The standard topics of election law — such as campaign finance, electoral redistricting, and voter qualification laws — are facing a deeply uncertain future in large part due to the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decisions. To consider the larger conceptual issues at stake in these decisions, this Essay addresses two inter-related questions. First: How should we conceptualize the role of the Supreme Court as an institution in these decisions? Second: What is the underlying conception of democracy that best elucidates the Court's major election law decisions in the last decade or so?

This Essay argues that the Supreme Court's role in recent election law decisions cannot be easily reduced to a single or consistent approach. Instead, I claim that the Court majority's opinions, when viewed from an external perspective, display a particular vision of democracy that is fundamentally elitist in its outlook. This elitist vision of democracy stands in marked contrast to the egalitarian vision of democracy that is evident in the dissenting opinions of the four liberal justices. I suggest further that this elitist conception of democracy is a familiar one — it has certain continuities (and discontinuities) with theories of republicanism that existed at the time of the Founding.

Given the echo of founding era themes, this Essay considers the role of originalism in current election law decisions. It concludes that neither the Court's decisions, nor the emerging elitist conception of democracy, fall within originalism strictly understood. That being said, the Essay suggests that some of the Court majority's arguments display an "originalist orientation" in which original meaning takes a preponderant weight in the analysis even if it does not compel the overall outcome. In practical terms, this originalist orientation has significant implications for future election law cases because it means that, at least for some issues, the founding era is serving as an implicit baseline for the conservative wing of the Court. The Essay identifies three ways in which the Court majority's originalist orientation matters: first, non-originalist precedents would likely carry less precedential weight; second, election law federalism would likely be interpreted in a manner hostile to egalitarian ideals; and third, electoral reform efforts could be thwarted. In future cases, this originalist orientation will likely reinforce the elitist conception of democracy and further erode the egalitarian approach to democracy.


Plant impressions of Kamthi Formation of Maharashtra were collected from Nagpur and Chandrapur districts. They belong to Gymnosperms and Pteridophytes. Several species of Glossopteris leaves were collected from different localities. One of the specimens is a female fructification attached to Glossopteris leaf. It is Cistella type fructification and devoid of cuticle. It agrees with the characters of Plumstedia ovata (Surange and Chandra) Rigby. It is an addition to the Kamthi Flora of Maharashtra.


In general, coastal and shelf hydrodynamic modelling is undertaken with limited area numerical models such as Delft3D or Mike 21. To conduct successful numerical simulations these programmes require appropriate boundary conditions. Various options exist to obtain boundary conditions such as Neumann conditions, specifying water levels, specifying velocities and combination of these, amongst others. In this study one specific method is investigated, namely the specification of water levels on all the open boundaries using a "reduced physics" approach. This method may be more appropriate than Neumann conditions when the domain is fairly large and is also of particular interest as it allows measured data to be incorporated in the boundary conditions, although the latter was not considered in this study. The boundary conditions of interest are determined by separating the crossshore and alongshore components of the momentum equations. To justify the separation, the equations of motion are firstly non-dimensionalised to determine the relative importance of various terms and then scaled to determine under which conditions the cross-shore and alongshore components can be solved independently. The efficacy of a computer program, Tilt, to calculate the open boundary conditions have been investigated for a number of idealised cases. Based on an understanding of the underlying physics and scaling assumptions, situations where these open boundary conditions underperformed have been analysed and reasons given for their underperformance. When applied to "real-life" situations it is likely that one or more of the scaling assumptions will be violated. Comment is provided on the likely errors in model simulations should this occur. The main conclusions are that the "reduced physics" approach used in Tilt restricts fairly significantly the range of flow that can be simulated. Should the scaling assumptions underlying Tilt be satisfied, Tilt performs adequately for limited area model simulations of coastal and shelf regions, however there remain some concerns: • The no flux condition at the coast and clamped water level offshore ii Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za


It is estimated that one in eight American women will develop breast cancer in her lifetime and a significant number of these cases are due to misregulation of the epidermal growth factor receptor, EGFR. Current drugs based on antibodies (mAbs) and tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) show promising yet highly variable clinical efficacy. Recent advancements in EGFR‐signaling suggest that these therapeutic limitations are due to underestimation of a complex system that relies on receptor dimerization. Here we report a class of small‐molecule inhibitors that target and disrupt the dimerization in living cells, which contrasts the traditional strategies of developing mAb‐ and TKI‐based inhibitors. Our approach is a top‐down protocol that combines in silico high‐throughput screen of a compound library and in vitro biochemical assays that experimentally test the putative candidates. Several compounds were identified as potent and specific inhibitor against the activation of EGFR in living cells. The discovery, and the on‐going characterization, of these inhibitors offer an alternative class of EGFR‐inhibitors and could serve as the building blocks of novel therapeutics against breast cancer.


A field experiment was carried out during Rabi season from 2007–2010 at Chatha, Jammu to find out relative efficiency of weed management practices in gladiolus (Tagets erecta L.). Result revealed significant enhancement in spike yield with 2 hand weedings at 20 and 40 days after transplanting (6.05 t/ha) and pendimethalin 2 kg/ha + 1 hand weeding (5.79 t/ha), both of which were superior to weedy check (3.25 t/ha). The highest weed control efficiency (78.2%) was also achieved with 2 hand weedings, followed by pendimethalin + hand weding 76.9%). Application of pendimethalin along with hand weeding proved to be economical.


Epoxy/BaTiO3 hybrid materials are prepared as good candidates for organic capacitors. The hybrid system is cured by using camphorquinone and a iodonium salt through a free-radical promoted cationic polymerization using a long-wavelength tungsten halogen lamp. The cured films are fully characterized. Morphological characterization shows a well-dispersed inorganic phase within the organic matrix. Electrical characterization demonstrates a linear increase of the dielectric constant with increasing filler content, while low dielectric loss values are obtained.


The goal of this paper is find the best design in terms of cost for analyzing the renewable energy sources available in a rural area of Jaisalmer district in Rajasthan, India considering the average hourly solar insolation and load profile of that location which will help the small village avail electricity. In this paper, the size of standalone PV system with battery energy storage are determined so that the system will be sufficient to supply the load as well as the total annual cost of the system (ACS) remains as minimum as possible. The simulation by Improved Harmony Search Algorithm (IHSA) method is proposed to determine the size of the PV system with battery energy storage with an objective of minimizing the levelized cost of energy (LCE) within the frame work of system operation constraints. Additionally, a study of operating hours of diesel generator (DG) in optimal configuration is presented.


Objective:To evaluate the effect of traditional Chinese medicine in Acute Pancreatitis,with Comparative Study of Clinical Therapeutic Effect for Using Rhubarb with Qingyi Decoction,and then guiding clinical medication preferably.Methods:The medical record of patients who getting Acute Pancreatitis were refered in the first affiliated hospital of Anhui medical university and then,we adopted case-control study to analysis.The patients were divided into Rhubarb with Qingyi Decoction Group(RQDG) and Control Group(CG).To study Remission time、the results of laboratory examination.And then the statistical results were entered into SPSS17.0 to take t-test or chi-square test.Results:The Symptoms and length of stay in RQDG were shorter than those in CG.The difference between RQDG and CG has statistical significance(P0.05).The recovery rate(Fully recovered and effective case) is 97.1% in RQDG,88.2% in CG,and it has statistically significant difference between them(P0.05).Conclusions:traditional Chinese medicine of Rhubarb with Qingyi Decoction is advised to be used in the patients with acute pancreatitis,to relieve the clinical symptoms and signs,and improve the results of laboratory examination and also raise the recovery rate.


Background:  Single Incision Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy is becoming a widely performed operation with various techniques and special instruments having been developed for the procedure. However, these tend to increase the cost of the operation and hence are not always feasible options in smaller centres with poor patients. We describe a safe, low cost operation that involves the same equipment and instruments as the conventional laparoscopic cholecystectomy and draw conclusions on the steps to improve safety during the learning curve. Methods: The study was conducted on 35 patients who underwent Single Incision Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy out of 212 who underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy at a secondary level charitable hospital in Shillong, Meghalaya, India from November 2009 to March 2011. Results:  With careful case selection, single incision laparoscopic cholecystectomy was safely performed on 35 patients. 2 tall patients required an additional port in the epigastrium since the instruments were not long enough to comfortably reach the Calot's triangle. One patient developed a wound infection after 3 weeks and there were no other reported complications or incidence of hernia after 4 years. Conclusions:  With wise patient selection, proficiency in 3-port cholecystectomy, demonstration of the critical view of safety, proper placement of the ports and utilisation of standard laparoscopic instruments, single incision laparoscopic cholecystectomy can be safely performed without major complications and at no increased cost even in smaller hospitals without specialised training in the procedure.


This study focuses on the impact of R&D policies in Flanders. We conduct a treatment effects analysis at the firm level to investigate possible crowdingout effects on the input side of the innovation process. Different specifications of R&D activity are considered as outcome variables in the treatment effects analysis. Applying a non-parametric matching, we conclude that subsidized firms would have invested significantly less in R&D activities, on average, if they had not received public R&D funding. Thus, crowding-out effects can be rejected in this case.


the industry in this country and the American industrial revolution. This part is followed by a well-crafted discussion of the early technology of the industry and the resultant working conditions-described as being dehumanizing at best, and deadly at worst. Several chapters are devoted to the manner in which both miners and managers responded to the changes occurring in the burgeoning industry. The gradual shift from a mostly smallscale, craft-oriented industry, to an industry dominated by large enterprises employing production techniques depending less on skilled workers and more on technology, had many repercussions. Long explores the impact this evolution had on the miners, including its effects on their working conditions, their wages, and the relationships between skilled and unskilled labor. She also discusses events outside the mines that affected the mine worker's life-increased immigration, the emergence of mining communities, and the relationships between the various ethnic groups that came to populate those communities. The book also devotes attention to the organizations that miners formed to help them deal with the difficult circumstances accompanying the growth of the industry. Long examines the emergence and impact of the American Miners' Association and the Workingmen's Benevolent Association, two of the earliest groups formed by miners. The Knights of Labor and the National Federation of Miners and Mine Laborers are also discussed. Finally, the author details how the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) was formed to resolve the organizational chaos that had been the history of the miners' efforts toward collective action. This aspect of the story is completed with a discussion of mine owners' reactions to the efforts of miners to gain some control over their working lives, and the conflict and violence that ensued. The first part of the book is set in the eastern U.S. coalfields, with particular attention to the anthracite fields of Pennsylvania. Part 2 focuses on the industry in the West, specifically, the mines of the Rocky Mountain coalfields of Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah. Long makes the point that although the West and East differed geographically and in the characteristics of their coal miners, events in the West reflected national trends. To illustrate that point, she traces the development of the industry in the West, focusing on the significant part played by the large railroad companies and the important role coal had in bringing industrialization to that region. As in the East, the miners' lot quickly drove them to attempt to organize and engage in collective action; and, as in the East, coal management resisted with all the resources at its disposal. Long examines the coal strikes of 1901, 1903-4, and 1910. Special attention is given to the "Great Coalfield War" of 1913-14 that pitted the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Company against the fledgling UMWA and resulted in the infamous "Ludlow Massacre" of 1914. Interwoven in Long's discussion of the conflict that had become a way of life in this region are useful insights about the miners' communities, the roles played by women, and the attitudes and strategies of the mine owners. Also detailed is the disorganization and infighting that characterized the UMWA, a problem exacerbated by the presence of the more radical Western Federation of Miners. Long uses the examination of both the eastern and the western coal industries to illustrate the rise of industrial capitalism, including the birth of large corporations and conglomerates. The new values these enterprises brought to American society, and the degree to which these values were resisted, underlie virtually all of the story she tells. Clearly, events in the coal mining industry help illuminate what was going on in other regions and in other industries during the same period. The author successfully accomplishes her goal of synthesizing for the reader a very important and dramatic part of American history. The book is exhaustively researched, using a great deal of primary material. Although the book does not explore a lot of new territory, it does provide good coverage of a subject that previously might have taken a reader years to master. In this respect, it makes a worthwhile contribution. Readers should take note, however, that the subtitle of the book, A History of America's Bloody Coal Industry, is not an accurate description of the book's contents. Since Long covers only a limited period in the history of this industryfrom its origins through 1920-the title advertises more than the book delivers.


There have been invented innumerable chemical substances which enter living organisms, including humans. These may damage the liver, preserve the teeth, damage the fetus, induce cancers, cure trivial and serious diseases, destroy vermin, prolong life, increase the quality and quantity of the food supply, preserve the facade of youth for the aging and make instantaneous photographs in vibrant living color. When a chemical enters a living organism, the blood stream carries it along until it comes to rest in or on one or more of the various organ systems. An interaction between the chemical and a reactive component of the organ then occurs. The organ reacts and the chemical is changed; biotransformed. If the organ reaction is defined as injurious by any of several criteria, the chemical is characterized as toxic. This pharmacological toxicity differs from mechanical injury, such as burns and wounds, in several important respects. One of these is that there is usually a mathematical relation between the dose and the frequency of response of individuals within a group to that dose. Such relationships are lacking after mechanical injury. During the past few decades there has been an exponential increase in sophistication of instrumentation making possible large scientific advances. It is now possible to isolate and identify a specific chemical from all other ingredients in a soup and then to reliably measure its quantity in pico units. It is now possible to design and produce living systems with predetermined biochemical and structural characteristics from bacteria to hairless mice. It is now possible to develop mathematical and statistical models to analyze the most complex life processes ranging from the Michaelis-Menten equation to matrices. Unfortunately, along with these advances, there has not been an equally impressive increase in sophistication in toxicological theory and practice.


The subject of the research is the postmortem combined psychological and psychiatric forensic expertise in cases of juvenile suicide. The authors reveal the legal basis for conducting examinations of this type; the content of complexity signs; the specifics of the subject of forensic psychological, forensic psychiatric and combined forensic psychological and psychiatric expert examinations. They point out that the expertise under consideration is a necessary stage of investigation of criminal cases on a number of articles of the Criminal code of the Russian Federation, and the quality of the examination is directly related to truth-seeking and that this statement fully applies to criminal cases on the facts of juvenile suicide. In order to study the practice of setting and carrying out the expertise of this type in cases of juvenile suicide, the authors studied 30 acts of postmortem examinations obtained by random sampling. The article presents the analysis of typical questions that were put to the experts, and the recommendations on the optimal formulation of these questions in order to fully identify the circumstances that are important for the cases. The authors note that the situation is unsatisfactory when the complexity of the postmortem forensic psychological and psychiatric expertise, in fact, is replaced by a set of two examinations: psychological and psychiatric.


The Cardiovascular Risk Factors, Aging, and Dementia (CAIDE) risk score is used to assess the future risk of developing dementia based on cardiovascular risk factors. In this study, we compared the cognitive functions of participants with higher and lower risk of dementia assessed using CAIDE score, in the rural and urban Indian populations. Data was obtained from participants enrolled in the TATA Longitudinal Study of Aging (TLSA) and Srinivaspura Aging, Neuro Senescence, and COGnition (SANSCOG) study, which are two large, harmonized studies from urban and rural India, respectively.


Objective To examine the effects of a positive deviance intervention on dual-method contraceptive use among married or in-union women. Design Open-label cluster randomised controlled trial. Setting 20 health facilities in Mbarara District, Uganda. Participants 960 married or in-union women aged 18–49 years using a non-barrier modern contraceptive method. Interventions A combination of clinic-based and telephone-based counselling and a 1-day participatory workshop, which were developed based on a preliminary qualitative study of women practising dual-method contraception. Primary outcome measure Dual-method contraceptive use at the last sexual intercourse and its consistent use in the 2 months prior to each follow-up. These outcomes were measured based on participants' self-reports, and the effect of intervention was assessed using a mixed-effects logistic regression model. Results More women in the intervention group used dual-method contraception at the last sexual intercourse at 2 months (adjusted OR (AOR)=4.12; 95% CI 2.02 to 8.39) and 8 months (AOR=2.16; 95% CI 1.06 to 4.41) than in the control group. At 4 and 6 months, however, the proportion of dual-method contraceptive users was not significantly different between the two groups. Its consistent use was more prevalent in the intervention group than in the control group at 2 months (AOR=14.53; 95% CI 3.63 to 58.13), and this intervention effect lasted throughout the follow-up period. Conclusions The positive deviance intervention increased dual-method contraceptive use among women, and could be effective at reducing the dual risk of unintended pregnancies and HIV infections. This study demonstrated that the intervention targeting only women can change behaviours of couples to practise dual-method contraception. Because women using non-barrier modern contraceptives may be more reachable than men, interventions targeting such women should be recommended. Trial registration number UMIN000037065.


This paper presents a new variant of AdaBoost based on Viola and Jonespsila framework, called Z-AdaBoost. Instead of modifying the mechanism of selecting optimal weak classifiers as other variants do, Z-AdaBoost strengthens the discriminating power of weak classifiers themselves by expanding them into 2-thresholded ones, which guarantees a better classification with smaller error. And a linear online algorithm is adopted to select the optimal values for the 2 thresholds. The idea is simple as the bound on the accuracy of the final hypothesis improves when any of the weak hypotheses is improved. The experimental results under a rigid and objective detection criterion on MIT+CMU upright face test set show that Z-AdaBoost explores some potentially discriminative features that are ignored during the weak learning process in AdaBoost, resulting in a comparably effective detector with much fewer weak classifiers and features. The approach of Z-AdaBoost can be easily incorporated in other boosting algorithms to even improve their performance.


Abstract. A new meteorological dataset derived from records of Antarctic automatic weather stations (here called the AntAWS dataset) at 3 h, daily and monthly resolutions including quality control information is presented here. This dataset integrates the measurements of
air temperature, air pressure, relative humidity, and wind speed and
direction from 267 Antarctic AWSs obtained from 1980 to 2021. The AWS spatial distribution remains heterogeneous, with the majority of instruments
located in near-coastal areas and only a few inland on the East Antarctic Plateau. Among these 267 AWSs, 63 have been operating for more than 20 years and 27 of them in excess of more than 30 years. Of the five
meteorological parameters, the measurements of air temperature have the best
continuity and the highest data integrity. The overarching aim of this
comprehensive compilation of AWS observations is to make these data easily
and widely accessible for efficient use in local, regional and continental
studies; it may be accessed at https://doi.org/10.48567/key7-ch19 (Wang et al., 2022). This dataset is
invaluable for improved characterization of the surface climatology across
the Antarctic continent, to improve our understanding of Antarctic surface
snow–atmosphere interactions including precipitation events associated with atmospheric rivers and to evaluate regional climate models or
meteorological reanalysis products.


One of the new possibilities offered by EPIC architectures is to allow the compiler to direct the cache placement and replacement policy through cache hints. In this work, a method to generate these cache hints at compile time is presented. The generation of appropriate cache hints is based on the locality of the instructions they apply to, which is quantified by the reuse distance metric. Next to the static selection of the most appropriate cache hints, a dynamic selection of cache hints by predicates is proposed. The generation of static hints is based on a simple profiling scheme, while the dynamic selection is based on an analytical model of the programs cache behavior. The implementation of the static approach in the Open64compiler shows a speedup of 7% on average on a set of pointer-intensive and regular loop-based programs. The dynamic approach shows that for loop kernels, up to 35% reduction in cache misses can be attained. Furthermore, the dynamic selection allows to remove almost twice as many cache misses as statically selected cache hints.


This paper describes a case study on basic EFL courses for freshmen and sophomore students at Kansai University of International Studies conducted in 2018. First, it examines previous studies on e-learning and then discusses the questions they raise. Finally, it suggests the efficiency of blended learning, a combination of face-to-face and online learning methods, in BYOD environments. The study concludes that this is an efficient approach to close the gap between the current situations and instructors' growing demands in higher education.


Abstract Objective. The introduction of stage-independent prognostic markers may play a significant role in future selection for adjuvant treatment for early-stage colorectal cancer (CRC). The purpose of this study was to assess the combination of preoperative serum carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and plasma tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases (TIMP)-1 as a prognostic index in patients with primary, curatively resected CRC. Material and methods. Blood samples were collected before surgery from 422 patients with CRC stage I–III (Dukes' stage A–C). CEA was determined in serum by a routine analysis and TIMP-1 was determined in plasma using a validated in-house enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Disease-free survival (DFS) was registered and its associations with serum CEA and plasma TIMP-1 levels were studied using a Cox multivariate model. Hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) for DFS were calculated. Results. An event was recorded in 186 patients: 75 had local recurrence, 75 had distant metastases, 28 had both local recurrence and distant metastases, and 36 died from their cancer without a registered recurrence. Scoring CEA and TIMP-1 as continuous variables on a logarithmic scale, serum CEA and plasma TIMP-1 were statistically significant in a multivariate analysis with HR = 1.1 (95% CI 1.0–1.2) and HR = 1.5 (95% CI 1.1–2.0), respectively. The two serological markers could be combined to form a prognostic index adjusted for baseline variables. This index showed a 51% increase in HR for a given CEA level if the TIMP-1 level was doubled. Conclusions. Preoperative serum CEA and plasma TIMP-1 levels are independent predictors of DFS in patients with primary resectable CRC. In combination these two proteins could form an index for the assessment of risk of disease recurrence in early-stage CRC.


In this article has been discussed the matter of unemployment among people who are more than 50 years old and are registered in the Podkarpackie Province. The categories of the unemployed belonging to the mentioned age group have undergone a detailed survey and they have been compared to thestructure of the unemployed population in the Podkarpackie Province. The changes the categories of the unemployed 50+ were affected by in the period of 2010-2015 have also been included. The analyses have been supported by the data available from official statistical reporting, especially obtained from the resources of the Central Statistical Office (GUS), including the Local Data Bank and the Economic Activity Survey (BAEL). In the analytic process basic statistical methods have been used and the results have been presented in tables.The time range of analyses is 2010-2015. The Podkarpackie Province is an example of the labour market which is characterised by,in relation to the Polish standards, a high unemployment rate and unfavourable structure of unemployment duration.One fifth of the unemployed registered here arepeople in their 50s and older. The analyses present this category of the unemployed as a community relatively poorly educated and remaining unemployed for a long time, and constantly growing. The data presented in this article will be a basis for a research project planned for 2016, to be carried out on a sample of the unemployed 50+ of the Podkarpackie Province. The analysis may also be useful while developing detailed programmes and projects aimed at professionalactivation of people in their 50s and older by state and private labour market subjects.


In the second half of the 1970s, Lloyd J. Old and his group at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) discovered the first human cancer antigens by establishing an approach called "autologous typing." The key preconditions of these discoveries were improvements in establishing human cancer cell lines from fresh tissue specimens and cultures from autologous healthy tissues, including fibroblasts and epithelial cells from different organs, as well as Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-transformed B lymphocytes.

Based on the assumption that cancer cells are recognized by the immune system and thus elicit a cellular and humoral immune response, we postulated that serum and T cells from cancer patients may be used as tools to identify immunogenic tumor-associated antigens. Because methods to generate T cell lines and clones in vitro were not established yet, the first experiments to discover tumor-associated antigens were performed with patients' sera that were pre-absorbed extensively with autologous, allogeneic, and xenogeneic healthy cells. Subsequently, such sera were incubated with autologous cancer cells, which resulted in the discovery of a larger series of new human cancer antigens in different types of cancer like melanoma, leukemia, renal cell, brain, and others (1). As antibodies against these newly discovered cell surface antigens of human cancer generally were present in a rather low concentration, attempts to boost humoral immune responses in vivo were undertaken by vaccination with in vitro-expanded and lethally irradiated autologous cancer cells.

In the midst of these studies, a new era was ushered in when Georges Kohler and Cesar Milstein developed a method to immortalize antibody-producing B cells (hybridomas) for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1984 together with Niels Jerne (2). This new technique enabled the production of an unlimited amount of antibodies with a known and single specificity and opened a Pandora's Box for the discovery of multiple cell surface antigens in cancer and other tissues. The hope for antibodies as therapeutic reagents dominated the decade to follow.

In the late 1970s, methods to expand cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) after antigenic stimulation in vitro were developed (3, 4), which enabled the search for tumor-associated antigens that are recognized by T cells. One major advantage of T cells over antibodies as a discovery tool is that T cells also recognize antigens that are not expressed on the cell surface.

We initially focused on melanoma because we had established autologous sets of tumor cells and T cells mainly from this group of patients. At MSKCC, we started with a patient named A.V. who had stage IV disease (SK-MEL-29) and had been subjected to multiple surgical interventions without ever achieving tumor-free surgical margins. From the blood of this patient, we established T cell cultures that were reactive to autologous SK-MEL-29 melanoma cells in vitro. With the tools available at the time, an extensive specificity analysis was done showing tumor-restricted reactivity at the clonal level (5). Because A.V. had the strongest autologous T cell reactivity of a total of 13 melanoma patients, whom we extensively studied over the following years, we interpreted the fact that he was alive and free of disease for more than 30 years after his initial diagnosis by cancer immune surveillance.


Objectives The purpose of the current survey was to investigate the attitude of patients towards smoking and their knowledge of smoking as a risk factor for periodontal disease and dental implants. Methods The subjects were new 1,585 patients who visited the clinic of the Tokyo Medical and Dental University Hospital from January to December 2012 for an oral implant. The methodology included a questionnairesurvey about smoking status for the recognition of smoking as a risk factor for periodontal disease and dental implants and the Kano Test for Social Nicotine Dependence(KTSND). Results The response number was 1,159 respondents(response rate, 73%). Smoking was recognized as a risk factor for periodontal disease by 621 patients(59%)and as a risk factor for dental implants by 234 patients (23%). The KTSND scores of the patients with knowledge of smoking as a risk factor for periodontal disease(621 patients, 59%)and for dental implants(234 patients, 23%)were significantly lower than those of the patients without knowledge of smoking as a risk factor for periodontal disease and for dental implants, respectively. Discussion The recognition of smoking as a risk factor for periodontal disease and dental implants had an influence on the smoking status and attitude. Conclusion In order to increase the recognition of smoking as a risk factor for periodontal disease and dental implants, the informed consent process and patient education must be improved.


Objectives: We hypothesized that the increase in ankle-brachial index (ABI) with age occurs as a result of increasing arterial stiffness and wave reflection. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between ABI and incident hypertension in a screened cohort. Methods: We analyzed the data of 1344 participants without hypertension at baseline who underwent ABI measurement by an automatic oscillometric method at least twice with an interval of over a period of 36 months at health checkup, the baseline measurement in 2008–2010 and the second one in 2011–2015. Participants with ABI ⩽0.9 (n = 3) and ABI ≥1.4 (n = 1) were excluded. Hypertension was defined as systolic pressure ≥140 mmHg and/or diastolic pressure ≥90 mmHg in the supine position and/or use of antihypertensive medications. Results: Mean age of participants was 51 ± 10 yeas, with a range of 19–80 years, and 55% were women. ABI was lowest in participants aged less than 40 years, and increased with age in both sexes. At the second visit (median 47 months follow-up period), 224 (17%) participants developed hypertension. Baseline ABI was positively correlated with the rates of change in brachial systolic pressure and incident hypertension. Compared with participants with the lowest quartile of baseline ABI, the adjusted odds ratio for incident hypertension was higher in participants with the highest quartile of baseline ABI before and after multivariate adjustment for age, sex, baseline systolic pressure, heart rate, brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity (baPWV), BMI, prevalence of diabetes, dyslipidemia, and low eGFR (<60 ml/min/1.73m2) (odds ratio 2.1, 95% confidence interval 1.19 to 3.61, P = 0.010). Conclusion: Baseline ABI was positively and independently associated with the rate of SBP change and incident hypertension.


Nuanced understanding and the generation of detailed descriptive content for (bimanual) manipulation actions in videos is important for disciplines such as robotics, human-computer interaction, and video content analysis. This study describes a novel method, integrating graph based modeling with layered hierarchical attention mechanisms, resulting in higher precision and better comprehensiveness of video descriptions. To achieve this, we encode, first, the spatio-temporal inter dependencies between objects and actions with scene graphs and we combine this, in a second step, with a novel 3-level architecture creating a hierarchical attention mechanism using Graph Attention Networks (GATs). The 3-level GAT architecture allows recognizing local, but also global contextual elements. This way several descriptions with different semantic complexity can be generated in parallel for the same video clip, enhancing the discriminative accuracy of action recognition and action description. The performance of our approach is empirically tested using several 2D and 3D datasets. By comparing our method to the state of the art we consistently obtain better performance concerning accuracy, precision, and contextual relevance when evaluating action recognition as well as description generation. In a large set of ablation experiments we also assess the role of the different components of our model. With our multi-level approach the system obtains different semantic description depths, often observed in descriptions made by different people, too. Furthermore, better insight into bimanual hand-object interactions as achieved by our model may portend advancements in the field of robotics, enabling the emulation of intricate human actions with heightened precision.


This paper proposes a hardware pipelining processor for single-threads with granularity of code block.It makes use of compile technique to parallel program and divides program into blocks.Some blocks are arranged to be executed at processor's idle units to improve performance.The processor needs compiler support,but has less of modification to primary processor.Results show that spec2000 test program gets 40% performance improvement after using this processor.


The aim of this work was to improve the solubility and dissolution of the poorly water soluble ketoprofen(KP) using natural solubilizers, The physical mixture(PM) and lyophilized solid dispersion(LSD) of drug were prepared using different carriers namely shark bile salts(S.B) , fresh water fish(Tilabia nilotica) bile salts(F) , polysorbate 80(P.S) and sodium lauryl sulphate(SLS) . The solubility and dissolution of KP in distilled water were investigated as a function of solubilizer concentration(0-3%w/w) in the prepared PMs and LSDs . In a concentration of 2%w/w solubilizer , the drug solubility and dissolution were improved dramatically. In LSDs the solubility increased from 14 mg/ml to 81 mg/ml and 63 mg/ml when using shark bile and polysorbate 80 respectively . Dissolution was found to be a function of solubility especially in case of natural solubilizers and polysorbate 80 . Simple and mixed micellar solubilization was the main mechanism suggested for the increased solubility and dissolution of the drug. Results were confirmed by surface tension measurements of the aqueous solution of the plain drug , its PM and LSD . DSC , IR and XRPD studies suggested possible interactions between KP and some of the used solubilizers. The results suggested that shark bile salts revealed promising technique in enhancing the solubility and dissolution of the poorly water soluble drugs as KP and application in the field of dosage form design in digestive therapy. The kinetic study revealed that , the drug release from all formulations followed zero order kinetics.


The relative chemotherapeutic effectiveness of 1,19-trimethylene bis(4-formylpyridinium) dioxime (TMB-4) and 2-pyridinium aldoxime inethiodide (2-PAM) as adjuvants to atropine in the treatment of rats poisoned with anticholinesterases has been studied. TMB-4 was found to be superior to 2-PAM when used prophylactically against sarin and therapeutically against the above agent as well as tabun, DFP and TEPP. The rapid rate of reactivation of eel cholinesterase (inactivated by the above agents), when incubated with TMB-4, suggests that reactivation of inhibited cholinesterase may be part of the mechanism of chemotherapeutic action of this oxime.


Shield tunnel construction is a very complex process, people used many different analysis systems to improve the quality and safety of shield tunnel construction, but as these systems may be heterogeneous and the traditional analysis method depend on the typical projects lack of response capabilities and the actual process of constantly capacity. People cannot share data in these systems to perform much more accuracy dynamic analysis about shield tunnel construction, In term of the problem that how to perform dynamic analysis for tunnel construction in the heterogeneous data environment, we provided the method of middleware-based integration heterogeneous data and multi-model based dynamic analysis mechanism, based on the new method, we have designed and implemented a dynamic analysis system to ensure the safety of the tunnel construction and the surrounding environment, it also provide technical support to improve the quality of the project.


M SIL is among the top 5 FMCG companies in the edible/non-edible oil seg ment, with its main focus on a high-volume and low-margin strategy. Its growth has largely hinged on the 15 kg/lt. tin pack. The company is now targeting the lower, middle and upper middle class segments of the society. Edible oils are considered high involvement products and thus, perceptions toward brand and referrals strongly influence purchase decisions. The 'Popular' brand of MSIL was not so popular despite the fact that they targeted the lower , middle, and upper-middle income groups. Among other edible oils, palm oil, soyabean oil, and mustard oil are the three largely consumed oils in India. In order to bridge the gap between demand and supply of edible oils, imports constitute 45-50 percent of the total oil consumption. The kirana stores account for 70 percent of the edible oil annual sales, which amounts to severe competition and marginal profits. Packaged sales of MSIL account for 38 percent of the total edible oil sales whereas it is about 58 percent and 60 percent respectively for AWL and Cargill India. Overall, MSIL has an 18 percent market share. The Moksh brand (mustard oil) is priced lower than the largest player in the market. Due to low pricing strategy, the profit margin is comparatively low. Swaad constitutes 50 percent of the total sales in the Popular category. Consumer awareness regarding Swaad (palmolein) is insufficient, leading to low returns. Safal (soyabean oil), another product with low awareness is being sold through the local kirana, general stores, and wholesale outlets. MSIL Delhi sales team comprised 11 salespeople as compared to a team of 50 salespeople with the largest competitor. Ninety percent of the raw materials were expected to arrive from Indonesia and Malaysia. The challenge before Mr Arnab Dasgupta, Head North Zone of 'Popular' product division of MSIL, is the expansion of the Popular product line to achieve a market share of 25 percent or more in the North Zone within two years. An approval budget of ̀ 4 crore was specified to achieve the The current issue of Vikalpa has published a Case, Mehta Soya: A Promotional Conundrum. This Diagnoses features an analysis of the Case by Gurjeet Kaur and Anil Gupta. presents analyses of the management case by academicians and practitioners D I A G N O S E S I Mehta Soya: A Promotional Conundrum


In this paper we describe a method for calculation of axisymmetric motion of a solid body in the Bingham medium under the influence of gravity. The two-dimensional flow field is conformally mapped on a rectangle. The model of Bingham medium is regularized and thus reduced to the description of motion of a non-Newtonian liquid with viscosity that specifically depends on the second invariant of the strain rate tensor. An example of calculation for a body with an elliptic shape is given.


The latest report of the National Center for Education Statistics (2018) showed that 33 7% of postsecondary students in the United States were enrolled in at least one online course in 2017 Social cognitive models highlight motivational factors and the interrelationship among students' beliefs and their use of learning strategies in these highly independent learning situations (Pintrich, 1999;Zimmerman, 2000) [ ]social cognitive models emphasize the influence of social and environmental factors on students' personal beliefs, associated behaviors, and academic success in online education (Pintrich, 2000;Richardson & Swan, 2003;Zimmerman, 2000) According to Zimmerman and Moylan (2009), general self-control strategies include self-instruction, imagery, time management, environmental structuring, help-seeking methods, interest incentives, and self-consequences [ ]students demonstrated several significant adaptations of SRL strategies that were unique to the web-based learning environment such as planning for technical problems, accessing technical expertise, creating a psychological place for class, better use of time and environment management skills, using student postings and exemplary assignments as models, and frequent checks of online gradebook and note-taking (Hsu et al , 2009;Igo et al , 2005;Puzziferro, 2008;Whipp & Chiarelli, 2004)


This paper presents the detailed development of a multiphase model to predict the behavior of terrain-induced slugging, influenced by the viscous effects and hilly terrain.Currently, high viscosity heavy crude oil represents most of the available fossil resources. This crude flows inside long and expensive pipelines, usually over hilly terrain, causing the formation of slug flow. A very common flow pattern produces critical effects on pipelines in terms of modelling, mechanical stress, induced oscillations, fatigue, production losses, and other negative effects for the system. An accurate characterization of this pattern may give critical data for the mechanical design of piping systems and provide valuable information for the downstream process equipment selection.At present, most of the existing models to predict the behavior of slug flow neglect relevant parameters such as the effect of liquid viscosity and the effect of topographic terrain profile. The objective of this study is to present a mechanistic fluid model to determine the behavior of slug flow affected by the hilly terrain using viscous fluids. The model predicts the four stages of slug flow proposed by Schmidt et al. [1], and extends these stages to hilly terrain systems. The model is valid for a wide range of fluid viscosities and considers a range of pipe inclinations between 0° and 90°. Model validation with available literature and experimental data, shows a maximum deviation of 6%.Copyright © 2014 by ASME


AbstractThin hard coatings deposited by chemical vapour deposition (CVD) techniques on to various substrate materials lead to considerable improvement in the tribological and corrosion behaviour of coated components, provided that suitable residual stresses are present. The distinction between deposition induced intrinsic and thermally induced residual stresses in coated parts is well accepted. Thermal stresses were introduced into the coating–substrate compound upon cooling to room temperature from the high temperatures applied in CVD processes. The resulting residual stress states, which affect the mechanical and tribological behaviour of the coatings, are attributed to the different thermal expansion coefficients of substrate materials and hard coatings. The calculation of residual stresses in CVD hard coatings often differs from the experimentally examined stresses measured by X-ray diffraction. The development of residual stresses in steel substrates coated with CVD TiCN was studied in situ while hea...


This article is about the deaf education methods debate in the public schools of Toronto, Canada. The author demonstrates how pure oralism (lip-reading and speech instruction to the complete exclusion of sign language) and day school classes for deaf schoolchildren were introduced as a progressive school reform in 1922. Plans for further oralist reforms in 1945 brought significant opposition from a deaf political organisation – the Ontario Association of the Deaf (OAD). The author situates the Toronto battle over methods between progressive educators and deaf people in the longer historical and larger transnational context of debates over oral and manual methods. The author's examination of the Toronto methods debate raises and answers crucial critical questions about the contested nature of progressive school reforms by examining grassroots responses to reform. The author also places significant emphasis on the effects of reforms on deaf young people who received instruction. The pure oralist method was never as successful for deaf young people as oralists claimed it could be. Yet deaf youngsters felt more ambivalent about the methods than hearing school officials and parents, and deaf adults, did. Historical issues in deaf education that the author examines continue to be controversial today.


In the light of opposing views on the existence of collective women's experience and rising support for the idea of the category of "woman" as one that changes over time, it becomes interesting to consider the methodology which assumes the existence of a collective women's experience. Keeping in mind ideas propounded by theorists to determine the meaning of social category of "woman", the paper explores women's experiences in terms of three selected components: economic involvement, religion rights, and women's power and gender. Thus it is concluded that 1. women from spatial area under research had different experiences in domains of their economic inclusion and regarding their opportunities to hold political power and influential position within the family. 2. However, there are indisputable features that common to women in the mentioned geographical and time frame. 3. The third conclusion stems from the to mentioned: that the theories assuming existence of women's collective experience are partially valid and need to be applied with care due to the two above mentioned conclusions.


The purpose of this book is to present the biochemical under-pinnings on which a great number of clinical procedures are based, both in diagnosis and as a guide to therapy. On that score it is superb. The present edition does not differ basically from the splendid third edition, except that it is updated from 1964. One of my favorite topics, carbohydrate metabolism, did indeed require updating due to recent changes in our understanding of diabetes, insulin, etc. The orientation is predominantly clinical, but it offers sufficient data on basic mechanisms to give the subject wholeness. The emphasis is on the practical that may be encountered any day. For example, Hoffman does not take space to argue whether hypoglycemia is or is not a clinical entity, but he outlines briefly its varieties or types and what actually happens. In the same fashion, he presents blood clotting, diabetes, and several other phenomena


Question 1: Dr. Aisenstein, in your opening remarks, you refer to Freud's concept of a primary identification that precedes object cathexis. This idea is less familiar, and so less salient clinically, to Anglophone readers than it is to French analysts. North Americans are more attuned to identifications that follow object loss or at least the awareness of difference. As a result, your statement that "the process of identification opens the way to otherness" is perplexing; we are more likely to emphasize ways in which identification solves the problem of otherness. Could you elaborate your understanding of the dynamics of these two types of identification and say something about how you work with them clinically?


Background: Sensory neural hearing loss (SNHL) is the most common congenital sensory deficit, with an incidence of one to three per 1000 live births. Acoustic deprivation during the first 3 years of life can hinder speech and language acquisition with significant negative consequences on a child's educational and psychosocial development. The gold standard intervention for permanent severe to profound hearing loss is cochlear implantation. Cochlear implant (CI); is a semi implantable electronic device that bypass the cochlea. Objectives: An observational study was carried out on 40 cases of pre-lingual deaf to find out the causes of pre-lingual deaf, to evaluate the preoperative procedures to set ideal criteria for pre -lingual cochlear implantation and to evaluate surgical procedure and outcome of cochlear implantations. Methods: Evaluation of the candidates included patient medical history, general health checkup, ENT examination, audiometric evaluation, CT and MRI scans, psychological profile of the candidate. A limited cortical mastoidectomy was performed. The facial recess was opened using the fossa of incudis as an initial landmark. The round window niche was visualized through the facial recess about 2 mm inferior to the stapes. A cochleostomy created by drilling over the basal turn of the cochlea anterior and inferior to the annulus of the round window membrane. The electrode array was then carefully inserted through the fenestra into the scala tympani of the cochlea. Electrophysiological testing (Neural Response Telemetry: NRT) was performed to verify the correct placement of active electrodes. Resulst: Among them 22 (55%) were male and 18 (45%) were female. Male female ratio was 1.2:1. Age distribution at implantation was 3.3±1.054(SD). Average hearing loss was 96.4±5.3(SD) dB and in aided audiogram was 63.7±4.6(SD) dB. Overall complications 1. Associate Professor, National Institute of ENT, Dhaka. 2. Registrar, National Institute of ENT, Dhaka. 3. Assistant Professor, National Institute of ENT, Dhaka. 4. Medical Officer, National Institute of ENT, Dhaka. 5. Research Officer, National Institute of ENT, Dhaka. 6. Assistant Registrar, National Institute of ENT, Dhaka. 7. Professor and Director, National Institute of ENT, Dhaka Address of correspondence: Dr. Zakaria Sarker, Associate Professor, National Institute of ENT, Dhaka Mobile no: 01819157287, E-mail: email@example.com


Models phrased through moment conditions are central to much of modern inference. Here these moment conditions are embedded within a non‐parametric Bayesian set‐up. Handling such a model is not probabilistically straightforward as the posterior has support on a manifold. We solve the relevant issues, building new probability and computational tools by using Hausdorff measures to analyse them on real and simulated data. These new methods, which involve simulating on a manifold, can be applied widely, including providing Bayesian analysis of quasi‐likelihoods, linear and non‐linear regression, missing data and hierarchical models.


Abstract An efficient optimization method was used to separate catechin compounds by RP‐HPLC. In this work, the binary mobile phase of water and acetonitrile was used with the buffer of acetic acid (AA). The elution profiles were calculated by the plate theory based on the linear and quadratic equations of retention factor, lnk=Ink w +SF, lnk=L+MF+NF 2, k=A+B/F, where F was the vol.% of acetonitrile. We modified the retention theory to calculate the elution profile in both isocratic and gradient modes. The final calculated results showed that the first mobile phase composition was water in 0.1% AA/acetonitrile in 0.1% AA, 90/10 vol.%, followed 30 min later by the second composition of mobile phase, which was linearly changed to 70/30 vol.%. In the experimental conditions, the agreement between the experimental data and the calculated values was relatively good. Catechin compounds from Korean and Chinese green tea as potential powers of anticancer and antioxidant components were target materials in this work. The full content of the catechin compounds of EGC, (+) C, EC, EGCG, and ECG in Chinese green tea extracted was 249.92 mg/g, so it was 2.15 times of that from Korean tea.


Poster: "ECR 2011 / C-0037 / The role of US for the diagnosis of clinically suspected abdominal bleeding in the major trauma patients" by: "A. D. Hilendarov, K. G. Velkova; Plovdiv/BG"


The balance between Th17 and Tregs influences the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases. The active form of vitamin D, 1α,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3, was shown to exert anti-inflammatory effect. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of vitamin D on the differentiation of naïve and total CD4+ T cells into pathogenic Th17 subset and regulatory T cells ex-vivo in healthy controls, and to characterize their phenotype and its modulation by vitamin D. Purified naïve and total CD4+ T cells were activated in Th17 and Treg polarizing conditions in the presence or absence of 1,25(OH)2D3 for 6 days. Cells were processed for multiparameter staining and flow cytometry, and cell culture supernatants were reserved for cytokine quantitation by cytometric bead array for IL-17A, IL-10, IL-6, TNF-α, IL-2, IFN-γ, and IL-4. In Th17 cell cultures, overall expression of CCR6 and the percentage of CCR6+IL-17A+CD4+ T cells is decreased with Vitamin D. Interestingly, IL-23R and IL-23R+IL-17A+ cells, as well as IL-17+IFN-γ+ cells associated with pathogenic Th17 cells are reduced, while Foxp3+ cells are increased. In the presence of vitamin D, Treg polarized CD4+ T cells upregulated CD25 and CTLA4 expression but not Foxp3. Foxp3 expression was reduced in both CD25hi and CD25lo cells. Cytokine analysis by CBA and Treg suppression assays are underway. Results obtained thus far point to an effect for Vitamin D in reducing pathogenic Th17 cells, and modulating the induction of regulatory T cells.


This paper is dedicated to the study of the kernel of the "compact motivization" functor $M_{k}^c:SH^c(k)\to DM^c(k)$ (i.e., we try to describe those compact objects of $SH(k)$ whose associated motives vanish. Moreover, we study the question when the $m$-connectivity of $M^c_{k}(E)$ ensures the $m$-connectivity of $E$ itself (with respect to the corresponding homotopy t-structures). We prove that the kernel of $M_{k}^c$ vanishes and the corresponding "connectivity detection" statement is also valid if and only if $k$ is a non-orderable field; this is an easy consequence of the corresponding results of T. Bachmann (who considered the case where the $2$-adic cohomological dimension of $k$ is finite). We also sketch a deduction of these statements from the "slice-convergence" results of M. Levine. Moreover, for a general $k$ we prove that this kernel does not contain any $2$-torsion; the author also suspects that all its elements are odd torsion. Besides we prove that the kernel in question consists exactly of "infinitely effective" (in the sense of Voevodsky's slice filtration) objects of $SH^c(k)$ (assuming that the exponential characteristic of $k$ is inverted in the coefficient ring).
These result allow (following another idea of Bachmann) to carry over his results on the tensor invertibility of certain motives of affine quadrics to the corresponding motivic spectra whenever $k$ is non-orderable. We also generalize a theorem of A. Asok.


This research is an action research which aims at describing student's ability in listening skill. The population was the 8th grade students of SMPN 15 Mataram. The sample was the 8th grade students of class D. The researcher used songs and observation student's sheets to obtain the required data. It was found that there was a progress in gaining the score in listening to song from cycle 1 to cycle 2. In cycle 1 the total score for the student's achievement in listening to song is 30% and in cycle 2 students gained score 6.5 is 92.5%. Then the achievement of KKM is also increased from cycle 1 to cycle 2. In cycle 1 the students who have achieved the KKM are 12 students (30%) and in cycle 2 the students who have achieved the KKM are 37 students (92.5%). It is clear that the students listening skill can be improved by using English songs.


[13C-carboxyl]Salicylic acid has been prepared by carbonation of 2-benzyloxybromobenzene followed by reductive debenzylation. Deuterium and tritium labelled salicylic acid and 2H2/13C-salicylic acid were prepared by reduction of the 3,5-dibromo derivatives using Raney Ni-Al. Deuterium labelled salicylic acid containing up to four deuterium atoms was prepared by catalytic exchange with Raney Ni-Al in 5% NaOD/D2O.


We compare entire weak solutions $u$ and $v$ of quasilinear partial
differential inequalities on $R^n$ without any assumptions
on their behaviour at infinity and show among other things, that
they must coincide if they are ordered, i.e. if they satisfy $u\geq
v$ in $R^n$. For the particular case that $v\equiv 0$ we
recover some known Liouville type results. Model cases for the
equations involve the $p$-Laplacian operator for $p\in[1,2]$ and the
mean curvature operator.


Post harvest losses in fresh fruits may occur anywhere from the point where the food has been harvested or gathered up to the point of consumption. Peach ripen and senescence rapidly at ambient temperatures and require carefull and rapid handling of fruit after harvest to avoid serious losses. Due to the increase in fruit production practical methods of packing and storage are necessary to improve post harvest quality of fruits during cold storage and self-life. The objective of this research was to evaluate the storage pretability of two peach cultivars using two films types and low temperatures. Fruits were analyzed for various physico-chemical characters like fruit firmness, colour, fresh weight, total soluble solids, titratable acidity. Modified atmosphere in both unperforated and perforated bags were associated with lower weight loss, absence of decay, gradual decreased of acoustic firmness, insignificantly modification of colour and balanced taste of fruit.


Follmring ihe law of stress adopted in the Narier-Stokes equations, the configuration of [he riscmis jlvw in planes at right angles to the am"~of an in$nite cylind(r is found to be indep(nde nt of the am.al motion of z%ecylinder. In the .limi~ing case o-fa yawed or szrept wing of M-Y high asped ra~w, certain bvunclary-[aycr and separation phenomena are thus determined i)idep(ndenily by the crosswise component of relocity. It fol10UWlhat the e~ect of suvepback is fo increase fhe area of stable laminar j70w and to decrease the lift coefficient at zchich jlow separation occurs. INTRODUCTION


Recently developed mid-IR LED non-dispersive gas analyzers can replace conventional infrared gas monitors. The advantages of novel analyzers are compact size, fast response and low power consumption. InAsSb(P)- and InGaAs(Sb)-based LEDs developed and manufactured at Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute suit for optical gas sensing well because of narrow emission band and the possibility of making LED emission peak spectrally matched with the gas absorption maximum. We present estimations of gas detection limits for LED based optical sensors, sensor head constructions and some experimental results for CO2 and CH4 detectors based on LED-PbSe photoresistor and LED - InAs photodiode optopairs.


Mycotoxins are naturally occurring toxic, small chemical compounds (MW ~700) that are produced as secondary metabolites by certain fungi contaminating food and feed, during crop growth or processing products. These compounds "once consumed by animals and/or humans" may lead to mycotoxicosis with symptoms of intoxication, causing substantial effects on animal and human health. According to the United Nations of Food and Agriculture Organization report, 25% of the word's food is significantly contaminated with mycotoxins. These contaminations can be occurred directly or indirectly. Indirect contamination of food and feed can take place when an ingredient have been previously contaminated with toxin producing fungi, while the fungi may be killed or removed during processing, the mycotoxin remains in the final product. Direct contaminations occur when the product is infected with toxigenic fungus inducing toxin liberation at different stage from the transformation process. Currently, more than 300 mycotoxins are known, and scientific interest is mainly on those that have been proven to be carcinogenic and/or toxic. These toxins include but not limited to ochratoxins (OT), aflatoxins (AF), tremorgenic toxins trichothecenes, fumonisins (F), patulin (P), zearalenone (ZON) and ergot alkaloids. The economic impact of mycotoxins includes perturbation of human and animal health, increased health care and veterinary costs, reduced livestock production, disposal of contaminated foods and feeds, and investment in research and applications to reduce severity. For these reasons, worldwide toxin contamination of foods and feeds presents a significant problem. In 1993, the WHO-International Agency of Research on Cancer (WHO-IARC, 1993) evaluated the carcinogenic potential of OT, AF, F, ZON, and trichothecenes. Naturally occurring AF was classified as a carcinogenic to human (Group 1) while OT and F were considered as possible carcinogens (Group 2B) with trichothecenes and ZON as non carcinogenic for human (Group 3). The European Commission has set maximum levels for these mycotoxins to protect human and animal health. To minimize the mycotoxins presence in the food supply, and to design strategies that would prevent contaminated commodities from entering food and feed processing facilities, attention must be focused on the methods of preventing mycotoxins formation at all levels of food chain. To meet this purpose, testing of the commodities is required to accomplish this Proceeding of the 9 th ICEE Conference 3-5 April 2018 SMD Military Technical College Kobry El-Kobbah, Cairo, Egypt 9 th International Conference on Chemical & Environmental Engineering 3-5 April 2018 441 process. This involves sample preparation and analysis using a quality testing procedure, which requires complicated and complex instrumentation, and qualified skilled person. In this context, an overview of recent progress in the domain of mycotoxins, their occurrence and detection in food and feed will be presented. The discussion will be particularly emphasized on the (bio) sensor and bioassays designs described for OTA, AF and ZON detection, as these biosensors architects provide general platform, and are also applied for the detection of other mycotoxins. BAE-LBBM USR CNRS 376, Université de Perpignan Via domitia, 52 avenue Paul Alduy 66860 Perpignan Cedex France Tel : +33 68662254 or +33 616814591 Fax: +33 468662223 E-mail : firstname.lastname@example.com


Abstract. A state-of-the-art compact Low-Energy X-ray Reflectometer is in operation at DTU Space and is used to characterize x-ray coatings for the optics of future spaceborne and ground-based telescopes. The reflectometer is housed in a vacuum chamber and operates at 1.487 keV, complimenting an existing 8.048 keV reflectometer. With a microfocus source and plane-parabolic Kirkpatrick–Baez mirrors, the 0.5-mm wide beam is collimated to <0.75 arcmin. An actively cooled 2D CCD yields sample alignment precision of 26  μm in linear position and 0.18 arcmin in angle. A multilayer monochromator provides a peak reflectance of 43.5% and beam purity > 99  %  . The reflectometer has a 2θ range of 0 deg to 35 deg and dynamic range up to eight orders of magnitude. Techniques are demonstrated to investigate the sample surface morphology and we show the system's capability to detect the presence of atmospheric contaminants on coated mirrors.


Number information plays an important role in many Chinese natural language processing tasks. Different from English, Chinese does not explicitly show grammatical number information by inflection. Mostly existing number type identification methods for Chinese personal noun phrases are based on rules, some machine learning-based methods explore diverse features, including both flat and structured to train the classification models. However, the unbalanced data between different classes in the problem of personal noun phrases number type identification leads to the low classification accuracy in the small sample class. In this paper, we propose a Piece-wise Linear Support Vector Machine(PL-SVM) method to divide the large number class into N parts, and train the local linear SVM to construct classification boundary and fit the train data, to improve the classification accuracy in small sample class. Experiments on ACE2005 show that our method can not only achieves better performance on large number class, but also improves the classification accuracy on small number class, which makes up the flaw of traditional methods in some extent. Furthermore, the experiment results show that our method can improve the resolution accuracy when it is implemented in Chinese coreference resolution.


Abstract A crucial problem of any steady-state fusion reactor is removal of the plasma exhaust. In this addendum to the paper "About a New Fusion Reactor Scheme" [Fusion Sci. Technol., Vol. 75, p. 197 (2019)], we analyze the possibility of achieving this goal in the fusion reactor scheme by using a model C stellarator type of divertor.


A DRUG DELIVERY DEVICE intradermal comprising a housing (301A, 301B) with a medicament reservoir (312) and a chamber gas generation (313) SEPARATED BY A SLIDING TANK MEMBRANA (311). ELECTROLITICA a cell controlled by a microprocessor (316A, 316B, 319) PROVIDES GAS TO EXPAND GAS generation chamber (313) and thus contracting the reservoir (312). A HOLLOW (110) NEEDLE communicating at an inner end with the reservoir (312) extending from a bottom surface (308) of the housing (301) so that contraction TANK FORCE THE MEDICATION TO ESCAPE THE SAME A through the needle (310). DEVICE ALLOWS DRUG DELIVERY MOLECULAR WEIGHT CONTROLLED relatively high A LOW INDICES. PROTECTIVE COVERAGE SCROLLABLE (303) is mounted on a mechanism (307) to allow movement thereof (303) between extended positions and withdrawn (305.306). COVER (303) having an adhesive bottom surface (309) for attachment to the skin of a subject. When used, it follows CASING, the device is pressed against the skin and coverage (303) returns to its retracted position (306) and NEEDLE PIERCING (310) SKIN. After use, CASING (301) is pulled back and cover (303) returns to the EXTENDED (306) before it is detached from the skin and covering the needle (310) before disposal.


The article stated the development of leisure agriculture of Chinese and abroad, discussed the problem of development in Hainan leisure agriculture and proposed some advice about the problem. The advice is valuable to effectively develop the leisure agriculture of Hainan.


A series of pure and copper-doped cobalt oxide films was prepared by plasma-enhanced metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (PEMOCVD). The effect of Cu-doping on the chemical structure and morphology of the deposited films was investigated. Raman and FTIR spectroscopies were used to characterize the chemical structure and morphology of the produced films. The bulk composition and homogeneity of the samples were investigated by energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis (EDX), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) was employed to assess the surface chemical composition of pure and doped materials. The obtained results permit to affirm that the PEMOCVD technique is a simple, versatile and efficient method for providing homogeneous layers of cobalt oxides with a different content of copper. It has been found that pure cobalt oxide films mainly contain Co 3 O 4 in the form of nanoclusters whereas the films doped with Cu are much more complex, and CoO x (also Co 3 O 4 ), mixed Co-Cu oxides and CuO x nanoclusters are detected in them. Preliminary catalytical tests show that Cu-doped cobalt oxide films allow to initiate catalytic combustion of n-hexane at a lower temperature compared to the pure cobalt oxide (Co 3 O 4 ) films. From what has been stated above, the plasma-deposited thin films of Cu-doped cobalt oxides pave the way towards a new class of nanomaterials with interesting catalytic properties. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ms.19.3.2320


The present thesis deals with variants of the space-time reduced basis method for parametrised parabolic partial differential equations. The reduced basis method is a well-known projection based model reduction technique for parameter dependent problems. We consider parabolic partial differential equations in space-time variational formulation. The formulation includes integration over space and time and a model reduction is achieved in both, space and time dimension. One objective of this thesis is the development of a reduced basis method to handle functions as parameters. A parameter in the reduced basis method is usually a vector of real numbers that describes the underlying model properties. The more general concept of a parameter space that is a subspace of a Hilbert space requires new reduced basis generation processes. In particular, the initial value of a parabolic partial differential equation is considered as a function parameter. A Two-Step Greedy Method is presented where two reduced bases are constructed, one for the approximation of the initial value and one for the evolution of the solution. The decomposition into two steps allows for a better approximation error control. A-priori as well as a-posteriori error bounds are provided. As the space-time reduced basis method deals with time as additional dimension, the reduced basis generation process is computationally expensive. We apply the H-Tucker low rank tensor format in the reduced basis offline phase to reduce the computational costs. The high dimensional linear system is decomposed in its tensor product components and can efficiently be solved applying the low rank tensor method. The resulting solution of the high dimensional problem implies an additional approximation error that has to be considered in the basis generation process. Error analysis is provided to combine both model reduction methods. For derivative pricing in finance, one needs to calculate the conditional expectation of the discounted payoff under a risk neutral measure. To this end one can equivalently solve the associated parabolic partial differential equation in diffusion based models. If we want to apply the reduced basis method as model reduction scheme, we usually have to construct a new reduced basis for each payoff function. To avoid this effort, the reduced basis method for parameter functions can be applied. Two standard option pricing models are considered, the Black-Scholes model and the Heston model. Both models provide a closed form solution such that the numerical results can easily be verified.


This study was designed to demonstrate the effect of using TBI in small cooperative groups of university students. For the study, the research was...


In Metro Broadcasting v. FCC, the Supreme Court upheld two Federal Communications Commission ("FCC" or "Commission") policies designed to increase the number of broadcasting stations owned by racial and ethnic minorities and, to a lesser extent, women. The FCC, prodded by early decisions of the Circuit Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia, has claimed for almost two decades that by increasing the diversity of ownership of the airwaves it will increase the diversity of programming content. Hence, these policies--termed "minority preference policies"--are justified as a method of diversifying broadcasting content and not as a matter of remedying any past or present discrimination. In Metro Broadcasting the majority found more than enough evidence
of a nexus between minority ownership of broadcasting stations and broadcast programming diversity to allow Congress and the FCC to adopt these policies. The dissent took a completely different view of the evidence (as well as everything else) and found that it was totally insufficient to justify the minority preference policies.


Laminar free convection heat transfer from constant temperature and constant heat flux vertical plates and horizontal cylinders is analyzed using integral techniques. The corollaries of the assumption are examined and an equivalence found for the commonly employed assumption of equal thermal and momentum boundary layer thicknesses.


St. Evagrius Ponticus declared, "If you are a theologian, you will pray truly. And if you pray truly, you will be a theologian."1 This maxim seems to equate the theologian's knowledge with the knowledge embodied in the saint, which is to say, in a life transfigured by divine charity in works of mercy, fasting, and contemplation. But such a statement surely raises more questions than it answers. For instance, is saintliness a reliable marker of articulate theological knowledge? Or should we doubt or dismiss non-Christian engagements in theology? Christian thinkers in every generation have been drawn to two specifications of Evagrius's maxim that answer both such questions in the affirmative. The stronger, which I will call the conflation thesis, treats the life of prayer as a necessary and sufficient condition for theology— sanctity and sanctity alone fits us for theologizing. Its weaker cousin, which I will call the vestibule thesis, treats the life of prayer merely as a necessary condition for theological practice; even if not all saints can be theologians, all theologians must, at least aspirationally, be saints. The first commends checking one's doctrinal claims by finding some really holy person and asking her what she thinks of them; the second suggests that a Buddhist or an unrepentant adulterer cannot engage in Christian theology. Each of these theses, I will argue, rests on a basic set of confusions about the relationship between the only minimally overlapping cat-


The Maritime Military School System, with its mission to have future officers up and ready to serve on combat ships of the Polish Navy, has been in operation for nearly 90 years. This School System was first introduced in 1921 and although it has, over all these years, undergone numerous changes, its mission remains just the same – to foster new generations of Polish best naval officers. Its hitherto existence may be divided into four main periods: (a) from 1921 through 1939, encompassing the time of efforts to prepare sufficient cadres for the rising maritime and river flotillas. Those efforts, however strenuous, proved fruitful and brought us officers whose professionalism evidenced itself during WWII hostilities at seas and oceans; (b) from 1939 through 1945 – when the Polish Maritime Military School System operated in exile, most notably in the United Kingdom. It's graduates excelled at warfare and won acclaim from the leadership of the Allied Forces; (c) from 1946 through 1991, epitomized by incessant changes with a view to modernize educational and training processes and address requirements of the theater of operations. Good sense of direction behind those changes is evident and confirmed by our allies – the NATO members; (d) which has continued since and featured political transformation and alignment with NATO. And once again the School System yields acclaimed cadres who, in turn, may take pride in serving under the white and red flag.


Abstract Experimental GPC calibration data for polystyrene, poly(methyl methacrylate), and poly(dimethyl siloxane) in chloroform is reported. These polymers have similar hydrodynamic volumes, since their unperturbed dimensions and extensions in chloroform, due to polymersolvent interaction, are very similar. As a result, the same molecular weight calibration curve is obtained for the three polymers. Recently published GPC data is examined on a plot of logarithm of unperturbed end-to-end distance against elution volume. This procedure gives a universal calibration for linear polymer molecules, providing the column combination, solvent, and temperature do not change. For the data of Meyerhoff, use of the unperturbed dimensions is superior to the plot of η suggested by Grubisic, Rempp, and Benoit. A possible explanation, based on a model for the polystyrene gel pores, is proposed for the use of the unperturbed dimensions.


Schizophrenia is a serious and often devastating disease, affecting approximately 1% of worldwide population. Animal models represent a suitable way for investigating serious brain diseases in preclinical research. Animal models of schizophrenia can be generally divided into several categories that include pharmacological, genetic and neurodevelopmental models. Pharmacological models are usually based on application of specific receptor ligands for neurotransmitters. Genetic models are created by genetic manipulations (mutations; often in laboratory mice). Neurodevelopmental models are induced by manipulations in early stages of life of the laboratory animal. They are manifested later in juvenile or adult age by phenotypes that are similar to schizophrenia symptoms. This review summarizes and discusses pharmacological models of schizophrenia based on application of NMDA receptor antagonists; furthermore, the study focuses on selected genetic and neurodevelopmental models.


We present GTC-10.4m spectroscopy and multi-band photometry of the faint (r ~26) optical counterpart of the anomalous X-ray pulsar 4U 0142+61. The 5000 - 9000 Angs spectrum -- the first obtained for a magnetar -- is featureless, allowing us to set an equivalent width upper limit EW < 25 Angs to the presence of emission lines in the Halfa region. Multi-band photometry in the g, r, i, z SDSS bands obtained at different epochs over 12 years shows no significant variability from minutes-to-years time scales. The photometry has been calibrated, for the first time, against the SDSS itself, resulting in solid upper limits to variability ranging from ~0.2 mag in i (over 12 years) to 0.05 mag in z (over 1.5 years). The shape of the optical + near-infrared (literature values) spectral energy distribution is not well constrained due to the high extinction along the line of sight. Using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo analysis we find that it can be described by a power-law with a spectral index beta=-0.7+-0.5 and E_(B-V)=1.5+-0.4. We also discuss on the implications of adding hard X-ray flux values from literature to the spectral fitting.


In this paper we describe the tracker that provides the real-time visual feedback using on-board low-cost computers. Instead of using the voluminous and costly special purpose image processor, we exploited conventional processors and reduced processing time using the smart system software and vision software. The proposed tracker is based on the Two Stage Visual Tracking Method (TSVTM) which consists of real-time kernel, image saver, and vision module. A vision task is divided into two stages according to the information available: recognition and tracking itself. In the recognition stage, grayscale images are segmented into a set of regions. Targets are then recognized by their shapes. Once targets are initially located by the recognition stage, tracker itself can easily find and keep tracking targets using the focus-of-attention strategy based on Kalman filter. In order to avoid its inherent large variation of response time due to the difference of computation requirements between both stages, real-time kernel and image saver manage the resources efficiently. The tracker has been implemented on an mobile robot CAIR-2 and exhibited at '93 World Exposition and '95 IJCAI Robot Competition[19, 21].


[Objective] To explore differential diagnosis value of leptin,C-reactive protein and CEA for malignant pleural effusions.[Methods] The concentrations of leptin in the serum and pleural effusions were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA) in the malignant and benign pleural effusion patients,and C-reactive protein were by Immunodiffusion and CEA were by RIA.[Results] The concentrations of leptin in the pleural fluids and serum of malignant pleural effusions were higher than benign pleural effusions [(38.29±18.22) ng/L (19.49±13.27) ng/L VS(25.24±23.69) ng/L (10.73±11.56) ng/L];The CRP levels in the pleural effusions and serum of malignant pleural effusions were less than that in benigns [(16.31±13.79) mg/L (40.76±26.15) mg/L VS(28.59±15.61) mg/L (61.54±31.96) mg/L];The concentrations of CEA in the pleural fluids and serum of malignant pleural effusions were higher than benign pleural effusions [(70.64±136.32) ng/L (22.72±48.04) ng/L VS(5.35±11.95) ng/L (2.88±4.59) ng/L];The highest diagnosis value of malignant pleural effusions was combined measurement of leptin and CEA in pleural effusions,and the sensitivity and specificity were 53% 97%.[Conclusion] Leptin,CRP and CEA are useful parameters for differential diagnosis of malignant pleural effusions,the highest diagnosis value of malignant pleural effusions is combined measure of leptin and CEA in pleural effusion.


Within sociological and economic analyses of working time, important questions remain regarding women's ability to combine paid and domestic work. While there is a growing body of research in this area, our knowledge and understanding of the relationship between working, social and private time, often remains limited, in particular regarding the formation of preferences among women with different family statuses. In this paper, we consider the phenomenal growth of part-time work and the emergence of the one-and-a-half earner model in the Netherlands, comparing this to the growth and high levels of part-time work evident in Germany and the United Kingdom. Despite cross-national differences in the development of part-time work, many working mothers, in all three countries, exhibit a preference for part-time work as a second best option for combining paid work and motherhood. This led to a 'normalisation' of part-time work in the Netherlands. We show that despite a similar gendered employment pattern and a strong "breadwinner" welfare state tradition, part-time work in Germany and the UK developed under different conditions, making it more difficult to overcome "marginalisation.


The article considers a currently important problem of controversy between humor and religion. Jokes, memes, caricatures are increasingly becoming the trigger for religious conflicts, criminal matters and even terrorist attacks. From the end of the XIX century, the negative attitude towards laughter and humor that prevailed in the public conscious-ness for centuries (among other things due to the influence of medieval theology), has been gradually changing. The positive paradigm of humor, which has become leading, at least for representatives of modern Western society, has affected all spheres of life - theology is no exception. Beginning from 70-ies of XX century comprehension of the catego-ries of laughter and humor is becoming a trend in Western religious thought. Neverthe-less, the traditional religious worldview is still characterized by a certain amount of mis-trust in relation to the phenomena of laughter, play, fun and humor. This hidden contradiction between the religious attitude to such frivolous phenomena and general trend in their positive reevaluation may increase tension in situations of offensive humor or situations of being offended by humor. On the one hand, religious conflicts, which are based on dissatisfaction with specific examples of humor, are similar to conflicts around, say, works of art, on the other – include additional risks, primarily reputational.


THz wave emission from liquids under intense optical excitation provides a new way to generate intense and broadband THz signals. Here, we show that the use of water lines in place of water films as THz emitters to obtain stronger THz signals. In addition, we observe that the polarity of liquid has a significant influence on the THz wave generation. Besides paving the way to develop intense liquid THz sources, our report could be useful for the further study of laser-liquid interaction.


Recent studies suggested that the seismic events prior and after an eruption follow an Omori's law similar to the one observed for earthquakes with possible different exponent values (e.g., Lemarchand and Grasso, 2007). Given these similarities, we are interested in going further into the analogy between damage triggered by earthquake failure and eruption onset, by studying the damage of the upper crust contemporary to eruptions.


Nocodazole is an anti‐mitotic drug that has long been used as an experimental tool in cell biology. Although nocodazole is known to bind with high affinity to tubulin and to inhibit microtubule assembly, very little has been done on its precise mechanism of action. In fact, its binding to the different isotypes of tubulin has never been addressed. Although the nocodazole binding site overlaps with that of colchicine, the two drugs are structurally quite different. The tubulin molecule is an α/β heterodimer; both α and β exist as various isotypes whose distribution and drug‐binding properties are significantly different. In this study, we measured the binding affinity of nocodazole for purified tubulin isotypes. Using fluorescence quenching analysis, we found that the binding kinetics of nocodazole with each type of tubulin best fits a two‐affinity Michaelis‐Menten binding model. The apparent dissociation constants for the high‐affinity binding sites are 0.52 ± 0.02 for αβII, 1.54 ± 0.29 for αβIII, and 0.29 ± 0.04 for αβIV. Thus, nocodazole has the highest affinity for αβIV and the lowest affinity for αβIII. Knowledge of the isotype specificity of nocodazole may allow for development of novel therapeutic agents based on this drug. Drug Dev. Res. 55:91–96, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Recently,it is well known that synthesizing carbon encapsulated metal nanomaterial is a very active task and being concerned in the nanotechnology field by many researchers because of its excellent electrical,optical and magnetism properties.In this paper,the representational methods for carbon encapsulated metal nanomaterial synthesis are reviewed,such as arc discharge method,chemical vapor de-position method,pyrolysis method,low temperature pyrogenation method,cumulative method,detonation method and so on.The synthesis mechanism and the strong and weak points are briefly summarized.


An effective way to process a graph that does not fit in RAM is to build a hierarchical partition of its set of vertices. This hierarchy induces a partition of the graph edge set. We use this partition to produce a macro view of the graph. A screen embedding of this macro view is a Graph Sketch. We describe the use of Rectangular FishEye Views to provide drill-down navigation of graph sketches at different levels of detail including the graph edges data. A higher level of detail of a sketch focus area is obtained by distorting the lower detail context. Alternative visual representations can be used at different sketch hierarchy levels. We provide two sketch screen embeddings. One is tree-map based and the other is obtained by a special sequence of graph edge contractions. We demonstrate the application of our current Unix/Windows prototype to telecommunication graphs with edge sets ranging from 100 million to 1 billion edges(Giga-Graphs). To our knowledge this is the first time that focus within context techniques have been used successfully for the navigation of external memory graphs.


The spontaneously hypertensive (SHR) rat is a genetic model for the study of essential hypertension. Blood pressure in the male SHR is elevated compared to the female SHR and to both sexes in the normotensive Wistar Kyoto (WKY) strain. Compared to the WKY the cerebral and mesenteric vasculature of the male SHR is hyperinnervated by sympathetic nerves and neonatal sympathectomy in the SHR reduces blood pressure. The objective of this experiment was to investigate the relationship between sex and strain differences in blood pressure and neuron number in the superior cervical ganglion (SCG). To this end sex and strain differences in ganglion volume, cell number and density and mean soma area in the SCG of SHR and WKY rat strains were measured. Ganglia were fixed with 4% paraformaldehyde in 0.01M sodium phosphate (pH 7.4) by cardiac perfusion and embedded in paraffin. Sections were cut at 6μ and stained with toluidine blue and digital images were captured for image analysis (ImageJ, Scion Corp, Frederick, MD). Sex differences were observed in both strains for neuron number, cell density, ganglion volume and mean soma size, but no strain differences were found for any of the parameters measured. These data suggest that blood pressure differences between strains are not related to neuron number.


SEVERAL years ago David Knowles called attention to the reappraisal that the Rule of St Benedict is receiving on the continent.' Benedict's Rule, according to the revisionist hypothesis, can no longer be considered the eminently original code of monastic life that it was once thought to be. The Regula Magistri (RM), which had been ignored for centuries as a bad plagiarism, a later, barbaric rendering of the Rule of St Benedict (RB), is the earlier rule written about A.D. 5105925.2 The RB is therefore indebted to the RM and not the other way around. Nor is this indebtedness merely in small or trifling matters. The prologue and the first seven chapters of the RB closely follow the prologue and the first en chapters of the RM. Where the text of the RB departs from that of the RM, it is to be explained by the RB's omission of details, elaborations or explanations that are in the RM. In subsequent chapters the parallels between the two rules continue, although in a less regular and striking fashion. Nevertheless the text which both rules most fully share sets forth the substance of the monastic polity.3 In the last few years the hypothesis of the priority of the RM has won almost unanimous acceptance.4 However, the text of the RM on which St. Benedict de-


A new firm called Lake Charles Methanol has received a $2 billion conditional loan commitment from the Department of Energy for a facility that will produce methanol by gasifying petroleum coke, a waste product from oil refining. The plant will capture and purify by-product carbon dioxide for use in enhanced oil recovery. Pending completion of financing, the $3.8 billion plant will be built in Lake Charles, La. and supplied with coke from nearby refiners. In addition to methanol and CO2 it will produce hydrogen, sulfuric acid, argon, krypton, and xenon. Although the plant will use existing technologies for its gasification and gas separation and purification units, it will be the first in the U.S. to make methanol from petroleum coke. In the U.S., methanol is most commonly made from natural gas; plants in China rely on coal gasification. The chemical industry has long known that petroleum coke could be used


The Jinba deposit is an orogenic gold deposit located in the Markakuli shear zone, in the southern part of the Altay orogenic belt, northwestern China. Several granite and diorite dykes are present in the area of the mine, with ore bodies occurring in the diorite dykes. However, the diagenetic age, genesis, and evolution of these magmas, and the tectonic setting of the dyke emplacement process, remain unclear. The present study is based on a detailed geological survey, zircon U–Pb dating, Lu–Hf isotopes, and geochemical analysis of the granitic and diorite dykes. The crystallization ages of the granitic and diorite dykes are 384.5 ± 1.2 Ma and 393.9 ± 3.5 Ma, respectively, which indicates formation in the Early to Middle Devonian. Zircon εHf(t) values of the granitic and diorite dykes are 1.43 to 5.2 and −4.47 to −1.18, respectively, with a corresponding two-stage model of depleted mantle (TDM2) ages of 1046 to 1285 Ma and 1242 to 2623 Ma, respectively. This indicates that the granitic and diorite dykes were formed by the mixing of mantle magma and crustal materials to varying degrees, and diorite dykes are more obviously contaminated by the lower crust. Geochemical analysis shows that the granite dykes have a high SiO2 (72.51%–74.87%) and moderate Al2O3 (12.88%–14.04%) content, a total alkali of (K2O + Na2O = 5.51%–6.44%), and aluminous (A/CNK = 1.0–1.02). Granite dykes are enriched in LREE and Th, U, and Pb, and depleted in P, Sr, and Nb elements, with clear Eu negative anomalies (δEu = 0.62~0.66). The SiO2 content of diorite dykes is 51.48%–53.71%, Al2O3 contents are high (14.70%–15.99%), K2O is 1.94%–2.54%, Na2O is 2.97%–3.96%, MgO contents are high (5.15%–6.46%), and TFe2O3 is (13.42%–15.13%), enriched Sr, U, Pb, deficient Th elements, rare earth fractionation is not obvious, and Eu anomaly is not obvious (δEu = 0.93~1.1). We conclude that the Early to Middle Devonian magmatism in the southern margin of Altay (which corresponds to the Jinba gold deposit) may have formed in an island arc-related subduction environment.


The aim of this work is to know clearly the effects of temperature in response to curing condition, hydration heat, and outside weather conditions on the strength development of high strength concrete. The concrete walls were designed using three different sizes and three different types of concrete. The experiments were conducted under typical summer and winter weather conditions. Temperature histories at different locations in the walls were recorded and the strength developments of concrete at those locations was measured. Testing results indicated that the elevated summer temperatures did not affect the early age strength gain of concrete made using ordinary portland cement. Strength development was significantly increased at early ages in concretes made using belite-rich portland cement or with the addition of fly ash. The long-term strength loss significantly appeared in concretes made under summer weather conditions.