Dense, impervious and hard sintered high alumina aggregate is one of the important raw materials for refractory application particularly for castables. Several authors developed high alumina aggregates utilizing different kinds of raw materials through synthetic route [1–4]. Sillimanite beach sand, kyanite, high purity consistent quality fly ashes are some of the newly evolved sources of alumino silicate material to produce alumina rich synthetic aggregates. Other commercially available high alumina synthetic aggregate are tabular alumina, fused alumina, sintered alumina, sintered bauxite etc. The manufacturing process, properties of such aggregates and their compatibility in refractory products are available in many published literature [5–7]. Das et al. [8] and few other authors [9, 10] reported an overview of refractory raw materials, production and research in Indian [13–17]. Erkalfa et al. [13] reported that densification of pure alumina containing more than 0,5 mass-% MnO2 is controlled by grain boundary diffusion mechanism, whereas volume diffusion mechanism is suggested in case of 0,1–0,5 mass-% of MnO2 addition. Microhardness and strength also shows an increasing trend by MnO2 addition. Smothers et al. [17] reported that some additives which increase grain growth enter into the solid solution with alumina. Some other additives forms glassy phase. Presence of this glassy phase greatly increases surface diffusion and results grain growth. Pyrolusite, a mineral essentially consisting of oxides of manganese of varying assay concentration. It has been used as additive for densification of alumina and kaolin mixture by Das et al. [18] to produce wear resistant ceramic tiles. Dörre et al. [19] discussed that, highly sintered alumina ceramic can solve severe wear problem in textile industries due to their superior wear resistant characteristics, low coefficient of friction and microcontext where various alumina sources are described which are used to produce synthetic aggregate. Aneziris et al. [11] emphasized the need of new variety of potential synthetic refractory materials for stringent application in high temperature industries. Das [12] reported the development of erosion and abrasion resistant high alumina aggregate for application in monolithic castable utilizing calcined alumina, kaolin and selective dopants. These aggregates used in a castable composition of self flow type. The author observed the presence of well developed corundum crystal as major phase with hot-MOR value of 8 MPa at 1450 °C. In ceramic system, additives in small amount play an important role towards densification processes. A variety of di-, triand tetravalent oxides such as MgO, Fe2O3, TiO2 and MnO2 etc. have been used by several authors in alumina systems for many reasons Effect of Pyrolusite on the Densification Behaviour of Alumina-kaolin System: Towards Sintered High Alumina Refractory Aggregate


A sure sign of life on other planets would be if someone from one of those planets finally got their act together and started writing a poem. Say, for example, someone from the planet Thermador, wh...


Summary Streptomycin seems to possess some advantages over streptothricin particularly from the point of view of toxicity and its greater action against certain gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria in vivo. Although certain batches of streptomycin appear to have the same order of toxicity as streptothricin, the findings suggest that under proper conditions a relatively non-toxic preparation can be obtained. Streptothricin seems to be much more effective in vitro against pathogenic fungi than streptomycin.


Network coding is a hot research topic due to its ability to improve network throughput and robustness. Most existing research on network coding assumes that the transmission between two nodes in a network is free of errors. Accompanying with this assumption is that nodes in the network always perform hard decisions regarding the received data bits. In this paper, however, we deal with the fact that data transmission is noisy in reality. Only binary networks are considered. The communication channel between two nodes is treated as either BSC or AWGN. Two issues are addressed. First, with all network branches treated as BSC, we investigate the problem of how a transmitter node should allocate its available energy among the branches connected to it so that the intended receivers get the best result (in some sense). Secondly, by treating the branches connected to a receiver node as AWGN, we develop a soft decoding scheme for obtaining the soft decisions (in terms of probabilities) regarding the received data bits at a receiver node. We then show how these soft decisions can be exploited in some belief-propagation decoding schemes. We claim that if error correcting codes are to be incorporated into network coding, then soft decoding is either indispensable or much preferred.


New, high-quality echelle spectra of four halo stars with metallicities in the range -2.0 ≤ [Fe/H] ≤ -0.9 have been obtained in the region of the Li I λ6707 lines. Upper limits on the Li isotopic ratio ranging from 6Li/7Li ≤ 0.02 to 6Li/7Li ≤ 0.08 are found for HD 76932, HD 218502, and HD 284248. The apparently composite spectrum of the close visual binary HD 219617 proved to be unsuitable for similar analysis. Hipparcos parallaxes are used to evaluate the evolutionary states of the three newly observed stars, along with 15 other stars for which Li isotopic ratios (or upper limits, in all but two cases) were previously observed by three groups. The high 6Li/Be ratios seen in HD 84937 and BD +26°3578 indicate that 6Li production occurred primarily via the 4He(α, 2H)6Li reaction between cosmic rays and the interstellar gas, at [Fe/H] ≲ -2.3. The much lower 6Li/Be upper limits measured in the much more metal-rich stars HD 132475 and HD 134169 appear to require either (1) large upward 6Li depletion corrections for these two stars or (2) a transition at [Fe/H] ≳ -2.3 to a much lower 6Li/Be Galactic production ratio, or some combination of both effects.


The association between exaggerated blood pressure (BP) response to exercise (ExBPR) and "masked hypertension" is unclear. Medical records of patients with high‐normal BP who were evaluated in the Chaim Sheba Screening Institute Ramat Gan, Israel, during the years 2002–2007 and referred for 24‐hour ambulatory BP monitoring (ABPM) and exercise test were reviewed. Data on exercise tests performed in the preceding 5 years were retrieved. Reproducible ExBPR was defined when it was recorded at least twice. BP levels on 24‐hour ABPM were compared between patients with a normal BP response and those with an ExBPR (systolic BP ≥200 mm Hg). Sixty‐nine normotensive patients with high normal BP levels were identified. ExBPR was recorded in 43 patients and was reproducible in 28. BP levels on 24‐hour ABPM were similar in patients with and without ExBPR. In patients with high‐normal BP levels, ExBPR is not associated with masked hypertension.


Copy trading allows traders in social networks to receive information on the success of other agents in financial markets and to directly copy their trades. Internet platforms like eToro, ZuluTrade, and Tradeo have attracted millions of users in recent years. The present paper studies the implications of copy trading for the risk taking of investors. Implementing an experimental financial asset market, we show that providing information on the success of others leads to a significant increase in risk taking of subjects. This increase in risk taking is even larger when subjects are provided with the option to directly copy others. We conclude that copy trading reduces ex-ante welfare, and leads to excessive risk taking. JEL codes: C91, D81, G12, G20, G41.


Abstract The purpose of this paper was to discuss the efficacy of public sector reforms that were introduced in Botswana in the early 1990s. In terms of design/methodology/approach, the paper used the intrepretivist research philosophy and survey research strategy. Data collection was in the form of secondary sources. Since the efficacy of public sector reforms cannot be directly measured, proxy measures in the form of Customer Satisfaction Surveys were used. Data analysis was in the form of document analysis. The paper concluded that the fruit from public sector reforms is poor. Poor Customer Satisfaction Surveys suggest that these public sector reforms have not improved the quality of public services in Botswana as it was intended. Reasons for the poor results are yet to be investigated. However, institutional and environmental contexts matter, so, this paper, using institutional and environmental contexts analysis, argues that founding conditions were unfavourable. Thus, there is a need to prepare the ground before introducing reforms. Since the paper is anchored in a Botswana-specific context, its generalisability is limited. Despite the limited generalisability of this case study, there are common lessons when introducing public sector reforms; first things must happen first. That is, preparing the soil (founding conditions) before planting the seed (reform).


A CDC 7600 computer program, REVERT, can revise Spent Fuel Test - Climax data files using one of several algorithms, depending on the type of data. The algorithms use coefficients from a separate file organized by data type identifiers. REVERT can also make that file of coefficients, using data from tapes made by Hewlett-Packard equipment employed for data acquisition on the spent Fuel Test - Climax at NTS. 12 references.


: E ffi cient delivery of DNA, RNA, and genome engineering machinery to plant cells will enable e ff orts to genetically modify plants for global food security, sustainable energy production, synthetic biology applications, and climate change resilience. For the delivery of functional genetic units into plant cells, nanoparticles, particularly carbon nanotubes (CNTs), have attracted considerable interest. Although some success has been achieved using CNT-based approaches, the e ffi ciency and practicality of the method for genome editing applications remain elusive. This is partly due to insu ffi cient knowledge about the mechanisms of CNT-mediated delivery and expression of CNT-condensed DNA in plants. Here, we characterize the transcription and transformation e ffi ciency of DNA deposited on CNTs coated with positively charged polymers by applying multiple experimental settings and reporter systems controlling the delivery and expression of DNA in plants. We found that the formation of partially condensed DNA on the CNT surface is a prerequisite for transfection and expression. In addition, we show that DNA irreversibly binds to the CNT and does not detach completely from the CNT surface. These results, together with an in vitro transcription assay, suggest that only the partially condensed part of the DNA is accessible to the cellular transcription machinery. Thus, the overall transcription and translation e ffi ciency remains low, in particular for the large DNA units that are required for genome editing applications. Understanding the underlying mechanisms and limitations of CNT-mediated delivery of DNA through the plant cell wall is of considerable importance in guiding e ff orts to design nanomaterials for e ffi cient transformation, agricultural trait engineering, and synthetic biology applications.


Abstract : It has been suggested that hydromagnetic (hm) emissions propagate toward the equator from high latitudes in an ionospheric waveguide centered at the Alfven velocity minimum in the F region. In the present paper the effects of absorption in and around the waveguide are considered. In order to simplify the mathematical treatment the ionospheric Alfven velocity profile is approximated by a squarewell profile. A conventional mode theory analysis - valid for all wavelengths - is then carried out. It is found that at hm-emission frequencies (around 1 cps) and for distances of several thousand miles, there is moderate nighttime waveguide attenuation at sunspot maximum and negligible attenuation at sun-spot minimum. Also the calculated value of group velocity for nighttime sun-spot minimum is in close agreement with experimental observation. (Author)


With the increasing use of biometrics for user authentication especially on mobile devices, its privacy and resource requirements are becoming big challenges to consider. In this paper, we propose a generic model for privacy-preserving yet accurate authentication on smartphones using the mobile matching on card (MMOC) technique and transfer learning. MMOC technique takes advantage of SIM cards as a secure element (SE) on smartphones to increase the security and privacy of user verification with low performance overhead. In order to improve the performance accuracy of the system, we use transfer learning and fine-tune a network suitable for implementation on off-the-shelf SIM cards available on smartphones. The classification sub-network is migrated to the SIM card for a lightweight and secure user verification. However, the implementation of classification sub-network on constrained resource smart cards with high accuracy and efficiency is a challenging task. We propose log quantization scheme and an on-card optimization architecture to speed-up the forward pass of the sub-network and retain the system's accuracy close to the original model with low memory footprint and real-time verification response. Using a public mobile face dataset, we evaluate our privacy-preserving verification system. Our results show that the proposed system achieves Equal Error Rate (EER) of 0.4%-2% in real-time, with response time of 1.5 seconds.


The improper disposal of textile dyes like Rhodamine B into nearby water bodies and land areas affects living organisms nearby. Here, we explore the effects of rhodamine absorption through the soil into the plant root and how variation in rhodamine concentration affects the growth and development of the plant. The developmental defects over time are verified by nuclear staining the plant cells. Furthermore, we hypothesis that the chemotropic effect seen in plants guides the root away from rhodamine B high concentration regions to low concentration regions. This will in turn help the plant recover from the injury. These minute structural variations are analyzed with the help of our in-house developed dual-arm multi-level magnification light-sheet microscopy (DMx-LSFM) system. The microscope consists of an automated (translating and rotating) sample holding stage, which helps to observe nearby regions by bringing the region of interest into a plane of focus without disturbing the sample.


Transparent and stretchable conductors are expected to be an essential component in future stretchable optoelectronic devices. Until now, two main methods have been commonly employed to fabricate transparent and stretchable conductors by using metal nanomaterials: creating buckling configurations and creating network configurations. In this report, a novel strategy for obtaining transparent and stretchable conductors is presented, one that employs these two main approaches simultaneously.To the best of our knowledge, this proposed configuration of a buckled long nanofiber network in this study has not yet been reported. In order to provide the transparent conductors with dual mode stretchability originating from simultaneous buckled and network configurations, a buckled Au@polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) nanofiber network (hereafter referred to BANN for convenience) was fabricated by transferring Au-metallized electrospun PVP nanofibers onto a prestrained polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate. Our BANN shows considerably lower strain sensitivity of resistance than that of straight Au@PVP nanofiber network. Durability tests conducted by performing cyclic tensile strain reveal that the relative change in resistance of BANN (prestrain = 20%) is quite small after 1000 cycles. We also demonstrate that this BANN exhibits superior performance over widely used indium tin oxide conductors with regard to high optical transmittance and low sheet resistance.


This study analyzed the participation of companies listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange in 2016 in response to tax amnesty, based on industry classifications, the presentation of assets and liabilities related to tax amnesty, and disclosures of assets related to tax amnesty. Methods of descriptive qualitative research are adopted in this study, along with content analysis, applied to data from financial statements of listed companies' financial statements in 2016. The results of the analysis show that, of a sample of 559 companies, 194 (34.7%) participated in the 2016 tax amnesty. There were two alternatives to the presentation of assets and labilities in the context of this tax amnesty, which were separately from other assets and liabilities, a path followed by 25 companies, and together with other assets and liabilities that, used by 169 companies. Among the 194 companies, 46, or 23.71%, did not disclose the net value of their tax amnesty assets, and 131, or 72. 29%, recorded the net value tax amnesty assets as additional paid-in capital. Keywords—tax amnesty, tax amnesty assets, accounting for tax amnesty assets and liabilities


We have calculated the energy spectra for almost all the filling fraction in the Jain series, low energy fundamental mode as well as higher energy modes using CF theory. The nature of low energy mode and higher energy mode is nearly identical roton mode. We have observed that, these series of filling fractions ν = n/(2pn+1) posses n number of roton minima in their higher energy mode.


This thesis describes the characterization and further application of a model system for
prostate cancer, the human prostatic adenocarcinoma PC-82 which is transplantable in
athymic nude mice.
The mortality rate of patients suffering from prostatic carcinoma is high, in spite of the
high response rates which are initially achieved with hormonal treatment ofthese patients.
Growth and function of the prostate are primarily dependent on androgenic stimuli.
Hormonal treatment of prostatic carcinoma is based upon the suppression of the testicular
production of androgens. This can be achieved directly by surgical removal of the testes or
indirectly by inhibiting the hypophyseal gonadotropin release through treatment with
estrogens or analogues of luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH). However, in
the majority of patients relapse of the tumor occurs following a favorable response to
androgen-ablation therapy. Progression is caused mainly by a loss of androgen-sensitivity of
the tumor.
Since many investigations relevant to prostate cancer cannot be performed in patients,
there is a great need for well-characterized model systems which reflect the properties of
clinical prostate cancer. Relevant aspects of the prostate in general and of prostatic
carcinoma in particular are described in chapter 1, which also contains a summary of the
current knowledge of androgen action in the prostate and information on the available
model systems for prostatic cancer.


In 1999 Konyagin and Temlyakov introduced the greedy algorithm and applied their method to seminormalized basis in Banach spaces. We make new approach for studying greedy approximations by getting rid of seminormalized condition. For this goal we do some modifications of basic definitions such as democracy, greediness and partial greediness. This method allows us to study unbounded basis as well. We reprove some known theorems using the new definitions. We proved that a basis is greedy if and only if it is unconditional and democratic, almost greedy basis is equivalent to being quasi greedy and democratic and partially greedy is being quasi greedy and conservative. We give an example to show the differences between the two methods.


Sudden cardiac death is the main cause of mortality in patients affected by chronic heart failure (CHF) and with history of myocardial infarction. No study yet investigated the intra-QT phase spectral coherence as a possible tool in stratifying the arrhythmic susceptibility in patients at risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD). We, therefore, assessed possible difference in spectral coherence between the ECG segment extending from the q wave to the T wave peak (QTp) and the one from T wave peak to the T wave end (T e) between patients with and without Holter ECG-documented sustained ventricular tachycardia (VT). None of the QT variability indexes as well as most of the coherences and RR power spectral variables significantly differed between the two groups except for the QTp-T e spectral coherence. The latter was significantly lower in patients with sustained VT than in those without (0.508 ± 0.150 versus 0.607 ± 0.150, P < 0.05). Although the responsible mechanism remains conjectural, the QTp-T e spectral coherence holds promise as a noninvasive marker predicting malignant ventricular arrhythmias.


Process Control Monitor (PCM) to device modeling is used as an aid in selecting wafers for testing to meet high throughput demands. It can also be used to check for design centering and to facilitate lot starts to meet demand. The output from the model is based on early information provided from PCM testing of the wafer during wafer fabrication. Additionally, the model output can be used to provide an FMA flag, for wafers that have low yield when they are predicted to have high yield. Wafers have limits on PCM parameters. It was found, however, that these limits did not always guarantee a good wafer.


Objective To observe the effect of recombinant human interferon α-2b spray on herpes simplex.Methods By random-open and parallel-controll method,60 cases patients on Herpes simplex were divided into the treatment group( A group) 30 cases and the control group( B group) 30 cases. The patients in treatment group were treated with recombinant human interferon α-2b spray,the patients in control group were treated with 3% acyclovir ointment. Results Herpes simplex degree of improvement in symptoms and cure of the total days on the course in the treatment group were better than that in the control group,the difference was statistically significant( P 0. 05) . Conclusion Recombinant human interferon α-2b spray is a safe and effective new medicines of treating herpes simplex.


We present a simple constructive proof of the existence of distinguished sum of squares representations for polynomials nonnegative over finite sets described by polynomial equalities and inequalities. A degree bound is directly obtained, as the cardinality of the support of the summands equals the number of points in the variety. Only basic results from commutative algebra are used in the construction.


Space-Filling Curves (SFCs) are encountered in different fields of engineering and computer science, especially where it is important to linearize multidimensional data for effective and robust interpretation of the information. Examples of multidimensional data are matrices, images, tables, computational grids, and Electroencephalography (EEG) sensor data resulting from the discretization of partial differential equations (PDEs). Data operations like matrix multiplications, load/store operations and updating and partitioning of data sets can be simplified when we choose an efficient way of going through the data. In many applications SFCs present just this optimal manner of mapping multidimensional data onto a one dimensional sequence. In this report, we begin with an example of a space-filling curve and demonstrate how it can be used to find the most similarity using Fast Fourier transform (FFT) through a set of points. Next we give a general introduction to space-filling curves and discuss properties of them. Finally, we consider a discrete version of space-filling curves and present experimental results on discrete space-filling curves optimized for special tasks.


In this paper, we will analyse the language used by a group of Tourism ESP students on WhatsApp. The data will be analysed from different perspectives: a) the grammatical mistakes made, and b) the students´ degree of adaptation to the most common linguistic features in text messages. The results indicate that these students continue to make some basic grammatical mistakes they should have already overcome. Moreover, many linguistic features of text messages were encountered in their interventions such as punctuation overuse and deletion and overuse of sounds. Finally, they insert many emojis in their messages to express different meanings.


The electrical grid is transitioning to new smart grid technology. With smart meters becoming an essential feature in smart homes, concerns regarding smart meters and the vast amount of consumer data that it captures are on the rise. While access to this fine-grained energy consumption data captured by smart meters can potentially violate consumer privacy, advanced analysis of this data can help to protect the interest of both the consumer and the utility company by enabling fraud detection at either end. The use of machine learning techniques has been a very common approach to energy fraud detection. Patterns in energy consumption can be recognized and used to detect anomalous behavior. This research reports on a novel application of decision tree learning technique to profile normal energy consumption behavior allowing for the detection of potentially fraudulent activity.


shaped the respective outcomes of democracy promotion in these two contrasting cases. This book is likely to become an important reference point for other scholars researching democracy promotion and democratization in post-conflict contexts in the Middle East and beyond. The comparison of cases from different geographical regions has a particular strength in revealing relevant factors not considered previously in the literature on democracy promotion. However, there exist two tensions within the book, which are not so much the fault of the author but rather the consequence of the deficiencies of mainstream comparative politics as an academic field. The first tension concerns the role of geopolitics and, in particular, the geostrategic interests of Western governments in ultimately shaping the nature of political settlements. The author does discuss these factors throughout the book. For example, Chapter 3 is attentive to how the post–Cold War geopolitical context in the Middle East weakened the PLO and its bargaining position vis-à-vis Israel. Chapter 4 highlights the significance of Western interests in determining the amounts of aid disbursed in each case. Per capita, the OPT received over three times more aid than El Salvador, even though the OPT is a middle-income country. This gave donors to the OPT more leverage over political outcomes than in the El Salvador case. Nonetheless, the geopolitical context is not incorporated into the book's explanatory framework. The second tension lies with the book's normative commitment to the idea ofWestern democracy promotion despite its limitations and failures in practice. The author does hint toward this in places. As Benjamin Shuetze discusses in his contribution to Jadaliyya's Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative, this is aweakness shared bymost of the literature onWestern democracy promotion. In both El Salvador and Palestine, democracy promotion has not only failed to address the fundamental issues that generated conflict and violence in the first place—that is, social inequalities of land distribution in El Salvador and national dispossession in Israel-Palestine— but has been key to enabling the continuation of these injustices. Ultimately, the fact that almost thirty years after the signing of the Oslo Accords Palestinians have neither peace nor democracy is a stark indictment of Western democracy promotion. I believe that an exploration of these tensions could be productive in revealing future avenues of research into democracy promotion and post-conflict transitions in the Middle East and beyond, as well as pushing comparative political scientists to think more critically about how some of the assumptions underpinning their field are entangled with imperialism.


One kind of variable stiffness catheter insertion portion, comprising: a catheter insertion portion, the sheath having a body portion and a distal end portion of the base, is defined in the direction connecting the base portion and the distal end portion having a length shaft; a slide member having a distal end and a proximal end, and the sliding member movably disposed on the base end side of the sheath body in the longitudinal axial direction; said sliding member having a gripping portion, and the the operation of the slide member moving gripping portion in the longitudinal axial direction; and a mechanism, which is provided on the sheath body, the helical member may be in a manner as the operation of the sliding member along the sliding member abuts the distal end side, and moves in the direction of the longitudinal axis of the slide with the sliding member, the hardness of the catheter insertion portion corresponding to the moving mechanism is changed.


A hierarchical CDFG model designed as an intermediate representation for hardware/software (HW/SW) codesign is presented in this paper. A new concept of transport node, which represents the communication resources of the system, is proposed in this model. Hierarchical feature can be straightly obtained through extending the definition of nodes, allowing them to nest sub-CDFG recursively. Then it is demonstrated how to build basic control constructs of branches and loops. Explaining in a short introduction to the translation process, such a hierarchical CDFG is suitable for HW/SW codesign as an intermediate representation. The hierarchical CDFG model can capture the design information from source file specified by VHDL or C language. It maintains relative simplicity while providing helpful features for HW/SW partitioning and High-level synthesis tools.


The vocational education in the poor region can promote the good development of local economy,society and person,which is advantageous to the harmonious development of the whole society.But the current development condition of vocational education checks itself further development.So the writer investigates two index signs and carries on a substantial evidence research.


EULA End User License Agreement defines the terms and conditions of software usage. Presenting EULA and agreeing to the terms and conditions outlined in EULA are regulatory requirements for software publisher and end user respectively. Prior studies show most users skip or ignore the EULA section of the software installation for variety of reasons and blindly accept and agree EULA. In this paper, we discuss the problems users face when it comes to reading and understanding the terms and conditions in EULA. We aim to present our study that clearly defines the problem statement, identifies the factors that affects the perceived user cognizance and ways to improve these factors and propose solutions that ultimately improves the overall user cognizance of EULA.


Hybrid Intelligent System for the Diagnosis of Typhoid Fever
The diagnosis of Typhoid Fever (TF) is often complicated due to the significant number of vague variables involved. As a result of this complexity, several lives have been lost while others are living with deteriorated health status. This research proposes a Hybrid Intelligent System which provides an efficient means of handling the complexity associated with the diagnosis of TF.


Victor Nee and Sonja Opper, Capitalism from Below: Markets and Institutional Change in China, Cambridge, MA, and London, Harvard University Press, 2012, 431 pp.This work by Victor Nee and Sonja Opper is an important book. Considering that approaches to the Chinese economy and its transition to the private sector remain deeply marked by an analytical system centred on the primacy of the role of the state and how it orchestrates development, this book explores a different facet of this expansion, that of the private economy that has formed "from below." What are the ways in which the private sector has been established? How have entrepreneurs managed to overcome the barriers resulting from socialist organisation centred on the state? Which institutions have enabled private economic actors to cooperate and compete with the dominant state sector of public companies during the transition phase? This is the subject of Chapter 1. Standard economic theory, which focuses primarily on top-down regulation, pays little attention to the fact that economic actors, particularly entrepreneurs, by their very actions gradually create their own operating standards and their own institutional frameworks. It is therefore appropriate to tackle the problem at the base and from the other direction - that is, from the behaviour of entrepreneurs rather than from the standards set by central government institutions - to better see the latent regulations and hidden standards that have marked the construction of the private sector in China (Chapter 2).The task of the authors has been to observe this phenomenon as close to the field as possible. In an area described as the epicentre of "capitalism from below" - the Yangtze River Delta Region, where the development of private enterprises has been particularly significant - Victor Nee and Sonja Opper established a sizeable investigative procedure aimed at entrepreneurs. More than 700 private companies in business for more than three years were the subject of studies in 2006 and 2009, through a highly comprehensive economic, social, and relational survey. The result is an 84-page annex to the book, which observes how a range of decisions made by entrepreneurs and their attitudes to finance, to other entrepreneurs, to work, to personnel, and to various local or national political players, etc., have led to the emergence of new standards of behaviour, both informal and institutional, in parallel or even in contrast with formal arrangements (Chapter 3). Supplemented by qualitative interviews, the surveys were conducted through the Market Survey Institute of the Shanghai Academy of Sciences. They involved companies located in seven cities: Shanghai, three cities in Jiangsu (Changzhou, Nanjing, and Nantong), and three cities in Zhejiang (Hangzhou, Ningbo, and Wenzhou).Focusing first on the careers of entrepreneurs and the creation of their businesses, Chapter 4 shows how these new private players initially received little help from the state politico-economic apparatus: in fact, they fended for themselves by creating "innovative informal arrangements" (p. 107) and mobilising small groups held together by shared conceptions of finance, business, etc., and therefore driven by their own values and norms, which made it possible for them to survive and exist outside the dominant system of state enterprises. After being considered somewhat "deviators" (p. 108) for a time, these entrepreneurs were subsequently able - because of their success - to see their practices recognised and their new forms of institutional organisation adopted. However, it should be noted that such behaviour was exercised with great caution and avoided any head-on clash with the "rules of the game" (p. 131) of the prevailing socialist mode of production. Chapter 5 ("Legitimacy and Institutional Change") shows the subtle game played in practice by many companies, which adopted to the letter, but sometimes as pure formality, the officially-issued rules of organisation, even if they did not attempt to give them any actual content, or indeed, were better able to take advantage of them by diverting them from their stated aims. …


Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have clearly demonstrated that cholesterol-lowering statins are beneficial in the treatment and prevention of coronary heart disease. Although recent evidence indicates that major RCTs of statins have significantly influenced physicians' prescribing behaviour,[1][


With the strengthening of economic globalization,national higher education reform policies are increasingly international.When the British policy after the enactment of reducing funding for higher education into the substantive precarious period.To the international horizon as a starting point,cut through the analysis of UK higher education funding policy,revealing the motives of the three major policy reforms.Further expand the scale of China's higher education,improve quality,funding,school principal,student financial assistance and investment in education and other aspects of the reform and development to provide useful inspiration.


We know that visuals have the potential to make or break an eLearning event, but how do you know you've got the right ones? This course will present key principles of graphic and information design that will shift your visuals from blah to bam. While the principles apply to designing visuals across education contexts, examples will be drawn from eLearning courses with an emphasis on screen design considerations. You'll leave with a guide you can apply when approaching your next visual presentation project.
Related URL: http://www.inspired-ed.com/


An experimental and theoretical study is presented of the inlet-vortex (or ground-vortex) phenomenon. The experiments were carried out in a water tunnel using hydrogen-bubble flow visualization. The theoretical study is based on a secondary-flow approach in which vortex filaments in a (weak) shear flow are viewed as convected (and deformed) by a three-dimensional irrotational primary flow; the latter being calculated numerically using a three-dimensional panel method. Two basic mechanisms of inlet-vortex generation are identified. The first of these, which has been alluded to qualitatively by other investigators, is the amplification of ambient (i.e. far-upstream) vorticity as the vortex lines are stretched and drawn into the inlet. Quantitative calculations have been carried out to illustrate the central features connected with this amplification. I n contrast with what has been supposed, however, there is another mechanism of inlet-vortex formation, which does not appear to have been recognized previously and which does not require the presence of ambient vorticity. It is thus shown that an inlet vortex can arise in an (upstream) irrotational flow, for an inlet in cross wind. In this situation, the vortex is accompanied by a variation in circulation along the length of the inlet. The ratio of inlet velocity to upstream veIocity is an important parameter for both mechanisms.


ABSTRACT Background The Therapy Behavior Scale (TBS) is a standardized instrument that is used to evaluate behavior of infants and toddlers during physical, occupational, and developmental therapy sessions. The TBS can be applied in intervention comparison research to assess therapy-related behaviors exhibited by study participants. Purpose The purpose of this pilot study was to establish the reliability of the TBS Version 2.2 prior to its use in a randomized clinical trial comparing two physical therapy (PT) interventions in infants with congenital muscular torticollis (CMT). Methods Three infants with right and 7 with left CMT, severity grades 1–3, 3 girls and 7 boys, age range 3–6 months, participated in this research. Examiners were 2 experienced pediatric physical therapists. To obtain the intrarater reliability estimates, each examiner conducted 2 PT sessions with 5 infants and scored their behavior "live," and then scored the video recordings of these 10 sessions at least 1 month later. To obtain the interrater reliability estimates, both examiners scored a total of 20 video recordings. Results Results indicated good intrarater reliability, with ICC (3,1) of 0.92, 95% CI = 0.81–0.99, and 0.95, 95% CI = 73–0.98, and moderate to good interrater reliability, with ICC (2,1) of 0.84, 95% CI = 0.48–0.96, and 0.91, 95% CI = 0.67–0.98. Conclusion This study established the reliability of the TBS Version 2.2 for 2 examiners who subsequently used it in a RCT of 2 PT interventions. Further research is necessary to demonstrate the reliability of this instrument in a larger population of infants with CMT, and in infants and toddlers with other conditions.


The pervaporation (PV) behavior of water and 2-propanol mixtures is compared with vapor permeation (VP) behavior using three types of water-selective composite or asymmetric membranes with different materials in their skin layers, i.e., membranes of polyion complex with polyacrylic acid (PIC-PAAc), polyion complex with partially hydrolyzed polyacrylonitrile (PIC-PAN), and polyparabanic acid (PPAc). From solubility measurements of water-2-propanol mixtures in dense membranes at 356 K, it is found that in liquid phase experiments PIC-PAAc and PIC-PAN membranes show higher solubility of water than PPAc membrane, although no significant difference in solubilities of water vapor among the three membranes is observed in vapor phase experiments. In permeation experiments at 356 K, the PV water fluxes through the three membranes are higher than those for VP if the mole fractions of 2-propanol in the feed solution (x1p) are below 0.90. Using PIC-PAAc and PIC-PAN membranes, higher fluxes of 2-propanol are obtained for PV at less than x1p = 0.6 as compared with those for VP. However, remarkable differences in 2-propanol fluxes are not observed between PV and VP using a PPAc membrane.Based on the solution-diffusion theory and taking account of water solubility in the membranes, the fluxes of water and 2-propanol for both PV and VP are analyzed for PIC-PAAc, PIC-PAN and PPAc membranes. Approximate coincidence in the estimated values of diffusion coefficients without swelling and the swelling parameters for water and 2-propanol, which indicated their diffusivities in the membranes, are obtained for PV and VP using the respective membranes.


. Unbalanced dataset classification issues have been prevalent in medical domain. Lately, clustering-based oversampling techniques were introduced to address this issue. Regrettably, they suffer from the vulnerability of hard grouping approaches. This paper introduces Recurrent Neural Network Fuzzy-C-Means SMOTE (RNNFCM-SMOTE) that balances data based on Recurrent Neural Network Fuzzy Fuzzy-C-Means in filtering phase. First of all, to manage the sensitiveness of the hard clustering, RNNFCM is used to determine safe regions. Second, take benefit of the capacity of neural networks to comprehend the features of data and dynamic systems to recover from past clusters, recurrent neural network is implemented to determine the membership function of different instances. To generate artificial data, classical smote is used. As the methods implementing fuzzy logic have proven to be very competent when it comes to the edge problem, RNNFCM-SMOTE is combined to nine fuzzy classifier methods to predict the existence of hidden diseases represented by five unbalanced medical data sets. The proposed method is compared to 12 oversampling methods using three performance measures. RNNFCM-SMOTE has been shown to consistently exceed many other popular oversampling techniques


Fuzzing has been studied and applied ever since the 1990s. Automated and continuous fuzzing has recently been applied also to open source software projects, including the Linux and BSD kernels. This paper concentrates on the practical aspects of continuous kernel fuzzing in four open source kernels. According to the results, there are over 800 unresolved crashes reported for the four kernels by the syzkaller/syzbot framework. Many of these have been reported relatively long ago. Interestingly, fuzzing-induced bugs have been resolved in the BSD kernels more rapidly. Furthermore, assertions and debug checks, use-after-frees, and general protection faults account for the majority of bug types in the Linux kernel. About 23% of the fixed bugs in the Linux kernel have either went through code review or additional testing. Finally, only code churn provides a weak statistical signal for explaining the associated bug fixing times in the Linux kernel.


Introduction: Petrous bone cholesteatoma Petrous bone cholesteatoma (PBC) is defined as cholesteatoma extending medial to otic capsule. Because of its relations with vital structures, surgical management is generally difficult. Objective: In this study, we aim to share our clinical experiences about surgical approaches, managements and follow up results in petrous bone cholesteatoma. Methods: A retrospective clinical study was conducted on patients who had been diagnosed as PBC between 2003 and 2012 years. Sanna classification was used for the pathology extending. A total of 13 patients with 14 ears were evaluated about symptoms, clinical and radiological findings, surgical techniques, complications and follow up results. Results: The mean age of patients was 33,3 years ranging from 18 to 52 years. Hearing loss was the most common symptom (92 %). Five patients had facial paralysis preoperatively. Massive type was the most common type. Different surgical techniques were carried out for each pathological type. Mean follow up time was 34,3 months. Recurrence was identified in one patient twice within two years and revision surgical procedures were performed. Conclusion: Extent of the PBC should be well defined in preoperative imaging and type of surgical approach should be planned before with an appropriate classification. Regular follow up is mandatory for patients with MRI every year.


A review of Antonio Casimiro Ferreira Porto's book, "Politics and society: social theory in a time of austerity", by Wanda Capeller.


An algorithm is developed for joint tracking and detection of multiple maneuvering targets using a wireless sensor network. The target existence probability framework is adopted in which a collection of tentative tracks, each characterised by a posterior density and existence probability, is maintained. Track state posterior densities are approximated using the unscented Kalman filter and the interacting multiple model algorithm. The advantage of this approach compared to particle filter- based approaches is that it enables more computationally efficient tracking of multiple targets. The performance of the algorithm is examined as a function of signal-to-noise ratio and the number of bits per observation for a scenario involving three maneuvering targets. Good performance is achieved in all cases considered.


To provide a mask assembly which permits a change in the mounting position of the number and the mask of the head strap. A patient mask assembly for positive-pressure ventilation has a brace 12 which sandwich the mask. The brace 12, the alternative location to the mounting position 17 of the head gear 14, which is provided by the mask, to provide a mounting position 17 of the headgear 14. The brace also includes mask stabilizer 20. .The


Water sorption isotherms of freeze-dried strawberries were determined using the interval sorption technique. The surface temperature during freeze-drying (from 20°C to 60°C) affected the hygroscopicity of the strawberries, particularly below 0.40 aw. Over 1 yr, quality changes in dried strawberries were evaluated by sensory analysis at 3-month intervals. Crushing before drying and low processing temperatures improved sensory quality of dried strawberries and vacuum packaging improved storage stability.


A spherically collapsing gas bubble will create a uniaxial extension of the fluid surrounding it. This flow may be readily analyzed, and it is possible to relate observed experimental parameters such as the pressure inside the bubble and the bubble collapse rate to the predictions of viscoelastic constitutive relations. This study compares the predictions of the Newtonian fluid and a viscoelastic model to observed bubble collapse in three fluids: one Newtonian fluid and two viscoelastic polymer solutions. Good agreement between data and the model was observed for the Newtonian experiments. The viscoelastic solutions, however, yielded rates of collapse which were greater than the Newtonian predictions based on equal zero-shear viscosity. Subsequent modeling with a modified corotational Maxwell fluid yielded good agreement with the data for the transient elongational response in the viscoelastic solutions.


This paper examines the problem of a regulated utility that sells output according to a nonlinear price schedule. Three results are obtained. First, rate-of-return regulation lowers the price schedule charged by the firm along its entire length. Second, some units of output will always be sold at a marginal price below true marginal cost. Third, a move from linear to nonlinear prices at a given fair rate-of-return can lead to an unambiguous increase in welfare.


firstname.lastname@example.com To comprehend light matter interaction should we first decipher its components or instead understand the interplay between its building blocks and its underlying complexity? In a journey from the nanoscale dimension of a single fluorescent molecule to the macroscopic scale of self-assembled mm-sized photonic materials I will discuss light transport and lasing. I will show how we can get inspiration from recent advances in the synthesis of 3D nanophotonic materials [


Pregnancy marks an important milestone in the lifecourse of a woman compounded by the dual phenomena of pregnancy affecting oral health status of a woman and oral health status affecting pregnancy outcomes. Pregnancy makes a woman more vulnerable to common oral diseases such as dental caries and periodontal disease if oral health status is not well maintained during this crucial period. Changes in dietary habits and difficulties in maintaining oral hygiene could increase the risk of tooth decay in pregnancy. Moreover the increased production of oestrogen and progesterone during pregnancy may give rise to development of gingivitis and periodontitis attributed to increased vascular permeability and tissue oedema [1]. Against such a scenario, studies conducted among pregnant women have reported that they carry a high burden of dental caries and periodontal disease [2].


In order to improve the acceleration response of hybrid vehicles, this paper applies Radau pseudo-spectral method to solve the trajectory optimization problem of vehicle acceleration. The mathematical model of engine-generator, battery pack and electric motor is established, and the optimal control problem of vehicle acceleration time is constructed. As for the problem is strongly nonlinear. The problem is transformed into a nonlinear programming problem by Radau pseudo-spectral method, and the numerical solution is carried out. The rotational speed and torque trajectory curves of the engine-generator set and the motor are obtained. The simulation results show that Radau pseudo-spectral method can optimize the working curve of various components of hybrid vehicles and improve response speed.


The amphiphilic title compound, easily accessible from (p-
cymene)ruthenium dichloride dimer and sodium molybdate in aqueous
solution, presents an unprecedented
Ru
 4
Mo
 4
O
 12
 framework comprising a central
Mo
 4
O
 4
 cube with four folded ORuO flaps resembling
the sails of a windmill.


Abstract The topic of fatigue strength of joints of flat and honeycomb-structured thin sheets has not yet been adequately studied. This concerns, for example, the development of an appropriate test method. In many cases, there is still a lack of information, how effective joints of flat and structured sheet metals are in comparison with reference joints of flat sheets. Combinations of resistance spot-welded specimens of flat and honeycomb-structured thin sheets of deep-drawing steel DC04 with a thickness of 0.5 mm were examined. Adopted clamping plates were applied for the testing. Joined smooth specimens were used as a reference material. The analysis of the frequency [1] was applied for comparison. The fatigue limit of a joint of a flat and a structured sheet metal is not significantly affected by spot welding. The fatigue limit of these spot-welded joints is comparable to that of an unjoined honeycomb-structured sheet. By means of frequency or stiffness analysis, stability and damage mechanisms of differently shaped joints were explained. The joining of bridges of the structure shows a better stability than the combination of honeycombs. The stiffness analysis is a favored method for the clarification of the damage mechanisms in a spot-welded joint. The reasons for the low fatigue strength values of the joined flat-structured specimens compared to flat-flat joints are strong notch effects in the bridge area and momentum effects by the structure height of the studied honeycomb structure. The spot weld with a pronounced indentation also affected the fatigue strength of both flat and structured joined sheet metals.


When a concrete gravity dam is heightened, due to the temperature difference between the new and the old concrete, tensile stresses will be induced in the dam heel and new concrete. The stresses in the dam may be worsened and cracks may appear in the new concrete. New concept and new techniques are proposed in this paper for solving this problem. The SaintVenant's Principle in the theory of elasticity, the water pipe cooling and the strong superficial thermal insulation are used comprehensively to solve this problem. After applied to Danjiangkou dam, they are proved to be very useful.


The processing of health information from medical records and, especially, clinical notes is a complex task due to the nature of the texts themeselves (i.e., hand-written and containing semi-structured or unstructured data) and the diversity of the terminology used. While certain technologies exist to process these types of texts and data in the English language, only a few such initiatives exist for similar texts and data in the Spanish language. This paper presents a new proposal for the semantic annotation of Spanish-language clinical notes, implementing an automated tool similar to the UMLS MetaMap Transfer (MMTx) for the identification of biomedical concepts in the Spanish-language SNOMED CT ontology. Moreover, an assessment of the tool using 100 Spanish-language clinical notes is presented. Using the clinical notes manually annotated by specialists of a Spanish hospital as the gold standard, it is concluded that precision scores are sufficiently good for the several types of matching achieved by the automated tool proposed. The research presented in this contribution offers a launching point for the establishment of semantic relationships between concepts and the application of mining techniques to Spanish-language clinical notes.


Cross-term interference exists in the WVD of multi-component signals in time-frequency analysis, and the STFT is limited by Heisenberg uncertainty criterion. For multicomponent signals under noisy background, this paper proposes an improved STFT-Wigner algorithm, which establishes a threshold based on the exponential multiplication result compared to the original algorithm, so as to weaken the cross term and reduce the impact of noise on the signal, and improve the time-frequency aggregation of the signal. Simulation results show that the improved algorithm has higher time-frequency aggregation than other methods. Similarly, for cross-term suppression, our method is superior to many other TF analysis methods in low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) environment.


The invention relates to a plug-in type balance valve which comprises a valve body, a one-way valve core and a balance valve core, wherein a first oil opening, a second oil opening and a third oil opening are arranged on the valve body; the one-way valve core is arranged at the second oil opening and pushed by a first spring to maintain the trend of axial upward shift; the balance valve core is installed in the valve body and can be matched with a valve opening of the one-way valve core, and a second spring is arranged in a spring cavity of the valve body; the upper part in the balance valve core is provided with an axial passage and a first damping hole; the middle position of the balance valve core is provided with an axial convex shoulder; an annular notch is arranged on the periphery surface of the axial convex shoulder; the inner wall of the valve body is provided with an annular inner shoulder blade; an oil inlet cavity is formed among the annular notch, the inner wall of the valve body and the annular inner shoulder blade; and the third oil opening is communicated with the oil inlet cavity by a second damping hole on the side wall of the valve wall. The balance valve core and the one-way valve core are in an integral structure, and the structure is simple; the balance valve core and the one-way valve core are relatively independent on the relative position relationship, the assembly is convenient, and the requirements on heat treatment and materials of the balance valve core are lowered.


This work had the objective of studying the ceramic pigment BaFe2O4, which presents iron as the chromophore ion, and barium as net modifier. Synthesis was done by the polymeric precursor method. After calcination at different temperatures, characterizations were done by X-ray diffraction, infrared spectroscopy, surface area by BET, scanning electron microscopy, UV–vis spectroscopy and colorimetric analysis, using CIELab system. The soft chemical synthesis method leads to a high crystallinity material after calcination at 700 8C, while usual methods require higher temperatures (above 850 8C) or lead to secondary phases. The powders were applied on ceramic pieces in order to evaluate the behavior of the system when added to a glaze. Pigments presented dark brown color, with homogeneous surfaces of the glaze. # 2006 Elsevier Ltd and Techna Group S.r.l. All rights reserved.


The Kedungombo and the Sermo Reservoirs have problems in fulfilling basic services because of sedimentation. Sedimentation that occurs in each of the reservoirs would form a specific reservoir sedimentation pattern that is supposed to be similar because the hydrology and physiography conditions of the reservoir's catchment area are similar. This study aims to determine the dynamics of sedimentation patterns that occur in the dead storage for reviewing the characteristics/sedimentation regime of the two reservoirs. The analysis was carried out by processing bathymetrical data which were processed into a digital terrain model (DTM) using ArcGIS. Furthermore, the storage volume, sedimentation volume, storage percentage, and specific reservoir sedimentation rate are calculated. The results showed that the two reservoirs showed an increase in sedimentation volume each year so that the reservoir characteristic curve shifted from the plan graph. The dead storage capacity of Kedungombo Reservoir is 100% in 1989 to 43% in 2016 and 100% of Sermo Reservoir in 1997 to 58% in 2011. The specific reservoir sedimentation rate, i.e. 0.0031 and 0.0042 million m3/year/km2 for the Kedungombo Reservoir (between 1989 and 2016) and the Sermo Reservoir (between 1997 and 2011) respectively, indicating that the two reservoirs are in the same regime


(57) Abstract: The present invention, biologically active agents of the silicone gel and an effective amount, in particular a retinoid, a cosmetic or pharmaceutical composition for the superficial topical application. This composition allows for stabilization of the biologically active agent.


Abstract This article deals with decompression wave propagation in high-pressure gas transmission pipelines. A decompression wave calculation model called Decomwave including a united two-phase sound velocity model was proposed and programmed and can be used for poor or rich gas and has shown good results with experimental data. Under certain operating conditions of a gas transmission pipeline, the effects of gas composition, initial pressure, and temperature on decompression wave behavior were analyzed using Decomwave.


A hoard of 197 coins in an earthenware green-glaze vessel were discovered during building work. The group comprised 192 English and 5 Scottish groats. The date of the latest coin was 1466. A second hoard discovered at Dunblane during quarrying comprised 91 silver pennies of which 86 were English, 3 were Scottish and 2 were Irish. Two of the English coins were forgeries. The date of the latest was 1324.


The content of this bachelor thesis titled Cost Analysis and its Control in the Company KAMAX - METAL s.r.o. is evaluation of present the situation cost management of the company. The goal of the theoretical part is focused on critical research, which represents issues connected with cost analysis and its classification. It explains terms related to costs and represents different views, which are used in the practical part. The practical part introduces a company and its cost management and shows present progress of the costs and their generic cost classification and classification of costs according to the relation volume of output .The conclusion consists of some suggestion and recommendations of potential improvements.


The World Health Organization classifies brucellosis as one of the seven neglected en‐ demic zoonosis which contribute to the perpetuation of poverty in developing coun‐ tries. Although most of the developed countries are free from this important zoonosis, brucellosis has still a widespread distribution in the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, Central Asia, and parts of Latin America, making it a global problem. Nearly half a million of new cases of human brucellosis are reported each year around the world, in which animals (or products of animal origin) are the most likely source of infection. Brucella melitensis, the main etiologic agent of small ruminant brucellosis, is the most prevalent specie involved in cases of human disease in most parts of the world. Additionally, Brucella abortus (main responsible of bovine brucellosis) and Bru‐ cella suis (the most common etiological agent of porcine brucellosis) are often associat‐ ed with human brucellosis. In animal production, brucellosis has a strong economic impact due not only to its direct consequences (e.g., reproductive failures) but also to indirect loses (e.g., trade restrictions). The problem of brucellosis could be considered a clear example of the need for a "One World, One Health" strategy, given that the only approach to achieve its control and subsequent eradication is the cooperation be‐ tween public and animal health authorities. The prevention of human brucellosis can‐ not be achieved without the control of the disease in the animals, as exemplified by the impact that the early measures adopted in the beginning of the 20th century for‐ bidding the consumption of goat milk had on the prevalence of the disease in the Brit‐ ish soldiers in Malta. When the prevalence of the disease in the animal population is high or when eradication cannot be achieved due to other factors (e.g., lack of eco‐ nomic resources), its control in livestock must be the first objective. When deciding the optimal approach to tackle the disease, the prevalence of animal brucellosis is not the only parameter to consider by the decision makers since other epidemiological and economic aspects should be considered in order to implement the most adequate control strategy in each region. Cooperation between all stakeholders involved is a cornerstone in the success of any control strategy. Strict biosafety and management measures, vaccination, and test-and-slaughter strategy are recognized as the most ef‐ © 2015 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. fective strategies to control this pathology in livestock. The adequate combination of these measures depends on several factors that will determine the success of the erad‐ ication efforts. The present chapter will review the abovementioned measures for the control and eradication of brucellosis in livestock, focusing on the advantages and drawbacks of the diagnosis tools and immunization strategies currently available and evaluating new approaches based on the advance on the knowledge of different as‐ pects of this disease and its etiological agents.


Study was undertaken to provide a reference for the gross anatomy of the sternum of emu as one of the ratite species and also to compare the structural differences with sternum of duck and turkey. The sternum from four adult emu, turkey and duck were collected and used for the present study. The sternum was a large unsegmented bone located on the antero-ventral aspect of the body cavity, bowl-shaped in emu, triangular in turkey and rectangular in duck. It consisted of deeply concave dorsal surface, more convex ventral surface without keel in emu, with prominent keel in turkey and duck and had two extremities and two borders. An upward and antero-laterally directed flat antero-lateral process was observed and was long in turkey, short and curved in emu and very small in duck. The posterior extremity or metasternum was triangular and flattened in emu. It had very long posterior process and carried ventrally a thin plate of bone called keel in duck and turkey. Single and divided postero-lateral process was noticed in duck and turkey respectively but was absent in emu.


There have been various papers about service quality. This article is one of them. This is about the measurement of service quality in the competitive structure between department and discount store. In this paper, we tried to measure the service quality and overall satisfaction by using 6 sigma, degree of combination and top2box which is a little bit different methodology from traditional ones. The data were collected by the internet survey from 1428 and 1605 department and discount store customers respectively. The result shows the different patterns in the each retail industry. Also, there is a significant difference in terms of sigma level in the each retail industry. Finally, we showed the summarized result as the 6 Sigma Portfolio Matrix.


A linear projective ind-variety X is called 1-connected if any two points on it can be connected by a chain of lines l1, l2, ..., lk in X, such that li intersects li+1. A linear projective ind-variety X is called 2-connected if any point of X lies on a projective line in X and for any two lines l and l 0 in X there is a chain of lines l = l1, l2, ..., lk = l 0 , such that any pair (li , li+1) is contained in a projective plane P 2 in X. In this work we study an ind-variety X that is a complete intersection in the linear ind-Grassmannian G = lim−→G(km, nm). By definition, X is an intersection of G with a finite number of ind-hypersufaces Yi = lim−→Yi,m, m ≥ 1, of fixed degrees di , i = 1, ..., l, in the space P∞, in which the ind-Grassmannian G is embedded by Pl¨ucker. One can deduce from work [17] that X is 1-connected. Generalising this result we prove that X is 2-connected. We deduce from this property that any vector bundle E of finite rank on X is uniform, i. e. the restriction of E to all projective lines in X has the same splitting type. The motiavtion of this work is to extend theorems of Barth - Van de Ven - Tjurin - Sato type to complete intersections of finite codimension in ind-Grassmannians.


This paper tests the hypothesis of complete markets in a panel of Italian households drawn from the Bank of Italy's Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW). Under the hypothesis that markets are complete and preferences are of the CRRA type, consumption growth is equated across households, and thus it is independent of idiosyncratic variables. I use the difference between realized income and its subjective expectation as the household's idiosyncratic shock, allowing for non-separability between consumption and leisure. Other possible measures for the personal shock are proposed in order to obtain more robust results. For all the proposed specifications the test strongly rejects the null hypothesis of complete markets.


The device being used for non-impact type printer head, emits radiating light in the direction which is parallel with the surface of PCB. The device comprises a reflecting surface (8) being angled with the PCB surface (11); wiring (7,7-11,...) and wiring (4) for common electrodes which are formed on the surface (11); light emitting element chinps (1,1-1,....) with a plurality of light emitting parts (2), which are bonded on the wiring (7,7- 11,...); pads (3,3-1,...) of (2) being opposite to the wiring (7,7- 11,...); the surface (8) being bonded with the part (2) so as to be opposite to each other.


A new class of amphiphilic spiropyran derivatives has been designed and synthesized. Their photophysical and photochromic properties have been investigated. Under UV light irradiation, the ring-closed hydrophobic spiropyrans have been shown to undergo photoinduced ring-opening to give the zwitterionic ring-opened merocyanine forms, which resulted in the amphiphilic properties of the compounds. These compounds were also found to display self-assembly behavior with the formation of H-aggregation in organic solvents under UV irradiation to give different morphologies with diverse nano-structures, leading to promising candidates for the design of a new class of small-molecule photo-responsive materials. The H-aggregate formation has been further supported by computational studies and noncovalent interaction (NCI) analysis of the dimer of the merocyanine form. This represents the first demonstration of the use of NCI analysis on the role played by noncovalent interactions in H-aggregate formation of the spiropyran derivatives.


Dependence of the flow behavior of aqueous suspension of Black Hills bentonite on the concentration and the types of electrolytes was stydied. The flow properties were measured with a Couette-type totational viscometer. On addition of monovalent cations, the apparent viscosity determined from the reproducible flow curves (shear rate vs. shear stress) decreased followed by a rise as the ionic concentration further increased. Addition of multivalent cations (di- and tri-) resulted in the viscosity which increased to a maximum then decreased to a constant value. Anions of different chatges produced essentially the same relationship between viscosity and electrolyte concentration. The flow behavior of the electrolyte-containing suspensions was rationalized in terms of the Derjaguin-Landau-Verwey-Overbeek theory of colloidal stability and the generalized theory of viscosity.


To address the issues of corrosion damage and lining deterioration caused by long-term operation of Luan River to Tianjin water delivery tunnel,the nonlinear dynamic reliability of the funnel structure system was investi-gated and the remaining safety life was assessed.The concrete and steel strength of linings were measured using the safety monitoring system of Luan River to Tianjin water delivery tunnel.The project-specific curves of ultrasonic-rebound combined method suitable for the tunnel project were established to obtain non-destructive test results.Ac-cording to the three-dimensional finite element numerical simulation,taking full account of resistance to decay over time,tunnel structure safety life assessment and risk control were conducted based on the structural system nonlinear dynamic reliability theory and quantitative safety assessment method.The present work provides a scientific reference for the maintenance,management,and comprehensive governance of engineering structures,which can be applied to the entire operational process of the security maintenance and risk control of the tunnel structure.


This paper deals with the characteristics of short-arc (10mm or less)high pressure lamps using xenon and/or an additive metal fill. Metal reflectors produced by the electro-forming process are also described. The combination of short arc lamp and deep-dish electroformed reflector is compared to other collection methods, and applications are explored.


This document describes possible application of MultiObjective Evolutionary Algorithms (MOEAs) to a problem of finding the most suitable vessel route taking into account changeable weather conditions and several navigational constraints. The paper includes a review of MOEA-specific techniques and presents a proposal of their utilization in a weather routing evolutionary algorithm.


The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of brand image and brand trust influence brand loyalty on Pocari Sweat in the city of Malang. This type of research is quantitative, the sample in this study amounted to 120 customers Pocari Sweat. The technique of collecting data that is by way of kuesioner.
The results of research and discussion that has been done then can be concluded as follows: 1) brand image variables, brand trust variables, and brand loyalty variables according to customer perception Pocari Sweat in Malang city is a good category. 2) brand image variables significantly influence brand loyalty in Pocari Sweat. 3) brand trust variables significantly influence brand loyalty in Pocari Sweat. 4) brand image variables and brand trust variables simultaneously affect toward brand loyalty in Pocari Sweat in Malang city. 5) the biggest contributing variable toward brand loyalty in Pocari Sweat in Malang city is brand trust variable.


This paper is concerned with the factor analysis of a boulder-fall by the theory of quantification and the presentation of a method for evaluating the possibility of the boulder-fall on a slope. Based on the considerations about the topographical, geological and mechanical conditions related to the phenomenon of boulder-fall, detailed field investigations have been carried out on many actual slopes in Yamanashi and Nagano prefectures. The statistical analysis of the data obtained from the field investigations is conducted to grasp quantitatively the degree of the influence which each of the factors gives to the phenomenon. Moreover, on the basis of the theory of quantification, the method by which the possibility of an outbreak of boulder-fall can be estimated is presented, and its applicability is examined through comparing with observations.


Abstract An account is presented of the work done in our Laboratory at Texas A&M University on pairs-of-pairs whereby two multiple-bonded dimolybdenum units are joined by various types of linkers. These species that behave as Creutz–Taube analogs show that under appropriate conditions, electronic communication is facilitated by the electrons in delta bonds. The account shows how various experimental techniques such as electrochemical measurements, X-ray crystallography, near-infrared spectroscopy, EPR and NMR spectroscopies, magnetism and theoretical computations complement each other while interrogating these compounds.


Abstract Since many years the coordinates of the position can be obtained with the use of satellite navigation and augmentation systems, SNS and SBAS, respectively. All these systems are called GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems). The main task of the user segment is to transform the products delivered by the GNSS infrastructure into services that users are mainly interested in. That's why GNSS receiver selection depends on user application. Nowadays several hundred different receivers provided by more than one hundred manufacturers are available on the world market. The review of the performance parameters of GNSS receivers accessible in 2014 and last three years is presented in this paper. Additionally the paper gives the reply to some important questions as: for how many applications the given model is destined, which is the percentage of the receivers designed for marine and navigation users, which equipment features of the receiver are the most important for given application, which satellite signals apart from GPS signals can be tracked in the receiver?


We consider the problem of constructing bounded-degree planar
 geometric spanners of Euclidean and unit-disk graphs. It is well
 known that the Delaunay subgraph is a planar geometric spanner with
 stretch factor $C_{delapprox 2.42$; however, its degree may not be
 bounded. Our first result is a very simple linear time algorithm
 for constructing a subgraph of the Delaunay graph with stretch
 factor $
ho =1+2pi(kcos{frac{pi{k)^{-1$ and degree bounded by
 $k$, for any integer parameter $kgeq 14$. This result immediately
 implies an algorithm for constructing a planar geometric spanner of
 a Euclidean graph with stretch factor $
ho cdot C_{del$ and
 degree bounded by $k$, for any integer parameter $kgeq 14$.
 Moreover, the resulting spanner contains a Euclidean Minimum
 Spanning Tree (EMST) as a subgraph. Our second contribution lies
 in developing the structural results necessary to transfer our
 analysis and algorithm from Euclidean graphs to unit disk graphs,
 the usual model for wireless ad-hoc networks. We obtain a very
 simple distributed, {em strictly-localized algorithm that, given a
 unit disk graph embedded in the plane, constructs a geometric
 spanner with the above stretch factor and degree bound, and also
 containing an EMST as a subgraph. The obtained results
 dramatically improve the previous results in all aspects, as shown
 in the paper.


The papers presented in this volume include: X-ray optical properties: A review of the constraints and the data base; Measurements of X-ray fluorescence yields of plastics by photoexcitation; and The components of the photoionization cross section in the VUV and soft X-ray region.


The frequency and magnitude of life events and the relationships between these events and neurotic impairment were examined in 368 Japanese employees, using a life events questionnaire and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). While both desirable and undesirable life events with a high frequency were related to work only, both kinds of life events with a high strength were related to both family and work. No significant relationship was found between GHQ scores and the frequency or strength of desirable life events, but it was found between these scores and the frequency or strength of undesirable events.


Nominal data of any type usually require some accommodation before it can be used in comparison studies, particularly if there is a large number of levels in the nominal field. At the same time, nominal data frequently consist of nouns only so that such variables are not normally analyzed using text mining. However, if there is also an identifier field such that multiple items of the nominal field can be linked to one identifier code, then it is possible to use text mining to group and rank clusters of levels in the nominal data field. Once the levels are clustered, an outcome variable can be used to rank the clusters. The process generally involves the following steps:


Neutron-activation analysis has been used to analyze sediment cores from the Rock River and two branches of Kent Creek, one of its tributaries, to determine the concentrations of thirteen heavy metals (Ti, Cu, V, Mn, As, Sb, Se, Cr, Ni, Sc, Fe, Zn, and Co) and two rare earths (Sm and La). The downstream sites of both the Rock River and the two branches of Kent Creek have elevated concentrations of several heavy metals including arsenic, antimony, and zinc. In addition, hundreds of parts per million of copper have been found in samples from the downstream site of the North Fork of Kent Creek. Toxicity tests of the sediments also indicate that the downstream sites are detrimental to lifeforms. Analyses of the data from the two branches of Kent Creek clearly indicate that heavy-metal concentrations increase as the distance from the center of industrial activity (Rockford) decreases.


Objective To explore satisfactory repairing effects for the cleft lip through reconstructing the nosal deformity simultaneously during repairing the pediatric cleft lip .Method Correction operation of the cleft lip were analysisied retrospectively in 100 cases which were randomly divided into two groupes preoperatively: A grope , reconstructing the nosal deformity simultaneously during repairing the cleft lip in 50 case ; B groupe , only repairing the cleft lip in 50 case.they were followed up 3 months, 6 months and 1 year after operation .Results comparing the two gropes, A groupe were recovered more satisfactory than B groupe .Conclusion It is necessary to reconstruct the nosal deformity simultaneously during repairing the cleft lip.


Disclosed are a resistive memory device, a resistive memory array and a method of manufacturing the resistive memory device. The disclosed resistive memory device has a structure where a source, a channel, a drain, and a memory resistance layer are successively formed in one direction. The resistive memory device having a gate electrode which is formed to surround a channel around the channel can be provided.


The present invention in a tube production apparatus of the pulp mold products in particular, it would be pollution-free tube to the pulp mold manufacturing apparatus is an industrial waste is not generated. Pulp mold is to protect the electrical and electronic products from newspapers, cardboard and that the notices of such recycled released pulped in water to refer to the product stamped with a mold on easily as eggs, fruit or fragile objects or impact it can be seen that the product is used as a packaging material. Pulp molded products are to a bar, need a large amount of water is produced after the screen release the notice in water pulp and forming it into a mold through a step of heat-drying the water contained in the pulp, thereby lowering waste water and waste pulp the lot is generated. In contrast, the present invention processes the generated that collects constant by reusing waste water, process the generated ever re-use the waste pulp such that Fe water and the waste pulp of pollution as in the conventional pulp mold manufacturing equipment rare It will ever provide a non-polluting pulp molding production jangchieul not.


The aim of the master´s project "Family from the perspective of children and educators from Diagnostic Institute" was to find out how children from Diagnostic Institute perceive their behaviour and risk of a family evironment. The same issue has been compared to the views of educators. The project is subdivided into two parts: theoretical and empirical.IN the theoretical part there are, according to the literary sources, defined the concept of family, its functions, the risk of a family environment, crisis situations and possibilities of rehabilitation and releated legislation. The empirical part is based on qualitativeresearch and interviews, it was examined what had preceded a stay at the Diagnostic Institute, what children and educators think about the causes of stay. Furtheremore, the work deals critically not only about the behaviour of the children, but especially about the risk of a family environment.


Software Defined Radio takes what used to be physically ingrained within the radio and provides a variety of hardware and software alternatives that add to it more flexibility and functionality. This project looks to implement a 16QAM communication system using a baseband receiver and transmitter and two USPR2 boards. It will show the benefits of Software Defined Radio (SDR) and will demonstrate the power, flexibility, and advantages that it gives the designer through the ease of modification that it provides. This project does, however, require a great amount of new, unfamiliar software which may prove to be one of its biggest challenges.


Glowworm swarm optimization(GSO) algorithm is the one of the newest nature inspired heuristics for optimization problems.In order to enhance accuracy and convergence rate of the GSO,two behaviors which are inspired by artificial bee colony algorithm(ABC) and particle swarm optimization(PSO)of the movement phase of GSO were proposed.The effects of the parameters about the improvement algorithms were discussed by uniform design experiment.A number of experiments were carried out on a set of well-known benchmark global optimization problems.Numerical results reveal that the proposed algorithms can find better solutions compared with classical GSO and other heuristic algorithms and are powerful search algorithms for various global optimization problems.


Chlamydia trachomatis (CT), caused by various serovars, remains the leading sexually transmitted bacterial infection worldwide. An efficient delivery system is critical to developing whole or subunit vaccines against CT, and some vaccine developmental efforts are targeting biodegradable nanoparticles-based vaccines with encapsulated antigens. We developed a nanovaccine employing the recombinant major outer membrane protein (rMOMP) of C. muridarum (Cm) encapsulated in poly(lactic acid-co-glycolic acid) 85/15 (PLGA-rMOMP). We previously compared the humoral responses of two priming routes, subcutaneous (SC) or intramuscular (IM-p), followed by two SC-boosts to evaluate rMOMP-specific serum antibodies [IgG2a, IgG2b and IgG1] produced by PLGA-rMOMP immunization of female BALB/c mice. Here we used an elementary body (EB)-specific ELISA to investigate the ability of systemic antibodies produced in immunized mice to recognize Cm and to cross-recognize human CT-serovars D, F and J. Serum from mice inoculated with PBS encapsulated PLGA served as negative control. We observed high recognition of Cm specific total IgG (8-fold) and isotypes IgG2a (8-fold), IgG2b (32-fold), IgG1 (8-fold) by SC in comparison to IM-p immunizations. We also observed IgG antibodies recognizing CT-serovars D, F and J from mice immunized via both routes. Evaluation of the Th1 (IgG2a, IgG2b)/Th2 (IgG1) antibody titer ratios revealed that immunization via the SC route induced predominantly Th1 antibodies recognizing both Cm and human CT-serovars. Our data show that mice immunized with PLGA-rMOMP produced high levels of systemic antibodies recognizing Cm, but more importantly, there was a robust serological cross-recognition of the human CT-serovars.
 This research was supported by the National Institute Of Allergy And Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number NIH-R21AI111159, NIH-NIGMS-RISE (1R25GM106995-01) and the National Science Foundation (NSF)-CREST (HRD-1241701) and NSF-HBCU-RISE (HRD-1646729) grants.


Modern psychology has generated a great effort and huge research resources on the field of creative/innovative personality. The positivist epistemological and methodological research frameworks have been the predominant line on research methodology. All those resources and research commitment have not obtained yet any conclusive results and even less satisfactory results. The combination of creativity-innovation and productivity from the dominant psychological-managerial discourses set the direction of the predominant research. The various meanings that connote the terms "Information Society" and "Knowledge Society" entail each one of them separately different meanings and implications in relation to the innovative action of consumers and users.


A core task of recreation research is to understand the relation between settings, scenery, and visitor experiences. This paper uses environmental psychology to describe four conceptual models underlying these relations: inherent/aesthetic, opportunity/goal-directed, symbolic, and expressive. The paper then describes some challenges to applying results to recreation resource management.


This Journal's readers are aware of the International Commission on Irrigation , Drainage and Flood Control, I. C. I. D., which is an international organization to promote study and performance of irrigation and drainage projects. The I. C. I. D. holds Conferences and/or Executive Councils every year . At the Executive Council in 1994, the I. C. I. D. underwent a major structural innovation, in which the organizational structure was largely simplified . The number of working groups was much reduced and the remained working groups were classified into only four groups; policy , system, on-farm and technology dissemination. This innovation also sharpened the focus on several topics including the environment. This innovation was made possible by the strenuous effort of the staffs of the I. C. I. D.


An 80-year-old man presented with a 6-month history of daytime sleepiness. He had a 3-year history of tremor in the left fingers. He slept more than 9 hours during the night, but he always felt sleepy in the daytime. He had no abrupt sleep attacks, but he persistently napped for several hours or more in the afternoon. Consciousness was clear and neurologic examination was unremarkable except for tremor. Head CT showed low-density areas in the bilateral enlarged thalami (figure, A). T1-weighted MRI revealed bilateral thalamic enlargement with homogeneous low signal intensity and no contrast enhancement (figure, C and D). Both thalami showed high-signal intensity on T2-weighted images (figure, B). Histologic examination of a stereotaxic biopsy specimen identified fibrillary astrocytoma (grade II).


A B S T R A C T The state of Paraiba is characterized by striking climatic irregularities, both its spatial and temporal rainfall, since 86.6% of its territory is part of the Brazilian semiarid region. The vegetation of caatinga, enough already impacted by human activity, has different features related to soil and climatic factors, among these, the precipitation, which influenced by the relief, tends to increase with altitude within the different spaces hidrogeografic. The lower rainfall, increased aridity and the irregularity of rainfall distribution. In the dry season, most plants of the caatinga lose foliage, recovering quickly, as soon as you start a new period of rain. Generally, the quantity and persistence of hardwood biomass from caatinga vegetation is related to soil water availability. This study aimed to analyze the influence of antecedent moisture on multispectral image captured by the sensor and medium resolution satellite used for mapping of


LOW WORLD sugar prices are making it increasingly difficult for raw sugar mills to remain competitive, and many milling companies are embarking on new revenue earning opportunities. In almost all new ventures, the energy from bagasse (as steam or cogenerated electricity) or the fibre itself provides an important basis for generating the additional revenue. Integral to increasing the economic viability of such projects is the need to cost-effectively reduce the steam consumed by the factory for sugar manufacture. The Sugar Research Institute has completed a comprehensive study of numerous options to reduce the process steam consumption of factories, and to determine the financial implications of the different options. Process simulation software for evaporators, pans and heaters were integrated with a basic high pressure steam model. For each process steam efficiency option, the effects on boiler load, fuel consumption, and cogeneration output could be accurately assessed for selected steam conditions at the boiler. The outputs from the integrated process model were directly linked to the financial model. For nominated input conditions, the project determined a prioritised list of technically and economically attractive options for reducing the steam consumption of the factory. The analyses were undertaken for three scenarios which include sale of export electricity, sale of surplus steam or sale of surplus bagasse. This paper describes the development of the integrated models and the results for a base case study. The results show a quintuple station is the preferred evaporator configuration for circumstances where the steam on cane is reduced from current levels of approximately 50% on cane to about 40%. To reduce the steam consumption below this level, a sextuple arrangement is preferred. A quadruple set shows inferior results for all steam on cane values. Options for steam on cane to below 30% were found to be technically feasible for cane factories, but these configurations are not likely to be economically justified.


In males Infra vesical obstruction can cause  urinary retention. This obstruction could be intrinsic or extrinsic. In Most of the cases benign prostatic hyperplasia is the commonest cause for urinary retention. But extrinsic  factors causing urinary retention are very rare. Intra or retroperitoneal mass lesion which compressing the bladder neck or posterior uretheral region may present as urinary retention. So non urological causes also born in mind when there is no urological evidence for obstruction.


Patient-independent detection of epileptic activities based on visual spectral representation of continuous EEG (cEEG) has been widely used for diagnosing epilepsy. However, precise detection remains a considerable challenge due to subtle variabilities across subjects, channels and time points. Thus, capturing fine-grained, discriminative features of EEG patterns, which is associated with high-frequency textural information, is yet to be resolved. In this work, we propose Scattering Transformer (ScatterFormer), an invariant scattering transform-based hierarchical Transformer that specifically pays attention to subtle features. In particular, the disentangled frequency-aware attention (FAA) enables the Transformer to capture clinically informative high-frequency components, offering a novel clinical explainability based on visual encoding of multichannel EEG signals. Evaluations on two distinct tasks of epileptiform detection demonstrate
the effectiveness our method. Our proposed model achieves median AUCROC and accuracy of 98.14%, 96.39% in patients with Rolandic epilepsy. On a neonatal seizure detection benchmark, it outperforms the state-of-the-art by 9% in terms of average AUCROC.


The application of high chromium white iron for wear resistant purposes is often limited by its brittle behaviour, caused by the coarse network of chromium carbides present in conventionally cast iron. In this work the fracture properties are investigated of white iron produced by spray forming, an alternative production route yielding a much finer structure. Different heat treatment conditions are considered. The energies required for crack initiation and propagation and the fracture toughness are determined by performing low-velocity tests with an instrumented drop-weight impact tower using Charpy-like specimens with a sharp notch. It is found that spray-formed iron has favourable initiation properties as long as it is not heat treated. However, a drastic deterioration of the fracture properties material is found after applying a de-stabilising heat treatment. As a spin off, it is found that the properties of conventionally cast iron can be improved considerably by performing a hightemperature heat treatment. Introduction Hypo-eutectic high-chromium white cast irons is a composite material containing a substantial volume fraction of eutectic chromium carbides embedded in what could be described as a high-alloy steel matrix. The eutectic carbides provide the material with an excellent wear resistance, but due to their brittleness the fracture toughness of the material is only limited. In conventionally cast material the chromium carbides form a relatively coarse network. The development of this carbide network is inherently linked to the conventional casting technique. It is thought that this network morphology is a major reason for the poor fracture properties, see Tabrett et al. [1]. It has been attempted to increase the material toughness by modifying the microstructure through alloying or through heat treatments, e.g. Janssen et al. [2]. Such attempts have only shown limited success, mainly because the eutectic carbide network is not significantly affected. However, by using an alternative production route for high chromium white cast iron, the so-called spray forming technique,


The influence of the decision maker's sex on the choice process in specific business buying situations is not well-established. Within an organizational buying context, this study compares men's and women's evaluations of decision criteria and examines whether they form different preferences in the selection of microcomputer vendors. Expert Choice, a microcomputer software package for performing the analytic hierarchy process methodology, served as the decision support tool to structure the decision process, to collect the data, to derive the importance weights for the decision criteria, and to synthesize them with the vendor preferences. The results of a multivariate analysis of the experimental data indicate that men and women do not differ in weighting the importance of decision criteria nor in forming preferences for alternative PC vendors. Instead, the type of organization employing the subjects and the influence of their boss's decision rules were found to significantly affect the vendor evaluation process.


India is corrupt, but according to Transparency International, it is less so than it used to be and less so than many similar countries. People often blame India's corruption on the system of business licensing that prevailed from the 1950s through the 1980s, but Pakistan, even without such a system, has been rated higher in corruption. Significantly, India's nationalist movement was often moralistic, especially because of the influence of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhian traditions have lingered and affected anticorruption drives in 1974–1975 and in 2011 and after. Corruption continues in India for several reasons, including ingrained habits, the pervasiveness of the government, the opportunities for crony capitalism that have come with liberalization, and a loss of civic faith. At least in its more obvious forms, corruption may slowly fade, because India does have civic traditions, and because there is a revulsion against it that has inspired both protest activities and electoral campaigns.


Production technology of ferroelectric monomolecular triglycine sulphate films (TGS) which can be used in the elements of ferroelectric memory (FRAM-Ferroelectric Random Access Memory) and other controlled nanostructures have been designed.


It is shown that for a random function of two or three dimensions and the case where statistical properties are isotropic in space, the Wiener-Khintchine theorem takes on the form of a Fourier-Bessel transform instead of a one-dimensional Fourier transform.