[Objectives]To prepare oxiracetam injection,establish its quality control and determine its stability and safety. [Methods]Some work was done to optimize the prescription and preparation technology. The character, identification and examination were tested. The content of Oxiracetam injection and its related materials was deter-mined by HPLC.Stress testing, accelerated testing and long-term testing were done to study its stability. The safety was evaluated by testing the vessel stimulation, haemolyticus and hypersensitivity. [Results]The linear relation of Oxiracetam was excellent within the range of 0.02084~0.18756 μg/mL (r =0.9999), and the mean recovery was 99.42% with RSD was 0.31%. No obvious changes were observed at 6 month of an accelerated test or 12 month of long-term storage test. [Conclusion]The preparation was reasonable in formulation, simple and convenient in preparation technique, accurate in quality control, good in stablility, and safe in application.


In this study, graphene/Mn3O4 composites were fabricated to improve the specific capacitance of graphene based supercapacitor, using two different simple methods. First, Graphene/Mn3O4 composite (GM1) was synthesized through deposition of nanoscale manganese oxide on the surface of graphene under microwave irradiation. Second, a two-step method consisting of mixing and annealing was employed to fabricate graphene/Mn3O4 composite (GM2). The prepared materials were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) .The XRD analysis revealed the formation of graphene/Mn3O4. Moreover, the presence of Mn3O4 and MnO2 was conformed using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. GM2 electrode showed better electrochemical performance, and exhibits the largest specific capacitance of approximately 100 F/g at the scan rate of 30 mv/s in 1 M H2SO4 electrolyte. In addition, other electrochemical measurements of the electrodes were implemented proposing that the graphene/Mn3O4 composite electrodes are promising materials for supercapacitor application.


Competence - based teaching has been a concern of many educators in the current period. Preparing the lesson plans before classes greatly determines the success of the lessons. Applying scientific research methods such as theoretical research, investigation-observation, expert method, the article presents the structure and process of designing lesson plans for Mathematics, analyzes and clarifies the steps in the design process, thereby applying the design of specific lesson plans to facilitate teachers in the teaching process. The results published in the paper are unanimously agreed by experts.


Since 1902,the study of histoyical figures has experienced great changes in perspectives and methods such as biography compiling,transformation of appraising standard,application of psychological history and choice of social history.These changes vigrously promote the study of historical figures.


The influence of Australian cold air activities on precipitation of middle and lower reaches of the Changjiang River within main flood season is studied initially by using statistical methods of spectrum.Moreover,the West Pacific Subtropical High affects grievously the above influence.The data root in Australian 700 hPa analytical temperature and precipitation of middle and lower reaches of the Changjiang River.Conclusions are as follows:During summer season of China a 7.7 days period of the temperature alteration of Australian day to day and rainfall of the middle-lower reaches of the Changjiang River occurs in wet year,this means that there is a remote correlation of 7.7 days between them and they have in-phase surging in the 7.7-day period.Besides,Australian cold air activities affect rainfall of the middle-lower reaches of Yangtze River after 7.3 days.The affecting processes are:when Australian cold air activity is stronger,WPSH moves northward and the middle-lower reaches of Yangtze River is sunny and controlled by WPSH;when Australian cold air activity weakens,WPSH moves southward and the middle-lower reaches of Yangtze River locate on the edge of WPSH with rainy days.To some extent the above-mentioned conclusions provide forecasting foundation during main flood season of the middle and lower reaches of Changjiang River.


1. From July 1994 to September 1995, at six censuses, the herbivore community associated with understorey (< 2.5 m height) and canopy (15–20 m) leaves of Quercus alba and Q. velutina was sampled in south‐eastern Missouri, U.S.A.


Background: DNA methylation, the most common epigenetic modification, is defined as the removal or addition of methyl groups to cytosine bases. Studying DNA methylation provides insight into the regulation of gene expression, transposon mobility, genomic stability, and genomic imprinting. Whole-genome DNA methylation profiling (WGDM) is a powerful tool to find DNA methylation. This technique combines standard whole-genome sequencing methodology (e.g., Illumina high-throughput sequencing) with additional steps where unmethylated cytosine is converted to uracil. However, factors such as low cytosine conversion efficiency and inadequate DNA recovery during sample preparation oftentimes render poor-quality data. It is therefore imperative to benchmark sample preparation protocols to increase sequencing data quality and reduce false positives in methylation detection. Methods: A survey analysis was performed to investigate the efficiency of the following commercially available cytosine conversion kits when coupled with the NEBNext® Ultra™ DNA Library Prep Kit for Illumina (NEB): Zymo Research EZ DNA Methylation™ kit (hereafter known as Zymo Conversion kit), QIAGEN EpiTect Bisulfite kit (hereafter known as QIAGEN Conversion kit), and NEBNext® Enzymatic Methyl-seq Conversion Module (hereafter known as NEB EM-seq kit). Input DNA was derived from soybean (Glycine max [L.] Merrill) leaf tissue. Results: Of those tested, the QIAGEN Conversion kit provided the best sample recovery and the highest number of sequencing reads, whereas the Zymo Conversion kit had the best cytosine conversion efficiency and the least duplication. The sequence library obtained with the NEB EM-seq kit had the highest mapping efficiency (percentage of reads mapped to the genome). The data quality (defined by Phred score) and methylated cytosine call were similar between kits. Conclusions: This study offers the groundwork for selecting an effective DNA methylation detection kit for crop genome research.


The Generation IV nuclear power system has been developed by the Generation IV Forum (GIF) with its benefits such as highly economical, enhanced safety, low waste production, and proliferation resistant. MSR is one of Generation IV nuclear power system which uses molten salt as a fuel and a coolant, therefore its technology differs from the conventional solid-fuel reactors. In this study, the author focus on the safety characteristic analysis of the MSRs, in which a point kinetic equations and core heat transfer have been modeled by developing a mathematical model for MSRs. The founded model is applied to analyze the safety characteristics of the molten salt actinide recycler and transmuter system (MOSART) by simulating transient basic condition, and that is the unprotected loss of flow (ULOF) and unprotected overcooling accident (UOC). The result of reactor accident simulation is power distribution and temperature in the core reactor toward the time and showing that MOSART conceptual design is a reactor design which is stablee inherently. This reseach purposes to give basic understanding about safety characteristic of the MSR.


The text analyzes the verbs with cognate objects in European Portuguese and provides an analysis of this phenomenon in the framework of Distributed Morphology, and a few ideas of the Minimalist Program. In this paper we only develop the analysis of the constructions of the type of chorar um choro... [cry a cry…] and cantar uma cantiga [sing a song]. Since a lexicalist theory as the one developed by Hale & Keyser (1993; 2002) can't solve all the issues raised by the various types of constructions in EP, we will try any analysis that combines the contributions of Haugen (2009), on cognate objects, Marantz (1993) and Alexiadou (2001, 2006), on verbal functional heads, and (Chomsky 1995), on the idea of movement by copy.


ABSTRACT This is an exploratory study profiling the career drivers of final-year accounting- major students at four tertiary institutions in Hong Kong. Specifically, the study identifies what an accounting-major student is looking for in a career. Comparative examinations of the career drivers are performed by the gender and institutional criteria. The career driver scores of accounting-major and non-accounting business students are also compared. The results suggest the presence of statistically significant differences between male and female accounting-major students in the career drivers of material rewards, search for meaning in their career, creativity, job security and job status. When institutional setting is used as a basis of comparison, there are statistically significant differences among the accounting-major students in the areas of material rewards, creativity, affiliation, security and status. Accounting- major and non-accounting business students exhibit differences in the career drivers of...


Should the realized risk premium be taxed – or not? In a simple two asset portfolio model we analyze the optimal taxation rule when the economy faces aggregate risk. We show in an appropriate designed tax system, that the risk premium of the risky asset should be fully taxed if the households are risk neutral in public consumption. If they are risk averse in public consumption, too, a positive tax rate below 100 % is optimal. We show further, that an efficient risk allocation between public and private consumption can be achieved without any distortion costs.


This article presents a transient model of a magnetorheological damper, which takes into account the effect of Duhamel's superposition of the variation of magnetorheological damper piston velocity with time. The magnetorheological fluid flow channel studied in this work is in the shape of an annular gap between the piston and the bore of the cylinder of the magnetorheological damper. The model was derived using a Bingham plastic model for shear stress versus shear rate behaviour of the magnetorheological fluid by applying the combination of Laplace and Weber transforms to the Navier–Stokes equations for obtaining the analytical solutions of the velocity in the sheared regions in a given cross section of an annular magnetorheological fluid flow channel. The solution is further modified to include the effect of time variation of piston velocity by using Duhamel's superposition integral. The equations of the velocity profiles have been used to obtain the equations of mass flow rate balance, velocity compatibility for the plug flow boundaries and equilibrium of forces acting on the plug. The set of non-linear algebraic equations has been solved by Newton–Raphson's method. The proposed model has been validated by comparison with the experimental results.


Abstract – An LCL-type isolated dc-dc converter is analyzed, using ac approximation. Analyses to express characteristics on the proposed converter are derived under steady and ideal elements conditions in this paper. The two operating modes can be identified from the analysis results representing different device conduction sequences. This converter is capable of achieving required output voltage(step up or down) operations with inductance ratio while operated at fixed frequency with constant duty ratio–50%. Experimental results show that the designed converter based on Q has zero voltage switching and constant output voltage at different load variations to verify the analysis.Key Words : LCL, DC-DC Converter †Corresponding Author : Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Chungnam National University, Korea.E-mail: email@example.com* Agency for defense development, Korea.Received: September 12, 2014; Accepted : January 23, 2015 1. 서 론 이다. 이에 별도의 추가회로 없이 부하변동에도 일정한 출력전압공진형 컨버터는 스위칭 순간 스위치의 전압이나 전류가 영이 되게 함으로써 스위칭 손실이 최소화되도록 하여 고주파에서도 높은 효율을 갖는 컨버터이다. 공진형 컨버터에서 공진 스위치는 스위치에 공진을 일으키는 인덕터와 캐패시터를 추가하여 구성된다. 이러한 컨버터는 초기에 소형, 경량을 요구하는 항공, 우주분야의 전원공급장치와 인버터에 적용을 시작하였으며, 최근에는 다양한 산업분야에서 공진형 컨버터에 사용되고 있다.[1] 또한, 공진형 컨버터의 고주파수 스위치는 영전압 스위칭(zero voltage switching, ZVS)과 영전류 스위칭 (zero current switching, ZCS)이 가능하기 때문에 전자기적 간섭(Electromagnetic Interference , EMI)을 저감시킬 수 있는 장점이 있다. 공진형 컨버터는 공진방식에 따라 직렬 공진형, 병렬 공진형, 및 직/병렬 혼합 공진형으로 구분된다.본 논문에서는 그림 1에서 보여지는 것과 같이, LCL형태의 공진탱크를 적용한 전압형 컨버터를 제안한다. 이는 DC 전압을 공급하는 전원(E


When the grid voltage is unbalanced, the lifetime of the drive train is reduced because of the squirrel cage induction generator (SCIG) torque oscillations with double grid frequency. In this paper, the coordinated control strategy of a hybrid energy storage system (HESS) is designed, including the positive-and negative-sequence voltage coordinated control strategy of DC/AC converter, the control strategy of the lithium battery and supercapacitor. The objective of the positive-sequence voltage control strategy is to maintain the voltage of the point of common coupling (PCC) at the rated value, while the objective of the negative-sequence voltage control strategy is to control the negative-sequence voltage to zero. Therefore, the control strategy can eliminate the generator electromagnetic torque oscillations. The control strategies of the lithium battery and supercapacitor in an HESS are designed as well. A lithium battery is employed to stabilize the DC voltage of the DC/AC converter and a supercapacitor is used to absorb power fluctuations on the DC side of the inverter. Finally, the correctness and effectiveness of the control strategy are verified by the simulation work in the real time digital simulator (RTDS).


Heavy minerals have been collected from the coarse sandstones of the Jurassic Yamaoku formation., These minerals are allanite, anatase, augite, biotite, clinozoisite, epidote, garnet, hornblende, muscovite, rutile, titanite, tourmaline, zircon, zoisite, and opaque minerals such as hematite, ilmenite, magnetite, and pyrite., Three zones of heavy mineral associations are recognized in the formation., These zones transect the lithologic boundaries of the formation., The cause of this transection is not clear., The source materials of the sediments may be granitic, andesitic, and basaltic rocks as well as pre-Jurassic sedimentary rocks.,


China's construction industry is one of the important supporting industries for national economy and associates with the progress of urbanization.Its performances,however,are not too well in production efficiency and physical import for technical progress,although its status and action of supporting industry are increasingly built up.The technical progress contribution ratio for growing velocity of China's total output of construction industry is 39.01% in the year of 2004 based on the method of growing velocity equation.Further study is needed for technical progress contribution ratio of construction industry because different results were made by different methods.Considering that the contribution ratios of labor and capital to growing velocity of China's total output of construction industry are getting down and technical contribution ratio is getting up, technical progress is the only way for construction industry development.


Fat and oil are critical for human nutrition, as a major source of energy and with numerous functionalities in biochemical pools become imperative to review it source method of extraction and chemical composition. Fat and oil are majorly sourced from plant and animal. Traditional and modern methods of extraction as well as refining were reviewed. Triglyceride phospholipids, sterol, pigments, fatty alcohols and tocopherol are some of the chemical constituent that defines the molecular and biochemical configuration of source oils and fats.


OBJECTIVE
The aims of the Hypertension Optimal Treatment (HOT) Study were to investigate the relationship between three levels of target office diastolic blood pressure (BP; < or = 90, < or = 85, and < or = 80 mm Hg) and cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction (MI), and stroke in hypertensive patients, and to examine the effects of 75 mg of acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) daily versus placebo.

DESIGN
Randomized, double-blind study. This substudy assessed the influence of gender on the incidence of MI.

SUBJECTS
A total of 18,790 patients (mean age, 61.5 years; range, 50-80 years).

METHODS
Patients were randomized and followed for an average of 3.8 years until 71,051 patient-years had elapsed and 683 events, including 215 MIs, had occurred.

RESULTS
There were significantly fewer MIs in the lowest diastolic BP target group (P = .034) in women (n = 8883); a similar but smaller trend was not statistically significant in men. The effect of ASA on preventing MI was also influenced by gender (P = .38 in women; P = .001 in men [lowered by 42%]).

CONCLUSION
Lowering diastolic BP to about 80 mm Hg in hypertensive women and administering 75 mg of ASA daily to well-treated hypertensive men reduces MI in patients with essential hypertension.


Thin films of p-type organic semiconducting nickel phthalocynanine (NiPc) and semitransparent Al were deposited in sequence by vacuum evaporation on a glass substrates with predeposited Ag source and drain electrodes. Organic field effect transistors were fabricated with metal (aluminum)–semiconductor (nickel phthalocyanine) Schottky junction. The effect of humidity on the NiPc based organic photo field effect transistors was investigated. It was found that in the relative humidity range of 45% to 93% RH, the resistance of the transistors decreased from 1.37 to 1.25 times depending on the thickness of the NiPc films, accordingly for 100 nm, 200 nm and 300 nm. The utilization of the NiPc based transistor as multi-functional or single-functional sensor is discussed.


Can managers be perceived as good leaders through a culture of empowerment in multinational settings? This question was answered by employing a 3 (delegation styles: advisory; informational; extreme) x 2 (manager gender: male; female) x 2 (country: Malaysia; USA) factorial design--with the first factor as within-subjects and the last two as between-subjects. A sample of 218 was drawn from one semiconductor multinational firm-118 from one Malaysian site and 100 from three US sites. The analysis revealed that both the US and Malaysian managers almost equally favored informational delegation style, but they differed significantly in terms of attributing extreme and advisory delegation styles: the US managers outperformed Malaysian managers in attributing extreme delegation style, whereas Malaysian managers outperformed the US managers in attributing advisory delegation style. This finding was more pronounced for female than for male managers. Key implications of the findings both for theory and for practice are discussed, potential limitations are specified, and directions for future research are suggested. Delegation and Leadership Perceptions 3 Delegation Styles and Leadership Perceptions: A Comparison of Malaysian and American Managers Leadership has attracted much interest among scholars and practitioners for a long time. However, scientific research on leadership did not begin until the twentieth century and the focus of most research has been on the determinants of effective leadership (Bass, 1990). The twenty-first century has brought about new challenges and issues in this area of research. Among the key trends of the new century are increasing globalization, new technologies, changing composition, and values and needs of the workforce. Some of the substantive leadership issues are leadership styles, criteria of effective leadership, multinationalism, and workforce diversity (Bass, 1990). While some of these issues have been recurring from the past, they are and will still figure significantly or even more significantly in the present and the future. In the past few decades, a growing number of leadership researches have advocated empowerment as a source of motivation and higher performance. Followers are empowered when their leaders increase their autonomy, discretionary opportunities, help them obtain the resources to reach higher goals, and give support for their efforts (Bass, 1990). One of the most important aspects of empowerment is the participation of employees in decisionmaking. Participative leadership can take on many forms, but most theorists working in this area concede that there are four distinct decision-making styles: autocratic, consultation, joint decision, and delegation (Yukl, 1998). The present study focuses on the styles of delegation. Delegation occurs when the manager gives an individual the authority and responsibility for making a decision, where prior approval may or may not be required before the decision can be implemented (Yukl, 1998). According to Bass (1990), delegation remains a relatively unexplored management option despite evidence of its importance to Delegation and Leadership Perceptions 4 organization effectiveness, and deserves future research with more fine-tuning of delegation as a style of leadership. In addition, there is the question of how subordinates perceive managers who delegate. Studies on preferences for idealized styles of supervision or leadership style abound, but hardly has any focused on a direct link to delegation. Thus, the leadership perceptions of subordinates toward the practice of delegation are still unclear. There is a need to conceptualize delegation as a process and to research what makes it effective or ineffective. Culture is an important element in this study. In a classic study of culture, Hofstede (1980) identified four dimensions on which various cultures could be classified. They are individualism/collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity/femininity. Later, he (1993) added long-term/short-term orientation as a fifth dimension. There is overwhelming evidence from various cross-cultural studies (Alpander, 1991; Gill, 1998; Offerman, 1997; Randoph & Sashkin, 2002) that cultural differences persist from country to country. Therefore, cultural constraints still apply to management theories. The trend of multinationalism raises many questions on how managerial decision-making practices can be transferred from one country (or culture) to another. With the influx of women into the workforce, there is a need to study women in leadership positions--more so in a developing country such as Malaysia. Performance and effectiveness appraisals of female managers are mixed and inconclusive (Bass, 1990). While Bass noted that there might be a bias toward men in leadership positions, no significant differences were found in various studies reviewed by Bass. Therefore, there is still a lack of understanding if gender of managers affects the leadership perceptions of their subordinates. In short, the problems discussed indicate the lack of research on the effects of delegation and culture on leadership perceptions, and inconclusive findings on whether Delegation and Leadership Perceptions 5 gender of managers affects the leadership perceptions of their subordinates. Also, we are aware of no empirical research that has specifically compared Malaysia and the United States of America in terms of delegation styles. As the trend of multinationalism increases, all these issues are relevant to how managerial practices can be transferred from one country (or culture) to another. Thus, this study aims (a) to examine the impact of delegation styles on leadership perceptions; (b) to examine if gender of the manager moderates the relationship between delegation and leadership perceptions; and (c) to examine if country moderates the relationship between delegation and leadership perceptions. Theoretical Framework and Development of Hypotheses Implicit theories of leadership state that subordinates have expectations regarding leadership behavior, as do the leaders themselves (Bass, 1990). In addition, subordinates attach their own value-laden meanings to the actions of their supervisors. Thus there may be many factors that may differentiate subordinates' leadership perceptions. Studies conducted by Ansari (1987) and Ansari and Shukla (1987) found that ratings on leadership perceptions were significantly influenced by leader behavior. In particular, participative and nurturanttask managers produced more favorable ratings in terms of leadership attributes, present performance, and anticipated performance. Acting autocratically had a strong negative impact on evaluation ratings. Cellar, Sidle, Goudy, and O'Brien (2001) investigated if the personality of agreeableness interacted with leader gender and leader style (autocratic vs. democratic) to affect subordinate reactions to the leader in terms of leader evaluation, future effort, and future interest. A three-way interaction was predicted, such that leaders will be penalized most for behavior that was inconsistent with gender roles by participants low in agreeableness. Results generally supported interaction hypothesis for effort and interest variables, but not for leader effectiveness. Delegation Styles and Leadership Perceptions Delegation and Leadership Perceptions 6 Delegation involves the level of hierarchy at which a given activity may be initiated, independent of clearance from above, with respect to that activity (Whyte, 1969). It refers to the process by which a supervisor gives the subordinates the authority to do his or her job (Hicks, 1972). Thus delegation occurs when the manager gives an individual or group the authority and responsibility for making a decision; the managers usually specifies the limits within which the final choice must fall, and prior approval may or may not be required before the decision can be implemented (Yukl, 1998). It is important to understand where delegation stands in the conceptual distinctions of leadership. One thing is clearly evident is that, on a continuum of superior-subordinate decision-making authority, delegation is on the opposite end of autocratic decision-making. Although delegation is sometimes treated as a variety of participative leadership, delegation differs from other decision-making processes like consultation and joint decision in two primary ways. First, it typically involves decision-making by an individual subordinate rather than by peers, a group of subordinates, or a supervisor-subordinate dyad. Secondly, delegation stresses subordinates' autonomy in making decisions (Leana, 1986). Some researchers have attempted to examine relative degrees of delegation. According to Yukl (1998), there are varying degrees of delegation involving the aspects of the variety and magnitude of responsibilities, the amount of discretion or range of choice allowed in decision-making, the authority to take action and implement decisions without prior approval, the frequency and nature of reporting requirements, and the flow of information. A manager who practices total delegation widens the amount and scope of responsibilities for his or her subordinates, allows discretion in decision-making, gives authority to subordinates to take action without prior approval, requires minimal reporting from the subordinates, and gives performance information directly to subordinates. Delegation and Leadership Perceptions 7 Schriesheim and Neider (1988) identified three forms of delegation: advisory, informational, and extreme. In advisory delegation, the subordinate makes the decision after first getting a recommendation from the leader. In informational delegation, the subordinate makes the decision after first getting needed information from the leader. In extreme delegation, the subordinate makes the decision without any input from the leader. Researchers ha


Using national survey data on the long-haul pleasure travel market in the UK, this study compared British travellers bound for Asian, North American and Oceanic destinations on three different psychographic dimensions. Significant differences were found among the three travel groups in trael philosophies, travel benefits sought and destination attribute preferences. In contrast, demographic and socio-economic variables were found to be ineffective in differentiating the British travellers. The research findings provided further empirical evidence of the valuable role that psychographic factors, such as attitudes and preferences, can play in understanding travel decision making. The results also indicated that destination areas should identify the benefits and attributes that are most highly valued by travellers from key countryof-origin target markets. Furthe, the study suggested that there was good reason for closer marketing alliances among individual countries within a region. Within each of the three broad travel regions reviewed in this study there existed more homogeneity, while between regions there appeared to be more heterogeneity in the psychographic variables.


The current study was aimed to investigate the filler layer structure in modified bioretention systems. Three different structural layers in bioretention were proposed to evaluate their hydrologic performance and pollutant removal efficiency under different rainfall intensities. These layers were as follows: all three layers (filter, transition, and drainage layers), without transition layer, and without drainage layer. Synthetic stormwater was used for experimental purpose in current work. Results revealed that compared with "all three layers", runoff control rate of "without transition layer" and "without drainage layer" was reduced by 0 to 7.4%, 0 to 10.1%, and outflow start time was advanced by 6 to 8 min and 1.5 to 4.5 min, respectively. Moreover, CODcr (chemical oxygen demand), NH4+-N (ammonium nitrogen), TN (total nitrogen) and TP (total phosphorus) removal rates were 86.0%, 85.4%, 71.8%, and 68.0%, respectively. Particle size distribution of the fillers revealed that during operation, particle moved downward were mainly within 0.16–0.63 mm size. Findings showed that transition and drainage layer played an important role in runoff control, and total height of the filler layer should not be less than 800 mm. Filter layer effectively reduce runoff pollution but the thickness of the filter layer should not be less than 500 mm. Whereas, transition layer has the function of preventing the filler loss of the filter layer; therefore, proper measures must be taken into consideration during structural optimization.


A bounded linear operator T on a Hilbert space H is called an mpartial isometry for a positive integer m, if


This paper presents the system description of team AaltoNLP for SemEval-2022 shared task 11: MultiCoNER. Transformer-based models have produced high scores on standard Named Entity Recognition (NER) tasks. However, accuracy on complex named entities is still low. Complex and ambiguous named entities have been identified as a major error source in NER tasks. The shared task is about multilingual complex named entity recognition. In this paper, we describe an ensemble approach, which increases accuracy across all tested languages. The system ensembles output from multiple same architecture task-adaptive pretrained transformers trained with different random seeds. We notice a large discrepancy between performance on development and test data. Model selection based on limited development data may not yield optimal results on large test data sets.


Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESSs) play an important role in modern energy systems. At present, stationary BESSs have found wide applicability in real-word applications, while there is a growing trend in exploiting the use of mobile BESSs (MBESSs) for serving energy demands at geographical locations that can vary over time. This paper proposes a comprehensive decision-making framework for a MBESS that dispatches multiple carriers to deliver a number of batteries to serve residential houses in a planned grid outage event. The proposed framework includes model representations capable of addressing the following three scenarios: (1) before the start of the outage - during this scenario, the scheduling of the battery delivery to the houses considers the typical energy operations and aims at exploiting the surplus renewable energy for the charging of the batteries; (2) during the outage period - during this scenario, the battery relocation is optimized to minimize the amount of energy demand affected by the outage by enabling the carriers to dynamically transport the batteries and to serve different houses; and (3) after the outage - in this scenario, an optimal path selection model enables the carriers to recycle the batteries from the houses to the MBESS station. Computational approaches are developed to solve the above three models and extensive numerical simulations are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.


This is the second of three volumes covering the long history of the fable from Sumer to the present day. Historical evidence reaching as far back as Antiquity, supports the study of more than 500 works considered to be fables.


The spread of electric vehicles (EV) contributes substantial stress to the present overloaded utility grid which creates new chaos for the distribution network. To relieve the grid from congestion, this paper deeply focused on the control and operation of a charging station for a PV/Battery powered workplace charging facility. This control was tested by simulating the fast charging station when connected to specified EVs and under variant solar irradiance conditions, parity states and seasonal weather. The efficacy of the proposed algorithm and experimental results are validated through simulation in Simulink/Matlab. The results showed that the electric station operated smoothly and seamlessly, which confirms the feasibility of using this supervisory strategy. The optimum cost is calculated using heuristic algorithms in compliance with the meta-heuristic barebones Harris hawk algorithm. In order to long run of charging station the sizing components of the EV station is done by meta-heuristic barebones Harris hawk optimization with profit of USD 0.0083/kWh and it is also validated by swarm based memetic grasshopper optimization algorithm (GOA) and canonical particle swarm optimization (PSO).


The ATMPs are living drugs as most of them are composed of live cells or tissues. Indeed, in vitro cultured tissue or organ or genetically modified cells are now considered medicines. An issue associated with these products is that human cell-based therapies include complex biological products sensitive to their environment. Moreover, the final products maintain the intrinsic variability of the human donors. Additionally, they have a short shelf life, and it is difficult to achieve the required release control and identify controllable parameters related to clinical efficacy (the potency), as "living medicines" act via multiple mechanisms in the pathologic environment (1,2). Like any other drug, ATMPs must undergo safety evaluations, and the use of animal models is a concern, because of the anatomical and physiological differences between humans and the animal models. This makes surgery and immunological evaluations difficult or not comparable to humans. Moreover, in clinical trials, it is difficult to define the control group or randomise patients to administer these drugs, as it requires surgery, which is not ethically acceptable without a positive benefit-to-risk ratio in humans. On the contrary, all medicine guidelines necessitate a tightly regulated GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) and GCP (Good Clinical Practices) (3).


Methods of mapping and measuring an animal's gait have found an application in equestrian and cynological sports. One of the key elements of diagnosing a dog or horse's gait is an assessment of movement range in individual joints. Digital image registration, frame-by-frame analysis of all phases (steps) enables researchers to pinpoint abnormalities in the way an animal moves. Goniometry, the measurement of angles between bones connected by joints, assumes values for intervals defined for species and anatomic structures. Properly functioning joints allow an animal to shift its weight onto individual body parts without any effort. A proper gait not only testifies that an animal has good utility value for sports, but is also a key economic aspect taken under consideration when evaluating animals for breeding purposes.


The magnesium bromide diethyl etherate (MgBr2.OEh)-methyl sulfide (Me2S) system is useful for the mild and chemo-selective deprotection of pmethoxybenzyl (PMB) ether in the presence of 1,3-diene, t-butyldimethylsilyl (TBDMS) ether, benzoate, benzyl ether and acetonide. © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Mild and selective removal of hydroxyl protecting groups is crucial for the synthesis of complex natural products such as carbohydrates and macrolide antibiotics. I Benzyl ether is frequently used as a protecting group because it shows suitable stability towards a variety of reactions and is easily removable by hydrogenolysis. However, benzyl protection can not be applied to alcohols possessing additional functional groups that are susceptible to reductive conditions. A number of benzyl-type protecting groups, which can be cleaved by mild, non-reductive methods, have been developed, p-Methoxybenzyl (PMB) ether is one of the most significant among them, and can be removed oxidatively with 2, 3-dichloro-5, 6-dicyano1, 4-benzoquinone (DDQ) 2 and ceric ammonium nitrate (CAN) 3in the presence of benzyl ether. In the asymmetric synthesis of curacin A 4, a novel marine antimitotic agent produced by a Caribbean cyanobacterium, we encountered difficulty in the deprotection of the PMB ether 1. Deprotection of 1 with DDQ resulted in complete decomposition, and the desired alcohol 2 could not be obtained at all. Other reagents, such as CAN, trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) 5, TFA-ethanethiol and BBr 3 were also unsuccessful. During a survey of deprotection conditions, we found that the magnesium bromide diethyl etherate (MgBr2.OEt2)-methyl sulfide (Me2S) system, which is a combination of a hard Lewis acid and a soft nucleophile 6, affords mild and chemo-selective deprotection of I (Scheme 1). Here we describe the selective deprotection of a variety of PMB ethers in the presence of 1,3-diene, t-butyldimethylsilyl (TBDMS) ether, benzoate, benzyl ether and acetonide by using this combined system. Scheme 1 MgBr2OEt2, Me2S CH2CI2 OPMB . OH OMe 76%, 5 times OMe 1 (PMB=p-CHsOCeH4CH2) (recovery of 1, 6%) 2 First, deprotection of the PMB ether containing a 1,3-diene 37 was examined (Table 1). The attempted deprotection of 3 with DDQ gave only a complex mixture and no starting material was recovered (Entry 1). Deprotection of 3 with MgBr2-OEt 2 in CH2CI z was also unsuccessful (Entry 2). The addition of Me2S to MgBr2-OEt 2 in CH2C128 at room temperature dramatically improved the reaction to give the desired alcohol 4


This paper presents the procedures for the wind speed measurement using ultrasonic transducers. The wind speed measurement is based on the time-of-flight (ToF) ultrasonic estimation that has been estimated using the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) algorithm. For this purpose it was developed the dynamic system model in state space and was analyzed the convergence of the EKF algorithm. Simulation results are presented considering the presence of additive Gaussian noise.


This paper presents new neutron-induced single event upset (SEU) data on the SRAM devices with the technology nodes from 40 nm to 500 nm due to spallation, reactor, and monoenergetic neutrons. The SEU effect is investigated as a function of incident neutron energy spectrum, technology node, byte pattern and neutron fluence rate. The experimental data show that the SEU effect mainly depends on the incident neutron spectrum and the technology node, and the SEU sensitivity induced by low-energy neutrons significantly increases with the technology downscaling. Monte–Carlo simulations of nuclear interactions with device architecture are utilized for comparing with the experimental results. This simulation approach allows us to investigate the key parameters of the SEU sensitivity, which are determined by the technology node and supply voltage. The simulation shows that the high-energy neutrons have more nuclear reaction channels to generate more secondary particles which lead to the significant enhancement of the SEU cross-sections, and thus revealing the physical mechanism for SEU sensitivity to the incident neutron spectrum.


THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF TROPICAL MEDICINE THE third annual meeting of the American Academy of Tropical Medicine was held in Baltimore, on November 18, with President Richard P. Strong, of the Harvard Medical School, presiding. The academy has no scientific program, since it meets with the American Society of Tropical Medicine. At the annual dinner, at which members of the American Society of Tropical Medicine were guests, Dr. Robert Hegner, of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, presided as toastmaster. The guest speaker, Dr. Ernest Muir, was introduced by Perry Burgess, president of the Leonard Wood Memorial. Dr. Muir spoke on "Recent Progress in Tropical Medicine in India." The dinner program was concluded with an address by President Strong. At the business session of the academy, Dr. Edmund V. Cowdry, professor of cytology at the Washington University Medical School, St. Louis, and Dr. Fred L. Soper, of the Division of International Health of the Rockefeller Foundation, were elected to active membership, and Professor W. A. P. Schiiffner, of the School of Tropical Medicine, Amsterdam, was elected to honorary membership. The newly elected officers consist of: President, Dr. Wilbur A. Sawyer, Rockefeller Foundation, New York City; Vice-president, Dr. F. G. Novy, University of Michigan; Secretary, Dr. Ernest Carroll Faust, Tulane University; Treasurer, Dr. W. W. Cort, the Johns Hopkins University; Councillors, Dr. Herbert C. Clark, Gorgas Memorial Laboratory, Panama City; Dr. Thomas T. Mackie, New York City; Dr. Maurice C. Hall, National Institute of Health, Washington, D. C.; Dr. William H. Taliaferro, University of Chicago, and Dr. George C. Shattuck, Harvard Medical School.


This paper investigates a subject of high practical importance and proposes representative frequency range definition for HVAC testing with PD measurement which can improve both, on-site and laboratory testing. It will also strengthen the clear connection between stresses in service and HVAC testing. Furthermore it creates the correspondence between on-line PD monitoring and off-line PD testing


The effect of relative humidity on the morphology of electrospun fibers of poly(vinyl alcohol), poly(methyl methacrylate), poly(vinyl chloride), polystyrene, and poly(lactic acid) dissolved in solvents such as toluene, N,N-dimethylformamide, 2,2,2-trifluoroethanol, and deionized water was studied by scanning electron microscopy to investigate the factors that may contribute to pore formation. Results showed that the presence of pores depends on factors such as the type of polymers used, the polymer–solvent combination, molecular weight, and the size of the electrospun structure. The final morphology developed implies a competition between the dynamics of phase separation and the rate of solvent evaporation. In addition, continuous solvent evaporation and constant stretching owing to the electric potential difference give rise to the final shape of porous electrospun fibers.Key words: electrospinning, relative humidity, porous fibers, polymers.


Theoretical predictions and experimental data have been extensively used to establish the range of variation of the ITER plasma scenario parameters [1] since they have a direct impact on the dimensioning of the PF (Poloidal Field) system and on the design of the first wall components. Compared to today's experiments, the working margins adopted for the ITER design are reduced. Resistive flux consumption, li and p ranges play an important role for the capability of the tokamak to guarantee the required plasma shape, plasma current, and flattop duration. Actually the nominal ITER plasma scenario # 2 has an Ohmic slow aperture expansion ramp-up where li at flattop is ~ 0.85, and Cejima mean values during ramp up are ~ 0.45 (see ITER design


Huzhu highland barley liquor has unique styles including pure elegant aroma,mellow plump taste,and enjoyable aftertaste.Its unique styles are determined by the factors including raw materials,microorganisms,pits,Daqu,special production techniques,and special blending and flavoring techniques.In this paper,the five main factors influencing the formation of the style of Huzhu highland barley liquor were discussed.


The use of hexagonal grids of pixels to represent digital images is a topic that has been studied for decades; however, despite its advantages there is relatively little work done on the subject. On the other hand, for the compression of images with rectangular grids, where there is far more research, the use of the wavelet transform is a strategy that allows high levels of performance to be achieved; two examples of image compression systems based on wavelets are the JPEG2000 standard and the IW44 algorithm used by DjVu, both currently still in use. In this work we are interested in evaluating the feasibility of a hexagonal grid image compression system using wavelets for implementation on a configurable sensor made of pixels on a hexagonal grid previously developed by our group. In order to do this, theoretical and implementation aspects of image compression with wavelets on hexagonal grids of pixels are studied first. A complete hexagonal image compression system is then implemented using Haar like wavelets and an adaptation of the coding algorithm for rectangular images SPIHT. To evaluate the performance of the proposed system, a comparison is made with its rectangular analogous version by testing with multiple images. Finally, a simple test is carried out on the configurable sensor that shows the it is possible to directly read the decomposition coefficients instead of reading pixel by pixel.


Objective Summarize the mechanism of fire needle therapy and its research progress in the treatment of erysipelas in recent years. Methods Conducted through CNKI,Wan Fang Data and VIP Data from 1994 using keywords "fire needle""mechanism"and "erysipelas"then summed up clinical trials of the mechanism of fire needle therapy and its research progress in the treatment of erysipelas. Results The understanding of the mechanism of fire needle therapy gradually formed; fire needle therapy have good curative effect in the treatment of erysipelas. Conclusion The fire needle therapy's curative effect in the treatment of erysipelas is outstanding and worthy to be popularized.


Computing the greatest common divisor (GCD) of polynomials can be done by computing the Grobner basis instead of the well-known Euclidean algorithm, studied by Gianni and Trager in 1985, and Sasaki and Suzuki in 1992. In this paper, we extend their theories to polynomials with parameters. That is the theory of parametric greatest common divisors by means of comprehensive Grobner systems (CGS). Moreover, this can be considered as an indirect extension of known parametric GCD algorithms to those for several multivariate polynomials with parameters.


In the absence of dispersants, surfactants or other deposition inhibiting techniques, nanoparticles contained in a base fluid could potentially deposit on channel walls. Nanoparticle layering has been shown to impact heat transfer coefficient, alter hydrodynamic characteristics including viscosity and flow regime, and influence the onset of boundary layers. The rate of deposition is a function of nanoparticle size, heat flux, microchannel hydraulic diameter, fluid velocity, temperature, adhesion properties and volume fraction. This paper presents an analytical investigation of nanoparticle deposition in microchannel heat exchanger systems. The objective of this study is to correlate the rate of deposition with nanoparticle size, microchannel hydraulic diameter, heat flux and volume fraction for transient flow conditions in which Brownian diffusion and thermophoresis are appreciable slip mechanisms of nanoparticle transport. A two-component four-equation nonhomogeneous thermal equilibrium model for mass, momentum and energy in nanofluids that includes nanoparticle mass transport into the channel walls is used in this analysis. An analytical model representing the transient distribution of nanoparticles in a channel is proposed.Copyright © 2011 by ASME


Twelve months ago the suggestion that Australia needed a Dictator was received with a tolerant smile. A Mussolini might suit the Latin psychology but the Australian sentiment would not stand for one. Today a large number of persons representing every side of our civic and commercial life agree that the suggestion is a sound one. The only question is "Who is the man?'


A phosphorescent coordination hybrid has been successfully prepared from silsesquioxane containing phosphine oxide and europium tris β-diketonate. The novel silsesquioxane was synthesized by the sol-gel reaction of corresponding trialkoxysilane obtained by the ene-thiol reaction of allyldipenylphosphine oxide and mercaptopropyltriethoxysilane. Despite the high concentration of the europium complex (50 wt%), the complex was dispersed completely into the silsesquioxane, giving a dense, homogeneous, and transparent hybrid thin film. The luminescence property of this film was also investigated. This hybrid thin film with the embedded europium complex shows bright phosphorescence accompanied with a characteristic sharp spectrum derived from the f-f transition of europium at ambient temperature. It can be concluded that the enhancement of the emission intensity and the branching ratio for the europium complex in the hybrid compared to the europium complex in PMMA is due to the formation of a coordination bond between the europium complex and the phosphine oxide in silsesquioxane.


This paper presents the consolidation parameters of reconstituted peat soils with different peat soil particle sizes. The reconstituted peat sample was used to determine the consolidation parameters since the undisturbed samples were difficult to collect. The selected sizes of soil particles passing have been collected and formed the reconstituted peat samples by preloaded a pressure to remove the extra water. The testing involve was one-dimensional oedometer consolidation test with the load increment method (5 – 320kPa). It is important to gather the information about a soil profile, especially on consolidation properties which were important in predicting the settlement of soil. Based on the results, compression index (Cc) and swell index (Cs), the values were increased with the increasing peat particles size.


The ALICE (Accelerators and Lasers in Combined Experiments) facility (formerly known as ERLP) is being commissioned at Daresbury Laboratory. It is a test facility for novel accelerator and photon science applications. As part of this facility, an oscillator FEL will be commissioned later in 2009. The FEL will be used to test energy recovery with a disrupted beam and to provide output for a select experimental programme. The FEL output will be measured and used to determine the accuracy of FEL modelling techniques. The facility will also be used as a testbed for novel FEL concepts. In this paper, an overview of the FEL design is presented, together with an update of the status of commissioning preparations, including time-dependent modelling using the expected electron beam parameters.


Due to the application needs of some special scenarios, multi-instance learning problem has been paid more and more attention in recent years. Different from the traditional supervised learning problem, each example in the training set of multi-instance learning is not represented by a single feature vector, but a group of feature vectors, the example is called bag, and the vector contained in them are called instances. Multi-instance learning is widely used in many real scenarios. Therefore, it has become an important topic in machine learning, and many algorithms related to multi-instance learning have been proposed successively. In this paper, the latest applications of multi-instance learning in some real scenarios are described in detail, the main ideas of some new multi-instance learning algorithms are given, and finally summarizes and prospects.


Introduction The pioneering biologist Konstantin S. Merezhkovsky first argued in 1909 that the little green dots (chloroplasts) in plant cells, which synthesize sugars in the presence of sunlight, evolved from symbionts of foreign origin. He proposed that "symbiogenesis" a term he coined for the merger of different kinds of life-forms into new species-was a major creative force in the production of new kinds of organisms. A Russian anatomist, Andrey S. Famintsyn, and an American biologist, Ivan E. Wallin, worked independently during the early decades of the twentieth century on similar hypotheses. Wallin further developed his unconventional view that all kinds of symbioses played a crucial role in evolution, and Famintsyn, believing that chloroplasts were symbionts, succeeded in maintaining them outside the cell. Both men experimented with the physiology of chloroplasts and bacteria and found striking similarities in their structure and function. Chloroplasts, they proposed, originally entered cells as live food-microbes that fought to survive -and were then exploited by their ingestors. They remained within the larger cells down through the ages, protected and always ready to reproduce. Recent studies have demonstrated, however, that the cell's most important organelles chloroplasts in plants and mitochondria in plants and animals are highly integrated and well-organized former bacteria1.


Time series of temperatures during periods of extreme cold display long-term seasonal variability and short-term temporal dependence. Classical approaches to extremes circumvent these issues, but in so doing cannot address questions relating to the temporal character of the process, though these issues are often the most important. In this paper a model is developed with the following features: periodic seasonal effects; consistency with asymptotic extreme value theory; Markov description of temporal dependence. Smith et al. studied the properties of such a model in the stationary case. Here, it is shown how such a model can be fitted to a non-stationary series, and consequently used to estimate temporal aspects of the extremal process of low temperatures which have most practical and scientific relevance.


Pear is a heterozygous perennial plant. Open pollination in pear has been reported to be better than controlled cross-pollination. Significant positive correlations were observed between increased inbreeding and improved flavour, grit and texture. Seedlings with ovate and ovate-elliptical leaves had the best fruit quality. The additive gene effects were predominant in the expression of fruit weight, fruit shape, ripening date and resistance to fire blight. Non-additive gene effects were predominant for total yield/plant, height, number of fruits/plant, number of branches/plant, number of locules/fruit and pericarp thickness. Heritability was higher for fruit weight and pH of the fruit juice; moderate for ripening period, fruit length, fruit diameter, fruit shape index, soluble solid content, grit content and skin russeting, while, flesh texture, flavour, appearance, flesh firmness, total weighted selection index and the weighted total score had relatively low heritability. General combining ability (GCA) were higher than specific combining ability (SCA) for number of branches/plant, average fruit weight, total soluble solids, acidity, height, number of fruits/plant, number of locules/fruit and total yield/plant, except pericarp thickness.


In this work we analyze the effect of the RMP coils on the magnetic topology in ITER since this is known to affect the stability of Type-I ELMs. Resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs) are used for suppression and mitigation of edge localized modes (ELMs) in DIII-D and other tokamaks. ELMs drive impulsive energy losses and can be detrimental to plasma facing surfaces in future ITER high power experiments. During RMPs the vacuum topology of the magnetic field, excluding the plasma response, changes producing a stochastic region that is formed by overlapping magnetic islands. Experiments have shown that the application of RMPs leads to increased transport in the pedestal and the suppression of Type-I ELMs. Understanding ELM physics and developing the ability to control Type-I ELMs will improve the performance and longevity of ITER plasma-facing surfaces in high energy density tokamak-based fusion confinement. The ITER RMP ELM control approach is based on the successful ELM suppression with DIII-D I-coils. Thus, by comparing the magnetic topology in DIII-D with that in ITER we can extrapolate our knowledge of the DIII-D RMP ELM suppression strategy to the future ITER experiments. Previously, several preliminary ITER coil designs were studied for the coil mode spectra and magnetic island overlap. In the present work we extended this research to the current design for the ITER internal RMP coils. We have also included the effect of the ITER Error Field Correction coils in the analysis which has not been done in the earlier studies. Here, RMP ELM suppression is studied for a range of different ITER scenarios (H-mode, Hybrid, Steady-state) for various ITER RMP coils mode spectra such as toroidal mode number n=3 and n=4 for a range of coil current amplitudes and phasing. The goal is to examine the effect of various RMP configurations on ELM suppression in ITER using vacuum field modeling when compared to DIII-D ELM suppression results with similar vacuum field topologies. This is achieved by calculating field line characteristics such as the Chirikov magnetic island overlap parameter, and the magnetic field line loss which is primarily responsible for connecting field lines from the hot regions of the plasma to the vessel walls. Our results show that we can achieve a desired level of stochastization using nominal ELM control coil currents in ITER that is equivalent to the levels of stochastization in DIII-D RMP ELM suppressed discharges. The results also show that this level of stochastization can be achieved with or without the error field correction coils.


Extracting PD pulses from excessively noisy environment has been a crucial issue in PD on-line measurement. DWT as a powerful mathematical tool has proven its effectiveness in PD measurement denoising. The paper presents a method on how to achieve an improved denoising effect at an optimal sampling rate in DWT. It reveals the relationship between the sampling rate and the frequency band in wavelet analysis and contrasts the distribution of a PD signal and white noise along the decomposition levels. A set of 3 PD pulses produced by a narrow band detector immersed in white noise are processed at different sampling rates to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.


This paper describes the development of decoupled vibratory feeding system (DVFS), and concentrates on its structural design and driving technology. In DVFS, vibration angle, frequency and waveform of the driving signals can be easily adjusted in software way, as well as the phase angle between vertical vibration and horizontal vibration. So DVFS has a great superiority. Up to now, two DVFS prototypes have been successfully developed, and the structure of decoupled vibratory feeder (DVF) becomes more and more compact. But its application is limited, because of complex structure, occupying much space and inconvenient installation and commissioning. So the structure should be optimized. The electromagnet and the drive circuit are the core of the drive system which should be simultaneously considered. Its external dimensions and drive performance should be optimized. Presently, some researches on the electromagnet driving technology have been made. One method is to receive analog signal from D/A output, then drive electromagnet through power amplifier. The other method actually is to use a switching circuit controlled by PWM technology. To test electromagnet performance, a test system has been designed.


The automatic test system of calibration and maintenance for ground-to-air missile weapon system is introduced in this paper. The composition, principle of automatic test system and its application in the multi-field are described.


DDoS attacks are thrown through carriage of a large amount of packets to an objective machine, using instantaneous teamwork of numerous hosts which are scattered throughout the Grid computing environment. Nowadays DDoS attacks on the Internet in general and particularly in Grid computing environment has become a visible issue in computer networks and communications. DDoS attacks are cool to provoke but their uncovering is a very problematic and grim task and therefore, an eye-catching weapon for hackers. DDoS torrents do not have familiar characteristics; therefore currently existing IDS cannot identify and discover these attacks perfectly. Correspondingly, there implementation is a puzzling task. In practice, Gossip based DDoS attacks detection apparatus are used to detect such types of attacks in computer networks, by exchanging stream of traffic over line. Gossip based techniques results in network overcrowding and have upstairs of superfluous and additional packets. Keeping the above drawbacks in mind, we have proposed a DDoS detection and prevention mechanism in [1], that has the attractiveness of being easy to adapt and more trustworthy than existing counterparts. We have introduced entropy based detection mechanism for DDoS attack detection. Our proposed solution has no overhead of extra packets, hence resulting in good QoS. Once DDoS is detected, any prevention technique can be used to prevent DDoS in Grid environment. In this paper we are going to extend our idea. A confirmation mechanism is introduced herewith.


This letter proposes a technique for designing flat lenses using field transformation (FT), as opposed to ray optics (RO) or transformation optics (TO). The lens design consists of 10 layers of graded index dielectric in the radial direction and 5 layers in the longitudinal direction. The central layer in the longitudinal direction primarily contributes to a bulk of the phase transformation, while the other four layers, above and below this middle layer on either side, act as matching layers that help reduce the reflections introduced by the impedance mismatch at the interfaces of the middle layer. The letter compares the performance of the lens, so designed, to those based on the RO and TO techniques. We show that the proposed lens design using FT is broadband, has a better than 1 dB higher gain compared to the RO- and TO-based designs over a wider frequency band, and that its scan capability is superior as well.


In this paper, we aim to understand the distribution of the densest subgraphs of a given graph under the density notion of average-degree. We show that the structures, the relationships and the distributions of all the densest subgraphs of a graph G can be encoded in O(L) space in an index called the ds-Index. Here L denotes the maximum output size of a densest subgraph of G. More importantly, ds-Indexcan report all the minimal densest subgraphs of G collectively in O(L) time and can enumerate all the densest subgraphs of G with an O(L) delay. Besides, the construction of ds-Indexcosts no more than finding a single densest subgraph using the state-of-the-art approach. Our empirical study shows that for web-scale graphs with one billion edges, the ds-Indexcan be constructed in several minutes on an ordinary commercial machine.


The paper presents a deep learning based fully automatic object annotation technique for warehouse application usecase. One of the main challenges that is addressed in this paper is the large amount of manual labour involved in generating datasets for training a deep network. The proposed annotation model is developed by fine-tuning a deep network based object detection framework with ImageNet pre-trained models. We have used Faster RCNN network with pre-trained model VGG-16 and RFCN with ResNet-101. A small set of manually annotated images of single objects are used to automatically generate a dataset of significantly large size within a very short time duration (in real-time). The model also has the competence of precisely localizing the region of any new object that comes into the familiar background. Incorporation of techniques like color augmentation and affine transformation enables the network invariant to rotation, scale and brightness. Augmentation also enables the model to performs well even if the background is different. A clutter generation technique is introduced in the framework which makes the system capable of annotating objects even in a densely populated real-world environment. This work has another significant contribution in detection of objects those are used in Amazon Robotic Challenge (ARC) 2017 where our team was among the four finalist in both picking and stowing task. The automatically generated big dataset is further used to train multi-class detectors using Faster RCNN and RFCN networks to validate the performance of the proposed annotation model. The efficacy of the proposed model is hence demonstrated through various experimental results. The dataset is shared online for the convenience of the reader.


This paper investigates the model for pedestrian flow firstly proposed in [Cristiani et al., DOI:10.1137/140962413]. The model assumes that each individual in the crowd moves in a known domain, aiming at minimizing a given cost functional. Both the pedestrian dynamics and the cost functional itself depend on the position of the whole crowd. In addition, pedestrians are assumed to have predictive abilities, but limited in time, extending only up to $\theta$ time units into the future, where $\theta\in[0,\infty)$ is a model parameter. 1) For $\theta=0$ (no predictive abilities), we recover the modeling assumptions of the Hughes's model, where people take decisions on the basis of the current position of the crowd only. 2) For $\theta\to\infty$, instead, we recover the standard mean field game (MFG) setting, where people are able to forecast the behavior of the others at any future time and take decisions on the basis of the current and future position of the whole crowd. 3) For intermediate values of $\theta$ we obtain something different: as in the Hughes's model, the numerical procedure to solve the problem requires to run an off-line procedure at any fixed time $t$, which returns the current optimal velocity field at time $t$ by solving an associated backward-in-time Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation; but, differently from the Hughes's model, here the procedure involves a prediction of the crowd behavior in the sliding time window $[t,t+\theta)$, therefore the optimal velocity field is given by the solution to a forward-backward system which joins a Fokker-Planck equation with a Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation as in the MFG approach. The fact that a different forward-backward system must be solved at any time $t$ arises new interesting theoretical questions. Numerical tests will give some clues about the well-posedness of the problem.


It is challenging to accurately judge the actual end position of the manipulator—regarded as a rigid body—due to the influence of micro-deformation. Its precise and efficient control is a crucial problem. To solve the problem, the Hamilton principle was used to establish the partial differential equation (PDE) dynamic model of the manipulator system based on the infinite dimension of the working environment interference and the manipulator space. Hence, it resolves the common overflow instability problem in the micro-deformable manipulator system modeling. Furthermore, an infinite-dimensional radial basis function neural network compensator suitable for the dynamic model was proposed to compensate for boundary and uncertain external interference. Based on this compensation method, a distributed boundary proportional differential control method was designed to improve control accuracy and speed. The effectiveness of the proposed model and method was verified by theoretical analysis, numerical simulation, and experimental verification. The results show that the proposed method can effectively improve the response speed while ensuring accuracy.


Summary Laboratory bioassays were conducted on the susceptibility of air-dried sapwood specimens, from trees of both regrowth and mature karri (Eucalyptus diversicolor) and jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata), to attack by the powder post borer (Lyctus brunneus). The susceptibility of regrowth karri was determined using material collected from 10 trees (five trees x two areas) each at three positions (the butt, midway along the bole and the crown). Material from the butts of 64 mature trees, representing three different areas in the south west of Western Australia, was similarly assessed. Both regrowth and mature karri specimens were collected from trees within the main karri estate. The susceptibility of both regrowth and mature jarrah was compared concurrently in a bioassay which evaluated butt specimens of approximately 20 trees from each of three different areas in the jarrah forest. Prior to the bioassays, all specimens were assessed for starch concentration in the sapwood. Some sapwood specimens of both r...


We give a variational formulation, for the problem of the waves above an immersed body On donne une formulation variationnelle pour le probleme des vagues au-dessus d'un corps faiblement immerge


The script concordance test assesses reasoning in the context of uncertainty. To score the test, examinees' answers are compared with those given by members of a panel of reference made up of experienced practitioners: but how many experts are needed? Panel members' answers will vary, so the reference panel has to be large enough to get reliable panel scores and therefore reliable student scores. Charlin and colleagues, from Canada, France and the Netherlands, show that for high stakes exams, a panel of 20 is recommended. For other exams, any number over 10 is associated with acceptable reliability.


Gut contents of 1013 stonefly nymphs, comprising nine species, from the Dolores River, Colorado, were analyzed from December 1974-October 1975 and compared with food availability. Pteryonarcyids ingested large quantities of detritus and some moss, moss being a substantial food item in later instar Pternarcella badia nymphs. Perlodids fed primarily on chironomids and simuliids, although Isoperla fulva also ingested mayflies in June. Claassenia sabulosa remained carnivorous throughout development: young nymphs ingested chironomids and small mayflies and larger nymphs ingested caddisflies and mayflies. Horn's Coefficient of Dietary Overlap indicated significant overlap between all perlodids and chloroperlids. It also showed significant overlap between small and large C. sabulosa nymphs, yet selection of different prey sizes indicated resource partitioning. A comparison of food habits with the Gunnison River stoneflies indicated differences between the diets of large and small Claassenia sabulosa, with chironomids comprising large percentages of the diet for both size classes in the Gunnison River and smaller nymphs in the Dolores. Mayflies were important prey for larger individuals in the Dolores River. These differences could be attributed to different prey populations in each river and/or to availability of prey in the particular size that each predator preferred. In both rivers, Chironomidae and Simuliidae larvae were the major prey in the guts of Cultus aestivalis and Isoperla fulva. This prey specificity may have been due to decreased availability of smaller individuals in the other major prey groups or a difficulty in capture of larger prey organisms. INTRODUCTION Fuller and Stewart (1977) discussed stonefly food habits and showed that seasonal-developmental shifts occurred in nymphal diets and food preferences among 10 species in the Gunnison River, Colorado. They also addressed dietary overlap, prey size electivity, resource partitioning and diel periodicity in feeding. Earlier studies by Muttkowski and Smith (1929), Hynes (1941), Brinck (1949), Jones (1950), Mackereth (1957) and Richardson and Gaufin (1971) dealt only with gut analyses and descriptive aspects of feeding. More recent studies have reported seasonal fluctuations in diets (Tarter and Krumholz, 1971; Sheldon, 1972; Vaught and Stewart, 1974; Cather and Gaufin, 1975), yet only one (Siegfried and Knight, 1976) contains information on prey availability. When feeding habits of specific taxa are compared between river systems, prey availability data are essential before any conclusions can be drawn about a predator's preference or selection for particular prey taxa. This article describes a study made of food habits and prey selection by nine stonefly species in the Dolores River, Colo. The research was done concurrently with that reported by Fuller and Stewart (1977) on the Gunnison River, Colo., and comparisons will be made for the eight species encountered in both rivers December 1974 October 1975. STUDY RIVER AND METHODS Headwaters of the Dolores River originate on the S slope of the San Miguel mountains in southwestern Colorado. The West and East Forks converge about 13 miles above Dolores, and the river flows southwestward to Dolores, thence north' Study supported in part by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Traineeship #T900115 and North Texas State University Faculty Research Fund Grants # 34866 and 34905. 2 Present address: Department of Zoology, University of Toronto, Toronto, M5S, lAl, Ontario, Canada.


A vector computer implementation of a wide-angle Synthetic Aperture Radar processor is presented. The choice of this architecture is convenient inasmuch Fast Fourier Transform codes and matrix multiplications can be efficiently implemented. Experiments and performance data of the processor are presented.


The immunological aspects of lactation of cows are investigated in this work. The authors present modern scientific data on the local immune protection of the mammary gland of cows. The purpose of the research was to improve the laboratory methods of diagnosis of mastitis and to study the cytological composition of the secretion of the breast of the cows for subclinical and purulent catarrhal inflammation of the udder. The cytological differentiation of milk cells was carried out according to its own developed, tested and patented method. Our experimental data convincingly confirm that in subclinical and purulent-catarrhal mastitis in cows there are significant changes in changes in the cytological composition and the system of local immune defense of the mammary gland. An important role in inflammation of the mammary gland is played by neutrophilic granulocytes that migrate to the parenchyma at the beginning of the clinical pathology (with subclinical inflammation) and release a range of inflammatory mediators in the inflammation zone. Subclinical mastitis of cows is accompanied by a sharp increase in the total somatic cells count in the secretion of the mammary gland. This is due to the activity of neutrophilic granulocytes, monocytes of histiocytes. Corresponding changes were found in the cytological balance of immunocompetent cells of the secretion of cows at from subclinical mastitis. The most significant shift was noted in the index of migratory activity of neutrophils (P < 0.01), which is a specific "indicator" indicator of inflammatory response in the body of diseased animals. Subclinical inflammation was also manifested by a decrease in the migration activity of lymphocytes. At purulent-catarrhal mastitis of cows there is a significant increase in the number of somatic cells. Also, the migration activity of neutrophils and histiocytes in the pathologic process zone is increasing and changes in the balance of immune cells are established. Thus, our experimental data convincingly confirm that in subclinical and purulent-catarrhal mastitis in cows there are significant changes in the system of local immune defense of the mammary gland. It has an important diagnostic value and also needs immunocorrection in the treatment process.


Li Shens 46 line poem written after he encountered calumny in the Hanyuan was an important document about the contention between Niu and Li and the literature in Tang Dynasty. Although it was the poets personal account of history, yet a lot of people and events were mentioned, especially the contention between the two different schools headed by Niu and Li. It is of great significance if we use this as a case to explore the relationship between the political events and literature in Tang Dynasty.


The invention discloses a clamp for cleaning a shaft part, which does not leave a dead angle with only needing a row of nozzles when cleaning the shaft part. The clamp comprises a stand. A plurality of support shafts are movably arranged on the stand through a bearing, a gear is arranged on a shaft end of each support shaft, two adjacent gears are mutually meshed, a pair of clamping wheels are respectively and slidingly arranged on each support shaft, and steps are respectively arranged at one sides of the clamping wheels at the shaft end of each support shaft on the circumferential surfaces of the clamping wheels. The invention is suitable for places of cleaning the shaft part.


This study aims to explore the creative possibilities associated with the concept of data portrait as a means of representing and expressing identity. To this end, it begins by discussing the concept, its emergence, and the functions of data portraits. It then examines its concrete manifestations by analyzing a set of aesthetic artifacts that are, implicitly or explicitly, tied to the notion of data portrait through different creative approaches. This analysis informs the design and development of a Data Self-Portrait, aiming to explore visualization methods for producing a portrait, generated from personal data collected through an autoethnographic approach. In this manner, this study seeks to highlight how personal data become relevant in portraying identity. It seeks to contribute to a discussion about the ways of conceptualizing portraiture, informed by the current proliferation of digital data and the creative possibilities offered by computational media for exploring the portrait as a representation genre.


ABSTRACT Many of the films of Lars von Trier can be situated within the context of the 'woman's film' and, more specifically, within its subgenre of the maternal melodrama. However, the films' intensification of the investments typically demanded by the woman's film could be said to function as a form of 'provocation' (Nobus 2007). This opens up a space within which to explore the spectacle of suffering in the woman's film in general and in von Trier's films in particular.


The country-house novel is characterized by the dominating role of a country house which is mythologized and seen as analogous to the "pleasant place" (locus amoenus). In the article J. Fowles' novel "The French Lieutenant's Woman" is analyzed from the point of view of this genre tradition.


BACKGROUND: Postoperative fibrinoid syndrome (PFS) is an early complication of phacoemulsification, manifested by fibrin deposition on the iris and the intraocular lens surface, which leads to visual acuity decrease.
AIM: To assess the rate and the treatment efficacy (by YAG laser, enzymatic, medicalmentous) in PFS after phacoemulsification.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: Retrospective analysis of 56,019 cataract surgery cases of 20172021. There were 49 patients with PFS divided into 3 groups according to treatment approaches: 1st group medicamentous treatment (MT) + YAG laser destruction of the fibrin film (n = 6); 2nd MT + prourokinase injection into the anterior chamber (n = 6); 3rd MT only (n = 37).
RESULTS: There was no difference between groups in best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) before the PFS development. There was a more rapid increase in BCVA in the 1st and the 2nd groups compared with the 3rd one on the third day (0.20 0.09 and 0.21 0.08 versus 0.09 0.08 for groups respectively, p = 0.001) and on the fifth day of treatment (0.25 0.10 and 0.27 0.13 versus 0.16 0.14, p = 0.029). Nevertheless, in one week, there was no difference in BCVA between groups. Unfortunately, BCVA did not return to baseline in any group.
CONCLUSION: The incidence of PFS after phacoemulsification is relatively low and amounts to 0.093%. The most rapid BCVA recovery was observed in the 1st and the 2nd groups.


A new RF front-end architecture is proposed for achieving a full-duplex phased array, in which two reference channels with a decoupling network are added to the traditional receiver. The proposed architecture was verified in a one-dimensional phased array with separated Tx and Rx patch antennas. The simulation results illustrate that the isolation from Tx to Rx is improved from 17.5 dB to 47.4 dB over a 600 MHz instantaneous band centred at 10 GHz. When the beam of the transmitter scans from 0 degrees to 60 degrees, the isolation is not degraded, demonstrating how the Tx-to-Rx self-interference could be suppressed in a phased array scenario.


Comparisons among Chinese sub-groups and Western design experts, Landsc. Urban Plann., Vol.32, pp.107-126, 1995. 19) Steinitz, C.: Toward a sustainable landscape with high visual preference and high ecological integrity: The Loop Road in Acadia National Park, USA, Landsc. Urban Plann., Vol.19, pp.213-250, 1990. 20) Yamashita, S.: Perception and evaluation of water in landscape: Use of Photo-Projective Method to compare child and adult residents' perceptions of a Japanese river environment, Landsc. Urban Plann., Vol.62, pp.3-17, 2002. 21) Brown, T.C. and Daniel, T. C.: Scaling of ratings: Concepts and methods, USDA Forest Service Research Paper RM-293, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Fort Collins, Colorado, 1990. 22) Wohlwill, J.F. and Harris, G.: Response to congruity or contrast for man-made features in natural-recreation settings, Leisure Sciences, Vol.13, No.4, pp.349-365, 1980. 23) Zube, E.H., Pit, D.G. and Evans, G.W.: A lifespan development study of landscape assessment, J. Environ. Psychol., Vol.6, pp.115-128, 1983. 24) Ulrich, R.S.: Aesthetic and affective response to natutal environment. In Altman, I. and Wohlwill, J.F. (Eds.): Behavior and Natural Environment, Plenum Press, New York, Vol.6, pp.85-125, 1983. 25) Ulrich, R.S.: Human response to vegetation and landscapes, Landsc. Urban Plann., Vol.13, pp.29-44, 1986. 26) Brush, R.O. and Shafer, E.L.: Application of a landscape preference model to landscape management. In Zube, E.H., Brush, R.O. and Fabos, J.G. (Eds.): Landscape Assessment: Values, Perceptions and Resources, Dowden, Hutchinson & Ross, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, pp.168-182, 1975. 27) McHarg, I.L: Design with Nature, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1992.


A social choice rule g selects a member of a given set of alternative X as a function of individual preferences. The Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem establishes that if preferences are unrestricted and the range of g has at least three members, only dictatorial rules are strategy-proof. However, if the domain of g is the set of profiles at which there exists a strong Condorcet winner, Campbell and Kelly have shown that majority-rule is the only non-dictatorial strategy-proof rule for an odd number of individuals when the range of g contains at least three alternatives. Dasgupta and Maskin consider the case of a continuum of voters as a means of circumventing the issue of parity. Although their analysis provides an approximation for a sufficiently large (but finite) set of individuals, no exact analysis exists for an arbitrary even number of individuals. We are therefore interested in characterizing the family of strategy-proof social choice rules over the Condorcet domain for an even number of individuals. We provide a full characterization when individual preferences are strict linear orderings, and prove several propositions concerning strategy-proof rules when individual preference orderings are permitted to be weak linear orders.


Long Period Earthquakes (LPEs) linked to the volcanic activity offer understanding the kinetics of active magmatic systems. These events are usually caused by cracks resonating as magma and gases move at the subsurface level or towards surface. The off Nicobar region in the Andaman Sea is observing recurrent earthquake swarms after the 2004 megathrust event. The earthquake swarms have happened in January 2005, March and Oct 2014, Nov 2015 and Apr 2019. Passive Ocean Bottom Seismometer (OBS) experiment conducted for the first time in the Andaman Sea by CSIR-NIO during December 2013-May 2014 provided new insights to the genesis of the recurrence of swarms in off Nicobar region. In addition of OBS data, we have also combined Andaman ISLANDS network data and land stations data from the IRIS Data Centre. Hybrid very long-period earthquakes were detected for the first time with prominent hydro-acoustic phase during the March 2014 earthquake swarm; these were documented by passive OBS experiment. On the 21st and 22nd of March 2014, a total of 141 high-frequency events were recorded, with 71 of these being low-frequency oscillations. The spectral analysis of these events shows a spectral peak at 0.13 Hz. This event's initial onset is predominated by a high-frequency phase, which is trailed by lengthy low-frequency vibrations. The observed swarms roughly align in the NW – SE direction on the trend of underwater volcanic arc and Great Sumatra Fault. High resolution multibeam bathymetry data in the off Nicobar region revealed a pattern of faults depicting the joining of Seulimeum Fault (SF) and Aceh Fault (AF) of the Sumatra Fault with the West Andaman Fault and Andaman Nicobar Fault. We have identified 26 closely spaced distinct volcanoes, which include well-developed cratered seamounts with fissure and fracture features in the off Nicobar region, suggesting the occurrence volcanic eruptions in the recent past.These swarms were also detected using hydrophone component of OBS unit. Earthquake epicentre information determined from T wave rise time suggested subsurface magma migration from deeper to shallow crust. LPEs and a prominent T phase are indicators of subsurface tectono-magmatic activity. The temporal variation of b-values also analysed for all swarms' using data from both the global network and the OBS. Temporal variation of b-value suggests bimodal characteristics of frequency-magnitude distribution. This proposes that the swarms were caused by a complex seismic process that was influenced by both tectonic and volcanic activity. The stress generated from magma movement has triggered volcano-tectonic events due to reactivation of pre-existing sliver faulting and generated long period ringing.


Understanding life history traits is important for assessing potential invasiveness, particularly in the context of the future spread of invasive species under climate change. A number of species of Veronicellidae have been introduced beyond their native ranges and have become invasive. Two of these species, Veronicella cubensis and Laevicaulis alte, are widespread in Hawaii, yet little is known of their life histories. This study of growth and reproduction and their relation to temperature in these two species was undertaken using laboratory stocks derived from individuals collected in Hawaii. More data were collected for V. cubensis than for L. alte because of difficulty maintaining the latter in the lab. Veronicella cubensis grew faster at 22 °C than at 27 °C. At 22 °C, the mean age at which V. cubensis first mated was 203 d, and the mean age when eggs were first laid was 226 d. Mating in V. cubensis lasted more than a day, and it took up to 4 d to lay an egg mass. Mating took less than a day in L. alte. No self-fertilization was recorded in V. cubensis, but a single L. alte individual maintained alone from hatching laid fertilized eggs. Sperm storage after a single mating in V. cubensis was estimated to last up to 6 months. In both species the time for eggs to hatch was shorter at 27 °C than at 22 °C. Hatchability was between 74 and 93%. Veronicella cubensis lived for at least 2 years and was estimated to produce at least 400 eggs over its life. Climate warming will probably lead to expansion of the ranges of V. cubensis and L. alte to higher elevations in Hawaii and elsewhere. Growth and reproduction will also be affected by a warming climate and therefore impact the success of these invasive species.


Genetic variances were estimated for grain yield and quality characters in rice (Oryza sativa L.) by full-sib and halfsib analysis in 20 F 1 hybrids produced from crosses between five high yielding genotypes namely IR 50, IR 62, IET 5656, IET 8002 and IET 6441 as lines and four quality rice genotypes namely Basmati 385, Dudheswar, Kalonunia and Sambamahsuri as testers. The lines were significantly varying for the characters, whereas variances due to testers were significant for all the characters except panicle weight. Line × tester interaction was highly significant for all the characters. Combining ability analysis revealed predominance of non-additive gene action for days to flowering, total tillers/plant, productive tillers/plant, 1000 grain weight, grain yield/plant and kernel elongation ratio; additive gene action for plant height, panicle length, panicle weight, spikelet/panicle, filled grains/panicle, spikelet fertility, grain length, grain breadth, grain length/breadth ratio, grain weight/panicle, ker nel length, kernel breadth and kernel length/breadth ratio and both additive and non-additive gene actions for cooked kernel breadth. Among the lines IET 5656 was found to be the best general combiner for grain yield as well as its components and quality characters, while IET 8002 and IET 6441 were superior general combiners for quality characters only. Among the testers Kalonunia was the best general combiner for yield and its components followed by Basmati 385, whereas, for the quality characters Dudheswar was the best general combiner, followed by Basmati 385. The three crosses namely IET 5656 × Kalonunia, IR 50 × Basmati 385 and IR 62 × Sambamahsuri were superior over their superior grain quality parents like Kalonunia, Dudheswar and Sambamahsuri for most of the yield and quality characters. When all the 23 yield and quality characters were considered together in an overall ranking on the basis of specific combining ability for grain yield per plant and kernel elongation ratio as the base characters and the actual field performance of their attributing characters, the cross IET 8002 × Dudheswar was the best performer, closely followed by IR 50 × Basmati 385 and IET 6441 × Dudheswar in this regard.


Using N-acetylglucosaminono-1,5-lactone (1) as the reference, the inhibitory activity of its (formal) derivatives N-acetylglucosaminono-1,5-lactone oxime (2) and N-acetylglucosaminono-1,5-lactone O-(phenylcarbamoyl)-oxime (3) was tested against β-N-acetylglucosaminidase of different origins (animal, plant, fungus). Displaying inhibition constants of 0.45 μM and 0.62 μM, for the animal and plant enzyme, respectively, the simple oxime 2 was about equally potent as the parent lactone 1, and 50–400 times more efficient than two recently described new β-N-acetylglucosaminidase inhibitors. The (phenylcarbamoyl)oxime 3 performed even better, particularly with the fungal enzyme (Ki= 40 nM), i.e. was about 350 times more potent than the lactone. In all cases competitive inhibition was observed with 4-nitrophenyl-β-N-acetylglucosaminide as the substrate. With Ki/Km ratios up to 3300 for 2 and 13600 for 3, the mode of action of these novel inhibitors is probably that of transition state mimicry. Suggestions are made for their use as a tool in biological research.


PurposeThe tibia first technique in unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA) may have the advantage that surgeons can obtain a balanced flexion-extension gap. However, changes of the soft tissue tension during UKA has not been elucidated yet. The purpose of this study was to examine the correlation between the soft tissue tension before the femoral osteotomy and after the femoral component in place using the tensor in UKA.MethodsThirty UKAs for isolated medial compartmental osteoarthritis or idiopathic osteonecrosis were assessed. The mean age was 71.8±8.5 years old (range: 58–85), and the average coronal plane femorotibial angle (FTA) was 181.2±3.2 degree preoperatively. All the patients received a conventional medial Zimmer Unicompartmental High Flex Knee System (Zimmer Inc, Warsaw, Ind). The actual values of the proximal and posterior femoral osteotomy were calculated by adding the thickness of the bone saw blades to the thickness of the bony cut. Using a UKA tensor which designed to facilitate intra-o...


The purpose of this paper is to discuss and review the fruits of Muhammad Al-Ghazali's thoughts on a hadith and its role in the lives of Muslims today. Literature research is used in the writing mechanism by tracing the scientific work of previous researchers and then analyzing and concluding. For the results of this paper, namely: 1. The method of determining the degree of hadith of Muhammad Al-Ghazali using criteria: a. testing with the Qur'an, b. testing with other hadiths, both the level and context of the content of the hadith, c. testing with historical facts (conditions when the hadith was issued), and d. testing concerning the conformity of reason (scientifically proven). 2. The role of hadith criteria set by Muhammad Al-Ghazali has had an impact on the understanding of Muslims, namely:: a. be more selective in responding to various hadiths circulating or in other words not necessarily take it for granted, b. Seeing the objectives, objectives, and intentions of a hadith by relating the explanation of the Qur'an then assisted by explanations that are not aimed at one scholar alone and adding a review of the truth of the ratio (reason) with scientific (science) and c. not fixated on judging a hadith because the narrator is considered qualified in the eyes of scholars, but tries to know and seek its truth through searches in scientific assemblies (ulama), scientific studies (writings), books of hadith.

Keywords: Classification, Role, Shahih Hadith, Muhammad Al-Ghazali.


Background and aim To investigate the prevalence and characteristics of colonic adenoma and advanced colonic adenoma in a large group of patients in mainland China. Materials and methods We conducted a cross-sectional study on patients who had undergone colonoscopy examination in a university hospital in mainland China. Colonic adenomas and advanced adenomas were recorded. Results The prevalence of polyps, adenoma, and advanced adenoma was 23.9%, 13.3%, and 3.5%, respectively. Age and sex were independent risk factors for the prevalence of adenoma and advanced adenoma. Polyp size was associated with an increased risk of both colonic adenoma (OR 1.50, 95% CI 1.44–1.56) and advanced adenoma (OR 2.78, 95% CI 2.55–3.03) after sex and age adjustment. Proximal colon polyps were a risk factor for adenoma (OR 1.41, 95% CI 1.20–1.66) and also associated with a significant reduction (44%) in risk of advanced adenoma (OR 0.56, 95% CI 0.36–0.86) compared to distal colon adenoma after sex and age adjustment. A screening indication was associated with a statistically significant decrease in the odds of prevalence of adenoma (OR 0.90, 95% CI 0.81–0.99) and advanced adenoma (OR 0.72, 95% CI 0.59–0.88) compared to a no-screening indication. Conclusion The overall prevalence of adenoma was low in mainland China. It exhibited a varied pattern with respect to age and sex. Polyp size was a risk factor for both colonic adenoma and its transition to advanced adenoma. Proximal colon polyps were a risk factor for adenoma, but a protective factor for advanced adenoma compared to distal colon adenoma.


This paper submits the iron swords from the necropolis of Son Pellisser (Calvia-Majorca). Although the materials that we find are numerous and still under research offer a preliminary study about three imported swords, found in burial objects, also their possible origin and way of introduction on the island. These weapons could be the first archaeological evidence that the Balearic mercenaries participated in the Wars of Sicily, between Carthaginians and Greeks, from the fifth century BC.


We consider the problem of non-trivial pattern formation in decentralised multi-robot systems, and, in particular, how to achieve timeand space-varying behaviour. To tackle the problem, we explore the idea of evolving the fine-level regulation of an underlying self-organising controller. Results from simulation show the promise of the approach: we demonstrate a robot cluster that can stably maintain two different spatial patterns, switching between the two upon sensing an external signal; we also demonstrate a cluster in which individual robots develop differentiated states despite having identical controllers (which could be used as a starting point for functional specialisation of robots within the cluster). The controller was developed with a particular hardware platform in mind—the underwater HYDRON robots developed by the HYDRA consortium (an EU Fifth Framework project). We discuss the implementation of the controller on this and other multi-robot platforms comprising free-moving individual robots, and suggest possible simplifications of the design. This work could eventually have applications in various situations that require robust, complex self-organising behaviour in a collection of free-moving robots, e.g. in space, underwater and nano-scale systems.