Abstract Objectives To perform an exploratory study to identify a JDM serum metabolic profile that differs from healthy controls (HCs) and responds to immunosuppressive treatment. Methods Blood was collected from 9 HCs and 10 patients diagnosed with probable (n = 4) or definite (n = 6) JDM based on the criteria of Bohan and Peter for myositis, with 7 of the 10 providing longitudinal samples following initiation of treatment; these patients comprised the treatment-naïve cohort. Sera underwent mass spectroscopy–based measurements of targeted metabolic intermediates, including 15 amino acids, 45 acylcarnitines (ACs), 15 ceramides and 29 sphingomyelins. Principal components analysis reduced metabolites into smaller sets of factors each comprised of correlated metabolic intermediates. Factor scores and metabolite concentrations were compared with HCs using two-sample t-tests while treatment effects were evaluated using paired t-tests. Results Of eight principal components analysis–derived metabolite factors (one AC, two amino acids, three sphingosine and two ceramide), two were significantly associated with JDM: one AC factor containing mostly long-chain ACs (P = 0.049) and one ceramide factor (P < 0.01). For 12 individual ACs, mostly long chain, and three ceramides, concentrations were significantly greater for JDM than HCs. Factors based on these individual metabolites showed decreasing scores with treatment (P = 0.03 and P < 0.01, respectively). Conclusion While additional validation is needed, these lipids have potential as JDM serum diagnostic and/or treatment biomarkers. Additionally, the significant association of long-chain ACs and ceramides with JDM offers insights regarding pathogenesis, implicating dysregulation of mitochondrial fatty acid β-oxidation.


Delay-based routing is proved to improve the network's round-trip time without enhancing its throughput [1]. The reason is that optimising the end-to-end delay, as any load-based metric, creates route instability which results in packet reordering. This problem is detrimental for TCP. In the present work, we couple delay-based routing with a mechanism that locks, upon each node, the next-hop for each TCP flow, unless that hop becomes unavailable. The routes for future flows are proactively discovered by optimized link-state routing (OLSR) and reside in the node's routing table, so the proposed mechanism is fully distributed. Simulation experiments in static and mobile scenarios for small pedestrian networks show that the use of path-locking in conjunction with delay-based routing alleviates the route oscillations and improves the TCP's throughput. III -Attended Seminars, Workshops, and Conferences IEEE PIMRC'10, 26-30 Sept. 2010, Istanbul, Turkey. CWC GIGA2010 Seminar, 11 Jan. 2010, University of Oulu, Finland. IV – Research Exchange Programme (12 month scheme) University of Bern (SARIT), 1-7 February 2010, Switzerland. Host: Prof. Torsten Braun. Description: Meetings with all the team members were planned. The purpose was to identify common fields of knowledge and research. We found out that the data dissemination techniques proposed for the recent content-centric networking paradigm, i.e., one of the VTT's objectives, have common –if not identicalcharacteristics with the directed diffusion, widely used in sensor networks for over a decade. The University of Bern (UniBe) has been active in these techniques, so we obtained valuable feedback. An area where future cooperation between the two institutes became possible was in an effort to support real-time communications in wireless mesh networks, from UniBe. The proposed ATOM architecture of Unibe required a passive measurement tool for connection monitoring and dynamic adaptation of video encoding and of path selection. The QoSMeT measurement tool, developed by VTT, was planned to be integrated into the ATOM architecture for this purpose. The installation and testing period of QoSMeT has been completed, and UniBe is in the face of integration.


Purpose: To quantitate the error of tumor internal target volume (ITV) as determined from simulated free‐breathing cine‐mode 4DCT using dynamic magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI). Method and Materials: 8 healthy volunteers and 6 lungtumor patients underwent a 5‐minute MRI scan in the sagittal plane to acquire dynamic images of lung motion. A MATLAB program was written to simulate the cine‐mode 4DCT acquisition by segmenting and resorting the MRimages. Maximum intensity projection (MIP) images were generated from both simulated 4DCT (sCT) and dMRI, and the errors in MIP‐based ITV from sCT (e), comparing to those from dMRI, were determined and correlate to the subjects' respiratory variability (ν). Results: MIP‐based ITVs from sCT were comparatively smaller than those from dMRI in both digital‐phantom studies (e=−21.64±8.23%) and lungtumor patient studies (e=−20.31±11.36%). The errors in MIP‐based ITV from sCT linearly correlated ( e = −5.31ν − 6.71 , r2=0.76) with the subjects' respiratory variability. Conclusions: Because of the low temporal resolution and retrospective resorting, 4DCT may not accurately depict the excursion of a moving tumor. Using 4DCT MIP image to define ITV may therefore cause under‐dosing and increased risk of subsequent treatment failure. Patient‐specific respiratory variability may also be a useful predictor of the 4DCT‐induced error in MIP‐based ITV determination.


The calcium carbonate particles, saturated fatty acids, unsaturated fatty acids, alicyclic carboxylic acids, resin acids, and with at least one surfactant (A) a member selected from the group consisting of these salts, phosphonic acids, polycarboxylic acids, and the resin surface-treated calcium carbonate filler, characterized in that the at least one member selected from the group consisting of those of the salts, surface-treated with a compound (B) having a chelating function for the alkali earth metal is provided. Resin surface-treated calcium carbonate filler of the present invention is less deterioration with time, good dispersibility of the resin into and to provide a useful sheet or film as durability, weather resistance, a battery separator and an optical reflector a good balance having the strength and thermal stability can do.


The locally one-dimensional (LOD) scheme is introduced into the implicit FDTD method. The LOD-FDTD provides simple implementation of the algorithm and reduced computational time. For facet reflectivity analysis of an optical waveguide, the computational time is reduced to 80 and 50% of those of the ADI-FDTD and the conventional FDTD, respectively.


The knowledge about the main milestones ofAbdullin 's creative career of a musician, a pedagogue, a researcher and a creator of the scientific school "Pedagogic methodology of the music education " are considered. For the first time using Eduard Borisovich 's memories the author show those motivations which had determined his life choice to become the music teacher and to find his way in the uniquely profession. The special attention is given to the mainstream of his music, pedagogic, research and public works. It is shown wide scope of Abdullin 's ideas in the music and pedagogic theory and practice, which had obtained the wide public interest not only in Russia but in the countries of the world.


During all the years I have lived in daily contact with Jean Seberg, I have regained from her some of that brave candor you need to win by losing. -Romain Gary Once upon a time, there was an actress called Jean Seberg who lived her life. You might have heard of her. Despite her small stature, she was a beautiful creature who captivated everyone in the room. Once on screen, her big blue eyes stared right at you from the enhanced Technicolor screen. Her closely clopped hair, blonde and perfectly sculpted, was chic and modern, novelty and iconic all at the same time. This year, come September 8, marks the 29th anniversary of her prematurely tragic death. The year was 1956, the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema, of dreams and glamour. Otto Preminger--the big-time Hollywood director of Viennese-origin--while looking for an unknown to play Jeanne d'Arc for his screen adaptation of Saint Joan, "discovers" Jean Seberg from Iowa's farmlands, and introduced her to the blinding Californian sun. Jean was still a teenager then. A fair maiden just like Jeanne d'Arc when she drove the English out of French soil and crowned Charles VII at Rheims. The publicity surrounding Preminger's search for his Jeanne d'Arc on every remote corner of America--hitherto unheard-of, not since David O. Selznick cast Vivien Leigh in Cone with the Wind--made this Jean out of Iowa an instant worldwide star even before Saint Joan was released. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As was custom in those days, upon Herr Preminger's request, Jean was "contracted", and later made a prisoner of Columbia Studio. Thus, she was given the role of Jeanne d'Arc as was promised to her under his watchful eyes. If you were an actor back in that day, you had no freedom. Led by camera flashes, they hopped from hotel suites to press conferences, then to movie premieres with their dates fixed by the studio. That was the rules of the game: if you were an actor, you simply had to obey what the studio told you. And the maiden out of Iowa was fed up under the Californian sun; she was fed up with Preminger's constant harassing and his insults, calling her a terrible actress. Fed up, because this Preminger did not understand her; he merely used her as a puppet and cared only about his overall enterprise. Only on rare occasions when he told stories about Vienna, did the old Austrian treat her well. Sometimes after the shoot, Jean had to sit politely in a restaurant and listen to his stories. And it was always the same: Mozart, Freud, Klimt, Schnitzler... To see out her contract, Jean, biting her lip, underwent another tormenting shoot with Preminger, appearing in Bonjour Tristesse. The only consolation during the shoot was playing the rebellious character of Cecile, with whom jean could at least identify. If you are unhappy ... if someone's always pulling you down by the ankle, you can't fly ... this rare bird Jean ... out of Iowa ... Then the year 1959 arrived--the end of the decade, the end of the Golden Age. At last freed from her captivity in Hollywood, Jean took off to Paris to work with the then-unknown, young and charismatic Jean-Luc Godard. For his first film Breathless, Godard had given her the role of Patricia, an aspiring American writer with a big dream, making her living in Paris selling New York Herald Tribune on the trendy Champs Elysees. In her role as the girlfriend of Jean-Paul Belmondo, an ocean apart from the Californian sun and the Faustian Preminger, Jean blossoms as an actress under Godard's freewheeling, youthful, and hectic direction. She must have been what? 21 years old? 21 years old and American, her first time living alone overseas. Jean had arrived in Paris with no translator, no agent, nothing--just a suitcase and a little bit of confidence in herself. just imagine how free Jean must have felt, speaking her lines in American-accented French, to the applause of Quartier Latin intellectuals. …


Parkinson's disease (PD) severity is evaluated by neurologist experts by means of several tests. One of them is the Movement Disorder Society–Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (MDS–UPDRS). The main hypothesis is that changes in the speech of PD patients reflect changes in their neurological state. In this study we use the Gaussian Mixture Model–Universal Background Model approach to track the disease progression per speaker. Speech recordings from 62 PD patients were captured from 2012 to 2015 in three recording sessions. The validation of the models is performed with recordings of 7 patients (3 male and 4 female). The models were trained using speech recordings from male and female patients separately. According to the results, it is possible to track the disease progression with a Pearson's correlation of up to 0.88 for males and 0.53 for females.


The chemistry teachers of Cleveland have been cooperating for about a year in an effort to formulate questions which would be a measure of the information in chemistry possessed by their pupils. Questions upon limited portions of the semester's assign ment were sent out from time to time to the different teachers for use in their classes. A record was made for each question on the basis of returns from the teachers. These questions were gleaned from different sources, many being submitted by the teachers themselves. As a consequence, there are on hand some five hundred questions based on the textbook in use (McPherson and Henderson), which have been tried out in three or more schools and have been attempted by at least one hundred pupils. It is intended that this work shall be followed up until about eight hundred questions have been standardized for the subject as presented in Cleveland. The cooperative feature of these tests is in itself of the greatest value. We are trying to prepare a measure for use in our own work. Already good effects have come from the scrutiny which we have individually given to our work as a result of this united effort. New projects which have developed directly or indirectly from this work await their turn for consideration and treatment.


The inert grout for shield tunnel after-wall grouting process is composed of (kg/cu.m) quicklime 40-100, flyash 200-600, bentonite 40-100, fine sand 800-1200, water 200-400 and additive 0-40, the additive is soda or carboxymethylcellulose sodium, i.e. CMC. Said invented grout is an inert grout which is made of quicklime and flyash as main raw material, and its fluidity, thickness, stratification and setting time can meet the requirement for shield construction, and the grout property can be effectively controlled by regulating addition quantity of the additive.


A few decades ago, common land ownership was viewed as a legal institution of the past, irreconcilable with the modern capitalistic economy, that required private ownership. With this opinion, in 1927, the legislator mainly acted to get the agricultural properties free from common uses (grazing, gathering wood, etc.) and to reduce the extensions of the properties opened to a shared utilisation, by putting them at the same time under the authority of the municipalities. Common Property and Local Development. Research Elements for Friuli Venezia G... Journal of Alpine Research | Revue de géographie alpine, 109-1 | 2021 12


The game-theoretic framework for probability was introduced by Vladimir Vovk and myself in Probability and Finance, published in 2001. But it has roots in the work of Jean Ville, who showed how Cournot's principle, the principle that an event of very small probability will not happen, can be given a game-theoretic interpretation. The framework allows us to generalize the classical limit theorems of probability and opens up new ways of making probability predictions.


Various quantum walk-based algorithms have been developed, aiming to distinguish non-isomorphic graphs with polynomial scaling, within both the discrete-time quantum walk (DTQW) and continuous-time quantum walk (CTQW) frameworks. Whilst both the single-particle DTQW and CTQW have failed to distinguish non-isomorphic strongly regular graph families (prompting the move to multi-particle graph isomorphism (GI) algorithms), the single-particle DTQW has been successfully modified by the introduction of a phase factor to distinguish a wide range of graphs in polynomial time. In this paper, we prove that an analogous phase modification to the single particle CTQW does not have the same distinguishing power as its discrete-time counterpart, in particular it cannot distinguish strongly regular graphs with the same family parameters with the same efficiency.


Though the current specification is well describing the embedded depth of a guardrail post in bear grounds, any information is not given yet when the posts are installed in pavements. Since the soil resistance is expected to increase when a post is installed in pavements, this study proposed an analytical approach to investigate an equivalent embedded depth for pavements. The linear and nonlinear springs are utilized in idealizing the soil resistance including ascon pavements. The input parameters for these spring models are calibrated with an existing experimental result. An embedded depth was investigated according to the proposed analytical approach for the preliminary design of actual crash tests or static/dynamic load tests. An equivalent embedded depth, which can secure the same performance level with the standard case of bear grounds, is evaluated and proposed. The considered performance criteria consist of the maximum deflection of guardrail and the damage indices of passengers. Based on the simulation results, the possibility of reducing the embedded depth is confirmed when posts are installed in pavements. However, a series of experimental research should be followed for the standardization.


The majority of studies to date dealing with NMDAactivated ion channels have used whole-cell preparations to study macroscopic currents. The whole-cell current response to applied agonists consists of several components including the number of single channels activated by the agonist, the magnitude of the current passed by each ion channel, and the mean open time and frequency of opening of the ion channels. In order to determine the physiological and pharmacological properties of these individual components, it is useful to record single-channel currents through the NMDA ion channel. In this work I have used the cell-attached configuration of the patch clamp technique to study the effects of (a) different agonists and their stereoisomers and (b) intermediate and long-chain alcohols and volatile general anaesthetic agents on the single channel properties of the NMDA channel. An important point in this work is that intact cells, where channel gating from intracellular factors were preserved, were studied whereas the majority of single channel data involving NMDA channels has been obtained using outside-out patches, with little or no attempt to correlate such measurements with ion channel behaviour in the intact cell. I have studied the differences in mean open time and opening frequency (and thus probability of the channel being in the open state at a particular time) produced by different agonists of the NMDA channel; as well, the effect of agonist concentration on the frequency of channel opening was investigated. Cultured rat hippocampal CAl neurones were used in order to assess the single-channel kinetics of the stereoisomers of two different NMDA agonists, N-methylaspartic acid and homocysteic acid, as determined by on-cell patch-clamp recording with the agonists included in the pipette. In the absence of external Mg the mean open time of NMDA channels, with all agonists, were diminished in an exponential manner with increasing patch hyperpolarization. No significant differences in conductance were observed between any of the agonists. However, significant differences in mean open time were found between the enantiomers NMDA and NMLA and between the enantiomers Dand L-homocysteic acid. Increasing the concentrations of the agonists in the patch pipette significantly increased the frequency of channel openings. These data on agonistinduced unitary currents can be correlated with whole-cell electrophysiological studies and autoradiographical binding affinity studies. Further studies were undertaken in order to assess the effects of several anaesthetic drugs, including the normal aliphatic alcohols butanol, pentanol, and octanol, as well as the volatile anaesthetics halothane and isoflurane, on the kinetics of unitary NMDA agonistactivated currents as recorded in the cell-attached configuration. While the channel conductance was not


Impure BiFeO3 as a visible light photocatalyst for phenol degradation was synthezied via solid state method. The calcined temperatures of catalysts were studied. The characteristics of the catalysts were determined by XRD, SEM/EDS and BET. The catalysts were mainly composed of rhombohedral distorted perovskite-type BiFeO3 phase with impurity phases (B2Fe4O9, Bi25FeO40 and Bi2O3). Photocatalytic activity of phenol (5 mg/l) was studied in the impure BiFeO3 illuminated with 200 w fluorescence lamps. The catalyst amount and initial pH value of phenol solution on the photocatalytic effiency have been also investigated. In the present experiments, the catalyst calcined at 800°C shows the highest activity. The optimum loading of impure BiFeO3 and pH value were obtained to be 0.5 g/l and 6, respectively.


High‐level ab initio calculations have been performed on N‐methyl‐N‐methyleneammonium and related compounds to obtain accurate rotational barriers, structures, and vibrational frequencies. The 6‐31G** basis set has been utilized at the Hartree‐Fock level of theory for these calculations because little experimental data are available. The MM2(91) and MM3(94) force fields have been parameterized to include these nonconjugated charged nitrogen‐containing compounds. Molecular mechanics geometries and vibrational frequencies compare well with the ab initio results. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.


[Objective]To provide external basis of establishment operative and rehabilitative scheme,and estimate pro-operation and rehabilitation treatment effect.[Method]A total of 40 unconstraint people(mean age 33) and 112 patients suffering from orthopaedic disease were made gait analysis using 3-D gait analysis system(VICONCompany,V-612,U.K.).Their mean age was 46.5.Among them 42 patients were male,and mean stature 171±13 cm, mean body weight 65±11 kg.Female stature 158±11 cm,and body weight 45±11 kg.[Result]The result indicated that gait analysis can supply changes of kinematics,biomechanics and skeletal EMG in activity.[Conclusion]The method of gait analysis is feasible for patient suffering from orthopaedic disease.


Winner of the 1982 Lower Prize, The Cleveland Clinic Educational Foundation. More than 17 million young people in this country participate in organized sports. Seven million high school students engage in interscholastic competition.1 Although such widespread athletic participation is beneficial to the physical well-being of developing adolescents, there is an accompanying risk of injury and death.2. In an attempt to reduce this risk, all states have enacted laws requiring students to have regular preparticipation physical examinations.4 Sports-oriented medical examinations can decrease morbidity and mortality by identifying risk factors before participation. Unfortunately, school sports physicals are frequently considered ineffective, inconvenient, or too costly, and there is little baseline data available from these examinations.5' 6 The purpose of this study was to establish baseline examination data from a large group of young athletes studied prospectively and to evaluate the screening effectiveness, convenience, and cost of this comprehensive approach.


A smart city is emerging as a strategy to the issues caused by rapid urbanization and urban population growth. Despite the fact that cities continue to grow and improve their economic, social, as well as environmental objectives, a minimal study has been conducted on this topic. Due to an urgent need for smart city concepts to be applied, stakeholders have gained a better understanding of how their city is performing today. As a result, establishing a structural framework for smart city evaluation is essential to communicate emerging shortcomings and strengths, highlighting areas of genuine development. This research provides a useful tool to assist assess the relative success of smart cities, based on the exploration of an enormous as well as a broad range of literature from many academic fields and on the conceptual literature. Moreover, it is crucial to consider the evaluation extent of smart cities.


A two-year collaborative project by Deakin, RMIT and Charles Sturt universities aims to build in each institution, the academic and professional staff capacities for developing and using a form of online, goal-based, role-play simulation (eSimulation/eSim). While the project embraces 'knowledge transfer', 'capacity building' and 'embedded dissemination', a greater challenge is transforming perceptions of eSims in blended learning contexts to improve flexible learning designs across the higher education sector. The project addresses the need for coordinated research and development in the field of eSimulations in Australian higher education. It aligns the educational, technical, evaluation and research strengths of the three parties to build academic and professional staff capacities for the 'local' development and use of an already successful approach to simulating 'professional workplace experiences' for student learning. This poster presents the ALTC Competitive Grants Program project (2008-2010): 'Building academic staff capacity for using eSimulations in professional education for experience transfer'. The project's website is http://www.deakin.edu.au/itl/insims/altc-project/.


It is important for fashion companies to be active in e-commerce landscape as it is growing rapidly especially in the apparel sector. As shopping is considered being an experience, it is important ...


The surface vertical and horizontal displacements resulted from the mined-out pit are predicted by use of the FLAC software and the slope and curvature of surface sedimentation at every locus are figured out with numerical value analysis theory. The prediction results can be referred for the mine construction.


A graph representing the molecular structure of a chemical compound is called a molecular graph. A molecular graph is a collection of points representing the atoms in the molecule and set of lines representing the covalent bonds. The physicochemical and biochemical properties of compounds depend strongly on their molecular structures. The construction and investigation of topological indices that could be used to describe molecular structures is one of the important directions of mathematical chemistry. The Wiener index of a graph is defined as the sum of distances between all pairs of vertices in a connected graph. Wiener index correlates well with many physicochemical properties of organic compounds and as such has been well studied over the last quarter of a century. In this paper we introduce a wiener type index called Like Degree Wiener index and study the same for few graph structures.


The half-quantized Hall conductance is characteristic of quantum systems with parity anomaly. Here we investigate topological and transport properties of a class of parity anomalous semimetals, in which massive Dirac fermions coexist with massless Dirac fermions in momentum space or real space, and uncovered a distinct bulk-edge correspondence that the half-quantized Hall effect is realized via the bulk massless Dirac fermions while the nontrivial Berry curvature is provided by the massive Dirac fermions. The spatial distribution of the edge current decays away from the boundary in a power law instead of an exponential law in integer quantum Hall effect. We further address physical relevance of parity anomalous semimetal to three-dimensional semi-magnetic topological insulators and two-dimensional photonic crystals.


In the following, it is proposed to calculate the induced diamagnetic moment due to the free electrons in a metal, using, instead of the classical assumptions of elastic collisions, the recently developed wave-nature of the electron and the Fermi statistics. The problem resolves itself into three parts: to find (1) the ψ functions for an electron in a lattice for the case of small perturbations by the atoms of the lattice, (2) the induced magnetic moment derived from the ψ functions and its dependence on the energy, (3) the total induced magnetic moment, which will then be obtained by applying the statistics for a degenerate system.


Regarding to the joint device erection for highway bridge (Type CQG-C), only after the suitable work following the procedures required by the Engineer and the serious inspection at each stage, the quality could be ensured and the service life could become longer.


Ojective The aim of the present study was to examine the etiology and clinical manifestation of patients with drug-induced liver disease. Methods Thirtyone patients with drug-induced liver disease were examined of drug history, clinical symptom and signs,laboratory tests and therapeutic effect, In some cases, hepatic biopsy was carried out to help diagnose.Results It was suggested that the proportion of drugs which induced liver disease were antibiotics 22.6%, anti-tuberculosis 12.9%. There were 26 patients with acute and 5 patients with chronic drug-induced liver disease. The dominating clinical manifestation were jaundice and elevated transaminase.The most patients were cured with good prognosis. Conclusion The clinicians should attach importance to the prevention, diagnosis and therapy of drug-induced liver disease.


This article will forecast in a general way the potential for major new international pipelines that may be engineered and constructed in the period from 1985 to 2000. The article will develop forecasts for the transportation needs that will arise based on the demand and production seen for oil, gas, and coal. The forecast will be divided by selected segments of the world, and a discussion will be given of the actual pipelines that are expected because of these potential transportation opportunities.


An exploratory study of psychosocial factors in nonorganic failure‐to‐thrive infants is presented, focusing on familial relationships and other pertinent environmental factors implicated in this disorder. It is apparent from the presented data and discussion that a comprehensive medical work‐up is mandatory for every patient in whom this diagnosis is entertained.


This article considers the visual effectiveness of white light, based on recent research at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. Anecdotal claims of the benefits of white light are being investigated. Light measurement is expressed in terms of photopic and scotopic luminance, covering all levels of visible light. Metal halide (MH) lamps, a source of white light, emit radiant power over a broader region of the visible spectrum. Low-pressure sodium (orange) lamps have better photopic luminous efficacy, but at the illuminances specified for street lighting the eye is operating at mesopic conditions, increasing the luminous efficacy of MH lamps. The research under discussion is focused on lighting for pedestrians rather than motorists, investigating brightness and visual performance. Spectral power distribution has an effect on brightness at photopic levels but this is not clearly shown at mesopic levels. Some evidence of spectral effects in mesopic conditions is found, dependent on the nature of the task being undertaken. Research will investigate how lower illuminance permitted for MH lamps affects visual performance.


The invention provides a diaphragm structure. At least one through hole of the diaphragm structure is a crescent-shaped through hole. Lenses with the diaphragm structures are used in pairs, and the two crescent-shaped through holes face reversely, and obtain two images respectively. The same point in the two images and a window nearby the point are selected, and Fourier transformations of the two images are calculated; each d value within a selectable distance range according to needs is used for successively calculating a set of frequency domain recovery values and a set of frequency domain error evaluation values of the point; the d value corresponding to the minimum frequency domain error evaluation value is selected as the optimal estimated distance value of the point, and the corresponding frequency domain recovery value serves as the optimal frequency domain recovery value of the point; inverse Fourier transformation is performed on the optimal frequency domain recovery value, so that a clear image value of a space domain is obtained. Through transforming the shape of the through holes of the diaphragm structure, a pair of special diaphragms and the corresponding image processing method are used for performing inverse recovery calculation, so that the distance between sceneries is accurately obtained, the image which is clear at a short distance or an intermediate distance or a long distance is obtained, and the purpose of greatly increasing the field depth is achieved.


This paper describes metaphorical engagement of ecology as a strategy for designing human inhabitation catalyzed by and supportive of healthy urban ecosystems. A case is made for the importance and timliness of collaboration and conceptual association between architects and landscape ecologists. Next, the Australian architect Richard Leplastrier's notion of architecture as "furnishing with particular purpose this larger room we are in" - suggestive of both the architect's role and the context of an architectural undertaking - is examined as a prototype for approaching problems of design in an environmentally sensitive manner. A pilot studio attempt to engage ecological issues through metaphor is described, and building from this experiment and Lepastrier's statement, a palette of "human act/environment" case study metaphors is offered for use in design. Lastly I offer a methodology for testing these metaphors in advanced architectural design studios and evaluating their influence on students' design thinking and the environmental responsiveness of projects that result.


This paper reports on the first stage of a wider research project investigating the influences on the spiritual development of children within a Catholic parish context, as perceived by Catholic parish personnel who have assumed this responsibility. Eight participants who held religious leadership positions within a parish environment met as a focus group and derived six domains considered to be key influences on a child's spiritual formation. A subsequent focus group comprising 37 adult participants who held a direct spiritual educative/formative role with children discussed these six key areas of influence, and then individually ranked and weighted them in terms of considered importance. Findings indicated variation among the clusters of domains describing the influences of family, peers and school, relationship with God, and one's use of time. The influence of information technology was found to be distinct from all other domains. Further research based on these findings is warranted.


The decades of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s witnessed cataclysmic changes as during this time there were the simultaneous discussions on both nationalism and colonialism and India was being forced to face the advent of modernity. Apart from male writers of Indian English literature, there were a number of women novelists who contributed to the literary field . By their writings, they secured the future of Indian writing in English by turning writing in English into a solid material project that had assumed international proportions by the 1940s. These included writers like Anita Desai, Kamala Markandaya, Nayantara Sehgal etc. During the 1990s, India became a popular literally nation as a number of women authors made their debut in this era. The list of Indian women novelists comprises popular names such as Bharati Mukherjee, Nergis Dalal, Krishna Sobti , Diva Mehta, Gauri Deshpande,Ruth Jhabwala, Shobha De, Arundhati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri and many more who are known for the contemporary approach in their novels .


In this paper research was made on the regeneration process of Pinus tabulaeformis and Betula platyphylla population in the inundated area.The results demonstrated that the size structure of P.tabulaeformis population was unimodal curve deflecting to the right,with no difference of slope aspect,and that of the Betula platyphylla population was unimodal curve deflecting to the left,but some individuals were found only on the shady slope of the inundated area.There were different types of survival curve,type Ⅱ in the P.tabulaeformis population and type Ⅲ in the Betula platyphylla.By comparison,the regeneration of P.tabulaeformis population were mainly affected by the land condition,and that of Betula platyphylla population were influenced by the seed origination distance and seed germination and establishment condition.


Boro season is the most productive among Aus, Aman and Boro seasons. For confirming food security, we need to emphasize more on Boro season to feed more people. That's why forty entries of Boro rice germplasm were allowed to evaluate for their genetic variations in yield and yield contributing traits, their associations and also direct and indirect effects on yield. Observing means, range and all genetic parameters, selection could be done on the basis of number of effective tillers, harvest index, filled grains per panicle, unfilled grains per panicle, days to maturity and grain yield. Traits association analysis revealed that days to flowering, days to maturity and filled grain per panicle could significantly improve rice germplasm. Path analysis estimated that direct selection based on days to flowering, days to maturity and filled grain per panicle would be efficient for improvement of rice germplasm. G5 had the highest yield along with filled grain per plant, harvest index and 1000 grain weight and it could be used as potential variety for improving yield. The germplasm G7, G19, G9 and G33 could be used in further breeding program for the improvement of rice germplasm.


Tension infiltrometer measurements have been used to measure steady-state infiltration rates at applied tensions. The measurements can be used to determined soil hydraulic properties through linear or nonlinear regression. Such regression methods are often based on a few imprecise field measurements, and the traditional regression analysis may not yield valid estimates and reliable prediction. The objective of this study is to introduce fuzzy linear regression as an alternative to statistical regression analysis In determining hydraulic properties from tension infiltrometer measurements. Using a tension infiltrometer, in situ steady-state infiltration rates [q ∞ (h)] were measured at six different tensions (h) between 3 and 22 cm of water on silty loam and day loam soils. Hydraulic properties (i.e., field saturated hydraulic conductivity, K i s , and inverse macroscopic capillary length scale, α G ) and their confidence intervals were estimated following the fuzzy least-square linear regression procedure with the minimum fuzziness criterion and linear least-squares method (traditional statistical method). Both calculation procedures yielded the same mean hydraulic properties. A comparison between fuzzy and statistical In q(h) relationship indicated that the confidence binds resulting from both procedures enveloped all the measurement points, but fuzzy regression estimates offered a tighter fit around the midpoint values (least-square estimates). Fuzzy linear regression is more reliable and may be used as a complement or an alternative to statistical linear regression analysis for determining hydraulic properties from tension infiltrometer measurements.


Abstract Objective. Physical activity has been shown to decrease obesity and improve executive function, but few studies have examined the effects of exercise in the natural environment. The purpos...


Background: Intravenous drug users (IVDU) have a 10-fold increased risk of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) compared to the general population. There is scarce data available evaluating the clinical outcomes of IVDU hospitalized patients with CAP and that data mostly focuses on mortality. The objective of this study was to evaluate the clinical characteristics, incidence and outcomes of hospitalized patients with CAP in active intravenous drug users in Louisville, Kentucky. Methods: This was a secondary data analysis of the University of Louisville Pneumonia study. IVDU patients were propensity score matched to a non-IVDU group. Study outcomes were time to clinical stability (TCS), length of stay (LOS), mortality at discharge, and mortality at 1 year. Stratified Cox proportional hazard regression was performed to evaluate TCS and LOS. Conditional logistic regression was performed to evaluate mortality. Statistical significance was defined as p ≤ 0.05. Results: From a total of 8,284 hospitalized patients with CAP reviewed, 113 patients were matched per group. Median (IQR) age for the IVDU was 33 (28-43) versus 36 (28-48) for the matched nonIVDU group (p<0.001). Analysis showed no association with TCS (stratified hazard ratio (sHR): 0.81; 95% CI: 0.58-1.14; p=0.227), LOS (sHR: 0.71; 95% CI: 0.50-1.01; p=0.053), mortality at discharge (conditional odds ratio (cOR): 1.67; 95% CI: 0.40-6.97; p=0.484) and mortality at 1 year (cOR: 1.125; 95% CI: 0.43-2.92; p=0.808). Conclusions: This study shows that active IVDU hospitalized patients with CAP do not have worse outcomes when compared with non-IVDU hospitalized patients with CAP. Patients in the IVDU group were significantly younger. Since severity scores commonly used are heavily influenced by age, these will not likely be useful tools to assist the physicians with the site for care and management. DOI: 10.18297/jri/vol2/iss2/2 Received Date: February 22, 2018 Accepted Date: July 24, 2018 Website: https://www.louisville.edu/jri Copyright: ©2018 the author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-ND 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Affiliations: 1University of Louisville Division of Infectious Diseases, Louisville, KY 40202 2Pfizer, Inc., Collegeville, PA *Correspondence To: Vidyulata Salunkhe Work Address: University of Louisville, Division of Infectious Diseases 501 E. Broadway, Louisville, KY 40202 Work Email: firstname.lastname@example.com 7 © ULJRI 2018 Vol 2, (2) ORIGINAL RESEARCH population-based cohort study of all hospitalized adults with CAP who were residents in the city of Louisville, Kentucky, from June 1st, 2014 to May 31st, 2016 [13]. Inclusion Criteria Diagnosis of CAP required the presence of criterion A, B, and C: A. New pulmonary infiltrate on imaging (CT scan or chest x-ray) at the time of admission to the hospital. B. Signs and Symptoms of CAP (at least one of the following): • New or increased cough • Fever >37.8°C (100.0°F) or hypothermia <35.6°C (96.0°F) • Changes in WBC (leukocytosis >11,000 cells/mm3, left shift > 10% band forms/microliter, or leukopenia < 4,000 cells/mm3 C. Working diagnosis of CAP at the time of hospital admission with antimicrobial therapy given within 24 hours of admission. Study Groups Cases (group 1): Hospitalized patients with CAP with active IVDU documented in the medical record. Controls (group 2): Hospitalized adults with CAP who did not have documentation of actively using intravenous drugs. IVDU cases were matched 1:1 to control cases by age, race, and history of obesity (body mass index >30), current smoker, active alcohol use, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure, stroke, diabetes mellitus, HIV, renal disease, and liver disease. Study Variables • Patients' characteristics: demographics, medical and social history, physical, and laboratory findings were collected if documented in the medical records. • Severity of disease: assessed by the following variables – acute altered mental status on admission, need of intensive care, ventilatory support, or vasopressor on the day of admission, pneumonia severity index risk class IV or V. • Complications: defined as the presence of persistent bacteremia and/or endocarditis. Study Outcomes • Time to clinical stability (TCS): A patient was defined as clinically stable the day that the following four criteria were met: 1. Improvement in cough and shortness of breath 2. Lack of fever for at least 8 hours 3. Improving leukocytosis (decreased at least 10% from the previous day) 4. Tolerating oral intake with adequate gastrointestinal absorption Patients were evaluated daily within the first 7 days of hospitalization to determine the day when clinical stability was reached. • Length of hospital stay (LOS): defined in days and calculated for each patient as the day of discharge minus the day of admission. Patients hospitalized for >14 days and patients who died prior to 14 days were censored at 14 days. • Mortality: defined as death by any cause 1) during hospitalization and 2) at one year after discharge. 8 © ULJRI 2018 Vol 2, (2) Table 1 Patients' characteristics for both study groups Variable IV Drug Users Non IV Drug Users Pvalue Total Population n=113 n=113 Demographics Age, median (IQRa) 33 [28, 43] 36 [28, 48] 0.364 Male sex, n (%) 66 (58) 70 (62) 0.684 Black or African American Race, n (%) 9 (8) 6 (5) 0.593 Medical and Social History, n (%) BMI ≥ 30 20 (18) 22 (20) 0.864 HIV infection 3 (3) 1 (1) 0.614 Renal disease 17 (15) 10 (9) 0.218 Liver disease 47 (42) 37 (33) 0.215 Congestive heart failure 3 (3) 3 (3) >0.999 Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease 23 (21) 30 (27) 0.346 Stroke 5 (4) 4 (4) >0.999 Current Smoker 100 (89) 103 (91) 0.660 Diabetes mellitus 9 (8) 5 (4) 0.408 Cirrhosis 6 (5) 7 (6) >0.999 Alcohol use 21 (19) 27 (24) 0.416 Nursing home resident 3 (3) 2 (2) >0.999 Hospitalized within 90 days 24 (21) 14 (12) 0.109 IV antibiotics within 90 days 15 (13) 7 (6) 0.116 Home infusion 0 (0) 3 (3) 0.245 Chronic dialysis 3 (3) 0 (0) 0.245 Home wound care 1 (1) 1 (1) >0.999 Oral antibiotics within 30 days 13 (12) 20 (18) 0.258 Neoplastic disease within past year 0 (0) 7 (6) 0.021 Pneumonia vaccination 16 (14) 20 (18) 0.586 Flu vaccination 16 (14) 23 (20) 0.305 Physical Exam Findings, median (IQR) Temperature (Degrees Celsius) 37 [37, 38] 37 [37, 38] 0.231 Respiratory rate (Breaths/Minute) 24 [20, 30] 20 [20, 26] 0.008 Systolic blood pressure (mmHg) 106 [92, 121] 112 [97, 127] 0.094 Diastolic blood pressure (mmHg) 58 [49, 68] 61 [54, 73] 0.055 Heart rate (Beats/Minute) 116 [106, 131] 113 [97, 125] 0.047 Laboratory Findings, median (IQR) Serum bicarbonate (mEq/L) 25 [22, 27] 25 [22, 28] 0.611 Blood Urea Nitrogen (mg/dL) 14 [9, 20] 12 [9, 15] 0.077 Serum glucose (mg/dl) 132 [116, 165] 122 [104, 146] 0.012 Hematocrit (%) 36 [33, 40] 38 [34, 42] 0.061 Serum sodium (mEq/L) 136 [133, 139] 137 [134, 140] 0.190 Severity of Disease, n (%) Acute altered mental status on admission 33 (29) 18 (16) 0.026 Need of intensive care on admission 37 (33) 20 (18) 0.014 Need of ventilatory support on admission 21 (19) 15 (13) 0.363 Need of vasopressors on admission 6 (5) 3 (3) 0.496 Pleural effusion 19 (17) 21 (19) 0.862 PSI Risk Class IV or Vb 35 (31) 26 (23) 0.231 aIQR: Interquartile range bPSI: pneumonia severity index Statistical Analysis Descriptive statistics were performed, with comparisons between groups analyzed by using a Chi-squared test or Fisher's exact test for categorical data and the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney U test for continuous data. Kaplan Meier curves were created for TCS and LOS. Differences in outcomes adjusting for propensity score matching were analyzed using stratified Cox proportional hazards regression for TCS and LOS and conditional logistic regression for mortality during hospitalization and at one year. Differences are reported as stratified hazard ratios (sHR) or conditional odds ratios (cOR), respectively.


The environment of manufacturing and assembly manual activities radically evolved in the last decades. First, the western world workforce is alarmingly aging. In the last 15 years the percentage of European employees older than 50 years rose from 21.6% to 30.4%. Furthermore, the latest developments in legislations (EU Machinery directive, 2006/42/EC, 89/391/EEC, Occupational Safety and Health act) force the companies to assess, monitor and safeguard the health of their operators. Finally, an increasing pressure from the civil society and the stakeholders pretends safe working conditions in manufacturing and assembly processes. This paper tackles these issues proposing an original Motion Analysis System (MAS) for the ergonomic assessment of human operators involved in industrial processes. This research exploits different motion capture (MOCAP) technologies, e.g. optical, inertial and miscellaneous, to register the static postures and the dynamic movements of an operator during manufacturing or assembly activities. The information provided by the MOCAP technologies about the evolution over time of the position and orientation of the skeleton segments are processed by the MAS. This system calculates for each monitored frame the angle values of all the relevant joints of the human body accurately reproducing the operator movements. Furthermore, the MAS assesses the risk of musculoskeletal disorders of the performed manufacturing and assembly activities with the automatic evaluation of three ergonomic indices considering the features of the products and tools which the operator pick and handle. Along with the calculation of REBA and OWAS indices, an original one is developed and proposed based on the ISO 11226:2000 norm. The MAS is tested and validated with the industrial case study of a gearbox assembly process comparing the novel ergonomic index with the traditional ones. The results suggest that the proposed index accurately evaluates the ergonomic risk of specific assembly tasks compared to the classical approaches.


Design with reuse has been accepted as a cost-effective way to software development. Software reuse covers the process of identification, representation, retrieval, adaptation, and integration of reusable software components. In this paper, we propose a semi-formal approach to software reuse. The approach consists of the following major steps: (1) software components are annotated with formal information, (2) the software components are then translated into predicate transition nets, and (3) consistency checking of the reusable and new components is carried out using the reachability analysis technique of predicate transition (PrT) nets. The approach is demonstrated through an example.


It is of no doubt that, emergencies occur without warning, and one does not predict the outcome. This project seeks to design a personal emergency or panic alert system (digiRESCUE) to aid in inevitable and dangerous situations. The digiRESCUE system has two main parts: the embedded hardware and software application. The hardware part is made up of a button embedded with a chip. This button when pressed triggers the chip, which then activates the software, portion of the system to send an automated message including the individual's location to the selected contacts saved in the software application. The software part of the system is in the form of a mobile application, which can be downloaded onto a mobile device. This software would allow users to record or write an SOS message and input selected contacts (including friends, family, and authorities) who would be alerted of the user's predicament when the external button in pressed. This software application can tap into the mobile device's GPS module to inform the selected contacts of the individual's location. The hardware would interact with the software application via Bluetooth connectivity therefore making the process of seeking for help, a lot quicker and easier. In situations where the individual is held as a hostage, he or she can easily call for help without drawing attention to oneself


Large cohort studies, such as the Women's Health Initiative, have traditionally grouped hematopoietic neoplasms (HPN) into disease categories including multiple myeloma (MM), non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), Hodgkin lymphoma (HL), and leukemia, however this may not allow for optimal distinction of biologically relevant associations. The 2001 World Health Organization (WHO) classification of HPN represents the current gold standard classification scheme, and has been incorporated into the International Classification of Disease for Oncology, Third Edition (ICD-O-3). In 2007, the International Lymphoma Epidemiology Consortium (InterLymph) proposed a classification of lymphoid neoplasms for epidemiologic research that is based upon the WHO/ICD-O-3 classification (Morton LM, et al. Blood, 2007;110:695–708). Here we report on the application of this proposed classification scheme within the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), a large, nationwide health study. All incident cases of HPN reported by women in the WHI cohort of 161,808 women were adjudicated by SEER-trained cancer coders according to SEER criteria, including assignment of histology codes based on ICD-O-3 guidelines. Cases were simultaneously assigned to one of the four traditional categories (leukemia, NHL, HL, and MM). Histologic subtypes were then grouped according to the recommendations of InterLymph. A total of 1534 women with incident HPN were identified within the WHI cohort. This included 405 within the general category of leukemia, 853 NHL, 237 MM, and 39 HL. Within the leukemia category, 221 are of lymphoid origin. See Table 1 for the InterLymph classification of the lymphoid neoplasms. These findings highlight the critical importance of appropriately classifying HPN for epidemiologic research. The traditional classification of all blood-based HPN as "leukemias" is particularly problematic, as this grouping includes neoplasms from both the myeloid and lymphoid lineages. In addition, disorders with both leukemic and solid disease phases, such as CLL/SLL, are split between those two traditional categories (leukemia and NHL). These groups also include entities with both indolent and aggressive clinical behaviors. HPN are a heterogeneous group of neoplasms that are known to have distinct phenotypes, presentations, and natural progressions, and they are increasingly recognized to be etiologically heterogeneous. The traditional grouping of these neoplasms into leukemia, NHL, HL, and MM is problematic, and may limit the interpretation of research findings. Classification of these neoplasms according to the recommendations of InterLymph should allow for improved detection of biologically relevant associations. TABLE 1. All incident lymphoid neoplasms since WHI enrollment, by ICD-0-3 histologic subtype (first column) and by traditional categorization as leukemia (leuk), non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), Hodgkin lymphoma (HL), and multiple myeloma (MM).


Variants of MET, a receptor tyrosine kinase which binds the ligand Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), have been linked to elevated risk for developing autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in humans. Though best known as a protooncogene,MET also plays important roles during normal development, including the development of the central nervous system. Recent studies in several mouse lines have shown that mice with reduced HGF-Met signaling have altered profiles of interneurons in the cortex, striatum, and hippocampus. Alterations in neuronal development, particularly in the cerebral cortex, may contribute to the pathology of developmental disorders, including autism. Other studies have shown changes in excitatory signaling in the Met-deficient cortex. Interestingly, mice with deficient Met signaling also show behavioral alterations characteristic of autism. Here we review anatomical and behavioral findings in mice with altered HGF - Met signaling.


Radical decarboxylation and quinone addition reaction allowed us to obtain a library of squamocin quinonic analogues. We evaluated both pro-apoptotic potential and mitochondrial complex I inihibition, supposed to be responsible for acetogenins activity. No clear link between the enzyme inhibition and apoptosis induction appeared, suggesting the possible existence of other biological targets. Squamoquinone, ten times more potent than squamocin as an apoptotic inducer, emerged as a promising compound, as it induces apoptosis through a mitochondrial caspase-dependent pathway. Huisgen type 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition, catalysed by copper (I) led to the first fluorescent acetogenins. Mitochondria were identified as their major targets by confocal microscopy. We also studied the kinetics of cell penetration. The association of this "click chemistry" reaction both with the activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) concept and classical proteomic methods, allowed us to poiny out five proteins as targets of our fluorescent probes. Those proteins are currently under identification by mass spectrometry. This observation confirmed the hypothesis of a more comlex mechanism of action for acetogenins than the one initially describes. Aiming at understanding the particular supramolecular behaviour of acetogenins of Annonaceae, squamocin was branched onto p-tert-butylcalixarene and phloroglucinol scaffolds, using the same "click chemistry" reaction. We also obtained two diastereoismers of chamuvarinin from squamocin, using biomimetic synthesis. The comparison of their spectral data with natural chamuvarinin led to rule out a biosynthetic link between both acetogenins.


Next week, planetary scientists building instruments for a 2016 Mars mission called Trace Gas Orbiter will update a committee advising NASA on its Mars exploration program. But they9ll also be grilling NASA officials attending the meeting on the Obama Administration9s decision last week to kill the mission, one of two joint efforts with the European Space Agency dubbed ExoMars. The president9s 2013 budget request eliminates funding for the 2016 mission, which received $27 million this year, as part of a 20% cut to NASA9s planetary science division.


Succession in education is one of the factors in the society's development. The article in hand examines how the Imperial Dorpat University (early XIX century) trained professors for Russian Universities so that they could be competitive on the European level. Particular attention is paid to the succession of the professional style of the tutors to their students' experience, and to approved mechanisms of this process.


— What happens when your research changes you? In the Fall of 2011, we came together to analyze eight transcripts from interviews with Changemakers, prominent change agents who have exemplar records in enabling socially beneficial change in STEM education. Through this collaborative sensemaking research experience, we ourselves have changed. We have changed the way we think about change. In this paper we share the rarely told stories about how research can assist researchers in thinking through who we are and what we care about. Specifically, research assists in encouraging the development of collaborative learning processes which includes being able to deal with emerging themes from research data in an attempt at sensemaking.


In 1961, the work of Meselson and Weigle and of Kellenberger, Zichichi, and Weigle demonstrated that a genetically recombinant chromosome in phage λ can be composed in large part of atoms derived directly from at least one of the chromosomes which interacted to form it. Thus, "copying choice" was ruled out as the sole mechanism of recombinant formation. As pointed out by Meselson (1964), the technique employed by Meselson and Weigle could in principle distinguish between two models involving breakage of parental chromosomes—a "break-reunion" model, and a "break-copy" model in which one end of the recombinant chromosome is composed of DNA from one parent and the other end is composed of new material bearing information from the other parent. However, in order to distinguish between the two models, it was essential to modify the Meselson-Weigle experiment. First, it was essential that both parents be density labeled, otherwise the origin of any light atoms in a recombinant molecule would be ambiguous. Second, the markers employed should be centrally located on the chromosome so that at least one parent could be expected to make a sizable material contribution to a recombinant. In his 1964 paper, Meselson demonstrated that recombination between genes J and c I (see Fig. 1) produced some recombinant particles containing chromosomes composed exclusively of atoms present in the infecting phage particles. These results were interpreted as demonstrating that some recombinants, at least, arise by "break-reunion" as opposed to "break-copy." The force of that conclusion was weakened by two considerations.


High-g accelerometers are needed in certain applications, such as in the study and analysis of high-g impact landings and projectiles. Also, these accelerometers must survive the high electromagnetic fields associated with the all-electric vehicle technology needed for aerospace applications. The choice of SiC is largely due to its excellent thermomechanical properties over conventional silicon-based accelerometers, whose material properties inhibit applicability in high electromagnetic radiation and high temperatures (>150 C) unless more complex and sometimes costly packaging schemes are adopted. This work was the outcome of a NASA Glenn Research Center summer internship program, in collaboration with Cornell University and the Munitions Directorate of the U.S. Air Force in Eglin, Florida. It aimed to provide the enabling technology infrastructure (modeling, fabrication, and validation) for the implementation of SiC accelerometers designed specifically for harsh environments.


Measurements of peak ground velocity v and acceleration a for earthquakes and mine tremors, with local magnitudes ranging from −0.8 to 6.4, have been analyzed in terms of a model of inhomogeneous faulting. The fault model involves the failure of a circular 'asperity' of radius ri surrounded by a previously faulted annular region of outer radius r0. The failure of the asperity results in seismic radiation with a characteristic frequency proportional to 1/ri followed by lower-frequency radiation, proportional to 1/r0, as static equilibrium is regained over the larger region. For r0/ri ≫ 1 both v and a are associated primarily with the failure of the asperity but also depend on the large-scale source parameters. Specifically, v = (βΔτr0/μR) (0.10 r0/ri+ 0.15), and a = (Δτ/ρR) [0.30(r0/ri)2 + 0.45], where β is the shear wave velocity, Δτ is the overall stress drop, μ is the modulus of rigidity, and ρ is density. The terms involving r0/ri, correspond to the high-frequency radiation associated with the failure of the asperity, and the other terms indicate the peak parameters due to the broad-scale readjustment. Observations of peak ground motion for events with seismic moments ranging from 5 × 1016 to 1026 dyn cm indicate that r0/ri is normally in the range of 1–10 and appears to be independent of earthquake size. The inhomogeneous fault model also yields convenient expressions for the small-scale displacement and stress drop of the asperity failure as well as for the level of regional stress available to cause slip.


In this article the contributors show the value of application of kinetic methods for the estimation of biocide activity. Authors have developed methods of quantitative estimation of biocide efficiency independent of their solubility in water. It is found that inhibited kinetics of microscopic fungal growth on nutriments with biocides is described by a logistic equation. They suggest parameters for the characterization of biocide efficiency.


Summary Data from Ionograms are discussed in relation to the description of night-time storms at Christchurch. A consideration of seasonal variation shows that in winter, storms have features not noticeable at other seasons. Electron distributions are calculated for the early hours of both severe and moderate storms; all show an initial increase in the number of electrons up to maximum density level prior to the storm decrease normal for this latitude.


Abstract
 In the first part of this study, a flood wave transformation analysis for the largest historical floods in the Danube River reach Kienstock–Bratislava was carried out. For the simulation of the historical (1899 and 1954) flood propagation, the nonlinear river model NLN-Danube (calibrated on the recent river reach conditions) was used. It was shown that the simulated peak discharges were not changed significantly when compared to their historical counterparts. However, the simulated hydrographs exhibit a significant acceleration of the flood wave movement at discharges of between 5000 and 9000 m3 s-1. In the second part, the travel time-water level relationships between Kienstock and Bratislava were analysed on a dataset of the flood peak water levels for the period 1991–2002. An empirical regression routing scheme for the Danube short-term water level forecast at Bratislava station was derived. This is based on the measured water level at Kienstock gauging station.


Hospital infections or healthcare-associated infections (HAI) occurs in patients under medical or surgical care. They are among the major complication of modern medical therapy due to the advanced age of patients, increased number of people with altered immune system, increased utilization of invasive devices such as catheters and ventilators, and often inappropriate use of antimicrobial therapy. Multidisciplinary infection control committee and infection control team are apparently common in European hospitals as well as in our country. Infection control nurse has an important role in the prevention and control of HAI.


Objective
To explore the application effect of tarso-conjunctival flap for one-stage repairing eyelid posterior defect after resection of eyelid tumors.

Methods
From June 2014 to December 2016, 33 patients with 33 cases of eyelid posterior tumors were treated, including 21 cases of Pigmented nevus of eyelid, 7 cases of eyelid basal cell carcinoma, 3 cases of eyelid adenocarcinoma and 2 cases of eyelid squamous cell carcinoma. Direct resection was performed for eyelid nevus, Mohs method (intraoperative delivery of frozen sections to control the cut edge) resection was performed for malignant tumors. According to the scope and location of the defect, the tarso-conjunctival flap was used to repair the posterior defect of the eyelid, and the eyelid anterior defect was treated with local flap transfer.

Results
All 33 patients were followed up for 3 to 24 months. In addition to the absence of eyelashes in the defect area, one case had mild blepharoptomy (1 mm) and recovered after self-recovery. The remaining cases had recovered in appearance and function of eyelid with no serious complications.

Conclusions
The flexible application of tarso-conjunctival flap can basically solve the problem of repairing eyelid posterior defect after resection of eyelid tumors. The operation method has clinical practical value.

Key words:
Tarso-conjunctival flap; Posterior eyelid defect; Tumors, eyelid; Surgical flaps


In his article "Authorship, Collaboration, and Art Geography" Martin de la Iglesia explores the connection between geographical spaces and works of art, a connection often made, but hardly theorized, by scholars in the field of art geography. He suggests t object is established by the creator of the object. A feasible method is devised to determine the creator's geographical identity, which in turn determines which space is assigned to the object. Particularly, the implications of multiple authorship for such a methodology are considered. The procedure is exemplified by a geographical analysis of the comic book series Civil War, which was produced by four main creators from the United Kingdom, Canada, and the USA. This spatial analysis results in the conception of the work as a patchwork of geographical influences bestowed by its creators. To successfully interpret the results of such an analysis, it is necessary to view them in the context of the general geographical c > ISSN 1481-4374 <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Purdue University Press , the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monog firstname.lastname@example.com> ssue 3 (September 2010) Article 6 Martin de la Iglesia, " > 12.3 (2010) > hat the link between space and ircumstances of the world of comics. > ©Purdue University


This little book of about 230 pages is noteworthy on two counts. First, it contains an excellent up-to-date summary of recent advances in clinical enzymology; and second, the author succeeds in making the book easy to read, despite the complexity of the subject. To do so is quite an achievement, requiring the unusual talent of making understandable a topic most physicians would find recondite.
 There are eleven chapters each of which deals with a particular application of enzymology, such as cardiac infarction, African heart disease, pregnancy, inherited metabolic abnormalities, and so forth.


There is a need to approach environmental education (EE) topics, such as climate change, with a framework that productively reflects its inherent complexity. This study investigates how computational thinking (CT), specifically systems thinking (ST), may prepare educators to teach climate change. As scientists increasingly rely on computational techniques in their studies of complex EE topics, it is incumbent on science education to provide learners with computational thinking opportunities. We investigated how elementary preservice teachers (PSTs) in a science methods course (N=35) adapted a curricular resource on the climate change topic of sea level rise to integrate the CT practice of ST. Changes in their thinking were analyzed. Findings suggest that PSTs prior to instruction held a limited understanding of climate systems, often conflating weather and climate. Post instruction, their thinking expanded to consider the relationships between carbon dioxide, global warming, ice melt, and sea level rise. Further, many were able to describe these systems in a future EE teaching activity for young learners. A major implication was the need to develop a continuum of CT practices for elementary educators, with an emphasis on ST, for complex environmental education topics, that could frame their pedagogical thinking for climate change education.


Abstract Unsaturated polymers can be converted metathetically to fragments of low molecular weight by adding monoolefins. Since the scission of the polymer backbone always occurs at the double bonds, analysis of the degradation products enables a conclusion about the polymer microstructure. Our earlier works have shown that in case of polybutadienes and styrene-butadiene copolymers, the catalyst system "tungsten hexachloride/tetraalkyltin/diethylether" allows a selective degradation and detailed determination of the microstructure. On the other hand complete degradation of polyisoprenes and sulfur crosslinked rubbers failed using conventional metathesis catalysts. Our latest investigations show that using stable transition metal carbenes as catalysts, degradation of polyisoprenes and sulfur-crosslinked rubbers (including tires) proceeds quantitatively. This opens up a method of microstructure determination of crosslinked rubbers, including tires. Results obtained using well denned transition metal carbene...


FREE BONUS - Download Now! Learn How to Use Microsoft Office Excel Step by Step! #2 of the MASTER EXCEL series. Lesson three and four! This collection has been conceived like a course and every manuscript like a lesson. By the end of this course you will be able to use Excel commanding this program like a real expert! - Sorting and Filtering Data Sorting: Naming cells, Naming rows and columns, Defining names, Creating names with the new name dialogue box, Managing named content, Creating column and row headings, Creating a table, Formatting tables, Creating a dropdown list, Text, Formatting Options, Custom Filtering Data - All about Formulas and Functions To enter functions or formulas, To switch between relative cell references and absolute cell references, To quickly enter common functions, Conditional functions, Function to add and subtract units of time, Function to determine a running balance, Function to determine the average, mean, median and mode, Function to subtract, Function to multiply, Function to divide, Function to raise a number to the power of x, Function to find the biggest or smallest number in the range, The COUNTIF function, Function wont calculate, Formula wont update ENJOY!


Rural Health Analytics system is a system that holds all the detailed information about health statistics of rural area. As there are various health camps arranged by government as well as private hospitals, this system will show campaign wise data as well as analysis of the campaign data. Such analysis on regular basis will help government to find disease prone areas, preventive measures to be taken and if any special awareness camps are required.


An optimal modulation scheme that enables minimum conduction and copper losses is presented for a bidirectional dual active bridge (DAB) dc-dc converter. The considered converter system is employed for an automotive application and comprises of a high voltage (HV) port with port voltage V1, 240V ≤ V1 ≤ 450 V, and a low voltage (LV) port with port voltage V2, 11 V ≤ V2 ≤ 16 V; the rated output power is 2 kW. The closed-form expressions for the optimal control parameters are derived and implementation details are presented in order to facilitate the direct application to a given DAB converter. The paper further details the properties of the presented modulation scheme with respect to switching losses. Experimental results confirm a considerable increase of the converter efficiency achieved with the proposed optimal modulation scheme, compared to the efficiency obtained with conventional phase shift modulation. The efficiency increase is most distinct at V1=450V and V2 = 11V with an increase from 78.6% to 90.6% at 1 kW output power and from 85.9% to 90.7% at rated output power as compared to conventional phase shift modulation.


The goal of this paper is to analyse differences in inferential or evidential uses of the Swedish and English present perfect. When used in non-inferential contexts, both display the present perfect puzzle, i.e. they cannot be combined with certain past adverbials: *He has worked yesterday vs. *Han har jobbat igar. In inferential contexts however, when used to indicate the author's degree of confidence in a present inference about past events, the present perfect puzzle only disappears in Swedish: *He has probably worked yesterday vs. Han har tydligen jobbat igar. I call this the lost present perfect puzzle. I claim that semantic and/or pragmatic analyses of the lost present perfect puzzle are not possible. Instead, I pursue a morphosyntactic based account. I show that the Swedish inferential present perfect originates as a non-finite perfect that does not impose restrictions on adverbial selection in both English and Swedish. I further show that the same analysis is not possible for English.


One of the unique things of the millennial generation, they allocate more income for travel rather than buying houses, branded goods (fashion), gadgets. The size of the income does not put the desire of millennials to travel any less. e-Promotion is promotional activities through the internet or especially social media that will influence the purchase decision of products and services. The cost needed to carry out advertisements and promotions on the internet and social media is very affordable. This effectiveness is certainly influenced by travel agents from small to large scale to do promotions. Instagram is used as a media platform that provides education and information on many things, including traveling. Instagram features visualizations of various tourist destinations. Millennials and Banyuwangi can collaborate to maximize this potential through the #explorebanyuwangi tagline on Instagram. The author then purpose formulation of the problem; (1) How about #explorebanyuwangi content on Instagram? (2) What are the millennial generation's preferences for traveling info on #explorebanyuwangi? There are three data collection methods used by researchers (1) Online Survey, (2) Social media observation, literature review & literature study. The results of the study showed 364 thousand hashtag #explorebanyuwangi in the form of photos and videos. Millennials who see #explorebanyuwangi post-claim want (40.3%) and eager (9.7%) to visit Banyuwangi's natural attractions.


Profiling of secondary metabolite production (both known and unknown metabolites) on standardized culture media has proven to be useful for classification and identification of certain morphologically similar species of Alternaria . In this study, secondary metabolite profiling of 50 fungal isolates belonging to 10 plant pathogenic Alternaria species such as A. solani , A. porri , A. brassicicola , A. brassicae , A. sesame , A. alternata , A. macrospora , A. ricini , A. carthami and A. brunsii isolated from vegetable, oil yielding and seed spice crops were examined. Secondary metabolites were extracted from 14 day old cultures, grown on potato dextrose agar, with ethyl acetate containing formic acid. After extraction, the secondary metabolite profiles of all fungal isolates were analyzed using thin layer chromatography (TLC), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and matrix assisted laser desorption ionization–time of flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry. These analyses indicated characteristic 'species-specific metabolite finger prints'. Thus, chemotaxonomic approach is a simple and rapid technique to determine the chemical diversity of the different Alternaria species and to identify species specific metabolites that could be adopted as chemotaxonomic markers in species identification. This study can be integrated in a polyphasic approach.


Objective
To explore whether apply selective perineal skin preparation or not is feasible for patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) before percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).

Methods
Divided patients with CHD before PCI into the experimental group (801 cases) and the control group(798 cases) according to the hospital number. Selective perineal skin preparation was used in the experimental group, while the right forearm skin preparation was used in all the patients in the control group. The rate of skin preparation and the care hours in the two groups were compared.

Results
The care hours of skin preparation in the experimental group was (5.58±0.30) h, which was significant shorter than that in the control group, (66.50±1.50) h,t=-1127.03,P< 0.05.

Conclusions
Before PCI, for patients with CHD, applying selective perineal skin preparation is feasible. It can not only reduce care labor , decrease nursing costs, but also relieve nurse-patient psychological pressure, cut back patients' expenses; and without percutaneous entrance infection.

Key words:
Percutaneous coronary intervention; Skin preparation


Recent decades have seen an increasing ethnic diversity in Britain due to the natural demographic process, particularly immigration streams from the EU accession countries and commonwealth countries. It leads to a wide public and policy debate on whether Britain is sleepwalking into a segregated society. To understand ethnic segregation of the British society is nontrivial to address issues such as community cohesion and social inclusion. Previous studies on ethnicity and segregation mostly rely on population data from the decennial censuses. However, census data are not that updated for contemporary studies, whose temporal resolution is relatively coarse-grained to capture more details about ethnicity changes during the inter-censual years. In addition, there exists comparability issues within census data. As an increasing share of the Big Data harvested from use of consumer services, consumer data can be one of the promising supplementary data sources for ethnic segregation research. In this study, ethnicity data are derived from consumer data by linking to ethnicity classifications based on forename and surname pairs of the customers. Ethnic segregation is then re-examined with the traditional index of dissimilarity across census Output Areas in Britain. A decrease in the overall residential segregation level in Britain can be identified from dissimilarity indices for most ethnic groups except for a small increase for the White British group. These findings reinforce the existing claims of a more mixing Britain in related studies in the literature with empirical evidence. Ethnic segregation in Britain can be better understood with more details during the inter-censual years from the perspective of consumer data.


The invention relates to liquid milk, in particular to liquid milk which is suitable for pregnant women and added with the mineral composition and a preparation method thereof. The invention belongs to the dairy food technical field. The liquid milk, which is provided by the invention and is suitable for pregnant women, contains the components as follows: 950-1300kg of milk (or the reconstituted milk), 100-340kg of composite minerals and 1.2-5.5kg of emulsification-stabilizing agent. The nutrient contents of the liquid milk are more reasonable, can meet the requirements of special physiological period of the pregnant women. Compared with the fresh milk and the ordinary powdered milk, the liquid milk has the advantages of scientific nutrition ratio, fragrant favor and edible convenience.


This article uses findings from an evaluative review of the implementation of the Crime Reduction Programme (CRP) to highlight the key challenges faced when seeking to deliver evidence-based policy programmes. It considers ways of facilitating the translation of research into practical programmes and projects, and the difficulty of designing effective processes for evaluation, learning and change. The overall lesson is the importance of an approach to programme design and implementation that balances the many tensions inherent in evidence-based programmes, including fidelity to the evidence base versus innovation, short-term wins versus long-term learning, and evaluator distance and independence versus a more 'hands-on' and active evaluator role.


Correct placement of the femoral and tibial tunnels is the key to rapidly restoring motion and maintaining stability after reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). Incorrect tunnel placement causes graft failure, which can lead to recurrent instability, stiffness, and prolonged recovery that cannot be prevented by adjusting other variables such as the graft material and size, rehabilitation program, timing of return to sport, and bracing. Unfortunately, there is currently no universally agreed on definition for proper tunnel placement.

The most important finding from the Level-I study by Meuffels et al. is that two surgeons, both highly experienced in ACL surgery, had "considerable and unexpected lack of precision in tibial and femoral tunnel placement," with 40% of tibial tunnel and 60% of femoral tunnel positions being outliers when they randomized the use of conventional and computer-assisted surgical instrumentation for placing the tunnels. It is both enlightening and disconcerting that highly experienced surgeons have poor precision in drilling the tunnels in the intended target. Even with use of "more sophisticated" computer-assisted technology, imprecision and outliers …


A methodology to incorporate the MOSFET gate dielectric breakdown (BD) failure mechanism in the design of complex systems is presented. The model accounts for the statistical nature of the BD phenomenon, is easily extensible to different device geometries and operation conditions (following the established scaling rules for the mechanism), considers the stress history, and can be easily implemented in circuit simulation tools. Device level characterization of the BD mechanism is presented, which is the base for model parameter extraction. The model has been introduced in a circuit simulator to show its suitability for evaluation of the BD effect in circuits and their reliability, taking ring oscillators as example.


DURING THE LAST DECADE OR SO of the 20th century the historiography of Russia underwent, somewhat belatedly, the 'linguistic turn' that had previously been negotiated by the historiography of Western Europe, the Americas and Asia.2 Both social and literary historians expanded their understanding of acceptability in source materials almost infinitely, to include texts that one or other, or both, types of investigator would have treated with suspicion, or simply ignored, in earlier decades. Such material included letters, diaries and memoirs; products of commercial culture, for example popular songs, advertisement texts, mass-market books and printed ephemera; journalism and broadside polemic.3 The employment of sources of this kind was not entirely novel in the context of Russian culture (both the Russian Formalists of the early Soviet era, notably Viktor Shklovsky and, later, Lidiya Ginzburg, and their successors, the Tartu semioticians of the 1960s and 1970s, had also produced work drawing on some of these areas).4 However, boundaries were now drawn more broadly, to include, for instance, popular culture rather than folklore as traditionally denominated, and memoirs and letters by ordinary people as well as by the major figures who had previously attracted individual study.5 At the same time, better established types of source material (e.g. legislative acts or political speeches) began to be regarded not as a transparent reflection of social change, or even merely an expression of ideology, but as a set of rhetorical structures reproducing wide-ranging cultural patterns, many beyond the control of the individual or individuals who shaped them.6 A 'post-modern' conviction that there is no reality beyond language


Via introducing cholesteric liquid crystal into voids of colloidal crystal, a novel tunable photonic colloidal crystal based on coupling of cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) and colloidal crystal (CC) was prepared. Cholesteric liquid crystal used in this paper was prepared by combining nematic liquid crystal 5CB and the chiral dopant COC (cholesteryl oleyl carbonate), its selective reflection wavelength can be controlled by changing proportion of the mixture, and with temperature rising, blue shift of the selective reflection peak occurred. Firstly, SiO 2 colloidal crystal was obtained by deposition method, then cholesteric liquid crystals was filled in voids of colloidal crystal by capillary force with temperature above the clearing point. Under polarized light microscope, the cholesteric liquid crystals in voids of colloidal crystal exhibited typical texture of chiral smec-tic phase in certain temperature region. Since cholesteric liquid crystal has particular selective reflection, if band gap of colloidal crystal locates in the reflection wavelength region of cholesteric liquid crystal, homodromous shift of band gap of cholesteric liquid crystal and colloidal crystal originating from changing of refraction index of cholesteric liquid crystal in voids occurred at the same time with temperature changed. But shift rate of band gap of cholesteric liquid crystal was faster than that of colloid crystal. So when temperature was carefully raised from lower limit of working range of cholesteric liquid crystal, band gap of CLC would gradually approach reflection peak of colloid crystal. Under a certain temperature, band gap of colloidal crystal would couple with selective reflection of CLC and form a single peak, reflection intensity increased from an average of 50% to 74%. With the further increase of temperature, peak of selective reflection of CLC exceeded stop-band of colloid crystal, the single reflection peak re-splitted into double band. Then reversible transition between single and double stop-band of photonic crystal device was realized.


In order to discuss the systematic statuses of Hapalogenys, the full-lengths of cytochrome b gene were cloned from Hapalogenys nitens and Hapalogenys mucronatus. Phylogenetic relationship among 29 species of Percoidea, representing six families, was analyzed based on mitochondrial cytochrome b gene sequences with neighbor-joining methods. Genetic divergence between Hapalogenys and other five genera of family Pomadasyidae were exceeded than genetic diversity level between families in Percoidea. NJ tree revealed that 29 species were divided into two clades with clade-1 composed of Parapristipoma, Haemulon, Diagramma, Anisotremus and Pomadasys of family Pomadasyidae and Sparidae, Caesionidae and Lutjanidae; clade-2 composed of Hapalogenys, Oplegnathidae and Pomacentridae. There are obvious genetic divergence which existed between Hapalogenys species and other Pomadasyidae species, herein, our results supported that Hapalogenys might be upgraded to the family Haplogeniidae which belong to Percoidea.


The article provides theoretical researches and methodic recommendations as for creation a managerial costs system. The essence, contents and particularities of process of cost management is revealed. It is connected with stages of enterprise strategy development. Purposes, objects, subjects, methods, instruments, and functions of cost managerial system are determined. The system of costs and results activity monitoring is presented. The especially establishment of accounting and analytical support for cost management are justified.


The knowledge of the roll angle of a projectile is decisive to apply guidance and control law. For example, the goal of ISL's project GSP (Guided Supersonic Projectile) is to change the flight path of an air-defence projectile in order to correct the aim error due to the target manoeuvres. The originality of the concept is based on pyrotechnical actuators and onboard sensors which control the angular motion of the projectile. First of all, the control of the actuators requires the precise control of the roll angle of the projectile. To estimate the roll angle of the projectile, two magnetometers are embedded in the projectile to measure the projection of the earth magnetic field along radials axes of the projectiles. Then, an extended Kalman filter is used to compute the roll angle estimation. As the rolling frequency of the GSP is about 22 Hz, it is easy to test the navigation algorithm in laboratory. So in previous papers ([1],[5]) the in-lab demonstration of this concept shows that the roll angle estimation was possible with an accuracy of about 1° at 22 Hz. In this paper, the demonstration is extended to in-flight test, with a roll rate about 35 Hz. Thus, two magnetometers, a DSP and a LED (to simulate a thruster) are embedded inside the projectile; the DSP runs an extended Kalman filter and a guidance algorithm to compute the trigger times of the LED. By using a high speed camera (a trajectory tracker), we can observe that the LED is switch on at the target angle.


To facilitate the task of meaning discrimination on the part of the users, addressing strategies are assigned to translation equivalents in dictionaries. The rate of addressing strategies assigned to different words in a dictionary should not be either at random or in a consistent way. In this study it is believed that the addressing rate (AR) should be affected by such variables as equivalent relation (ER) and part of speech. This article statistically examines the practice of Hezaareh English-Persian dictionary in assigning addressing strategies to different items. The results indicate that there is no systematic relationship between AR and ERs. It is also revealed that items belonging to different parts of speech are not adequately addressed, either. The article proposes that to be communicatively successful the dictionary compilers of Hezaareh should allocate more AR to the items in which the ERs of semantic or poly divergence prevail. Besides, the role verbs play in comprehension related purposes and their polysemous nature make them good candidates for receiving higher ARs.


The establishment and maintenance of a small olive baboon colony for behavioral research is described. Proper design resulted in efficient and inexpensive simian husbandry and experimentation.


Contemporary authors on African urbanism regularly repeat reports by early European travellers of large Tswana settlements with populations of approximately 20,000, apparently the same size as Cape Town at that time. These settlements, called agro-towns, unlike Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe, are mostly described in academic publications, while very few architects know what they really looked like. This article applies quantitative analysis to the plans of the ruins of certain distinctive Tswana stone-walled homesteads and villages by exploring the physical attributes such as size, shape, geometries, spatial patterns and land-use intensities. Sizes are subsequently compared with those of pertinent frontier towns of that period, as well as those of Great Zimbabwe, which are widely recognised and undisputed as urban entities. The purpose of the investigation is simply to enhance the understanding and appreciation of Tswana settlements, vis-a-vis contemporaneous European towns and those of the Shona some time earlier.


: OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence and antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of Methicillin-Resistant S. Aureus (MRSA) strains isolated from different clinical specimens referred for routine culture and sensitivity testing. METHODOLOGY: A cross sectional study was conducted in which 642 consecutive clinical isolates of staphylococcus aureus were collected from various clinical specimens at Khyber Teaching Hospital Peshawar from January 2017 to September 2017. All the isolates were identified as per Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) guideline. S.aureus isolates then were screened for MRSA by using Cefoxitin (30ug) disc. The antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of MRSA to ten commonly used antibiotics were determined by Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion method. Data were coded, entered and analyzed using SPSS version 22 and MS. Excel. RESULTS : A total of 642 clinical of Staphylococcus aureus were studied, out of which 148 (23.05%) were found positive for MRSA, among which the highest number was recovered from wound pus specimens 93 (62.4%) and least number was collected from blood 1 (0.7%). The frequency of MRSA was more in female 82 (55.4%) than in male 66 (44.59%). Out of these total MRSA, the greatest percentage were recovered from the patient of OPD 39.6%, and least percentage of MRSA isolates were recovered from ENT Ward and Burn Unit (0.7%). These MRSA strains also showed various degrees of resistance to Ciprofloxacin (84.45%), Trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (77.02%), Erythromycin (69.59%), Gentamicin (64.86%), Amikacin (58.10%), Clindamycin (34.45%), Doxycycline (31.75%), Linezolid (10.13%) and minimum resistant were found against Vancomycin (5.4%). CONCLUSION: In the present study, the prevalence of MRSA infection in KTH, Peshawar was 23.05%. Pus/abscess is the main source of MRSA than other samples in hospital settings. Vancomycin, Linezolid and Doxycycline showed best chemotherapeutic activity against MRSA infections.


The purpose of this research is to study the dynamics of import flows in Russia in 2013-2015, using the tools of regression models. The timeframe from 2013 to 2015 includes events destabilizing the dynamics of imports, in particular: the political crisis in Ukraine, trade sanctions introduced in 2014, the economic recession of the Russian economy. The authors evaluate the impact of these events and measures on the commodity, country and geographical structure of the import flows to the Russian Federation. The authors use data on imports of certain goods to the regions of Russia through border points for the period from 2013 to 2015 in order to evaluate a number of econometric models linking the intensity of the commodity flow from the counterparty country to the Russian region with the characteristics of the country, region, product. We also assess the model for the disaggregated flows of imported goods from foreign countries to the regions of the Russian Federation through border checkpoints in order to assess the impact of foreign trade shocks on the routing of cargo transportation.


The mutualistic interactions between the oleaginous yeast Lipomyces starkeyi and the green microalga Chloroidium saccharophilum in mixed cultures were investigated to exploit possible synergistic effects. In fact, microalga could act as an oxygen generator for the yeast, while the yeast could provide carbon dioxide to microalga. The behavior of the two microorganisms alone and in mixed culture was studied in two synthetic media (YEG and BBM + G) before moving on to a real model represented by the hydrolysate of Arundo donax, used as low-cost feedstock, and previously subjected to steam explosion and enzymatic hydrolysis. The overall lipid content and lipid productivity obtained in the mixed culture of YEG, BBM + G and for the hydrolysate of Arundo donax were equal to 0.064, 0.064 and 0.081 glipid·gbiomass−1 and 30.14, 35.56 and 37.22 mglipid·L−1·day−1, respectively. The mixed cultures, in all cases, proved to be the most performing compared to the individual ones. In addition, this study provided new input for the integration of Single Cell Oil (SCO) production with agro-industrial feedstock, and the fatty acid distribution mainly consisting of stearic (C18:0) and oleic acid (C18:1) allows promising applications in biofuels, cosmetics, food additives and other products of industrial interest.


Curriculum is unique to each educational institution. It reflects both the institutional mission and graduates abilities. In order to win the competition, curriculum should be designed to meet the industrial demand and reviewed periodically. The revised curriculum is used to gain the incremental quality improvement. The model suggested that further improvement is achieved by combining it with continuous improvement in learning activities. Industrial Engineering curriculum is used as a case to describe the applicable methodologies and approaches to solve the problems stated in this paper.