayed as a germanophilie cold and calculating cleric, selfishly concerned with protecting himself and the institutional Church from the ravages of war, and favoring the Germans in their war against Soviet bolshevism. Some historians, pick ing up the theme, also point out the probability that the pontiff was unwilling to create a crisis of conscience for the German people by condemning their Fuhrer.3 The pope's defenders on the other hand


This work presents a recursive identification algorithm. This algorithm relates to the identification of closed loop system with Variable Structure Controller. The approach suggested includes two stages. In the first stage a genetic algorithm is used to obtain the parameters of switching function which gives a control signal rich in commutations (i.e. a control signal whose spectral characteristics are closest possible to those of a white noise signal). The second stage consists in the identification of the system parameters by the instrumental variable method and using the optimal switching function parameters obtained with the genetic algorithm. In order to test the validity of this algorithm a simulation example is presented. Keywords—Closed loop identification, Variable structure controller, Pseud-random Binary Sequence, Genetic algorithms.


In ancient Roman mythology, Janus is the god of beginnings and transitions. Janus has two faces, one looking back into the past and one looking ahead into the future (Figure 1). According to Ovid, having two faces also enabled him to never turn his back on his adored Cardea. In the figurative sense, something that is Janus‐headed is ambivalent and must be seen in context. In this regard, potassium is the Janus among electrolytes in heart failure. Potassium is abundant in cells and sparse in the extracellular space. This concentration gradient helps to build up the transmembrane potential that is indispensable for electrical signal conduction in the heart and in other organs. A decrease in extracellular potassium concentration augments, and an increase dampens excitability. Both conditions can severely impair normal physiological function. Serum potassium levels are largely determined by urinary potassium excretion. By acting on the expression of sodium and potassium transporters in the collecting tubules, the renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system (RAAS) causes sodium retention and potassium excretion. In patients with heart failure (HF), low levels of serum potassium are associated with increased mortality. Potassium depletion may result from neurohumoral RAAS activation in these patients, as well as from diuretic treatment, a mainstay in the management of heart failure. In the SOLVD trial cohort, the use of non‐potassium‐sparing diuretics was an independent risk factor for sudden cardiac death. The RALES, EPHESUS, and EMPHASIS‐HF trials have firmly established the role of potassium‐sparing mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists (MRA) in the treatment of heart failure. Aldosterone and eplerenone retain potassium and have direct effects on the myocardium. Because aldosterone levels are often increased despite RAAS blockade, simultaneous application of MRA has an additive effect over ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers. On the other hand, the concomitant use of MRA and other RAAS blocking agents may put patients at risk of fatal arrhythmias due to hyperkalaemia—Janus' second face. This is most commonly seen in those that exhibit reduced aldosterone levels in the first place, e.g. due to hyporeninaemic hypoaldosteronism. Elderly patients and those with diabetes mellitus or/and kidney disease are at highest risk. In the wake of the landmark MRA trials, the prescription rates for MRA have sharply increased. A concomitant increase in the rates of hyperkalaemia has been reported in one study (Figure 2), but not in another. However, the coincidence of hospital admissions due to very severe hyperkalaemia and the dual use of MRA and other RAAS blocking medications is now such a commonplace clinical experience that the term 'RALES' disease' (Morbus RALES) has gained currency among emergency physicians. To assess the actual risk of patients on dual MRA and other RAAS blocking treatment, we queried Würzburg University Hospital's Clinical Data Warehouse (Table 1). The Data Warehouse is a clinical registry that includes every inpatient and outpatient case managed by any department at this tertiary care centre. Out of ~5 million cases, we identified 118 691 cases (2.4%) between 2003 and January 2017 with at least one RAAS blocking agent (including an MRA). Dual ED ITOR IAL


The present invention extends in one direction and spaced from each other on the pixel areas is defined, a substrate including a switching area, and the gate wiring and a common wiring formed of the double-layer structure; A gate pad electrode of the double-layer structure is formed, it is connected to the ends of the gate wiring on the substrate; Common electrode of the plurality of single-layer structure formed of branches from the common wiring in the pixel region on the substrate; A pixel electrode of the plurality of shift and in parallel to the common wiring of the single-layer structure to form a plurality of single-layer structure all of the ends connected in a pixel region on the substrate; It is formed in the switching area on the substrate and a gate electrode of a double-layer structure coupled to the gate wire; Wherein said each pixel region boundary, and is formed covers the said switching area, and the gate pad electrode, having a first gate pad contact hole exposing the gate pad electrode on both sides relative to the central portion of the gate pad electrode, a gate insulating film having a pixel contact hole to any of a number of the pixel electrode exposed to a pixel electrode and the end of; Defining the gate insulating film above the pixel region by intersecting with the gate wire and the data wire formed of double layer structure; Is formed to be connected with one end of the data line over the gate insulating film, the central part has a single-layer structure, the two sides and the data pad electrode having a double layer structure; Over the gate insulating film on the first gate pad contact hole and in contact with the gate pad electrode of the double-layer structure, the central part has a single-layer structure, the two side ends are auxiliary gate pad electrode having a double layer structure; A semiconductor layer formed on the switching area over the gate insulating film and; The drain electrode of the double-layer structure in contact with one of the plurality of pixel electrodes via the pixel contact hole and spaced apart from the source electrode a source electrode of the double-layer structure is formed, is connected to the data line over the semiconductor layer, in the semiconductor layer the upper and; Covers the said switching area, and the data line formed at the boundary of the pixel regions, at the same time covers the part forming a two-layer structure in response to the gate auxiliary pad electrode and the data pad electrode, the central portion having a single-layer structure not correspond to those provided for the second gate pad contact hole and the lateral jeongyehyeong array substrate and a method of manufacturing the liquid crystal display device including a protective layer, and having formed in a data pad contact hole for each exposure. Mask 4, the array substrate, a liquid crystal, a horizontal electric field, the pad poor


Hepatitis B virus, one of the world's most widely spread infectious viral agents, is a major cause of millions of disease and death each year. The existence of approximately 350 million carriers in the world provides a reservoir for continuous transmission of the virus. At present, there is no effective treatment for the diseases caused by hepatitis B virus, and hence prevention of the infection through vaccination plays a significant role in eradicating the diseases caused by the virus. The present review is based on the prevention and vaccination strategies against hepatitis B virus infection and the aim of the study is mainly directed to the development and safety of different hepatitis B vaccines that are already developed and/or on the way to development. The review is mainly based on secondary publications for the last ten years. The review helps in developing ideas about the prevention and vaccination strategies against hepatitis B virus and also the problems that have arisen during vaccination.


The present invention relates to a haptic provide a method and electronic device that supports it, according to the haptic providing method in accordance with various embodiments of the present invention, for detecting a first input operation, in response to the first input to the first input according to the determined corresponding to the determined haptic object or texture operation, and where the first input is detected texture may include an operation to provide haptic feedback.


This paper proposes an indoor moving obstacle avoidance system with stereo camera for an autonomous transportation vehicle. Using three-dimension (3D) data, the obstacle avoidance system first separates the floor and non-floor data. Then, using density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise, the system classifies obstacles as static or moving based on optical flows from the data's center of gravity. Next, using Enhanced Vector Field Histogram method on depth data, the system locates a moving space for the vehicle and estimates the velocity and angular velocity of any moving obstacles using Kalman filter. In addition, the system selects a space for passing with Enhanced Vector Field Histogram method only for static obstacles. The system predicts whether avoidance is possible based on estimated velocity of obstacle. If obstacles cannot be avoided, another path is selected. The proposed system is validated in experiments using a moving robot as the test vehicle in traffic situations where collision with other moving objects (i.e., obstacles) is predicted. The results show that the robot effectively avoids moving obstacles by turning or changing velocity.


: Torrefaction is one of waste to energy (WTE) technologies developing in Taiwan recently, which can reduce the moisture and impurities and increase the energy density of biowaste effectively. To understand the torrefaction characteristics of different biowaste and the influences of different torrefaction conditions, four typical biowaste were selected to carry out the torrefaction experiments. The physical and chemical properties of different biowaste prior to and after torrefaction were analyzed and compared. Experimental results show that the contents of elemental carbon and caloric value of the four biowaste were significantly increased after torrefaction. The increase of combustible and caloric value in bamboo was the greatest among the four biowaste. The caloric value of bamboo can be increased from 1526 kcal/kg to 6104 kcal/kg after 300oC and 1 hour torrefaction. The caloric value of torrefied bamboo was almost four times as the original. The increase of elemental carbon content in wood was the greatest (from 41.03% to 75.24%), and the next was bamboo (from 47.07% to 74.63%). The major parameters which affected the caloric value of torrefied biowaste followed the sequence of biowaste kinds, torrefaction time, and torrefaction temperature. The optimal torrefaction conditions of the experiments were bamboo torrefied at 300oC for 3 hours, and the corresponding caloric value of torrefied bamboo was 5953 kcal/kg. This caloric value is similar to that of brown coal or bituminous coal.


in a temperature gradient, see Fig.1. This is of our knowledge the first molecular dynamics study of a reacting system submitted to non-equilibrium conditions. The reaction, which is diffusion controlled, was investigated at and close to local chemical equilibrium. The transport properties are determines; i.e. diffusion, thermal conductivity and the coupling between transport of heat and mass. The assumptions that are used to write down the equations of transport are verified.


i Respiratory sounds (RSs) auscultation using stethoscope is often the first noninvasive resource available to physicians for the detection and analysis of respiratory ailments. Motivated by the subjectivity of human auditory system, computerized auscultation combined with signal processing techniques have boosted the diagnostic capabilities of RS. This PhD thesis concentrates on the advanced signals processing methods for RS analysis from several aspects including: RS denoising by means of heart sounds (HSs) cancellation (Part I), respiratory phase detection (Part II), as well as RS analysis and feature extraction methods for RS classification (Part III). Part I solves the problem of HS cancellation through a two-steps scheme consisting of HS localization and HS removal from different types of single-channel RS recordings. HS contaminated segments have been localized by introducing a wavelet based localization scheme. A detection function based on multiscale decomposition is calculated and HS segments in the noisy RS signal are localized based on the cumulative sums of likelihood ratios capturing the dynamic behaviour of the signal. HS removal from RS is then addressed by proposing a novel semi-blind single-channel source extraction algorithm which incorporates the filter banks and template based matching using FIR filters. It has shown that the proposed methods are successful attempts to solve the clinical application challenge faced by the existing HS cancellation methods in terms of respiratory ailments. In Part II, the problem of noninvasive automatic respiratory rate monitoring by acoustical means is addressed first. Respiratory phase segmentation is then formulated as an optimization problem and the boundaries of the respiratory phase segments are ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library