A BCR three-step sequential extraction procedure, with a sediment reference material (BCR701), was used in order to assess the environmental risk of Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn in contaminated sediment from Dongting Lake. The total metal content was determined as well. Dongting Lake, the second largest fresh-water lake in China, contains three China wetlands of international importance. In the Dongting Lake sediments, the trace elements (Cu, Zn, Cr, and Ni) analyzed are mainly distributed in a residual phase at an average percentage greater than 60% of the total metals, especially 79% for Cr and 90% for Ni; but Pb in Fe/Mn oxhydroxides phase (59%) and Cd in soluble species and carbonates (51%). The potential risk to the lake's water contamination was highest in East Dongting Lake based on the calculated contamination factors. Therefore, there is an urgent need to protect Dongting Lake from anthropogenic sources of pollution to reduce environmental risks.


features of MRI T1and T2-weighted images with gadolinium of most cases are insufficient to distinguish cryptococcoma from neoplasms. Isolated cryptococcomas or enhancing cortical nodules are seen only in a minority of patients, and the most common sites for these lesions are the midbrain and basal ganglia. CNS cryptococcoma is known but rare among the immunocompetent population. Although most cerebral cryptococcomas present with systemic illness and signs of intracranial pathology, this case demonstrates that they may be clinically silent with few symptoms and signs, even in the presence of multiple cerebral lesions.


The first case of sparganosis is reported from France. The patient, a 21‐year‐old man, presented with a subcutaneous lump on the chest, and the diagnosis was made on histological examination after needle biopsy. He achieved a complete recovery.


In this paper, we propose a real-time framework for vulnerable road user detection from outside looking camera mounted on the vehicle. Pedestrians and cyclist are more vulnerable towards accidents on the road with the vehicle, therefore we focus on detecting the pedestrians, tracking them and predicting their vulnerability towards possible accidents with the moving vehicle observing the scene. In our framework, as the vehicle moves, the camera captures the image and pedestrians are detected using the existing deformable parts based model (DPM) with an active part selection approach. Once a pedestrian is detected then for the next n frame we use obtained spatial information in the temporal scene to track the pedestrian that ensures new pedestrians entering the scene as the vehicle moves are also get detected, the DPM is used periodically. Our system predicts the vulnerability of the pedestrians based on their path of movement with respect to the vehicle. The driver is warned if the pedestrians vulnerability of collision is high low or medium. Tracking exploits the spatiotemporal relation between frames, thereby reducing the computational cost and improving the overall runtime performance of the system. Experimental results on publicly available pedestrian dataset show that our system is capable of robustly detection, tracking and finding the vulnerability of the pedestrians to alert the driver for taking the necessary action before any collision or accident occurs.


THIS REFLECTION ON USING the Mosaic Approach as a framework for undertaking research with young children contributes to the dialogue around qualitative research methodology. The provocation of social constructivist theory challenges researchers to consider and explore innovative ways to position themselves so the multiple voices of children can be heard, valued, respected and listened to. Three underpinning principles are identified and each of the methodological tools used by Greenfield (2007a) is discussed. Trustworthiness or situated validity in research is vital. It is argued that the Mosaic Approach provides an effective, flexible and authentic methodology when undertaking research with young children.


Based on the empirical data of China from 1995 to 2010,this paper analyzes the long-term and short-term dynamic effect relationship between high-tech industrial development and transformation of economic development patterns.This paper uses vector autoregression model(VAR) model with error correction,and integrates impulse response and variance decomposition to test the assumption.The research indicates: there is a causal relationship between high-tech industrial development and transformation of economic development pattern;transformation of economic development pattern is proved to be conducive to high-tech industry,and the expansion of domestic demand promotes the upgrade of products and the value increment of industry,while the retransformation of China's industry is promoted.Being a leading industry,high-tech industry can promote the economic transformation in to an optimized pattern which is characterized by domestic demand guided and consumption driven.


According the status of the system test of China Mobile Communications Corporation,advantages of automated testing and the corresponding problems in manually testing were analyzed,then an automated testing framework based on case analysis was presented.Next,a SaaS-based cloud services architecture was brought forward to meet the request of remote central support of users.Last,a SaaS-based automated testing platform was built,in which the visualized test case building and operation was brought forward.Finally,the results show that,the more efficient automated testing system can be fast deployed by using the platform.


Silicon nanowire field effect transistors SiNW-FETs provide a local probe for sensing neuronal activity at the subcellular scale, thanks to their nanometer size and ultrahigh sensitivity. The combination with micro-patterning or microfluidic techniques to build model neurons networks above SiNW arrays could allow monitoring spike propagation and tailor specific stimulations, being useful to investigate network communications at multiple scales, such as plasticity or computing processes. This versatile device could be useful in many research areas, including diagnosis, prosthesis, and health security. Using top-down silicon nanowires-based array, we show here the ability to record electrical signals from matured neurons with top-down silicon nanowires, such as local field potential and unitary spike within ex-vivo preparations and hippocampal neurons grown on chip respectively. Furthermore, we demonstrate the ability to guide neurites above the sensors array during 3 weeks of cultures and follow propagation of spikes along cells. Silicon nanowire field effect transistors are obtained by top-down approach with CMOS compatible technology, showing the possibility to implement them at manufacturing level. These results confirm further the potentiality of the approach to follow spike propagation over large distances and at precise location along neuronal cells, by providing a multiscale addressing at the nano and mesoscales.


Purpose: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an especially aggressive and hard-to-treat disease. Although the anticancer role of kaempferol has been reported in breast cancer, the effect of kaempferol on TNBC remains unclear. Materials and methods: This experiment investigated the migration-suppressive role of a low dose of kaempferol in TNBC cells. Wound-healing assays and cell invasion assays were used to confirm the migration and invasion of cells treated with kaempferol or transfected indicated constructs. We evaluated the activations of RhoA, Rac1 and Cdc42 in TNBC cells with a Rho activation assay. A panel of inhibitors of estrogen receptor/progesterone receptor/ human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (ER/PR/HER2) treated non-TNBC (SK-BR-3 and MCF-7) cells and blocked the ER/PR/HER2 activity. Wound-healing assays and Rho activation assays were employed to measure the effect of kaempferol and ER/PR/HER2 inhibitors on Rho activation and cell migration rates. Results: A low dose of kaempferol (20 μ mol/L) had a potent inhibitory effect on the migration and invasion of TNBC cells, but not on the migration of non-TNBC (SK-BR-3 and MCF-7) cells. The low dose of kaempferol downregulated the activations of RhoA and Rac1 in TNBC cells. Moreover, the low dose of kaempferol also inhibited the migration and RhoA activations of HER2-silence SK-BR-3 and ER/PR-silence MCF-7 cells. Overexpressed HER2 rescued the cell migration and RhoA and Rac1 activations of kaempferol-treated MDA-MB-231 cells. Conclusion: The low dose of kaempferol inhibits the migration and invasion of TNBC cells via blocking RhoA and Rac1 signaling pathway. of cells were incubated with 20 kaempferol and to the qPcr assays. The relative mrna levels of e-cadherin, Vimentin, snail, slug ( and MMP2, MMP9 ( ) were normalized to the average value of controls. results are presented as mean ± sD of 3 independent experiments. Abbreviations: epithelial–mesenchymal MMP, matrix metalloproteinase;


This paper applies iterative multiuser detection employing a new channel estimation scheme to multicarrier interleave-division multiple access (MC-IDMA), called OFDM-IDMA, which is expected to offer improved spectral efficiency in mobile communications. The MC-IDMA transmitter uses both a low-rate channel code and an individual chip interleaver for each user. The MC-IDMA receiver, which this paper focuses upon, repeats the iterative multiuser detection and soft decision-directed channel estimation (SDCE) by exploiting log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) of the coded bits which the maximum a posteriori (MAP)-based channel decoders for all users provide. SDCE estimates channel impulse responses of all users by the least-mean-square (LMS) algorithm, which aims to minimize the mean squared error between the received signal and its replica. This paper investigates the performance of MC-IDMA employing SDCE and compares it with those of three MC-CDMA techniques. Computer simulations demonstrate that MC-IDMA employing SDCE outperforms time-spread MC-CDMA and frequency-spread MC-CDMA, and that it can achieve almost the same bit error rate performance as chip-interleaved MC-CDMA while requiring lower complexity.


Professor David Traum, from the University of Southern California. DAVID: Um, hi, glad to be here! SIENNA: Welcome, I have a lot of questions about dialogue! SILA: I thought dialogue was about (answering) questions? SIENNA: No, that's question-answering! SILA: Well, there are plenty of questions and answers in dialogue. DAVID: And other things, like elaborations, explanations, suggestions, instruc tions... SEIICHI: Why don't we start with a question?


We report a case of a 20-year-old male who presented with a gradual painless decrease of vision in his left eye. Best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) was 20/20 in the right eye and 20/200 in the left eye. Anterior segment examination was normal for both eyes. Left eye indirect ophthalmoscopy revealed the presence of a thick epiretinal membrane (ERM) along with telangiectatic vessels and subretinal lipid deposits in inferotemporal quadrant which became more obvious on Fluorescein angiography. Spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) of left macula revealed a thick ERM with tangential contraction. The patient was diagnosed as adult-onset Coats' disease (Stage 2A) with ERM. The patient underwent standard 25 gauge pars plana vitrectomy with ERM peeling followed by cryotherapy of the telangiectatic vessels. Postoperatively there was a decrease in the amount of subretinal lipid deposition with scarring and obliteration of telangiectatic vessels and BCVA improved to 20/20, N6 which remained stable throughout follow-up.


In this article were the patterns of growth for a country in transition, because Romania has came an intense process of transition. An attempt to identify factors which increase the supply of factors of production which is the connection between them and the GNP / capita or standard of living for a longer period.


The invention relates to a method for displaying interest points and equipment thereof. The method comprises the steps of receiving input keywords for retrieving the interest points; matching the input keywords with the stored interest point name and searching the matched interest point name including the keywords; and building and displaying the abbreviated name. The invention can still ensure the user to obtain the important information under the limited display length, leads the user to accurately judge and select the appropriate interest points and meets the requirement of the user on data accuracy.


A set of programs for unstructured mesh construction, fluid flow calculation and flow field visualization in two and three dimensions is described. The grid generators are based on the advancing front concept. The flow solvers use the finite element methods with Flux Corrected Transport techniques to solve several sets of equations including the Euler and Burger's equations. Several examples show the flexibility and accuracy of the methods.


This paper presents a new automatic segmentation algorithm based on wavelet multi-resolution and Radon projection. By giving the definition of ROI of finger crease, this algorithm use feature vector and regional growth to produce candidate sub-region set in high frequency sub-images, and then utilize Radon projection in low frequency sub-images to verify the candidate sub-region set. Finally, by adopting straight-line fitting technique, the location of ROI of finger crease is accurately located. Emulation experiment shows that this algorithm can not only resist noise and hand-shape affection but also robust in different situations.


Aim Purpose studies the management policy for Mobile IPv6.Methods Modify control policy and simulation based IETF mobile IPv6 management.Results and Conclusion the methods for the mobile notes moving frequently,which improve the performance of the network by analyzing and calculating.


According to A. Ya. Steinberg (Vopr. Tuberk., 1925, No. 5), tbc tends to be localized not in one organ, but in a whole group of organs (tissues), and these groups are not random, but are determined, apparently, by a common embryological origin.


Data sharing plan by utilizing ascribe based to lessen the key escrow issue additionally builds up the expressiveness of quality, on account of that the subsequent plan is more easy to understand to cloud computing. In this proposed work we are presenting an enhanced two-party key issuing convention that can ensure that neither key expert nor cloud benefit administrator can bargain the entire mystery key of a client independently. We present the idea of quality with weight, being given to upgrade the outflow of property, which can not just stretch out the articulation from parallel to subjective state, additionally help the intricacy of get to strategy. So that, both capacity cost and encryption complexities for a figure content are diminished. In our proposed work the adjustment procedure is after the data proprietor sends mystery key to the client, the specific cloud client can see the data which is put away in cloud server. Once the client utilized that mystery key means the key will be consequently changed for that mutual data, this dynamic key will be send to the data proprietor too.


The Goal of this contribution is to demonstrate an illustrative example of genetic programming application in the area of regional administrations financing. The principle of genetic programming is used for the establishing of the analytical function for the calculation of the share each individual municipality has in the national shared taxes revenues in the Czech Republic. This approach is confronted with the existing municipal financing principle issuing from the effective act on Tax Assignment to sub-national Government Level.


There are many apparent similarities between PMN chemotaxis and phagocytosis. Previous investigators have suggested that serine esterases are involved in the chemotactic response in so far as a variety of inhibitors and substrate analogues inhibit chemotaxis. We studied the effect of various trypsin inhibitors and a substrate on human PMN chemotaxis and phagocytosis. Reversible inhibition of chemotaxis was demonstrated with the low molecular weight trypsin substrate N-benzoyl-L-arginine ethyl ester (BAEE). The low molecular weight active site titrant, nitrophenyl-P-guanidino benzoate (NPGB) revealed irreversible inhibition of chemotaxis, whereas the low molecular weight inhibitor, benzamidine (BENZ) and the high molecular weight inhibitor, soybean trypsin inhibitor (STI), caused reversible inhibition. The various inhibitors and the substrate gave varying inhibition profiles. The following concentrations gave complete inhibition of chemotaxis: BAEE, 100mM; NPGB, 0.5mM; BENZ, 10mM; STI, 5mM. Neither the active site titrant, NPGB, nor the low molecular weight inhibitor, BENZ, affected phagocytosis as determined by the Maaloe technique at concentrations completely inhibiting chemotaxis. These results may suggest different underlying mechanisms initiating chemotaxis and phagocytosis.


In his daily activities a general practitioner wonders about a patient's probability to see his state of health altered due to externalfactors that could influence it.Surely some risk factors , both modifiable and not modifiable , can interact with external factors to increase the incidence of diseasesor ailments that compels one person to go under medical care, to the emergency room or in serious cases to hospitalization and / orexitus . The summer period , and in particular the risk of heat wave in big cities , as reported in the literature , is an additional riskfactor for the development of difficult health situations .


SIK, I agree so heartily with almost all of Professor Macbeath's article in your April issue, and consider his main theses so important, that I am emboldened to ask whether he would consider a change (not affecting these at all so far as I can see) in one of his descriptive phrases. He shows that we judge what we ought to do, not abstractly, but each of us in the light of a certain plan or policy; an ideal not lodged merely in the future but working d»y by day. This he describes as the conception of "the good of the self as a whole." While I know that the phrase has a distinguished history, yet I believe that its continued use to indicate the guiding principle or scheme of the good life makes a very real stumbling-block for ordinary readers. There seem to be two objections to it, partly separable, (i) Conduct is so often determined by needs located elsewhere than in the actor's self. The tired mother sits up with the sick child because the child needs it. The same reason no doubt makes it simultaneously part of the good of her self, but it would shock her to be told that the latter conception, and not the child's need directly, was moving her. (2) Our attitude in important concerns is incongruous with the phrase. When the disinterested statesman toils with others over some reform, or the creator or discoverer loses himself in his work, he does not feel as if he were working in a scheme arranged round himself. Rather, he is striving to arrange himself round these things which he serves; to make himself a means and a detail for them. In so far as any man is religious, this will be his attitude at all times. It is certainly difficult to suggest a phrase which shall avoid these objections and yet indicate some unity in the total life of each individual. Yet even the simple "This is what I really want" fits better, I think, than "the good of my self as a whole." Professor Macbeath himself has an improved variant in one place where he speaks of "the unity of the self's interests" (italics mine). Could we perhaps adopt the form "the good espoused by the self as a whole" ? I have tried it in each of Professor Macbeath's contexts, and it seems possible. He writes in another connection, "Moral goodness is not something at which we aim directly. . . . Moral goodness and other goods enter into the good life in different ways. . . . The latter are the ends to which it is directed, the former is realized in the pursuit of them" (pp. 112, 114-15). I should like to invoke a parallel to this. We do sometimes aim at moral goodness, but this is not our typical aim in the course of the good life. We do sometimes think about the good of our self as a whole, as in the reflective moment of youth described on pp. 101-2, but it is much more typical of the mature man to be working within a scheme of goods which he has espoused. These are the ends to which his life is directed. The good of his self is realized in the service which he gives to these.


The Quaternary stratigraphic unit is an important underground space resource for sustainable urban development. It is of great significance to understand the spatial variation characteristics of the Quaternary stratigraphic structure and its internal attributes. However, due to the openness and complexity of the Quaternary sedimentary environment, the sedimentary characteristics of Quaternary stratigraphic units are often very complex and difficult to accurately analyze. In this study, a method for analyzing Quaternary sedimentary characteristics via 3D geological modeling based on vector and grid integration is proposed. Based on this method, the Quaternary depositional framework of Xiong'an New Area is established. The results show that the study area is mainly composed of seven Quaternary strata with different sedimentary origins, and the 3D spatial variation characteristics of lithology in each stratum are unique. Taking the vector framework model as the constraint boundary, this study constructs the lithology stochastic model of each Quaternary stratigraphic unit respectively, and accurately simulates the 3D spatial variation characteristics of the inner lithology of Quaternary stratigraphic units in the study area, which is of great significance for the urban planning, construction, and environmental protection of Xiong'an New Area.


This paper aims to discuss an alternative, but still preliminary, proposal of economic policy aimed at resuming public investment in Brazil from the use of surplus foreign exchange reserves. Based on the Principle of Effective Demand, it is understood that public investment assumes a strategic function in the economy by generating stimuli on demand and assembled supply. However, it is observed that this variable not always receives the appropriate priority and ends up being submitted to cuts in the context of fiscal adjustment. Therefore, Brazilian public investment rates behave in cycles, with a recent inflection into a downward trend that led the level of investment to levels that are similar to those from the mid-1990s. Due to the consensus in favor of a fiscal adjustment without tax increases and international reserves being above the level considered suitable, there is a proposal about using foreign exchange surpluses to finance public investment in Brazil.


The exaggerated grain growth of ZnO in the low voltage ZnO varistor was investigated. At a temperature exceeds 1000•Ž in the sintering process, many thin films were formed in the sintered body which contained TiO2 and Bi2O3. The ZnO grain seemed to grow epitaxially with the thin film. XYA and powder X-ray diffraction analysis suggest that the thin films are Bi4Ti3O12. The growth of the thin films depended on the amount of Al2O3additive. Then the exaggerated grain growth of ZnO was under the control of small amount of Al2O3additive.


definite and valuable contribution to the literature on North American mythology, and in this volume, generously enriched by the publisher with a wealth of remarkably fine plates (many of which are in color), we have at last an account, entertaining in style and based upon trustworthy sources, from which student and layman alike may gain, better than ever before, a real knowledge of the mythology of the first Americans.


The new scheelite-type ErCrO4 polymorph has been obtained from the zircon-type ErCrO4 phase by a treatment at 4 GPa and 823 K. X-ray and neutron diffraction studies reveal that this scheelite-type polymorph crystallizes with tetragonal symmetry, space group I41/a being the lattice parameters a = 4.9989(10) Å and c = 11.2332(23) Å. Although bisdisphenoids [ErO8] and tetrahedra [CrO4] polyhedra are present in both compounds, dramatic changes have been observed in the magnetic properties of both polymorphs of ErCrO4. The zircon one is ferromagnetic with TC≈ 15 K; while the corresponding scheelite-type polymorph behaves as antiferromagnetic with TN≈ 21 K. The observed change of sign in these compounds could be explained by considering the differences found in the superexchange Er–O–Cr bond angles through which the magnetic interactions take place in both polymorphs.


By taking the poplar Zhonglin-46 and popular Langfang as the research object,the thermal dissipation sap flow probe (TDP) and the automatic weather station are applied to the synchronous observation of the stem flow and environmental factor.The main conclusions are showed as below:The poplars sap flow (SF) diurnalvariation,no matter in the clear day or cloudy day,presented orderly a unimodal curve;The SF velocity wasn't uniformity with different months;a good correlation was demonstrated between the SF velocity and meteorological factors.Correlation analysis showed that there was a positive correlation between the SF velocity、radiant intensity and air temperature;and a negative correlation between the SF velocity and relative humidity;while a poor correlation between SF velocity,wind speed and 10cm soil temperature;Based on the analysis of relationship between SF and different micrometeorological factors in situ,the multi-linearity models were established for the stands of 3-year,5-year Zhonglin-46 and 5-year Langfang,respectively.


It needs the government and adult education consulting institutions to work together to construct the consulting service system of adult education in China.Governments at all levels should encourage and support the development of adult education consulting industry through making laws and regulations,enhancing industry regulation,offering financial support,guiding market growth and so on.Adult education consulting bodies should strengthen self-construction increasingly through reinforcing specialization and intensification,setting up industry associations of adult education consultation and other means.


In this research project Ben, Megan, and I put a PowerPoint slideshow together for our participants. This slideshow that we put together as a group consisted of sentences of adjective and noun pairs. However, these words were Homonyms, meaning they looked and sounded similar but the meanings of the words were different. When meeting with the participants once everyone arrived we then divided the group in half and had one half stay present in the room and told the other half to remain outside the door in the hallway until further notice. With the first group, we presented the slideshow and immediately after, we had them recall all the nouns they could remember and recognize by circling them on the worksheet we had given them. As for the second group we did the same presentation however when we were finished with the PowerPoint we had them listen to a variety of music and told them to focus on the beat of each song by taping their fingers on the desk or just listening to the beat. After about five minutes of listening to music we then had them recall what they recognize from the slideshow on the worksheet. In this research we found that the same adjective, meaning the old-old pairs that were presented in both the PowerPoint and on the worksheets we handed out after the presentations had a better percentage for recall than new-old and new-new word pairs. Encoding Specificity: The effects of Context and Instructional Set This research project was designed to test the encoding specificity principle, which explains how well humans encode and retrieve information and how it effects one's memory. Therefore in our experiment we wanted to see if changing the semantic context would affect one's recognition memory. Tulving and Thomson (1973) explain encoding specificity as "operations performed on what is perceived determine what is stored, and what is stored determines what retrieval cues are effective in providing access to what is stored." After, reading the article that was assigned to us titled "Effects of Changed Semantic Context on Recognition Memory" (Light, &Carter-Sobell, 1970), I became extremely interested in this project and wanted nothing less but to learn more on this topic and how we use it in everyday life. I had thought that our instructions for our project were presented in an explicit manner, therefore I was curious as to why people confused the words such as the homonyms that were presented to the participants when they were tested and told to recall as many as they could remember. Although, my curious questioning wasn't able to be addressed or answered in this research I was still glad our results turned out the way we expected them to. In a previous study by Rowe (1973) he concluded that "the increase in recognition which accompanies increases in presentation frequency presumably reflects the increased probability of finding at least one relevant list marker as more become available." It was also interesting to find that according to (Mirman, Strauss, Dixon & Magnuson, 2009) other studies have suggested that the representational distance between two noun meanings is smaller than the distance between a noun meaning and a verb meaning. My hypothesis was that the participants would have better percentage of recognition memory when they're tested on the information the same way it was presented to


Self-Organizing Mobile Ad-hoc Network(MANET) equipped with multiple interfaces and multiple channels(MIMC) is an emergent issue in cognitive radio networks(CRNs). Recently the rendezvous algorithm using the multiple radios for fast rendezvous such as role-based parallel sequence(RPS) algorithm have been studied in distributed network. While the RPS algorithm using one dedicated radio and multiple general radios provides an enhanced rendezvous performance and a guaranteed time-to-rendezvous(TTR), it doesn't consider that how many dedicated radios optimize the rendezvous performance. In this paper, we proposed an optimized waiting and hopping(OWH) algorithm for multiple radio devices to provide guaranteed the lower maximum TTR. We derive an upper-bound maximum TTR for the multiple radios network, and analyze the optimized number of waiting radio theoretically. Extensive simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance our algorithm in symmetric and asymmetric channel environment.


We experienced two cases of surfer's ear, exostosis of the external auditory canal, and one of them developed acute mastoiditis and the other with traumatic eardrum rupture . In both cases, extreme stenosis of the external auditory canal was observed. In the former case, the patient complained of left temporal pain for a month. The external canal was completely closed and the eardrum could not be observed . Emergency mastoidectomy was necessary because exposure of the posterior fossa dura by the inflammation in the left ear was suggested by CT findings. In the latter case, the patient had frequent vertigos during surfing after a trauma by a wave in the right ear. Observation of the eardrum perforation was difficult even under a microscope. After the removal of exostosis, the whole perforation was confirmed and myringoplasty was performed. Removal of exostosis in the advanced case is necessary even if no symptoms are found because of the diagnosis delay of the serious complication derived from the canal stenosis .


Diffusion Tensor tracking provides line trajec- tory data representing neural fiber pathways throughout the brain. However, it is difficult to display and analyze the thou- sands of resulting tracks. An automated clustering approach was devised to segment the data into major component path- ways. The fuzzy c-means (FCM) (1) clustering algorithm was used, which provides probabilistic values for cluster member- ship based on distance measures between tracks. Several dis- tance metrics were tested that included functions of distance between tracks and shape information. Using this algorithm several hundred human subcortical tracks were classified into pathways with high accuracy, compared with manual selec- tion using spatial volumes (SSV)(2). INTRODUCTION: Over the last several years diffusion ten- sor MRI (DT-MRI) has provided data with sufficient signal to noise ratio and resolution to perform accurate tracking of nerve fiber bundles in the brain (2,3,4,5). These algorithms can pro- duce thousands of tracks using whole brain data. Automati- cally segmenting this large amount of data into more manageable clusters of tracks that represent the known major fiber bundles in the brain would be extremely useful for future applications of this technique, both for research and clinical purposes. An automatic technique would not be biased in patients with brain lesions or distorted anatomy. The FCM algorithm is a robust clustering algorithm that has been used in numerous engineering and medical application. The algorithm requires the user to provide the number of desired clusters and a distance metric between members of the group to be classified. The algorithm provides probabilistic values of cluster membership for each member of the group. Following an initial seeding of each cluster with a representa- tive group member the algorithm minimized the weighted sum of squared differences within each cluster. METHOD: DT-MRI data were obtained from normal human volunteers using a single-shot echo-planar imaging pulse sequence with diffusion tensor encoding in tetrahedral and orthogonal directions on a Siemens Vision 1.5 Tesla MR sys-


Firstly, several high glossy photo papers were introduced. Those were swellable papers, cast coating photo papers and micro-porous papers. Then the development of high glossy photo paper's in the world was discussed.


Microstructural analysis and investigations of mechanical properties via indentation-techniques have been performed on a LaB6 - 15 vol. % TiB2 ceramics, obtained by the hot-pressing at T = 1900 °C and P = 30 MPa in argon gas. The relative density of hot-pressed material was up to 97% of theoretical. XRD, SEM and EDX analysis of ceramics were performed. The Vickers hardness (18.5 GPa) and fracture-toughness (3.9 MPa-m1/2) were compared with the values, measured on a single-crystalline LaB6 (Hv = 21 GPa, KIc = 2.4 MPa-m1/2) and arc-melted eutectic composite LaB6-TiB2 (Hv = 23 GPa, KIc = 6.7 MPa-m1/2).


This column is about patrolling problems in a geometric network. Mobile agents patrol a road network, and have to visit every point in the network as frequently as possible. The goal is finding a schedule that minimizes the idle time, i.e., the maximum time between two consecutive visits of some agent over all points in the network.


Estriol-16α-glucosiduronate in the urine and serum of pregnant women was measured by a direct radioimmunoassay which was highly specific for this compound and did not require hydrolysis or chromatography. Urinary and serum estriol-16α-glucosiduronate increased as pregnancy progressed. Pregnant women with presumptive renal failure (toxemia of pregnancy, malignant hypertension, post renal transplantation, etc) showed low urinary levels of estriol-16α-glucosiduronate but normal serum levels. Their renal clearance of estriol-16α-glucosiduronate was calculated provisionally and compared to that of creatinine. The results suggest that some serum estriol is conjugated by the kidney and that the measurement of estriol-16α-glucosiduronate can be used as a clinical index of renal failure during pregnancy.


The magnitude and duration of the current conducted through a human body at 60 ㎐ should be less than the value that can cause ventricular fibrillation of the heart. This paper proposes the duration of shock current for calculating a tolerable body current limit in the distribution systems. As the standard for safety in distribution systems grounding is not exist, this paper examines the guide for safety in substation grounding.


The utility model discloses an automatic visual laminating machine, which comprises a machine station taken as the bearing device of the whole laminating machine, a turntable that is arranged on the table board of the machine station and driven by a drive device for running, modules installed on the turntable and evenly distributed on the circumference of the turntable, a manipulator located beside the turntable, and a material table used for placing the objects to be laminated and positioned beside the turntable and the manipulator, wherein products needing to be laminated are fixed through a fixture on the module; the manipulator comprises a group of adsorption arms which realize moving in X/Y /Z axis directions and auto rotating through the drive device; and a detection lens is arranged below the turntable and passes through the module to be mapped on the objects adsorbed by the adsorption arms of the manipulator. After adopting the technical scheme, the automatic visual laminating machine not only can achieve precise laminating of the objects, but also has the advantages of high degree of automation, simple operation, manpower saving, working efficiency improvement and the like.


Purpose

This paper aims to present an alternative airspeed computation method based on artificial neural networks (ANN) without requiring pitot-static system measurements.

Design/methodology/approach

The data set used to train proposed neural model is obtained from the Digital Flight Data Acquisition Unit records of a Boeing 737 type commercial aircraft for real flight routes. The proposed method uses the flight parameters as inputs of the ANN. The Levenberg–Marquardt training algorithm was used to train the neural model.

Findings

The predicted airspeed values obtained with ANN are in good agreement with the measured airspeed values. The proposed neural model can be used as an alternative airspeed computation method.

Practical implications

The proposed alternative airspeed computation method can be used when the air data computer or pitot-static system has failed.

Originality/value

The proposed method uses flight parameters as inputs for the ANN. As such, airspeed is calculated using flight parameters instead of the pitot-static system measurements.


The aim of the present work was the preparation and characterization of o/w/o co-surfactant free olive oil microemulsions with Laurus nobilis (bay leaf) essential oil, in order to obtain a system that could provide a controlled, sustained product with desirable sensory characteristics and prolonged oxidative stability.


With the arrival of mobile internet and mobile nursing, mobile nursing has developed a lot. According to the consultant of domestic literature, this paper summarized the mobile nursing from the perspective of nursing connotation of mobile nursing, innovation and practice of mobile nursing inside the hospital, innovation and practice of mobile nursing outside the hospital, the solution of the bottleneck problem of mobile nursing and the problem of mobile health products, in order to provide ideas and methods for the development of domestic mobile nursing.

Key words:
Mobile nursing; Inside the hospital; Outside the hospital; Solution; Review


Abstract : Research to develop disciplines and capabilities that underpin outcomes for a variety of applications often struggles to gain support from end users, partly due to assumptions made about the utility of the underpinning science or technologies and partly because it is difficult to find a constituency within some application domains to champion the adoption of new techniques. Modelling and simulation and systems engineering are broad areas that seems to fall within this category outside a few recognised communities. This presentation discusses some of the ways in which the research community might look to engage users in order to develop an understanding of the benefits associated with the adoption of a systems approach, and in particular the use of modelling and simulation in the design, implementation and operations phases of large projects.


Purpose: The Resident Assessment Instrument–Minimum Data Set (RAI/MDS) is an interdisciplinary standardized process that informs care plan development in nursing homes. This standardized process has failed to consistently result in individualized care planning, which may suggest problems with content and planning integrity. We examined the decision making and care practices of personal support workers (PSWs) in relation to the RAI/MDS standardized process. Design and Methods: This qualitative study utilized focus groups and semi-structured interviews with PSWs (n = 26) and supervisors (n = 9) in two nursing homes in central Canada. Results: PSWs evidenced unique occupational contributions to assessment via proximal familiarity and biographical information as well as to individualizing care by empathetically linking their own bodily experiences and forging bonds of fictive kinship with residents. These contributions were neither captured by RAI/MDS categories nor relayed to the interdisciplinary team. Causal factors for PSW exclusion included computerized records, low status, and poor interprofessional collaboration. Intraprofessional collaboration by PSWs aimed to compensate for exclusion and to individualize care. Implications: Exclusive institutional reliance on the RAI/MDS undermines quality care because it fails to capture residents' preferences and excludes input by PSWs. Recommendations include incorporating PSW knowledge in care planning and documentation and examining PSWs' nascent occupational identity and their role as interprofessional brokers in long-term care.


The effects of the geometry of the cubic lattices on the properties of a Heisenberg antiferromagnet with first- and second-nearest-neighbour interactions are investigated. Both the Neel temperature and the quantum defect are calculated using temperature-dependent Green function theory and the random phase approximation (RPA) for all values of the exchange constants leading to antiferromagnetic order. Special attention is given to the properties of the phase transitions which occur when the exchange constraints are varied. Graphs of the Neel temperature and the quantum defect are presented to aid comparison between theory and experiment.


S S37 PROFICIENCY TESTING IN BONE MARROW MORPHOLOGY John Sioufi, Katherine Marsden RCPAQAP Haematology, St Leonards, NSW, Australia Aim: The RCPAQAP blood film morphology module originated in 1963 unable to offer a bone marrow (BM) morphology module as it was not possible to obtain the number of slides required for a survey. Virtual microscopy overcomes this problem and the aim was to determine the feasibility of a BM morphology survey using online virtual microscope scans. Method: A pilot survey was sent to all laboratories enrolled in the RCPAQAP Morphology module. Virtual microscopy scans of the blood film, bone marrow aspirate and trephine from an essential thrombocythaemia (ET) patient were used. Participation involved providing a bone marrow differential count, a diagnosis and recommended additional investigations. Results: The uptake was low despite reminders and extensions of the closing date. Forty participants completed the differential count; 30–39 answered survey questions and/or provided other feedback. The diagnoses made were ET 31/39 participants (80%), other myeloproliferative neoplasms 5/39 (13%), other diagnoses 3 (8%). Conclusion: The reasons for the low response rate are not known but we conclude that many laboratories could now manage an online virtual bone marrow morphology survey. As a result the RCPAQAP will introduce a bone marrow morphology module in 2016 but ensure that DVDs are available if preferred. THROMBOPHILIA INVESTIGATION – NOT FOR EVERYONE


Abstract Not Available – First paragraph follows:
Nitrogenous fertilizers—in some form—are applied to most lemon orchards and in the majority of cases constitute the only fertilizers used. The growing of legume or other cover crops for the most part has been abandoned.


Ultraviolet loss measurements on germanosilicate fibre samples showing an intense absorption, centred at 242 nm, with an associated fluorescence at 413 nm are presented. The first direct observation is reported of the bleaching of this 240 nm band under the action of ultraviolet irradiation, evidence which is consistent with the Kramers-Kronig model for the photosensitive refractive index change in these glasses.


An experimental investigation on the dynamic process in evaporation and crystallization of a single millimeter-sized aqueous electrolyte solution droplet levitated by a single-axis acoustic levitation apparatus has been made. The levitation apparatus demonstrated great potential for visualizing the morphological change accompanying the homogeneous nucleation and crystal growth in droplets of aqueous solution of NH 4Cl. The e xtensive visualization reveals that after the onset of crystallization the crust normally appears first at some portion of the droplet surface and the evolution from partial crust to complete crust proceeds by three kinds of possible growth mechanism, i.e., the inward growth of local crust toward the droplet interior, the extension of local crust along the droplet surface, as well as the outward growth in the form of dendrites or whiskers at some spots of local crustal surface. Most other electrolyte solution droplets experience the similar mechanisms as NH 4Cl solution droplets until the formation of complete crust, but the morphological changes after the completion of crust are quite different from solute to solute. A preliminary experimental test of the dependence of morphological changes on the solute natures and of the morphology of a binary mixed solution droplet has also been carried out. In addition, a qualitative discussion of the possible influence of acoustic wave on the universality of the observation results is presented. The method and observation results will provide useful information for the better comprehension of the morphological phenomena of particles from spray drying and spray pyrolysis, and for the determination of morphological control strategy.


The harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) is one of the most abundant coastal cetacean species in the Northern Hemisphere with differential levels of regional knowledge. Gaps are particularly evident for the Pacific subspecies Phocoena phocoena vomerina. In the Salish Sea (a transboundary body of water spanning between Washington, United States and British Columbia (BC), Canada), there is a dearth of information on many aspects of the biology, ecology, behavior, sociality, and regionally specific threats. Here we present a case study of the Salish Sea harbor porpoise, combining historical and current research, from both BC and Washington, to provide a more holistic view of this species' status, the knowledge continuum and gaps, risks from identified threats and what current research and collaborations are revealing about this enigmatic species. The Salish Sea harbor porpoise was abundant to the 1940s and 1950s, but by the 1990s their numbers were greatly reduced, and all but absent in some areas. By the early 2000s, numbers had resurged, and harbor porpoise are now once again found throughout much of the Salish Sea. Despite this, studies focused on Salish Sea harbor porpoises have been limited until recently. Current long-term research has been conducted from vessels and land in both Canada and the United States. Multi-faceted work using techniques including photo-identification (photo-ID), behavioral visual observations, acoustics, commercial fishery surveys, sighting reports, citizen science and other ecological data have provided insight into the seasonal variation in density and abundance, site fidelity, reproduction, by-catch rates, foraging and the identification of important habitats that are used intra- and inter-annually in this region. These may represent culturally and biologically significant habitats for Salish Sea harbor porpoise. Collaborations within and outside of the Salish Sea have revealed consistencies and dissimilarities between different communities or populations; indicating that some aspects are more uniform for the species, while others may be community or population specific. The importance of long-term broad and fine-scale research is highlighted, as well as recommendations to further close the knowledge gaps and reduce the known human threats within the Salish Sea.


This paper discusses the need for and process of capturing sequence of events (SOE) information with the emphasis on collecting it from one or more remote locations and transmitting it to a centralized location for processing and display.


The invention relates to a rechargeable electrochemical battery cell with a ceramic separator and an indicator electrode. The indicator electrode is electronically isolated with respect to the positive and negative electrode and provided in the battery cell to the fact that it is contacted by a metal deposition of the active metal and displays it.


Fault diagnosis using partial discharge (PD) measured from operating generators is a continuing research in the past 25 years. This paper reports the diagnosed data from an operating 16 kV/ 250 MVA generator. Permanently installed capacitive couplers were used for tapping PD signals from 16 kV generator and busbar connected step-up transformer terminals. A four channel fast sampling oscilloscope was used to record the simultaneous behavior of PD signals at the selected 4 terminals. The signals were analyzed for collective PD distribution with the phase angle after filtering and phase referencing with 20 samples of 40 ms duration. Denoising was done either by wavelet, threshold and digital filtering techniques. It indicated the presence of minor surface discharges in all the 3 phases. Identification of the phase of PD origin was difficult as PD occurred simultaneously in most of the monitored terminals. Single pulse analysis indicates that the initiating pulse may be characterized by the time delay in occurrence in different phases, magnitude in time and frequency domains and various dominant frequency content. The measuring input impedance changed the sensitivity of measurement.


Small satellite payloads commonly involve missions with multiple field-of-view (FOV) capability. For these missions, it is often desirable that the payload instrument contain optical sensors with both a wide FOV for searching or scanning a scene and a narrow FOV to interrogate and identify the object of interest. This generally requires multiple sensors or a zoom lens with multiple moving lenses. For infrared sensors, these approaches are generally not compact enough for use on small space platforms, unmanned air vehicles, or small satellite payloads. This paper describes a compact dual field-of-view telescope with a 6x field ratio. The selection of the field involves changing optical filters, which transmit different spectral wavebands. Each spectral waveband is associated with separate optical paths with differing focal lengths, thus fields-of-view. This concept has been proven through the design, build, and alignment of a long-wave infrared (LWIR) catadioptric telescope.


Abstract There is no doubt that each project manager uses different methodologies, methods, tools and techniques (MMTTs) while dealing with constant pressure to deliver results in a complex and changing environment, where complexity and stakeholders' expectations are continually growing. This article presents results from the study about project managers' choice on artefacts that they frequently use in their regular work. This study was conducted within the context of selected environment (one country and one sector of engineering projects), but designed methodology and results might also be significant for a wider audience. The results were based on the feedback that were received from 31 project management (PM) professionals gathered in the form of a structured questionnaire, followed by an interview with three PM experts for validation. The results confirmed a variety of PM artefacts in use and provided their ranking by perceived usefulness. The additional results indicated correlation between PM success and usage of MMTTs, as perceived by project managers. This study also resulted in several interesting findings, such as popularity and usefulness of artefacts, rigidity of PM processes, and maturity of PM organizations, about the topic. Despite of rather small sample taken from one country's environment, the results could serve as a solid information for moving ahead, while considering the significance of PM artefacts, as well as for their further development. The key findings are also messages to PM professionals to consider whether they use available and appropriate PM artefacts and is there a room for more efficient and effective usage.


Technological developments continue to increase in various fields, one of which is in the field of cellular telephones, one of the companies established to enter this intense market competition is Xiaomi. There are 3 equity values of the products used in this study, namely Brand awareness, Brand Image, Brand Loyalty that will affect the Brand Equity of this Xiaomi product. This study aims to see how the three elements influence the value of brand equity. The results showed that brand awareness, brand image, brand loyalty influence brand equity simultaneously and brand image, brand loyalty affects brand equity partially while brand awareness does not partially affect brand equity . Keywords: Brand Awareness, Brand Image, Brand Loyalty, Brand Equity


Spaceflight computing is a key resource in NASA space missions and a core determining factor of spacecraft capability, with ripple effects throughout the spacecraft, end-to-end system, and mission. Onboard computing can be aptly viewed as a "technology multiplier" in that advances provide direct dramatic improvements in flight functions and capabilities across the NASA mission classes, and enable new flight capabilities and mission scenarios, increasing science and exploration return. Space-qualified computing technology, however, has not advanced significantly in well over ten years and the current state of the practice fails to meet the near- to mid-term needs of NASA missions. Recognizing this gap, the NASA Game Changing Development Program (GCDP), under the auspices of the NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate, commissioned a study on space-based computing needs, looking out 15-20 years. The study resulted in a recommendation to pursue high-performance spaceflight computing (HPSC) for next-generation missions, and a decision to partner with the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) in this development.


The purpose of this integrative review is to synthesize the scientific literature referring to barriers and facilitators of physical activity participation for individuals with mobility impairments. Using EBSCO and Google Scholar search engines, peer-reviewed articles published in English between 2000-2019 were screened. After extracting research-based articles focusing on participants with mobility limitations 46 articles were retrieved, including eight intervention studies. The outcomes reported in these studies were synthesized referring to theoretical approaches including the theory of reasoned action, the transtheoretical model of change, and self-efficacy theory. A thematic analysis was conducted on study contents. The following categories were constructed. (a) Personal factors, with secondary categories: personal medical condition, personal psychological perception of physical activity practice, and self-efficacy; (b) environmental factors, with secondary categories: physical environment and social environment, each of them also containing tertiary categories, and (c) interventions aimed at increasing physical activity. Practices promoting physical activity participation were recommended.


Governments in both developed and developing countries are turning towards New Public Management (NPM) of their local bodies to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of public service. The question remains however, whether this move towards more flexible public management is practiced as stated and if this approach is a feasible option for countries like Nepal. This article outlines the key aspects of NPM and analyses how far the Nepalese Government has moved the process from a formal to a flexible management arrangement for its local government institutions and whether this approach is feasible in a Nepalese context. The paper finds that flexible public management at the local level should be pursued but that Nepal is still far from its intention of transforming the local bodies to become effective service facilitators, thus emphasizing the need for adjusting the relatively culture blind NPM approach to the local context. Background With the introduction of the Local Self-Governance Act (LSGA) in Nepal in 1999 increased authority has been devolved to the local level and a new framework for providing services to the public has emerged, a process which is being further expanded with His Majesty's Government of Nepal's (HMGN) plans of increasing the level of devolution in specific sectors. A wide range of donors, is heavily supporting this decentralization drive with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in the forefront, in line with the increased focus on good governance as one of the single most important factors for development. Till now the main focus have been related to the externalities of the decentralization process focusing on participation , transparency and accountability and less on the internal management of the local governments. The two main reasons for choosing to decentralize are generally to ensure a greater level of participation and influence of the citizens on the decision-making process and to enhance


'NewWine in Old Bottles?' (Chapter Eleven). During perestroika, the political had to be articulated anew, and the question today is whether we will be in an analogous situation when the Putin regime comes to an end. Russian Political Philosophy came out right after Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which in addition to the disastrous consequences this currently has for Ukraine also raises the question of Russian political philosophy, that is whether some of its doctrines have contributed to the situation in which the world finds itself today, and whether Russia also may offer any better alternatives for the future. The author managed to write a short afterword before the book was printed, where he points out that the legitimisation of the current war clearly leans on tendencies and themes in Russian political thought, from Dostoevsky to Dugin, but reminds us also that its history provides us with ideas that have been deeply critical of the authoritarian, neoimperialist Russias, new or old. Zweerde firmly believes that during the three decades that have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union 'two generations of Russians have learned to think critically and independently' (211) and that another Russia, therefore, is possible, however remote it may seem at present. 'Suppression of the political invokes uprisings and it invites conspirational political organisations' (208). At the time of writing this review, the remaining world yearns for the overthrow of the Putin regime from within.


Purpose
This study aims to investigate the government's role in the development of toll road projects that adopt public-private partnership (PPP) schemes in Indonesia. In addition to investigating its role, this study also attempts to quantitatively assess its performance as the use of quantitative analysis in this area is still fairly limited. The analysis was developed from the perspectives of two main stakeholders involved: government and private sectors. The findings of this study are expected to help both government and private sectors to better understand the government's role as well as its performance in PPP toll road projects in Indonesia.

Design/methodology/approach
The data was analysed by using statistical methods. Following the identification of the government's role in PPP toll road projects from the literature, a preliminary survey involving 12 highway construction experts was conducted to verify the initial findings from the literature review. Subsequently, the authors conducted a survey of 146 respondents from both government and private sectors. To analyse the collected data, both descriptive and inferential statistics were used, which include analysis of means, analysis of reliability, as well as independent T-test. T-test was used to examine differences in perception between the two groups.

Findings
In total, 12 criteria from the literature were used to assess the government's role and its performance in PPP toll road projects in Indonesia. Based on the analysis, the authors find that the government's role in the development of PPP toll road projects can be considered moderate in its performance. In this respect, the author argue that, instead of focusing on meeting all the criteria, it would be better for government to focus on meeting only a number of them, which include realizing smooth land acquisition, selecting appropriate concessionaire, offering a solution to community protests over environmental issues, providing substantial government support, providing supervision, enforcing the law and eradicating corruption. The results of this study provide valuable information for international parties aiming to participate in PPP toll road projects in Indonesia, considering this country has been offering a wide opportunity for private sectors to be involved in developing infrastructure. Meanwhile, for the host government, the findings can be used as the basis for conducting improvements to attract private sectors' involvement and to achieve more successful upcoming PPP toll road projects in Indonesia.

Research limitations/implications
The findings of this study might provide valuable information for the host government to evaluate its role and performance to achieve more successful PPP toll road projects in the future. Rather than focusing on all attributes, the improvements can be made by focusing only on the critical ones: those ranked high on the importance and low on its performance. In addition, this finding can also help private sectors to better understand both the role and performance of government in Indonesia as this country offers a great opportunity for infrastructure investment through PPP schemes.

Practical implications
The findings of this study might provide valuable information for the host government to evaluate its role and performance to achieve more successful PPP toll road projects in the future. Rather than focusing on all attributes, the improvements can be made by focusing only on the critical ones: those ranked high on the importance and low on its performance. In addition, this finding can also help private sectors to better understand both the role and performance of government in Indonesia as this country offers a great opportunity for infrastructure investment through PPP schemes.

Social implications
Text.

Originality/value
This paper contributes to the body of knowledge on the criteria to assess the government's role performance in the Indonesian PPP toll road projects. Whilst there is still limited research has been conducted regarding the government's role in the PPP toll road projects in Indonesia, this study presented the criteria of the government's role and showed how to assess and evaluate the host government's performance based on these criteria in a more objective approach using quantitative method. This result can be used as the basis for improvements to achieve a more successful PPP toll road project in Indonesia and might be in other similar developing countries.


Many diseases are related to multiple genetic alterations along a single gene. Probing for highly multiple (>10) variants in a single qPCR tube is not possible due to a limited number of fluorescence channels and one variant per channel, so many more tubes are needed. Here, we experimentally validate our novel color-mixing strategy that uses fluorescence combinations as digital color codes to probe multiple variants simultaneously. The color-mixing strategy relies on a simple intra-tube assay that can probe for 15 variants as part of an inter-tube assay that can probe for an exponentially increased number of variants. The color-mixing strategy is achieved using multiplex double-stranded toehold probes modified with fluorophores and quenchers; the probes are designed to be quenched or luminous after binding to wildtype or variant templates. We used the color-mixing strategy to probe for 21 pathogenic mutations in thalassemia and distinguishing between heterozygous and homozygous variants in 6 tubes, with a specificity of 99% and a sensitivity of 94%. To support tuberculosis diagnosis, we used the same strategy to simultaneously probe in Mycobacterium tuberculosis for rifampicin-resistance mutations occurring within one 81-bp region and one 48-bp region in rpoB gene, plus five isoniazid-resistance mutations in inhA and katG genes.


Let E be a rational elliptic curve, and K an imaginary quadratic field. In this article we study how to construct Heegner points when E has a prime of additive reduction ramifying in the field K.


In traffic engineering the proper design of elastic bearings with regard to comfort and noise generation is very important. In this context the rubber springs have found use in a wide range of applications, especially the air spring meets the increasing requirements for comfort. Solving vibration and noise control problems with elastomeric products require the understanding of material behaviour and the knowledge about the long-term performance under service conditions. Samples of rubber bearings in railway applications are shown. For the first time, a railway manufacturer is placing the responsibility for developing and supplying a complete, primary suspension unit in the hands of a single supplier from the rubber industry. The continuous advancement of computational life prediction methods forms a basic requirement for the reduction of test periods and costs of component fatigue tests and for a simultaneous quality improvement of life endurance proofs.


The number of individuals per occupation in the city of Ann Arbor fits the logarithmic series at least as well as do the data from most plant and animal communities. It is likely that departures from the logarithmic series in samples from natural communities are largely attributable to nonrandomness in the sampling procedure. In view of the relative ease of working with the logarithmic series it may continue to serve a useful purpose in community ecology even in competition with the truncated log-normal distribution, provided the sampling is done in a sufficiently random manner. The hypothesis is proposed that the reason the number of individuals per species in random samples from natural communities tends to follow the logarithmic series and the truncated log-normal distribution is that the factors affecting abun- dance tend to combine multiplicatively. To test this hypothesis a synthetic community consisting of 220 species and 26,000 individuals was created by making the abundance of each species pro- portional to the product of 10 random normal numbers having a mean of 2 and a standard deviation of 1. The synthetic community thus formed does, in fact, follow the log-normal distribution approximately. The number of individuals per species in a random sample of 1,083 adults from the synthetic community followed the logarithmic series almost perfectly. It is concluded that a multiplicative combination of factors affecting abundance is capable of pro- ducing both the log-normal distribution and the logarithmic series.


The damage properties of polymer bonded explosives under dynamic loading were studied by using ultrasonic evaluation and fractal analysis. Explosive samples were damaged by a long-pulse low-velocity gas gun with a gas buffer under different impact velocities. The microstructures of the samples before and after impact were examined by use of polarized light microscopy. The optical micrographs were analyzed using image processing and fractal theory. Ultrasonic examination was carried out using a pulse through-transmission method. Spectra analyses were carried out using fast Fourier transform(FFT). Characteristic ultrasonic parameters including ultrasonic pulse velocities, attenuation coefficients, spectra area and master frequency were obtained. The correlation between the impact damage and ultrasonic parameters were analyzed. The results show that both ultrasonic parameters and fractal dimension can be used to quantitatively assess the impact damage of plastic bonded explosives.


A novel azo pyridinium compound, 4-[(2-hydroxyl-5-methylphenyl)azo]-1-octadecylpyridinium iodide (HAPO), and its analogue, 4-[(2-hydroxyl-5-methylphenyl)azo]-1-methylpyridinium iodide (HAPM), were synthesized, and their photochromic and electrochemical behaviors were studied both in solutions and in Langmuir−Blodgett films. Reversible photochromism through a photothermal cycle and a good reversible oxidation/reduction process were observed. The reaction of HAPO in solution undergoes a first-order kinetic process. The mechanisms of photochromism and oxidation/reduction were also proposed. Data show this new compound is an ideal material for information storage.


The response mechanism of nitrate ion selective electrodes (ISEs) containing covalently bound quaternary ammonium salt sensor molecules has been investigated using 15N tracer studies, ion exchange measurements and surface analysis by electron microscopy using energy dispersive X-ray analysis. The ISEs were shown to operate by surface ion exchange mechanism with no involvement of ion diffusion though the membrane. Ion selectivity was shown to be dependent on a solvent mediator increasing membrane surface permeability towards nitrate allowing ion exchange to occur. A new sub-category of classification for electrodes of this type is proposed.


Diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) is characterized by pain and sensory loss, affecting approximately 50% of patients (1). Early identification and risk factor management are key to limiting progression of DPN. In contrast to retinopathy (retinal fundus imaging) and nephropathy (microalbuminuria) with early disease detection, the 10-g monofilament identifies advanced DPN. Corneal confocal microscopy (CCM) is an ophthalmic imaging technique that identifies subclinical corneal nerve loss, which predicts incident DPN (2) and has good diagnostic utility for DPN (3). It also identifies corneal nerve regeneration prior to improvement in symptoms and nerve conduction studies after simultaneous pancreas and kidney transplantation (4). CCM studies have primarily used manual corneal nerve analysis (CCMetrics), which, although highly reliable, is time-consuming with limited scalability. Here, we combine a deep learning (DL) algorithm for fully automated quantification of corneal nerves in CCM images along with an adaptive neurofuzzy inference system (ANFIS) to rapidly differentiate patients with (DPN1) and without (DPN ) neuropathy and healthy control subjects. Participants with type 1 diabetes (n = 87) and control subjects (n = 21) underwent detailed assessment of neuropathy (Table 1). Based on the Toronto criteria, which combine symptoms, signs, and abnormal nerve conduction, patients were subdivided into DPN1 (29%) and DPN (71%) groups (Table 1). Participants underwent CCM, and 6–8 central corneal nerve images/subject were quantified using our established methodology (5). DL performance was assessed against ground truth derived from gold-standard 1) manual CCMetrics and 2) automated (ACCMetrics) methods to quantify corneal nerve fiber length (CNFL). The DL algorithm uses a U-Net–based convolutional neural network, which requires smaller training sets for more precise segmentation. The algorithm was initially trained on 25% (n = 174 images) of the data set (affecting approximately 50% epochs/0.0001 learning rate) for 30 h (Intel Core i3–6100) and then validated on the remaining images (n = 534). To optimize quality, input training images were cropped to 256 256 pixels, binarized, and skeletonized, resulting in a segmented output image, where nerve pixels corresponded to a value of 1 and nonnerve pixels to 0. DL-estimated CNFL was comparable to CCMetrics (1,326 ± 459 vs. 1,269 ± 444 pixels, P > 0.05) and significantly outperformed ACCMetrics (1,036 ± 385 pixels, P < 0.0001), with higher pixel detection sensitivity (85% vs. 70%) and lower false negative rate (15% vs. 30%) than ground truth. The intraclass correlation coefficient indicated excellent reproducibility for DL segmentation (0.98, P =


by the repeated use of an erroneous designation for one of the most famous RussoGerman battles of the First World War (given as "Mansurian" Lakes instead of Masurian, pp. 3 and 4) , including a cross reference in capital letters. In a short (twelve-line) biographical entry, "Adamenko, Ivan Diomidovich" (p. 180), based on a single Soviet source (an article in Istoriia SSSR, 1975, no. 3) , I counted four errors, one of which—identification of the subject's place of birth as the Kushevskii district (for Kushchevskii)—must go back to an error in the original text. Ordinarily, a reviewer would avoid such minutiae of scholarship, but when one is dealing with a basic work of reference, especially one which is just being launched, the question of accuracy is vital. If the Encyclopedia is to live up to its potential, it will have to be raised to a more acceptable level of accuracy. An errata sheet for the first volume, based on rigorous checking, should be provided to subscribers, who have the right to expect that subsequent volumes will be more reliable.


Iskandar Malaysia (IM) is a new economic region in Malaysia's most southern state, Johor. The region is targeted for massive development by 2025 with a targeted rapid increase in the population to 3 million, or double the 2005 level, within the 20-years development period. The current handling method for solid waste in the area depends solely on final landfill and is not sustainable for the future of IM with massive waste generation forecasted by 2025. However, in order to develop an alternative solid-waste management plan, details study of the waste generated are crucial but are currently unavailable. We carried out a study at the Seelong Waste Treatment Facility in June 2012 to characterize household solid waste (HSW). We separated one hundred kilograms of HSW into 27 physical groups and proximate analysis and calorific value analysis were run on the samples in the laboratory. HSW generated in IM consists mainly of food, paper, and plastic in the proportions of 41%, 22%, and 21%, respectively. The moisture content, ash content, combustible content, and measured calorific value of the waste were 56.9%, 8.2%, 34.9% and 1591 kcal/kg, respectively. Further study of the suitability of the waste for alternative waste handling methods shows that, other than landfill, composting and incineration could be applicable in the study area through promotion of waste separation.


The invention discloses a gas circuit control device on a rotating disk. The gas circuit control device on the rotating disk comprises a rotating disk, wherein the center of the rotating disk is provided with a gas rotation quick-change coupler and a gas shunting head connected with the gas rotation quick-change coupler; a plurality of vacuum absorption tools are evenly distributed on the circumference on the rotating disk; the gas shunting head and each vacuum absorption tool are connected by a vacuum generator and a vacuum control valve; a position above the rotating disk, which needs to break vacuum, is provided with a press cake cooperated with the vacuum control valve of the vacuum absorption tool. When the gas circuit control device on the rotating disk, which is disclosed by the invention, is adopted, a plurality of vacuum adsorption stations can be put together on the rotating disk so as to reduce the equipment floor area and improve the degree of automation of the equipment.


The invention relates to a micro-channel aluminum flat tube extrusion die which comprises a die ring, a die cushion and a die sleeve. The die ring, the die cushion and the die sleeve are sequentially connected. An upper die body and a lower die body are arranged in the die sleeve. Two pits are formed in the face, facing the die sleeve, of the die cushion. Radiators are arranged in the pits. The die ring is provided with an air inlet hole and an air outlet hole, wherein the air inlet hole communicates with an air inlet of one radiator, and the air outlet hole communicates an air outlet of the other radiator. The micro-channel aluminum flat tube extrusion die is provided for overcoming the defect in the aspect of design of an aluminum flat tube extrusion die in the prior art; and the micro-channel aluminum flat tube extrusion die is good in radiating effect, long in service life and capable of better increasing the extrusion speed, and therefore the yield of aluminum flat tubes is increased.


In this paper we couple collocated Boundary Element Methods (BEM) with unstructured analysissuitable T-spline surfaces for solving a linear Boundary Integral Equation (BIE) arising in the context of a ship-hydrodynamic problem, namely the so-called Neumann-Kelvin problem, following the formulation by Brard (1972) [1] and Baar & Price (1988) [2]. The local-refinement capabilities of the adopted T-spline bases, which are used for representing both the geometry of the hull and approximating the solution of the associated BIE, in accordance with the Isogeometric concept proposed by Hughes et al. (2005) [3], lead to a solver that achieves the same error level for many fewer degrees of freedom as compared with the corresponding NURBS-based Isogeometric-BEM solver recently developed in Belibassakis et al. (2013) [4]. In this connection, this paper makes a step towards integrating modern CAD representations for ship-hulls with hydrodynamic solvers of improved accuracy and efficiency, which is a prerequisite for building efficient ship-hull optimizers.


The aim of this approach is to evaluate the humans' exposure risk to the microwave electromagnetic fields using the case of a microwave oven as an example of radiation source. Measurements and Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) were performed aiming the assessment and classification of the exposure risks and finally to identify some exposure reduction measures. Use of risk priority numbers (RPN) in combination with fuzzy logic aims to find a better risk prioritisation technique. This approach is also a proposition for a management technique that can be adapted and applied in other cases of electromagnetic pollution.


Abstract : Although frequently encountered in engineering problems, the meaning of error contours has been the subject of much debate and confusion among engineers. This report attempts to clarify this situation by developing results from first principals without rigorous derivation. While the material presented here may be well known among a miniscule clique of theorists, it appears that this exposition is required by the engineering community.


A countable group is C*-simple if its reduced C*-algebra is simple. It is well known that C*-simplicity implies that the amenable radical of the group must be trivial. We show that the converse does not hold by constructing explicit counter-examples. We additionally prove that every countable group embeds into a countable group with trivial amenable radical and that is not C*-simple.


This paper makes an analysis of both data acquisition system structure and data acquisition mode,and presents how to implement a new data acquisition in physical isolation between the real-time database and the DCS.The paper also makes a study of a solution for the heterogeneous data integration based on the OPC and discusses the way of real-time data transfer and communication in the data acquisition system,thus providing a new way to the data acquisition and processing for an integrated scheduling and control system in a process industry.


In thinking about pricing in a deregulated electric power industry, getting the right price at the generator is not sufficient. Transmission prices that provide economically efficient prices for delivered capacity are needed, and that in turn requires transmission prices based on marginal or incremental costs. This article is an overview of incremental-cost pricing in the electric power industry.


The engraved gem which forms the subject of this note (plate I, Al, A2, and fig. 1) is part of the collection of Mr. Richard Falkiner of London. I am grateful to him for allowing me to publish it here, and for placing at my disposal the notes which result from his own inquiries. What is known of the history and provenance of the object may be stated in a few words. It was bought by its present owner from a London dealer who had obtained it at auction.


fWe introduce a dialect of Java, JShield, for concurrent object oriented programming, whose primary design goal is robustness. JShield preserves the Java syntax and the semantics of sequential Java programs. It modifies the semantics of concurrent programs to completely avoid data races without relying on the programmer ability, and without requiring special annotations. This is achieved by combining Hoare's monitors with remote method invocations of Java to ensure the proper request of a lock before manipulating shared data. We show that this can be done with a reasonable overhead in execution time compared to Java.


Calcium and zinc stabilizers are highly effective,low-cost,non-toxic and have good prospect for development.Synthesis and properties of the research progress about calcium and zinc heat stabilizer in this decade were reviewed.At present,research trends of calcium zinc heat stabilizer include:research and development of new calcium zinc heat stabilizer,such as design into multivariate(binary) carboxylic calcium zinc salt or some groups(epoxy,etc.),in order to improve thermal stability,increase compatibility.The new type of gas absorption HCl in inorganic and organic compounds with zinc calcium stabilizer is researched to develop cooperative system and invent calcium zinc composite stabilizer.


Crypto currency is the key action word of caution and currency in operation. Technology has enabled operations of currencies across possible by least cost with appropriate legal correctness. There are two options left to Governments of Nations: 1. Adapt to fast changing to curb Bitcoins - a symbol of challenge for the Nations and 2. Legalize crypto currencies to control their disastrous effects. The time is now to discuss the issue at the global level to address the challenge before it erupts into a volcano.


Citrus sudden death (CSD) is a disease that has affected millions of orange trees in Brazil, leading to economic losses in the order of billions of US dollars. This article examines the effects of CSD on the fatty acid composition of triacylglycerides (TAG) extracted from rootstock and scion bark. The fatty acid profile determined by gas chromatography showed a reduction in oleic and linolenic acids, and an increase in the saturated fatty acids and linoleic acid content, which was in line with the severity of CSD. The reduction in linolenic acid content was related to its role in the biosynthesis of jasmonic acid, which is involved in responses to abiotic and biotic stresses, as well as senescence. These alterations in the fatty acid profile were also used to classify plants both with and without CSD symptoms by using chemometric means. This method represents an alternative to support the diagnosis of CSD disease.


The present invention discloses an audio frequency induction vacuum cleaner controller. The audio frequency induction vacuum cleaner controller comprises a controller main body; and the controller main body comprises a power conversion circuit for converting an AC signal to a DC signal, a motor control circuit for controlling normal operation of a motor, a microcontroller serving as a control center, a display and button module providing interface operation, a power sampling module capable of acquiring electrical parameters, and a microphone circuit for acquiring audio frequency information. According to the audio frequency induction vacuum cleaner controller, the microphone circuit acquires the audio frequency information between a motor suction opening and a dust bag, and whether the vacuum cleaner is stalled and the dust bag is full or not can be determined through software analysis of the microcontroller; persons are reminded to process timely through display of the display and button module; and the effect of power self-learning is achieved through cooperation of the power sampling module and the microcontroller, so that the technical problem of compatibility of different access power sources is solved, and the vacuum cleaner controller can be used more safely, conveniently and intelligently.


To measure the effect of Food Vlogger's Attribute on Purchasing Intention of Culinary Product from Street Food Vendor in Jakarta. Use probability sampling techniques using judgmental sampling, who have  watched Food Vloggers videos in YouTube and live in Jabodetabek at least 6 month from the questionnaire spread  to the respondent via online. While the time horizon used is cross sectional studies that take the October to November 2020 range to 287 respondents who meet the criteria. The SEM method with SmartPLS 3.3.2 software is used in data processing. Physical appearance, Expertise, Trustworthiness, and Social Attractiveness have a positive effect on Attitude toward Products. Then Attitude toward Products and Content Sharing Intention have a positive effect on Purchase Intention, also Content Sharing Intention have a positive effect on Purchase Intention. this study have a practical impact that can be considered in relation to the world of advertising carried  out using social media influencers, specifically the Food Vlogger (s) for products that are close to the food or culinary world


The increasingly erce competition encourages each company to perform a variety of ways so that the company can continue to survive and be a winner in the competition. To be able to continue to compete, then the company should be able to compile an appropriate competitive strategy that can be used to win a business competition. Companies are faced with one question is how to keep the price of the products can compete and still be able to achieve the company's expected earnings. One way that can be used to deal with these problems is to use a strategy of cost advantages that can be achieved by apply- ing a target costing. Because these reasons the authors are interested in taking the title of "target costing ROLE IN STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION COST ADVANTAGE IN. RATTAN SATRIA INDOGUNA "as the title of this paper. From the results of research conducted it can be concluded that the strategy of overall cost advantage can be performed using a target costing in the implementation using engine value (value engineering). With the cost advantages that are owned, companies can lower the selling price of their product without aecting the expected pro t


Marine boiler is one of the most important systems on board which is used to produce steam to drive the main engines or auxiliary machinery. Steam demand is the main criteria of operating a boiler at a given load for marine boilers. It is of importance that boilers cannot be overloaded to achieve excessive output and ensure all the parameters are within the safety limits. Therefore, some important do's and don'ts must be followed which marine engineers must know on operating a marine boiler in a safe and efficient manner.


A process for continuously preparing 2-pyrrolidone by reacting gamma-butyrolactone with ammonia in the liquid phase in the presence of water, wherein the reaction is carried out at a temperature of from 275 to 300° C. and an absolute pressure of from 140 to 180 bar.


Abstract : An algorithm for the parallel solution of tridiagonal and pentadiagonal linear systems having nonzero elements at the top right and bottom left corners. Tridiagonal systems of this kind arise from the solution of two point boundary value problems with periodic boundary conditions. Penta- diagonal systems of this kind arise from e.g the approximation of the shallow water equations by the two-stage Galerkin method combined with a high accuracy compact approximation to the first derivative (Navon, 1983).


Extreme low pressure regions develop in the high pressure direct injection fuel flow inside the fuel injector holes, compelling the liquid fuel to transform to vapour phase in the form of vapour cavities or bubbles, a phenomenon known as cavitation. The cavitation phenomenon determines the quality of primary atomization and hence affects the performance of direct injection diesel or gasoline engines. A cavitation model, coupled with the mixture multiphase approach and RNG k − turbulence model, has been developed and implemented in this study for analysing cavitation. The cavitation model has been implemented in ANSYS Fluent platform. The model predictions have been compared with results from experimental works available in the literature. A good agreement of the model predictions has been observed. Comparisons of the model with other cavitation models (Schnerr & Sauer and Zwart-Gerber-Belamri) available in ANSYS Fluent have been carried out with both mixture and Eulerian-Eulerian multiphase approaches. The overall performance of the proposed model in comparison with other models has been observed to be more effective. The model has been further applied to diesel vs. biodiesel cavitation as biofuels are the greener alternatives of conventional fossil fuels in recent times. Additionally effects of property differences between diesel and biodiesel, inlet pressure fluctuations have been investigated. Liquid phase viscosity has been observed to be the determining parameter amongst all the properties for cavitation characteristics. The present study has also assessed the relevance of following factors for the case of cavitation in diesel injectors : a) compressibility, b) stress of a flowing liquid, c) wall roughness and d) turbulence. The two phase flow passes through the nozzle at very high velocities and hence can no longer be considered incompressible. Stress can affect the inception of cavitation as the liquid under considerable stress can fail and then rupture to form cavities. In the real nozzles at microscopic levels there are always some non-uniformities or crevices that can aggravate cavitation and hence its importance should be assessed. The flow passage inside the injector is small enough to have high enough Reynolds number to get a turbulent flow. Moreover the turbulent fluctuations can cause drastic drop in the local pressure, even though the mean thermodynamic pressure is higher than the saturation pressure, causing unexpected cavitation. Parametric studies indicate that the compressibility becomes important at high pressure differences and effects of stress and turbulent pressure fluctuations are not significant for cavitation in diesel injectors. The effect of the inlet pressure fluctuation has also been assessed for diesel and biodiesel. Diesel appears to be more susceptible to pressure fluctuations compared to biodiesel due to the difference in the viscosity. The developed cavitation model has been finally implemented to simulate cavitation


Cobalt ions were implanted into Fe-based amorphous alloys Fe41Co7Cr15Mo14C15B6Y2 by metal vapor vacuum arc(MEVVA)with the total dose of 3×1017 ion/cm2.The nano-indentation method was employed to characterize the influence of ion implantation on mechanical properties of the Fe-based amorphous alloys.The wear and friction properties of the cast,implanted and devitrified amorphous alloys were assessed by ball-on-disc friction high temperature tester and wear test carried out under dry sliding condition.The surface morphology was observed by SEM,the composition was analyzed by EDS,and the cross section topography was measured by topographic meter.The results show that after Co ion implantation,the hardness increases from 15 GPa to 21GPa and the elastic modulus from 190 GPa to 230 GPa;the wear resistance property is improved by ion implantation and devitrification.The wear mechanism was mainly brittle exfoliation accompanied with oxidization.Ion implantation can impede brittle spalling because of the hardness increases.The strip of the hard phases was the main cause of the wear of the devitrified amorphous alloys.


An improved algorithm for high-performance substrate verification utilizing multiprobe testers is proposed. Since there exist numerous test sets for a design the algorithm dynamically selects preferred ones using a linear validation routine during the probe route optimization phase. By considering test generation and probe scheduling simultaneously the superiority of the algorithm is demonstrated.<<ETX>>


Background  Low triiodothyronine (T3) has been associated with increased short‐term mortality in intensive care unit patients and long‐term mortality in patients with heart disease. The objective of this study was to investigate possible associations of thyroid hormone status with clinical outcome in patients admitted for acute stroke.


of the Dissertation Cross-Platform Heterogeneous Runtime Environment by Enqiang Sun Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Engineering Northeastern University, April 2016 Dr. David Kaeli, Adviser Heterogeneous platforms are becoming widely adopted thanks to the support from new programming languages and models. Among these languages/models, OpenCL is an industry standard for parallel programming on heterogeneous devices. With OpenCL, compute-intensive portions of an application can be offloaded to a variety of processing units on a system. OpenCL is one of the first standards that focuses on portability, allowing programs to be written once and run unmodified on multiple, heterogeneous devices, regardless of vendor. While OpenCL has been widely adopted, there still remains a lack of support for automatic workload balancing and data consistency when multiple devices are present in the system. To address this need, we have designed a cross-platform heterogeneous runtime environment which provides a high-level, unified, execution model that is coupled with an intelligent resource management facility. The main motivation for developing this runtime environment is to provide OpenCL programmers with a convenient programming paradigm to fully utilize all possible devices in a system and incorporate flexible workload balancing schemes without compromising the user's ability to assign tasks according to the data affinity. Our work removes much of the cumbersome initialization of the platform, and now devices and related OpenCL objects are hidden under the hood. Equipped with this new runtime environment and associated programming interface, the programmer can focus on designing the application and worry less about customization to the target platform. Further, the programmer can now take advantage of multiple devices using a dynamic workload balancing algorithm to reap the benefits of task-level parallelism. To demonstrate the value of this cross-platform heterogeneous runtime environment, we have evaluated it running both micro benchmarks and popular OpenCL benchmark applications. With minimal overhead of managing data objects across devices, we show that we can achieve scalable performance and application speedup as we increase the number of computing devices, without any changes to the program source code.


What a difference a few years make! In the fall 1982 issue of Reference Services Review I described forty reference monographs and serial publications on photography. That article concluded with these words, "a careful reader will be aware that not one single encyclopedia or solely biographical source was included…this reviewer could find none in print…A biographical source proved equally elusive" (p.28).


The aim of this contribution is to give closer information about structure of chitosan/polyethylene oxide polymer blends in preparatory solution for electrospinning. Special attention has been paid to the interaction between both polymers. Molecular modeling using ab-initio force field in Accelrys Materials Studio modeling environment was performed in this study. Compositions of model systems were derived from the compositions of real preparatory solutions which are used as input for electrospinning process. Molecular modeling on the basis of energy minimization and molecular dynamics revealed that deacetylation as well as deprotonation of chitosan amino groups play a key role for stability of resulted polymer blend. Three following parameters were used to characterize the optimized models: interaction energies between investigated polymers, structure characteristics and miscibility factor as described by Flory-Huggins theory.


Self-concept, intelligence and academic achievement were examined in students preparing to teach in primary, elementary, secondary, and special education (N = 267). The measures were the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale, a group intelligence test, and school grades. Differences in self-concept, but not in intelligence and academic achievement, were found among groups of student teachers. Secondary education majors reported a more positive self-concept than primary or elementary, with special education majors reporting the least positive self-concept of all.