Many short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) show prompt tails lasting up to hundreds of seconds that can be energetically dominant over the initial sub-second spike. In this paper we develop an electromagnetic model of short GRBs that explains the two stages of the energy release, the prompt spike and the prompt tail. The key ingredient of the model is the recent discovery that an isolated black hole can keep its open magnetic flux for times much longer than the collapse time and thus can spin down electromagnetically, driving the relativistic wind. First, the merger is preceded by an electromagnetic precursor wind with total power , reaching 3 × 1044 erg s−1 for typical neutron star masses of 1.4 M☉ and magnetic fields B ∼ 1012 G. If a fraction of this power is converted into pulsar-like coherent radio emission, this may produce an observable radio burst of a few milliseconds (like the Lorimer burst). At the active stage of the merger, two neutron stars produce a black hole surrounded by an accretion torus in which the magnetic field is amplified to ∼1015 G. This magnetic field extracts the rotational energy of the black hole and drives an axially collimated electromagnetic wind that may carry of the order of 1050 erg, limited by the accretion time of the torus, a few hundred milliseconds. For observers nearly aligned with the orbital normal this is seen as a classical short GRB. After the accretion of the torus, the isolated black hole keeps the open magnetic flux and drives the equatorially (not axially) collimated outflow, which is seen by an observer at intermediate polar angles as a prompt tail. The tail carries more energy than the prompt spike, but its emission is de-boosted for observers along the orbital normal. Observers in the equatorial plane miss the prompt spike and interpret the prompt tail as an energetic long GRB (the supernova-less long burst GRB060505 and GRB060614 may belong to this category). We also demonstrate that episodic accretion onto the black hole of magnetized clouds that carry non-zero magnetic flux can be highly efficient in extracting the spin energy of the black hole, producing the electromagnetic outflows with power exceeding the average accretion power and total energy exceeding the rest mass energy of the accreted mass. We identify the late time flares with such accretion events.


ABSTRACT Using oral history interviews and questionnaires gathered as part of the 'Cultural Memory and British Cinema-going of the 1960s' project, this article recovers and analyses the reminiscences of people who were interested or involved in the British counterculture. By drawing on a broader range of experiences than typically represented in canonical accounts of the counterculture and those that have informed prior historical scholarship, it adds a wider range of experiences, understandings and behaviours when considering how people remember their discovery of the counterculture and its bearing on their social lives, understanding of film, popular culture, politics and society. The article demonstrates how film and, more generally, popular culture held significance in presenting ideas about counterculture as well as how cinemas and film clubs provided spaces for people to socialise and develop subcultural networks. It also suggests how significant class, locality, educational experiences and gender were in shaping how people did or did not enter countercultural scenes, how they understood themselves, their cinema-going experiences and the films that they watched.


In order to solve the interference in a direct conversion receiver in transceiver AM interference sources and non-linearity problems related error estimator is utilized to reduce an error in a received base band signal introduced. The transmitter within the transceiver on the error estimator can be used to subtract the interference caused by the transmitter from the knowledge of the received signal of the strongest source of interference received by the transceiver signal. In addition, even for a receiver I and Q channel interference that can be achieved are not equal.


We present a general approximation technique for a large class of graph problems. Our technique mostly applies to problems of covering, at minimum cost, the vertices of a graph with trees, cycles or paths satisfying certain requirements. In particular, many basic combinatorial optimization problems fit in this framework, including the shortest path, minimum spanning tree, minimum-weight perfect matching, traveling salesman and Steiner tree problems.
Our technique produces approximation algorithms that run in <italic>O</italic>(<italic>n</italic><supscrpt>2</supscrpt> log <italic>n</italic>) time and come within a factor of 2 of optimal for most of these problems. For instance, we obtain a 2-approximation algorithm for the minimum-weight perfect matching problem under the triangle inequality. Our running time of <italic>O</italic>(<italic>n</italic><supscrpt>2</supscrpt> log <italic>n</italic>) time compares favorably with the best strongly polynomial exact algorithms running in <italic>O</italic>(<italic>n</italic><supscrpt>3</supscrpt>) time for dense graphs. A similar result is obtained for the 2-matching problem and its variants.We also derive the first approximation algorithms for many NP-complete problems, including the non-fixed point-to-point connection problem, the exact path partitioning problem and complex location-design problems. Moreover, for the prize-collecting traveling salesman or Steiner tree problems, we obtain 2-approximation algorithms, therefore improving the previously best-known performance guarantees of 2.5 and 3, respectively [4].


Purpose: This present study reports a case of a child with Takayasu arteritis, with onset of stroke as the primary symptom. This case illustrates that Takayasu arteritis is dangerous in children patients and is related to acute recurrence that can cause catastrophic complications within six months. Methods: A diagnosis of multiple Takayasu arteritis, with a primary manifestation of cerebral stroke, was established for a 12-year-old male patient, through reviewing patient disease history, clinical manifestations, physical examination results, laboratory examination, limbs vascular ultrasound, head magnetic resonance imaging, and cranial magnetic resonance angiography imaging. Results: The patient developed Takayasu arteritis that initiated upon onset of cerebral infarction, in contrast with the common process of Takayasu arteritis. Conclusion: This case illustrates that multiple Takayasu arteritis is dangerous in children patients, may cause cerebral infarction in early stages, and may present repeated acute recurrence, causing catastrophic complications within six months.


This paper solved the portfolio selection problem whose security returns with uncertainty.Utilizing a new perspective,this paper gave a new definition of risk for uncertain portfolio selection.A new optimal portfolio selection model was proposed based on this new definition of risk.A new hybrid intelligent algorithm was designed for solving the new optimization problem.In the proposed new algorithm,99 method was employed to calculate the expected value and the chance value.It greatly reduces the computational work and speeds up the process of solution compared with hybrid simulation used in our previous algorithm.A numerical example was also presented to illustrate feasibility and validity of the new modeling idea and the proposed new algorithm.


In this article, the Elzaki decomposition method is used to evaluate the solution of fractional-order telegraph equations. The approximate analytical solution is obtained within the Caputo derivative operator. The examples are provided as a solution to illustrate the feasibility of the proposed methodology. The result of the proposed method and the exact solution is shown and analyzed with figures help. The analytical strategy generates the series form solution, with less computational work and a fast convergence rate to the exact solutions. The obtained results have shown a useful and straightforward procedure to analyze the problems in related areas of science and technology.


As microprocessor designs integrate more cores, scalability of cache coherence protocols becomes a challenging problem. Most directory-based protocols avoid races by using blocking tag directories that can impact the performance of parallel applications. In this article, we first quantitatively demonstrate that state-of-the-art blocking protocols significantly constrain throughput at large core counts for several parallel applications. Nonblocking protocols address this throughput concern at the expense of scalability in the interconnection network or in the required resource overheads. To address this concern, we enhance nonblocking directory protocols by migrating the point of service of responses. Our approach uses in-flight chains of cores making parallel memory requests to incorporate scalability while maintaining high-throughput. The proposed cache coherence protocol called chained cache coherence, can outperform blocking protocols by up to 20% on scientific and 12% on commercial applications. It also has low resource overheads and simple address ordering requirements making it both a high-performance and scalable protocol. Furthermore, in-flight chains provide a scalable solution to building hierarchical and nonblocking tag directories as well as optimize communication latencies.


Robust adaptive observers for uncertain systems corrupted by bounded disturbances have to overcome two main problems. They have to guarantee a bounded parameter estimation, because it is well known that an arbitrarily small disturbance might drift to infinity the parameter estimation error even if the state estimate error remains bounded, and they have to ensure a robust state and parameter estimation independently of the uncertainty of the system. The contribution of this paper is a solution of both issues. We present a robust adaptive observer based on a normalized dead zone which guarantees a bounded estimate dealing with noise corrupted systems and on an adaptive gain which increases the robustness against uncertain systems. Tuning parameters are computed minimizing the effect of disturbances on the estimation error. The performance and the stability of the proposed adaptive observer is analyzed and demonstrated through simulation examples.


The competence of teachers in carrying out their duties as educators really needs to be considered. This is inseparable from the principal's leadership, because good leaders will always foster and develop the competence of their teachers through various activities. This study aims: 1). to determine the relationship between principal leadership and teacher professional competence in elementary schools; 2). to determine the relationship between teacher attitudes towards work, and 3). to determine the relationship between principal leadership and teacher attitudes towards work with the professional competence of teachers in elementary schools. The results of this study indicate that: 1) there is a significant relationship between principal leadership and the professional competence of elementary school teachers. This shows that the higher the leadership level of the principal, the higher the teacher's professional competence will be. Conversely, the lower the principal leadership, the lower the professional competence of teachers; 2) there is a significant relationship between teacher attitudes towards the professional competence of elementary school teachers. This means that the higher the teacher's positive attitude towards their work, the higher the teacher's professional competence will be, and vice versa; 3) there is a significant relationship between principal leadership and teacher attitudes towards the professional competence of elementary school teachers. Based on this research, it is suggested that teacher performance needs to be improved and teachers must realize that rights and obligations must be balanced. Good professionalism is maintained and improved again considering that there is a significant relationship to teacher performance


Scientific Agendas and Permanent Work Tables: two emerging concepts that summarise a position of science constructed over three decades of Participatory-Action-Research from CONICET and UNLP of Argentina. It is a science that, surpassing positions of status quo and allocating time for criticism, seeks to produce Theories of Transformation referring to possible territories. Two cases in progress, in an informal urbanisation and in an industrial and residential flood zone in La Plata, Ensenada and Berisso, Buenos Aires, Argentina, give meaning to two Agendas with their respective Tables: "Puente de Fierro Possible Territory" and "Territory, Industry and Environment". The objective is to execute a science that brings closer the wishes of people with public policies in cases of high exemplary and replicability. The work is organised in three parts: what science, what agendas, what praxis, and a conclusion.


OBJECTIVE To establish the analytical method for the fingerprint of Scrophulariae Radix by HPCE and estimate the quality of Scrophulariae Radix.METHODS Scrophulariae Radix was analyzed and the chromatographic fingerprint was determined by HPCE.The data were analysed by Fuzzy Cluster and Fingerprint Similarity Evaluation Software to compare the similarity of samples.RESULTS HPCE fingerprint of 9 main peaks was established preliminarily.It was discovered that certain differences exist among a small number of samples.CONCLUSION The method is reliable,accurate and can be used for the quality control of Scrophulariae Radix.


In this work some methods of visualization of the volumetric images with application of reflecting surfaces of the special kind are stated. The methods can be used for development of three-dimensional displays.


In view of the recent regulatory changes and volatile market conditions, the insurance and finance industry started focusing more on developing strategies to find new customer segments. Acquiring new customers is difficult especially in a fiercely competitive industry like insurance. Also, the dynamic nature of pricing for insurance products makes it even more challenging. In this context, it is essential for an insurer to have knowledge about customers, plan customer-centric offerings, attract more profitable customers and increase the bottom line. In the changing market and economic conditions, the insurance industry has started considering customer-centric rather than a product-centric view to well serve the customers. Information Technology (IT)-driven data analytics now has the capability to discover knowledge hidden inside very large amount of data to help in making business decisions which are customized to customer needs. This paper is an attempt to create business rules from customer lead data which will help in identifying customer segments for better marketing campaign and to acquire new customers, and also to explore answers for specific business problems like low lead conversion ratio, important attributes influencing lead conversion and right customer profile to optimize lead conversion.


Epo pheasant benzyl terminated poly (arylene ether) has the structure of formula: R-W-R Wherein, W is a divalent poly (arylene ether) residues of the phenolic oxygen atom terminus, R is an epoxy benzyl group, or different from each other were respectively the same. The epoxy benzyl terminated poly (arylene ether) is formed by a peroxide-containing reagent is reacted with a vinyl benzyl terminated poly (arylene ether). Further, with the epoxy-benzyl terminated poly (arylene ether), a curing accelerator, an auxiliary epoxy resin, also a curable composition comprising a disclosed as an optional ingredient. Curable compositions are useful in the preparation of the composite, the composite is particularly used in the production of printed circuit boards. .FIELD 1


information from the huge time series is a challenging task. Databases are prepared by keeping in mind the type of information required. Indexing a time series is a difficult task, where shape may not be exact. Finding the minima and maxima of the time series is another difficult job dependent on the expert's subjectivity. In this information age algorithmic trading is the buzz word. For the identification of various patterns, a machine can be made intelligent by embedding some good algorithm in the trading module to identify the various patterns. In this paper an attempt has been made to identify the extremes, where profit probability is maximized.


Obesity is a chronic, relapsing and progressive disease that reduces quality and life expectancy. The purpose of this survey is to investigate the interest of the diabetologists in the management of the patient with obesity in order to raise awareness of the clinical and management issues related to this pathology. The results of the survey show a strong interest of the diabetologists in taking care of the patient with obesity, however they highlight the lack of highly specialized centers in the management of this disease among the interviewees. The diabetologists involved indicate the lifestyle modification approach as the most suitable therapy for obesity, however awareness of the drug and surgical therapy of obesity also emerges in part. These data allow us to draw a picture of the state of the art on the knowledge of obesity by diabetologists and provide a starting point for the creation of training courses on this pathology which affects about 40% of patients with type 2 diabetes. KEY WORDS obesity; survey; care of patient; drugs; bariatric surgery.


The aim of this study is to analyse the level and explanatory factors of the technical efficiency of independent oil palm producers in the Sanaga-Maritime. To achieve this objective, we used the stochastic production frontier with embedded inefficiency effects, which we applied to primary data from a survey that covered the period from June 2018 to July 2019. The results lead to the conclusion that 81.6% of the production inefficiency is explained by the producers themselves and only 18.4% of this inefficiency is related to random factors. This inefficiency of independent producers is mainly related to off-farm income and their level of education. Therefore, in order to ensure a better supervision of producers and to ensure an improvement of their production efficiency, the study proposes that emphasis be put on training and monitoring of producers, as well as on measures to improve the conditions of access to land. This paper contributes to the understanding of the factors that explain the technical efficiency of independent oil palm producers.


Discussing on the strategies and the countermeasures of forest right reform ,the experience and achievement in Cuiluan forestry bureau.Analysising the three types of contract management and forest protection,the programme of forest management and the serve system for forest right reform.In all directions talked about the problems must be dealed with in forest right reform in Cuiluan forestry bureau.


In this paper, we consider the nonlinear stability for the shear flows of the Boussinesq system in a domain [Formula: see text]. We prove the nonlinear stability of the shear flow [Formula: see text] with U( y) close to y and α ≥ 0 in Sobolev spaces for the following two cases: (i) α ≥ 0 is small scaling with the viscosity coefficients and initial perturbation ≲min{ ν, μ}1/2 and (ii) α > 0 is not small, the heat diffusion coefficient μ is fixed, and initial perturbation ≲ ν1/2.


The older plant protection generation had been a vast amount research work about Chinese cotton plant-bug's life cycle.It provided scientific basis for controlling cotton plant-bug.The author summarized research progress of cotton plant-bug's life cycle.


Autophagy is an ancient cell survival pathway that allows cells to recoup ATP and essential building blocks for biosynthesis when they are starved of nutrients or when they are exposed to hypoxia, which are hallmarks of the tumor microenvironment. This pathway involves the formation of double-membraned vesicles, coined autophagosomes, which envelop bulk cellular material and/or organelles and that subsequently fuse with lysosomes that degrade their cargo. Autophagy has been suggested to play important roles in chemoresistance of cancer to some therapeutic agents, which typically induce an apoptotic response. For example, the histone deacetylase inhibitor SAHA induces both apoptosis and autophagy, suggesting that agents that disrupt the autophagy pathway might augment its efficacy as a therapeutic agent. We tested this notion in a model of Imatinib-refractory chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) and in imatinib-resistant primary CML cells from patients bearing mutations in Bcr-Abl, including the T315I mutation that causes resistance to currently utilized tyrosine kinase inhibitors and translates into a very poor clinical prognosis. Agents that disrupt autophagy were shown to synergize with SAHA in provoking apoptotic death of these refractory tumors. These findings support the use of agents that disrupt the autophagy pathway in settings of chemorefractory malignancies. Addendum to: Targeting Autophagy Augments the Anticancer Activity of the Histone Deacetylase Inhibitor SAHA to Overcome Bcr-Abl-Mediated Drug Resistance J.S. Carew, S.T. Nawrocki, C.N. Kahue, H. Zhang, C. Yang, L. Chung, J.A. Houghton, P. Huang, F.J. Giles and J.L. Cleveland Blood 2007; In press


With the emerging trend of restructuring in the electric power industry, many transmission lines have been forced to operate at almost their full capacities worldwide. Due to this, more incidents of voltage instability and collapse are being observed throughout the world leading to major system breakdowns. To avoid these undesirable incidents, a fast and accurate estimation of voltage stability margin is required. In this paper, genetic algorithm based back propagation neural network (GABPNN) has been proposed for voltage stability margin estimation which is an indication of the power system's proximity to voltage collapse. The proposed approach utilizes a hybrid algorithm that integrates genetic algorithm and the back propagation neural network. The proposed algorithm aims to combine the capacity of GAs in avoiding local minima and at the same time fast execution of the BP algorithm. Input features for GABPNN are selected on the basis of angular distance-based clustering technique. The performance of the proposed GABPNN approach has been compared with the most commonly used gradient based BP neural network by estimating the voltage stability margin at different loading conditions in 6-bus and IEEE 30-bus system. GA based neural network learns faster, at the same time it provides more accurate voltage stability margin estimation as compared to that based on BP algorithm. It is found to be suitable for online applications in energy management systems.


An analysis of national survey data collected by the National Institute of Dental Research (NIDR) concludes that children who live in areas of the U.S. where the water supplies are fluoridated have tooth decay rates nearly identical with those who live in nonfluoridated areas. The analysis was done by John A. Yiamouyiannis, a biochemist and expert on the biological effects of fluoride, who has been an ardent opponent of fluoridation for 20 years. His results are not widely different from those recently found—but as yet unpublished—by NIDR in analyzing the same data. In the 1986-87 school year, NIDR examiners looked for dental caries in 39,207 schoolchildren aged five to 17 from 84 different geographical areas. Yiamouyiannis obtained the survey data from NIDR under the Freedom of Information Act. Yiamouyiannis compared decay rates in terms of decayed, missing, and filled permanent teeth. The average decay rates for all the children aged five to 17 were 2.0 ...


A scaling analysis is presented for the evaluation of the time dependence of the lateral chain motion in monodisperse polymer melts. This analysis accounts for the correlations between the motions of neighboring chains, as well as for the correlations between the motions of beands in the same chain. These correlations result in a slowing of the Brownian chain dynamics. This analysis predicts that the bead mean squared displacement depends on time as g ∼ t 2/7 for times less than the terminal time. The terminal time is found to scale as N 3.5 . The center-of-mass diffusion constant has a component, which arises from the relative motions of neighboring chains, that scales as N -2.5


IT was Sophie Spitz (1948) who pointed out that most of the melanotic tumours of childhood are quite benign. Nevertheless, melanoblastomatous tumours which metastasize are occasionally found in children. It is the purpose of this paper to survey the incidence of melanoblastoma as seen at Eoyal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney and to record three examples of malignant moles in prepuberal children. The information upon which this survey is based was obtained from the records of the Department of Histopathology of the Fairfax Institute, Eoyal Prince Alfred Hospital. From the beginning of July, 1950, to the end of December, 1961, tissue specimens were examined from 478 patients, comprising 189 males and 289 females. Some of the specimens were of metastatic deposits removed from patients who had been diagnosed earlier in this and in other institutions. It must be understood, therefore, that the figm-es in this paper neither represent the incidence of melanoblastoma in the population at large nor do they indicate the number of new cases seen at Eoyal Prince Alfred Hospital.


The effect of the atmospheric oxidant, peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) on photosynthetic phosphorylation, NADP plus reduction, and CO/sub 2/ fixation by chloroplasts prepared from spinach and bean plants has been studied. When this gaseous oxidant was passed through reaction mixtures in the light, inhibition of the photosynthetic reactions occurred. Inhibition in ATP and NADPH formation and the fixation of C-1402 was prevented by the addition of ascorbate to the reaction mixture. Also NADP plus reduction was maintained by adding either excess photosynthetic pyridine nucleotide reductase (PPNR) or heat inactivated PPNR preparations. Gassing the individual components, chloroplasts or PPNR in the light or dark prior to their use in a complete reaction, did not cause inhibition. 14 references, 1 figures, 8 tables.


Ionic liquids (ILs) are a rapidly expanding family of condensed-phase media with important applications in energy production, nuclear fuel and waste processing, improving the efficiency and safety of industrial chemical processes, and pollution prevention. ILs are generally nonvolatile, noncombustible, highly conductive, recyclable and capable of dissolving a wide variety of materials. They are finding new uses in chemical synthesis, catalysis, separations chemistry, electrochemistry and other areas. Ionic liquids have dramatically different properties compared to conventional molecular solvents, and they provide a new and unusual environment to test our theoretical understanding of charge transfer and other reactions. We are interested in how IL properties influence physical and dynamical processes that determine the stability and lifetimes of reactive intermediates and thereby affect the courses of chemical reactions and product distributions. Successful use of ionic liquids in radiation-filled environments, where their safety advantages could be significant, requires an understanding of ionic liquid radiation chemistry. For example, characterizing the primary steps of IL radiolysis will reveal radiolytic degradation pathways and suggest ways to prevent them or mitigate their effects on the properties of the material. An understanding of ionic liquid radiation chemistry will also facilitate pulse radiolysis studies of general chemical reactivity in ILs,more » which will aid in the development of applications listed above. Very early in our radiolysis studies it became evident that slow solvation dynamics of the excess electron in ILs (which vary over a wide viscosity range) increases the importance of pre-solvated electron reactivity and consequently alters product distributions. Parallel studies of IL solvation phenomena using coumarin-153 dynamic Stokes shifts and polarization anisotropy decay rates are done to compare with electron solvation studies and to evaluate the influence of ILs on charge transport processes. Picosecond pulse radiolysis studies at BNL's Laser-Electron Accelerator Facility (LEAF) are used to identify reactive species in ionic liquids and measure their solvation and reaction rates. We and our collaborators (R. Engel (Queens College, CUNY) and S. Lall-Ramnarine, (Queensborough CC, CUNY)) develop and characterize new ionic liquids specifically designed for our radiolysis and solvation dynamics studies. IL solvation and rotational dynamics are measured by TCSPC and fluorescence upconversion measurements in the laboratory of E. W. Castner at Rutgers Univ. Investigations of radical species in irradiated ILs are carried out at ANL by I. Shkrob and S. Chemerisov using EPR spectroscopy. Diffusion rates are obtained by PGSE NMR in S. Greenbaum's lab at Hunter College, CUNY and S. Chung's lab at William Patterson U. Professor Mark Kobrak of CUNY Brooklyn College performs molecular dynamics simulations of solvation processes. A collaboration with M. Dietz at U. Wisc. Milwaukee is centered around the properties and radiolytic behavior of ionic liquids for nuclear separations. Collaborations with C. Reed (UC Riverside), D. Gabel (U. Bremen) and J. Davis (U. South Alabama) are aimed at characterizing the radiolytic and other properties of borated ionic liquids, which could be used to make fissile material separations processes inherently safe from criticality accidents.« less


The emergence of a large number of Taoist nuns is a kind of particular social phenomenon in Tang Dynasty. Taoist nuns in Tang Dynasty is not only numerous but also active to take part in the social life of the time, especially to keep the closely contacts with the group of scholar. The phenomenon reflected the open ethos and the improvement of female's social position of the day. The emergence of them not only enriched the Tang's social scenes but also provided many treasurable materials for scholars' composition, which is the important compulsion to the Tang poetry development


Parametric vibration is one of the main reasons for the failures of radial gates. This paper presents three calculation models of the parametric vibration of radial gates which reflect the mechanical properties and geometric features of the gates. Two most commonly used analysis methods, i.e., Bolotin's method and the finite element method, were described to determine the boundaries of regions of the dynamic instability of radial gates. A numerical example concerning finite element method was also demonstrated.


We review the holographic duals of gauge theories with eight supercharges obtained by adding very few flavors to pure supersymmetric Yang–Mills with 16 supercharges. Assuming a brane-probe limit, the gravity duals are engineered in terms of probe branes (the so-called flavor brane) in the background of the color branes. Both types of branes intersect on a given subspace in which the matter is confined. The gauge theory dual is thus the corresponding flavoring of the gauge theory with 16 supercharges. Those theories have in general a nontrivial phase structure; which is also captured in a beautiful way by the gravity dual. Along the lines of the gauge/gravity duality, we review also some of the results on the meson spectrum in the different phases of the theories.


Electrically active induced energy levels in semiconductor devices could be beneficial to the discovery of an enhanced p or n-type semiconductor. Nitrogen (N) implanted into 4H–SiC is a high energy process that produced high defect concentrations which could be removed during dopant activation annealing. On the other hand, boron (B) substituted for silicon in SiC causes a reduction in the number of defects. This scenario leads to a decrease in the dielectric properties and induced deep donor and shallow acceptor levels. Complexes formed by the N, such as the nitrogen-vacancy centre, have been reported to play a significant role in the application of quantum bits. In this paper, results of charge states thermodynamic transition level of the N and B vacancy-complexes in 4H–SiC are presented. We explore complexes where substitutional N/N or B/B sits near a Si (V) or C (V) vacancy to form vacancy-complexes (NV, NV, NV, NV, BV, BV, BV and BV). The energies of formation of the N related vacancy-complexes showed the NV to be energetically stable close to the valence band maximum in its double positive charge state. The NV is more energetically stable in the double negative charge state close to the conduction band minimum. The NV on the other hand, induced double donor level and the NV induced a double acceptor level. For B related complexes, the BV and BV were energetically stable in their single positive charge state close to the valence band maximum. As the Fermi energy is varied across the band gap, the neutral and single negative charge states of the BV become more stable at different energy levels. B and N related complexes exhibited charge state controlled metastability behaviour.


We explain simple laboratory experiments for making quantitative measurements of the Doppler effect from sources with acceleration. We analyze the spectra and clarify the conditions for the Doppler effect to be experimentally measurable, which turn out to be non-trivial when acceleration is involved. The experiments use sources with gravitational acceleration, in free fall and in motion as a pendulum, so that the results can be checked against fundamental physics principles. The experiments can be easily set up from ``off the shelf'' components only. The experiments are suitable for a wide range of students, including undergraduates not majoring in science or engineering.


Symptomatic dermographism is a common urticarial condition, which requires determination of provocation thresholds to confirm diagnosis and allow physicians to individualize management and therapy for optimal control of symptoms. To determine provocation thresholds, we have developed a provocation test device, the FricTest® 4.0. This simple and inexpensive device, which is stroked across the skin to produce a response, consists of a flat plastic comb with four round‐ended plastic pins, 3 mm in diameter, and of differing lengths.


This paper reports the identification and quantification of 15EPA-PAHs in the sediments samples collected in Ngoua River, Douala, Cameroon. PAH and n-alkanes were separated by using a chromatographic column, identified and quantified by using Gas Chromatography (GC/FID). The total concentration ranged from 140.42 µg/g to 229.47 µg/g dry matters during the rainy season and from 48.89 µg/g to 333.49 µg/g dry matters during the dry season. All samples showed the predominance of high Molecular Weight (HMW) PAHs due to industrial activities. At the upstream, the concentrations of PAHs were systematically lower than those found downstream indicating an influence of Nettoycam Company in the local pollution by PAHs. Principal component analysis (PCA) also showed remarkable differences of characteristics of samples collected upstream and downstream of Nettoycam Company, samples location and also of samples from rainy and dry seasons.


Adaptation for social companions is a crucial requirement for future applications. Personalized interaction seems to be an important factor for long-term commitment to interact with a social robot. We present a study evaluating the feasibility of a dueling bandit learning approach for preference learning (PL) in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Furthermore, we explore whether the embodiment of the PL agent has an influence on the user's evaluation of the learner. We conducted a study (n=53) comparing a graphical user interface (GUI), a virtual robot and a real robot. We found no difference regarding the preference for the virtual or real robot. We used the obtained study data to compare the PL approach against a strategy that randomly selects preference rankings. The results show that that the dueling bandit PL approach can be used to learn a user's preference in HRI.


An experimental investigation was carried out to study the influence of pulsation and special surface geometry on the convective heat transfer in laminar flow. The experiments were performed using a glycerol-water mixture of 23 wt% glycerol. Ethanol was used as a coolant. The amplitude of pulsation was between 0.37 and 0.91 mm and the frequency range was 26.7 to 42.7 Hz. The mean flow Reynolds number range was between 50 and 1143. All the geometrical parameters of the channel such as the relative fin spacing and relative fin thickness were constant. The enhancement factor E, i.e. the ratio of heat transfer coefficient due to pulsation compared to steady flow diminishes at low Pe. A maximum E was observed in medium ranges of Pe and small Pe. The amount of heat transferred from the working fluid also depends on κ value. So far, a maximum heat transfer enhancement of E = 2.5 at κ = 3 and Pe = 2750 was obtained. The enhancement factor also increases with increasing pulsation amplitude.Copyright © 2006 by ASME


Shrilal Shukla's Raag Darbari is currently in its fiftieth year.1 A widely read fiction in Hindi literature, Raag Darbari, is also considered one of the finest satirical texts on the political ethnography of rural India. Set in the backdrop of an imaginary village, Shivpalganj in Uttar Pradesh, in the late 1960s, the novel was perhaps the first critique on the developmental state, its bureaucracy and the democratic institutions of the country, served with black humour and irony. The Department of Political Science, University of Delhi organised a unique 2-day international conference entitled Polity as Fiction, Fiction as Reality: 50 years of Raag Darbari on 29 and 30 January 2018. This conference provided a unique interdisciplinary platform for an amalgamation of ideas, critical engagement and a review of multiple issues by academicians and scholars across social sciences and humanities (including economics, political science, social policy, geography, sociology, tribal studies, media studies and literature), experienced bureaucrats and civil society representatives who also attended the conference.


In the Philippines sterilization programs and other family planning efforts are meeting with success in spite of strong religious and cultural constraints. The population is predominantly Catholic male prestige is linked to the number of children a man can support and children are viewed as a form of social security for elderly parents. Yet during the period 1970-1973 2950 women had tubal ligations 1166 had fimbriectomies and 993 men had vasectomies and during a ten month period in 1974-1975 over 4000 men and 13000 women were voluntarily sterilized. In addition the pill IUD and other methods are being used by 1000s of women. Significant birth control efforts did not begin until 1965 when a group of doctors and other interested persons organized the Family Planning Association of the Philippines. This group later merged with the Planned Parenthood Movement in the Philippines to form the Family Planning Organization of the Philippines (FPOP). FPOP receives assistance from International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and their efforts have received strong backing from the national government. In 1969 the government created a study commission to develop basic policies for the Philippine Population Program. The commission called for an integrated approach using existing structures and encouraging multiagency participation. In addition it was decided that individuals were to be given complete freedom in choosing a contraceptive method. This freedom was enhanced in 1972 when sterilization was legalized. At first only a few clinics offered this service but by the end of 1975 165 sterilization centers were in operation. A group of family planning doctors later formed the Philippine Association for the Study of Sterilization and the objectives of this group are to facilitate cooperation between agencies to undertake sterilization research to disseminate information to other professionals as well as to the public and to raise money to support research and sterilization programs. The group is now a member of the World Federation of Associations for Voluntary Sterilization.


The relationship between the topographical and electrical properties of the polycrystalline HfO2 layer has been investigated using conductive atomic force microscopy under ultrahigh vacuum conditions. Its high lateral resolution identified the grain boundaries (GBs) as a primarily conduction path through the dielectric. Electrical stress-induced breakdown sites were also found to be located at the GBs, suggesting that the polycrystalline phase of the gate dielectric may impair reliability.


There is a tragic characteristic in the role design of Liu Chao's Monster-writing sto- ry. The tragedy involves roles have no choice but to retreat from society, fall apart between husband and wife, go to die leisurely. The role design, which caused by the realistic role act of excessive disaster during Liu Chao,the lasting tragic culture atmosphere and literati's tragic tasting mentality, gave us extraordinary personality charm and life consciousness through the whole tragic truss.


A collimator is an electromagnetic device that focuses or aligns the direction of wave propagation to achieve a narrow, intense beam. In this study, we propose a two-dimensional dielectric collimator for microwave beam focusing. This is something that is difficult to achieve using theoretical- or intuition-based approaches. We therefore used a systematic design process, which is referred to as the phase field design method, to obtain an optimal topological configuration for the collimator. The phase field parameter determines the optimal configuration of the dielectric material and, as a consequence, it determines the relative permittivity of the component. To verify the design results, we fabricated a prototype via three-dimensional printing and performed an experimental verification using an electric field scanner to measure the near field distributions of the designed collimator positioned parallel to an incident wave. We also performed angle dependent experiments for which the collimator position was ...


A computer code has been developed to solve the linear Boltzmann transport equation on an unstructured mesh of triangles, from a Pro/E model. An arbitriwy arrangement of distinct material regions is allowed. Energy dependence is handled by solving over an arbitrary number of discrete energy groups. Angular de- pendence is treated by Legendre-polynomial expansion of the particle cross sections and a discrete ordinates treatment of the particle fluence. The resulting linear system is solved in parallel with a preconditioned conjugate-gradients method. The solution method is unique, in that the space-angle dependence is solved si- multaneously, eliminating the need for the usual inner iterations. Electron cross sections are obtained from a Goudsrnit-Saunderson modifed version of the CEPXS code. A one-dimensional version of the code has also been develop@ for testing and development purposes.


A windcatcher is a natural ventilation device fitted on the roof of a building and divided internally into two halves to deliver fresh outside air into the building's interior, and induce the stale air to the outside, working by pressure difference between outside and inside of the building. In this work, air flow through a two-dimensional but real-sized room fitted with a windcatcher is investigated numerically, using a commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software package. The standard K-e turbulence model is used. Flow pattern and flow velocity are considered in terms of the windcatcher's location, inlet velocity, the shape of the windcatcher's bottom and the length of the windcatcher's bottom. It is found that when inlet velocity is not too low, the windcatcher's shape at its bottom strongly affects flow pattern and flow velocity in the room. This leads to a way of improving the windcatcher's effectiveness in ventilating the living area (lower part) of a room.Copyright © 2011 by ASME


Phase-sensitive tensammetry is shown to be a convenient and useful way to analyse polyacrylamides and associated derivatives (pams) in dilute aqueous solutions. Standard curves were obtained with ranges varying from 9 to 25 ppm and limits of detection varying from 0.7 to 2 ppm. Ways to change the range and sensitivity are discussed and demonstrated. Typical interferences and their effects are tabulated, and the analysis of pams in coal washings is discussed. The analysis of certain mixtures of polyacrylamides is shown to be possible.


Liberalism, like democracy, is a hurrah-word. People as widely apart as Roy Jenkins and Lord Harris, and Nobel Prize winners Milton Friedmann and J.K. Galbraith, all claim to be liberals. But who are really the succesors to that great liberal triumvirate: Locke, Bentham and Mill? In this polemical book, Lord Russell has set for himself the task of defining the true touchstone of that great British institution, liberal philosophy. Lucidly analyzing how it worked in the past, he makes a passionate plea for its continued importance in the modern world. Liberalism couldn't be further removed from colourless pluralism or watered-down socialism. Its belief in individual autonomy is a vital political philosophy that we can only ignore at our peril.


The present issue of Palliative & Supportive Care deals, once again, with assessment and outcome measures for the clinical practice in palliative care. This is indeed a "hot topic" in palliative care literature and has been for quite some time. A quick search in PubMed reveals more than 1,400 articles on these subjects in the past 5 years alone, with increasing tendency. One of the reasons for this apparent inflation in outcome and assessment measures may be inherent to the very definition of palliative care by the World Health Organization: "an approach to improve quality of life of patients and their families" (Sepulveda et al., 2002). Thus, the whole discipline depends essentially on a single, highly subjective and rather ill-defined psychological construct. This has historically posed a serious problem for the field. Looking at quality of life alone, assessment measures can be found by the dozens (a review in 2010 found 29 different measures specific for palliative care) (Albers et al., 2010). In a previous editorial (Borasio & Bernard, 2016), we discussed the basic difference between nomothetic (investigator-defined) and idiographic (respondent-defined) questionnaires, with the latter clearly being more attuned to the individualized approach that is typical of palliative care. Here, we point out the increasing tendency to dissect the ultimate outcome of palliative care (quality of life) into smaller and smaller portions, each contributing its own bit to the overarching quality of life construct. This reductionist approach is understandable, given the urge to define, assess, document, compare, and evaluate that pervades our medical systems nowadays. But maybe we are beginning to overdo it? The structure of the reductionist approach flows nicely from the World Health Organization definition itself, when it speaks of "physical, psychosocial, and spiritual" problems. This leads to a search for (hopefully) clinically meaningful and quantitatively evaluable parameters in each of these domains. We have plenty of instruments at hand to evaluate pain and any other conceivable physical symptom. In the psychological domain, more and more constructs (positive and negative) are being explored for their relevance to palliative care: hope and hopelessness, dignity and its loss, personal values, meaning in life, gratitude. . .and so on. This has led to highly interesting scientific insights, but also to some degree of fragmentation and redundancy: a review published in 2012 on outcome and assessment measures for meaning in life reported no less than 59 different instruments (Brandstätter et al., 2012). The same holds true for the social domain, in which more and more attention is now turned to the evaluation of the relatives and the family system, and the spiritual domain, with spiritual well-being being increasingly recognized as one of the foremost components of quality of life at the end of life (Bernard et al., 2017). Although many of these instruments are valid, statistically robust, and clinically helpful, there is a real danger that we might be losing sight of the overall picture here. After all, one of the main components of palliative care practice is the skill of active listening. When we listen to patients' stories without trying to squeeze them into a predetermined frame of mind, we often find explications for their behavior that would escape even the most sophisticated of questionnaires. For instance, we vividly remember one of our inpatients who showed a multitude of therapy-refractory symptoms going from pain to nausea to anxiety and more. No matter how hard we tried, she would not admit to any improvement of her well-being, and her morning tirades over her misery were quite impressive, indeed almost theatrical in nature. When this remark was made in the team meeting, the chaplain revealed to us that this lady had been a famous opera singer in younger years—and all of a sudden her behavior made sense. Her life had been a great theater piece, and she was not going to leave quietly. With Palliative and Supportive Care (2018), 16, 1–2. # Cambridge University Press, 2018 1478-9515/18 doi:10.1017/S1478951518000019


Excerpt In 1819 Brentonneau carefully described diphtheria and concluded that the disease was communicable. In 1884 Loffler confirmed that a bacillus was the long-sought etiologic agent of the dise...


Y our kidneys are 2 bean-shaped organs about the size of a fist, located near the middle of the back, below the rib cage. Kidneys filter blood by keeping compounds that are useful and removing waste and excess fluid, and they help regulate blood pressure and the number of red blood cells. Every 30 minutes, your kidneys filter all the blood in your body. The July 14, 2010, issue of JAMA includes an article about regional variations in treatment practices for older adults with end-stage kidney disease. This Patient Page is based on one published in the February 11, 2009, issue of JAMA.


For the purpose of raising the automatization level,as well as the reliability of power plants,the on-site bus concept has to be applied to sensors and transducers,wherewith their network management can be realized.Application of protocol HART is one way of achieving it.Based on an analysis of principal design problems of protocol HART intelligent sensors,of existing difficulties and technical key considerations,and in connection with application requirements of the steam turbine's supervisory instruments,protocol HART eddy current displacement sensors have been designed.


One faces innumerable difficulties in linking something as macro and complex as societies with individual behavior or values. In reviewing studies of social structure and personality, House (1981) summarized ther major criticisms of early national character studies: "it was assumed, but not empirically demonstrated, that shared behavior patterns were produced by shared personality patterns, which, in turn, were the outcome of shared child-rearing experiences" (1981:534) and the literature shared a tendency to use "cultural differences" to explain everything. Some studies have departed from this emphasis on cultural explanations and have focused rather on certain social structural elements that induce standard


BSA loaded hydroxyl terminated-PLGA and acid-terminated-PLGA microspheres have been prepared by a conventional water-in-oil-in-water (w/o/w) and a modified water-in-oil-in-oil-in-water (w/o/o/w) emulsion solvent evaporation method. In modified w/o/o/w emulsion technique, 100 µl of BSA solution (30 mg/ml) in 1% aqueous PVA (w/v) was emulsified with 50 mg of carboxyl terminated-PLGA in ethyl acetate (EA). This water/oil emulsion was then emulsified with 50 mg of hydroxyl terminated-PLGA in dichloromethane (DCM). The obtained w/o/o emulsion was further emulsified with 10 ml of 1% PVA. The resulting w/o/o/w emulsion was transferred into 50 ml of 0.5% PVA (w/v) aqueous solution and stirred for three hours to evaporate EA/DCM solvent mixture by vacuum evaporation at room temperature. After that the microspheres were separated by centrifugation and washed 3 times with 60 ml distilled water and freeze dried overnight. In conventional w/o/w method, BSA loaded hydroxyl terminated-PLGA and acid terminated-PLGA microspheres have been prepared separately as well. The particle size distribution was expressed as the volume median diameter (D 50%). BSA encapsulation efficiency and in vitro release were determined by a micro BCA method.
Microspheres prepared with w/o/w and w/o/o/w emulsion technique exhibited high encapsulation efficiency except formulation F3. High initial burst release of BSA was observed in all formulations prepared by w/o/w emulsion technique. A significant reduction of initial burst release of BSA (Table 2) was observed when microspheres were prepared by modified w/o/o/w emulsion method. The optimized formulation (F4) of BSA loaded microspheres was nonporous, smooth-surfaced, and spherical shape (Fig. 2) under field-emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) with a mean particle size of 3.95 µm and encapsulation efficiency of 98.46%. In contrast, microspheres prepared with w/o/w double emulsion technique were porous (Fig. 1) which might be a reason of high initial burst release of BSA. It can be concluded that microspheres prepared with hydroxyl terminated-PLGA and carboxyl terminated-PLGA by modified w/o/o/w method can be proposed as a potential delivery system of therapeutic proteins.


Web applications have come a long way both in terms of adoption to provide information and services and in terms of the technologies to develop them. With the emergence of richer and more advanced technologies such as Ajax, web applications have become more interactive, responsive and user friendly. These applications, often called Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) changed the traditional web applications in two primary ways: Dynamic manipulation of client side state and Asynchronous communication with the server. At the same time, such techniques also introduce new challenges. Among these challenges, an important one is the difficulty of automatically crawling these new applications. Crawling is not only important for indexing the contents but also critical to web application assessment such as testing for security vulnerabilities or accessibility. Traditional crawlers are no longer sufficient for these newer technologies and crawling in RIAs is either inexistent or far from perfect. There is a need for an efficient crawler for web applications developed using these new technologies. Further, as more and more enterprises use these new technologies to provide their services, the requirement for a better crawler becomes inevitable. This thesis studies the problems associated with crawling RIAs. Crawling RIAs is fundamentally more difficult than crawling traditional multi-page web applications. The thesis also presents an efficient RIA crawling strategy and compares it with existing methods. iii Acknowledgement First and foremost, I am indebted to my supervisors, Dr. Bochmann for their constant support, encouragement and guidance. They have always been very amiable and approachable advisors. Their brilliance, perseverance, and pursuit of excellence will continue to inspire me for years. This thesis would not be possible without their knowledge, encouragement, and guidance. I would also like to thank my colleague Emre Dinçtürk and the members of the Software Security Research Group at University of Ottawa, including Dr. Vio Onut (IBM) for all the insightful discussions and suggestions. I would also like to thank Seyed M. Mirtaheri for helping me with all the test applications for experimental studies. I would like to convey my regards to Bo Wan for all the help and advice. of Canada for all their help and support. I am also grateful to the AppScan® team at IBM.


In this paper we present are latest work on the development of a solid state pump-probe laser. Our initial aim was to develop a system for use in electro-optic sampling but it is clear that there are many sampling techniques that require a pump-probe source. Basic results on the principle of operation will be given as well as a description of the prototype system which has been developed.


We report results from Monte Carlo simulations of a thin-film superconductor in a spherical geometry within the lowest-Landau-level approximation. We observe the absence of a phase transition to a low-temperature vortex solid phase with these boundary conditions; the system remains in the vortex liquid phase for all accessible temperatures. The correlation lengths are measured for phase coherence and density modulation. Both lengths display identical temperature dependences, with an asymptotic scaling form consistent with a continuous zero-temperature transition. This contrasts with the first-order freezing transition which is seen in the alternative quasiperiodic boundary conditions. The high-temperature perturbation theory and the ground states of the spherical system suggest that the thermodynamic limit of the spherical geometry is the same as that on the flat plane. We discuss the advantages and drawbacks of simulations with different geometries, and compare with current experimental conclusions. The effect of having a large-scale inhomogeneity in the applied field is also considered.


Land use change significantly affects habitat quality, and the long time series exploration of dynamic variations in wetland habitat quality is of great significance to wetland conservation and management practices. Jingxin Wetland is located in the lower reaches of the Tumen River Basin, an important ecological function area in China. In recent years, under the influence of human activities and climate change, Jingxin Wetland has faced the threat of degradation and reclamation. This study investigated the dynamic evolution of habitat quality in Jingxin Wetland based on the CA-Markov model and the InVEST model at a long time scale and analyzed the drivers of habitat quality changes. Furthermore, habitat statuses under different policy orientations were explored using a multi-scenario development model. The results show that the total area of Jingxin Wetland exhibited a shrinking trend from 1964 to 2019, the wetland landscape was more fragmented, and the loss of natural wetland (marsh wetland) was serious. Consequently, wetland habitat quality has declined. According to scenario analysis, the study area should firmly follow the ecological conservation route in the future, through which the encroachment of human activities on wetlands can be effectively reduced and habitat conditions can be effectively improved. Both natural and economic development scenarios would result in the shrinkage of wetlands, which will extend the trend of declining habitat quality. It is noteworthy that the loss of wetland can be effectively reduced by implementing ecological conservation policies, which would reduce the degradation of wetland habitat quality. The results of this study can provide valuable references for wetland ecological conservation and ecological management practices.


Vasodilatory compounds in the weak acidic fraction of a benzene extract of diesel exhaust particles (DEP) were fractionated by column chromatography through silica gel, and the chemical structures of these compounds were analyzed using GC-MS and 1H-NMR. The compounds in DEP that cause vasodilation — 3- and 4-nitrophenol, 2-methyl-4-nitrophenol, 3-methy-4-nitrophenol, and 4-nitro-3-phenylphenol — were isolated and identified. All five of these nitrophenols had vasodilatory activities (10-4 to 10-6 M) in rat thoracic artery assays, and 4-nitro-3-phenylphenol was the most potent vasodilator among these compounds. In addition, nine other alkylnitrophenols were isolated from the benzene extract of DEP and characterized.


Malaysia is one of the top eight countries that has a drawback of mismanaged plastic waste. This study intended to investigate polymer degradation using the biological technique with the help of microalgae to minimise the time required for biodegradation. This research article aims to identify the collected sample with the most suitable microalgae for the biodegradation of microplastic and to analyse the biodegradation of the polymer by microalgae. The results revealed that the consortium of Chlorella sp. and Cyanobacteria sp. were able to deteriorate low-density polyethene (LDPE sample) through several stages, and this was confirmed by UV-Spec, FESEM, EDX, CHNO, FTIR and DSC analysis. The results obtained revealed that microalgae producing exopolysaccharides (EPS) decreased the carbon and oxygen ratio. According to SEM micrographs, microalga may colonise, agglomerate, and adhere microplastics to its surface, regardless of its fractional size. The EDX analysis showed that the initial composition of carbon was 92.30 ± 1.23 %, while after the incubation, the carbon composition started decreasing from 53.18 % to 39.12 ± 1.08 %. Finally, there was a 37.91 % decrease in carbon weight from elemental analysise


Bacteria isolated from soil were tested for antagonistic activity against Sclerotium rolfsii. All isolates showed antagonistic activity against the pathogen.


phisms, the degree of inflammatory response, and outcome from severe sepsis. These workers hypothesized that 1641 A/G and 1654 C/T promoter polymorphisms of the protein C gene are associated with altered outcome in white patients with severe sepsis. They found that patients with the A allele at protein C 1641 had lower survival, more organ dysfunction, and more clinical evidence of systemic inflammation than patients who did not have this 1641 A allele. Furthermore, this genotype displayed a greater proinflammatory interleukin-6 response after cardiopulmonary bypass surgery. In contrast, protein C 1654 was not associated with measurable biological effect. This simple yet elegant description of a new genotypic marker of sepsis was made more relevant by the proven biological efficacy of exogenously delivered activated protein C in severe sepsis (9). Although the authors clearly show a linkage of genotype and phenotype including mortality, organ injury, and inflammation, the linkage between these findings and the therapeutic use of activated protein C is not clear. Thus, this implication of their findings to activated protein C therapy in severe sepsis remains to be elucidated. As stated by Pinsky (12), "the realization that genetically-determined propensities in responsiveness to immune challenge may be a primary determinant of survival from acute illness blurs our definition of genetic diseases." We are rapidly expanding our knowledge of the determinants of the host response to disease and therapy. As we increase our understanding of these important interactions, we also need to find ways of screening patients before they develop critical illness so that their care can be individualized. Traditionally, disease is defined as an abnormal condition, not an abnormal response to a common occurrence. If subjects are prone to die of otherwise nonlethal insults or will survive more often when others succumb, then our concepts of disease, disease risk, and predicting mortality must change. However, ethical issues will also arise from this knowledge if it is used to limit care or change the cost of healthcare premiums to these same individuals. Clearly, such individualized genetic information is needed and greatly appreciated. Because no one at the present time can change their genetics, knowledge of our genetic propensities will need to be placed in the proper context and this information given to patients with the same sensitivity used now when performing genetic counseling for genetic diseases. Perhaps some day we will all have our genotype measured the way we now have our blood type and blood pressure measured. This information will then be available to the healthcare delivery system so that we may finally manage patients as the individuals they are. Michael R. Pinsky, MD Department of Critical Care Medicine University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA


ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to better understand the relationship between parents' experience of caregiving and expressed emotion during the early stage of their child's eating disorder. Fifty mothers and 38 fathers of adolescents suffering from anorexia nervosa and hospitalized for the first time participated in this study. They completed the Experience of Caregiving Inventory, a measure of the negative and positive aspects of the caregiving experience, and the Family Questionnaire, which measured the different dimensions of expressed emotion, namely emotional over-involvement and critical comments. Results showed that caregiving experience is significantly and positively correlated to expressed emotion. Among the negative aspects of caregiving, sense of loss contributed most to emotional over-involvement, while difficult behaviours contributed most to critical comments. The results suggest that parents' perceptions of their child and child's future are strongly related to their tendency to be over-involved. The perception of disruptive behaviours in their child could be one of the principal triggers or exacerbating factors of parents' critical attitudes.


Sericulture is an agro-based, labour intensive, foreign exchange earning commercial activity. It has been considered as an excellent medium for generating employment for women and for poverty alleviation. Sericulture not only empowers the women but also provides excellent self-employment opportunities to the educated youth including women from the rural community. In recent past sericulture scientists developed improved tropical sericulture technologies and designed improved reeling devices to accomplish good quality of silk and high productivity. Central Silk Board (CSB), Bangalore under the Ministry of Textiles, Govt of India is taking continuous efforts in Research and Development and Technology Transfer in different sectors of sericulture viz., mulberry cultivation, production and distribution of healthy silkworm seed, production of quality cocoons and raw silk and promotion of silk marketing. Adoption of new technology in sericulture is must because, it can make the enterprise more remunerative, though the production has gone up faster over the last several years as a result of improved management triggered by the release of high yielding varieties both at mulberry and sericulture sector, there is wide gap in the potentiality of increase in yield at the research station and the actual yield achieved by the farmers. In case of women, who constitute a major portion of silk industry, access to latest innovations has become beyond their reach. Hence this study is an attempt to understand the hindrances that are preventing women from access to science and technology, its consequences and remedies.


Mounting device for clamp fastening of sealing or Abdeckprofilstreifen (1) on mounting flanges (2) for bending together of the first spread side walls (1.2, 1.3) of a channel-like fastening part (1.1) of the sealing profile strip (1) at least one pair of approximately parallel, in opposite direction of rotation driven axles and spaced apart by approximately the width of the profile strip pinch rollers (3.1, 3.2), characterized in that in the working direction of the mounting device immediately before the clamping rollers (3.1, 3.2), at least one rotatable support roller (3.3) is arranged such that it sealing and / or cover parts (1.6) of the sealing profile strip (1) which extend along the side walls (1.2, 1.3) of the attachment portion (1.1), in a their damage during the deformation of the side walls (1.2, 1.3) be avoided and the clamping deformation of the side walls not hindering suppressed pre bene desired position and / or in the desired Location holds.


Correlation between coronary anatomy and the presence or absence of chest pain was studied during bicycle exercise testing in 101 patients. All of them had significant ST segment depression during the stress test. ECG changes were accompanied by chest pain in 66 patients (group A). 35 patients were free of symptoms (group B). Coronary arteriography showed significant stenosis of one or more coronary artery branch in 50 patients of group A, and in 24 patients of group B, the difference was not significant statistically. The presence or absence of chest pain weren't valuable markers in the differential diagnosis of true and false positive ST segment depression. Frequency of three-vessel disease was significantly higher in group A (14 cases), than in the other group (1 case). In conclusion, if a significant ST segment depression occurs during exercise stress either with or without anginal pain coronary arteriography is recommended to perform.


The paper focuses on the investigation of durability and performance of a low temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) stack as a function of Pt loading in automotive test conditions. Major motivations are problems related to the need to reduce the amount of Pt in membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) in order to make PEMFC more competitive. The particular challenge is to maintain sufficiently high performance and long‐term durability. The study shows that for cathode Pt loadings below 0.2 mg cm−2 and for current densities exceeding 1 A cm−2 a sudden drop of performance is observed. The same threshold value is found for the increase of irreversible voltage losses which lead to an intense reduction of PEMFC durability for cathodic loadings below 0.2 mg cm−2. Another durability issue at cathodic Pt loadings < 0.4 mg cm−2 is the acceleration of reversible degradation, which leads to a strong voltage drop during continues fuel cell operation (i.e., without a recovery interruption).


This study examined the incidence and nature of the errors made by trainee coders during their coding of question types in interviews in which children disclosed abuse. Three groups of trainees (online, postgraduate and police) studied the coding manual before practising their question coding. After this practice, participants were given two-page field transcripts to code in which children disclosed abuse. Their coding was assessed for accuracy; any errors were analysed thematically. The overall error rate was low, and police participants made the fewest errors. Analysis of the errors revealed four common misunderstandings: (1) the use of a 'wh' question always denotes a specific cued-recall question; (2) ' Tell me' always constitutes an open-ended question; (3) open-ended questions cannot include specific detail; and (4) specific questions cannot elicit elaborate responses. An analysis of coding accuracy in the one group who were able to practise question coding over time revealed that practice was essential for trainees to maintain their accuracy. Those who did not practise decreased in coding accuracy. This research shows that trainees need more than a coding manual; they must demonstrate their understanding of question codes through practice training tasks. Misunderstandings about questions need to be elicited and corrected so that accurate codes are used in future tasks.


This protocol describes an alternative resuspension protocol for iron chloride flocculated viruses from natural water. This method produces much higher molecular weight DNA than the original.


In order to determine the region where the Borel sum of a Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin (WKB) solution ψ of an mth order (m⩾3) ordinary differential equation Pψ=0 with polynomial coefficients is well defined, we apply the steepest descent method to the Laplace integral of a WKB solution ψ of Pψ=0, with P denoting the Laplace transform of P. As a counterpart of the connection formula for ψ, we introduce a new notion of the exact steepest descent path, which is the union of bifurcated steepest descent paths. Both theoretical and computer-assisted experimental studies are given to show the importance of this notion.


Predicting the Unit Appraisal Value of the Unimproved and Private Land in the City of Houston by LEED Sustainable Site Credits. (December 2009) Young Jun Park, B.En., Korea Military Academy, M.S., Seoul National University Co-Chairs of Advisory Committee: Dr. Paul K. Woods Dr. Valerian Miranda The primary objectives of this research are to identify the relation between Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) criteria regarding sustainable site credits and the appraised value of land parcels in the City of Houston, and additionally to analyze the effects of detail components which leverage the sustainable credits regarding the Public Transportation Access (PTA) in terms of economic issues. To accomplish these objectives, the approach to estimate sustainable ratings of specific parcels using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) was established. Green construction must be one of the most powerful trends in the construction industry. One of the main concepts to underlie the basis of this green construction is sustainability. This sustainability has to be considered in the process of the site selection prior to the actual activities to construct a building. Recently, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has suggested the modified guideline with "LEED 2009 for New Construction and Major Renovations". According to this metric, it is clear that this principle endeavors to block environmental abuses related to land development or restoration projects. On the other hand, it is not easy to check the serviceability of these


To study the natural vibration property and seismic performance of long-span curve prestressed concrete rigid-frame bridge,a(95+170+95)m long-span curve prestressed concrete rigid-frame bridge with high-rise piers was taken as the study background.The finite element models of two groups of bridges with different radius of curvature and pier height were built using the finite element program MIDAS Civil for the natural vibration property and seismic response spectrum analysis.The results of the study demonstrated that for the bridge of such type,the longitudinal stiffness of piers and the transverse stiffness of main girder were relatively weak.The vibration features in different orders were roughly approximate to those of straight line bridges,which means that the variation of radius of curvature has minor influence on the natural vibration period of a bridge,while the increase of pier height results in the considerable increase of the natural vibration period of different orders,and the vibration properties of the first two orders of the bridge were shifted.The variation of radius of curvature has minimal influence on the maximum internal force and displacement of the bridge.The increase of pier height led to the significant decrease of maximum controlled internal force of bridge piers,while the maximum deformation was significantly raised.For this type of bridge,the transverse earthquake is usually a control factor,and the internal force at the bottom of the piers,the maximum displacement in transverse bridge direction in the cross-section of the midspan of the intermediate span of main girder and the longitudinal displacement of the main girder near the pier top support should be considered as the control section for internal force and displacement in bridge seismic design.


Summary: This presentation will describe types of trajectories in post-operative social support for hip fractured persons with DM and how these trajectory types influence the health outcomes within 2 years following the hip fracture. Content Outline:


We examine the implications of parental choice regarding the gender of their child in a context where boys are valued more than girls. In the absence of a bride price system, parental choice may reduce gender bias, but has an adverse e¤ect on welfare since it results in a sex ratio that is biased against girls. Bride prices can ensure e¢ cient outcomes with a balanced sex ratio if markets are Walrasian. However, if the marriage market is subject to frictions, the equilibrium sex ratio will be unbalanced and ine¢ cient.


Objective: To evaluate whether a collaborative model of mental healthcare involving general practitioners and clinical psychologists benefits patients with common mental disorders in primary care.


To the Editor: The retina in all vertebrates is composed of three layers of nerve cell bodies and two layers of synapses. The first area of neuropil, where synaptic contacts occur, is the outer plexiform layer, in which connections between rod and cones, and vertically running bipolar cells and horizontally oriented horizontal cells, occur. 1 Experimental data suggests that some classes of spiking neurons in the first layers of sensory systems are electrically coupled via gap junctions or ephaptic interactions.


ABSTRACT The semaphorin 4D (Sema4D) receptor plexin-B1 constitutively interacts with particular Rho guanine nucleotide exchange factors (RhoGEFs) and thereby mediates Sema4D-induced RhoA activation, a process which involves the tyrosine phosphorylation of plexin-B1 by ErbB-2. It is, however, unknown how plexin-B1 phosphorylation regulates RhoGEF activity. We show here that activation of plexin-B1 by Sema4D and its subsequent tyrosine phosphorylation creates docking sites for the SH2 domains of phospholipase Cγ (PLCγ). PLCγ is thereby recruited into the plexin-B1 receptor complex and via its SH3 domain activates the Rho guanine nucleotide exchange factor PDZ-RhoGEF. PLCγ-dependent RhoGEF activation is independent of its lipase activity. The recruitment of PLCγ has no effect on the R-Ras GTPase-activating protein activity of plexin-B1 but is required for Sema4D-induced axonal growth cone collapse as well as for the promigratory effects of Sema4D on cancer cells. These data demonstrate a novel nonenzymatic function of PLCγ as an important mechanism of plexin-mediated signaling which links tyrosine phosphorylation of plexin-B1 to the regulation of a RhoGEF protein and downstream cellular processes.


The results of warmth retaining, heat transfer and compressive elastic recovery of the five kinds of bedspread fabrics, which were produced from packing weft of 2700 denier and 3600 denier batt yarn treated with raw material of Polyester /48 DTY, are as follows: 1) 3600 denier packing weft showed lover count in compressive elastic recovery than 2700d packing weft, so it took longer time to recover. 2) When packing weft of the same count is used, a sample of packing weft with higher density showed lower recovery. 3) It took 2700d packing weft 30min to get approximately 98% recovery in temperature . But, 3600d packing weft stayed under 98% recovery in the same temperature. Considering only the result of compressive elastic recovery, we should use 2700d packing weft. 4) The higher the density of packing weft is, the higher warmth retaining becomes. Although sharp increase appeared until 5min, equilibrium was kept without any increase after that time. 5) When 2700d packing weft was used, the maximum warmth retaining was approximately 60% and 64% in the conditions of density 12(thread/in) and 22(thread/in) respectively.


The failue analysis of 9SiCr Steel which has been treated with composite for strengthening and toughtening was studied by means of TEM and SEM.The result shows that the brittle fracture belongs to tempered brittleness and would be deteriorated due to remained austenite changed into martensite.


The wisdom of crowds refers to the phenomenon in which the collective knowledge of a community is greater than the knowledge of any individual. This paper proposes a network design for the fastest and slowest consensus formation under average node degree restrictions, which is one aspect of the wisdom of crowds concept. Consensus and synchronization problems are closely related to variety of issues such as collective behavior in nature, the interaction among agents as a matter of the robot control, and building efficient wireless sensor networks. However, designing networks with desirable properties is complex and it may pose a multi-constraint and multi-criterion optimization problem. For the purpose of realizing such efficient network topology, this paper presents an optimization approach to design networks for better consensus formation by focusing on the eigenvalue spectral of Laplacian matrix. In both the fastest and slowest networks presented, consensus is formed among local structures first, then on a global scale. This suggests that both local and global topology influence the networks dynamics. These findings are useful for those who seek to manage efficient consensus and synchronization in a setting that can be modeled as a multi-agent system.


It is well known that Hash algorithm works in one way, and it cannot be reversed. We can build a new algorithm by using Hill cipher technique .Since its invention in 1929, Hill cipher algorithm which is one of the most famous symmetric cryptosystems .Hill cipher requires the inverse of the key matrix for decryption. This inverse not always exists, so we can use non-invertible matrices to propose a model for our new hash algorithm, and we proof the four requirements that needed to design a practical one way hash algorithm.


Objective To investigate the situation of mental health of the elderly in empty- nest families so as to improve their quality of life. Methods Psychological symptoms of the empty- nest elderly in Huaxin Town,Qingpu District,Shanghai were assessed by the Symptom Checklist- 90( SCL- 90) and the General Information Questionnaire. And the assessment results were compared with those in normal controls. Results Among 112 elderly empty- nesters,53 cases were positive( with the positive rate of 47. 32%). The average score of SCL- 90 positive items,the total average score,the number of positive items,and the average score of positive symptoms were all higher in empty nesters than in normal controls( P 0. 05). The scores of hostility and paranoid ideation were significantly lower in empty nesters than those in normal controls( P 0. 05),while the scores of somatization,interpersonal relationship,fear factors in empty nesters were significantly higher than those of normal controls( P 0. 05). There were significantly differences regarding the total score of SCL- 90 among empty nesters with different genders,the average monthly income,drinking or non- drinking,marital status,visit frequency,and the expected ways of old- age care( P 0. 05). Conclusions Empty nesters' mental health disorders can not be ignored. Somatization,interpersonal relationship and fear factors are very important for the regulation of empty nesters' mental health. It is necessary to set up a sound service system for geriatric medicine based on the cooperation of individuals,families and society and explore scientific and reasonable old- age care modes so as to actually realize healthy aging and improve empty nesters' quality of life.


In this article, we consider the importance of learner well-being for a better performance during the learning process, taking into account their emotions and how they affect them. The CLIL approach is used to integrate learners' language knowledge and provides strategies about how to manage their emotions and develop a positive mindset. In this context, we suggest three meaningful activities for teenage learners to identify and analyze their emotions while learning and encourage their critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative work. Furthermore, learners can learn about how emotions affect not only their school, but also their personal lives. Through these proposed activities, students may develop some tools and pieces of advice to take care of their emotional health.


Shape memory alloys (SMAs) are a unique class of metals capable of recovering large strains either spontaneously or upon heating, depending on their thermal-mechanical state [...].


This paper presents a description of The Fukushima Daiichi Accident Study Information Portal. The Information Portal was created by the Idaho National Laboratory as part of joint NRC and DOE project to assess the severe accident modeling capability of the MELCOR analysis code. The Fukushima Daiichi Accident Study Information Portal was created to collect, store, retrieve and validate information and data for use in reconstructing the Fukushima Daiichi accident. In addition to supporting the MELCOR simulations, the Portal will be the main DOE repository for all data, studies and reports related to the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. The data is stored in a secured (password protected and encrypted) repository that is searchable and accessible to researchers at diverse locations.


Purpose To analyze results of pachymetric measurements in patients after deep anterior lamellar keratoplasty (DALK) and endothelial keratoplasty (DSEK) using three techniques of pachymetry estimation.

Methods For the study 35 eyes after various lamellar keratoplasty were qualified. 20 eyes they who underwent DSEK (12 women and 8 men) and 15 after DALK (9 men and 6 women). The subjects age ranged from 23 to 92 years old (mean 45.0.1 years). The follow-up ranged from 9 to 31 months (mean 16.8 months). Patients underwent routine DSEK and DALK, using "big bubble" technique, surgery. Pachymetric values were achieved using three devices: ultrasonic pachymeter, specular microscope, Anterior Segment OCT. Pachymetric outcomes were analyzed and compared.

Results Total corneal thickness in case of patients who underwent DSEK surgery using ultrasound pachymeter ranged from 581 to 829µm (672.4 ± 89.1), specular microscope registered values from 518 to 719µm (575.4 ± 78.3), OCT Visante ranged from 575 to 911µm (690± 122.1). Total corneal thickness in patients who underwent DALK surgery using ultrasound pachymeter ranged from 382 to 571µm (487 ± 76.8), specular microscope registered values from 380 to 481µm (427 ± 84.2), OCT Visante ranged from 379 to 569µm (439± 143.1). Corneal thickness values received with the use of ultrasound and OCT values significantly differed form obtained using specular microscope.

Conclusion Specular microscope seems to omit graft thickness in corneal pachymetry evaluation, also pachymetric outcomes are underrated, even though is able to calculate endothelial cell density in patients who underwent lamellar keratoplasty.


Objective Exploring teaching way and method of general medicine.Methods Summarizing and using the teaching methods of multimedia courseware in the teaching of general medicine and comparing the teaching effect.Results Most students like this teaching method,and students who taught by means of multi-medid courseware are more likely to make good use of libraries and network resources for learning(X2 =16.3111,P =0.0003 ),their performances in study have been apparently improved ( t =5.1885,P<0.0001 ).Conclusions The use of multimedia courseware for general medicine teaching canfully mobilize the enthusiasm of students and improve teaching efficiency and effect.

Key words:
General medicine;  Multimedia courseware;  Teaching effect


Objective To optimize the extraction technology of Radix Angelicae dahuricae by ultrasonic method.Methods Orthogonal design was taken to optimize extraction technology by ultrasonic method.Total content of imperatorin and isoimperatorin were taken as investigation index.Ultrasound time,amount and concentration of ethanol were taken as investigation factors.Ultrasound time of 15 min,30 min and 45 min were taken respectively as three different levels,amount of ethanol were 9 times,12 times and 15 times;Concentration of ethanol were 70%,80% and 90%.Results The optimized technique was:Radix Angelicae Dahuricae was extracted with 12 times of ethanol(80%)by ultrasound time for 45 min.Conclusion Ultrasound time and amount of ethanol were the most important factor which affected the extraction of imperatorin and isoimperatorin from Radix Angelicae dahuricae.


Simulation results of the interconnection of previously proposed switched-current (SI) cells are presented as a first step to the overall design of an analog adaptive filter. Two kinds of multipliers employing different techniques are tested, showing the usefulness of the difference integrator proposed. Due to the modularity presented by the filter structure a slice is first analyzed.


The Sub-Saharan countries in Africa are evaluated to determine if conditions exists to cause some to develop the Dutch disease. Two groups are assembled from the study population: those with natural resources rents under 8% of GDP, and those over. Both groups show tendencies for higher resources rents than the baseline World readings. Both groups also experience decreases in both the agriculture and manufacturing sectors during the study period. In addition, both groups see increases in personal remittances received by the host countries. All of these are ingredients which signal potential Dutch disease. In addition to the two group comparisons, individual country assessments are conducted which identify 13 of the 49 countries, or 26.5%, as having conditions which would support the Dutch disease diagnosis. Measurements for the study are taken from the World Bank databank website and categorized into two sections, economic configuration and money flows, for further focus. The study includes discussions on natural resources development, globalization, institutions, the Dutch disease, remittances, and investments.


Recalcification time, prothrombin time (PT), partial thromboplastin time (PTT) and activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT) were determined for common carp plasma. Clotting times were 37.6±8.7 s (mean±SD) recalcification time, 23.5±3.4 s PT, 17.9±3.2 s PTT, and 5.1±0.7 s APTT, respectively. The difference between APTT and PTT suggests that the intrinsic hemostatic system is developed in carp blood. Citrated plasma lost its clotting activity within 12h during incubation at 37°C, whereas clotting activity was maintained for long hours at 25°C. The shortest clotting time was obtained for the mixture of BaSO4 adsorbed plasma and serum. This indicates that coagulation factors of carp blood can be classified into the serum factors and barium sulphate adsorbed factors.


In this paper, we present an approach to the driver head motion tracking problem using Bayesian learning and inter-frame optical flow clustering. Two cameras (one operating in visual band and the other in the infra-red range) are mounted on vehicle dashboard to determine the driver head motion by examining the temporal variation of video-histogram differences (VHD). Progresively increasing VHD indicates that the driver head moves from its steady position. An optical flow map is generated as a measure that would lead the tracker in the direction of head motion in synthetically generated volumetric view geometry involving a sequence of motion frames. Experiments show that the proposed system can track the driver head and identify the motion as left or right in two consecutive video frames parallel to the image plane of the camera or forward and backward direction from one frame to next. This simplifies the problem of tackling head movement with arbitrary motion in space via considering two consecutive frames at a time and marking the motion from the current frame to the next in sequence. Since the head position is marked in each frame with its optical flow track, the arbitrary motion is viewed as a classification problem of belonging to left-right, right-left, backward-forward, and forward-backward in the inter-frame duration via the Bayesian learning process of the Gaussian density.


The fashion industry has always struggled with the perception that it is only a game for skinny people to play, but Allyson Ancona asks, "are plus size women discriminated against in the world of fashion?" First of all, the definition of a plus size women is a woman who wears a size 14 or larger. However, a plus size model in fashion is a woman who wears a size 6 or larger. This is a huge discrepancy, and it is clear why women have problems with the way plus size fashion is presented to the public. Therefore, the relationship between the fashion industry and plus size women is untrustworthy and questionable. Ancona went on to discuss a reverse SWOT analysis, a TOWS, of the plus size fashion industry.


A survey in some Ghanaian markets and farms on the current trend of packaging fruits and vegetables has shown that Ghana is not making much progress in research on packaging of fruits and vegetables. As such the storage techniques that have been in existence for decades are still in use. They involve different packaging techniques ranging from the use of wood, cane, guinea corn stalks, palm fronds, plastics, tin, aluminum pans, rugs, polyethylene bags to that of stuffed old-kitchen bowls. Storage under stalls, in store-rooms or in the open, under sales tables, etc, and covered with jute sacks, polyethylene fertilizer sackS, plastic films, clothes, etc, were some of the techniques. This paper describes the types ofpackaging materials and the packaging techniques used in Ghana on-farm, for distribution, and the packaging methods employed by retailers at the marketing centres for tomato fruits.


Ultra high molecular weigh cralkene-derivatived polymers were synthesized by bulk polymerization with the combination of Ziegler-Natta(Z-N) and Metallocene(Cp_2ZrCl_2) as the primarily catalyst and the aluminium triethyl[(C_2H_5)_3Al]as the cocatalyst.The optimum catalysts' composition ratio (A:0.02 g,B:0.03 g,C:0.2 mDwas obtained by the orthogonal experiment method.Gel permeation chromatograph(GPC) test shows that the resulted polymers achieved the weight-average molecular weights of 1.12×10~7 and with the polydispersity of 3.79 when employing this optimum catalysts' composition ratio.The apparent viscosity of the polymer in hexane reached 27 mPa ? s as measured by the revolving viscosity apparatus.The results of our experiment showed that not only the molecular weight but also the distribution of molecular weight of cralkene-derivatived polymers were enhanced when catalyzed by such combining catalysts.


We report a case of a 17-year-old young man with a coronary fistula incidentally diagnosed. On transthoracic echocardiography, an abnormal flow draining into the pulmonary trunk was evidenced. Coronary computed tomography confirmed the presence of a small coronary fistula connecting the proximal part of the left anterior descending artery to the pulmonary trunk. As the patient was completely asymptomatic, in order to guide the clinical management and exclude any underlying ischemic phenomena, the patient underwent stress myocardial perfusion scintigraphy which was negative for ischemia.


Background The success of pharmacotherapies for smoking cessation in real-life remains limited, with a significant number of long-term relapses. Despite first promising results, the duration of the effectiveness of electronic cigarettes is still unknown. Our objective was to assess the duration of the effectiveness of electronic cigarettes on smoking cessation and reduction in daily smokers. Methods The databases EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), ClinicalTrials.gov and PUBMED were consulted until March 23, 2022. We selected only randomized controlled trials with daily adult smokers. The intervention was the nicotinic electronic cigarette vs. non-nicotine electronic cigarette or other validated pharmacotherapies (varenicline, bupropion and nicotine replacement therapy). The minimum duration of the intervention was 3 months, with a follow-up of at least 6 months. Two independent reviewers used the PRISMA guidelines. The primary endpoint was smoking cessation at the end of the intervention and follow-up periods confirmed by a reduction in expired CO < 10 ppm. The reduction was defined as at least 50% of the initial consumption or by a decrease of daily mean cigarette consumption at the end of the intervention and follow-up periods. Results Abstinence at the end of the intervention and follow-up periods was significantly higher in the nicotine electronic cigarette group, compared to nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) [respectively: RR: 1.37 (CI 95%: 1.32–2.93) and RR: 1.49 (CI 95%: 1.14–1.95)] and to the non-nicotine electronic cigarette condition [respectively: RR: 1.97 (CI 95%: 1.18–2.68) and RR: 1.66 (CI 95%: 1.01–2.73)]. With regard to smoking reduction, the electronic cigarette with nicotine is significantly more effective than NRT at the end of the intervention and follow-up periods [respectively RR: 1.48 (CI 95%: 1.04–2.10) and RR: 1.47 (CI 95%: 1.18–1.82)] and non-nicotine electronic cigarette in the long term [RR: 1.31 (CI 95%: 1.02–1.68)]. Conclusions This meta-analysis shows the duration of the effectiveness of the nicotine electronic cigarette vs. non-nicotine electronic cigarette and NRT on smoking cessation and reduction. There are still uncertainties about the risks of its long-term use and its potential role as a gateway into smoking, particularly among young people.


Economic growth and poverty are interrelated. Generally, economic development is believed to reduce poverty. In Nepal, over the last fifteen years, poverty has remarkably come down in spite of lower economic growth meaning that reducing poverty would be much easier if economic growth rate could be increased. Higher economic growth can never be attained unless production and productivity rise. Regarding economic growth of South Asian Countries, Afghanistan accorded first place followed by 10.2 percent, Bhutan second 9.7 percent, China third 7.8 percent. Nepal Sixth 4.6 percent and Maldives occupies last followed by 3.5 percent for the year 2012. Economic Journal of Development Issues Vol. 17 & 18 No. 1-2 (2014) Combined Issue, Page: 163-174