Many emerging Big Data applications involve real- time classification in which data instances arriving sequentially over time need to be classified based on their feature vectors. A common and implicit assumption in existing works is that the features become available instantly with the instance and simultaneously with each other, which, however, rarely holds in practice. Instead, features of an instance may experience various random delays to be available. In such scenarios, an important trade-off emerges between accurate classification and timely classification. In this paper, we provide a first formulation of this important problem and propose efficient online algorithms, namely DAlay-aware Real-time Classification (DARC) algorithms, that maximize the classification accuracy given an average classification delay constraint. The algorithms are developed based on the Lyapunov stochastic optimization technique which provides strong performance guarantee. Numerical results on an intrusion detection dataset are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.


The case for looking beyond prejudice and myth at the sexual experiences of both men and women, and at how their experiences are connected to questions of sexual health, is becoming increasingly important as the proportion of the population over 50 continues to expand over the next 50 years. This paper summarizes the findings of a literature review, commissioned by The Pennell Initiative For Women's Health, which looked at how sex and sexuality interacts with common health problems faced by women in the second half of life. It concludes by considering some of the implications for further work in this field.


The research on the multilevel inverter structures has been focused on reducing the number of voltage sources and the components while obtaining voltage boosting in the output voltage. A lesser number of components would ensure lesser cost while higher boosting ability increases its application potential. Based on these features, the paper presents a new topology for switched‐capacitor multi‐level inverter (SCMLI), which can produce an output voltage waveform of nine levels with a voltage boosting of twice the input voltage employing a single dc voltage source, three capacitors, and 11 power switches. The operation of switches, capacitors with a self‐charge balancing modulation scheme, and a voltage source for producing nine‐level boosted output voltage make this topology useful, and it is capable of supplying different types of load with efficiency above 97%. The simulation results and the hardware results are provided to verify the satisfactory operation of the proposed topology.


Chronic venous ulceration (CVU) of the lower limbs is a common condition affecting 1% of the adult population in Western countries, which is burdened with a high complication rate and a marked reduction in the quality of life often due to prolonged healing time. Several metalloproteinases (MMPs) such as MMP‐9 together with neutrophil gelatinase‐associated lipocalin (NGAL) appear to be involved in the onset and healing phases of venous ulcer, but it is still unclear how many biochemical components are responsible for prolonged healing time in those ulcers. In this study, we evaluate the role of MMP‐1 and MMP‐8 in long lasting and refractory venous ulcers. In a 2‐year period we enroled 45 patients (28 female and 17 male, median age 65) with CVU. The enroled population was divided into two groups: group I were patients with non‐healing ulcers (ulcers that had failed to heal for more than 2 months despite appropriate treatments) and group II were patients with healing ulcers (ulcers in healing phases). MMP‐1 and MMP‐8 were measured in fluids and tissues of healing and non‐healing ulcers by means of enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and Western blot analysis, respectively. In particular the patterns of the collagenases MMP‐1 and MMP‐8 in healing wounds were distinct, with MMP‐8 appearing in significantly greater amounts especially in the non‐healing group. Our findings suggest that MMP‐1, and MMP‐8 are overexpressed in long lasting CVU. Therefore, this dysregulation may represent the main cause of the pathogenesis of non‐healing CVU.


IN A RECENT STUDY1 an analysis has been presented for the determination of the steady-state characteristics of magnetic amplifiers in terms of data of design. The method is to apply Kirchhoff's and Faraday's laws to the electric circuits of the amplifier and to use Ampere's law to relate the magnetic field intensities and currents, expressing the empirical relationship between field intensities and flux densities by means of some convenient analytical expressions.


The chemical changes brought about by light in the green leaf leading to the production of sugars and starch from carbon dioxide and water are still far from being clearly understood. To what extent the chlorophyll takes part in this process, whether it simply performs the function of bringing the rays of light into contact with the carbon dioxide and water in such a way as to enable them to effect a synthesis of these two compounds, or whether the chlorophyll itself initiates these changes by its own chemical decomposition, are problems still unsolved.


This paper investigates in detail a micro scale in-plane gap closing electrostatic energy harvester with strong nonlinearities in squeeze-film damping, electromechanical coupling, and impacts on end-stops. The device shows softening response on increasing the bias voltage and saturation behavior on impact with end-stops at high enough acceleration amplitude. We demonstrate that a lumped model can adequately describe the measured nonlinear behavior for a range of operating conditions with nonlinear fluid damping force and impact force included in the model. While modeling capacitances, a finite-element method (FEM) is used to analyze fringing field effects on the capacitance variation for gap closing electrodes. The nominal capacitance is obtained from FEM analysis, for a range of under-cut values in the fabrication process treated as a free parameter in the model. The device modeled for linear and nonlinear squeeze-film damping force highlights the importance of nonlinear damping force to understand the device behavior over the range of operating conditions. With the compliant end-stops treated as spring-dampers and with proper choice of end-stop damping-coefficient, the model successfully captures the end-stop nonlinearities for a particular operating point and reproduces the dynamic pull-in phenomena at 8 V bias, and rms acceleration 0.6 g , as observed in the experiments. Thus, the model described in this paper reproduces the subtle nonlinear effects dominating the dynamics of an in-plane gap closing electrostatic energy harvester.


Enhanced serial interface systems and methods having a higher throughput. An enhanced serial interface system is disclosed. The system includes a master component and a slave component. The master component is configured to operate in a standard mode and an enhanced mode for communication. The master component includes standard terminals and hybrid terminals. Only the standard terminals are used for communicating in the standard mode. The hybrid terminals and the standard terminals are used for communicating in the enhanced mode. The slave component is configured to operate in the enhanced mode and communicate with the master component.


The new directive on public procurement, the European Parliament and Council Directive 2014/24/EU, is to be implemented in Swedish law by the year 2016. This paper discusses the new directive's significance for opportunities to make demands on social considerations. It also includes the development that has taken place in the area of social considerations in general.

The directive involves no major changes in social considerations. The changes are mostly codification of existing case law. The Directive clarifies, however, what this case law means. The judgment in Max Havelaar has clarified the legal position in regard to the opportunities to make demands on social considerations pertaining to a product, service or works' life cycle, by defining what can be linked to the subject-matter of the public contract. This has also been introduced in the new directive. This extends the ability of a contracting authority to choose in which situations it would want to use either a contract award criteria or a condition for performance of the contract. It is also now, under certain conditions, allowed to demand brands in the specifications.

The procurement law principles, the link to the subject matter of the public contract as well as the rest of European Union law and national law must continue to be considered when a contracting authority demands social considerations.

The effects of social considerations are relatively unknown. There is a lack of relevant research in this area. The lack of monitoring of the contracts procured is another problem that has been identified.


Objective To observe the effect of acupuncture-predominant treatment for cervical spondylosis of vertebral artery type.Methods A hundred and twelve patients with cervical spondylosis of vertebral artery type were randomized into a treatment group and a control group,56 in each.The treatment group received acupuncture plus rehabilitation training,and the control group was treated with acupuncture only.The therapeutic effects were compared between the two groups afterwards.Result The recovery rate and total effective rate were respectively 57.2% and 96.4% in the treatment group,and 37.5% and 83.9% in the control group.The differences between the two groups were significant(P0.05).Conclusion Acupuncture is an effective method for treating cervical spondylosis of vertebral artery type.


The awareness and the extent of usage of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) components by Village Extension Agents (VEAs), in three selected States Agricultural Development Projects (ADPs) of Nigeria, were investigated. Two hundred and four (204) VEAs were sampled as respondents for the study. With aid of simple statistical tools (average, cumulative and percentages), and the analysis of the results indicate that the level of awareness of ICTs among the respondents (VEAs) was quite high especially on radio (99%), GSM phones (96%); and television (93%). On the contrary, the level of awareness was low on fax (68%) and Personal Digital Assistant (PDAs) (69%). It was also noted that the following devices were highly used by the respondents; GSM phones, radio, cassette recorder, television, CD/DVD player and VHS Video player. Unfortunately, the respondents recorded least ICT usage on fax and PDAs. It was recommended that both awareness and usage of available ICT formats should be intensified among VEAs so as to optimize their usage in the effective performance on the job.


Cultural heritage has an important role in sustaining communities: it strengthens cultural identity and feeling of belonging; creates economic benefits for example through tourism; and reinforces sustainability in broader ecological and environmental terms. Heritage conservation is commonly included to the idea of sustainable development. Since the idea and concept of cultural heritage is extremely fluid, ambiguous, and emotionally charged, the attempts to sustain and preserve it easily gain a political dimension. During the past decade, the transcultural and transnational dimensions of heritage have become topical in a new way in Europe: the idea and the concept of a common European cultural heritage have been more and more frequently referred to in the political discourses and practices of the EU. The European Commission has recently launched and currently administrates or supports several cultural initiatives, which aim to foster the idea of a common European cultural heritage. The concept of cultural heritage is also often used in EU policy sections other than culture. The paper discusses the explicit and implicit heritage politics included in the recent EU heritage initiatives and their policy discourse. The main questions in the paper are: What kind of heritage politics does the EU promote and implement through its heritage initiatives; and how and why does the EU aim to govern the cultural heritage in Europe? In order to understand the constructive and generative nature of the EU's heritage politics, it is approached in the paper as a discursive meaning-making process that consists of several political aims, strategies for obtaining them, and the underlying ideologies on which the aims and the strategies are based upon. In the paper, the EU heritage politics is understood as a form of governance which aims at governing both heritage agencies and the cultural meanings of heritage in Europe.


We present an approach to designing arbitrarily high-order finite-volume spatial discretizations on
locally-rectangular grids. It is based on the use of a simple class of high-order quadratures for computing the average of fluxes over faces. This approach has the advantage of being a variation on widely-used second-order methods, so that the prior experience in engineering those methods carries over in the higher-order case. Among the issues discussed are the basic design principles for uniform grids, the extension to locally-refined nest grid hierarchies, and the treatment of complex geometries using mapped grids, multiblock grids, and cut-cell representations.


The creation of a single European rail transport market it is important to increase confidence between the actors on the market and between member states who shall ensure that railway safety is generally maintained and, where reasonably practicable, continuously improved. For this purpose the European railway safety directive introduces a mechanism to adopt a Common Safety Targets (CST) expressed in risk acceptance criteria for individuals and for society. This paper focuses on the apportionment of safety targets for European railway system. We develop a generic approach based on the Functional Hazard Analysis (FHA), to analyse the safety of railway systems for a unified European network and to com¬ply with the CSTs required by the European railway Safety Directive. We suggest to combine the FHA technique with the functional railway architecture to allocate the safety targets to the railway functions.


This paper is concerning the issues of behaviour of lightweight expanded clay aggregates concrete exposed to high temperature. Lightweight aggregates from expanded clay are produced by firing of row material up to temperature 1050°C. Lightweight aggregates have suitable properties in terms of volume stability, when exposed to temperatures up to 1050°C, which could indicate their suitability for construction applications with higher risk of fire. The test samples were exposed to heat by using the standard temperature-time curve ISO 834. Negative changes in resulting mechanical properties, such as compressive strength, tensile strength, and flexural strength were evaluated. Also visual evaluation of the specimen was performed. On specimen exposed to excessive heat, an explosive spalling could be observed, due to evaporation of considerable amount of unbounded water from the inner structure of the concrete. Keywords—Expanded clay aggregate, explosive spalling, high temperature, lightweight concrete, temperature-time curve ISO 834.


The elaboration of an efficient distribution strategy involves steps like determination of warehouse number and its location, the strategy of inventory products allocation in each warehouse and elaboration of routes for products distribution, from warehouses to points of sale. Due the complexity involving each one these steps, decisions have been done in a hierarchical and sequential way. This traditional approach conduces to sub-optimal solutions, since the problem is divided in sub-problems and each sub-problem solution affect the others. This paper proposes a single model for solve the warehouse location and centralization of inventories problems in a simultaneous mode and proposes a heuristic algorithm for the problem based on evolutionary approach. Proposed model was applied on a real problem involving the re-planning of a drugstore network, showing its technical viability.


The temperature dependence of the unimolecular dehalogenation of radical anions of nitrobenzyl halides and haloacetophenones was measured between -7 and 70/sup 0/C. Activation parameters range from E/sub a/ = 11.2-16.9 kcal/mol and log A = 12.7-17.1. Both E/sub a/ and log A increase from p- to o-nitro radicals and from chloro to bromo radicals. Unfavorable steric effects that move the halogen atom out of the aromatic plane result in lowered A factors. In general, the variation of k/sub 294/ with structure depends in a complex way on the combination of E/sub a/ and log A factors, which suggests caution in the evaluation of rate constants at one temperature. The fast unimolecular dissociation of (p-NO/sub 2/C/sub 6/H/sub 3/CH/sub 2/Br)/sup -/ . (k/sub 294/ = 4.6 x 10/sup 5/ s/sup -1/) allows measurement of the slower bimolecular electron transfer (C/sub 6/H/sub 5/NO/sub 2/)/sup -/ . + p-NO/sub 2/C/sub 6/H/sub 4/CH/sub 2/Br ..-->.. (p-NO/sub 2/C/sub 6/H/sub 4/CH/sub 2/Br)/sup -/ . + C/sub 6/H/sub 5/NO/sub 2/ (k/sub 294/ = 1.9 x 10/sup 6/ M/sup -1/ s/sup -1/). Both the activation energy and probability factor contribute to the slow rate, possibly due to a geometry change upon the reduction of ArNO/sub 2/. Extending the temperaturemore » studies to supercooled solutions shows no discontinuity of the unimolecular rate constants near the phase transition temperatures. 24 references, 4 figures, 1 table.« less


Inthis work the investigations of water vapour adsorption and calculation the specific surface area of soil samples of Sudanese Vertisols in North (NG), Central (CG) and South (SG) Gezira are presented. The Brunauer-Emmet and Teller (BET) equation was used to analyze experimental adsorption data of water vapour and to calculate the specific surface area (SBET) from both the adsorption and the desorption branches of the adsorption isotherm. The values of the SBET estimated from the adsorption isotherms ranged from 106 to 120, from 141 to 155 and from 165 to 187 m 2 g -1 for the soil from North, Central and South Gezira, respectively. If the desorption isotherms were used, the ranges of SBET were 117-140, 158-183 and 179-206 m 2 g -1 , respectively. Linear regression plot for the electric conductivity (EC), soluble Na + ions and the difference S=S(des)-S(ads) was found. The specific surface area slightly increased with the depth of the soil profile. The specific surface area of Vertisols from Sudan increa- sed from the north to the south and was related to the water regime and the intensity of cracking. The correlation between selected chemical and physical characteristics of soils and the values of the specific surface area was found.


A number of interesting effects develop when kinetically independent electrochemical reactions occur in parallel at the electrode. They are due to interaction of the charged solution components during their transport by migration and diffusion in the diffusion layers or in films covering the electrode. They include the migration-current exaltation observed when cations and a neutral substance are reduced in parallel [l-3], the correlational migration-current exaltation observed when different sort. of cations are reduced in parallel [2-4], as well as the migration effects observed when metal deposition and anion reduction occur in parallel [5 ] . In the present work we investigate a general three-component system where all charged components can participate in electrode processes. For the sake of simplicity, we limit ourselves to the case where all ions (two sorts of cations and one sort of anions) are univalent. Another possible case, with two sorts of anions and one sort of cations, can be examined in the analogous manner, and the appropriate relations can be obtained when replacing Ψ by -Ψ in the relations to be reported below.


In 1975 Tefko Saracevic declared the subject knowledge view to be the most fundamental perspective of relevance. This paper examines the assumptions in different views of relevance, including the s...


A gas chromatography-ion trap tandem mass spectrometry method was developed for the determination of DMZ,RNZ,SNZ,MNZ and ONZ residues in swine muscle.The nitroimidazole residues were extracted with dichloromethane,followed by reextracted with hydrochloric acid.The acid extract was made basified with K2HPO4,followed by extracted with dichloromethane.The final solution was carefully evaporated just to dryness with a vacuum evaporator(water bath at 40 ℃).The remaining residues was dissolved with 3 mL ethyl acetate.The solution was transferred into a derivation tube,evaporated to dryness under a weak nitrogen stream and derivatised with a solution of 50 μL of BSA-50 μL of i-octane for 60 min at 50 ℃ to produce trimethylsilyl-derivatives(TMS-derivatives).The resulting mixture was directly injected into the GC-MS/MS system.It was shown that the calibration curves were linear with a correlation coefficients(r) over 0.998 in range of 0.005-1.6 μg/mL.The limits of detection were 0.2 μg/kg for RNZ,0.5 μg/kg for SNZ,1.0 μg/kg for DMZ,MNZ and ONZ.Recoveries of five nitroimidazoles in tissues spiked at 0.2-4.0 μg/kg were 74%-82%,the inter-day relative standard deviation was less than 13%.These results suggested that the developed method was a sensitive and accurate method for the determination of nitroimidazole residues in swine muscle.


Abstract This corrigendum serves to recognise the contribution of Dr. Mark Lammers, who was erroneously not given authorship in the original version of the paper.


The cell density changes of Vibrio mimicus K-1 in sea water and arkshell feeding it were examined at various temperature. The strain was suspended in sterilized sea water and storaged at experimental temperature ). At intervals of up to 10 days, aliquots of each suspension were plated onto BHI agar. At 5 and , the plate counts of V. mimicus K-1 showed a rapid decline, which 3s known to be a reault of this bacterium's entering into the viable but non culturable state. At 20 and , however, V. mimicus K-1 are stable over the 10 days experimental periods. V. mimicus K-1 was fed to arkshell, which was subsequently stored at temperatures ranging from 5 to for 10 days. The samples of arkshell were homogenized and plated at intervals to determine the cell density of V. mimicus K-1 and total aerobic population of bacteria present. At 5 and , the numbers of V. mimicus K-1 in sea water rapid decreased over the 10 days experimental periods. However, little change of V. mimicus K-1 density was observed in shellstock arkshell at 5 and . While, V. mimicus K-1 density was decreased more rapidly to level below limit of dectection in shucked arkshell at same temperature. Incubation at the higher temperature resulted in large increase in total aerobic bacterial number of shellstock arkshell. These results suggest that even with proper storage, indigenous levels of V. mimicus may remain sufficiently high in shellstock arkshell to produce infection in compromise hosts.


Due to the intricacy and complexity of the power grid, the single-phase grounding faults mostly occur in small current grounding systems and timely remove the line faults being critical to the stability and safety of the power system. For that purpose, the fault transient signals are analyzed of single-phase grounding faults to accurately extract the characteristic frequencies that reflect the fault information, and the EMD method is used to model and simulate the fault information in following experiments. The experiments are conducted for two types of grounding distribution network models which are overhead lines and cable hybrid lines to study the simulation data of single-phase-to-ground short circuit of distribution network under various fault conditions; the faulty line location can be derived on the basis of the intrinsic modal energy; accordingly, the fault line selection can be obtained quickly which verifies the rationality of that method.


The following article aims to present, from children's perspectives, the value of literacy and how they use it in their everyday lives. Through the use of ethnographic methodology, including observations, interviews and collection of artifacts, it seeks to examine how children rely on their literacy skills authentically, as they play and move between spaces and respond to stimuli in their environment. I followed six children as telling cases and used Strauss and Corbin's (1990) Grounded Theory to illuminate the findings. Two dominant themes emerged: connecting and participating in significant moments. These findings provide much guidance on how teachers and parents can more readily support young children in their literacy development. It also supports the notion that children's perceptions of the value of literacy are inextricably linked to how they use it within their personal contexts: at home, school, and the wider community. This also supports children's use literacy as a means of bonding with and participating in social experiences.


Auxiliary power supply (APS) for railway vehicle, consisting of more than two subs, is the key electric component for supplying electric power of vehicle. When one of APS fails, fault one is stopped and disunited from vehicle load. During the extension of power from remaining normal APS, passengers have to endure inconvenience due to temporarily blocked electric power. In this paper, the simple parallel synchronous operation algorithm for APS was propose, with which All APS can operated in parallel at all times resulting seamless power supply to load even during failure of some APS. For minimizing the communication and other external control efforts to implement synchronous operation, simple but effective control algorithm was suggested and verified by PSIM simulation.


During dry seasons, equines are traditionally fed hay. However, if not prepared under favourable climatic conditions and if not well stored, hay does not preserve its nutritional value. The aim of this study was to evaluate the nutritional composition and beta-carotene concentration in Stylosanthes guianensis cv. Mineirao and Estilosantes Campo Grande hay varieties used to feed equines and assess the alterations that may occur during storage time. The leguminous plants were cultivated in a 1.5 ha plot and harvested after 127 days. The sun-dried products had humidity between 12 and 15% when transported into the storage shed. The samples were taken every 45 days over 225 days for analyses of dry matter (DM), mineral matter (MM), calcium (Ca), phosphorus (P), crude protein (CP), neutral detergent fibre (NDF), acid detergent fibre (ADF), acid detergent insoluble nitrogen (ADIN), lignin, and beta-carotene. The treatments were Stylosanthes guianensis cv. Mineirao and Estilosantes Campo Grande hay varieties which were assessed at six moments of storage: 0, 45, 90, 135, 180, and 225 days. A completely randomized split-plot design was used. Once compared, there were differences (P 0.05) throughout a period of 225 storage days. Storing hay, when well executed, maintains its levels of beta-carotene for at least 225 days, allowing for its use in equine feed, with no need for vitamin A supplementation. The nutritional composition suggested Estilosantes Campo Grande as the most appropriate hay to be used in equine diets.


The question of audience (dis)unity has been a central, if not always explicit, element of the theory and practice of drama since its inception. In this essay, I consider the staging of rhetorical expression and interpretation in Shakespearean drama, whereby the playwright intervenes in the relationship between audience and performance in order to problematize and retheorize the interpretive dynamics of the theater. There are many such moments of staged interpretation in the Shakespeare canon, but I will focus here on two plays which deploy subtle and complex strategies of interpretive disunification. In the first part, I offer a brief outline of theoreti-cal debates about audience unity, and an overview of the intersections of oratory and dramatic performance. In the second part, I turn to characters who serve as "internal audiences" or "mediators" on the Shakespearean stage. I first consider the unifying nationalist rhetoric of the titular monarch in Henry V , analyzing the staging of resistance to that rhetorical unification by the always already alienated low characters in the play. Fi-nally, shifting from spoken to silent rhetorical performance, I examine the complex dynamic between internal mediator and gestural performance in Titus Andronicus , whereby interpretive ambiguity operates in and destabilizes the drive toward both linguistic and socio-political unity.


This article dissects the analysis theory of the numerical value,digs out the thought characteristics of this subject,and puts forward the teaching ideology of the course: make clear about the theoretical system,grasp the thought characteristics,study and innovate in the light of the thought pattern designed by the numerical value method,direct the teaching of the course of numerical value analysis,and finally realize the goal of the course.


Latino male students lag far behind their Latina and European American counterparts in academic achievement (Yosso & Solorzano, 2006; Moll & Ruiz, 2002). One potential explanation for this discrepancy is the pressure to resist school behaviors (Fordham & Ogbu, 1986) that Latino male students may encounter from their same-sex and sameethnic peer group members. The current dissertation research explores how messages of school resistance from peers impact Latino student achievement and how self-monitoring strategies (i.e., regulating one's behaviors; Snyder, 1974) may provide a coping strategy for this school resistance. In Study 1, Latino and European American male and female undergraduate students (N=95) completed peer school resistance items and reported GPAs. Analyses revealed that while male students reported higher perceptions of peer school resistance than female students, peer school resistance was only negatively correlated with achievement for Latino male students, and was unrelated to achievement for European American male students. In Study 2, Latino and European American male and female undergraduate students (N=413) completed self-monitoring items and reported SAT math scores. Analyses revealed that self-monitoring strategies were positively correlated with achievement for Latino male students, but were unrelated to achievement for Latina and European American male and female students. While Studies 1 and 2 used correlational methods, in Study 3, Latino high school students (N=174) who were randomly assigned to read messages of high or low peer school resistance completed self-monitoring items, thoughts about achievement items, and an achievement task (i.e., AIMS math items). Analyses revealed that high peer school


Are presented data about possibility to consider Kizil structure-facies zone of Magnitogorsk megasinform in South Ural as an antiform. Its geologic structure is cha-racterized by thrust tectonics. It is departed Gusikha allochtonous structure, located be-tween Kizil and Magnitogorsk zones.


Green tides originate from the rapid growth of green macroalgae and their large accumulation. In the past few decades, the severity and frequency of green tides have increased and the range of their geographical distribution has widened. In recent years, Ulva meridionalis Horimoto et Shimada has been reported in many countries. This species has stable morphological characteristics, and its length can reach 3 m in indoor cultures. Its cells contain pyrenoids, and the sporangium and gametangium of each cell contain 8 spores and 16 gametes, respectively, which confer a high proliferation potential. The phylogenetic tree constructed in this study showed that the Internal Transcribed Spacer sequence identified U. meridionalis with a high identification reliability, and the genetic relationship between U. meridionalis and Ulva pertusa in the ITS sequence was close. The haplotype network analysis clarified the relationship of the U. meridionalis samples collected from four different sea areas in China and indicated that they were closely related. Five haplotypes were identified: Hap_2 and Hap_1 were the most frequent, and they were also the haplotypes shared among the three groups. The degree of subspecies formation was not reached among these U. meridionalis samples collected from the Chinese seas. Up to 20 years ago, U. meridionalis had only been recorded in Japan. After 2011, it has been found to be widely distributed in the United States, China, French New Caledonia, French Polynesia, and Australia, where it proliferates. It has spread as a new kind of green tide-forming macroalga. The present study found that U. meridionalis is widely distributed in the Chinese seas; specifically, there have been small-scale blooms in the Bohai Sea, the Yellow Sea, and the South China Sea. Further investigations should focus on establishing whether U. meridionalis will cause large-scale green tide events in the future.


The vibration and the noise generated by the water jet electric boats are low compared with those of same sized internal combustion engine boats. However, an objective evaluation of the vibration and the noise from electric boats has not yet been conducted. In this research, an underwater noise from an electric boat and that from an internal combustion engine boat were measured and analyzed. From results of experiments and frequency analysis, maximum noise level of the electric boat was found to be lower than that of internal combustion engine boat. It was also shown that the impeller revolution was the main source of underwater noise from the electric boat.


This paper starts with new opportunities in the reconstruction endeavor. Then it makes an analysis of the features and existing problems in this respect. A comprehensive and systematic approach of development to the reconstruction endeavor is thereby put forward.


If a metrizable space X is dense in a metrizable space Y , then Y is called a metric extension of X. If T1 and T2 are metric extensions of X and there is a continuous map of T2 into T1 keeping X pointwise fixed, we write T1 � T2. If X is noncompact and metrizable, then (M(X),�) denotes the set of metric extensions of X, where T1 and T2 are identified if T1 � T2 and T2 � T1, i.e., if there is a homeomorphism of T1 onto T2 keeping X pointwise fixed. (M(X),�) is a large complicated poset studied extensively by V. Bel'nov (The structure of the set of metric extensions of a noncompact metrizable space, Trans. Moscow Math. Soc. 32 (1975), 1-30). We study the poset (E(X),�) of one-point metric extensions of a locally compact metrizable space X. Each such extension is a (Cauchy) completion of X with respect to a compatible metric. This poset resembles the lattice of compactifications of a locally compact space if X is also separable. For Tychonoff X, let X� = �X\X, and letZ(X) be the poset of zerosets of X partially ordered by set inclusion. Theorem If X and Y are locally compact separable metrizable spaces, then (E(X),�) and (E(Y ),�) are order-isomorphic iff Z(X � ) andZ(Y � ) are order-isomorphic, and iff Xand Yare homeomorphic. We construct an order preserving bijection � :E(X)! Z(X � ) such that a one-point completion inE(X) is locally compact iff its image under � is clopen. We extend some results to the nonseparable case, but leave problems open. In a concluding section, we show how to construct one-point completions geometrically in some explicit cases.


The Galileo spacecraft encountered the Earth once on December 8, 1990 (Earth I), and again on December 8, 1992 (Earth II). These flybys provided excellent opportunities to evaluate the performance of the energetic particle detector (EPD) and establish analysis procedures in a relatively well-known environment. Further, because Galileo's Earth flyby trajectories were very rapid and nearly radial, the radiation belt measurements provided an excellent "snapshot" of trapped radiation. The EPD data agree with and extend the familiar radiation belt empirical models established by the National Space Science Data Center. Because of the rapid flyby and the 20-s spin period of Galileo, great care had to be taken to remove time aliasing from the pitch angle distributions. Large anisotropies were also present due to spatial density gradients. Spherical harmonics were fitted to the pitch and phase distributions in order to remove the effects of time aliasing and density gradient anisotropies and obtain fluxes from which phase space densities could be computed. The phase space density was calculated at pitch angles and energies that conserve the first and second adiabatic invariants. The extracted phase space density was compared with that computed from the AP8 model of the stably trapped proton fluxes. Earth I and Earth II observations and the AP8 model were compared for values of the first adiabatic invariant at 10.0, 15.0, 20.0, 25.0 30.0, 35.0, 40.0, 45.0, and 50.0 MeV/G and of the second adiabatic invariant at 0.10, 0.15, 0.20, 0.25, and 0.30 G0.5 RE. Results show that for lower values of the first and second adiabatic invariants the AP8 values slightly exceed the observations, and for higher values of the first two adiabatic invariants the AP8 values are slightly lower than the observations; and in the middle range of invariants there is relatively good agreement between AP8 and observations.


This study explored the perception of transplanted English prosody by thirty American and Korean, male and female listeners. The English utterances of various sentence types produced by Korean and American male speakers were employed to transplant the American prosody contours to Korean English utterances. Then, the thirty subjects were instructed to rate the transplanted prosodic components. Results showed that the interactions between the three factors (e.g., rater groups & transplantation types; transplantation types & sentence types; rater groups & transplantation types & sentence types) turned out to be meaningful. Both Americans and Koreans perceived the effectiveness of the combined effect of transplanted duration and pitch or duration and pitch and intensity. However, when perceiving individual prosodic components, Americans and Koreans showed different perceptual ratings. As for the overall prosody change, Americans perceived the change of intensity in a significant way but Koreans did not because intensity is not a crucial semantic factor in Korean. Americans rated the transplantation of duration alone as ineffective while Koreans rated otherwise. This was explained by the difference between English and Korean. The difference of perspective was also significant with different sentence types, especially with the three sentence types that had speech rates slower than other sentence types. A slower speech rate intensified the mismatch between the transplanted duration and the original pitch causing a negative impression on American listeners whereas this did not affect Korean listeners. Pedagogical implications of the findings are discussed.


The current studies examined the role of medial prefrontal cortical (mPFC) group II metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluR2/3) in the development of cocaine sensitization. Initial studies demonstrated that intra-mPFC injection of the mGluR2/3 receptor agonist, APDC, dose-dependently reduced acute behavioral response to cocaine (0.015-15 nmol/side with significant effects starting at 1.5nmol/side). The effects of APDC were prevented by intra-mPFC co-injections of an mGluR2/3 antagonist, LY341495 (1.5 nmol/side). Repeated intra-mPFC APDC (1.5 nmol/side) injections also prevented the initiation of behavioral and neurochemical sensitization, which is defined as enhanced nucleus accumbens (NAc) dopamine response to cocaine. Once sensitization was induced, however, intra-mPFC administration of APDC did not block cocaine-induced behavioral and neurochemical responses in sensitized animals after 7 days and 30 days withdrawal. In contrast, intra-mPFC injections of APDC were found to block the expression of behavioral and neurochemical sensitization in sensitized animals after 1 day withdrawal. Additional microdialysis studies demonstrated that intra-mPFC infusions of LY341495 increased glutamate levels in the mesocorticolimbic brain regions of control animals, while this response was enhanced in sensitized animals following short term withdrawal from repeated cocaine exposure. The mesocorticolimbic brain regions examined in these studies include the mPFC, NAc and VTA, which are well known brain regions involved in cocaine sensitization. Nonetheless, this effect was no longer apparent in animals after prolonged withdrawal (7 days and 30 days). Furthermore, additional results demonstrated that repeated cocaine exposure enhanced the vesicular (K evoked) and non-vesicular (cystine evoked) glutamate release in the mPFC. It was shown that LY379268, an mGluR2/3 receptor agonist, inhibited the K induced glutamate release and cystine induced glutamate release in the mPFC of animals following 1 day of withdrawal from repeated cocaine injections. In contrast to these data, LY 379268 did not inhibit the release of glutamate from one of these sources in the mPFC of animals following 7 day of withdrawal. Collectively, these data suggested that the mPFC mGluR2/3 receptor can reduce the motor response to cocaine. The development of cocaine sensitization may be associated with an initial increased responsiveness of the mPFC mGluR2/3 receptor, coupled with enhanced glutamate transmission in the mPFC. Following prolonged withdrawal, loss of inhibitory control of the glutamate release within mPFC by the mGluR2/3 receptor thereafter may result in the enhanced excitatory drive, which in turn generates increased excitatory output from mPFC to subcortical regions including NAc and VTA.


Introduction: Amniotic fluid is necessary for normal musculoskeletal development, gastrointestinal tract and lung development. It protects the fetus from trauma against umbilical cord and infections by bacteriostatic property . Oligohydramnios, a deficiency in the amount of amniotic fluid, occurs in 3.9-5.5% of all pregnancies . Most common cause of oligohydramnios is idiopathic (52%). Second commonest cause is PIH (25%) . Oligohydramnios may influence maternal, perinatal outcomes. The Amniotic Fluid Index (AFI) is the more commonly employed technique for assessing adequacy of amniotic fluid volume. The sonographic diagnosis of oligohydramnios is usually based on an AFI ≤ 5 cm or on a single deepest pocket of amniotic fluid ≤ 2 cm. Aim: 1) To study the maternal and perinatal outcome in pregnancies with gestational age 34 weeks and above with AFI less than or equal to 5. 2) To compare the maternal and perinatal outcomes of such pregnancies with pregnancies where AFI is 8 to 24. Materials and Methods: The present study was Prospective Analytical hospital-based study conducted at Nazareth Hospital for one-year i.e. (8 th September 2017 to 7 th September 2018) in the department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology. Patients with AFI less than and equal to 5 was taken as study group (Group I) and AFI 8-24 was taken as comparator group (Group II). This study included 50 number of cases and 100 number of control to compensate for 10% dropouts. Results: Among those women diagnosed with oligohydramnios (</=5) , 44% of patients belonged to primi gravida, most common antepartum complications associated was found to be hypertensive disorder (28%), There was more incidence of induction of labour (65.7%), (64%) underwent caesarean section, fetal distress ( 65.6%) was most common indication, 8% of patients had babies where APGAR score was below 7, 20% of patient had low birth weight babies, 20% babies was admitted in NICU. Conclusion: 1) Amniotic fluid index measurement can be used as a useful adjunct to other fetal surveillance methods, to identify those infants at risk of poor perinatal outcome. 2) AFI </= 5cm is associated with high incidence of thick meconium stained liquor, fetal distress, operative delivery and caesarean section for fetal distress, poor APGAR score, low birth weight, meconium aspiration and perinatal morbidity. 3) As a result, amniotic fluid assessment as an antepartum mode of fetal monitoring, helps an obstetrician better anticipate likely associated problems and plan a timely and appropriate mode of management.


When interviewed by members of the press, most of us in the field of alcoholism have had similar experiences. The first question asked is usually "just how many alcoholics are there in the United States?' The reporter wants to know whether there are five million, ten million, or, as estimated in a recent Journal of the American Medical Association editorial, 17 m i l l i ~ n . ~ In trying to answer what seems like a simple question, the alcohol specialist must confront some of the field's most difficult and perplexing problems. The first and most basic of these is the use of the term "alcoholism." At one extreme is the definition of alcoholism as a disease diagnosed according to the National Council on Alcoholism criteria,'* which is expressed as a dichotomy: either a person is or is not an alcoholic. On the other extreme is the concept of problem drinking, defined by constructing scales based on the number and extent of various alcohol-related problems, such as public intoxication or drinking driver arrests, employment problems, and domestic violence, yielding a continuous distribution rather than a dichotomy. Yet another concept for defining alcoholism defines a level of "hazardous consumption" and counts the number of people whose average daily intake exceeds this consumption as "alcoholics." The level of hazardous consumption for alcoholism is generally defined as a daily average of 15 centiliters of absolute alcohol: roughly 12% ounces of 80 proof liquor or the equivalent. (The level of hazardous consumption putting one at risk for cirrhosis of the liver is considered somewhat lower, approximately ?h pint of 80 proof liquor per day.) The second difficult problem touched by the seemingly simple question concerns the various sources of data upon which epidemiological estimates are made. For the alcohol studies field the principal sources are: 1) tax and population data, allowing the calculation of average per capita consumption, types of beverages consumed, and trends in consumption; 2) survey data, usually household surveys conducted by face to face or telephone interview, occasionally in schools by questionnaire; and 3 ) "catastrophe" counts, in which estimates of alcohol-related problems are made from reported death rates from cirrhosis of the liver, hospital admissions for alcohol psychoses or alcoholism, alcohol-related arrests, automobile crashes and other similar events. Each of these sources yields both useful data and a series of methodological problems. Before reviewing these data, some of the theories advanced to explain them, and some of the problems in method, let us look at a "best guess" of the situation in the United States today. FIGURE 1 16, lG presents an estimated distribution of the drinking age population of the United States; men and women age 14 and older, for the year 1975. Of the 160 million Americans in this age range, 48 million are abstainers and 112 million drink alcohol. As


The novel course of the reaction of the title dioxo-sulphide (II) with hydrazine is described. In absence of acid none of the expected dihydrothiadiazepine (Ia) could be detected; the major product, a monohydrazone (IV), being accompanied by other products including 2,2,4,4-tetramethyl-1,5-diphenyl-8-oxa-3-thia-6,7-diazabicyclo[3.2.1]octane (III) whose structure was elucidated by spectroscopic and X-ray crystallographic methods: compound (III) crystallises in the triclinic space group P with a= 9·911, b= 15·297, c= 6·257 A, α= 103·02°, β= 106·15°, γ= 81·17°, Z= 2, and the structure was refined to a final R value of 7·7% for 2055 independent reflections. The thiadiazepine (Ia) could, however, be obtained by treatment of a crude reaction mixture in pyridine with strong mineral acid, or by dehydration of (III) with acetic acid. The reaction of (III) with molecular oxygen gives, depending on temperature, either the ozonide (VI) or the epoxide (VII) in good yield.


This special issue comprises a selected set of high‐quality and extended articles of the 28th Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement (EuroSPI) Conference, held in 2021 in Krems, Austria.


Cross-laminated ('X-lam') timber panels and light-frame structures represent a new effective construction technology, with significant potential for multi-storey earthquake-resistant buildings. Despite the extensive use of these systems, there is a lack of design methods to evaluate the capacity in terms of dissipated energy and global response under cyclic loads. In the paper a method that allows an accurate evaluation of the energy dissipated by a subassembly made of X-lam panels connected to each other and to the foundation with metal fasteners is proposed. The X-lam panel is regarded as linear-elastic and all dissipated energy is assumed to take place in the connections. Appropriate user elements are implemented in the ABAQUS software package as external subroutines for different metal connections, such as screws, angle brackets, hold-downs and others. These elements allow the user to implement a hysteretic behaviour with pinching very close to the experimental results with allowance for strength and stiffness degradation. The model was calibrated and validated on cyclic tests carried out at CNR-Ivalsa on single X-lam walls connected to the foundation. The model was then extended to light-frame structures. These numerical models were able to predict the correct cyclic response in terms of deflection and energy with an overall good approximation.


Introduction: Addressing the many changing learning needs, styles and readiness of students, along with changing environments and advances in technology, the "lectorial" as an educational method was introduced to first-year university students undertaking a science course in 2016 and 2017. It was deemed an innovative and radical development from the traditional classroom. Reported by de la Harpe and Prentice (2011) after an extensive study of their Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology students undertaking undergraduate courses, the lectorial featured the use of flexible multi-media learning spaces, an accessible online interactive platform that engaged students with the content before the face-to-face lectorial and an active and conducive large-class environment, which allowed for optimal engagement with content, peers and staff. Moreover, the lectorial was identified as a strategy to reduce boredom in classrooms, a universal experience of university students. It is different from a flipped classroom (Milman, 2012), in that the learner is exposed to the content outside the classroom and is able to identify and address areas of strength and weakness and engage in various activities involving authentic case scenarios.


A key priority when treating leg ulcers is to identify the underlying cause and reduce any exacerbating factors. A problem-solving approach, which allows the ulcer to heal, will achieve optimum results.


The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (usmca) was the product of a renegotiation of the former North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta) that was intended by the Trump administration to "put America first." This article analyzes the most important new provisions in the usmca that that administration believed would inhibit foreign investment in Mexico and reverse the offshoring of U.S. jobs. Some of the new provisions represent improvements over nafta, especially the limitations on investor-state dispute settlement and strengthened protections for labor rights. However, the new requirements for automobile production are likely    to backfire by making North American automotive production more expensive and less competitive. On the whole, the formation of the usmca probably enhanced, rather than lessened, the confidence of foreign investors in the Mexican economy. However, the agreement is unlikely to bring about large gains in U.S. manufacturing employment or to boost the long-run growth of the Mexican economy.


1. The changing higher education context - Rebecca Davies 2. Connecting with the student perspective - Craig Gaskell 3. Working with professional associations - Andrew West and Raegan Hiles 4. Culture, values and change: observations from three consortia in Canada - Michael Ridley 5. Managing complex change collaboratively - Margaret Weaver 6. Leadership skills for collaboration: future needs and challenges - Sue Roberts and Rachel Esson 7. Knowing me...knowing you: the role of technology in enabling collaboration - Graham Stone and Dave Pattern 8. Space: changing the boundaries - Liz Jolly 9. Collaborative service provision through super-convergence - Maxine Melling 10. Joint-use libraries and transformational change - Ruth Kifer.


In order to solve the unstable dynamic current collection problem of pantograph-catenary system of high-speed EMU, based on the theory of pantograph-catenary dynamics, the dynamic current collection characteristics of the pantograph-catenary system with double-pantograph current collection mode are studied. The dynamic models of catenary and pantograph are established. Based on the theory of vibration mechanics and modal analysis, the leading pantograph excitation term is added to the dynamic equation of pantograph-catenary. Through the study of variation law of contact pressure between catenary and pantograph of long-marshalling EMU of Lanzhou-Urumqi high-speed railway line under different speeds and double-pantograph intervals, the concept of vibration mechanical wave is put forward to explain the contact pressure oscillation characteristics of double-pantograph-catenary system, and the dynamic current collection characteristics of high speed double-pantograph-catenary system of long-marshalling EMU of Lanzhou-Urumqi high-speed railway line is obtained. The result indicates that the speed and the distance between double pantographs are two key factors that affect the dynamic current collection of double-pantograph-catenary system. When the train's speed exceeds 260km/h, the vibration mechanical wave has strong interference to the current collection of double pantographs, and their dynamic contact performance deteriorates seriously. The double-pantograph interval of 170m is the most favorable distance to the current collection of double pantographs. The study can provide a reference for ensuring the safe operation of high-speed long marshalling EMU of Lanzhou-Urumqi high-speed railway line and optimizing the dynamic performance of high-speed double-pantograph-catenary system.


Visual analogy has been recognized as an important cognitive process in engineering design. Human free-hand sketches provide a useful data source for facilitating visual analogy. Although there has been research on the roles of sketching and the impact of visual analogy in design, little work has been done aiming to develop computational tools and methods to support visual analogy from sketches. In this paper, we propose a computational method to discover visual similarity between sketches, considering the following practical application: Given a sketch drawn by a designer that reflects the designer's rough idea in mind, our goal is to identify the shape similar sketches that can stimulate the designer to make more and better visual analogies. The first challenge in doing so is how to discover the similar shape features embedded in sketches from various categories. To address this challenge, we propose a deep clustering model to learn a latent space which can reveal underlying shape features for multiple categories of sketches and cluster sketches simultaneously. An extensive evaluation of the clustering performance of our proposed method has been carried out in different configurations. The results have shown that the proposed method can discover sketches that have similar appearance, provide useful explanations of the visual relationship between different sketch categories, and has the potential to generate visual stimuli to enhance designers' visual imageries.


To investigate the relationship between preoperative HbA1c level of diabetic patients and postoperative inflammation in anterior segment, and the prospective value of HbA1c. HbA1c values of 52 cases cataract patients with diabetic mellitus (DM) and 40 cases cataract patients without DM were detected preoperatively, and postoperative inflammation was observed. The relationship of HbA1c and postoperative inflammation was analyzed. There was significant correlation between HbA1c level and inflammation in the anterior segment (r s=0 865,P0 01). Patients with higher HbA1c level (HbA1c≥9%) manifested more serious inflammation compared to the control group(P0 01). There was no significant differences in inflammation between the patients with HbA1c9% and the control group (P0 05). [Conclusion] HbA1c value can predict inflammation of anterior segment, and evaluate the therapeutic effect of cataract surgery in diabetic patients.


Abstract The gene encoding phenylethanolamineN-methyltransferase (PNMT) has been amplified from a human adrenal medulla cDNA library. Following ligation of the gene into a pET3a-derived expression vector and transformation intoEscherichia coliBL21(DE3)pLysS, PNMT was expressed, yielding about 10% of the soluble protein. The enzyme was purified to homogeneity by ammonium sulfate fractionation followed by ion-exchange chromatography and gel filtration. TheKmfor phenylethanolamine andS-adenosyl- L -methionine were determined to be 130 and 16 μ M , respectively. The enzyme could be inhibited by reagents expected to modify cysteine, arginine, tyrosine, and histidine residues, but not by methyl acetimidate, a reagent expected to modify lysine residues.


【Objective】This paper studied the solubility characteristics of coated urea (LP 30). 【Method】It adopted soil and purified water as two culture methods and measured the solubility rate with different times under 10, 15, 20, 25℃. It used DTS method to forecast the nitrogen solubility rate of nature temperature.【Result】Temperature had significant effect on the nitrogen solubility rate, but culture methods of soil and purified water had little effect on it. The first-order reaction model could describe well the solubility process of coated urea. The rate of nitrogen solubility increased with rising temperature. The reaction rate constant could increase about 1 time when the temperature rises 5℃ within 10-25℃. There was no obvious difference between the measured value of nitrogen solubility rate and the forecasted value using DTS method for coated urea. 【Conclusion】The value of nitrogen solubility rate of coated urea (LP 30) is mostly determined by temperature, DTS method can truly forecast the nitrogen solubility rate at any time at natural conditions after applying coated urea in soil.


Cabo Verde remained uninhabited until 1460 CE, when European sailors founded a settlement in Santiago, and soon after in Fogo island. The degree to which different island ecosystems in Cabo Verde have been transformed by humans remains uncertain because of a scarcity of historical information and archaeological evidence. Disentangling these processes from natural ones is complicated in islands with a history of volcanic impacts and other natural hazards. In this paper, we apply microfossil (pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs and phytoliths) and sedimentological analyses (granulometry, X-ray diffraction, loss on ignition and tephrostratigraphy) to a 2-m sediment sequence deposited in a scoria cone from 4100 cal year BP (calibrated years before 1950 CE) to the present. The organic-rich basal sediments indicate that between 4100 and 2600 cal year BP the pre-settlement landscape of Fogo was an open grassland, where fire was infrequent and/or small-scale. An increase in volcanic glass deposition after 2600 cal year BP, peaking ca. 1200 cal year BP, suggests that there was a progressive activation of Fogo's volcanic activity, contemporaneous with increased fire frequency and erosion pulses, but with little impact on local grassland vegetation. While dating uncertainty is high, the first evidence of intensive local land use by early settlers was in the form of cultivation of Zea mays, abundant spores of coprophilous fungi (i.e. Sporormiella), and peaks in charcoal concentrations between 800 and 400 cal year BP. This was followed by large increases in pollen from pigeon pea (Cajanus), a diverse array of exotic trees (Cupressus, Grevillea), and invasive shrubs (Lantana). The introduction of these taxa is part of recent human effort to 'tame' this steep, dry and hazardous island by reducing erosion and providing firewood. An important outcome of these efforts, however, is a loss of fragile native biodiversity.


Enlightenment philosopher George Berkeley, Irish bishop of Cloyne (1695–1752) developed a theory of God's relation to the world both rooted in orthodox Western Theology and influential for European secular government. This article critically examines the notion of God in Berkeleian thought with special reference to its implications for his concrete recommendations and political projects in British government and empire building. To this end, it examines the application of early Christian ascetic techniques to enlightenment colonial government. Berkeley's thought exemplifies modernity's modelling of the governing autonomous self on a transcendent impassible God. His ethics represent a practice of cosmology, where the world is watched by the judging subject.


In the fall of 1998, MacMillan Hall opened at Brown University to students. In MacMillan Hall was the new Computer Learning Center, since named the EarthLab which was outfitted with high-end workstations and peripherals primarily focused on the use of remotely sensed and other spatial data in the environmental sciences. The NASA grant we received as part of the "Centers of Excellence in Applications of Remote Sensing to Regional and Global Integrated Environmental Assessments" was the primary source of funds to outfit this learning and research center. Since opening, we have expanded the range of learning and research opportunities and integrated a cross-campus network of disciplines who have come together to learn and use spatial data of all kinds. The EarthLab also forms a core of undergraduate, graduate, and faculty research on environmental problems that draw upon the unique perspective of remotely sensed data. Over the last two years, the Earthlab has been a center for research on the environmental impact of water resource use in and regions, impact of the green revolution on forest cover in India, the design of forest preserves in Vietnam, and detailed assessments of the utility of thermal and hyperspectral data for water quality analysis. It has also been used extensively for local environmental activities, in particular studies on the impact of lead on the health of urban children in Rhode Island. Finally, the EarthLab has also served as a key educational and analysis center for activities related to the Brown University Affiliated Research Center that is devoted to transferring university research to the private sector.


Cited2 [cAMP-responsive element-binding protein (CBP)/p300-interacting transactivators with glutamic acid (E) and aspartic acid (D)-rich tail 2] is a newly identified transcriptional modulator. Knockout of Cited2 gene is embryonic lethal because of heart and neural tube defects. Cited2 binds directly to CBP and p300, which have been shown to be crucial for hematopoietic stem cell self-renewal and proper hematopoietic differentiation, respectively. Cited2 also induces the expression of a polycomb-group gene, Bmi-1, which is essential for self-renewal of adult hematopoietic stem cells. These connections provided rationale to study the potential role of Cited2 in hematopoiesis. Mouse fetal liver is the major hematopoietic organ from day 10 postcoitus until right before birth. The smaller sized Cited2 −/− fetal liver and significantly decreased fetal liver cellularity strongly suggest the potential defect in hematopoiesis. In vitro colony formation assay in methycellulose-based medium was used to characterize the hematopoietic progenitors. We found that fetal liver cells from E13.5, 14.5 and E15.5 Cited2 −/− embryos gave rise to much less colonies, which reflects the decreased number and proliferative ability of hematopoietic progenitors due to Cited2 deficiency. Immunostaining of lineage-specific cell surface markers followed by flow cytometry was performed to characterize different hematopoietic populations in E14.5 and E15.5 fetal liver of wild type and Cited2 −/− embryos. Cited2 −/− fetal liver cells displayed a significant reduction in numbers throughout the hematopoietic hierarchy including hematopoietic stem cells (Lin − c-Kit + Sca-1 + ), progenitor cells (Lin − c-Kit + ), and differentiated cells of different lineages (CD45 + , Ter119 + , Mac-1 + , Gr-1 + ), thus revealing a multi-level hematopoietic deficiency of Cited2 −/− embryos. Long-term reconstitution experiment was then carried out to measure the ability of hematopoietic stem cells from Cited2 −/− fetal liver cells to engraft and reconstitute hematopoietic system of congenic recipient mice. Mice transplanted with Cited2 −/− fetal liver cells showed reconstitution of T cells whereas a 2-fold decrease in the reconstitution of B cell and myeloid lineages was observed, indicating a compromised ability of Cited2 −/− fetal liver hematopoietic stem cells to maintain hematopoiesis. The results suggest an important role of Cited2 in hematopoietic differentiation and a selective function of Cited2 in B lymphoid &myeloid induction. The underlying mechanisms responsible for these defects will be pursued by microarray analysis of gene expression profile of Cited2 −/− fetal liver cells, followed by more detailed phenotypic analyses of B and myeloid lineage markers plus in vitro and in vivo functional assays.


Heavy metals pollution in soils has become a serious threat to many countries especially developing countries like Nigeria due to increase in urbanization and industrialization. In this study several indexical models (contamination factor (CF), contamination degree (mCd), geo-accumulation index (I-geo), pollution load index (PLI), and Nemerow integrated pollution index (NIPI)) were used to assess the pollutions, pollution sources and ecological effect of heavy metals (Fe, Zn, Pb, Cd, Mn, Cu, Cr, and Ni) in industrial soils from Ajao area, Lagos. All the metals are within the standard of Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) except Cd (1.160, 1.020, and 1.080) mostly around the industrial wastewater dislodging Point. Pb has no significant correlation with other heavy metals in the soil samples whereas other heavy metals, strong to medium positive correlation exist between these heavy metals at 2-tailed significant levels of 0.01 and 0.05 suggests that these metals have the same anthropogenic origin. The 1-geo calculated for heavy metals suggest that all the samples are unpolluted. CF of the heavy metals was in the range of low contamination except Cd that showed moderate contamination. RI ∑ of all the heavy metals analysed in this study pose low ecological risks except for Cd which showed moderate potential to considerable potential ecological risk. NIPI result showed some of the samples were slightly polluted while some were heavily polluted. For mCd, all the samples were within very low degree of contamination. The PLI result shows that samples were within unpolluted range in the PLI classification scheme.


This paper presents an efficient multi-user detection (MUD) scheme for overloaded MC-CDMA systems. The proposed detection scheme for overloaded system achieves the optimal performance for constant-modulus modulation, e.g., MPSK, and provides near-optimal performance for non-constant-modulus modulation, e.g., M-QAM. Moreover, it has lower complexity than other optimal detection algorithms, especially suitable for group-orthogonal MC-CDMA (GO-MC-CDMA) systems, where group-based technique keeps joint detection size relatively small


ABSTRACT This paper describes a study designed to find out whether children's reading would be affected by line spacing that is wider or narrower than the commonly used default values. The realistic, high quality test material was set using a range of four different line spacing values, and twenty-four children in Years 1 and 2 (between five and seven years old) were asked to read aloud to the researcher. Audio-tapes of the children's reading were analyzed, using miscue analysis to compare the number and kind of reading errors made on the different spacing versions. The children were also asked whether they could see any differences between the four versions, which they thought was easiest to read, which they thought was most difficult and which version they would like to take home with them. The results indicate that line spacing that was wider or narrower than the default value did not significantly affect the children's reading performance. However, three-quarters of the children did notice differences between at least the extreme versions, and there was a tendency for the more widely spaced versions to be perceived as the easiest to read and to be preferred, and for the more closely spaced versions to be perceived as the most difficult. Children who nominated the more widely spaced versions as easiest or preferred generally gave reasons related to the line spacing or to the apparent size or weight of the type; those who favored the more closely spaced versions tended to give less well defined reasons, or to cite non-existent differences in the content or length of the text. INTRODUCTION The typography of school reading books for beginning readers is of interest for two main reasons. First, it is important that the visual characteristics of the text should not interpose themselves between the reader and his or her ability to deal with the semantic aspects of the reading task. This is of course true for adults too, but likely to be of even greater significance for children who are learning to read. Second, it seems likely that children's responses to the visual appearance of the text may affect their motivation to read. While publishers have tended to establish their own typographic conventions for school reading books, these conventions are inevitably based largely on what teachers consider appropriate and suitable for use in their classrooms rather than on direct observation of children's reading behavior and preferences. Yule (1988) argues that designing for sales appeal rather than user appeal can be yet another factor in making learning to read more difficult. In a survey of teachers' opinions about books for five-, six- and seven-year-olds, Raban (1984) asked 270 teachers to rank the importance of fourteen selected features. Of the typographic features investigated she found that type size and then typeface were considered to be the most important, followed by word spacing and line spacing (which were ranked as being of more or less equal importance). The issue of type size has been addressed recently by Hughes and Wilkins (2000), and in previous studies the authors have investigated serif versus sans serif typefaces and the use of infant characters (Walker and Reynolds, 2002/03), and the horizontal spacing of words and letters (Reynolds and Walker, 2004). The study described here deals with the vertical spacing between lines of text. This is variously referred to in the literature as line spacing, linefeed, inter-line space or leading. The term 'line spacing' is used throughout this paper and it refers to the baseline-to-haseline distance between successive lines of text. This distance is equal to the point size of the type, plus any additional space (or 'leading') in points that is added. In printed materials intended for adults it is generally accepted that, for type at sizes intended for reading at a normal distance, legibility is improved by the addition of two or three points of extra space between lines (Spencer, 1969). …


Opioid use disorder (OUD) is associated with significant morbidity and mortality in the United States. In recent years, interest in initiatives to increase access to medication for OUD (MOUD) and overdose‐reversing medications (naloxone) in acute care has grown. While well positioned to intervene, the role of acute care pharmacists in these interventions is not known. The objective for this scoping review was to better understand what is presently known about the role of pharmacists in acute care OUD interventions. These were defined as initiatives implemented in either inpatient or emergency department (ED) settings aimed at treatment of OUD (eg, initiation or management of MOUD) or harm reduction in individuals with OUD (eg, education or targeted naloxone dispensing). PubMed/MEDLINE and Embase databases were searched for articles pertaining to the research question from inception to 19 May 2021. Pearling was performed after the identification of eligible articles. Articles had to explicitly describe the pharmacist's role in planning, implementing, or evaluating an OUD intervention in the inpatient or ED setting. Data charting was performed by both authors using a predefined template, and data synthesis was performed via discussion between authors. The initial title search yielded 101 references which were screened and resulted in four articles that met inclusion criteria. Three additional articles were identified in the pearling process, yielding a total of seven articles. Four described initiatives aimed at point‐of‐care dispensing of naloxone, and three described initiatives for provision or management of MOUD. Pharmacist roles primarily consisted of medication use process management, hospital staff and patient education, and dispensing activities. Literature describing the role of pharmacists in acute care OUD interventions is limited. Given the burden of OUD, there are many opportunities for further exploration of the roles acute care pharmacists can play in OUD harm reduction and treatment.


Triethylene glycol monomethyl ether and poly(ethylene glycol) monomethyl ether modified 2-(2′-aminophenyl)benzothiazoles, namely ABT-P3EG, ABT-P7EG and ABT-P12EG varied by different chain length of poly(ethylene glycol) at the amino site, were synthesized to probe their photophysical and bio-imaging properties. In polar, aprotic solvents such as CH2Cl2 ultrafast excited-state intramolecular proton transfer (ESIPT) takes place, resulting in a large Stokes shifted tautomer emission in the green-yellow (550 nm) region. In neutral water, ABT-P12EG forms micelles with diameters of 15  ±  3 nm under a critical micelle concentration (CMC) of ~80 μM, in which the tautomer emission is greatly enhanced free from water perturbation. Cytotoxicity experiments showed that all ABT-PnEGs have negligible cytotoxicity against HeLa cells even at doses as high as 1 mM. Live-cell imaging experiments were also performed, the results indicate that all ABT-PnEGs are able to enter HeLa cells. While the two-photon excitation emission of ABT-P3EG in cells cytoplasm shows concentration independence and is dominated by the anion blue fluorescence, ABT-P7EG and ABT-P12EG exhibit prominent green tautomer emission at  >  CMC and in part penetrate to the nuclei, adding an additional advantage for the cell imaging.


. Configuration Management is a discipline traditionally responsible for controlling the software evolution. However, its work cycle, based on check-out, changes, and check-in, is usually supported by manual verifications, which are, in most cases, counterproductive and error prone. Thus, this work proposes an approach that amplifies the traditional work cycle with asynchronous, automatic, and incremental tasks for maintaining the consistency of the repository. Our preliminary results show that our approach was able to identify broken artifacts without a significant delay in the flow of check-ins.


In China, the constantly increasing CPI (Consumer Price Index) has become a prominent signal that indicates an overheated macro economy. An overheated economy and future surplus productivity will lead to a prediction of inflation, which will sustain the inflation in an evil circulation driven by costs and pulled by demand. As a result, it will cause severe financial instability. Therefore, applying a tight monetary policy, adopting a package of control measures, optimizing the structure of economy, and improving the quality of economic growth can help to achieve a fast and healthy development of national economy.


Objective To evaluate genotoxicity of trichloroethylene (TCE) to the sperm of mice. Methods After the administration of TCE to the mice (qd×5) by gavage, the animals were sarcrified on the 35th day following the first administration. By slides, the forms of sperm were observed. Results The ratio of sperm malformation in low dose group showed no difference with that of control group ( P 0 05). However, the ratios of middle group and high group were higher than those of control ( P 0 01). Conclusion TCE might have positive effect on the sperm formation of the mice, suggesting that TCE might cause genotoxicity on the sperm of male mice.


Community policing (Polmas) as an innovative model implemented by the National Police through strategy and organizational transformation can be considered effective in strengthening equal partnership communication between the National Police and the community in reducing fear of crime in the context of law enforcement against crimes that commit criminal acts. The implementation of policies through the Polmas model strategy by the National Police in carrying out the principles of interpreting the function of Polmas tends to be a Babinkamtibmas only oriented to the implementation of tasks rather than achieving the goal of creating good personal relationships with the community. The organizational strategy in achieving the operational objectives of the Polmas model is still faced with the lack of competence of Babinkamtibmas personnel in analyzing problem solving which is not merely an appraisal of the existence of security and public order problems so that there is a tendency for Polmas policies to be unsustainable because the orientation of the police officers understands more about the steps tactics who are fast in solving security problems.


Objective To explore the etiology,mechanism and treatment of diarrhea after(pancreatoduodenectomy).Methods Based on the clinical data of 159 cases of pancreatoduodenectomy(performed) in the recent one and half years,the pathogenesis of post-pancreatoduodenectomy diarrhea was(analyzed) and the effect of different treatments was observed.Results Seventy-one cases had diarrhea,with an incidence of 44.7%.Tweenty-two cases had bacterial infection of the intestinal tract and 4 cases had fungus infection.The incidence of infection was 36.6%.In 64 cases diarrhea was relieved with effective treatment,accounting for 90.1% of all cases.Seven cases with chronic diarrhea had additional treatment with oral pancreatic enzyme and symptoms were relieved 2 weeks after treatment.Conclusions Diarrhea is frequently observed in patients after pancreatoduodenectomy,and the majority of them can be cured with(treatment) selected according to the pathogenesis.


Recently, graphic processing unit (GPU) becomes a mandatory component in mobile consumer devices such mobile phones. The vertex and fragment shader programs in embedded GPU are programmed with embedded system shading language(ESSL). The shader compiler for ESSL should be designed considering several distinct features of ESSL and GPU. In this paper, we present ESSL compiler techniques for embedded GPU. The compiler can optimize the code and data memory size as well as improve the performance of shader code by fully exploiting the special architecture of target GPU. Experiments show that the proposed optimization techniques can reduce the code size by up to 10.3% and the execution cycles by up to 16.8%.


In the investment casting process, the pattern made of wax is obtained in a die for further formation of a shell mold. The problem of die-filling by pattern wax is significant because it influences the quality of the final casting. This work investigates three commercial pattern waxes' fluidity with a newly developed injection fluidity test. It was shown that the fluidity of waxes increased with increasing injection temperature and pressure, and the simultaneous increase in temperature and pressure gives a much more significant enhancement of fluidity than an increase in temperature or pressure separately. The rheological behavior of the waxes was also investigated at different temperatures using a rotational viscosimeter, and temperature dependences of waxes' dynamic viscosity were determined. It was shown that wax viscosity is increased more than ten times with decreasing temperature from 90 to 60 °C. A good correlation between wax fluidity and its viscosity is observed, which is different from metallic alloys, where the solidification behavior is more critical. The difference in wax flow behavior in comparison with metallic melts is associated with the difference in dynamic viscosity, which for investigated waxes and metallic melts is 3000–27,000 mPa·s and 0.5–6.5 mPa·s, respectively. The difference in investigated filled waxes' fluidity is observed, which can be associated with the type and amount of filler. The twice-increasing fraction of cross-linked polystyrene decreases fluidity twice. At the same time, terephthalic acid has a minor influence on wax fluidity.


The dependence of the magnetic coupling constant, J, with the pressure has been studied by an ab initio cluster model approach in a typical ionic solid such as KNiF3. By computing J at different values of the lattice parameter R, we predict a power law of the form ‖J‖≊R−n with 10.5<n<13.3 in good agreement with the suggested experimental value. This behavior is found even for the simplest Ni2F cluster model described by a complete active space configuration interaction wave function in which the active orbitals correspond to the open shell of each Ni2+ cation.


Objective:To investigate the prognostic value of left ventricular systolic dyssynchrony in patients with non-ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy(DCM) using tissue Doppler echocardiography. Methods:A total of 62 patients with non-ischemic DCM were studied.All patients were examined by electrocardiogram,echocardiography including tissue Doppler imaging and coronary angiography.The patients were divided into two groups according to the intra ventricular delay(IVD),IVD≤65 ms group,n=10 and IVD 65 ms group,n=52.The mean follow-up time was(1253±177)days and the primary endpoint was the overall mortality. Results:The patients in IVD 65 ms group had significantly longer IVD than those in IVD ≤65 ms group,(129±68)ms vs.(58±9)ms,P0.05,and higher rate of left bundle branch block,31% vs.10%,P=0.05.There was 1 sudden cardiac death in IVD ≤65 ms group,and 29 death in IVD 65 ms group including 12 of sudden cardiac death and 17 of heart failure.Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed a significant lower survival rate in IVD 65 ms group,P0.05.After adjusting the other main factors,IVD 65 ms was the independent predictor for mortality(RR=1.8502,P0.01). Conclusion:Increased IVD is the independent predictor for mortality in patients with DCM.


Currently a large number of hand injuries occur in the Mexican population, mainly caused by accidents at work and in sports activities. To help the population have access to a brachiopalmar rehabilitation, In this work it was proposed to develop a rehabilitative prototype "dynamic hand orthosis" to address the main pathologies that affect our society (fractures, dislocations, sprains, tendonitis and sx of the carpal tunnel). The design was analyzed in a finite element for its validation, having a safety factor of 2.6 and a maximum tension of 12.84 MPa below the ABS elastic limit, Manufacturing was done using a 3D printer with the ABS filament. This orthosis has an extensor finger attachment composed of hammocks, one for each finger. Due to its universal design, it can be used for both hands only by exchanging the extension of the thumb.


This thesis provides an experimental investigation of the free surface and flow dynamics within square orbitally shaken reactors (OSRs) as well as a mixing dynamics characterisation in shaken microwell systems. OSRs have been widely used for early bioprocess development as they allow a large number of experiments to be performed in parallel. It is necessary to develop robust scaling laws and determine effective dimensionless characteristics across shaken systems with various scales and geometries to facilitate bioprocess research and development. The fluid dynamics of shaken cylindrical reactors are well characterised by a number of previous studies, however, the understanding of square OSRs is still very limited despite its practical prevalence in bioprocessing. In the first part of the study, the free surface dynamics were investigated and different wave patterns and the relationship between the wave amplitude with respect to Froude number and the natural frequency of the system were identified in two square rectors with widths of 62 and 89 mm. Particle Image Velocimetry measurements were also obtained in the two square reactors and counter-rotation of the ensemble-averaged flow at high speed conditions were noticed. The flow transition occurring in square reactors was further investigated by means of Proper Orthogonal Decomposition. Despite the widespread use of shaken microwell plates, they have not been characterised from an engineering viewpoint. In the second part of the study, mixing time measurements were conducted into two intermediate-sized reactors and two microwell mimics for small orbital diameter shaker with do = 3 mm and compared against measurements obtained in lab-scale reactors for larger orbital diameter. A scaling parameter based on the natural frequency of the system, which depends only on fill volume, size and cross-section of the reactors, was proved to provide effective scaling across various shaken systems.


The Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering is pleased to announce that the Editorial Board has chosen "Numerical study of sandbar migration under wave-undertow interaction" by Jinhai Zheng, Chi Zhang, Zeki Demirbilek, and Lihwa Lin, published in the March/April 2014 issue (Vol. 140, No. 2, pp. 146–159), as the 2014 Best Paper Award winner. The selection process for the best paper has resulted in four additional finalists being recognized as 2014 Outstanding Papers: • "Cross-shore redistribution of nourished sand near a breaker bar" by Niels Gjol Jacobsen and Jorgen Fredsoe, published in the March 2014 issue (Vol. 140, No. 2, pp. 125–134). • "New physical insights and design formulas on wave overtopping at sloping and vertical structures" by Jentsje van der Meer and Tom Bruce, published in the November 2014 issue (Vol. 140, No. 6, 04014025). • "Numerical investigation of turbulence modulation by sediment-induced stratification and enhanced viscosity in oscillatory flows" by Xiao Yu, C. E. Ozdemir, Tian-Jian Hsu, and S. Balachandar, published in the March 2014 issue (Vol. 140, No. 2, pp. 160–172). • "Smoothed-particle hydrodynamics numerical modeling of structures impacted by tsunami bores." Philippe St-Germain, Ioan Nistor, Ronald Townsend, and Tomoya Shibayama, published in the January 2014 issue (Vol. 140, No. 1, pp. 66–81). The Best Paper Award and Outstanding Papers are selected annually from all technical papers, technical notes, and case studies published in a calendar year. The Editorial Board congratulates the authors and thanks them for their submissions.


It has been firmly established that the methods of testing the viability of bacterial spores previously exposed to heat greatly affect their apparent resistance. Curran and Evans (1937) reported that spores of several bacilli which survived severe heat treatment appeared to be more exacting in their nutritional requirements than the less resistant spores present in the population before treatment. This finding has led to the use of enrichment substances in media used for recovery of severely heated spores. We have recently shown that the composition of complex recovery media greatly influences the apparent thermal resistance of spores of putrefactive anaerobe 3679 (Frank and Campbell, 1955). While complex culture media are satisfactory for routine studies on spore recovery, the use of chemically defined media would permit a study and evaluation of the influence of the nutritional environment on recovery of heat-treated spores. Before such media can be formulated, however, information is needed on the nutritive requirements of the organisms concerned. With this in mind we have studied the nutritional requirements of a group of closely related putrefactive anaerobic spore-forming bacteria responsible for the spoilage of thermal processed foods. The present paper reports the results of our findings.


The use of radiotherapy as a form of treatment for cervical cancer induces morphological changes both in neoplastic cells and in normal epithelial and stromal cells. These alterations represent a challenge for the identification of residual lesions, generating a scenario of complexity in the post-radiotherapy cytopathological evaluation. Therefore, the objective of this study was to comparatively analyze the cytopathological examination (Conventional Cytology X Liquid-Based Cytology) with the Micronucleus Test of post-radiotherapy patients for cervical cancer and to describe the genotoxicity of radiation. This is a cross-sectional, descriptive study whose population consisted of ten patients with cervical cancer undergoing radiotherapy at the Cancer Hospital II of the National Cancer Institute (INCA – Rio de Janeiro/RJ, Brazil). For analysis of the Micronucleus Test, a control group with ten patients, equivalent to the study group, was included. The results showed that the low quality of Conventional Cytology in cases of post-radiotherapy control of cervical cancer can be a barrier to the speed of diagnosis and identification of recurrent lesions. A relevant alternative is the use of Liquid-Based Cytology, which contributes positively to the quality of diagnosis in irradiated patients, mainly associated with the Micronucleus Test, but the adoption of Liquid-Based Cytology for mass screening may be hampered by the cost of the technique. On the other hand, the use of the Micronucleus Test, which proved to be significant in irradiated patients, is a low cost and easy analysis technique. Therefore, in view of the above, we propose, as a follow-up protocol for patients undergoing radiotherapy for cervical cancer, performing Liquid-Based Cytology associated with the Micronucleus Test, which can be extended to other types of tumors.


I n the previous chapter, we discussed risk measurement for single "wellbehaved" securities, with returns that can appropriately be mapped to returns of one risk factor. In this basic case, the asset also has returns that move linearly, that is, one-for-one or in a constant proportion to some underlying asset or risk factor return. But many securities are not at all wellbehaved in this sense. Rather, they have nonlinear returns that have much larger or smaller responses to some other asset returns, depending on the asset price level. Nonlinearity can vitiate risk measurement techniques such as VaR that are designed primarily for linear exposures. In this chapter, we discuss nonlinearity, and how to measure risk in its presence. We'll focus on two important examples of nonlinear securities, options and bonds. Another reality that we will have to address is that many assets are complex, and are exposed to multiple risk factors, and that most real-world portfolios contain many positions and are exposed to multiple risk factors. In the next chapter, studying risk measurement for portfolios, we focus on assets that are sensitive to multiple risk factors. Options and option-like exposures depart in both ways from the previous chapter's model: nonlinearity and dependence on several risk factors. First, the P&L of an option is a nonlinear function of returns on the underlying asset. A relatively small return on the underlying asset can have a large impact on option P&L. The P&L would therefore not be normally distributed, even if risk factor changes were. Options are not unique in this regard. Bond prices are also nonlinearly related to interest rates or yields. Bond traders refer to this nonlinear sensitivity as convexity. Second, option returns depend jointly on several market risk factors, the underlying asset price, the financing or risk-free interest rate, and the


Here we present a contribution to the microstructure based design of new steel alloys by a careful investigation of multiphase microstructure solidification in a convective field. To this end we present an extension of the quantitative phase‐field model proposed in [1] to investigate the influence of hydrodynamic convection on the growth of eutectic/peritectic alloys. We study directional solidification of a eutectic alloy under the influence of a shear flow ahead of the solidifying front. We mainly investigate the growth of a eutectic lamellar structure. We show that the imposed flow tilts the whole lamellar structure away from the flow direction. Moreover, we show that forced flow alters the growth morphology of Fe‐Ni peritectic alloys, having a strong influence on the nucleation of the peritectic phase. Based on these investigations, a scale relation between the strength of flow and the solid volume fraction is derived. Further we propose an application of these models as an alternative approach to study heterogeneous nucleation kinetics in the solidification of peritectic materials systems.


AbstractThe channel analysis and design evaluation tool (CADET) is a numerical program to determine the optimum dredge depth for the offshore portions of entrance channels. A brief description of the theoretical basis and risk assessment in CADET is presented. Validation comparisons between CADET predictions and field measurements of wave-induced vertical motions at Ambrose Channel, New York, are presented. Prototype ship motions were measured with a differential global positioning system in April 1998 along three 488-m-long reaches. Comparisons were made with six ships, three tankers and three containerships, during inbound and outbound transits. In general, the CADET predictions matched the field measurements reasonably well, especially considering the wave heights were relatively small during the measurement period.


7.8% in MEP group, and decreased to 1.4% and 3.1% in MEP and TURP and expressed no changes until 24 months, respectively (p[0.466). At 24 month follow up recurrence was observed in one TURP patient (1.5%) and, in another one e urethral stricture (1.5%); in MEP group one patient had bladder neck sclerosis (1.4%). CONCLUSIONS: Current study results suggest that MEP is an effective and safe treatment option for small and medium-sized BPH allowing for combination of the efficacy of EEP and accessibility of conventional TURP. MEP allows for more complete removal of adenoma, which may lead to lower BPH relapse rate.


Purpose: Part III of the NBEO assesses a student's ability to examine patients and evaluate patient care decisions. There is some evidence that more hands-on patient care experience in optometric clinical education may result in improved clinical skills and clinical thinking. Our objective is to evaluate the correlation between the quantity of clinical patient encounters and performance score on the NBEO Part III. Methods: Data from the 2004 and 2005 New England College of Optometry graduating classes were evaluated. The total number of fourth year patient encounters as reported by student patient logs was compared with the reported total NBEO Part III score. Results: Data from 156 students were included. Total patient encounters in the final year ranged from 313 to 2533 with mean of 1143.9 and standard deviation of 362.4 representing a skewed distribution. NBEO scores ranged from 267 to 723 with a mean of 457.7 and a standard deviation of 110.5. Correlation with NBEO Part III total scores was calculated as r2 = 0.00. Conclusions: The data showed no significant correlation, indicating that other factors may better determine performance on NBEO Part III examination. This analysis suggests that further studies are needed to determine other factors that may better predict NBEO Part III performance. This study may be used to plan clinical programs and clinical goals for optometry students and to predict optometric success within the application process.


The aim of our research was, using an attitude questionnaire with Likert scale of evaluation, to analyze the rate of respondents ́ tolerance to smoking at the workplaces, depending on age, gender, place of work, as well as their smoking habits. The research sample consisted of 160 respondents, the teaching staff of a secondary school –The Gymnázium of J.Hollý in Trnava and The Primary School of Kornel Mahr and the employees of a private company Orange, Inc.residing in Bratislava. On the basis of our results can be stated that men are more tolerant to smoking at the workplaces and their attitude to anti-smoking policies is rather negative.The highest % of smokers have been seen in the age group of 21 to 30 years and the proportion of smokers in the school facilities was not signifi cantly different from their share in a private company, but in a private company a large number of respondents deprived of this bad habit.