Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS)-based storage is an emerging non-volatile secondary storage technology. Combining a movable non-rotating media sled and a stationary array with thousands of read/write probe tips into a single chip as small as a dime, MEMS-based storage provides up to ten gigabytes of storage with low access latency, high streaming bandwidth, low power consumption, and low entry cost. It is equally important that MEMS-based storage exhibits distinct low-level device-specific features, such as two-dimensional independent media positioning and fast power state transitions. The theme of this thesis research is to exploit the distinct properties of MEMS-based storage to deliver better performance, higher cost/performance ratios, lower power consumption, and higher reliability of storage systems.
We developed an analytical model of seek times for MEMS-based storage and identified seek time equivalence regions. This finding has great impacts on request scheduling and data layout on MEMS storage devices. We have developed MEMS-aware request scheduling algorithms that achieve superior service performance without sacrificing fairness. Data layout that leverages the knowledge of MEMS seek time equivalence regions also results in better performance under randomly-accessed workloads. Our MEMS-aware power conservation techniques reduces half of the power consumed by storage devices with negligible I/O performance penalties. With internal redundancy, sufficient online spares as well as optional maintenance, MEMS storage drives, which are built as disk replacement, are highly reliable in the economic lifetime. MEMS-based storage can also be used as fast front-end for disks to build high-performing, cost-effective hybrid MEMS/disk storage devices.


This study explores representations of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in three major U.S. newsmagazines—Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report—analyzing her symbolic role as arguably the most powerful feminine personification of besieged democracy alive today. The coverage examined here employs an Orientalist framework that underpins media representations of both a threat to democracy worldwide and a set of differing national competencies available to deal with this threat. Media representations of Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma invoke a "protection scenario," which positions the United States as a comparatively mature, masculine form of democracy run by highly competent yet compassionate leaders working to promote freedom and democracy worldwide. This case study demonstrates that within a larger, Orientalist framework, enacting a protection scenario provides a great degree of flexibility for symbolically coding the complex geopolitical environment that has emerged in the aftermath of the cold war.


In this review article we describe some recent results obtained in our laboratory. The successful combination of crossed molecular beam techniques and various laser excitation schemes has been used to study chemiluminescent reactions of ground and excited electronic states of barium with free molecules and molecular clusters. Studies include the identification of reaction products in cases where many chemiluminescent reaction channels are opened. The case of Ba(6sp1P1,6s5d1D2,6s5d3Dj) reacting with H20, methanol, ethanol, propanol-1, propanol-2, methyl-2, propanol-2, butanol-l, allyl alcohol, dimethyl ether, diethyl ether and diallyl ether is examined. A reaction mechanism is proposed which accounts for all these reactions. Studies reported in this review also include the unravelling of reaction dynamics where various forms of energy are mixed (electronic and kinetic energy). This is shown in studies of Ba(1D2and1P1)


Dear Editor In 1884 Gibbes found some structures containing great amounts of erythrocytes between the renal artery and vein of the human subject [1]. Soon after Robertson (1890) reported that these structures not only existed in the human subject but also in animals, and named them as ―hemolymph node‖ (HLN) [2]. Subsequent studies on rats showed that these nodes were also found between the renal artery and vein. Those researches focused mainly on morphological distribution and structure of HLN, or origin and location of erythrocytes in sinuses [3-7], seldom on the phenomenon of the rosette formation of the macrophage-erythrocyte (ME) and their immunity activities. Although recent article have mentioned that the appearance of HLN was related to immunity, there was no strong evidence to support the perspective [8].


ABSTRACT Existing research reveals opportunistic free-riding behaviours by municipalities facing mergers; these behaviours include over-issuance of debt before mergers because their burden will be shared by newly constructed municipalities. Nevertheless, the literature presents few solutions to this problem. We therefore investigate whether South African municipalities that faced mergers engaged in free-riding behaviours before the mergers. In South Africa, the upper government of municipalities implemented the monitoring of borrowings before mergers. Using a difference-in-differences analysis and quarterly data of South African municipalities, we find that South African municipalities decreased the amount of borrowings before their mergers. This result contradicts previous research, indicating that proper policy for municipal mergers may prevent the fiscal common pool problem caused by free-riding behaviours. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to demonstrate a reduction in borrowings before municipal mergers.


Dear Editor,Malignant tumors of the oral cavity and the oro- and hypopharynx represent one of the most difficult conditions in head and neck surgery due to the severe implications on the quality of patients' life, the poor prognosis of locally ad-vanced disease and of the functional consequences of surgery of the upper aerodigestive tract. Late-stage tumors benefit from the transmandibular approach for curative surgery, a well-known technique that has to be used in selected cases 1 . We report a case series of 119 patients with T4 tumors of the oral cavity and hypopharynx over a period of three years from 2011 to 2013 that were treated with the transmandibular approach in our department. In order to establish the in dications for the proper surgical procedure, all patients were assessed by clinical examination and imaging modalities that included plain X-rays of the head and neck region, computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging scans. A dental evaluation was performed in order to evaluate the need for dental extractions. Malignant tumors included in our study affected the palatine tonsil in 37 (31.09%), tongue in 29 (24.36%) and tongue and oral cavity floor in 26 (21,84%) cases. Our most commonly performed mandibulotomy was the medial (63 cases; 52.94%) because of the better surgical access that provides to the tumor site and of the lower complication rate. The "commando" surgical intervention - glosopelvectomy with partial mandibulectomy has also been performed (5 cases; 12.5%). Mandibulotomy related complications are in direct relation to the site, type of fixation (using two plates has a higher complication rate), type of osteotomies and material used for osteosynthesis. The lip-splitting mandibulotomy technique provides a safe and efficient means of approaching difficult to access anatomy of the upper aerodigestive tract 2,3 . After having undergone curative surgery as their primary oncological treat -ment, all 119 patients underwent radiotherapy. The total complication rate of the cohort was 18.8%. Fistulas


Markets ́ globalisation and competition made foreign markets increasingly viable and natural opportunities for growth-oriented firms. This fact is even more important for firms originating from small national markets. In the global market atmosphere these firms are forced to build their export marketing strategy based on relationships with their customers, suppliers or even competitors in order to be successful in their export market performance. Considering this fact the basic research question of the paper was to what extent the relationships can influence the firm's performance in foreign markets. Our research framework postulated that the firm's export performance is determined by relationships in addition to the type of industry and firm's internal forces. Three types of relationships were analysed: with customers, suppliers and with competitors. Several industries were compared in terms of their export performance characteristics. The general conclusion of the research was that the indications were not sufficient to claim that firms from a small country developed relationships with customers, suppliers or competitors intensively in order to improve their export market performance.


For representation of terrain, an efficient alternative to dense grids is the Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN), which represents a surface as a set of non-overlapping contiguous triangular facets, of irregular size and shape. The source of digital terrain data is increasingly dense raster models produced by automated orthophoto machines or by direct sensors such as synthetic aperture radar. A method is described for automatically extracting a TIN model from dense raster data. An initial approximation is constructed by automatically triangulating a set of feature points derived from the raster model. The method works by local incremental refinement of this model by the addition of new points until a uniform approximation of specified tolerance is obtained. Empirical results show that substantial savings in storage can be obtained.


INTRODUCTION The protozoa are the most diverse and amongst the most ancient group of organisms in the eukaryotic kingdom (Sogin et al., 1989). Many of their members are parasitic and some, like those belonging to the family Trypanosomatidae (African trypanosomes, Trypanosoma cruzi, Leishmania. spp.) and the genera Plasmodium, Eimeria, Babesia, Theileria, Toxoplasma and Entanoeba, are the cause of important diseases in humans and their domestic livestock. Glycoconjugates on the cell surface of these organisms frequently play a crucial role in determining parasite survival and infectivity. It has become clear over the last 5 years that many of these molecules are anchored to the plasma membrane via glycosyl-phosphatidylinositol (GPI) anchors. This type of anchor is not unique to the protozoa, but it does appear to be used with a much higher frequency in these organisms than in higher eukaryotes. In this article we review the structure, function and biosynthesis ofGPI anchors in protozoan parasites and in higher eukaryotes. These data suggest that there may be significant differences in the function of GPI protein anchors in unicellular versus metazoan organisms. In addition, some of the parasitic protozoa, particularly those belonging to the Trypanosmatidae, synthesize a number of exotic GPI-related structures which are not attached to proteins. The structure, biosynthesis and role of these major cell surface glycoconjugates in parasite survival and infectivity are discussed, together with some speculations on the evolutionary aspects of the GPI-family. Previous general reviews on the subject of the GPI anchors and related structures can be found in Ferguson and Williams (1988), Low (1989), Cross (1990a), Thomas et al. (1990), Ferguson (1991, 1992b), McConville (1991) and Turco and Descoteaux (1992).


This paper presents findings from a field study conducted with a smooth drum vibratory roller equipped with machine drive power (MDP) and accelerometer based compaction meter value (CMV) technologies. Two test sections with layered granular materials were mapped using the roller and tested using light weight deflectometer (LWD) and dynamic cone penetrometer (DCP). One area consisted of a thin relatively stiff recycled asphalt material underlain by poorly graded fine sand and the other test area consisted of compacted layers of poorly graded sand. Results indicated that the thin stiff layer in one of the test areas influenced the MDP and LWD measurements more than the CMV measurements. CMV showed deeper influence depths (up to 1 m) compared to MDP (< 0.5 m). MDP measurements correlated well with LWD and DCP-California bearing ratio (CBR) measurements when data from the top 300 mm was used. CMV correlated well with CBR measurements when data from the full profile (up to 800 mm) was used. (161 words)


AbstractA new, concise theoretical model for simulation of unsteady, nonhydrostatic two-layer flow is presented. The formulation is systematically developed from the equations of motion of an ideal...


This paper addresses the critique of the aggregational problem attached to the financial instability hypothesis of Hyman Minsky. The core of this critique is based on the Kaleckian analytical framework and, in very broad terms, states that the expenditure of i¬ rms for investment is at the same time a source of income for the i¬ rms producing capital goods. Hence, even if investments are debt i¬ nanced, as in Minsky's analysis, the overall level of indebtedness of the i¬ rm sector remains unchanged, since the debts of investing i¬ rms are balanced by the income of capital goods-producing i¬ rms. According to the critics, Minsky incurs a fallacy of composition when he does not take this dynamic into account when applying his micro analysis of investment at the macro level. The aim of this paper is to clarify the consequences of debt-i¬ nanced investments over the i¬ nancial structure of an aggregate economy. Starting from the works of Michal Kalecki and Josef Steindl, we developed a stock-flow consistent analysis of a highly simplii¬ ed economy under four different i¬ nancial regimes: (1) debt-i¬ nanced with no distributed profits, (2) debt-i¬ nanced with distributed proi¬ ts, (3) internally i¬ nanced with no distributed proi¬ ts, and (4) internally i¬ nanced with distributed proi¬ ts. The results of our investigation show that debt-i¬ nanced investments do not lead to a worsening of the i¬ nancial position of the i¬ rm sector only if specific assumptions are taken into account.


In order to understand the near‐cloud aerosol properties and their impact on radiative forcing, we utilized in situ aircraft measurements of aerosol particles and cloud droplets during the Cloud Aerosol Interaction and Precipitation Enhancement Experiment carried out over the Indian subcontinent in the monsoon season. From the measurement of aerosol size distribution of diameter range from 0.1 to 50 µm, we reported that aerosol concentrations could be enhanced by 81% and the effective diameter (deff, µm) by a factor of 2 near the cloud edges when compared with regions far from the cloud. These enhanced aerosol concentrations are a function of the relative humidity (RH) in the cloud‐free zone, attributed to mixing and entrainment processes in the cloud edges. It is also found that for warm clouds, RH increases exponentially in the near‐cloud regions. In addition, deff was increased linearly with RH. Through model simulations, we found that aerosol optical depth decreases with distance from the cloud edge. Further, aerosols in cloud edges were found to increase the reflected flux by 20% compared to cloud‐free regions, thus brightening the near‐cloud areas.


High temperature shape memory alloys (HTSMAs) are widely used in many fiels such as industry, biomedical, aerospace, etc. In order to expand the usage areas of these alloys, it is necessary to improve the materials, especially the martensitic transformation temperatures should be controlled. Third elements are often added to the material to control the martensitic transformation temperature. Ti-12V-8Al (wt. %) alloy, which is prepared for use in aircraft engines in the aviation industry, is a good choice due to its low density. In this study, Ti-12V-8Al (wt. %) alloy was prepared with the help of arc-melting technique. The martensite-austenite transformation temperatures, phase formations, microstructure of Ti-12V-8Al (wt. %) alloy were examined by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and optical microscope (OM) respectively. In the DSC test, it was determined that the martensitic transformation temperature reduced according as the heating rate of the alloy. In XRD and SEM measurements, it was observed that the alloy has α″ martensitic phases as well as some β austenite phases. Thermal activation energies of the alloy were founded by Kissinger and Ozawa techniques. It was concluded that the activation energy amounts computed by these two techniques are parallel to each other.


Abstract This paper presents a practical solution to the guidance of a fleet of unicycle type robots, including path following, formation keeping, obstacle avoidance, collision avoidance and the respect of wheeled actuation saturation constraint, without planning procedure. These results are based on an extension of previous results on path following control including actuation saturation constraints. New solutions for obstacle avoidance and collision avoidance are proposed.


Bioresorbable osteosynthesis materials have theoretical advantages over stainless steel osteosynthesis materials like reduction of stress shielding and the absence of the need for a removal operation. Large volumes of bioresorbable material will be needed for intramedullary osteosynthesis in humans. A long-term follow-up study in a sheep femoral osteotomy model was performed to preclude a possible negative influence of the large volume of bioresorbable osteosynthesis material on the bone healing process. Bone mineral density (BMD) in different regions of interest (ROI) of both femur and tibia was measured with dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) 30 months after intramedullary nailing of a femoral osteotomy. Ten sheep with a bioresorbable nail after femoral osteotomy were compared to six sheep with a stainless steel nail after femoral osteotomy. In both groups, BMD was increased in the osteotomy and proximal regions of the femur and decreased in the distal femoral and tibial regions. However, BMD decreases were always smaller while increases were mostly larger after bioresorbable osteosynthesis. Stress shielding and inactivity osteoporosis seemed to be less in the bioresorbable group. No osteolysis around the large-volume intramedullary bioresorbable implants was observed. Therefore, we conclude that bioresorbable intramedullary osteosynthesis has an advantage over stainless steel osteosynthesis with regard to BMD. It seems to be a safe alternative for stainless steel osteosynthesis


Sharing memories of a medical student who is also a corneal harvester for transplantation. The text will describe and share stories and experiences he went through and what lessons he learned


The article studies various aspects of building a system for efficient use of resources in construction and develops a model for estimating resource flows in construction. It has been proved that construction work cannot be organized without proper material resources: raw materials, construction materials, fuel, energy, pre-fabricated products, etc. It has been determined that the model for estimating the resource flows in construction should take into account the volume of resource consumption, i.e. resource consumption per unit of specific demand for their consumption, taking into account the total amount of resources consumed by a construction firm, and their cost.


Autogenous bone grafts from the ilium and proximal tibia are commonly used in orthopaedic procedures. They are used to promote healing and provide structural support. There are several advantages to using autogenous bone grafts including that they are not immunogenic and have osteoconductive and osteoinductive properties. Nevertheless, bone graft harvesting from these sites may be associated with multiple complications and significant morbidity. Bone harvesting from the anterior and posterior ilium may be complicated by severe pain, poor cosmesis, hematoma, infection, impaired wound healing, nerve damage, hernia, pelvic fracture, vascular injury, sacroiliac joint instability or urethral injury. Bone graft harvesting from the proximal tibia has a number of minor risks, including the risk of fracture. In this review, we describe and summarize the complications associated with bone graft harvesting from the anterior ilium, posterior ilium and proximal tibia.


This paper presents composite injection method, and it consists of static pressure injection method and high-pressure whirl injection method sequence in time. The composite method has all the advantages of the two individual injection methods and eliminates the disadvantages of them. It also increases the possibility of success and the range of subgrade reinforcement. Its effect is very good for the reinforcement of subgrade to many old buildings and new buildings which have problems in their subgrade.


Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by the novel virus, SARS-CoV-2 The clinical spectrum of COVID-19 varies from asymptomatic infection to severe pneumonia The COVID-19 epidemic started at the end of 2019 in Wuhan, China, and the disease has now spread to the entire world The rapid spread of the infection worldwide led the WHO to declare the outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020 Herein, we report three patients with COVID-19 admitted to Atsugi City Hospital, who contracted the infection on the cruise ship, Diamond Princess, which was one of the early sites of outbreak of COVID-19 The three patients had different backgrounds, including age, sex and underlying disease profile, and each had a different clinical course However, all three tested persistently positive by the PCR test for more than 4 weeks, which is longer than the average reported period of positivity In this report, we discuss the interpretation of persistently positive results of PCR for SARS-CoV-19, the appropriate instructions for these patients, and the optimal timing of discharge home of these patients, considering the available medical resources


The research examines the transnational engagement of African born academics in the US. It explores the various dimensions of their multiple and complex constituencies as immigrant academics on one hand, and as academic diaspora on the other.


anesthesiologic and procedure-related complications were recorded. CONCLUSIONS: Our data report for the fi rst time in literature the feasibility and safeness of TUIA during RT using SC that showed full operative and post-operative pain control and reduced operative time and patient discomfort.


The 1990 President's National Drug Controi Strategy Report estimated that 100,000 babies who have been prenatally exposed to cocaine are born each year. Medical research has established risks for both cocaine-using pregnant women and their unborn children. Infants prenatally exposed to cocaine may experience a marked failure to adapt to the neonatal environment, a lack of appropriate interaction with caregivers, and language, cognitive and motor abnormalities that clearly place them at risk. Initial results of follow-up on these infants have suggested that some will suffer long-term educational and behavioral handicaps. Little has been empirically documented concerning the characteristics of children 18 months and older who were exposed to cocaine prenatally. There is an urgent need for study of this group to determine what, if any, long-term effects children prenatally exposed to cocaine may later exhibit. Such information could be vital to a wide range of professionals in health, education, social service, and childcare. Such research must proceed with caution, however, for other interacting explanations of any identified long-term effects must also be considered.


In Vehicular adhoc networks, due to the limited bandwidth, high vehicle mobility and density of vehicles, scalability is a major problem. Data aggregation is a solution to this. The goal is to combine the information and disseminate this in larger regions. Another criteria is all the messages should be unaltered in the delivery and should be authenticated i. e. authentication and integrity of the messages should be verified. In this paper, a certificateless aggregate signature protocol for vehicular networks has been proposed which makes RSU responsible for authentication, aggregation and verification of messages sent from vehicles. The RSU is also responsible for notifying the results back to the vehicles within its communication range, to other neighboring RSUs and to the application server for further analysis. Here,we adopt batch verification technique such that verification time can be reduced. The proposed scheme is based on bilinear pairing and hard computational elliptic curve discrete logarithmic problems(ECDLP). The scheme achieves conditional privacy preservation due to the use of pseudoidentity, while a Trust authority(TA) can always retrive the real identity.


1 Department of Clinical Microbiology, University Hospital and Faculty of Medicine in Hradec Kralove, Charles University, Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic 2 Department of Hospital Hygiene, University Hospital, Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic 3 Department of Infectious Diseases, University Hospital and Faculty of Medicine in Hradec Kralove, Charles University, Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic 4 4 Department of Internal Medicine – Hematology, University Hospital Hradec Kralove, Charles University, Faculty of Medicine in Hradec Kralove, Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic 5 Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology, National Institute of Public Health, Prague, Czech Republic


A dentigerous cyst is an epithelial-lined developmental odontogenic cavity that encloses the crown of an unerupted tooth at the cemento-enamel junction (CEJ). Dentigerous cysts are the second most common odontogenic cysts after radicular cysts, accounting for approximately 24% of all true cysts in the jaws [1-3]. They are usually solitary in occurrence. The condition is frequently seen with the permanent dentition, usually associated with impacted mandibular third molars and maxillary canines. Pain, swelling, and facial asymmetry are occasionally seen; however, they are usually asymptomatic and observed during radiographic examination [4]. This report describes a rare case of a dentigerous cyst associated with an impacted mandibular left 3 rd molar with an ectopic position of the inferior alveolar canal (IAC).


In the present study, we investigate the effects of atorvastatin on the lipid profile, oxidative stress, and liver enzyme markers, and its protective activity against diabetic complications, in streptozotocin (STZ)‐induced diabetic rats. Fasting blood glucose (FBG), triglyceride (TG), total cholesterol (TC), and high‐density lipoprotein (HDL) levels, as well as alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) enzyme activities, were measured 7 weeks after the administration of STZ and atorvastatin. Thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS), non‐protein associated sulfhydryl (NP‐SH), total sulfhydryl (T‐SH), and nitric oxide (NO) levels were measured to evaluate oxidative stress. Atorvastatin was found to inhibit ALT and AST activities and to reduce FBG levels in rats with STZ‐induced diabetes. Moreover, atorvastatin treatment significantly reduced lipid peroxidation in kidney, heart, and eye tissues (P < 0.001, for all), and resulted in a significant increase in NP‐SH levels in brain tissues (P < 0.001). Total NO and nitrate levels increased significantly after atorvastatin treatment (P < 0.01). Our results revealed that atorvastatin has a protective effect against STZ‐induced oxidative damage by reducing TBARS levels and increasing NP‐SH levels, has a hepatoprotective effect by decreasing ALT and AST activities. It also shows the antihyperglycemic activity by lowering FBG levels.


Many works of art throughout the centuries have not only garnered intrigue, but also debate among physicians relating to a possible medical diagnosis depicted by the artist. Representation of both anatomy and disease with the use of votive offerings and forms of grotesque art is well recognized. Such work was particularly prevalent in pieces produced during the Hellenistic Age and includes statuettes, anatomical replicas, coins and other art work. Diseases such as acromegaly, Gorlin syndrome, lymphoedema, neurofibromatosis and ophthalmic disorders, among others, have been represented in such pieces. It had been thought by the suppliants that in presenting these offerings to the Gods, particularly Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine and son of Apollo, they could be cured from their ailments. An example of an artistic piece representing an individual with disease is that of a small bronze statuette described as a 'Statue of an Emaciated Man' and housed at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington DC. It is a small bronze statue measuring at just 11.5 × 5 × 8.3 cm, and is thought to date from around the first century Bc to the first century Ad. It depicts a gaunt young man sitting atop a bench with his left hand held limply and an apparently swollen right foot. It has been suggested that this individual could have suffered from lead poisoning. However, lead neuropathy is typically symmetrical and emaciation is uncommon. A more common source of lead poisoning in ancient times was wine drinking, as lead was used both as a sweetener and preservative. In addition, occupational exposure was common as lead was used widely in pottery, painting, lead smelting and glass ceramics. A disease that could explain the three features of emaciation, wrist drop and a swollen foot is diabetes mellitus. Diabetes had been recognized in Egyptian manuscripts dating back to 1500 Bc commenting on 'honey urine'. Diabetes has been well documented during the Hellenistic Age with Apollonius of Memphis in 250 Bc being credited for coining the term 'diabetes'. Insulin insufficiency can cause emaciation mainly through ketosis. The neuropathy of diabetes mellitus can affect single nerves, and a radial nerve palsy resulting in a wrist drop has been recognized. The appearance of an apparent swollen foot could be due to a Charcot joint, which is a result of repetitive microtrauma-induced complications of polyneuropathy. In conclusion, we believe this statuette represents features consistent with diabetes mellitus and is a 'bronze diabetic'.


The latest microprocessor roadmaps show not only ever-increasing performance and speed, but also the demand for higher currents with faster slew rates while maintaining tighter supply-voltage tolerances. This topic addresses these challenges by reviewing and comparing various control approaches for singleand multi-phase synchronous buck converters. An optimized hysteretic control algorithm is shown offering a significantly improved transient response, which is illustrated with a specific design example.


The key technology of GIS is introduced and how GIS and MIS are integrated seamlessly. Based on this, combining with the characteristics of campus information, using oriented-object technology, is put forward the model of CGIS and the implementation method of CGIS presented.


The world is facing unprecedented challenges with the COVID-19 pandemic. This pandemic has drawn attention to the importance, failings, and weaknesses of health systems around the world, and brough...


In this paper we describe a visualization system for enabling location-based navigation of a social blog network. Our visualization has three parts: a map, tabular, and matrix display, to facilitate several selected user tasks. We use coordinated visualizations with an interface based on the principles of overview, zoom and filter, and detailson-demand to enable users to explore the information in a flexible way. In addition, we suggest future directions for extending our prototype visualization into more general functionality. Author


This study compares and evaluates three Machine learning Algorithm in the field of polymeric film manufacturing. Compression moulding and extrusion-blow moulding were considered under the film manufacturing techniques. In this article, we are investigating how Principal Component Analysis (PCA) may be used to minimize the complexity of predictive and classification models such as k-nearest neighbors, artificial neural networks, and random forests. Using PCA, the provided dataset with 8 input parameters for Experiment 1 and 6 input parameters for Experiment 2 would be reduced and applied Machine learning algorithms for predicting the tensile strength of the material. The k-nearest neighbours (kNN) algorithm showed higher predictive abilities, with a coefficient of determination and Root mean square error of 96 percent and 1.09, respectively, for extrusion-blow moulded films. For compression molding, the ANN achieved 91 percent coefficient of determination and 1.11 as root mean square error. These algorithms can predict or categorize quality indices of commodities generated in multi-parameter manufacturing processes, such as the polymer manufacturing processes under study.


This article presents a new adjustable knock-out mechanism of a bolt former with a Roberts linkage and an adjustable crank-rocker linkage. The design requirements of the new mechanism are based on the analysis of an existing adjustable knock-out mechanism. The new adjustable knock-out mechanism mainly consisting of a Roberts linkage, and an adjustable crank-rocker linkage is proposed to meet the specified requirements. The path of the knock-out screw is approximately a straight line and the method presented is illustrated by an example.


This research examines the effect of the firm value, managerial ownership and institutional ownership as moderating variables to moderate the relationship of financial performance to the firm value. This research population uses properties and real estate sector companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange for the period 2017-2020 with a total sample of 193. This type of research is a quantitative research using secondary data. The study used Warp-PLS analysis tool version 7.0. Sampling techniques use purposive sampling that aims to obtain samples that fit the criteria set by the author. Financial performance has no effect on the value of properties and real estate sector companies for the period 2017-2020. The results of this study found that managerial ownership is not able to moderate the relationship between financial performance to the value of the company. However, institutional ownership can moderate financial performance against the firm value in the properties and real estate sectors for the period 2017-2020. Suggestions for further researchers to be able to add other variables that affect the value of the company, using other aspects such as profitability in measuring financial performance. Further researchers can also expand or use research objects other than the properties and real estate sectors to discover the results of different studies.


A nearest neighbour search procedure is described for use with serial files of textual data. The procedure involves the grouping of records into blocks, each of which is characterised by a fixed-length bit string. A comparable query bit string may then be matched against each of these bit strings, and an upper bound calculation used to identify those blocks which need to be inspected in detail if the document that is most similar to the query is to be identified. Experiments with three small collections of documents and queries are used to test the efficiency of the approach. The experiments show that reduc tions in computation are possible, although the precise savings are crucially dependent upon a range of factors including the frequency characteristics of the documents and queries, the similarity coefficients, and the sizes of the bit strings and of the blocks.


The supply chain of manufacturing industry has been under constant pressure to improve competitiveness, and supply chain network design is generally seen as one of the important means of resolution. The design or redesign of supply chain network entails taking decisions on a range of strategic issues, including the selection of suppliers, choosing the transportation link/node, location and selection of warehouses, etc. Total cost to serve is often used as the major factor in evaluation of supply chain network design, whereas enough attention in including the importance of customers for the evaluation of network remains challenging. The purpose of this study is to propose a logical approach by which the importance of customer weightage can be included in the evaluation of supply chain network design. The logical approach uses the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique for evaluation. The logical approach is demonstrated with a numerical example.


The aim of this study was to evaluate the HemoCue WBC DIFF system for point of care testing of fingerstick samples from paediatric patients.


Objective It is to observe the effects of effective components from 6 kinds of traditional Chinese medicinal herbs on the activity of L-929 cells to sieve the effective drugs for it.Methods Mouse fibroblasts(L-929 cells) were cultivated as target cells,and their activities were determined with MTT colorimetric method.Each drug was observed with 3 different concentrations and at 5 sequential time points.Results According to statistical analysis,Dan-Shen compound injection and other herb medicine had more potent inhibitory effects on the activity of L-929 cells than that of control group(P0.05).There were significant differences in the inhibitory function of some herbs of different concentration.But the inhibitory effect of TNF-α on L-929 cell was significantly more obviously than the other agents(P0.01).Conclusion This undergoing biological experimental system is right and reliable.Dan-shen compound injection and other 5 herb medicine have inhibitory function of different degree on the activities of L-929 cells.


PURPOSE: To produce a polychromatic filters array by silver halide photochemical providing a silver halide emulsifier material on a supporting body and sticking different dyes according to picture elements. CONSTITUTION: The photographic silver halide emulsifier material in which at least one of a water permeable silver halide emulsion layer is incorporated and which contains a mordant suitable for fixing the dyes in another layer, is provided on the supporting body and the different dyes or dye precursor compounds according to the picture elements are stuck to the photographic silver halide emulsifier material. And an image exhibiting a light absorbing contour pattern drawing each color picture element obtained by the sticking dyes is formed in a dye receiving body material by developing the silver halide emulsion layer. By the sticking of the dyes according to the picture elements, for example, each color element formed by dye diffusion transfer according to the picture element forms a light non-transmissible separating zone and is drawn favorably and accurately by a light absorbing contour line very narrow compared with each color picture element. As a result, the polychromatic filters array is produced. COPYRIGHT: (C)1990,JPO


Ecophysiological effect of La-Gly-VB6 on corn made by acid rain has been studied. When corn is sprayed with 30 mg/L La-Gly-VB6 once, the harmfulness to corn from acid rain pH2.0 will be reduced. The results indicate that this has something to do with many physiological effects, such as La-Gly-VB6 being able to speed up photosynthesis, root vigor and chlorophyll content, reduce malonic aldehyde content, decrease cell membrance permeability and keep the stability of cell juice pH value, and maintain the activity of NR and dehydrogenase in corn, etc.


The United States and members of the former Soviet Union are expected to ratify a treaty to determine the disposition of an assumed 100 tonnes of excess plutonium from nuclear weapons stockpile reduction. Many options are being considered to safeguard and dispose of this material. A US Department of Energy (DOE)-sponsored fission option study was initiated in which the weapons-grade plutonium is burned in power reactors and converted to a material less suitable for nuclear weapons. The first emphasis of the study was to demonstrate the feasibility of fueling a light water reactor with weapons-grade plutonium as fissionable material. Initial Westinghouse results have been reported to DOE and in previous American Nuclear Society conference papers. The reactor candidate for this task is designated the PDR600, a 600-MW(electric) pressurized water reactor (PWR) with advanced and passive design features. This paper is concerned with core optimization studies performed by Westinghouse Electric Corporation and Westinghouse Savannah River Company.


The passage of distorted flow through an annular axial compressor rotor or stator is analyzed in the actuator disk limit. In such a description the flow is steady in absolute coordinates. The resulting analysis yields an overall description of the blade row performance in the presence of inlet flow defects. The present (actuator-disk) analysis is compared successfully with Dunham's earlier three-dimensional analysis as well as with recent experimental data. In addition, comparison with a recent theory by Greitzer, employing an alternative approach, is made. The analysis shows that at least two important distinct types of vorticity arise, the one being directly analogous to the trailing vorticity (shed circulation) of classical wing theory, and the second being analogous to the vorticity occurring in "secondary flow" theory. The latter arises directly as a result of inlet distortion. The resulting varying flow angles produce spanwise variation in blade loading, and consequent trailing vorticity (Beltrami Flow). The two types of vorticity are therefore interrelated. The static pressure field is also affected by this coupling in agreement with experiment. This problem provided a striking example for which three-dimensional and two-dimensional analyses disagree qualitatively. The vorticity as viewed in coordinates fixed in the rotor is discussed in the Addendum.


This paper deals with the improvement of the transient response and harmonic, subharmonic, and dc-offset voltage rejection capability of a grid voltage sequence detection scheme based on a second-order generalized integrator (SOGI). To perform that, the SOGI structure is first analyzed in deep, emphasizing both its tradeoff limits between settling time and harmonic attenuation and the sensitivity to grid subharmonics and dc-offset voltage. Then, a study of the effect of grid voltage harmonics and subharmonics in SOGI and in the SOGI-FLL and MSOGI-FLL structures is introduced. Hence, to overcome these problems, a new structure based on the use of the SOGI filter as prefilter for the previous structures is proposed to achieve a faster time response and higher harmonic rejection. This structure is used in a sequence detection scheme for the detection of the grid voltage components in the αβ-frame and it is applied in a three-phase PV system. Experimental and comparative results are shown to validate this proposal.


This paper have several important aspects and techniques about thin film deposition process have been presented such as a brief overview of PVD process, types of PVD system that are thermal evaporation and sputtering, a brief overview of CVD process. The study and development of thin films via physical vapour deposition has played a significant role in the development of optical coatings, semiconductors, and solar cells. A detailed explanation of the development and operation as well as future improvements that were made.


Presented at the 1th Symposium on Engineering Problems of Fusion Research, Knoxville, TN, October 25-28, 1977 i al J LBL-6373 &J1 HaQ <t~n'? d Environment Division Rectangularly Shaped Large Area Plasma Source K. W. Ehlers October 1977 Berkeley Laboratory University of California/Berkeley Prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. W-7405-ENG-48 DISTRIBUTION OF THIS DOCUMENT IS UNLIMITED}


Studied the elemental composition of the fuel oil, derived from petroleum different fields; The values of the density, content and total sulphide sulfur and calorific value of the test fuel oil.


Objective:To evaluate the efficacy of cervical smear in diagnosing the sexually transmitted infection of cervix.Methods:248 women were tested for Chlamydia trachomatis, gonococci and gram stain of cervical smear for polymorphonuclear leucocytes count.Results:Of the 248 women, the prevalence of chlamydia trachomatis and gonococcus infection was 4.0% and 2.4% respectively. For polymorphonuclear leucocytes count of gram stained cervical smear, the sensitivity was 23.1%, specificity 84.5%, positive predictive value (PPV) 7.7% and negative predicative value (NPV) 93.8%.Conclusion:The number of polymorphonuclear leucocytes was of little value in diagnosing sexually transmitted infection in a population with low prevalence of sexually transmitted infection. It should combine with the clinical information to increase its sensitivity.


The purpose of this study was to determine the influnce of transformational leadership on teacher job satisfaction, intrinsic motivation on teacher job satisfaction, transformational leadership on teacher affective commitment, intrinsic motivation on teacher affective commitment, and job satisfaction on teacher affective commitment in state vocational schools. West Nias Regency. This research was conducted at State Vocational Schools in West Nias Regency. The study population was 160 teachers and to determine the number of samples used Issac and Michael tables, as many as 110 people with proportional random sampling technique. Data collection was carried out using a questionnaire, after the first trial was conducted. The data analysis technique used consisted of descriptive analysis, requirements analysis test, and path analysis with a significance level of α of 0.05. The results showed that transformational leadership was directly positive towards job satisfaction, instrinsic motivation had a direct positive effect on job satisfaction, transformational leadership was directly positive towards affective commitment, instrinsic motivation had a direct positive effect on affective commitment and job satisfaction had a direct effect on teacher affective commitments. To reduce the affective commitment the teacher can be done by increasing transformational leadership, instrinsic motivation and teacher's job satisfaction.


This paper presents a global 3D feature descriptor for object recognition and grasping. The proposed descriptor stems from the clustered viewpoint feature histogram (CVFH) feature descriptor. Since the CVFH feature descriptor relies on shape information only, it obtains a poor performance when recognizing the objects with similar shapes. In order to improve the robustness and accuracy of object recognition, we extend CVFH feature descriptor with color information. Then this new global 3D feature descriptor is tested for multiple classes of 3D object classification by using support vector machines (SVM), and it is evaluated with a public dataset and real scenes respectively. The experimental results show that the proposed descriptor outperforms the CVFH feature descriptor in terms of recognition rate. Finally we utilize the proposed descriptor on our grasping system to recognize and grasp the objects, showing that the grasping system can accomplish the tasks well.


Introduction. After the end of World War II, a peace treaty between Russia and Japan was never signed. The reason for this lies in the dispute between the two states about the ownership of the Southern Kurils. The intensification of Russian-Japanese negotiations on this issue in recent years actualizes the topic of this study in the context of ensuring the interests of Russia and the inviolability of its territory.

Methods and materials. In this paper, the authors use the following methods: interdisciplinary historical, formal-logical, formal-legal. The use of forecasting and modeling methods contributes to the formulation of the main conclusions of the study. The theoretical basis of the research is presented by monographs and scientific articles on the history of Russian-Japanese relations over the Southern Kurils.

Analysis. The paper presents the experience of relations between Russia and Japan since the mid-19th century. The basic international treaties that laid the legal basis for the territorial affiliation of the Southern Kurils have been studied in detail. The current state of the Russian-Japanese relations over the Southern Kurils has been analyzed. Japans claims to the Southern Kurils have been assessed in terms of the territorial and economic aspects.

Results. The authors conclude that the territorial belonging of the Southern Kuril Islands was recognized by the international community of states as a whole on the basis of provisions of treaties in force at the time of concluding the Joint Declaration of the USSR and Japan of 1956, which entails the nullity of paragraph 2 of clause 9 of this Declaration. The inclusion of provisions on the non-separability of Russian territories in the Russian Constitution requires legislative concretization of the inadmissibility of territorial concessions by Russia in case of the conclusion of a peace treaty with Japan. The conclusion of a peace treaty based on the results of the agreements reached during the negotiations is also possible under other conditions that are not limited to the transfer of the Southern Kurils to Japan. In particular, it is possible to follow the path of economic integration of the respective territories by both countries.


Review of:
Slayden, David; Kirk Whillock, Rita (1999) Soundbite Culture: The Death of Discourse in a Wired World. Sage Publications: London.


Three-phase induction machines are widely used in industry and they are known as reliable and cheap components of drive systems. However, even if these components are reliable, they can be submitted to external stresses coming from the system and degradation can occur even in the electrical and/or mechanical parts. Fault detection in induction machines has been investigated largely for the last twenty years with success and progress is still being made. The objective of this study is to present a new method for early detection of anomalies, in particular broken bars and porosities which can occur in the fabrication process. The method presented is general and may be applied to the induction machine whilst in rotation or at standstill. It's based on broadband excitation signals which are able to excite the faulty modes of devices under tests. Experimental measurements are made both on healthy and faulty machines and the comparison gives a difference in the flux and current machine signatures which is basically the most commonly used method of fault detection. This fact is very important for industrial suppliers of induction machines, because in this way manufactures will have a way of early detection of defects before selling machines.


The chemical composition of Carnauba (Copernicia cerifera Martius) wax (a palm tree that grows in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay) was studied. When a previous saponification of the wax was done, fractions that contain different groups of compounds were isolated and identified. Among them, could be mentioned: fatty alcohols of high molecular weight (C24-C36) in which 1-dotriacontanol in the main one; fatty acids of medium (C12-C20) where hexadecanoic acid is the main one and those of high molecular weight (C24-C36), being octacosanoic acid the main one. A group of paraffins was, also, isolated, being heptacosane the main one corresponding to the homologue series of that of the alcohols. Also, were isolated 4 hydroxy acids: 16-hydroxyhexadecanoic, 18- hydroxyoctadecanoic acid as well as 26-hydroxyhexacosanoic and 28- hydroxyoctacosanoic acid. No unsaturated hydroxy acids were observed in our study. These compounds were characterized by means of the chromatographic and spectroscopic properties of each one of these groups


To determine the major components of aerosols in the Bosteng Lake area in Xinjiang so as to reduce the errors in radiative transfer calculations and remote sensing resulting from the mistake of the aerosol model,a method to determine the atmospheric aerosol model based on the spectral relationships of aerosol optical depth(AOD) was presented in this paper.The AOD was computed by using 6S radiative transfer model at multiple spectral bands for continental,desert,custom models for components volume percentage and two dynamic models.Then the most suitable atmospheric aerosol model among the several models was determined by minimizing the standard deviation between the observed values and computed values.This method was applied to the data from the sun-photometer measurements in the Bosteng Lake area in 2010.The Results showed that the region in the period of measurements was close to the custom models with dust-like component percentage more than 88%.


The preparations for the 100th anniversary of the Great War outbreak turn the lights on war heritage. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the war heritage site management in northern Italy considering the role of stakeholders and the marketing efforts to promote the renovated heritage sites. Trentino-Alto Adige, an Italian Alpine region, constitutes the area of this study. In the Great War, the region, one of the historical border areas of Italy under the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, witnessed heavy fighting in extreme environmental conditions. The tangible heritage of the frontline in the high Alps has recently been renovated and marketed in tourism. The conservation efforts to revalue the sites and to promote thematic routes linking war heritage in the region have gained interest from stakeholders. However, the institutions, museums, voluntary associations and tourism organizations involved in site management have different priorities. The findings show that significant effort has been invested to conserve and to exploit war heritage, however, regarding site management and visitor interpretation for international tourists' needs seem to be neglected.


Abstract The problem of characterizing thin layer ceramic deposited by plasma spraying has led the authors to develop an original means to determine materials, elastic constants by using a free vibration method. This paper gives an overview of an experimental set-up used for the elastic properties measurement of a free circular plate at room temperature or at higher temperature (1000 °C). This method is based on analysis of the natural frequencies of vibration recorded by a microphone. Identification of experimental natural frequencies and modal parameters that characterize the mode shapes, calculated analytically by using Mindlin theory, enables the Young's modulus and Poisson ratio of the material tested to be determined. Analytical and experimental results are compared over a frequency range from 0 to 20 kHz.


The theory of Gabor frames has been extensively investigated. This paper addresses partial Gabor systems. We introduce the concepts of partial Gabor system, frame and dual frame. We present some conditions for a partial Gabor system to be a partial Gabor frame, and using these conditions, we characterize partial dual frames. We also give some examples. It is noteworthy that the density theorem does not hold for general partial Gabor systems.


Presently, stroke is the leading cause of adult injury worldwide. The World Health Organization estimates that each year 15 million people around the world suffer a stroke. Five million of them die, and another five million are disabled for life. There is a chance to dramatically enhance the classification of strokes in the early stages. In this article, we reviewed all portable devices that produced electroencephalogram(EEG) data and all machine learning (ML) methods and deep-learning methods used to identify stroke using EEG data, and we noted that the amount of work on ML and deep learning in analyzing EEG data have increased rapidly in recent years. Such analysis has achieved greater precision compared to that conventional methods. We also discussed in this study the opportunities and key challenges for improving the accuracy of future work.


A new species Pythium borealis isolated from soil in Beijing is described and illustrated. Two species, P. oligandrum and P. myriotylum, and a variant? of P. ultimum, are newly reported in China and are briefly described.
The new species P. borealis is characterized by (1) the typically monoclinous sessil antheridium formed immediately below oogonium, (2) the tangentially intercalary oogonium, (3) the plerotic and thick walled oospore, and (4) the sphaerical sporangium.
P. borealis is separated from P. ultimum Trow by the less curved antheridium, the tangentially intercalary oogonium, the thicker walled and plerotic oospore. It also differs mainly from P. connatum Yu in the typically sessil antheridium and the thicker wall of the oospore.
The variant of P. ultimum was isolated from soils and diseased seedlings of cucumber in Beijing with a higher frequency than that of the species P. ultimum. All of it's morphological characteristics and habits of hyphae, appressoria and sporangia, the growth-temperatures and optimum daily growth rate are quite similar to that of the species P. ultimum.
Type specimens of the new species are deposited in the Herbarium Mycologicum, Beijing Agricultural University, Beijing, China and the cotype in the Institute of Microbiology, Academia Sinica.


Deep processing ability for manganese ores in Guangxi remains low though the ore reserves is taking first place in China. The situation of manganese resource utilization in Guangxi was analyzed. A view of developing manganese ore deep processing recycling economy, constructing reasonable integrated large scale manganese industry group, and promoting town development with an emphasis on carbonate manganese ore utilization was put forth.


Atopic dermatitis (AD) is an inflammatory skin disease whose pathogenic mechanisms remain unclear. We describe a novel method of computer-assisted image analysis for in situ quantification of mast cells (MC) activation. We also define quantitative parameters to measure skin remodeling in early-stage atopic dermatitis (eczema) using a validated human AD-like mouse model. Remarkably, skin thickening was substantiated after a single application of ovalbumin (OVA), antigen used in this model, with cellular infiltration of the hypodermis. Cell recruitment correlated with augmented chemokine production, MC activation, and increased levels of a sphingolipid metabolite sphingosine-1phosphate (S1P), produced by sphingosine kinase-1 (SphK1), we showed could be produced by and also activate MC-derived chemokine production. MC or SphK1 deficiency significantly hindered these inflammatory responses.


Introduction Working at Covid-19 frontline may threaten physical and mental health healthcare workers (HCWs). Assessing perceived Stress in HCWs is important to prevent serious mental illness Objectives Assess the association between perceived stress and risk perception among healthcare workers working in the Covid-19 unit. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional study among healthcare workers working in a COVID-19 unit between March and July 2021 through a self-administered questionnaire. The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) was used to assess perceived stress. The perceived risk of getting infected was assessed by a 5-item Likert Scale. The perceived risk of family members' infection was evaluated by a Scale from 0 to 10. Results A total of 85 participants were included. The mean age was 31±6 years. About 87% of participants lived with their families. Seventy-six per cent of HCWs rated their health status greater than or equal to 8/10. A percentage of 18,8% of HCWs have been infected with the Covid-19. Our population consisted of 44.7% technicians and 24,7% nurses, and 80% of the participants reported direct contact with COVID-19 confirmed patients. The level of the perceived risk of getting infected was high to very high in 95% of the HCWs. The mean score of the perceived risk of family members contracting the virus was 5.7 and 27,1% rated it greater than or equal to 8. The PSS-10 showed moderate and high perceived stress in 82,3% and 7,1% of participants, respectively. Only 10,6% of HCWs presented low-stress perception. Conclusions Frontline healthcare providers have high perceived stress and are at risk of mental health disorders Disclosure No significant relationships.


Conclusions drawn from the post-mortem examination of 226 subjects who died of cerebral haemorrhage are presented. There were slightly more women than men (53%) in the series. Arterial hypertension (68%) was the main cause of death, while renal disease, leukaemia, angioma of the pons, and embolism due to bacterial endocarditis were also observed. The most frequently noted sites are listed. Since cerebral haemorrhage follows the rupture of one or more already damaged deep arteries, as assessment was made of the part played by vascular lesions. 13 cases due to leukaemia and 35 to rupture of aneurysms of the polygon of Willis were discarded. In only 20 cases out of 138 in which convincing microscopic evidence of the vascular situation could be obtained was there an absence of significant alterations. The remaining cases consisted of serious hyalinosis (56%), fibrinoid necrosis (13%), and siderocalciosis (12%). An account is also given of the special pathogenetic conditions applicable to cerebral haemorrhage associated wtih serious gastrointestinal haemorrhage or recent myocardial infarct.


Land subsidence is identified as a global problem and intensive studies are being conducted worldwide to detect and monitor risk of this problem. Risk assessment of land subsidence is simply an evaluation of the probability and frequency of occurrence of land subsidence, exposure of people and property to the subsidence and consequence of that exposure. Remote sensing technology was used to extract information of land subsidence in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. Also, Disaster Risk Index method and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) along with Geographic Information System (GIS) tools were used to assess risk of land subsidence in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. Subsidence volume for locations Central Kathmandu, Chauni, Lalitpur, Imadol, Thimi, Madhyaour Thimi, New Baneshwor, Koteshwor and Gothatar was calculated using a simple mathematical formula. The subsidence depth for these locations was found to be in a range of 1 cm to 17 cm and the maximum subsidence velocity was found to be 4.8 cm/yr. This study revealed that the location where maximum subsidence was observed (i.e. Central Kathmandu and Lalitpur) was found to be at high risk of experiencing land subsidence induced damage. Other location where subsidence was observed was found to be at medium risk and the rest of the Kathmandu valley was found to be at low risk with current data situation. This study can be considered as the first step towards other comprehensive study relating to land subsidence risk assessment. The outcome of this research provides a basic understanding of the current situation that can further assist in developing prevention and risk management techniques.


background The aim of the study was to analyze demographic (age, gender and education), temperamental (briskness and emotional reactivity) and psychopathological (severity of the disorder, comorbid symptoms of personality disorders) predictors of effectiveness of psychotherapy (Prolonged Exposure; PE) of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It was expected that temperamental traits – briskness (BR) and emotional reactivity (ER) (involved in arousing and change of PTSD symptoms) – would predict the post-treatment diagnosis of PTSD, regardless of severity of PTSD and symptoms of personality disorders.


Minimum time guidance is often required to real systems. However, optimal control problem is not solved in the guidance system because of computational load. This paper proposed one design procedure for minimum time guidance law using multiple design points. The results show that the guidance law satisfies the design criteria, but the guidance law is solution at a local minimum point. The improvement on design criteria is necessary.


The spatial organization of Andean agricultural production follows the "vertical archipelago" described by J. Golte. This paper discusses how agricultural modernization based on the green revolution causes dispersed local farmers to reproduce the their biological diversity in areas with restricted mobilization and displacement. Later, valorization of altitudinal variation is examined in the Ecuadorian sierra in light of economical and social marginalization. Finally, Amazon marginality is analyzed as it relates to accessibility that lead to similar geoagricultural organization.


The purpose of this study is to identify the characteristic synoptic patterns of the spring (March to May) heavy rainfall events over Mt. Halla by the approach type of the warm conveyor belts around migratory extratropical cyclones. Analyses of synoptic atmospheric conditions show that the spring warm conveyor belts in the form of low-level jets appear at lower elevation than that in summer. Most of spring heavy rainfall events over Mt. Halla at the warning stages or watch result from forward-sloping ascent warm conveyors belts accompanying active convection. Particularly, the spring heavy rainfall events at the warning level over Mt. Halla is intensified by the elongation of the foreward-sloping ascent warm conveyor belts when the east high-west low pressure systems, the upper level jet in the northern regionsouthwesterly low level jet and the migratory low pressure system at mature stage heading for the Korean Peninsular are combined. These findings can be used in improving the predictability of the spring heavy rainfall events over Mt. Halla.


ABSTRACT. Data on sleep behaviour have been extracted from a prospective longitudinal study of growth in a random sample of, originally, about 200 children, with annual examinations. The purpose was to assess to what extent data at 4 years on duration of sleep, night‐awakening and habitual sharing of the parents'bed can predict conditions in these respects at 8, 12 and 16 years. The predictive power is slight in general concerning the first two variables, while the habit of sharing the parents'bed is rather more difficult to shake off, above all when the child has reached school age (6–7 years in Sweder).


The breakup of shearless invariant tori with winding number = 11+ / 12+ in continued fraction representation of the standard nontwist map is studied numerically using Greene's residue criterion. Tori of this winding number can assume the shape of meanders folded-over invariant tori which are not graphs over the x axis in x ,y phase space , whose breakup is the first point of focus here. Secondly, multiple shearless orbits of this winding number can exist, leading to a new type of breakup scenario. Results are discussed within the framework of the renormalization group for area-preserving maps. Regularity of the critical tori is also investigated. © 2006 American Institute of Physics. DOI: 10.1063/1.2338026


If patients are recruited purely on the basis of conventional medical diagnosis and receive a standard homeopathic treatment, recruitment will be relatively easy and the trial sample representative of the population. However, the speci®city of homeopathic prescribing will not be respected. Conversely, if a `double-selection', requiring conventional diagnostic criteria and speci®c criteria for the selection of homeopathic treatment is used, before entry into a clinical trial, the sample will be too limited and homogenous. Recruitment will be dif®cult and recruitment bias will be introduced: the trial sample will not be representative of the broader population.


A simple experimental equipment and test scheme is designed to estimate the swelling deformation under the lateral unconfined condition with coupling effect of uniaxial load and water-rock interaction. This paper carried out the swelling test under the lateral unconfined condition and analyzed the qualities of lateral unconfined swelling of weak swelling rock by applying simple self-designed saturated equipment to the swelling test on the platform of microcomputer-controlled rock shear rheological tester RYL-600. As a result of this study, the following conclusions were derived: (1) considering the coupling effect of load and water, the stress level is considerably lower than the mudstone-saturated uniaxial compressive strength, and it is discovered that the coupling effect is striking. (2) The swelling reveals the demonstrable time effect, which increases rapidly at the beginning of the swelling deformation, and after that, the deformation tends to maintain a certain value. (3) Both the rate and the scale of swelling deformation are restrained by the axial load.


Bringing together an array of contributors, in COVID-19 Collaborations: Researching Poverty and Low-Income Family Life During the Pandemic, editors Kayleigh Garthwaite, Rosalie Warnock, Anna Tarrant, Maddy Power, and Ruth Patrick present a poignant collection of pandemic experiences. This very current compilation serves as both a guide for navigating the next crisis and an informative analysis of the pandemic's effects. In the United Kingdom, there are about 14.5 million individuals who are poor and a comparable number receive public assistance. That represents about 22 percent of the population. However, when it comes to making decisions about public policy and engaging in debate, the works collected in this volume underline that this group of people is all too frequently seen as a single homogeneous mass. COVID-19 Collaborations examines the lives of people who are classified as being of "poor income," assessing their performance before the epidemic when the lockdown was at its worst and following the transition to the "new normal" in 2021. The book does this by refuting the generalizations that are prevalent in public discourse about people with low earnings and confronts the reality of the stigmatization this group endures. The focus of the collection is the "COVID-19 and Family members on a Low Income: Investigating Together" collective, that is simply one part of the wider "Covid Realities" research initiative—which was supported by the Nuffield Foundation to record the experiences of families with low incomes during the pandemic. Over 4,000 parents and caregivers from all around the United Kingdom participated in this federation.


The present invention is of high strength high nitrogen vanadium net cracks weathering steel slab control method not only effectively eliminate only net cracks slab, while the slab to eliminate surface transverse and longitudinal cracking cracks. The method of comprehensive use of the following technical measures: setting the wide face mold cooling water 2485 ~ 2515L / min, narrow surface of the cooling water 304 ~ 306L / min; drawing speed caster stabilized at 0.8 ~ 1.0m / min, the cast slab the lower end of the surface temperature of the solidified shell of the mold was increased to 1050 ~ 1120 deg.] C, a vibration frequency of 110 ~ 130Hz; CaO with reduced amounts of mold powder into the mold fluxes basicity of 0.95 to 1.20, a melting point of 1080 to 1120 ℃, 1300 ℃ viscosity is 0.2 ~ 0.5Pa · s; secondary cooling to reduce the amount of cooling water slab, static or dynamic method for adjusting the continuous casting ratio control of water in 0.60 ~ 0.65L / kg.


An experimental study is conducted in a high-enthalpy continuous facility to investigate the nonequilibrium shock-layer airflow induced by a two-dimensional body. The rotational and vibrational temperatures of nitrogen as well as the number density are measured by recording the rovibrational spectra of molecular nitrogen using coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering spectroscopy. Measurements are performed in the freestream and within the shock layer induced by a disk model. Difficulties specific to the application of an optical technique to a high enthalpy flow are discussed, and flows parameters are given. The nozzle and shock-layer flows are modeled numerically using a nonequilibrium Navier-Stokes solver. Good agreement is achieved between the experimental and calculated results.


Base on the analysis on raw material and workmanship of producing magnet-mine powder,discussed and analysed on necessity and feasibility of producing magnet-mine powder from firing waste residue of sulfating.


Malcolm X at Oxford Union: Racial Politics in a Global Era (Oxford University Press, February 2014) tells the story of Malcolm X's 1964 Oxford address at the Oxford Union debate. Calling the speech a "lost jewel of the civil rights movement," Ambar argues that the speech reflects the dynamic changes in racial politics and national identity in both the US and UK at the time, and Malcolm X's efforts to broaden the American Black freedom struggle to the African and Asian diaspora in Europe. Panelists will offer analysis and critique and engage in an open discussion with the author.


Offshore oil production platforms continually discharge oily water into the surrounding marine environment. To reduce the risk of these discharges, emission standards are set on the oil concentration in the effluent. This paper describes a decision analytic model for aiding regulators and platform operators in the standard setting process. The model combines three submodules: a regulator model, an operator model, and an impact model. The regulator model is a simple additive value function to evaluate different standards in terms of political objectives. The operator model is an expected utility model that determines optimal oily water treatment based on the standard set by the regulator, penalties for violating the standard, and equipment performance. The impact model simply uses random pollution levels, conditional on the standard and operator's decision, as a proxy for the effects on the marine environment. Given a particular standard, the model allows calculation of utilities or expected utilities for ...


Objective  To evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of a tailored multifaceted strategy, delivered by a national clinical effectiveness programme, to implement a guideline on induced abortion.


Recently, the government has been increasingly communicating with the public in response to their opinions on state administration and policy projects. To examine the practicality of the public's suggestions, this study investigated issues by disaster type, based on information from major media channels and comment data from the news. An analysis of the frequency of appearance, text mining (TF-IDF, LDA, and sentiment analysis), and the semantic network was performed by extracting the comment data of articles on the themes of "disaster" and "evacuation," published from January 2010 to May 2020. The analysis results showed that news articles centered on these themes increased rapidly from 2017. The main disasters in Korea were those of "fire," "typhoon," "forest fire," "radioactivity," and "earthquake," in order of enormity. Of the total negative words pertaining to "radioactivity" disasters, 43% were negative-sentiment words, and the semantic network analysis revealed that the terms "typhoon," "forest fire," and "earthquake" were connected to "radioactivity" disasters. This study is meaningful as it identifies issues by type of disaster and factors of anxiety expressed by the public using news and comment data, without conducting surveys and interviews.


At present, there are many problems in the process of three-level detection of highway communication facilities, including trunk center level, communication station level and optical cable transmission link. This paper investigates, analyzes and compares the common problems in the detection process, finds out the causes of the problems, and puts forward the methods and ways to solve the problems, so as to improve the quality of highway communication facilities.


Boarder Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a critical part of the Internet, as it is the protocol that keeps the Autonomous Systems (ASes) connected. Despite the fact that it managed to scale to the current Internet's size, it also faces other problems, one of them being transient disconnectivity during convergence time. In the last years, efforts to solve this problem concluded with the proposal of multi-path routing protocols. As their name implies, these protocols are designed to explore more paths than BGP in the attempt to keep the ASes connected in case of link failures. In this thesis we try to shed more light over the multi-path routing protocols by conducting experiments that show their behavior and impact on BGP. We focused on three multi-path protocols, i.e. R-BGP, YAMR and STAMP, and devised scenarios and experiments to show their impact on BGP's scalability, stability and resilience to link failures. Our results show that R-BGP outperforms the other two methods, being the only one that maintains continuous connectivity during convergence time and at the cost of the smallest number of extra BGP messages.


Doctors who scribe are all too uncommon, and uncommoner still is the gifted scribe who makes a living at surgery. These two worlds, literarv and chirurgical, converge in a crafty and winsome volume of essays by Richard Selzer. By probing through layers of cold, corporeal fact, Selzer manages to reach sublime levels of rhetorical wisdom. Ever the exuberant wordsmith, he writes with a quaintness of speech which sometimes threatens to become ponderous Yet such eloquence is what makes Mortal Lessons ultimately so engaging. We observe how the author and his subject have grown attached, knife to heart. Whether describing the onset of rigor mortis or the first throb of puerile infatuation, Selzer employs the same ornate vocabulary with facility and precision. He conjures lively tales from bones, bowels, bladders, blades, cadavers. He marches us to death's drumbeat through a vanquished corpse. His compelling little essay on abortion is a tour de force. Vignettes from his life as a Doctor's Kid expose the secret sources of his energy and spirit. All these Mortal Lessons are meant for those willing to enter the world within the surgeon's grasp. Richard Selzer persuades us that surgen is not so much skill but, rather, a well nigh priestly vocation.


In this study, a seismic vulnerability of Gyeongju city, where the 9.12 Gyeongju earthquakes occurred, was analyzed and compared the prediction accuracy using frequency ratio (FR) and logistic regression (LR) models. The buildings damaged by the 9.12 Gyeongju earthquakes were used as dependent variables, of which the buildings were randomly selected data for training (70%) and validation (30%). The total eighteen seismic-related factors were used as independent variables as slope, elevation, groundwater level, distance to epicenter, distance to faults, peak ground acceleration (PGA), age of children, age of elderly, population density, building density, construction materials, number of floors, age of buildings, distance to police stations, distance to fire stations, distance to hospitals, distance to gas stations, and distance to road network. The spatial relationship between damaged buildings and seismic-related factors was analyzed using FR and LR models. The produced seismic vulnerability maps were classified into five zones, i.e., very high, high, moderate, low, and very low. The two maps validated and compared prediction accuracy using relative operating characteristic (ROC) curve and the areas under the curves (AUC). The validation results indicated that AUC value of FR seismic vulnerability map (73.1%) was about 3% higher than LR map (71.4%). The seismic vulnerability maps produced in this study could possibly be used to minimize damage caused by earthquakes and could be used as a reference when establishing policies.


In view of inside and outside factors influencing technology innovation of key enterprises,using survey data from 132 key enterprises in Henan province,this research examines the main problem and characteristics in the course of technology innovation of different ownership key firms.Then,this paper gives suggestions to how to optimize innovative environment of key enterprises from the aspect of the enterprises,society and the government.


In this article, a transport model of gate solution AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistor has been developed that is capable of accurately predicting the sensitivity of the drain current as well as small-signal parameters such as drain conductance, device transconductance and cutoff frequency to PH values of the electrolyte and to charged adsorbents at the semiconductor-electrolyte interface. This model built up with incorporation of fully and partially occupied sub-bands in the interface quantum well, combined with a numerically self-consistent solution of the Schrödinger and Poisson equations. In addition, the polarization effects, and self-heating are also taken into account.


In this work, we prove the existence of a center manifold for some partial functional differential equations, whose linear part is not necessarily densely defined but satisfies the Hille-Yosida condition. When the unstable space is reduced to zero, we also show the attractiveness of the center manifold. We prove that the flow on the center manifold is completely determined by an ordinary differential equation in a finite dimensional space. Finally, we prove that the stability of the equilibrium is completely determined by the stability of the flow on the center manifold in some critical cases.


In this thesis the results of a mineral chemical and paragenetic study of cordieriteorthoamphibole- bearing rocks from the Mid-Proterozoic Bamble Sector, south Norway are presented. The scope of this study was 1) to deepen the knowledge of the metamorphic evolution of the amphibolite to granulite facies grade Bamble Sector, 2) to study the regional metamorphic fluid variation in cordierite-bearing rocks, and 3) to provide some insights on the behaviour of boron in the lower continental crust by studying borosilicatebearing mineral assemblages.


Aim: The aim of this study was to determine root surface strain (RSS) developed by two reciprocating NiTi files and the resultant cracks. Materials and Methods: Thirty mesial roots of mandibular molars were used. Ten roots were prepared using AF Blue R3 Reciprocating One-File System (FBR) (Fanta; ShangHai, China) for the mesiobuccal canal and WaveOne Gold primary (WOG) (Dentsply Tulsa Dental; Tulsa, OK, USA) for the mesiolingual canal. Ten roots were prepared using WOG and ten roots using FBR. An electrical strain gauge was fixed on the root surface connected to a strain amplifier. Maximum strain and time were recorded. Roots were cut transversely to evaluate for cracks. Results: WOG has developed RSS of (84.16±52.57) and cracks (2/10); FBR has developed RSS of (128.33±128.55) and cracks (5/10) without statistically significant difference. Preparation time of WOG was (55.28±26.24) which was statistically significantly less than FBR (109±57.3). Conclusion: Both files have developed RSS and cracks during canal shaping.


U.S. multinational corporations play an important role in the American economy. They are research and export intensive, and they provide tens of millions of high-paying jobs. Their worldwide distribution networks increase demand for domestic research, high-tech manufacturing, and management services. It is not in the interest of the United States to have multinationals' headquarters go abroad or for them to be at a competitive disadvantage to foreign-headquartered multinationals. We should always remain vigilant, but as of now there is little evidence that U.S. multinationals are going abroad1 or that they suffer significant tax disadvantages vis-a-vis foreign-headquartered multinationals. Moreover, multinational corporations are only a part of the American economy. Multinational competitiveness is not an end unto itself. The competitiveness of the entire economy is what is critical to the standard of living of the American people. If job creation through tax reform is our goal, we cannot neglect small businesses. We cannot neglect large and midsize businesses that do not have foreign operations but nevertheless compete internationally (with their exports to foreign markets and with imports into the United States). We cannot close the door to highly mobile, job-creating foreign companies that clearly have an opportunity to locate their factories elsewhere. Too often in Washington the term ''competitiveness'' is equated to the ''competitiveness of multinationals.'' This is a serious mistake. A far more important objective is promoting the overall competitiveness of the U.S. economy.2 Tax policies that only promote the interests of multinationals are a double whammy on the rest of the economy — for two reasons. First, this tax-induced tilt of the playing field shifts economic resources to multinationals and away from the rest of the economy. This not only hurts small businesses, but it hurts the overall economy because government rules get in the way of efficient free-market outcomes. Whatever the positive effects are to the United States of promoting the success of its homegrown multinationals, they are outweighed by the economic costs of distorted investment decisions.


The Bibliometric-enhanced Information Retrieval workshop series (BIR) was launched at ECIR in 2014 [Mayr et al., 2014] and it was held at ECIR each year since then. This year we organized the 10th iteration of BIR as an all-virtual workshop with a peak of 97 participants. The workshop series at ECIR and JCDL/SIGIR tackles issues related to academic search, at the crossroads between Information Retrieval, Natural Language Processing and Bibliometrics. In this report, we summarize the past workshops, present the workshop topics for 2020 [Cabanac et al., 2020] and reflect on some future steps for this workshop series.


Nanotribology with an atomic force microscope (AFM) requires an accurate calibration of the mechanical response of the cantilever. To determine the friction coefficient on the nanoscale, we have developed a new calibration method to determine the normal and lateral cantilever stiffness, and , used to calculate the normal and friction forces, which allow us to calculate the nanofriction coefficient μ. Comparative experiments on a silicon wafer with two cantilevers of different dimensions validate our calibration method. The nanofriction coefficient μ of two materials, one silicate glass and the same glass with a 100 Å SnO2 layer, has been measured by AFM after calibrating the cantilever stiffness. The different values of μ show the lubrication effects of the SnO2 layer on the nanoscale.


Wind tunnel experiments were conducted on two dimensional flow field downstream of a normal plate/splitter plate combination. The effect of varied level of perforation of the normal plate on fluctuating pressures measured across and along the separation bubble was studied using microphone based static pressure probe. The normal plate perforation levels used were 0%, 10%, 20%, 30% and 40%. The Reynolds number based on step height was varied from 4 3 10 2 . 1 10 4 × × to . The analysis of the results show that the maximum fluctuating pressure coefficient in the flow field, base pressure coefficient and the perforation level can be well correlated, for the cases studied.


The article documents the findings of semi-structured interviews with human resource managers and project leaders, mostly from Austrian enterprises, on their attitude towards the relevance of intercultural management and the measures they have taken to address this issue. The interviews were conducted in the context of the EU-funded university-enterprise project SKILL2E, aimed at designing and promoting cultural mentoring at the enterprise as a means to sustainably raise awareness and competence for an increasingly globalized workforce. While a large majority attested to the relevance of intercultural management, only a small portion actively engaged in activities to recruit and integrate employees with diverse backgrounds. Additionally, a number of enterprises indiscriminately equated induction or buddy programmes with cultural mentoring. It also became evident that the potential of transnational student placements as a recruiting instrument and a learning opportunity for both universities and enterprises has not yet been fully realized.


Berlin Institute of Health at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Department of Radiation Oncology, Berlin, Germany Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany; German Cancer Consortium (DKTK), Partner Site Berlin, and German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Department of Neuropathology, Berlin, Germany Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Department of Neurosurgery, Berlin, Germany Department of Pathology, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany


This chapter describes how most young people use online networks to extend and maintain their lives in the familiar contexts of school, cultural organizations, sports, and other activities. The new generations move about on social networks, create links, and share knowledge, and the delocalization of these connections allows them to function beyond any physical space. This chapter presents examples of different youth perspectives on digital participation (social, political and citizen, community participation projects, etc.) and examines some assumptions about what youth participation means (online, online–offline, click participation, new content production, projects owned by youth, and projects for youth). Finally, it provides some guidelines to support social pedagogy professionals in this area.


Liver is the most important metabolic organ in human,including the vast majority of metabolic enzymes involving phaseⅠ and phaseⅡ and playing an important role on detoxification of many endogenous and exogenous substances.UDP-glucuronosyltransferases(UGT)is the most important phaseⅡ metabolic enzyme that catalize glucuronidation in human,as compared with the CYP450 enzymes,study of UGTs lags behind,especially,the state of UGTs in liver injury is still poorly understood.This review summarizes latest studies of the UGTs in gene,protein structure and function,distribution in liver and relationship with the liver disease,then we discuss the effects of several common liver injury on hepatic UGT and glucuronidation.It will provide more reliable reference in durg metabolism in liver injury and guide the clinical rational use of drugs.


Exploitation requires at least two relata: a subject and an object. Moreover, the subject and object can't be identical (what does it mean to say that A exploits herself, i.e. her own person? You can say that A exploits her own superior ∗Text for an introductory lecture on exploitation, part of the Lovanium Seminar in Ethics and Public Policy 2011-12 (UC Louvain and KU Leuven), organised by Toon Vandervelde, Philippe Van Parijs and myself. †Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven, Belgium. firstname.lastname@example.com


This final report includes a discussion of the work accomplished during the period from Dec. 1988 through Nov. 1991. The objective of the program was to assemble existing performance and combustion stability models into a usable design methodology capable of designing and analyzing high-performance and stable LOX/hydrocarbon booster engines. The methodology was then used to design a validation engine. The capabilities and validity of the methodology were demonstrated using this engine in an extensive hot fire test program. The engine used LOX/RP-1 propellants and was tested over a range of mixture ratios, chamber pressures, and acoustic damping device configurations. This volume contains time domain and frequency domain stability plots which indicate the pressure perturbation amplitudes and frequencies from approximately 30 tests of a 50K thrust rocket engine using LOX/RP-1 propellants over a range of chamber pressures from 240 to 1750 psia with mixture ratios of from 1.2 to 7.5. The data is from test configurations which used both bitune and monotune acoustic cavities and from tests with no acoustic cavities. The engine had a length of 14 inches and a contraction ratio of 2.0 using a 7.68 inch diameter injector. The data was taken from both stable and unstable tests. All combustion instabilities were spontaneous in the first tangential mode. Although stability bombs were used and generated overpressures of approximately 20 percent, no tests were driven unstable by the bombs. The stability instrumentation included six high-frequency Kistler transducers in the combustion chamber, a high-frequency Kistler transducer in each propellant manifold, and tri-axial accelerometers. Performance data is presented, both characteristic velocity efficiencies and energy release efficiencies, for those tests of sufficient duration to record steady state values.


The high prevalence of allergic rhinitis (AR) leads to high morbidity and costs. Specific immunotherapy (SIT) is a potentially curative therapy for AR. The decision whether or not to employ SIT is often not totally clear.


Proteases are abundantly found in all living organisms that are essential to life. Microbial proteases possess a commercial value with various applications in industries. Some of the biotechnological applications are involved detergents, leather, food, pharmaceutical and bioremediation processes. The aim of the study is to analyses the binding cavities in protease, BleG1_1979, from Bacillus lehensis G1, in order to examine the interaction site of protease with other molecules. Protein encoding for BleG1_1979 is 19.2 kDa in size, with a predicted pI value
of 5.35 and 42% identity with intracellular protease from Thermococcus onnurineus NA1 from PDB database. Molecular docking was run using Hex v8.0.0. Four substrates were docked to BleG1_1979 pocket cavities, and casein exhibited highest binding affinity as compared to
collagen, gelatin and keratin. This has suggested that BleG1_1979 could rapidly hydrolyzed casein and B. lehensis G1 did not contain keratolytic activity. Docking results have provided a basis for further understanding the molecular mechanism of substrates preference for B. lehensis G1 protease. Such knowledge could be explored to expand the usefulness of microbial protease for industrial application.


Abstract. Clouds can strongly influence solar radiation and affects other microclimatic factors (such as air temperature and vapour pressure deficit), and those changed environmental conditions may exert strong effects on carbon exchange between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere. In this study, we analyzed how canopy photosynthesis and ecosystem respiration respond to changes in cloudy conditions, based on two years of eddy-covariance and meteorological data from an irrigated maize cropland in Yingke oasis of northwestern China. The results showed that net carbon uptake was more negative under cloudy than under clear conditions, it indicates that net carbon uptake increased under cloudy days. The rate of ecosystem respiration (Re) decreased under cloudy conditions due to decreased air temperature. However, photosynthesis was suppressed by the decreasing air temperature and vapour pressure deficit (VPD) under cloudy skies. Thus, the enhancement of net carbon uptake under cloudy skies mainly contributed from increasing photosynthesis with diffuse radiation. Those results improve our understanding of the effects of cloud cover on carbon exchange process in maize (C4) cropland, and improve our understanding of the driver improving net carbon uptake under cloudy conditions.


ynthetic hydro-geophysical exploration system is established using GIS strong spatial data structure to interrelate kinds of hydro-geophysical exploration data and spatial data.As hydro-geophysical exploration data are complex,the system applies GIS technology and database technology effectively to integrate property data and spatial data of hydro-geophysical exploration to manage the data in effect,and implement those functions of graphics edit,spatial analysis,search and statistic on data,special graphics protracting,numerical simulation and so on.Using the system,we can make spatial analysis of graphics,research on all kinds of data,interrelate graphics and data,and make kinds of special graphics from getting data,and intuitively reappear the spatial position and related property of the observation object by numerical simulation.The system provides science foundation for integration prediction and evaluation.


An adaptive Viterbi equalizer (VE) concept for non-linear intersymbol interference, low-resolution analog-to-digital conversion and high-speed implementation is proposed. Simulation results demonstrate that the VE outperforms other equalizers especially for closed eyes.