Abstract : This report presents the results of a theoretical and experimental investigation of the transmitting and receiving properties (far-field radiation patterns) of horizontal-wire antennas placed over an imperfectly conducting halfspace. Particular emphasis is given to the Beverage wave antenna, a special type of horizontal-wire antenna placed in close proximity to the earth. Early work by Sommerfeld showed that the radiation from a dipole above an imperfect earth could be separated into a space wave (which could reflect off the ionosphere and which predominates at large distances above the earth) and a surface wave (which could diffract around the curvature of the earth and which dominates close to the surface). Because of the difficulties involved in solving the Sommerfeld integral formulation, asymptotic approximations valid in the radiation zone have generally been employed to solve this problem. The useful approximate forms developed earlier by Norton have been used in this study, the only difference being that in the present analysis the exact expressions for the antenna current are used rather than an assumed current distribution. An expression for the space-wave radiation pattern is formulated using a 'geometric optics' approximation, while the superposition principle is used to sum the fields of individual infinitesimal dipoles to obtain the surface-wave radiation pattern. Expressions for a number of useful antenna parameters (efficiency, front-to-back ratio, antenna gain, effective length) are then derived.


Accurate temperature determination is central to measurements of physical and chemical properties in laser‐heated (LH) diamond anvil cells (DACs). Because the optical properties of samples at high pressure‐temperature (P‐T) conditions are generally unknown, virtually all LH DAC studies employ the graybody assumption (i.e., wavelength‐independent emissivity and absorptivity). Here we test the adequacy of this assumption for ferropericlase (13 mol.% Fe), the second most abundant mineral in the Earth's lower mantle. We model the wavelength‐dependent emission and absorption of thermal radiation in samples of variable geometry and with absorption coefficients experimentally constrained at lower mantle P and P‐T. The graybody assumption in LH DAC experiments on nongray ferropericlase contributes moderate systematic errors within ±200 K at 40, 75, and 135 GPa and T < 2300 K for all plausible sample geometries. However, at core‐mantle boundary P‐T conditions (135 GPa, 4000 K) the graybody assumption may underestimate the peak temperature in the DAC by up to 600 K in self‐insulated samples due to selective light attenuation in highly opaque ferropericlase. Our results allow insights into the apparent discrepancy between available ferropericlase melting studies and offer practical guidance for accurate measurements of its solidus in LH DACs. More generally, the results of this work demonstrate that reliable temperature measurements in LH DACs require that the optical and geometrical properties of the samples are established.


A brief overview is given of the activities of nine observatories (located at Madras, Lucknow, Trivandrum, Poona, Calcutta, Dehra Dun, Kodaikanal, and Hyderabad) which were established in India in the 19th century. A bibliography of publications of these observatories, sorted according to type of astronomical data, and some notes on observational material, is also presented.


Autism spectrum disorder is characterized by persistent deficits in the ability to initiate and to sustain reciprocal social interaction and social communication, and by a range of restricted, repetitive, and inflexible patterns of behavior and interests. Sensory symptoms are prevalent in autism spectrum disorder, and prevalence rates of tactile dysfunction in children with Autism have significantly to the extent of 77%. A descriptive and qualitative study on "Poor Tactile Dysfunction in Children with Autism" was carried out to study the presence of poor tactile perception and discrimination with regard to various tactile components. The Sensory Processing Disorder Checklist by Carol Stock Kranowitz (1995) has been used for this study. Data were collected from three special schools by using direct observation, parental interview, interaction with special educators and caregivers. Data were descriptively and qualitatively analyzed. Children with poor tactile dysfunction experience difficulty in motor planning and body awareness. Index Terms Autism, Sensory Symptoms, Poor Tactile Dysfunction, Motor Planning, Body Awareness


The development of menstrual regulation has forced us to look anew at the legal and medical distinctions between various methods of fertility control. The once clear difference between contraception and abortion blurs. The distinction had already been complicated by development of the pill and the IUD. While it seems clear that some forms of the pill function as contraceptives, actually preventing fertilization, the IUD apparently does not. The IUD instead prevents the implantation of the fertilized ovum in the uterus, as does the so-called "morning after" pill, which came into use in the mid-1960s. Although several authors have argued that both methods violate criminal abortion statutes,' there is no evidence that any successful criminal abortion prosecutions have ever been brought on that theory. Despite some lingering doubts, these methods are now considered "contraceptives" for several reasons: First, it is impossible to show that they function technically as abortifacients because they are effective so soon after a supposed conception. Second, the time-honored notion that pregnancy begins at fertilization has been eroded by recent changes in professional opinion.2 It is not improbable, then, that menstrual regulation will either be looked on as "contraception" or placed in a special category somewhere between contraceptives and abortifacients and referred to simply as a postconceptive fertility control method. Whether this will happen depends in large measure on the interpretations given to contemporary abortion legislation. Past experience and present ambiguities raise a number of questions as to the legal status of menstrual regulation: Is it likely to be prohibited by the criminal abortion statutes now in force in many countries? Can medical intervention be classified as abortion in the absence of proof of a preexisting pregnancy? What effect do the specific requirements of abortion statutes have on menstrual regulation? Beyond that, will it be possible to classify MR technology as contraceptive rather than abortifacient? And will MR be permitted because it can be used for medical purposes other than abortion? Finally, will the procedure lead to reappraisals of the legal notion of abortion? The aim of this article is to explore these questions. Legislation dealing with abortion is necessarily the touchstone for our analysis.


To evaluate the feasibility of the use of spatiotemporal image correlation (STIC) as a screening program for congenital heart disease and the influence of professional experience in those examinations.


art is usually considered to be upright in a specific orientation, i.e., adults show statistically significant agreement on the upright orientation of non-representational paintings. Perhaps adults make such judgements on the same basis as children make judgements of uprightness. Participant You mean if I were to give the same shapes on cards and tell a child to do what he wanted with them, he would consistently put them in the upright? Dr. Braine They usually do. Children seen to spontaneously turn pictures to the upright, both realistic ones and geometric ones. One explanation is that kids recognize them better when they are upright, because of the way children analyze the


The copolymerization of α-methylstyrene(α-MS) and ethyl acrylate(EA) with a complexed initiating system of AlEt 2 Cl and benzoyl peroxide(BPO). Effects of monomer ratio, monomer concentration, initiator composition and polymerization conditions on conversion, molecular weight and copolymer composition were studied. Elemental analysis, IR, 1 H-NMR, and 13 C-NMR results show that it is an alternating copolymer


A pure metagenomic DNA was extracted from the soil by a simple,rapid method. From the metagenomic DNA,three different DNA fragments were successfully amplified using the primers of different glycerol dehydratase genes. And those fragments were inserted into T vector. After being sequenced,it was found that they were highly homologous to the reported glycerol dehydratase genes from Klebsiella pneumoniae,Citrobacter freundii and Clostridium butyricum. The sequences alignment showed that these DNA fragments had 99 %,90% and 99% identities to the strains above,respectively.


This article adopts feminist methodology to demonstrate how women's rights and reproductive freedom can be enhanced at the judicial level: a process that can lead to legal reform. The practice of feminist judgment-writing is central in achieving this objective. Recently, feminist scholars and practitioners have come together to rewrite landmark judgments concerning women's rights. Examples of these efforts can be found in the Women's Court of Canada and the UK Feminist Judgments Project. Drawing from these reformative experiences, the article rewrites two abortion judgments of the European Court of Human Rights: A, B and C v Ireland and P and S v Poland . These revisions emphasise the necessity for alternate accounts of women's rights in the courtroom.


Structural analysis remains as an essential part of any integrated civil engineering system in today's rapidly changing computing environment. Even with enormous advancements in capabilities of computers and mobile tools, enhancing computational efficiency of algorithms is necessary to meet the changing demands for quick real time response systems. The finite element method is still the most widely used method of computational structural analysis; a robust, reliable and automated finite element structural analysis module is essential in a modern integrated structural engineering system. To be a part of an automated finite element structural analysis, an efficient adaptive mesh generation scheme based on R-H refinement for the mesh and error estimates from representative strain values at Gauss points is described. A coefficient that depends on the shape of element is used to correct overly distorted elements. Two simple case studies show the validity and computational efficiency. The scheme is appropriate for nonlinear and dynamic problems in earthquake engineering which generally require a huge number of iterative computations.


Background and Objectives : Unlike the normal skin, cholesteatomas characterized by hyperproliferative keratinocytes exhibits up-regulation of connexins (Cxs) and gap junctional intercellular communication (GJIC). Currently, there are no appropriate clinical methods that can inhibit cholesteatoma progression nor are there available optimal in vitro models of cholesteatomas. The objectives of this study were to identify the regulating materials that control GJIC using human keratinocyte cells (HaCaT) and to get preliminary information about how to inhibit cholesteatoma progression with an aim to make in vitro models. Materials and Method : Acetic acid (AA), , dexamethasone, retinoic acid (RA), or green tea extracts-epicatechin (EC) and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) were used for this study. After HaCaT cells were cultured with chemicals for 24 hours, cytotoxicity was quantitatively analyzed by cell counting and Neutral-red uptake test. Reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction, Western blot and immunocytochemistry were performed to analyze the change of Cx expression. GJIC was functionally evaluated with scrape-loading dye transfer (SLDT). Results : After the 24-hour culture, or EGCG (100 ) were observed to have interfered with cell growth. In the Western blot, Cx26 and Cx30 showed higher up-regulation by EGCG or dexamethasone, but less down-regulation by AA or than the control. In comparison with the control, immunocytochemistry (Cx26, Cx43) showed less expression and abnormal location of Cxs under AA, , or 50 EGCG than the control, and increased up-regulation or equal expression under 5 EGCG, EC, RA, or dexamethasone was greater than the control. In SLDT, dye transfer was significantly lower in AA-, -, dexamethasone-, or RA-treated cells than in the control cells. EC showed higher dye transfer than the control cells. Conclusion : The expression of Cxs and GJIC on human HaCaT keratinocytes can be up- or down-regulated by chemicals such as AA, , dexamethasone, or EC. These results may be useful information in understanding the progression or inhibition mechanisms of cholesteatomas.


Proximity-based motion gesture sensors (MGSs) using IR LEDs have been widely researched for contactless human-machine interfaces. Conventional MGSs have incorporated discrete photodiodes into a receiver, which prevents them from being adopted for portable handheld devices because of their large size and high profile. This paper proposes a proximity-based contactless MGS that embeds photodiodes and a motion detection algorithm into a single package. The area and height of the proposed optical structure including photodiodes and an optical block are reduced by 96.2% and 71.7%, respectively, compared with the most recently developed MGS. Furthermore, the proposed sensor achieves a recognition rate of over 99.5% on average at various speeds of hand movements. A prototype system is implemented and tested for validation1.


In this paper the VP route program problem(VPR)in ATM networks is analyzed The problem is transformed into a kind of bottleneck multiple choice integer program problem(BMCIP) According to the characteristic of the problem,a new effective method based on improved heuristic cluster local search and the branch and cut method is presented to get the global optimal solution Compared with the simulation results of local search and tabu search methods,the method in this paper seems very effective


Packet sets (P-sets) are proposed by introducing dynamic characteristics into Cantor set X , and they can be returned to finite Cantor set. P-sets are combined with internal packet set F X and outer packet set F X. In other words, P-sets possess dynamic characteristic, and denoted by (, ) F F XX . Packet reasoning is a new reasoning method based on P-sets, this method includes internal packet reasoning and outer packet reasoning. The dining and reasoning on inner-outer unknown information is studied by using P-sets and P-reasoning, and the related theorem and criteria are given. Finally, this paper presents the application concerning the reasoning and dining of inner-outer unknown information. Copyright © 2013 IFSA.


The total prevalence of congenital heart defects (CHDs) varies by populations and over time. Studies that examine trends in the prevalence of CHD in different regions may shed light on our understanding of the occurrence of CHD and the impact of different risk factors.


Hypertension is a major traditional risk factor for cardiovascular disease such as coronary artery disease and cerebrovascular disease and is also associated with major target organ damage such as kidney and retina. It is one of the leading causes of death related to cardiovascular cause.[1] Incidence and prevalence of hypertension vary according to age, sex, race, and geographic area, and it is increased with age. Most patients with markedly increased blood pressure (BP) (systolic pressure ≥180 and/or diastolic pressure ≥120 mmHg) are usually asymptomatic, but if increased BP associated with acute target organ damage, it is a life-threatening condition and needs urgent intervention. These hypertensive emergencies though uncommon if not treated in a timely fashion can be life threatening and therefore need a thorough evaluation with appropriate treatment. Hypertensive emergencies can be seen in patients with or without pre-existing hypertension. According to the 2017 American College of Cardiology (ACC) guideline for prevention, detection, evaluation, and management of hypertension, hypertensive crisis includes hypertensive emergencies and urgencies. Hypertensive emergency is defined as severe elevation of BP (systolic BP [SBP] >180 and/or diastolic BP [DBP] >120 mmHg) associated with acute or worsening of target organ damage. In contrast, hypertensive urgencies have been defined as a severe elevation of BP in otherwise stable patients without acute or impending change in target organ damage or dysfunction.[2] Various other terminologies such as malignant or accelerated hypertension were previously used in literature commonly but not used nowadays. Malignant hypertension was first described by Keith and Wagener in 1928 which is characterized by marked elevation of BP and widespread target organ damage, particularly Grades 3 and 4 hypertensive retinopathy.[3] Earlier in the absence of effective antihypertensive treatment, the prognosis of significantly elevated BP was similar to patients with cancer, and therefore, it was labeled as malignant hypertension. However, with the introduction of effective antihypertensive treatment, the prognosis of these patients has significantly improved, and therefore, this term is no longer used. Hypertensive emergencies include patients who have acute aortic dissection, acute pulmonary edema, acute myocardial infarction, acute pulmonary edema, acute intracranial bleed or acute ischemic stroke, hypertensive disorder of pregnancy, catecholamine crisis, perioperative hypertension, and sympathetic hypertensive crisis. It is not level of BP, but rapidity with which BP gets elevated is important. Early identification and immediate treatment with parenteral antihypertensive are an essential component in the management of hypertensive emergencies to prevent further target organ damage. In a Abstract


In this paper the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method is used to estimate the parameters of Perks distribution based on a complete sample. The procedures are developed to perform full Bayesian analysis of the Perks distributions using MCMC simulation method in OpenBUGS. We obtained the Bayes estimates of the parameters, hazard and reliability functions, and their probability intervals are also presented. We also discussed the issue of model compatibility for the given data set. A real data set is considered for illustration under gamma sets of priors. Nepal Journal of Science and Technology Vol. 14, No. 1 (2013) 153-166 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/njst.v14i1.8936


A theoretical analysis of optical frequency combs associated with the main and suppressed linear polarization modes of a gain-switched long-wavelength VCSEL is performed. We have studied the VCSEL polarization-resolved dynamics by using an extension of the spin-flip model to include nonlinear carrier recombination. Our results show that two orthogonally polarized combs are generated that combine to produce a wider overall optical comb. The dependence of combs on the VCSEL parameters and on the amplitude and frequency of the modulation is analyzed. Bistability between the two orthogonally polarized combs is found.


I like this book. It grew out of "a need for more and better training of pharmaceutical laboratory analysts, as perceived by the Food and Drug Administration". In the spring of 1996, Johnson & Johnson began the development of a two-week, in-house training course to meet this need. That course became the basis for this book.

The 15 chapters are contributed by 21 authors, 17 from industry (Janssen is well represented with 10 authors), …


Spectral leakage in Fourier transform will influence the accuracy of harmonic analysis for asynchronous sampling. The commonly used windowed interpolated FFT algorithm (WIFFTA) can improve the measurement accuracy by windowing the time samples and interpolating the DFT coefficients, but the accuracy is restricted by the frequency resolution. A new algorithm for harmonic analysis is proposed in this paper, which tries to adjust the actual sample sequence to an ideal sampling sequence synchronous with the original signal on the basis of the time-domain Newton's interpolation algorithm. Simulation results show this algorithm can increase the accuracy of harmonic analysis by reducing spectral leakage efficiently despite the variation of frequency resolution. In addition, it can improve the computation efficiency and it is suitable to analyze the fluctuating signals.


ab b b c , * B. Kaouache , P. Gergaud , O. Thomas , O. Bostrom , M. Legros a ˆ Abstract Thermal cycles have been performed both outside and inside a transmission electron microscope (TEM) in order to analyze the evolution of the microstructure of Al, 0.5% Cu, 1% Si thin films deposited onto oxidized Si substrates. It is shown that grain growth and dislocation activity start almost simultaneously and cooperate throughout the plastic regime of the stress-temperature curve to generate bamboo-type grains with low dislocation density. Si precipitates serve as anchoring points for dislocations and grain boundaries. Thermal cycling and diffusion cause the growth of these precipitates and a diminution of their number. Diffusion also proves to play an important role regarding plastic relaxation at the Al / SiO x interface and at the grain boundaries where an intense hillock and whisker formation has been observed in scanning electron microscope (SEM). The stress-temperature evolution is discussed in light of these observations.  2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


The characteristics of cuttings of five cultivars of local malay apple ( Syzygium malaccense L.) was studied in Ternate Island, Indonesia. Hardwood cuttings of malay apple were planted in two combinations of media and hormone treatments. During 5 months experiment, can be found that hardwood cutting of malay apple with top soil+ sand and NAA 1000 ppm had the best performance in producing shoots and roots for cuttings of malay apple in a short period. Although, each of these cultivars has different performance to rooting and shooting, but its can be propagated by cuttings. Therefore, the result of this research is expected to contribute for conservation of malay apple as a source of germplasm for further research and commercialization of malay apple as new potential fruit in the international market demand.


International Energy Agency estimates that 1 billion people worldwide have no access to electricity. Commonly prevalent offgrid electrification strategies through a) standalone solar and b) low-power central microgrids are largely suboptimal or prohibitively high cost for services beyond basic electrification (light services and mobile phone charging). Distributed solar generation, distributed storage architecture (DGDSA) for DC microgrids with peer-to-peer electricity sharing is now widely reported as an optimized architecture from systems efficiency perspective with allowance of higher power delivery through resource aggregation. However, DGDSA at distribution voltage of 48V or 380V may have significantly varying effiencies based on the spatial distribution of village houses for any offgrid electrification scheme. In this work, we evaluate both 380V and 48V distribution for low voltage (LV) DC microgrids incorporating a) converter efficiency and b) distribution efficiency for a typical village deployment in an offgrid scenario. System level efficiency is evaluated for peer to peer power sharing with varying inter-house distance. Results show that for power sharing of 100W, 48V distribution grid is an optimized choice for inter-house distance of up to 100m for a standard 4mm2 conductor. For larger power sharing and higher inter-house distance, 380V grid becomes a more efficient choice.


Several persistent sonar clutter features were observed in 2002 during an experiment in the Straits of Sicily (Malta Plateau) in a region that is nominally flat and thickly sedimented. High frequency sidescan and seismic reflection data from the region indicated that mud volcanoes were present and were possibly expelling clouds of methane bubbles. In 2004 the region was revisited with oceanographic equipment including a multibeam sonar, an acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP), CTD's, temperature loggers, a methane sensor, and a video camera. The visual observations at one site show carbonate mounds comprised of large heterogeneous blocks that suggest the presence of mud volcanism. A multibeam sonar survey of the area shows that the carbonate mounds are of order 5–10 m in height and 10–100 m in lateral dimension, and that they form in clusters. The multibeam backscatter data show high amplitudes in the region surrounding the carbonate mounds, possibly indicating the surficial extent of the carbonate ma...


In our study, estimation of the preventive role of vitamin E against DMBA induced mammary cancer in rats was achieved. Forty albino rats were divided into four equal groups. The first group was normal group; second group was administered Vit E (100mg/Kg B.W/d) by gastric tube; cancer was induced in third group by DMBA (50 mg/kg B.W); fourth group administered DMBA + Vit E. Our results revealed that cancer induced by DMBA significantly reduced the body weights and CAT activity of rats, increased MDA levels & altered the histopathological picture. Meanwhile vitamin E ameliorated these alterations. Our study revealed that vitamin E supplementation provided antioxidant properties & antitumor defense with strong preventive activity against DMBA-induced carcinogenesis.


This paper evaluates the feasibility of Radio-over-Plastic Optical Fiber (RoPOF) technology for LTE and Internet of Things (IoT) service providing in future short-range communication networks. In particular, we have focused on the downlink transmission of 10-MHz LTE and Narrow-Band IoT (NB-IoT) in guardband operation mode over a carrier frequency of 800 MHz. By selecting the proper components and transmission parameters, the impact of the input power and the relative power of NB-IoT to LTE over the Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) has been experimentally analyzed for both signals. For this purpose, a RoPOF communication link using a 75-meter Graded-index POF (GI-POF) has been established, while the main signal processing tasks as modulation/ demodulation and EVM estimation are performed offline. Results show that transmission performance meets the standard quality for both signals using a wide range of input powers. Additionally, the use of the LTE guardband for NB-IoT transmission hardly affects its quality indicating the strength of this spectrally-efficient solution.


This article aims at investigating some diachronic aspects of the Italian negative system, considering a time span ranging from Old Latin to Modern Italian. Most of the negative polarity phenomena populating the Modern Italian system are consequences of a crucial change that occurred in Old Latin: The Latin negative morpheme nōn ("not"), which initially displayed a maximal projection status, and became a syntactic (negative) head. This change caused the shift from a double negation system to a negative concord one, which affects many Romance languages (and their dialects). It also determines the availability of the expletive reading of negation in Italian, as well as in other Romance languages (ex. French), calling for a new generalization: only languages (and structures) displaying a negative head allow the expletive interpretation of negation, languages displaying a maximal projection status do not.


Purpose

Recent research has suggested that a heightened sensitivity to nonverbal cues may give individuals with psychopathic traits an advantage when selecting potential victims. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of gender on the association between psychopathy and perceptions of vulnerability to violent victimization.

Design/methodology/approach

A sample of 291 undergraduate students viewed a series of eight videos depicting individual female targets walking down a hallway from behind. Participants rated each target's vulnerability to violent victimization and provided a justification for each rating. In addition to these ratings, participants completed the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale.

Findings

A series of hierarchical linear regressions revealed gender differences in the association between psychopathy and accuracy. Among male observers, total psychopathy scores, Factor 2 psychopathy scores, and scores on the antisocial behavior facet were positively associated with accuracy in perceiving vulnerability to violent victimization. Conversely, no associations were identified between psychopathy (total, Factors, and facets) and accuracy among female observers. This suggests that the adept ability to accurately perceive nonverbal cues signalling vulnerability is specific to males exhibiting psychopathic traits.

Originality/value

The results of the current study highlight the importance of distinguishing male and female psychopathy in research and practice. Moreover, with an understanding of individual differences in the ability to accurately perceive nonverbal cues associated with vulnerability, we may begin to develop intervention strategies aimed at reducing future incidences of victimization.


The invention discloses a congestion monitoring method and system for enclosed spaces. The method comprises the following steps: acquiring a live picture of each waiting area in each enclosed space by a congestion monitoring management server; counting data acquired by all video counting cameras in each enclosed space in real time, and calculating the congestion index and congestion trend prediction of each enclosed space; transmitting the congestion index of each enclosed space to an indoor map server in real time; displaying the color of each enclosed space on an indoor map based on congestion states according to a preset congestion evaluation rule in combination with the congestion indexes by the indoor map server; sending an access request to the indoor map server by a client to obtain an indoor map interface, wherein the indoor map interface comprises each enclosed space displayed with colors according to the congestion states; and when a request of accessing a target enclosed space of the indoor map from a user is received, acquiring a congestion state corresponding to the target enclosed space according to a link corresponding to the target enclosed space. Through adoption of the method and system, congested pedestrian volume can be better dredged in rush hours.


The design space of object-based languages is characterized in terms of objects, classes, inheritance, data abstraction, strong typing, concurrency, and persistence. Language classes (paradigms) associated with interesting subsets of these features are identified and language design issues for selected paradigms are examined. Orthogonal dimensions that span the object-oriented design space are related to non-orthogonal features of real languages. The self-referential application of object-oriented methodology to the development of object-based language paradigms is demonstrated.
Delegation is defined as a generalization of inheritance and design alternatives such as non-strict, multiple, and abstract inheritance are considered. Actors and prototypes are presented as examples of classless (delegation based) languages. Processes are classified by their degree of internal concurrency. The potential inconsistency of object-oriented sharing and distributed autonomy is discussed, suggesting that compromises between sharing and autonomy will be necessary in designing strongly typed object-oriented distributed database languages.


Physical evidence comprises service environment, people (participants) involved in the services production, procedures and flow of activities that contribute to the delivery of services. Managing firm's physical evidence includes everything tangible-from the physical facilities to brochures and business cards as well and organizations' personnel dress code. Physical evidence can fall into different categories such as facility exterior (exterior design, insignia, parking, landscaping and environment), facility interior (interior design, equipment, insignia, layout, air quality and temperature, colors, music, scents and other tangibles).The aim of the empirical research conducted in Dubrovnik was to determine the importance of music and effects of music on consumer behavior in service industry. Data were collected in 2016 by testing a sample of 350 respondents, using method of personal interview. The consumers' attitudes were explored in certain types of service industry (mostly food shops, cloth shops, souvenir shops, restaurants, cafe bars). Data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistic based on chi-square testing. The aim of this paper is to show the strategic role and the dimensions of physical evidence in service industry and describe stimulus-response model commonly used to help explain the effects that services environment has on consumer behavior.


Addition of N2 to the plasma activated with Cl2, BCl3, or their mixtures in an inductively coupled plasma source induces drastic changes in the plasma state. These N2-related changes in the plasma state sometimes result in abnormal phenomena in aluminum alloy etching, like the wave-like fringes on the sidewalls of patterned metal lines. Optical emission spectroscopy revealed that admixing small amounts of N2 to the plasma activated with Cl2, BCl3, or their mixtures generally expedites dissociation processes to increase the density of Cl* radicals within it. On the other hand, N2 addition also accelerates the formation of passivation polymers via carbon species sputtered from patterned photo-resists. The polymers adhere to the sidewalls of patterned metal lines and protect them against the lateral attacks of deflected etchants such as Cl* radicals. Our studies tell that the relative abundance of Cl* radicals within the plasma over the passivation polymers, which is controlled by the amount of N2 addition, seems to be a critical factor in determining the occurrence of the wave-like fringes on the sidewalls of patterned metal lines.


Among those Italian nouns which display irregularities in their plural forms, there are also the so-called 'nomi sovrabbondanti' (cf. Dardano & Trifone, 1992), which have a double plural: a masculine plural in -i and a feminine plural in -a. Interestingly enough, this type of morphological marking serves as a cue to activate metonymic or metaphoric meanings. In this paper, we further explore the kind of metaphoric and metonymic meanings which are associated to them in order to ascertain some generalisations about their use in contemporary Italian. In addition, our analysis of the cognitive mappings underlying the use of Italian 'nomi sovrabbondanti' comes to provide ample evidence of the conceptual basis of morphological phenomena, an area of study which has been to date largely neglected.


Starting with the publication of a new collection of philosophical texts for schools, a general reflection is made on two important questions for teaching philosophy: 1) the ways in which philosophical texts are used in the classroom; 2) the possible goals of teaching philosophy. The two questions are connected because the idea is making headway in Italian schools, as in other countries, that philosophy can be taught in such a way that young people will be able to use philosophical instruments to understand reality, and this implies re-thinking the ways in which the texts are used.


Laser line scan (LLS) systems rely upon narrow angular field apertures and displacement between emitter and receiver to reduce volume backscatter from the common volume near the target. With this configuration, multiple volume scattering near the sensor becomes a significant contribution to the total backscatter return. Detection of continuous wave laser return signals is complicated at the range limit of these systems due to the temporal overlap between the target return and the backscatter return. In the compact implementation of these systems, necessary when the deployment platform is the 12" or 21" diameter AUV, this detection ambiguity can lead to a significant degradation in imaging performance. Detection methods must therefore separate the two signals and estimate the energy returning from the target alone. Indeed, the use of pulsed laser illumination under some conditions allows for temporal separation of the target and volume scattering return signals. However, this method relies upon knowledge of the target distance and establishment of a gated detection scheme. We present a comparison of simulation results for both the CW and pulsed-laser cases in a range of turbid water conditions and at differing optical attenuation lengths approaching the limiting case for these types of underwater imagers. These simulations are performed using models developed by Metron Inc. (Reston, VA), and allow both a time history and image quality comparison. The goal of this simulation work is to identify the operational and environmental conditions under which each scheme is usable for the AUV-deployed scenario. Experimental results supporting these findings will be presented as available.


Iconicity, the relationship between a symbol's form and its meaning, is an inherent part of sign languages, as both signs' referents and signs themselves exist in physical space. Adult learners of sign languages are able to take advantage of iconicity. This paper explores whether preschoolers are sensitive to the iconicity of signs and use form-meaning mappings in language learning like adults. Experiment 1 tested the ability of 87 hearing children, ages 3 to 5 years, to recognize the iconicity of signs that describe the shape of objects. Experiment 2 assessed 82 hearing 3to 5-year-olds' memory for iconic and arbitrary signs to see whether children take advantage of the similarities between iconic signs and their referents to learn new signs. Experiment 3 considered the same abilities in 27 deaf children learning American Sign Language (ASL) to explore whether the modality of the language one is acquiring affects iconicity recognition and use. Children recognized iconic signs with familiar referents as well as those with unfamiliar referents, implying that previous experience with a referent does not mediate recognition of iconicity. Hearing and deaf 4and 5-year-olds reliably recognized iconicity (p = .001), while 3year-olds recognized iconic signs only at chance (ps > .05). Accordingly, hearing 4and 5-yearolds benefitted from iconicity in a fast-mapping task, and learned iconic signs better than arbitrary ones (p = .015), and older deaf children showed a similar patter in their sign learning (p = .07). Children seemed to recognize perceptually iconic signs that describe shape later in development than function iconic signs that mimic how to use an object, and perform equivalently when signs' referents are familiar or novel objects. Despite iconicity's prevalence in sign languages but not spoken languages, preschoolers' use of iconicity does not depend on the modality of the language they are acquiring. UNDERSTANDING OF ICONICITY 5 UNDERSTANDING OF ICONICITY 6 Does Iconicity Matter? Deaf and Hearing Preschoolers' Sensitivity to Symbols' Form-Meaning Similarities During the preschool years, children must tackle the task of learning countless new words. For most children, this process happens automatically, by actively attending to the language used in their environment and by making inferences about words' meanings based on context (Carey, 1977) and syntax (e.g. Arunachalam & Waxman, 2010). Children use context and syntax to determine a word's meaning from the form of the word when the form is completely arbitrary as is the case with most spoken word, but what process do children use during learning when the form of a symbol is related to its meaning? The current study investigates 3to 5-year-olds' ability to recognize and remember a symbol's meaning when there is a transparent relationship between the symbol's form and meaning. Iconic symbols, such as the onomatopoeic English word boom, share features with the concepts they describe. In other words, the phonology of boom recreates the sounds it represents. Four-year-olds learning Japanese, a language with substantial onomatopoeia, can generalize the principles of onomatopoeia to understand the meanings of both known and novel onomatopoetic words (Haryu, 2010). In general, spoken languages afford limited opportunities for iconicity, because vocal symbols are emitted using sound waves and therefore can only iconically describe sound-related representations. The visual-manual modality of sign languages and gesture lends itself well to iconicity, as objects, signs, and gestures all exist in the same perceptual, in this case physical, space (Bosworth & Emmorey, 2010). For example, the sign TREE in American Sign Language (ASL) is iconic in its depiction of the object's shape, with the forearm held upright to represent the tree's trunk and the hand spread open to represent the tree's branches (see Figure 1). UNDERSTANDING OF ICONICITY 7 Figure 1. The forearm in the iconic ASL sign TREE maps onto the tree's trunk and the fingers map onto the tree's branches. Similarly, gestures are iconic when the form, and movement, of the hands relates to the semantic content of a speaker's message. If there are two baskets displayed in a shop window, a customer might make an iconic gesture to clarify which basket he is interested in purchasing (see Figure 2). In this way, iconic gestures supplement information in speech and can clarify meaning (McNeill, 1985). UNDERSTANDING OF ICONICITY 8 Figure 2. The speaker uses an iconic gesture to describe the shape of the basket (a). Iconicity can take many forms (for a review see Bellugi & Klima, 1976, and Taub, 2001). The current study investigates children's understanding of perceptually iconic gestures and signs for objects, where the hands and arms describe the referent's shape, as seen in the ASL sign TREE and the gesture for the basket described above (see Figures 1 and 2), as opposed to iconic signs or gestures that employ pantomime, where the signer mimics a behavior associated with an object or action. Symbolic Gesture Children's spontaneous production of iconic gestures provides compelling evidence for children's ability to understand symbol-referent connections, because if children can produce an iconic symbol, they may have an implicit understanding of how symbols and referents relate. UNDERSTANDING OF ICONICITY 9 Infants develop both gestural and verbal symbols at roughly the same time in development, yet a statistically insignificant time lag exists between the first production of symbolic gesture and the first production of symbolic word. This lag might exist because gestures are initially easier for children to articulate, but the development of memory and certain requisite cognitive skills need to be attained before children can produce any kind of symbol (Goodwyn & Acredolo, 1993). Together with the maturation of articulators, reaching these cognitive milestones determines when children will start to use symbolic gesture. Children begin to produce iconic gestures during their second year, but these gestures are most commonly enactments rather than descriptions of objects' shapes or features like those often produced by adults (Acredolo & Goodwyn, 1988). At 18 months, toddlers interpret gestures as symbols, but at 26 months, they prefer to accept spoken words as symbols. However, after a training period where the 26-month-olds were taught and encouraged to use gestures, they accepted gestures as symbols, implying that children begin life without a bias toward spokenlanguage symbols, but later form a bias as they begin to combine multiple spoken words (Namy & Waxman, 1998). While children, including preschoolers, produce iconic gestures (Boyatzis & Watson, 1993), their understanding of the iconic relationship between a gesture and its referent may be weak. In their gesture production, children may be modeling their caregivers and not exhibiting a deep understanding of iconicity. This paper explores children's ability to recognize the connections between iconic signs and their referents to determine whether preschool-age children are explicitly aware of inherent symbol-referent relationships. Analogical Reasoning: Overcoming the Dual Representation Problem An iconic symbol is analogical in that information about the referent is embedded in the symbol's form. Studying children's appreciation of models as stand-ins for real-world objects UNDERSTANDING OF ICONICITY 10 provides us with a basis for how children interpret symbols, and addresses whether children are sensitive to the analogical relationship between a symbol and its meaning. The model-object connection (i.e., understanding that a toy car is a model for a larger functional car) is not always easy for children to grasp and develops with age. By 18 months, children have a fragile comprehension of the toy-real exemplar relationship, but show a solid understanding of this connection by 26 months (Younger & Johnson, 2004). Increasing the similarities between the model and the real-world object improves children's understanding of their relationship. For example, preschoolers are better able to find a hidden toy in a matching room when the setups of the rooms are similar in terms of furniture as well as similar in terms of size, and older children understand the significance of models better than younger children (DeLoache, Peralta de Mendoza, & Anderson, 1999). Children depend on similarity, or iconicity, to make the mapping between two similar setups. The scale models in these experiments were both real-world objects themselves as well as symbols. The reason younger children struggle with this task could be that they have difficulty constructing dual representations for the model— the room as a scale-model and the room as its own object (DeLoache, Kolstad, & Anderson, 1991). Iconic signs might be challenging for children to interpret, as they are not only symbols but also are distinct entities themselves, just like models are both objects themselves as well as symbols. Perhaps once a child has sufficient experience with symbolic materials— either models or gestures— the child can master the dual representation problem and appreciate symbol-referent relations (DeLoache, Peralta de Mendoza, & Anderson, 1999). UNDERSTANDING OF ICONICITY 11 Children's Developing Ability to Interpret Iconicity The ability to recognize iconicity develops during early childhood, and the type of iconicity, method of labeling, as well as children's experience with referents likely affect this ability. Eighteen-month-olds and 4-year-olds can map both arbitrary gestures, such as touching one's index fingers together to mean bunny, as well as iconic gestures, onto familiar objects, while 26-month-olds only map iconic function gestures (Namy, Campbell, & Tomasello, 2004). The changing nature of children's sensitivity to iconic gestures suggests that an intriguing pattern unfolds during development. Whi


In the current historical period, everything seems to lean towards globalization. However, some transformations point out new trends such, as the valuation of territory assets. This trend challenges many local governments to improve their natural, social and cultural resources as an encouragement for developing strategies based in creation, preservation, or reconstruction of their own identity in an environmental and sustainable way. In this article, a reference to a territorial cutout of Brazil, is made it is located in states of Santa Catarina (northern) and Parana (southern), which there are two plant species that have become important natural resources for the region, parana pine and mate tea. The reality is contextualized and some strengths and challenges are pointed out for sustainable development of the region in question, the focus is the possibility of affecting the Geographical Indication of mate tea produced from native herbals. Research from the literature on the subject is made as well as documentary and interviews with representative authorities of local institutions, from which an analysis and questions are proposed.


Introduction and Overview of the Structure and Function of Cardiac Thin Filament Proteins There are several relatively recent reviews addressing these topics and providing detailed evidence for many of the ideas we present. Our intention here, as much as possible, is to update rather than repeat this information. Figure 1 shows a cartoon of the thin filaments in the sarcomere I-Z-I band and the A band. A-band operations of the thin filament are the ones that generally are thought of first, when considering structure/ function and modulation of thin filaments. Yet the barbed (Z-disk) and pointed (M-band) ends of thin filaments operate in a realm in which function in the form of cross-bridge interactions is rare and function in the form of signaling is more common. Figure 1 illustrates this region of the thin filaments at and near the Z-disk with emphasis on some of the elements of the Z-disk network of proteins. These elements include CapZ, the protein capping the barbed end (Z-disk end) of the actin strand, α-actinin, titin (T-cap or telethonin), proteins kinases (PK), such as PKC (docked at ZASP), PKD, p38, p21activated kinase (Pak-1), phosphodiesterase 5, the phosphatase,


289 1 General Surgeon Resident in the Plastic Surgery and Reconstructive Microsurgery Service at University Hospital Walter Cantídio/Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil; Aspirant Member of the Brazilian Society of Plastic Surgery (SBCP). 2 Member of the Brazilian Society of Plastic Surgery Regent of the Plastic Surgery and Reconstructive Microsurgery Service at University Hospital Walter Cantídio/Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil. 3 Member of the Brazilian Society of Plastic Surgery (SBCP) Plastic Surgery Preceptor in the Plastic Surgery and Reconstructive Microsurgery Service at University Hospital Walter Cantídio/Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil. 4 Specialist Member of the Brazilian Society of Plastic Surgery (SBCP) Plastic Surgery Preceptor in the Plastic Surgery and Reconstructive Microsurgery Service at University Hospital Walter Cantídio/Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil. 5 Medical Student at the Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil Member of the League of Plastic Surgery and Reconstructive Microsurgery Dr. German Riquet. 6 Medical Student at the Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil. -Member of the League of Plastic Surgery and Reconstructive Microsurgery Dr. German Riquet. Program for theoretical and practical training in suture techniques for medical students in the field of plastic surgery at the Federal University of Ceará (UFC)


The utility model relates to a washing machine with double-line drainage function, which comprises a machine body, a water drum and drainage pipes. A drainage valve with double-line drainage function is arranged between the water drum and the drainage pipe, an inlet of the drainage valve is communicated with the bottom of the water drum, and outlets of the drainage valve are respectively communicated with two drainage pipes. A drainage pump is arranged between the drainage pipe and a drainage connection pipe, the drainage pump can be provided with a controller to control the operation state of the drainage pump, and a drainage control device is arranged between the outlet of the drainage valve and the drainage pipe. Since the utility model has double-line drainage function, users can collect water of different phases in the process of washing according to the need, and utilize the water so as to save water greatly.


Background and Objectives: Increasing physical activity, as a health issue, especially among girls, is one of the recommendations of the World Health Organization for the osteoporosis prevention. The present study was designed and implemented with the aim of determining the causes of physical activity among students regarding osteoporosis based on health belief model (HBM).
Materials and Methods: This descriptive study was conducted among 470 pre-university female students of Rafsanjan city by census method in 2017-18. The data collection tool was a questionnaire including demographic characteristics, knowledge about osteoporosis and 24 questions based on HBM constructs, and it also assessed 11 physical activity questions. The tool validity was based on experts' opinion and reliability was determined using Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Data were analyzed using one-way ANOVA, independent t-test and Pearson's correlation test.
Results: The number of participants in this study was 470 students. The knowledge related to osteoporosis among students was undesirable (score 6 out of 15). 253 (53.8%) of students had moderate physical activity. There was a significant reverse correlation between the mean score of physical activity and perceived barriers (r=-0.1, p 0.05).
Conclusion: Due to undesirable physical activity and knowledge of students, designing and implementing educational interventions are recommended. It is also necessary to identify other determinants affecting physical activity, such as enabling and reinforcing factors.
Key words: Osteoporosis, Physical activity, Health belief model, Girls, Rafsanjan

Funding: This research was funded by Deputy of Vice Chancellor for Research and Technology at Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences.
Conflict of interest: None declared.
Ethical approval: The Ethics Committee of Vice Chancellor for Research and Technology at Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences approved the study (IR.RUMS.REC.1395.143).

How to cite this article: Aligol M, Kazemi S S, Salim Abadi Y, Nasirzadeh M, Tayyebi Z. A Survey on Physical Activity Determinants as Osteoporosis Preventive Behavior Among Pre-university Female Students of Rafsanjan in 2017: A Descriptive Study. J Rafsanjan Univ Med Sci 2019; 18 (5): 455-68. [Farsi]


Background: Hypertension also called as "silent killer" is one of the major concern in developing countries due to increasing burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the recent years. The global targets for non-communicable diseases are to reduce the prevalence of hypertension by 33% between 2010 and 2030. Aim: This study aim to assess the effect of pranayama on the physiological parameters among the hypertension patients admitted in Shri Vinoba Bhave Civil Hospital, Silvassa Methodology: A quantitative quasi experimental research design was adopted and sample were allotted in experimental group (n=30) and control group (n=30) by non-probability convenient sampling technique. Demographic data was collected using the interview and physiological parameters with bio physiological measurement. The pranayama was performed under the supervision of the investigator for 30 minutes daily for 7 days. Results: The study findings suggest that the mean post test score of physiological parameters such as systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, pulse rate and respiratory rate was 140.80, 82.46, 76.63 and 15.06 respectively in experimental group and 144.80, 86.00, 85.46, and 17.73 respectively in control group with the mean difference of 4.00, 3.54, 8.83 and 2.67 respectively. The "t" value were systolic blood pressure (6.58), diastolic blood pressure (4.64), pulse rate (5.71) and respiratory rate (3 .79) which were significant at p<0.01. It can be inferred that the decrease in post test mean score of physiological parameters in experimental group is greater than control group. Hence, pranayama was useful in reducing the physiological parameters in experimental group among the hypertension patients. Conclusion: Pranayama is effective in reducing the blood pressure, pulse rate and respiratory rate among hypertension patients. Pranayama is also a cost effective complementary therapy and can be practiced at home for the management of the hypertension.


-QROPHECY is a dangerous art. If the prophet is right, he may JL find himself at the stake; if he is wrong, he is a laughing stock; and if history has not yet proved him right or wrong, he is eating out his own heart because no one will heed. And how much prophecy is wish fulfillment? More than we care to admit. The prophet should have no enthusiasm or optimism, neither should his proper disillusionment have made him a cynic. Prophecy itself needs analysis: Is it the result of clairvoyance, insight or cold reason? Are we instruments, poets or scientists called upon to dream the future? We are playing a game of chance in public, each with a skill of his own which may make the game worth watching. This issue of The American Scholar will age like a good claret which, opened half a century hence, will give an evening of joyousness and good conversation, a mellowness which will restrain the laughter of derision to an indulgent smile, and aid the perception of those passages of truth which will surely be found within these


Past studies of ecogeographic character variations have failed to provide a quantitative relationship between the character being measured and the environmental parameter which impinges upon that character. We offer an example in amphibians directly relating a character variation, the range of temperature tolerance, and the critical environmental parameter for that character, the environmental temperature variation. In this example, the range of temperature tolerance is closely related to the environmental temperature variations. Where the environmental temperature variation increases so does the range of temperature tolerance. In addition, where environmental temperatures decrease, the capacity to tolerate such temperatures is lost. These data are consistent with the thesis that congeneric and conspecific populations in different habitats have partially independent evolutionary pathways and that where populations have been displaced from a less to a more uniform environment, characters which are no longer maintained by selection pressure are lost.


ABSTRACT IN THIS PAPER A MODEL FOR OPTICAL BISTABILITY IN A RIDGE WAVEGUIDE FABRY-PEROT RESONATOR IS PRESENTED. THE NON-LINEARITY IS DUE TO A MULTIPLE QUANTUM WELL STRUCTURE INSERTED INTO THE RESONATOR. NEAR THE EXCITONIC RESONANCE A BISTABLE BEHAVIOUR HAS BEEN FOUND, AS SHOWN BY EXAMPLES OF STEADY-STATE RESPONSE.


Hyaluronic acid(HA) hydrogels were synthesized by immersing HA microbeads in phosphate buffered saline solutions having different pH levels to assess the effect of pH on the swelling ratio of HA hydrogels for smart drug delivery systems. No beads were formed when the HA solution(below pH 9) was crosslinked with divinyl sulfone(DVS) because DVS is a basic solution. The variation regarding the size of the microbead was not significant, suggesting that the bead size is not a function of pH(10 ~ 14). However, the pore size of the microbeads decreased with increasing pH from 10 to 14, leading to the surface smoothness and dense network as a result of higher crosslinking. The swelling ratio of hydrogels increased when the pH rose from 2(acidic) to 6(neutral). Afterwards, it decreased with further increasing pH(basic). The lower swelling ratio may be due to the lack of ionization of the carboxyl groups. On the other hand, a higher swelling ratio is likely due to the increased electrostatic repulsions between negatively charged carboxyl groups on different chains. Experimental results suggested that pH-responsive HA hydrogels can be applicable to the controlled drug delivery systems.


A novel and facile hydrothermal-assisted self-hydrolysis route has been proposed for the controllable preparation of SnS2/SnO2 heterostructured nanoplates (HNPs). Benefiting from the unique structural features, the as-prepared SnS2/SnO2 HNPs exhibit significantly enhanced visible-light-driven photocatalytic activity in the reduction of aqueous Cr(VI).


Background: Diabetes is associated with poor cardiovascular outcomes, and insulin-treated patients usually have a worse prognosis than non-insulin-treated subjects. The relationship between insulin treatment and outcomes in high-risk myocardial infarction patients has not been described in a large dataset. Methods: To investigate the association between insulin-treated diabetes and long-term cardiovascular outcomes in patients with high-risk myocardial infarction, we used adjusted Cox models to compare cardiovascular mortality and hospitalisation among 28,771 patients grouped by diabetes status and insulin treatment from four randomised clinical trials (VALIANT, EPHESUS, OPTIMAAL, CAPRICORN) of acute myocardial infarction complicated by heart failure and/ or left ventricular systolic dysfunction. Results: After an approximately 2-year follow-up, patients with no diabetes (21,386 subjects, 74.3%), non-insulin-treated diabetes (4977 patients, 17.3%) and insulin-treated diabetes (2409 subjects, 8.4%) had an incremental yearly mortality risk (15.8%, 21.3% and 28.1%, respectively). Insulin-treated diabetes patients presented with a higher cardiovascular burden and comorbidities. After adjustment for 18 baseline covariates, patients with non-insulin-treated and insulintreated diabetes were at higher risk of cardiovascular death (hazard ratio (HR) 1.25, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.13– 1.38 and HR 1.49, 95% CI 1.31–1.69, respectively; P for comparison of non-insulin-treated vs. insulin-treated diabetes =0.016) and cardiovascular hospitalisation (HR 1.33, 95% CI 1.25–1.41 and HR 1.16, 95% CI 1.11–1.22, respectively) compared to patients without diabetes. These results remained consistent after further adjustment for medications and left ventricular ejection fraction. Conclusions: Insulin-treated diabetes patients had higher event rates than diabetes patients taking oral treatments and patients without diabetes. However, insulin-treated diabetes patients had more comorbidities and atherosclerotic disease, precluding any causality suggestion between insulin treatment and outcomes. This high-risk population may require specific and/or more intense cardiovascular protective therapies. 803701 ACC European Heart Journal: Acute Cardiovascular CareRossello et al. Original scientific paper 1 Translational Laboratory for Cardiovascular Imaging and Therapy, Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares Carlos III (CNIC), Spain 2CIBER de Enfermedades CardioVasculares, Spain 3 Université de Lorraine, Centre d'Investigations Cliniques Plurithématique, France 4 Department of Physiology and Cardiothoracic Surgery, University of Porto, Portugal 5BHF Cardiovascular Research Centre, University of Glasgow, UK 6 Department of Epidemiology, Human Genetics, and Environmental Sciences, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, USA 7 Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, USA 8 Department of Medicine, University of Michigan School of Medicine, USA 9Department of Cardiology, University of Bergen, Norway Corresponding author: Faiez Zannad, Centre d'Investigations Cliniques – INSERM CHU de Nancy, Institut Lorrain du Cœur et des Vaisseaux Louis Mathieu, 4 Rue du Morvan, Vandoeuvre lès Nancy 54500, France. Email: email@example.com 2 European Heart Journal: Acute Cardiovascular Care 00(0)


In this paper, we calculate electron and hole impactionization coefficients in In0.52Al0.48As using a Monte Carlo modelwhich has two valleys and two bands for electrons and holesrespectively. Also, we calculate multiplication factor for electronand hole initiated multiplication regimes and breakdown voltagein In0.52Al0.48As PIN avalanche photodiodes. To validate themodel, we compare our simulated results with the experimentalresults.


Chlamydiae are taken up by host cells so efficiently that the process has been termed "parasite-specified endocytosis" by Byrne and Moulder. This chapter focuses upon the active interactions of chlamydiae with the host cell and covers the stage of development up to the division of reticulate bodies (RBs). Surprisingly, different mutant cell lines displayed unique patterns of susceptibility or resistance to different C. trachomatis serovars or to C. pneumoniae. Despite the difficulties of comparing studies between different chlamydial species or serovars, conditions, and cell types, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that individual chlamydiae are capable of utilizing different mechanisms for entry. Translocation of Tarp and its tyrosine phosphorylation appear to be one of the first means of communication with the host cell to actively subvert host processes for parasite purposes. Identification of the kinases mediating Tarp phosphorylation is an initial step in mapping the signal transduction networks initiated by C. trachomatis to establish residence within an intracellular niche. Endocytosed elementary bodies (EBs) are rapidly transported to the peri-Golgi region of the host cell and become fusogenic with Golgi-derived vesicles. The Inc proteins do not share structural similarities to eukaryotic proteins, except for SNARE-like motifs, and homology searches do not provide substantial clues about their function. An improved understanding of the complex interactions of the important pathogens with the host cell should provide great potential for improved chemotherapeu-tic and immunoprophylactic interventions.


Draft legislation is due to be published by the European Commission1 this Autumn that, if enacted, will have a profound impact on the shipping and connected industries in the years ahead. In April 2007 the Commission declared its intention to bring forward draft proposals before the end of 2007 to bring shipping into the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) in an attempt to control the impact of greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. The costs of an eventual proposal have not yet been fully estimated but they will certainly be substantial. Depending on the final legislative choices on scope and type of allocations, and considering the fact that shipping serves 90 per cent of the global trade, the plans also have the potential to significantly distort competition and the growth and development of the sector going forward. There will be major winners and losers. Parallel plans to bring the aviation sector into the EU ETS are already well advanced. Draft legislation published in late 2006 is due to be voted on by the EU Parliament in plenary in November 2007. Many of the same legal and commercial issues that face the aviation sector will apply equally to shipping. Affected companies, their investors and lenders need to be considering and developing their positions and strategies now in readiness for these changes.


The Wilmington oil field is by far the largest oil producer in the Los Angeles Basin. Production is from seven zones within the Monterey (middle Miocene), Puente (upper Miocene), and the Repetto (Pliocene) formations. Most of the formations are interbedded sand and shale units showing characteristic submarine fan facies. The Torrance-Wilmington trend extends from north of the Palos Verdes Hills twenty-two miles to the Belmont Offshore area (Plate i). Mayuga (1970) published the most extensive stratigraphic description of the Wilmington oil field, but Wissler (1984), Truex (1972, 1973), Randell et al (1983), and Henderson et al (1984) have all addressed the subject. Plates 2 and 3 are cross sections showing the relationship of the sediments in the Los Angeles Basin. Plate 4 is a stratigraphic col~n for the Los Angeles Basin.


The effec t of va ri ous ring spinning parameters and winding machine parameters on the ya rn quality has been studied at higher sensiti vi ty leve ls using thc capacitance type tester. The re lationship between ex tra sensiti ve imperfec tions and infrequent ya rn faults has also been studied. It is observed that the spacer s ize, break draft and sp indle speed of ring frame influence the imperfect ions and c lassimat fault s. With the increase in twist multipli er the yarn quality improves initially and after a certa in stage there is an increase in imperfecti ons with increased twi st multipli er. Within the chosen limit the effect of w inding speed and tension weight of hi gh speed autoconer on imperfecti ons is minimal.


This paper describes the application of Discrete-Wavelet Transform (DWT) image compression to optical emission spectrum images collected during wafer fabrication. The goal of the current study is twofold. We are seeking not only a computationally efficient image compression algorithm that can significantly reduce the data storage requirement but also is capable of retaining sufficient data authenticity which is critical for diagnostic purposes. The Set Partitioning In Hierarchical Trees (SPIHT) algorithm was employed in our study to evaluate its performance when processing different types of wafer fabrication image data. We found that with a proper choice of the processing parameters in SPIHT it is achievable to obtain better than 99.5% data reduction while maintaining sufficient authenticity of the original image.


The paper considers a bank's investment in a risky asset when it is possible to collect additional information about the asset's return. The analysis assumes that the bank is risk-neutral and faces a constraint as to the risk it may take. We analyze the problem of delegating the acquisition of information to a risk-neutral agent who is subject to limited liability when the agent's effort and the acquired information are not observable and characterize optimal incentive schemes that implement a given level of effort and result in truthful disclosure of information. Moreover, we study the bank's incentive to acquire information under alternative capital constraints.


Surface-channel PMOSFET's have been realized using a dopant-drive-out technique with WSi/sub x/ polycide gate. The advantages of this technique include (1) excellent thermal stability, (2) superior electrical device characteristics suitable for deep sub-half micron technology, (3) 10 Omega / Square Operator sheet resistance for a thin gate stack (<or=200 nm), (4) less severe gate topography, and (5) suppression of ion-penetration effects during gate implantation.<<ETX>>


Based on models of L1 interference in L2 accent acquisition, sets of similar sounds which are distinguished in the L2, but not in the L1, are most difficult to acquire for an L2 learner. In this thesis, the correlation between production and perception of two sets of similar sounds, namely DRESS-TRAP and FOOT-GOOSE, are investigated in highly proficient native Dutch L2 English speakers who receive large amounts of L1 and L1 impacted L2 input. Production is tested in free speech, while perception is tested in a
highly controlled phonetic categorisation task. The findings are that all speakers have managed to acquire the distinction between these similar vowel sets, and that there are significant correlations between their production and perception of these vowels. The distribution of these correlations suggests that vowel perception is dependent on the context in which the vowel is presented, and that slightly different mental representations of vowel categories exist for production and perception, with production indicating that the acquisition of the vowel categories is robust enough to allow for the development of expectations in perception.


IntroductIon Computing systems have become more complex and there is a plethora of systems in heterogeneous and autonomous platforms, from mainframes to mobile devices, which need to interoperate and lack effective management. This complexity has demanded huge investments to enable these systems to work properly. It is necessary to invest on software acquisition and installation: management, administration, and update. These costs compound the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), which tends to increase exponentially according to the software complexity. Information Technology (IT) focuses mainly on providing information services in order to achieve simplicity, agility, large access to information , and competitivity. Database Management Systems (DBMS) are part of the IT infrastructure in large, medium, and even small enterprises. According to LIGHTSTONE (2003), the complexity of a DBMS enhances the difficulty in administrating it, as there are too many tasks a Database Administrator (DBA) should consider. Thus, more people are needed to be trained to efficiently manage this software. As a result, the maintenance costs increase and the problem is not properly solved. Performance, time-to-market, throughput, robustness, availability, security, are some concerns that a DBA should consider. Suppose that, due to an unexpected event (e.g., too many clients accessing the DBMS), the average load in a database server changes quickly and the query response times may become unacceptable. The DBA must, rapidly (a) detect the problem (unacceptable response time); (b) find the root cause of the problem (e.g., too many swap operations); and (c) tune the server to maintain response time goal (e.g., to increase memory size). These three activitiessymptom detection, diagnosis, and tuningif executed manually by a DBA, can take a long time. Worse still, the DBA could be absent by the time the symptom arises. On the other hand, autonomic computing has become an important research theme, aiming to reduce the manual efforts of administration of complex systems. Regarding DBMSs, they should be capable to react automatically to negative events, under the form of adaptive continuos tuning (LIGHTSTONE, 2003). For example, when detecting a load change, with risk of degrading the global performance of the system, a DBMS could automatically adjust some query execution plans; change its memory pool configuration; or still adjust data on disk (through index creation, data clustering, table partition, and so on) in order to maintain its overall performance. DBMSs with some capabilities of adaptive continuous tuning are called self-tuning ones. This chapter addresses the issue …


This paper studies the impact of the international financial crisis on the enterprise human resource management(HRM)in Dongguan by questionnaire survey.Most enterprises adjusted their HRM policy to the financial crisis,which produces influences on many sides,such as recruitment,salaries,benefits,performance assessment, training,employee turnover,and labor relations.


Report With this thesis we bring some new results and improve some existing ones in conjugate duality and some of the areas it is applied in. First we recall the way Lagrange, Fenchel and Fenchel-Lagrange dual problems to a given primal optimization problem can be obtained via perturbations and we present some connections between them. For the Fenchel-Lagrange dual problem we prove strong duality under more general conditions than known so far, while for the Fenchel duality we show that the convexity assumptions on the functions involved can be weakened without altering the conclusion. In order to prove the latter we prove also that some formulae concerning conjugate functions given so far only for convex functions hold also for almost convex, respectively nearly convex functions. After proving that the generalized geometric dual problem can be obtained via perturbations, we show that the geometric duality is a special case of the Fenchel-Lagrange duality and the strong duality can be obtained under weaker conditions than stated in the existing literature. For various problems treated in the literature via geometric duality we show that Fenchel-Lagrange duality is easier to apply, bringing moreover strong duality and optimality conditions under weaker assumptions. The results presented so far are applied also in convex composite optimization and entropy optimization. For the composed convex cone-constrained optimization problem we give strong duality and the related optimality conditions, then we apply these when showing that the formula of the conjugate of the precomposition with a proper convex K-increasing function of a K-convex function on some non-empty convex set X ⊆ R n , where K is a non-empty closed convex cone in R k , holds under weaker conditions than known so far. Another field were we apply these results is vector optimization, where we provide a general duality framework based on a more general scalarization that includes as special cases and improves some previous results in the literature. Concerning entropy optimization, we treat first via duality a problem having an entropy-like objective function, from which arise as special cases some problems found in the literature on entropy optimization. Finally, an application of entropy optimization into text classification is presented.


for tlic piircliase of slides, when such as we want may be had by purchase. At the last year's anniversary our numerical strength was 390 ; in the session just closed the elections have numbered sevcnty-four; we have lost four by death, and eight by resignation. Our present strength is, therefore, 452 Fellows; of these 361 are annual subscribers, and ninty-one compounders. Thus the Society is flourishing, as viewed in respect to finances, number of its Fellows, and increase in property. The last year has been one of great and unusual exaction of time and work from all your officers, and particularly from the secretaries, without whose zealous assistance I do not know how all the work could have been done which has been done, nor the library prepared €or use; I am greatly myself indebted to them. In conclusion, I beg to offer my thanks for the courtesy I have received from every member of every committee, and from every member of the Council, and to you for the support you have given me in performing the duties of your President.


The authors confront the challenges facing OHS regulators and stakeholders in a new and different world dominated by service industries and globalisation rather than manufacturing industries and protection. They explore new models of OHS regulation that take account of gaps and deficiencies in the current arrangements.


The invention relates to a method for producing a material application 14 on a surface 13 by means of arc spraying or by means of arc hardfacing. Two wires (2, 2 ') are at least partially melted in an arc. 7 For supplying energy to the wires (2, 2 ') fed with a pulsed current, said pulsed current consists of a sequence of current pulses with alternating signs.


It has been documented that fraud and corruption are gargantuan twin brothers that have limited the growth and infrastructure of many nations and led many firms to the road of bankruptcy. Fraud is rarely seen but the symptoms of fraud are usually observed. Corruption, the twin brother of fraud is the misuse of entrusted power for private benefit and includes; bribes, cronyism and nepotism, political donations, kickbacks and artificial pricing and fraud of all kinds. Corruption in Cameroon has been a significant problem for many years, inhibiting investment opportunities. The paper therefore adopts the agency theory to examine the level of fraud and corruption practices in doing business in Cameroon and evaluate the impact of government anti-corruption policies in fighting the menace of fraud and corruption practices. The study employed survey research method in obtaining data. Findings in this study revealed that virtually all the segment of the public sector are highly corrupt; with the Police, Custom and Tax administrations being the most corrupt institutions in Cameroon. Although, almost all the anti-corruption initiatives are ranked ineffective, only the CHOC-Cameroon programme (Change Habits, Oppose Corruption) are considered to be effective. This could be as a result of insincerity and lack of political will by the government to fight fraud and corruption in the system. The current paper gives a glimpse of challenges that all the established public structures are facing to deal with the fraud and corruption plights.


As one of the four priority corridors originally established by the US Congress under the ISTEA legislation, the Gary-Chicago-Milwaukee (GCM) Corridor has been the scene of numerous intelligent transportation systems (ITS) projects. One of the largest and most complex of these is the Gateway Traveler Information System. The Gateway involves the collection of transportation related data within a three state area and distribution of this data back to the sources as well as to the public and information service providers. This paper documents the process that took place during the development and implementation of a three-state traveler information system. During this development, significant issues needed to be addressed to interface non-traditional/non standard data sources. Some of these issues were technical in nature, while others were institutional. Many of these issues will also need to be addressed by other systems in the US.


China is experiencing a rapid expansion of what is termed 'collective bargaining'. The article draws on workplace and sectoral examples to assess what underlies this. Recent changes in labour policy are outlined. Four studies at establishment level describe the use of hybrid representation in response to growing worker activism and internal union reform. Two studies of sectoral bargaining shed light on decentralized decision-making on pay. Attention is drawn to the growth of employer organizations and increased articulation within the trade union. A form of collective bargaining is emerging where the union draws on state power to improve conditions of employment.


The R&D Trends Forecast for 2004 indicates that more companies are reducing rather than increasing their R&D spending. More companies than last year plan spending increases, but those cutting spending outnumber them. Consequently, the changes and reductions that we characterized last year as "leveraging" now appear to be "lessening." Reductions outnumber increases in capital spending, basic research, support of existing businesses, staffing, new-grad hiring, research intensity (R&D spending target as a share of sales), and even outsourcing and licensing. The major indicators of reductions (with survey question numbers in parentheses) are: * Total company expenditures on R&D (1) * Capital spending for R&D operations (2) * R&D professional personnel level (4) * Hiring new graduates (5) * Targeted R&D/Sales Ratio (9a) In the prior-year comparison charts on page 20, some lines are increasing, implying improvement. The charts show increases in categories: share of sales, total dollars, total hires, and others. It is important to be aware that these increases are occurring, because they may represent behavior observed by Richard Foster, as reported in the November December 2003 RTM (pp. 36-43). Foster wrote that in a study of 1,200 firms, McKinsey & Company found that many of today's industry leaders spent 22 percent more on R&D than their unsuccessful peers during the 1990 91 recession. In contrast, the leaders spent just 9 percent more outside of the recession. Therefore, this year we have a situation among the companies surveyed that has happened before but does not happen often. We are in a recession, and a significant fraction of companies decided to increase R&D spending in response. The charts show that in each of several categories, such as R&D spending (1), more companies than last year indicated increases of at least 5 percent. The Sea--Change Index (Table 1) tells the rest of the story, indicating that more firms actually plan decreasing industrial R&D spending and activity in several important categories. If Foster is right, the ones increasing spending will likely be future successful leaders. Here is another way to look at the data. Imagine that you are a grade-school teacher with 20 children in your classroom, and you track the health of your students. One day you note that 4 students seem perfectly healthy, 14 have the sniffles but are well enough to attend school, and 2 are absent due to illness. The next day, you note that 6 students seem healthy, 6 have the sniffles and are present, and 8 are absent due to illness. If you kept a graph of that health data in the same way as the IRI graph of the category increases, your graph would show a significant increase in "well" students--a jump from 10 to 30 percent. Problem is, the students are sicker--the group so ill as to be absent increased from 10 to 40 percent, a larger jump. As the teacher, you find both points are useful: more students are well, and more students are ill. With the IRI data, we show both the graphs and the Sea Change Index because both the increases and the decreases are important. The rest of this article describes highlights and implications of 2003's responses for R&D conduct and spending in 2004. For continuity with prior reports (RTM, Jan.-Feb. 2003, pp. 17-20), we continue calculating the "Sea-Change Index" (Table 1). For each question, such as "Total company expenditures on R&D," the index is calculated by subtracting the percentage of respondents predicting any decrease from the percentage predicting an increase of 5 percent or more. This assessment tells us whether respondents, taken together, intend to increase or decrease the factor measured by each question. Table 1 shows the results for the surveys conducted from 1999 through 2003, labeled "2000" through "2004" respectively. The Sea-Change Index helps to outline the dilemma in this year's results, correctly showing that on balance, more companies are cutting R&D spending and intensity. …


Because of the long and entrenched history of Chinese medicine in Taiwan, people have traditionally incorporated this knowledge into their health care. With the appearance and growing acceptance of Western medical practices, multiple medical approaches have become more and more popular. Yet, despite the strong foundations of Western medicine in the treatment of cancer in Taiwan, the use of Chinese medicine continues to be popular (Lin, 1992, p. 114).

The focus of this research is the contextual construction of meanings about non Western medicine (NWM). The context for the study is Taiwan, the researcher's home country. The purpose of the research is to explore the motivations for, and the processes by which, Taiwanese people with cancer incorporate NWM into their cancer treatment journey. Utilising a grounded theory approach, this research sought to explore the social processes by which Taiwanese people with cancer come to use non Western medicine. Twenty four in depth interviews were undertaken in the study.

The findings of the study demonstrate that the interactions between people with cancer and their use of NWM are complex. Taken-for-grantedness emerges as the core category in the study. The core category situates the use of non Western medicine outside the institutionalised and regulated domains of health care. More specifically, the meanings attributed to NWM are embedded in the philosophical beliefs and social relationships that constitute the lives of the participants.

These findings suggest implications for our understanding of the co-existence of NWM and Western medicine by Taiwanese people with cancer and the social processes with which they engage.


The fast evolution of medical micro‐ and nanorobots in the endeavor to perform non‐invasive medical operations in living organisms has boosted the use of diverse medical imaging techniques in the last years. Among those techniques, photoacoustic imaging (PAI), considered a functional technique, has shown to be promising for the visualization of micromotors in deep tissue with high spatiotemporal resolution as it possesses the molecular specificity of optical methods and the penetration depth of ultrasound. However, the precise maneuvering and function's control of medical micromotors, in particular in living organisms, require both anatomical and functional imaging feedback. Therefore, herein, the use of high‐frequency ultrasound and PAI is reported to obtain anatomical and molecular information, respectively, of magnetically‐driven micromotors in vitro and under ex vivo tissues. Furthermore, the steerability of the micromotors is demonstrated by the action of an external magnetic field into the uterus and bladder of living mice in real‐time, being able to discriminate the micromotors' signal from one of the endogenous chromophores by multispectral analysis. Finally, the successful loading and release of a model cargo by the micromotors toward non‐invasive in vivo medical interventions is demonstrated.


A solute flowing in a pressure-driven channel flow experiences an enhanced effective axial dispersion coefficient due to the transverse velocity gradients. An investigation shows how this phenomenon, known as Taylor dispersion, is affected by cross flow and mass transfer at the wall.


Site-directed mutagenesis is a powerful tool for producing mutants to assess the importance of specific amino acid residues in a protein's structure and/or function. We wanted to generate mutants of human ETS1 cDNA in the pET15b vector (Novagen, Madison, WI, USA) from which we had been producing wild-type protein for structural studies (11). Since we were subject to the constraints of this vector, we looked to established polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based methods for generating site-directed mutants (1–5,9, 10,12). However, these methods were labor-intensive (1,5), did not yield the expected mutagenesis efficiency (4,10), required unavailable restriction enzyme sites (9) or necessitated introduction of restriction sites (3,12) that would have altered additional residues in the coding sequence. As a result, we modified several aspects of the method of Weiner et al. (10) to create a PCR-based site-directed mutagenesis method with higher mutagenesis efficiency that can be used to mutate any site within a protein's coding sequence without additional changes. This method can be used with any vector, uses only two specific primers in a single PCR and yields mutant-encoding colonies in less than 48 h with an overall efficiency of 80%. As mentioned above, a similar sitedirected mutagenesis protocol has been published by Weiner et al. (10), but in the method described here, several steps have been modified or eliminated, resulting in a simplified procedure and a higher mutation efficiency. In particular, our procedure uses Pfu DNA polymerase, which not only increases the fidelity of PCR over that performed with Taq DNA polymerase, but also generates blunt-ended products, eliminating the need for end polishing (6,8). As in the Weiner et al. protocol (10), elimination of wild-type template DNA is accomplished by DpnI digestion, which is specific for methylated substrates (7). Since template plasmids isolated from most common laboratory bacterial strains are methylated, these templates would be recognized and digested by DpnI, whereas the unmethylated PCRamplified DNA would remain intact. In an experiment in which the reaction was not subjected to DpnI digestion, the mutagenesis efficiency dropped from 80% to 40% (data not shown), demonstrating the necessity of DpnI digestion for high mutagenesis efficiency. In contrast to the Weiner et al. procedure (10), ligation precedes DpnI digestion, eliminating the creation of religated, partially digested parental template products and increasing the mutagenesis efficiency. In addition, the low amount of template used in the method described here also increases the mutagenesis efficiency. An overview of this site-directed mutagenesis protocol is shown in Figure 1. Adjacent primers were designed on opposite DNA strands with the mutation encoded at the 5′ end of one primer. Both primers were phosphorylated before PCR by suspension of 50 pmol/μL of primer in ligase buffer (50 mM Tris-HCl, pH 7.6, 10 mM MgCl2, 1 mM ATP, 1 mM dithiothreitol [DTT], 5% polyethylene glycol [PEG]-8000) with 1 U/μL T4 polynucleotide kinase (Amersham, Arlington Heights, IL, USA), followed by a 30-min incubation at 37°C. PCR was carried out in a 50-μL mixture using 1.25 U Pfu DNA Polymerase (Stratagene, La Jolla, CA, USA) with 10–50 ng template plasmid DNA, 50 pmol of each phosphorylated primer, 200 μL each dNTP in supplied Pfu reaction buffer [20 mM Tris-HCl, pH 8.8, 10 mM KCl, 10 mM (NH4)2SO4, 2 mM MgSO4, 0.1% Triton X-100, 100 μg/mL bovine serum albumin (BSA)]. Amplification parameters were an initial 4 min at 94°C, followed by 16 cycles of 1 min at 94°C, 1 min at the annealing temperature [10° below the calculated primer melting temperature (4× G/C + 2× A/T)] and 15 min (2.5 min/kb) plus 5 s auto-extension at 72°C. After PCR, 5 μL of the reaction mixture were run on a 1% agarose gel to confirm amplified product formation. PCR samples were then phenol/chloroform-extracted and ethanolprecipitated. Samples were resuspended in 20 μL ligase buffer with 10 U of T4 DNA ligase (Life Technologies,


Abstract Background Malfunction of the peritoneal dialysis catheter is frequently caused by dislocation. The diagnostic approach is classically based on abdomen X-ray together with detailed case history and physical examination. Despite being rarely applied in clinical practice to evaluate catheter misplacement, ultrasound is a noninvasive, radiation-free technique that is potentially useful also to explore reasons for catheter malfunction. Consequently, we aimed to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of ultrasound to identify peritoneal catheter misplacement. Methods In a multicenter observational blinded study, we compared ultrasound to abdomen X-ray for catheter localization in 93 consecutive peritoneal dialysis patients with dialysate outflow problems enrolled in two nephrology and dialysis units. The position of the catheter was annotated on a standard scheme of nine abdominopelvic regions. The sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive value and Kappa coefficient were calculated. Results Dislocation out of the inferior abdominopelvic regions was present in 19 patients (20 %) at X-ray and 23 patients (25 %) at ultrasound. Correct determination of the position of the catheter in the lower abdomen by ultrasound had a sensitivity of 93 % (95 % CI 84 – 97 %), specificity of 95 % (95 % CI 72 – 100 %), positive predictive value of 99 % (95 % CI 91 – 100 %), negative predictive value of 78 % (95 %CI 56 – 92 %) and Kappa coefficient of 0.82 (95 % CI 0.67 – 0.96). In 10 out of 93 patients (11 %), there was a position mismatch between X-ray and ultrasound in an adjacent abdominopelvic region. Conclusion Our results suggest that abdomen X-ray for the evaluation of peritoneal catheter position can be replaced by ultrasound in experienced hands. This bedside diagnostic procedure might reduce costs, the time necessary for diagnosis and lifetime radiation exposure.


Forging tools for aluminum work pieces show an increased adhesive wear due to cold welding during the forging process. Laser dispersing offers at this point a great potential to fabricate protective layers or tracks with tailored properties that reduce abrasive or adhesive wear at the surface of highly stressed components. Using different process strategies, four metal ceramic compounds applied on two substrate geometries were investigated regarding their structural and mechanical properties and their performance level. The subsequent forging tests have pointed out a positive effect and less adhesive residuals on the laser dispersed tool surface.


Newness and the emotions related to new products have been widely discussed in the design research community. However, a debate on what newness means for digital products and services is lacking. To gather more insight on this topic a literature review was conducted pertaining to newness and innovation in the digital sector. Based on this literature review the importance and influence of the sensation of newness relating to digital products and services was identified. Based on these findings six elements that elicit the feeling of newness in digital designs have been identified: newness in aesthetics, symbolic newness or new meaning, newness in function, a pristine product, positive emotion and surprise, and new interrelatedness. These elements have been analyzed in relation to existing digital products. Conclusively, the importance of conveying the sensation of newness in digital designs is emphasized, and recommendations are given on how to utilize the six elements identified as an important foundation for long-term product-user relationships.


Chemical reactions of Al, K, Nb and Ta during their crystallization in melts were studied. Constitution diagrams constructed for KAlCl/sub 4/-- KTaCl/ sub 6/, KAlCl/sub 4/-- KNbCl/sub 6/ exhibited simple eutectic-type diagrams, the KTaCl/sub 6/-KNbCl/sub 6/ exhibited a continuous series of solid solutions, and KTaCl/sub 6/-- NbCl/sub 5/ and KAlCl/sub 4/-- NbCl/sub 5/ systems exhibited stratification regions in the initial NbCl/sub 5/ crystallization field. Diagrams were also constructed for the liquidus surfaces of quasi-ternary and ternary systems: NbCl/sub 5/-AlCl/sub 3/- KCl, KNbCl/sub 6/-- KTaCl/sub 6/-- KAlCl/sub 4/, and NbCl/sub 5/-KTaCl/sub 6/-KAlCl/sub 4/ and crystallization boundaries were determined. Tensiometric studies were made of the following systems: NbCl/sub 5/-- AlCl/sub 3/-- KCl, NbCl/sub 5/-- TaCl/sub 5/-- KCl, and NbCl/sub 5 /-- TaCl/sub 5/-AlCl/sub 3/-- NaCl. (R.V.J.)


Any ancient manuscript has two dimensions, one physical and one intellectual. Almost all of the discussion of Tchacos Codex has been on this intellectual side of the texts, since few have had experience, much less interest, in the physical side. Judas is more interesting than are codices, at least to most people. The following questions are addressed in the chapter: Where is the Tchacos Codex? Have the efforts to attach fragments physically to the leaves to which they belong been discontinued? When will Tchacos Codex be returned to Egypt? What happened to the full-size color reproductions? What is to be learned from the leather cover and cartonnage? What was the original length of the codex and the number of tractates? This chapter addresses some basic questions about the Tchacos Codex and its codicology. Keywords: codicology; Judas; manuscript; Tchacos Codex


This paper describes the analysis and design of a dual-band planar inverted F antenna for laptop computers. This antenna has desirable characteristics for use in IEEE802.11b and IEEE802.11a wireless LAN. The computed results (required gain, input characteristics and far-field pattern) are given. The dual-band planar inverted F antenna, mounted in a laptop computer has been demonstrated to operate in the 2.4 GHz and 5.2 GHz bands with |S/sub 11/| less than -9.5 dB.