Objective To investigate the effects of polysaccharide nucleic acid of Bacillus Calmette Guerin(BCG-PSN) on the cytokines (IL-12, IFN-γ and IL-4) in CD8~+ T lymphocytes in patients with recurrent genital herpes(RGH). Methods Flow cytometric analysis was employed to study intracellular cytokines(IL-12, IFN-γ and IL-4) in CD8~+ T lymphocytes in the peripheral blood of 45 patients with RGH (among them 30 cases were put under BCG-PSN injection and 15 cases as case-control) and another 15 healthy volunteers as normal control. Results Before treatment, the percentage of IFN-γ-producing and IL-12-producing CD8~+ T lymphocytes were significantly lower (P0.05), while the ratio of Tc1/Tc2 was lower in RGH patients than that in healthy volunteers (P0.05). The percentage of IFN-γ-producing and IL-12-producing CD8~+ T lymphocytes were significantly increased in RGH patients with BCG-PSN group (P0.05) and the ratio of Tc1/Tc2 in these patients recovered normal. The percentage of IFN-γ-producing, IL-12-producing and IL-4-producing CD8~+ T lymphocytes were not significantly changed in case-control group (P0.05). The differences between the percentage of IFN-γ-producing and IL-12-producing CD8~+ T lymphocytes before and after treatment were significantly higher in the BCG-PSN group than that in the case-control group. There were a higher rate of clinical control and milder recurrence in the BCG-PSN group than that in the case-control group. Conclusion There are Tc1/Tc2 inbalance with a decline of IFN-γ-producing subsets and a low level of IL-12-producing CD8~+ T lymphocytes in RGH patients. Usage of BCG-PSN can upregulate the level of IFN-γ-producing and IL-12-producing CD8~+ T lymphocytes and adjust the Tc1/Tc2 inbalance in RGH patients. [


In order to solve the problem that chips' area and power is too large, input data are reduced the bit width generally in the development of ASIC of DS-SS system. This paper proposed a new method for 2-bit quantization and simulated its correlation capability for receiving pseudo-noise (PN) signals. This paper also verified the correctness and validity of this method through comparing its capability with that of 8 bit quantization. Now, the 2-bit quantization algorithm has been applied in the design of ASIC of "Beidou" Navigation Test Satellite, and it has been proved the method is feasible in application.


Radioactive nickel sources are used in random number generators, beta cells, electron capture detector, and X-ray fluorescence. Among them, Ni-63, which emits 100% β-rays (Emax = 66.7 keV), can be manufactured in thin film form to be used for random number generators and beta batteries[1]. Electroplating method is usually used to manufacture the thin films due to its easy to control, thin thickness and low cost[2]. Several extra precautions should be considered when RI is electroplated. First, insoluble anode should be used to eliminate the possibility of natural nickel plated and to deposit Ni-63 dominantly. Second, since radioactive isotopes are expensive, in order to relatively increase the concentration of radioisotopes, a small plating bath should be used[3]. Third, the amount of radioactive waste after plating should be kept as low as possible to be managed easily and contained safely. A small plating bath is difficult to be stirred, which results in some bubbles remained in the bath. Pitting phenomena due to the bubbles can include lower quality problem in small bath compared to large plating bath. In addition, the concentration of nickel decreases rapidly during plating in small baths. Therefore the temperature and current density should be changed to maintain the best plating conditions. It is important to optimize the conditions for each concentration of the plating solution to maintain exact mass thickness and homogeneity per unit area. In this study, an automatic electroplating device was developed to obtain uniform electroplating results. Also, optimization conditions for electroplating were set resulting in accurate mass thickness.


We propose a new algorithm to compute the frequency modulation functions associated with the well-known monogenic signal. The new algorithm extracts the frequency modulation functions without requiring an auxiliary process to estimate local orientation. In addition, we show that, in situations where a multi-scale multi-orientation decomposition is required to analyze a signal, the partial Hilbert transform approach computes AM-FM functions similar to those obtained by the monogenic signal while maintaining a more efficient signal representation.


The technique orientation of hydraulic cylinders is a high performance, corrupt-resistant, high control precision and integrity of mechanics with electronics, with which it is acquainted from the products made in Eaton Corp.


In settings where abortion is legally restricted and socially sanctioned, the medical treatment of women who have had unsafe or incomplete abortions is often a willfully neglected service. Research conducted in the 1990s brought attention to the low quality of care and inhumane treatment that many patients receive as a result of this neglect. 1 The concept of postabortion care was central to this research, which highlighted three essential services for providers to offer women who seek care for an incomplete abortion: emergency medical treatment of complications, family planning counseling and services, and referral for other reproductive health care needs. By clearly positioning the problem within the health care domain—as opposed to religious, legal or social arenas—advocates of postabortion care have created a less-volatile atmosphere for research and program development. Yet, tension continues to surround activities concerned with abortion. As postabortion care programs expand out of the pilot phase and scale up their activities as elements of larger, ongoing health care programs, they test the limits of public officials' support. The literature offers little evidence of how successfully these programs have managed resistance associated with the politics of abortion and grown


Satisfactory clinic comprehensive qualities and doctor-patient communication are very important for medical students in clinical medical work,they are conducive to clinical therapy and clinical teaching,In view of the status quo of medical students' medical skills and doctor-patient communication skills,this article discusses how to train the medical skills and doctor- patient communication capability of interns to raise their comprehensive clinical quality and doctor-patient communication ability.It will do good for constructing harmonious doctor-patient relationship as well as reducing medical disputes.


In order to control the exhaust valves, the spool 21 of the control valve is displaced in the longitudinal direction so as to connect the first pressure chamber 29 of the actuator with the actuator piston to the high pressure port (8) or low pressure port 11 can be displaced do. An exhaust valve spindle (4) is 1 in the longitudinal displacement of the spool (21) is displaced by the distribution ratio of the longitudinal direction in Fig. The spindle moves along a spool 21 between a fully open and a fully closed position may be located between a position, closing and opening of the exhaust valve position. Exhaust valve


The asymptotic behavior of dynamical processes in networks can be expressed as a function of spectral properties of the corresponding adjacency and Laplacian matrices. Although many theoretical results are known for the spectra of traditional configuration models, networks generated through these models fail to describe many topological features of real-world networks, in particular non-null values of the clustering coefficient. Here we study effects of cycles of order three (triangles) in network spectra. By using recent advances in random matrix theory, we determine the spectral distribution of the network adjacency matrix as a function of the average number of triangles attached to each node for networks without modular structure and degree-degree correlations. Implications to network dynamics are discussed. Our findings can shed light in the study of how particular kinds of subgraphs influence network dynamics.


Methanol and ethanol are the simplest alcohols, which are widely used in industrial and medical fields, and even in daily life, we are often exposed to them because the basic component of various wines is ethanol, but the so-called "fake wine" is often accompanied by some methanol components. Here, in order to establish a method for measuring the concentration of methanol using Raman spectroscopy, the laser Raman method was used to study Raman spectroscopy of methanol and ethanol liquid samples. The research results show that due to the difference in the chemical structure, the Raman spectra of ethanol and methanol have significantly different characteristics. This study indicates that the 2840.2 cm−1 Raman shift is the main spectral basis for the detection of methanol; for ethanol, 888 cm−1, 1054.7 cm−1, and 1287.3 cm−1 are the most characteristic ones, and the identification of methanol in various liquid phases has certain practical value.


Objectives: Socially anxious people often imagine or recall social events from an observer perspective. They imagine their own appearance, often focusing on visible anxiety symptoms. These images have been shown to have wide-ranging negative effects such as increased anxiety and poor social performance. An alternative is the field perspective, in which the event is pictured from the person's own point of view. This is generally believed to be a more adaptive imagery style. Observer perspective images have been implicated in the onset of social anxiety. One possible mechanism by which this may occur is investigated in this study. It may be that observer perspective images have some of their effect by diminishing a person's enjoyment of social events and discouraging them from seeking out social interaction in future. Method: An independent measures study was conducted with two independent variables: anxiety (high vs low) and imagery type (field vs observer). Participants engaged in a conversation with the first author while focusing on an observer or field perspective image. They then completed measures of the quality, intimacy and level of disclosure during the interaction, and their desire for future interaction (DFI). Results: As expected, high anxious people reported lower quality of interaction and DFI. These effects were qualified by significant interactions between anxiety and imagery. The low anxious participants who used a field perspective image reported higher quality of interaction and DFI than all other groups. Further, an observer perspective image was found to decrease intimacy and disclosure among low socially anxious individuals (all ps<.05). Conclusions: The key findings of this study suggest that observer perspective images have negative effects on interaction quality for low socially anxious people. Their scores were often indistinguishable from those of the high anxious participants. Levels of social anxiety seemed to be more relevant than imagery type, in that differences between the perspectives were not significant among high anxious participants. Past research which emphasises the importance of observer perspective images in social anxiety is supported. Findings suggest that an observer perspective can cause non socially anxious individuals to view social interactions in a more negative light, and be less likely to engage in similar interactions again. Future research is planned which will investigate the reasons for this in more detail.


We focus on particle-laden thin film flows on an incline. Experiments are carried out where inclination angle, bulk particle volume fraction, liquid viscosity, and particle size are varied. We classify experimental runs based on observed settling regime: settled, where particle settle out of the flow and fingering instability develops at the front (low angles and concentrations); ridged (high angles and concentrations); and well-mixed (intermediate values). We also uncover the transient nature of the well-mixed regime. In addition, in our experiments, the suspension and particulate front motion is tracked using a camera/laser set-up. Using image processing, we are able to extract the instantaneous thin film profiles and record the front motion for all observed flow regimes. The theoretical model we con-sider is based on equilibrium theory and it balances hindered settling of particles due to gravity against shear-induced migration. Finally, the predictions of this model are shown to be in excellent agreement with our experimental data for settling.


1.HAT SOME causal relationship must exist between the function of the adrenal cortex and human behavior is suggested by the frequency with which psychological aberrations are observed in patients with adrenocortical dysfunction, the frequency with which adrenocortical dysfunction is observed in patients with psychiatric syndromes, and the frequency with which the administration of the adrenocorticotrophic hormone of the anterior pituitary gland (ACTH) or adrenal corticosteroids results in deviant behavior.' 44 Yet the patient with Addison's disease and the patient with Cushing's syndrome may both present the same psychiatric disturbance in spite of the fact that in one there is an insufficiency and in the other an excess of corticosteroids.


A globalization has brought a change in business interest. The winner of
business competition is not only thefirm with bigger earn but also bigger awareness
to create value added to stakeholder. These activities publicly named Corporate
Social Responsibility. This study aims to examine the association between themes of
Corporate social Responsibility disclosure tofirm's performance. The expected result
is positive influence indication among both ofthem. The disclosure ofCSR consist of
four theme such as employee relation, environment, social contribution andproduct,
while firm's performance measured by market performance whose proxy is closing
stock price. To control the unobservable factor, earning per share, price book to
value and return on equity used as control variable.
A sample of31 firms whose market capitalization value at Top Fifty ranked
by IDXstatistic during 2007 to 2008 was used. The sample selection usedpurposive
method sampling and the data is analyzed by Ordinary Least Square through SPSS
IS
The result ofthis study reveals that earning per share, price book to value
andreturn on equity have associated with closing stock price while the otherfactors,
employee relation theme, environment theme, social contribution theme, product
theme have no significantly association
Keyword
: Corporate Social Responsibility, closing stockprice, earning
per share, price book to value, return on equity,
employee relation, environment, social contribution, product


MoneyMarketing asked Tamryn Lamb, Joint head of Institutional Client Services, Allan Gray, about US monetary policy, Brexit and the Chinese economy.


The microscopic mechanism of platinum cluster nucleation on DNA templates is studied by first-principle molecular dynamics simulations. We find that Pt(II) complexes bound to DNA can form strong Pt−Pt bonds with free Pt complexes after a single reduction step, and may thus act as preferential nucleation sites. This is confirmed by a series of reduction experiments, in which we achieve purely heterogeneous platinum growth on DNA, and use it to fabricate metal cluster necklaces of unprecedented thinness and regularity.


In recent years, stream processing has become a prominent approach for incrementally handling large amounts of data, with special support and libraries in many programming languages. Unfortunately, support in Prolog has so far been lacking and most existing approaches are ad-hoc. To remedy this situation, we present {\em lazy stream generators} as a unified Prolog interface for stateful computations on both finite and infinite sequences of data that are produced incrementally through I/O and/or algorithmically.
We expose stream generators to the application programmer in two ways: 1) through an abstract sequence manipulation API, convenient for defining custom generators, and 2) as idiomatic lazy lists, compatible with many existing list predicates. We define an algebra of stream generator operations that extends Prolog via an embedded language interpreter, provides a compact notation for composing generators and supports moving between the two isomorphic representations.
As a special instance, we introduce answer stream generators that encapsulate the work of coroutining first-class logic engines and support interoperation between forward recursive {\em AND-streams} and backtracking-generated {\em OR-streams}.
Keywords: lazy stream generators, lazy lists, first-class logic engines, stream combinators, AND-stream / OR-stream interoperation, Prolog extensions


A 54-year-old woman developed right orbital pain and double vision. On examination, she could not abduct the right eye, but otherwise the neurological


An experiment was conducted with one hundred eighty numbers of day-old broiler chicks (Vencobb-400) to assess the effect of dietary antioxidants supplementation on broiler performance. The chicks were divided into T0, T1, T2, T3 and T4 having 3 replicates of 12 chicks in each group. Chicks in group T0 were given basal diet without antioxidant supplementation and T1, T2, T3 and T4 were supplied with antioxidants into drinking water as vitamin E@100mg/l and Selenium@ 0.2 mg/l, vitamin E@200 mg/l and Selenium@ 0.3 mg/l, vitamin E@100 mg/l and vitamin C@100mg/l and vitamin E@200 mg/l and vitamin C @200 mg/l respectively. Better performance was observed in antioxidant supplemented groups in terms of body weight gain, feed intake and feed conversion ratio, livability, gross profit and physicochemical profile of breast muscle excluding shear force value while the carcass traits and proximate composition of breast muscle except for crude protein percentage were not affected.


The subject of the study is the problems and prospects for the development of green finance, which provides funds for achieving Sustainable Development Goals. The objectives of the work are to assess the level of development and structure of green finance, as well as to identify factors determining its development taking into account the latest trends in the global economy. The article analyzes the state and trends in the development of the green finance market, identifies obstacles to the development of green financial instruments and suggests ways to solve these problems, identifies the features of the development of sustainable financing in Russia. The study used the concept of sustainable development and a problem-oriented approach to green financing. Analytical work was carried out using methods of analysis and synthesis, comparison and grouping, economic analysis and modeling. The results of the study showed that the interest in green financing instruments is due to the need of society for sustainable development and preservation of the environment, which requires strengthening the requirements for accountability of green financial instruments, stricter control by regulatory authorities and reliable disclosure of information supported by more accurate data. Conclusions are drawn about the need to stimulate the use of various instruments of green finance, the development of a legal framework in the field of sustainable development, which will ensure the harmonization of green finance policies and standards not only at the national but also at the global level.


Presently, the thermal based power plants caters majority of the demand of power in developing countries like India. Development of an electricity allocation model will help in the proper allocation of the energy sources in meeting the future electricity demand in such countries. In this paper, an energy planning model has been developed that minimizes the cost of power generation and determines the optimum allocation of different energy sources for the centralized and decentralized power generation in India with special emphasis on cost factor for the coal power plants. The electricity distribution pattern is obtained for the year 2020. The results indicate that the electricity generation mix would be 15,800 GWh (4 %) from the coal based plants. The OEAM model is validated by the sensitivity analysis. This study can be used by the policy makers for framing energy policies in developing countries.


Background : Bond strength at the metal-ceramic interface of auto-polymerizing resins used in orthodontic indirect bonding has not yet been evaluated and a literature-based clinical protocol is lacking. Goals : 1) To compare shear bond strength (SBS) between metal brackets and differently treated porcelain surfaces; 2) To suggest efficient and predictable chairside approaches. Materials and methods : Ninety leucite discs (6 groups; n=15/group) were prepared following 6 combinations of mechanical (+/bur roughening) and chemical (hydrofluoric acid, primer, silane) treatments. Metal brackets with custom composite resin Transbond XT (3M Unitek, Monrovia, California) bases were bonded with the adhesive resin system Sondhi A+B Rapid Set (3M Unitek, Monrovia, California). Samples were stored (H2O/24hrs), thermocycled (500 cycles) and tested (Instron, Norwood, Massachusetts). Maximum SBS and adhesive remnant index (ARI) scores were collected for each sample. ANOVAs were performed on ranks since data was not normally distributed, and then adjusted with the post-hoc Tukey method. A Kruskall-Wallis, a Mann Whitney U pairwise comparison and a Weibull analysis were also performed. Results : SBS medians of groups ranged from 17.0 MPa (bur + hydrofluoric acid) to 26.7MPa (bur + hydrofluoric acid + silane). Bur roughening did not affect bond strength. The chemical preparation of (bur + primer + silane) showed statistically significant higher SBS than (bur + hydrofluoric acid) preparation (p<0,05), while having similar SBS to the popular recommended protocol (bur + hydrofluoric acid + silane). ARI scores were statistically significant lower in group (bur + hydrofluoric acid) with p<0,05, while all other 5 groups were not different from each other. Percentage of porcelain damage in these 5 groups were very high at 80-100%. Conclusion : All the tested surface preparations combinations provided clinically adequate adhesion for orthodontic tooth movement. A silane and primer combination for porcelain surface preparation is clinically attractive as it is safe and simple and provides great adhesion for orthodontic tooth movement. It is wise to warn patients that there is a risk of porcelain fractures when debonding brackets. If one prefers to avoid porcelain fracture at all cost, one may treat porcelain with hydrofluoric acid only.


Objective To study the clinical characteristics and therapies of the general psoriasis pustulosa(GPP).Methods 40 cases suffering from GPP in the third people's hospital of hangzhou from 1995.1~2000.7 were analysised.Results GPP was associated with infection,cortical hormone(CH),fatigue,tension,etc.90% efficacy of the therapies which weren't applied CH.Conclusion The first choise of GPP's therapies wouldn't use CH.


With the rise of environmental awareness, regulations in various countries become stricter, which consequently results in environmental pressures. In this study, we analyse the relationship of green supply chain management (GSCM) and institutional pressures with environmental performance of firms in the auto component industry, as well as the relationship between small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Moreover, we study 224 firms in Taiwan by means of questionnaires and the results show that investment recovery and eco-design in GSCM as well as normative pressures in institutional pressures positively relate to a firm's environmental performance. Moreover, SMEs tend to do more external GSCM practice and internal environmental management.


The invention discloses a formal verification method for a sequencing specification of an FPGA (field programmable gate array) combinatorial logic system. The formal verification method comprises the following steps of (1) obtaining a VHDL (very-high-speed integrated circuit hardware description language) procedure according to an operation sequencing specification of the FPGA combinatorial logic system; (2) establishing a Petri net model according to the VHDL procedure; (3) establishing a reachability graph according to the Petri net model; (4) pitching on all stable gate circuit output states in the reachability graph; (5) generating a control specification comprising a logical formula for calculating tree tense according to the operation sequencing specification of the FPGA combinatory logic system; and (6) detecting whether the stable gate circuit output states in the reachability graph meet the control specification or not, determining that the states are mistaken if the stable gate circuit output states in the reachability graph do not meet the control specification, positioning mistaken statements in the VHDL procedure according to excitable changes generating the mistaken states, and determining that the VHDL procedure meets the design requirements if all the states meet the control specification. The formal verification method for the sequencing specification of the FPGA combinatorial logic system is rigorous and complete in logicality and low in complexity.


The design of entropy-constrained quantization is formulated as the minimization of quantization error with constraint which gives a maximum amount of information of quantized values. It is known that the optimization of unconstrained quantizer (e.g. a quantizer that minimizes summation of quantization error) is achieved by using approaches based on dynamic programming, which is called DP quantization. However, conventional DP quantization is an approach to optimize a quantizer whose quantization level is fixed. In this paper, we propose a complexity reduction algorithm for an optimal design for entropy-constrained quantizer by extending DP quantization.


With the development of China's economy and science and technology, the car has become one of the essential necessities in people life, at the same time, with the development of artificial intelligence, Internet, computer information technology, automobile manufacturing in our country is developing towards the intelligent direction, the rise of advanced computer technology and the electronics industry provides great power, for the optimization and upgrading of automotive electronic control system provides a new technical support, making the development of the automobile industry more in line with the needs of the current era. This paper will analyze the application of computer control technology in automotive electronic control system.


The mosquito repellent products are those products which has the ability to orienting the movement of the adultmosquito away from the source. These products are usually used for protection and not for killing mosquitoes. The aim of this study was to design and evaluation an insect cage prepared for studying the repellency of the commercial adult-insect-repellent products. Two commercial mosquito-products (Active and Lavanda-herbal) were brought from the popular pharmacy, Wad Medani Town, also the metal experimental cage was design as an upside down T-shape (1.5 m for each part from the cage center) and it was covered with a thick cloth from the back and a clear cloth from the front, so as to facilitate the measurements of horizontal and vertical repells of the adult mosquitoes. A thin layer chromatography test was run in this study, in addition to measuring the time required for one gram of the repellent product dispersed in one square inch to dissipate completely. Some of the laboratory reared Anopheles and Culex adult mosquitoes were put in the center of the cage with a dish containing one gram of the repellent product so as to measure its repellent efficiency. The distance of the orientation of the adult mosquito at the horizontal and vertical levels after the repellent product was put was measured for 6 hours with interval of 30 minutes. The results of volatility rate test revealed that, the Active product has a volatility rate make it efficient for 7:30 hours, with 2.8 mg volatility in one square inch/minute, while the least distance for the horizontal orientation was 24 cm and 42 cm for the vertical repellent, whereas the efficiency of the violet Lavanda product lasted for 6:40 hours and also with 3.2 mg volatility in one square inch/minute, with 81 cm for the horizontal orientation and 53 cm for the vertical one. The TLC test showed a clear difference in the number and types of the active ingredients for the two products. The design and the tests helped to understand the behavior of mosquitoes toward the repellent products. This study recommend to applied the required and the constructive modifications on the design and the tests so as to facilitate running similar studies on all commercial mosquito-repellent products available at the local markets.


Police education and training work is the basic work of constructing the public security troops, but also an important link to improve the combat effectiveness of the public security forces. To strengthen education and training, and to improve the mechanism of personnel training in police colleges is the objective requirement of the implementation of the Central Committee of CPC on deepening the reform of public security and promoting the standardization of public security troops. The college-bureau cooperation and joint police education in Liaoning Police College shows that strengthened leadership, solid internal strength and valued system construction is promoted to avoid the form and connotation in traditional college-bureau cooperation, to avoid missing links between colleges and policing work, to solve the problem of insufficient motivation in police working, and the conflicts between working and training in order to maintain sustainable and normal development of college-bureau cooperation and joint police education.


I. PROFIT SHIFTING....................................................................................................................................168 A. Forms of Profit Shifting...........................................................................................................168 i. Debt Shifting .................................................................................................................169 ii. Transfer Pricing............................................................................................................170 iii. Intangible Assets .........................................................................................................171 B. Focus on Profit Shifting, not Distinguishing Evasion and Avoidance....................................172 C. The OECD's Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Project...........................................................173


New improvements for pseudo-random number generation are introduced by congruent addition of pseudo-random number generators of different types, such äs congruential generator and m-sequence. These new generators yield remarkably better results than the original generators, with respect to random walk tests.


The second virial coefficient, correct to the fourth power in Planck's constant, is derived for a two‐dimensional gas in an external potential field. The molecules of the gas are assumed to interact via either a renormalized (12,6) potential or the Sinanoǧlu–Pitzer (12,6,3) potential, where the inverse cube term accounts for the perturbation of the gas–gas interactions by the field. As the magnitude of the perturbation increases the quantum defects at a given temperature are enhanced. The models are applied to data for CH4, CD4, H2, and D2 on a uniform graphitic surface. The results are inconclusive, since uncertainties in the data for the hydrogens preclude a (12,6,3) analysis for these gases.


The plasmin was purified from the fermentation solution by using of ammonium sulfate precipitation, DEAD-cellulose ion-exchange column chromatography and Sephadex G-75 gel filtration column chromatography. The purified enzyme showed a single band on PAGE and a level of fibrinolysis activity about 5.16 times that of the crude enzyme. The molecular weight was 12.6 kD determined by SDS-PAGE. The iso-electric point(pI) was proved to be 7.45 by fast polyacrylamide iso-electric focus electrophoresis. The fibrinolysis activity was determined by aragose-fibrous protein plate method. The optimum temperature and pH were 50 ℃ and 8.0 respectively. It is stable in the basic solution. According to the control of activity of this enzyme between positive and negative plate, this enzyme had high affinity to fibrin, and the ability of activating plasminogen was low. In vitro, this enzyme had strong ability to hydrolyze artificial thrombus.


Objective To understand the change of barreled pure water hygiene quality in urban area of Wuhu and probe into the scientific method of supervising management of the pure water hygiene. Methods Hygiene license application materials, inspection materials and supervision materials of barreled pure water enterprise from 2000 to 2004 in urban area of Wuhu were collected and studied. Results Barreled pure water qualified rate over the past five years of total bacteria amount, E. coli, pathogenic bacteria, mould and yeast fungus were 84.1% (73.2%~95.7%), 99.5%(97.1%~100%), 100%, 100%, 95.2% (87.5%~100%)respectively. The qualified rate of the chemistry pollution index ( lead , arsenic, copper, nitrite) was 100%. The qualified rate of the electric conductivity rate was 91%(83.3%-100%). There was no significant difference of issuing license examination and routine examination on microorganism index and chemistry index (P0.05). There was significant difference of issuing license examination and routine examination on electric conductivity rate (P0.01). Conclusions Strengthening the health permission management and routine monitoring were key to improve barreled pure water enterprise management and guaranteed pure water health quantity .


Voice type discrimination (VTD) is the task of automatically detecting speech produced in the same room as a recording device ("live speech") among other speech and non-speech noises, such as traffic noises or radio broadcasts ("distractor audio"). Existing work has described methods for performing the VTD task. This paper presents a method for adapting the output of these existing methods in an unsupervised manner via x-vector clustering and correlation. This adaptation method can be applied to the output of any VTD algorithm, requires no additional training data, and has been shown to yield a relative decrease in decision cost function (DCF) score of up to 47% on a standardized database collected for the task.


A 5-aminolevulinic acid unsaturated alkyl ester, its pharmaceutically acceptable salt, a method for preparing the compound, and a pharmaceutical composition for treating the skin disease containing the compound are provided to improve production yield by emitting the process for protecting an amino group and to reduce cytotoxicity. A 5-aminolevulinic acid unsaturated alkyl ester is represented by NH2-CH2-CO-CH2-CH2-CO-O-R, wherein R is a 2-prophenyl group, a 3-butenyl group, a 4-pentenyl group, a 5-hexenyl group, a cis-2-pentenyl group, a cis-3-hexenyl group, a cis-4-hexenyl group, or a trans-2-hexenyl group. The 5-aminolevulinic acid unsaturated alkyl ester is prepared by reacting the compound represented by NH2-CH2-CO-CH2-CH2-CO-OH with thionyl chloride and N,N-dimethylformaldehyde; and reacting the obtained compound with an unsaturated alcohol selected from the group consisting of allyl alcohol, 2-butenol, 4-pentenol, 5-hexenol, cis-2-pentenol, cis-3-hexenol, cis-4-hexenol, and trans-2-hexenol.


The study considers the moral legal and technical aspects of female sterilization and the technique used in the operation. The ligature of the fallopian tubes has some advantages over a complete hysterectomy: there is a smaller surgical risk because the operation is simple and quick and has less serious psychological effects. The operation is useful for health reasons in many different cases and especially after repeated instances of caesarean section in cases of excessive parity and as a family planning method. While it may have serious psychological consequences it should be accepted and its use should be regulated by law by establishing in hospitals ethics boards or councils to approve its use in justified cases thereby preventing abuses and protecting both patients and hospital personnel.


Eight-year medical education is an important way to train high-level medical students.Dermatological practice is a bridge that brings medical theory into clinical reality.Through cultivation different kinds of clinical thinking pattern,the evidence-based medicine thinking and scientific-research ability,eight-year medical student clinic practice of dermatology has been improved and achieved good teaching effect.


Abstract:John Marston's play, The Dutch Courtesan, presents characters with remarkably polyglot names for action set in England. My essay examines this naming practice, attending in particular to the Italian name and background of the 'Dutch' courtesan, Franceschina, familiar to theatre-goers as a traditional character in commedia dell'arte troupes and scenarios. Overall, the essay argues that Marston's deployment of foreign and polyglot names plays out and extends the ambivalences criticism has identified in the play, and in the genre of city comedy, towards hybridizations springing up in England in response to contemporary mercantile and cross-cultural relations.


International trade unionism is based on structures that for the most part were formed over a century ago, yet the trade union movement has continued to grow and develop new forms of organization and action throughout the last century, creating tensions and sometimes breaking the articulation between formal structures and trade union action. The major change to the formal structures occurred in 2006 with the foundation of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which brought together the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the christian-inspired World Confederation of Labour (WCL) along with a number of non-aligned national centres. The creation of the ITUC also marked the beginning of a new era in relationships between structures, primarily between the ITUC itself and the Global Union Federations (GUFs), which have retained their formal autonomy within a new mechanism for collaboration with each other and with the ITUC through the Council of Global Unions. It is not yet clear to what extent these new structures and formal relationships take account of the development of more informal networks and coalitions between unions in different countries and add anything substantively new to the dynamics of trade union action and organization at the international level. This paper will describe the recent evolution within the international trade union movement, culminating in the foundation of the ITUC and the Global Union Council, analyse the strategic direction of the new organization and examine the relationship between the new formal structures and the living dynamics of trade union action.


An adsorbent bonding method applied to a rotary dehumidifier belongs to the technical field of energy dehumidification. The adsorbent bonding method comprises the following steps: soaking and coating an aluminum base material in sodium silicate, drying, soaking and coating the aluminum base materials in an adsorbent, drying and solidifying at the temperature of 95 DEG C in a drying oven so as to achieve physical absorption of the adsorbent. The density of a coating layer on the aluminum base material is 0.9g per cubic centimeter to 1.2g per cubic centimeter. The adsorbent bonding method is applied to a runner, and has the advantages of high hygroscopic capacity, low regeneration temperature, high stability and the like; and with the adoption of the adsorbent bonding method, the dehumidification performance of the rotary dehumidifier is improved and the market competition capacity is enhanced.


This study analyses annual precipitation and dust storm data obtained from seven selected stations during 1960 to 2000. Monthly amounts of precipitation on upwind and downwind sides of the Altai and Khangai Mountains are studied. Time series of precipitation analysis showed that monthly amounts of precipitation on the downwind sides of the high mountains were less than those on upwind sides. Differences in precipitation between upwind and downwind sides of the Altai and Khangai Mountains averaged 66-73 ㎜, increasing up to 105 ㎜ on the far lee side of these mountain ranges. Orographic ascents and descents in the Altai and Khangai Mountains produced more rain on upwind sides and less rain on downwind sides. Rain-shadow deserts formed on the downwind sides of these high mountains, and desertification increased on the far lee side of them. Recorded dust storm frequencies were higher in these rain-shadow desert areas. Results showed that the number of dusty days were least in the mountainous areas and greatest in the Gobi Desert areas on the downwind sides of the high mountains in Mongolia.


to have fewer of these features; and those with both PT and T are either intermediary in these traits or the most complex of the types. Again, Marsh's Index of Differentiation (1967) shows PT significantly correlated (at or below the ooi level) in societies with a high index of differentiation, while those lacking both T and PT have a low index of differentiation. Furthermore, the presence of T only is related to migratory or semi-nomadic societies (for example, North America, with


During rapid, rearward, repetitive jetting, the mantle of a squid is expanded laterally by hydrodynamic pressure differences between the region of greatest girth and the refilling apertures beneath its downstream margin; this flow-induced expansion assists refilling between jet pulses. Estimates derived from measurements of pressure distributions on a model in wind tunnels indicate that about 50% of the pressure available for refilling is flow-induced at a speed of 3 m·s-1 while 90% is flow-induced at 9 m·s-1.


Recently, the attention mechanism and convolutional operation have been widely applied in Chinese Named Entity Recognition (NER) owing to their parallelization ability. However, in Chinese NER, the attention mechanism tends to model for global information and almost ignores local feature information between characters. On the contrary, convolutional operation can capture the local information while inability to solve patterns with discontinuous characters. In this paper, we propose a novel dual stream feature fusion encoding method. Specifically, we design a Dual-stream Temporal Network (DSTN), in which we use the advantages of both convolutional operation and self-attention mechanism while alleviate their respective drawbacks. DSTN can effectively capture the local and global feature information by encoding the characters. Besides, we also present a loss calculation method, namely Multi-loss, which can prevent the model from over-fitting. The experiment results on two NER datasets showed that our method has excellent performance and efficiency than most mainstream methods.


This chapter establishes the conceptual and analytic framework for the book. It relates not only to much of the existing work in evolutionary and institutional economics, but also to work in cultural science and cultural semiotics domains as well as in media convergence and transmedia studies. The central concept it first deploys is 'innovation systems' as applied in national, regional, international and sectoral contexts. It then builds on the general theory of economic evolution by Kurt Dopfer and Jason Potts and reviews the tools this theory provides to carry out a meso-level analysis of industries co-innovating and converging. It then proposes a new concept – 'cross-innovation' – to refer to the emergence of new structures and 'rules' at the boundaries of existing industries.


In this paper, we propose a fully decoupled Three Degree-of-Freedom (DOF) parallel wrist. The theory for type synthesis of fully decoupled parallel mechanism is concluded by reciprocal screw theory, and some symmetrical and asymmetrical 3-DOF parallel wrist is generated by the method. Since the Jacobian matrix of parallel wrist manipulator derived from the kinematics is constant, the mechanism is singularity-free and isotropic.


Servico Especial de Saude Publica (SESP) was created in 1942 from an agreement between the Brazilian and North American governments, having as functions, the sanitation of regions which produced primary material, such as the rubber of the Amazon region and the iron ores and mica from Vale do Rio Doce. SESP expanded in the rural Brazilian regions, where it built nets of local health units, focusing not only on the preventive medicine, but also the healing one, having as main axis, the sanitary education in the most different spaces, among them, primary schools. The proposal of this article was to present the conceptions of sanitary education, as well as the educational health activities turned specifically to schools, seeking to articulate the sespian conceptions with the subjectivity processes, which may or may not have contributed in the production of other and new identity formers. For this study, we adopted the time cut from 1942 to 1960, stage when SESP presented itself as bi sided agency, and gifted with certain regimental and budgetary autonomy in relation to the former Ministry of Education and Public Health. As historical sources, its publications at the time were used, the SESP Magazine and the SESP Bulletin.


The article brings into focus the theoretical analysis of the issues contained in two modern and current concepts of the practice and, equally, of scientific research, with their complex societal effects, medium and long term. Using milestones specific to the fundamental research, points of convergence and directions on how to improve the quality of the two approaches are highlighted, which have as finality one of the integrating dimensions of security, the human one.


The concept of the Perron complement of a nonnegative and irreducible matrix was introduced by Meyer in 1989 and was used to construct an algorithm for computing the stationary distribution vector for Markov chain.In this paper we consider the Perron complement of inverseN_0-matrices and give some related inequalities involving N_0-matrices and inverse N_0-matrices.


Because the NASA Space Station will spend approximately one-third of its orbital time in the earth's shadow, depriving it of solar energy and requiring an energy storage system to meet system demands, attention has been given to flywheel energy storage systems. These systems promise high mechanical efficiency, long life, light weight, flexible design, and easily monitored depth of discharge. An assessment is presently made of three critical technology areas: rotor materials, magnetic suspension bearings, and motor-generators for energy conversion. Conclusions are presented regarding the viability of inertial energy storage systems and of problem areas requiring further technology development efforts.


Purpose: To assess the efficacy of interferon-beta1b (INF-beta1b) in combination with favipiravir in early treatment of patients with COVD-19 pneumonia. Methods: This prospective non-controlled study was performed on admitted patients with moderate to severe COVID-19 disease to Amir-Alam hospital. The diagnosis of COVID-19 pneumonia was based on positive RT-PCR test from nasopharyngeal samples and typical spiral chest CT scan findings. At the time of this study, there was the shortage of efficient anti-COVID drugs especially "Remdesivir" due to sanction of Iran. All the patients received subcutaneous IFN-beta1b plus favipiravir. The patients with severe infection received intravenous dexamethasone. Those who underwent invasive or noninvasive mechanical ventilation, at the admission onset, were excluded from the study. Results: One hundred and eighty-two patients with moderate to severe COVID-19 pneumonia were included in this study. Among182 patients, 90 cases had moderate and 92 had severe pneumonia. Twenty-one cases with severe pneumonia and 14 cases with moderate pneumonia were transferred to ICU to receive invasive or non-invasive mechanical ventilation. The mean duration of hospital ward admission and ICU stay was 10.69±7.54 and 5.45±2.72 days, respectively. One hundred and seventy-four patients (80.7 %) recovered completely and discharged without need to ICU admission. The response rate was the same in patients with moderate and severe pneumonia. Nine cases (4.9 %) were passed away. Diabetic patients had higher mortality rates. Conclusion: This study showed the efficacy of IFN-beta1b plus favipiravir in early treatment of patients with moderate to severe COVID-19 pneumonia who did not need to mechanical ventilation.


FIELD: chemistry. SUBSTANCE: separating film is provided on one side with an anti-adhesive layer based on cured polysiloxane and has an inner layer based on a thermoplastic polymer, containing as an antistatic agent an oligomer compound, having antistatic action for three months, and a layer based on a thermoplastic polymer. EFFECT: producing a separating film in which the antistatic agent has no negative impact on anti-adhesive and mechanical properties. 16 cl, 8 tbl, 8 ex


First-line treatment of heavy menstrual bleeding is the levonorgestrel intrauterine system (Mirena ). As the fibroid is less than 3 cm and is not causing any pressure-related symptoms, this is appropriate. Women are recommended to continue with the device for at least a year and wait for a minimum of 6 cycles to assess the advantages. The copper coil can make vaginal bleeding heavier so should not be used. Because of the prior thrombotic event, the combined oral contraceptive pill and tranexamic acid would be less preferable. A hysterectomy could be considered if less invasive treatments are unsuccessful or symptoms are severe.


e21519 Background: Semaphorins regulate tumor progression, immune responses, and angiogenesis. SEMA4D was identified as a candidate proto-oncogene by a Sleeping Beauty forward genetic screen that induced osteosarcoma in mice. SEMA4D is expressed on tumors, including osteosarcoma, and in the tumor microenvironment. VX15/2503, a humanized IgG4 monoclonal antibody, binds SEMA4D, blocks receptor interaction and enhances the anti-tumor immune response in preclinical studies. This trial aimed to determine the tolerability and recommended dose of VX15/2503 in patients with relapsed/refractory solid tumors and activity in patients with osteosarcoma. Methods: Part A enrolled patients age≤ 21y with refractory solid tumors to assess the tolerability of VX15/2503 (20 mg/kg) IV every 14 days x 2 doses/cycle. The recommended dose was one that was tolerated and achieved sustained target saturation. Up to 6 additional children were enrolled to assess pharmacokinetics (PK). In part B, a two-stage design was used to assess the activity of VX15/2503 in patients with measurable, relapsed /refractory osteosarcoma. In part B1 patients > 21-30y accrued concurrently with part A; Part B2 (patients £ 21y) was initiated after the pediatric recommended dose was determined. Correlative studies including target saturation by VX15/2503 were required. Results: 18 eligible patients enrolled, 16 evaluable for toxicity. In part A (n = 12) the median (range) age was 12.5 (1-20) y. Diagnoses included osteosarcoma (8), neuroblastoma (2), other (2). No dose limiting toxicities (DLTs) were observed. In Part B1, (n = 6) median (range) age was 22.5 (22-30) y; one patient had cycle 1 DLTs (grade 3 acute kidney injury, creatinine increase, arthralgia and myalgia); a second patient had a later cycle DLT (grade 4 pericardial effusion). Given only 1/18 had a cycle 1 DLT, this did not impact dose selection. T-cell saturation by VX15/2503 was adequate and sustained in all patients. Conclusions: VX15/2503 was well tolerated at 20 mg/kg IV every 2 weeks and is the recommended dose in children, adolescents and young adults. The activity in osteosarcoma is under evaluation. Future trials combining VX15/2503 with novel agents are in development. Clinical trial information: NCT03320330.


Henri Fayol is widely considered to be the father of administrative management theory which focussed on the development of broad administrative principles that were applicable to general and higher managerial levels. Though his contribution to the field of management sciences is indispensable, it is argued that some of the fourteen principles propounded by him are rather outmoded due to the way the present-day organisations conduct their business.


The present communication deals with the study of prevalence of intestinal helminthic infection in some birds. In all 296 birds were examined and average over all prevalence as found as 156 (52.70%), nematodes 76 (25.67%) and mixed 22 (7.43%) thus in an order of nematodes > cestodes > mixed ones. Further, seasonal prevalence showed higher during summer (60.79%) followed by rainy (52.48%) and lowest during winter (37.83%) Thus the study indicated higher prevalence. of helminthic infection particularly Raillietina (cestode) and Ascaridia (nemadude) during summer season in some birds of the study area.


A covering array t‐CA (n, k, g) is a k × n array on a set of g symbols with the property that in each t × n subarray, every t × 1 column appears at least once. This paper improves many of the best known upper bounds on n for covering arrays, 2‐CA (n, k, g) with g + 1 ≤ k ≤ 2g, for g = 3 · · · 12 by a construction which in many of these cases produces a 2‐CA (n, k, g) with n = k (g − 1) + 1. The construction is an extension of an algebraic method used by Chateauneuf, Colbourn, and Kreher which uses an array and a group action on the array. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 13: 70–77, 2005.


An axisymmetric spherical cell is used to quantitatively predict the toughening of a glass particle-reinforced 2,2-bis[4(2-hydroxy-3 methacryloyloxypropyloxy)-phenyl]propane/triethylene glycol dimethacrylate (BisGMA/TEGDMA) polymer composite. The effect of a novel interphase consisting of ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene, and residual stresses on composite toughness is studied. Results show that the fracture toughness of the composite increases with increasing interphase thickness, while the Young's modulus is not reduced significantly if the interphase thickness is less than 10% of the particle diameter. The negative strain originating from the curing process reduces fracture toughness, while an imagined positive strain increases fracture toughness significantly. POLYM COMPOS., 27:360–367, 2006. © 2006 Society of Plastics Engineers


With the construction of expressways in eastern Henan, silt has been widely used as a filling material. However, the silt in this area is lacking clay, the content of active oxides in the soil is low, and the soil particles are bonded together. The property is poor, the erosion resistance is not strong, and the direct filling of the roadbed is prone to engineering problems. Due to the obvious regionality of silt in eastern Henan, this paper firstly analyzes the basic physical properties of silt in eastern Henan using compaction, compression, direct shear and particle gradation tests. The research displays that with the increase of the dosage of cement or lime, the optimal water content increases, while the maximum dry density decreases. The compressibility decreases linearly with the increase of the content. The improved soil has a significant increase in large particles. When the dosage of lime is 2%–6%, the improved soil has a good gradation, and the improved soil has a significant increase in large particles. When the dosage is 2%–6%, the improved soil has a good gradation, and the improvement effect on the cohesion is much greater than that on the internal friction angle. The comprehensive analysis of cement lime shows that the dosage of cement should be 4%–6%. In the early stage, the improvement effect of cement on silt is better than that of lime.


This paper analyzes the technical features,hardware configuration and the basic working principles of MN98-type small-current grounding devices,and expounds in detail its installation,operation and maintenance.


I am deeply conscious of the honour conferred upon me, and upon the department of which I am Director, by the invitation to give this, the third, Charles West Lecture. And in expressing my appreciation and gratitude I should like to couple it with these words of Charles West, to be found in the preface to his lectures on the Diseases of Infancy and Childhood. " It is too late to hope for more than this: that when I have passed away, those to whom my memory will still be dear may hear my name sometimes mentioned as the founder of the first Children's Hospital that ever existed in this country." In this act of grateful remembrance, let us forget the touch of sadness -almost of bitterness-in his words, and let us rather rejoice that from the devotion and labours of those who have served the great institution which he founded has sprung much of the inspiration that has fostered the cause of paediatrics in this country during the past ninety years. No man can know how far his message will travel, and it is for succeeding generations to pay tribute where tribute is due-as I do now, to Charles West. The outstanding characteristic of life during its embryonic, foetal, and childhood phases is the phenomenon of growth in mass (or weight) and in dimensions. It is accompanied by changes in the relative proportions of the component parts of the individual; by the development and elaboration of functions or skills consequent upon cellular specialization; and by a changing pattern of behaviour or reaction to internal and environmental conditions. The mode and degree of this evolution during childhood throw light upon the state of well-being of the individual, and its study is a source of great interest to all who deal with children, whether as parents, teachers, or paediatricians; but perhaps its special significance lies in the promise that it may carry for the future, when maturity succeeds to immaturity. Alexander Pope's famous line, "Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined," referred to the influence of education in childhood, but it is equally applicable to growth and development in a wider sense. A vast store of information about growth, especially in regard to lower forms of life, is available, though the ultimate nature of the growth-urge and of the forces that restrain it still remains a mystery; and numerous studies of physical growth in childhood, and more recently of physiological and psychological development, have been made, especially in America (Gesell, 1945; Gesell and Ilg, 1946; Gesell and Amatruda, 1947; Tanner, 1949), and


The study of characterization of the growth of hole in thin targets has been the subject of extensive study for the last five decades for its application in space industry. The representation of the diameter of hole in the shield or some other component of a spacecraft as a function of various projectile and target parameters helps in the assessment of its damage and hence its performance and functioning. The paper presents an exhaustive analysis of experimental data available in literature on the strike of cylindrical projectiles on thin metallic targets for the prediction of hole-diameter in the target. The discrepancies in the test data used in the analysis have been highlighted. A non-dimensional model for the prediction of hole-diameter is developed which incorporates the geometric and material properties of target as well as the projectile and the angle of strike of the projectile. The proposed model not only works well for different materials independently but also for all materials data of normal and oblique strike.


The dual origin of the circumflex artery from the main stem of the left coronary artery is rare variation of normal coronary, which is not reported in previous literature. We report a case of old man with the dual origin of the circumflex artery from the main stem of the left coronary artery.


Although it has long been recognized that perception plays the important role of providing the foundation for learning the sound pattern of a given language, most UG-based models of first language phonological acquisition tend to equate the onset of speech production with the initial state of the grammar coupled with the assumption that Universal Grammar (UG) equips the infant with all the universal phonological features and prosodic structures.. However, since a valid theory of phonological acquisition should contain a description of the initial state and perception is an absolute prerequisite for language learning, the initial state of the phonological grammar must be earlier than the onset of speech and the earliest perception data must be taken into consideration. The vast amount of infant perceptual studies has not only shown that the newborn infant is able to perceive phonetic contrasts, acoustic details, phonological units, and linguistic rhythm, but also corroborated the innate ability of infants to discriminate contrasts in any potential human language. However, starting with a study by Kuhl & Miller in 1975, which showed that chinchillas are capable of discriminating "phonemes", subsequent studies confirmed that certain non-human species are just as capable as human infants in the categorical processing of human speech. A study of the perceptual and neurobiological mechanisms of human newborns and cotton-top tamarin monkeys by Ramus et al in 2000 showed that sound boundaries perceived by monkeys occur in the same place as in humans. Furthermore, the neural lateralisation in the left hemisphere of the brain, which was thought to be specific to humans in language processing, was also found to be the case for signal processing in Japanese monkeys by Petersen et al (1978) and in adult rhesus monkeys by Hauser & Andersson (1994). Moreover, a study of celebral specialisation in four-month-old infants by Dehaene-Lambertz (2000) showed that there is no greater left hemisphere involvement in phonetic processing than in acoustic processing during the first months of life. Thus, under the assumption that UG guides the infant in perception from birth (or even before birth), the investigation of perceptual studies leads us to postulate that the initial state, which can be witnessed in the linguistic ability of the newborn infant and which distinguishes the human infant from other non-human species, does not contain any segments, but only the sense of rhythm. What the infants and nonhumans show in discrimination tasks of segments in perceptual studies must be interpreted as the ability to perceive phonetic differences, which is not specific to humans. The role played by UG in the acquisition of segments is to provide the learner with a mechanism to internalise or phonologise the phonetic representations, but at a later stage.. Since newborns are capable of distinguishing between stress-timed, syllabletimed, and mora-timed languages (e.g. Mehler et al 1988), but there seems to be no evidence for a UG default setting (trochaic or iambic) of the internalised rhythm, the role played by the basic syllable is extremely significant by virtue of it being the rhythm-bearing unit. Based purely on typological studies and transcriptions of infant productions, the CVsyllable is enshrined as the basic syllable. However, it is logically not possible for the infant to distinguish all three linguistic rhythm classes from birth if CV is the basic unit in the initial prosodic hierarchy consisting of only syllables and unbounded feet. There will be two steps between the basic CV syllable and distinguishing the three rhythm classes. The distinction between the mora-timed rhythm (with almost only CV syllables) and the stress-timed rhythm (with complex CVC syllables) must be the first step, before the syllable-timed rhythm (with simpler CVC syllables, but more complex than CV syllables) can be discriminated. Thus, this paper suggests that the basic syllable given by UG is CVX, consisting of a nucleus, an onset, and a coda constituent, X, which can accommodate either a consonant or a vowel. The plausibility of postulating CVX as the basic syllable is explored through various observations. In terms of perception, the basic CVX syllable provides a better continuum than the CV syllable in terms of sonority profile of running speech as well as a straightforward account for fuzzy syllable boundaries in young infants. Support for the basic CVX-syllable is also found in the explanations of immature physiology and neuro-motor control of young infants. Linguistic evidence for the basic CVX syllable can be found in cross-linguistic data of children's earliest productions.. The basic CV syllable would predict all early utterances to consist solely of CV syllables, before other syllable shapes may appear, depending on the syllable structure of the ambient language. However, the data show that infants produce a large variety of syllables, from monosyllables to polysyllables containing all syllable shapes. The basic CVX syllable, on the other hand, can account for the earliest words containing V, CV, VC, CVC, as well as geminates, CV-language acquiring infants producing CVCs for CV target words, acquisition of consonant extrametricality, and even predict the inability of newborns to distinguish the three rhythm classes if the stimuli consisted of only CV syllables. Thus, the paper concludes that it is more plausible to assume that the basic syllable given by UG in first language acquisition contains a coda constituent. References: Dehaene-Lambertz, G. 2000: Celebral specialization for speech and non-speech stimuli in infants. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 12 (3), 449-460. Hauser, M.D. & Andersson, K. 1994: Left hemisphere dominance for processing vocalizations in adult, but not infant rhesus monkeys: Field experiments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 91, 3946-3948. Kuhl, P.K. & Miller, J.D. 1975: Speech perception by the chinchilla: Voiced-voiceless distinction in alveolar plosive consonants. Science 190, 69-72. Mehler, J., Jusczyk, P., Lambertz, G., Halsted, N., Bertoncini, J. & Amiel-Tison, C. 1988: A precursor of language acquisition in young infants. Cognition 29, 143-178. Petersen, M.R., Beecher, M.D., Zoloth, S.R., Moody, D.B. & Stebbins, W.C. 1978: Neural lateralization of species-specific vocalizations by Japanese macaques. Science 202, 324-26. Ramus, F., Hauser, M. D., Miller, C., Morris, D. & Mehler, J. 2000: Language discrimi-nation by human newborns and by cotton-top tamarin monkeys. Science 288, 349-351.


Rob joined the Department of Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), in 1973. He was at UCI for 23 years of his life, until he left for Indiana University in 1996. We first met, and collaborated most intensively during those years, in the URBIS (Urban Information Systems) Project at the very beginning of his tenure at UCI. I came to UCI in 1967 and joined the faculty of the new Graduate School of Administration, which was in its second year of existence. In 1975, I became the director of the Public Policy Research Organization (PPRO), which is where the URBIS (Urban Information Systems) Project took place. The project had its roots in a consulting experience with the Department of Housing and Urban Development on a $30 million program aimed at helping cities to computerize. The idea was to use a systems approach and a multidisciplinary team comprised of aerospace/systems companies, research institutes, and city governments to develop prototype systems that could be transferred to other cities. The program, called USAC (Urban Systems Advisory Committee)2 for the federal interagency committee that created it, made awards to six cities to build integrated municipal information systems (IMIS).3 To maintain good will with the losing cities, a group of us were sent to all cities that competed for the awards to explain the selection process to city officials and to let them know that, in time, there would be a technology transfer program from which they could benefit. During these visits, we discovered that some of the losing cities were doing better with their computerization efforts than the chosen cities. I suggested that USAC support a research project to try to understand why this was the case, but it went nowhere because such an analysis could be a threat to the program.


In the theory of induced electrical polarization, a dilution factor, B, is a measure of the sensitivity of the apparent resistivity of an object to changes in the apparent resistivities of other objects. Intuitively, one would expect B to exhibit two characteristics: When measured far away from an object, B should be small. And, when measured inside an object, away from all interfaces, B should be close to unity. Surprisingly, the second expectation is not always met. The actual behavior becomes clear upon consideration of the action of charges within the object.


As is known, pollution (in all its forms) is most often a latent threat, particularly serious. It is not, as a rule, a sudden event, but is the result of slow accumulation of negative effects, which, unchecked and unrepaired timely touch time limits that exceed natural levels of balance, causing extremely dangerous consequences for the existence and functioning naturally.


In recent times new ways and means have been developed with the aim of making the Parties of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) better comply with their contractual obligations. This chapter first elucidates the interdependence between the structure of the treaty regime and the way of organising treaty compliance. Next, it tries to identify those elements in compliance control mechanisms that MEAs, although diverse in nature, may have in common, e.g. regarding the procedure employed and the institutions that are entrusted with exercising particular functions of compliance control. Thirdly, there is a need to identify the role that non-governmental organisations (NGOs) may play in the various stages of the compliance control procedure. Lastly, the chapter deals with the question as to how the compliance control mechanisms of the various treaty regimes might be coordinated or even pooled together, e.g. by means of clustering single mechanisms of a certain type. Keywords: compliance control mechanisms; multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs); non-governmental organisations (NGOs); treaty regimes


Support of a sustained reduction of energy resource consumption by implementing advanced energy-efficient technologies, including alternative and renewable energy sources, requires a well-reasoned selection of the cost-effective measures so it can be replicated at the «green construction» sites. One of the basic approaches in forming of the present-day policy in the ecofriendly and energy-saving trends became a scaling effect of what has been achieved from the «green construction» technologies implementation at similar sites in Moscow. The actuality and scientific novelty of this paper lie in the development of the evaluation algorithm of energy and as a result of echo-economic efficiency of different measures for energy-saving, the adaptation of the forecasting methodology for building's technical condition index application, review of the alternative and renewable energy source technologies implementation at the «green construction» sites in the Moscow region, analysis of the technical and ecological efficiency actual values of the utilized energy-saving methods and technologies. Monitoring and dispatching of a large number of separate power plants require special ways of collecting, processing, and analyzing information about the condition of water, heat, fuel, and electricity supply systems to ensure reliability and stability of the equipment functioning. Failures necessitate maintenance works at facilities by way of equipment repair as well as replacement. The consumers may impose penalties on the heat supply company for violating heat energy supply obligations as well as on the building's owner for incorrect equipment maintenance. The objective of this paper is to determine an approach that helps to develop a software program, based on the neural network programming, to calculate the forecasting composite index of building's energy system, «green construction» facilities ecological and economic efficiency examination and feasibility evaluation of their further replication in Moscow region.


A recently described pituitary chondrocyte growth factor (CGF) is a contaminant of several related glycoprotein hormones (TSH, LH and HCG). Chondrocytes were cultured from rabbits two to three months old. Bovine TSH (NIH) 69.5 μg/ml, used as the source of CGF, reduced the generation time from 16 to 10 hours through a virtual effacement of the G1 period. Incorporation of 3H‐thymidine declined rapidly after 48 hours from maximal values (control 300 cpm/μg DNA; CGF, 679). Total DNA accumulated thereafter until 116 hours when the figures were 36 and 98 μg/flask, respectively. Little growth response occurred in spinner cultures. CGF lowered plating efficiency from 4.5 to 2.3%. The stimulatory effect diminished when CGF was removed from the medium. The treated cells were smaller and contained less protein and RNA than controls. They synthesized smaller quantitites of sulfated mucopolysaccharides (chondroitin sulfates 4,6 and doubly sulfated chondroitin as well as some dermatan sulfate) but hyaluronate production was not diminished.


Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection has been called a silent epidemic (1). Millions of Americans infected with HCV during the 1960s through 1980s were not recognized as such until after 1989, when diagnostic tests became available. The baby-boom generation's high prevalence of infection led to recommendations for universal screening for everyone born between 1945 and 1965 (2). Although these recommendations are 5 years old, we still have a long way to go before all those infected are identified and presented with the option of curative, albeit expensive, therapy. Moreover, surveys on which prevalence estimates were based, such as NHANES (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) (3), included only persons willing to respond and participate and left out a growing population at risk for more recent infection (4). Another silent epidemic of HCV has been occurring as a syndemic within the outbreak of opioid and injection drug use. The lack of diagnostic tests does not account for the silence associated with this epidemic, although underresourced public health surveillance explains much of the delayed recognition. The consequences of this epidemic in a younger generation are more challenging than in baby boomers because transmission of the virus is ongoing; the population is hard to reach and has less access to, or interaction with, health care; and the demand for substance use treatment and associated services is great, although the supply is limited. The benefits of prevention, medical care, and treatment for the individual and society are evident. How to institute them effectively is not. The ongoing HCV epidemic in persons younger than 30 years was first identified primarily through public health surveillance (57). Unlike the almost 2:1 ratio of men to women among baby boomers with HCV infection, cases in younger people occur with closer gender parity. Thus, more children are being born to HCV-infected mothers than at any time since HCV became detectable. Ly and colleagues, in their current Annals report (8), used data from national surveillance and a large diagnostic testing laboratory to explore the implications of the current epidemic in reproductive-aged women and their babies. They estimate that approximately 29000 women with HCV infection give birth each year, resulting in approximately 1700 infected infants. They note that only 200 infections in children aged 2 to 13 years are reported to public health surveillance each year, so many cases go unrecognized. Although the rate ascribed to vertical transmission of HCV (5.8%) is much lower than the 90% for hepatitis B virus (HBV), the number of children with chronic HCV infection may now be greater than that of children with chronic HBV infection because of the lack of recognition and prevention of maternal HCV infection, as well as the effectiveness of public health programs to control perinatal HBV with vaccine and immune globulin. Of course, babies were born to women with HCV infection in the 1960s through 1980s, but no tests were available to diagnose those cases. Presumably, the children of that era in whom the infection did not clear are now among the adults whose ages fall between the 2 epidemic age cohorts. Today, however, recognizing the infection in pregnant women and neonates is possible, and clinical trials of antiviral therapy may show safety and efficacy in pregnant women and in children. Rather than silence, HCV infection calls out for public health action directed at all aspects of the epidemic, including consideration of screening pregnant women. At the very least, screening of pregnant women for HCV infection risk factors, as well as risk-based testing, requires more emphasis. Another issue in need of attention is the lack of authoritative, consensus-based recommendations for the identification, testing, and case management of newborns of infected mothers. A population-based study in Philadelphia revealed that among 537 babies born to HCV-infected mothers in 2011 through 2013, only 84 (16%) had HCV laboratory results reported by at least 20 months of age (9). A recent report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine proposes eliminating the public health problem of HBV and HCV infection (10). Much work lies ahead to eradicate HCV, starting with resources for public health surveillance to monitor incidence and prevalence, and to fully characterize the infection in the population. Strategies to effectively prevent or cure infection in reproductive-aged women and their sexual and needle-sharing partners are critical. The public will be best protected from the consequences of HCV infection only if accurate surveillance data are available to guide prevention and care, innovative and effective treatment and medical care for substance use disorder are delivered to an often marginalized population, and evidence-based harm reduction interventions are deployed.


This paper introduced the development status and existing problems of sprout vegetables in Heilongjiang province,and put forward related development countermeasures,including establishing production cooperatives,promoting standardized and large-scale production,strengthening market cultivation and developing balcony gardening of sprout vegetables,to solve the problems of vegetable supply and nutrition structure in the cold area of Heilongjiang province.


Objective:To discuss the diagnosisand treatment of the 30 cases of pregnant women with uterine fibroids. Methods:Analyse the clinical data of 30 patients retrospectiveiy. Results:8 cases of patients were vaginal delivery; cesarean section delivery in parallel with hysteromyomectomy were 21 cases;1 case was multiple fibroids and the diameters were 5 cm,with more bleeding and a larger wound during the operation d,so we took total hysterectomy to avoid infection; 1 case of cervical fibroids,which did not be removed in the cesarean section because of its special position. Conclusion:The uterine fibroids have significant impact on fertility,pregnancy with uterine fibroids are high-risk pregnancy which should arouse enough attention and aggressive treatment,cesarean section in parallel with hysteromyomectomy is a positive and practical way to get better clinical effect.


In a number of industrial, space, or mobile applications, reaction forces and moments transmitted by a manipulator to its base are undesirable. In this paper, we analyze the problem offorce and torque transmission in robotic systems, and propose design and planning methods that can eliminate it, or reduce it. Based on force and moment transmission analysis, a three DOF redundant manipulator design is selected. Dynamic reaction forces are eliminated by force balancing. Reaction moments are eliminated by following reactionless paths, whose planning is simplified by rendering the dynamics configuration-invariant. Reactionless Workspaces are defined in which any end-effector path can result in zero dynamic reactions. An example is used to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed methods. An important advantage of these methods is that the manipulator can be used either as a redundant, or as a reduced DOF reactionless system.


As a major health problem, traumatic brain injury has received increasing attention in recent years. Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is the representative of the vast majority of traumatic brain injury. However, most studies have focused on moderate to severe traumatic brain injury. According to reports, mTBI patients during the acute period have the most prominent cognitive disorders. Hence, we collected the functional magnetic resonance imaging data in resting-state (rsfMRI) of the acute-mTBI patients and the healthy controls to explore the differences of brain functional connectivity between them. We chose dynamic functional connectivity in resting-state as features and performed feature selection/extraction. Finally, the classifier based on machine learning methods achieved a good classification accuracy of 85.48%. Most of the extracted brain regions of interest (ROIs) with high identification power belong to the sensorimotor and functional connectivities extracted within the sensorimotor has the highest proportion which suggested the sensorimotor may be the most severely damaged part of mTBI patients in the acute stage.


Abstract: A review is presented on the effects of the molecular structure of polymers on their properties. The influence of such variables as molecular weight, macromolecular conformation and crystallisation, amorphous states and the glass transition temperature are discussed. Biphasic systems are explored and the properties of thermoplastic and thermosetting polymers are investigated.


During the last decade, the field of sensors has known a deep reorganization, which is mostly due to the spectacular developments in microelectronics and communication. Among the variety of sensors which take advantage of this approach, the ultrasonic velocity meter used for liquid flow measurements, is ready to provide specific conditions required by the smart sensor concept. This paper first presents a brief outline of the general principle of liquid flow measurements by ultrasonics, and problems of flow measurement. We propose an original ultrasonic method for liquids flow measurement. In this method we use two pairs of ultrasonic emitter-receivers, which are arranged in the proper positions and directions. In this case, to determine the liquid flow velocity, a real time on-line analysis taking into account the geometries of the hydraulic system, is applied to the obtained ultrasonic data. The usefulness of this method is confirmed by experiments that have been carried out. The observed results are presented. Finally, to answer the challenge imposed by the smart sensor concept, we make use of local processing units allowing the implementation of specific and interactive functions, and increasing in this way the global possibilities of the suggested ultrasonic flowmeter.


>1-The biological elements, proposed by the WFD as quality elements for the classification of ecological status of the transitional waters are: composition, abundance and biomass of phytoplankton;composition and abundance of other aquatic flora (i.e. macroalgae and angiosperms); composition and abundance of benthic invertebrate fauna; composition and abundance of fish fauna 2-Although the directive proposed these biological elements, it doesn't provide clear indication on the "biocriteria" to achieve. WFD suggested that ecosystem health should be defined by comparison to reference conditions 3 - Recently, there has been a growing interest and need for sound and robust ecological indices to evaluate transitional ecosystem status and condition, mainly under the scope of the Water Framework Directive implementation 4-A good biotic index should reflect the biological integrity; respond to environmental stresses in monotonic way; be measurable with low error; be cost-effective; be not invasive (i.e. the measure methods do not significantly disturb or alter habitats and biota) 5-Several indices have been developed for environmental quality assessment using macrobenthic assemblages, ranging from the comparison of a single metric to complex multivariate analyses Some indices were developed for fish assemblages and for macrophytes, but only few indices were proposed considering the phytoplankton 6-In this report, we shown and compare several biotic indices used for evaluating ecological status of transitional water ecosystems using the five biological quality elements.


Introduction: Asthma remains a significant risk to patients and costs to healthcare systems. Data on length of stay and time to recovery is important for prognosis, management of inpatient beds and follow up. Objective: We assessed physiological and biochemical factors affecting length of stay (LOS) and time to recovery on admissions for acute asthma. Methods: Adults admitted with asthma exacerbations were studied from 2 hospitals in Hampshire, UK. Patients were assessed at admission for symptoms, observations, exhaled NO and blood tests including blood count, coagulation (APTT, PT) and cytokines (IL5, IL6, IL8, IL12, IL13, IL17A, IFNg, TNFa, RANTES, eotaxin). Results were explored using correlation coefficients and subsequently analysed in a multivariate regression model. Results: 126 patients were recruited of which 75.4% were female. Mean age was 40.0 (SD 14.4) and mean length of stay 3.98 (SD 2.65) days. In multivariate analysis, length of stay was significantly associated with increasing age(p=0.003), symptoms of wheeze(p=0.006), lower APTR(p=0.003) and increased oxygen requirement on arrival(p=0.01). Delayed recovery was associated with serum IL-12 over 1pg/mL on admission(HR for recovery 0.36, p=0.005) . Conclusion: These results demonstrate that older, wheezing patients with oxygen requirements are likely to remain in hospital longer. Markers of increased coagulation in the intrinsic pathway also correlate with increased length of stay. Detectable IL-12 in serum, favouring a Th1 response,correlates with slower recovery, possibly due to poor response to corticosteroid therapy.


This paper introduces a kind of checking device used to monitor the running situation of a real-time control system.The new checking device uses high frequency signal generator and shift register detection circuit to ensure monitoring function.The control circuit will drive the protection circuit effectively to achieve protection timely when malfunction happens.This circuit has advantages such as tunable warning time,fast response,no single running system,hardware-only testing etc.which can improve the system reliability.This device is used in the hydro-pneumatic suspension testing system to improve the system's real-time safety and reliability so that the new technology presents a promising potential of the system energy saving.


structure of this organization was unique: all other exchanges were owned and controlled by their members. Only London had a separate group of proprietors who owned the premises and drew their income from user fees. Thus self-interest did not dictate limitations on the size of the membership, which reached as high as 5,000 by the First World War; as a result, the bylaws of the LSE were shaped by hundreds of small brokerages, often oneor two-person operations. As early as 1909, members were required to become either brokers, who dealt as agents, or jobbers acting as principals, from whom shares were purchased. In 1912, minimum commissions were introduced to ensure against cutthroat competition. And those rules endured: throughout the twentieth century, the archetypical London broker remained the upper-class twit, relying upon family and school connections to provide enough contacts with well-to-do friends and relatives to earn a handsome living in a few hours each morning, capped off by a bottle or two of good claret at luncheon before boarding the commuter train for home. Not even the end of foreign exchange controls in 1979 and the "Big Bang" of deregulation in 1986 could reverse the rot of decades.


This paper proposes a 3D multimedia presentation tool that allows the user to manipulate intuitively only through the voice input and the gesture input without using a standard keyboard or a mouse device. The authors developed this system as a presentation tool to be used in a presentation room equipped a large screen like an exhibition room in a museum because, in such a presentation environment, it is better to use voice commands and the gesture pointing input rather than using a keyboard or a mouse device. This system was developed using IntelligentBox, which is a component-based 3D graphics software development system. IntelligentBox has already provided various types of 3D visible, reactive functional components called boxes, e.g., a voice input component and various multimedia handling components. IntelligentBox also provides a dynamic data linkage mechanism called slot-connection that allows the user to develop 3D graphics applications by combining already existing boxes through direct manipulations on a computer screen. Using IntelligentBox, the 3D multimedia presentation tool proposed in this paper was also developed as combined components only through direct manipulations on a computer screen. The authors have already proposed a 3D multimedia presentation tool using a stage metaphor and its voice input interface. This time, we extended the system to make it accept the user gesture input besides voice commands. This paper explains details of the proposed 3D multimedia presentation tool and especially describes its component-based voice and gesture input interfaces.


Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has had a significant effect on every country's economy, particularly in the education sector. Some of the consequences include lockdowns, quarantines, social distancing and institutional closures. Adapting and adjusting to new learning standards was difficult due to a variety of demographic backgrounds among students, especially adult learners. Thus, the current research aims to investigate characteristics that contribute to adult adjustment and their influence on their knowledge of online courses. A quantitative study was done among 235 respondents in a Malaysian independent body namely the Malaysian Financial Planning Council located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Identifying the right elements will assist the training facility in giving the right and quality training to its audience.


Audiovisual sector is an important factor in American,
because this sector gives growing revenue more than other
sectors like automotive industry, transportation,
manufacturing and petrochemicals. American has interest for
growing industry that comfortable with imperialism system
as an American's ideology. In the other hand, for developing
countries including Indonesian as importer products
American have the amazing cultural identities. How
struggle's Indonesian defend cultural identities and what
Indonesian's cultural diversity can empower and can counter
American products blooding.
Key words: cultural identity, audiovisual sector, free trade


The factors causing the risk of purchasing process of precious metal raw material in large steel enterprise were various,but the drastic price fluctuation of itself was one of the main reasons.To control the purchasing risk caused by the drastic price fluctuation of precious metal raw material more effectively,each kind of precious metal raw material was regarded as a financial investment tool.Then,a financial tool so called Conditional Value at Risk(CVaR) was introduced and improved to construct a decision-making model based on risk control,which aimed to optimize the excepted revenue of raw material purchasing and the risk prevention jointly.At last,a concrete example from a large steel enterprise was applied to validate superiority of the established model.


Summary:  The ultimate goal of islet transplantation is to completely correct the diabetic state from an unlimited donor source, without the need for chronic immunosuppressive drug therapy. Although islet transplantation provides an opportunity to develop innovative strategies for tolerance in the clinic, both alloimmune and autoimmune barriers must be controlled, if stable graft function is to be maintained long‐term. After islet extraction from the pancreas, the cellular graft may be stored in tissue culture or cryopreserved for banking, providing an opportunity not only to optimally condition the recipient but also to allow in vitro immunologic manipulation of the graft before transplantation, unlike solid organ grafts. As such, islets may be considered a 'special case.' Remarkable progress has occurred in the last three years, with dramatic improvements in outcomes after clinical islet transplantation. The introduction of a steroid‐free, sirolimus‐based, anti‐rejection protocol and islets prepared from two (or rarely three) donors led to high rates of insulin independence. The 'Edmonton Protocol' has been successfully replicated by other centers in an international multicenter trial. A number of key refinements in pancreas transportation, processing, purification on non‐ficoll‐based media, storage of islets in culture for two days and newer immunological conditioning and induction therapies have led to continued advancement through extensive collaboration between key centers. This review outlines the historical development of islet transplantation over the past 30 years, provides an update on current clinical outcomes, and summarizes a series of unique opportunities for development and early testing of tolerance protocols in patients.


"I am not a Basque scholar or even a Basque writer; I am just a Basque who writes." In this humble way Robert Laxalt (1923-2001), son of Basque immigrants and one of Nevada's most renowned authors, defined himself whenever I asked him about his literary contributions to the rise of visibility of Basque immigrants in the United States or to the expansion of Basque studies in this country. Laxalt's extreme humility cannot hide his impressive literary career, consisting of seventeen books that won him international acclaim. He was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in fiction. In fact, in considering Laxalt's work, we cannot forget that Robert Laxalt was not just "a Basque who wrote," but the most talented American author writing on the experience of Basques both in the United States and in Europe. Any discussion of Laxalt's role as the leading American literary interpreter of the Basques should inevitably begin with the impact of his Sweet Promised Land on the general image of Basques in America. The publication in 1957 of this intimate tale of immigration, dealing mainly with the return trip of the author's father (Dominique) to his Basque homeland in the Pyrenees mountains after forty-seven years as a sheepherder in Nevada, put an end to the invisibility of the Basques in America. The instantaneous success of the book as a Basque-American epic became a fundamental event in the process of vindication of the figure of the immigrant Basque sheepherder in America. This new visibility of the Basques after Sweet Promised Land also extended to the American literary field where, until then, Basques had been overlooked as heroes and protagonists. As William A. Douglass and Jon Bilbao have noted, The occupational specialization of the Basques isolated them physically from their neighbors and identified them with one of the least prestigious activities in the region's economy. Consequently, the Basques remained a "phantom-like" element within the society of the American West, largely ignored by the literati. (1975: 367) Sweet Promised Land has been often described as an intimate biography or as an affectionate memoir of a son to his father. The approach taken by Laxalt to portray his father's life pervades the whole book and contributes to its success. Readers feel attracted by Laxalt's personal and direct statements about his father and the fact that it is the true story of a man viewed through the eyes of his son, though some incidents in the book may have been somewhat fictionalized. However, Sweet Promised Land must be read as the story not only of Dominique Laxalt, but of many Basque immigrants in the American West. The book goes beyond its personal level to embody the experience of Basque immigrants in the United States. These immigrants identified with Dominique's story and felt encouraged to display their ethnic pride at a time, previous to the "roots" phenomenon, in which Basques were neither well-known nor popular in America. At the same time, the wider public in the United States discovered Basques, "they discovered this romantic sheepherder thing," in Douglass's words (Rio 1999a: 42). Although the book deals mainly with the way of life of Basque sheepmen in the American West, their experiences can be regarded as a symbol of the struggle of American immigrants in general. The story works as a classic tale of immigration, where the immigrant's experience is portrayed by Laxalt as a process divided into three basic stages: the immigrant's decision to abandon his homeland to escape from poverty and/or oppression, his fight for acceptance in the new country and his impossible return to his native land once the assimilation process is over. Throughout these different stages Laxalt shows his deeply felt concern with the modern individual's need for meaning, for a sense of place and identity. Sweet Promised Land primarily emphasizes the challenges that immigrants faced in America and their often fruitless attempts to recapture the past. …