In this paper, we use data from a longitudinal study to draw a realistic picture of the housing conditions and future potential of large housing estates with a focus on demographic change. In doing so, we plead for a broader look at demographic dynamics: going beyond ageing and population loss to encompass changes of household size and compositions or diverse mobility patterns. Our empirical results, generated in the large housing estate of Leipzig-Grünau in eastern Germany, show huge changes in the demographic characteristics of estate residents within just 30 years, especially faster aging, a steep decline in household size, and a rapidly growing share of one-person households. Years of outmigration have caused a massive overall population loss that only recently came to a halt. Nevertheless, we are also able to provide evidence that a wide range of demographic groups still live in this estate and appreciate the living conditions in terms of housing, service facilities and recreation areas. The changes in household and age structures produce particular housing demands (appropriate apartments and services), which could be broadly satisfied within the large housing estate due to existing diverse residential offers for various housing needs. In conclusion, we argue that large housing estates have an important but underestimated potential to meet housing demand under the conditions of demographic change. Furthermore, the demographic challenges discussed here can be seen as important for other residential areas too. English title: Large Housing Estates as a Flexible Space for Demographic Change – Selected results of a long-term study of the large housing estates of Leipzig-Grünau focusing on the potential of an underestimated type of neighborhood


A method for modeling permanent magnet motors including saturation effects on cogging and motive torque is described. This method rivals the accuracy of finite element analyses but solves 4–5 orders of magnitude faster, depending on several factors. Simulation results match well with laboratory measurements.


This paper presents field measurements of the shaft shear stress and the horizontal stress made during the installation of a 73mm diameter instrumented pile in a heavily over-consolidated dense sand deposit. The measurements are compared with Cone Penetration Test (CPT) measurements to investigate the causes of friction fatigue on displacement piles in sand.


It was analyzed the influence of density and depth of sowing in the growth of plants in the production of seedlings in the variety of San Andrea. There were applied three densities of sowing (150 g seeds/m2, 250 g seeds/m2 and 300 g seeds/m2) and two depths of sowing (0.5 cm long and 2-3 cm) in a randomized block system, in three repetitions. The growth of plants was measured one week after sowing (first measurement) two weeks after sowing (second measurement) and three weeks after sowing (third measure). The results showed that sowing seeds with 250 g /m2 provides plants with the best growth. On average, the plants with variant 250 g seeds/m2 have for 12,28 % greater length of root and 6,10 % higher in relation to the stem of the plants with variant 300 g seeds/m2. The production of the dry weight of the plants with variant 250 g seeds/m2 was about 19,18 % higher compared to variant seed 300 g/m2. Sowing depth 0,5 cm resulted in improved plants in terms of sowing depth 2-3 cm. On average, sowing with 0,5 cm depth resulted in 29,83 % higher root plant compared with sowing 2-3 cm depth of sowing. Sowing depth 2-3 cm resulted in a lengthening of the stem to 1,22 % and reduced the dry weight of 30,14 % compared to the sowing depth 0,5 cm.

Keywords: transplanted rice, seeding density, seeding depth, seedling.


Heat pipe is well known device which is used to heat transfer phase-change of working fluid. Pulsating heat pipe (PHP) is special type of heat pipe which heat transfer by pulsating movement of working fluid. Article deals about operating activity and thermal performance measurement of this special heat pipe. Operating activity visualization of PHP was performed with PHP made from glass. The two types of PHPs were made. The first PHP has internal diameter of tube 1 mm, second PHP has internal diameter of tube 1.5 mm and both PHPs have eleven meanders. The working fluids used in PHP were water and Fluorinert FC-72. These fluids were chose for their different thermo-physical properties and the visualization observe formation of liquid and vapour phase working fluid during filling process and working operation.Next, the article describes thermal performance measurement of PHP depending on working fluid amount and heat source temperature. Measurement was performed with PHP made from copper tube with inner diameter 1.5 mm curved to the twenty one meanders and filled with water. The results give us image about formation and distribution of working fluid in pulsating heat pipe and about influence of working fluid amount on the heat transfer ability of pulsating heat pipe.


The fuel efficiency of a modern diesel engine has decreased due to the recent revisions to emission standards. For an engine fuel economy, the engine speed is to be optimum for an exact throttle opening (TO) position. This work presents an analysis of throttle opening variation impact on a multi-cylinder, direct injection diesel engine with the aid of Second Law of thermodynamics. For this purpose, the engine is run for different throttle openings with several load and speed variations. At a steady engine loading condition, variation in the throttle openings has resulted in different engine speeds. The Second Law analysis, also called 'Exergy' analysis, is performed for these different engine speeds at their throttle positions. The Second Law analysis includes brake work, coolant heat transfer, exhaust losses, exergy efficiency, and airfuel ratio. The availability analysis is performed for 70%, 80%, and 90% loads of engine maximum power condition with 50%, 75%, and 100% TO variations. The data are recorded using a computerized engine test unit. Results indicate that the optimum engine operating conditions for 70%, 80% and 90% engine loads are 2000 rpm at 50% TO, 2300 rpm at 75% TO and 3250 rpm at 100% TO respectively.Copyright © 2009 by ASME


Diacylglycerol kinase (DGK) is a lipid kinase to convert DG to phosphatidic acid. Recently, we have reported that a-tocopherol (αToc) and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) activate DGKα via 67kDa laminin receptor (67LR), resulting in improvement of diabetic nephropathy. Interestingly, αToc directly binds to 67LR at different site for EGCG, suggesting unknown binding site of αToc in 67LR. Furthermore, 67LR is believed to be concentrated in lipid raft as homo dimer. However, palmitoylation of 67LR hasn't been reported, although many proteins localized in raft are palmitoylated. Therefore, we investigated αToc binding site of 67LR and palmitoylation of 67LR with its physiological meaning in the activation of DGKα. We identified the αToc binding site in 67LR using hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry, and found both EGCG and αToc treatment induced palmitoylation with DGKα translocation (activation). A time course of αToc-induced palmitoylation was similar with DGKα translocation. A point mutation at Cys of 67LR abolished both 67LR palmitoylation and DGKα activation. These results indicate that palmitoylation of 67LR is necessary for the activation of DGKα by αToc or EGCG, suggested that, as well as DGKα, 67LR and its palmitoylating enzyme are pharmaceutical targets


This paper looks at the author's view as a practice teacher and educator that the revisions of Paper 30 and 26.3 resulting in the Assured Quality documents has had a detrimental effect on social work training. The paper argues that three fundamental areas are adversely affected, namely anti-oppressive practice, direct observation of student's practice and the integration of theory and practice. The author believes that the changes have resulted in social workers improper understanding of the theories underpinning social work in the same way that CQSW produced theoretically illiterate practitioners.


Computational population generation produces individual records using Monte-Carlo techniques. Generation rules for each individual characteristic potentially depend on other characteristics which create a dependency tree for computing each individual. In addition evolutionary computation objectives define selection criteria of individuals to match aggregate population goals. These elements repeat many times when creating new populations, therefore code reusability is important to simplify data entry. Moreover it allows exchanging computational building blocks to create simulation variations for sensitivity analysis or hypothesis testing which are essential for reference modeling. This paper describes an object oriented approach where population building blocks can be inherited to build a population that later can be rebuilt with variations. The paper describes the modular modeling theory with some basic examples.


We construct stimulated Raman scattering systems with damping which can be solved by the inverse scattering transform with a variable spectral parameter, and present the corresponding linear systems. We also analyse the non-standard properties of the damped soliton solution; amplitude, speed, and form change as the soliton propagates through a medium.


Earlier attempts to justify intra-party democracy have failed. Either they have been inconsistent with democratic premises, or those premises have been flawed in the first place. This article develops a viable defence for internally democratic parties based on the deliberative theory of democracy. Parties should be internally democratic in order to provide a vertical linkage between different deliberating spheres and a horizontal linkage between competing issues. In addition, intra-party democracy makes policy agenda-setting accountable to the public and provides a second-order principle from which to justify exceptions from internally democratic practices when deemed necessary. The article finally considers some of the institutional practices parties could adopt in order to approximate this deliberative ideal.


Tetraspanin family proteins form a rigid membrane structure called tetraspanin-enriched microdomain (TEM) on the plasma membrane and regulate multiple cellular processes. CD82, a tetraspanin protein, is highly expressed in various immune cells, but its role in immune responses has been poorly understood. In this study, we investigated the role of CD82 in T cells using CD82 knock-out (KO) mice. At steady state, CD82 KO mice had less memory CD8+ T cells in secondary lymphoid organs compared to wild type mice, which became more pronounced in aged mice. Upon in vitro T cell receptor (TCR) stimulation, CD82 KO CD8+ T cells showed defects in phosphorylation of TCR downstream signaling molecules, activation marker expression, proliferation, and cytokine production. By confocal immunofluorescence imaging, we found that TCR stimulation-induced translocation of the microtubule organizing center and formation of the immunological synapse was impaired in CD82 KO T cells. CD82 seems to recruit T cell polarity-regulating molecules such as Scribble via the PDZ domain-binding motif located in its C-terminus and mediate the T cell polarization. In association with the defective CD8+ T cell activation caused by CD82 deficiency, CD82 KO CD8+ T cells show less efficient anti-tumor immune responses than wild-type cells when transferred to tumor-bearing mice. Collectively, our study demonstrates that CD82 mediates the T cell polarization and is required for the optimal CD8+ T cell effector function.


As the economic downturn in America takes its toll on law school applications, analysts predict that law schools will admit candidates with low performance indicators. Reports of decreasing law school entrance exam takers, dwindling applications and even declining credentials of college graduates who take the law school admissions test may signal an increasing number of students who enter the legal academy as "at-risk" learners. These law students will not only swell the rolls of traditional academic support programs, but their academic and professional needs may place them at risk in the legal job market. As underperforming students garner attention from academic support faculty to promote their scholastic success, they are left behind in areas key to their professional success. These vulnerable law students require experiential learning opportunities to meet current demands for "practice-ready" law school graduates who need minimal training. Unfortunately, many law schools exclude underperforming students from legal clinics, and other experiential learning courses, that offer skills training in a legal practice setting. Arguably, academic support students require more skills training courses than their high performing peers whose scholastic achievements enhance their employment prospects.This Article addresses the anticipated surge of at-risk and underperforming law students who will be ineligible for law school clinics and externship placements. The authors explore the call for law schools to yield more practice-ready law graduates, despite the new reality that many matriculates will likely fall short of academic standards. In particular, the authors discuss the urgency surrounding expanded experiential course offerings in light of two recent proposals to revise law school accreditation standards. To ease this tension, this article proposes a union of experiential learning and academic support that enables law schools to leave no law student behind in practice skills training. The article details how an innovative course, In-House Clinical Externship, represents the intersection of experiential learning and academic support pedagogy to satisfy mounting appeals for curricular reform to produces the next wave of practice-ready law graduates.


We introduce a powerful technique to make classifiers more reliable and versatile. Background Check equips classifiers with the ability to assess the difference of unlabelled test data from the training data. In particular, Background Check gives classifiers the capability to (i) perform cautious classification with a reject option, (ii) identify outliers, and (iii) better assess the confidence in their predictions. We derive the method from first principles and consider four particular relationships between background and foreground distributions. One of these assumes an affine relationship with two parameters, and we show how this bivariate parameter space naturally interpolates between the above capabilities. We demonstrate the versatility of the approach by comparing it experimentally with published special-purpose solutions for outlier detection and confident classification on 41 benchmark datasets. Results show that Background Check can match and in many cases surpass the performances of specialised approaches.


Algoritmus controly ohrievaneho masivneho materialu In numerous technological processes a change on the output follows change on the input pending specific time. This time is called dead time and if this time is too large, it causes problems in the control. This contribution is aimed at analyzing the algorithms of discreet regulation of the systems with dead time. Verified were classical PID regulator and a regulator using Dead Beat method. The control was also tried with Dead interval method. The regulators were tested by simulation and in the electrical laboratory furnace. The task was to control the temperature inside the material heated by furnace power.


The invention discloses a novel tunnel testing device with a flight function, and relates to the field of tunnel testing equipment. The novel tunnel testing device comprises an aircraft model, a storage battery, a rotary connector, a camera, a transmitting and receiving module and a remote controller, wherein the storage battery is arranged inside the aircraft model; the rotary connector is mounted at the head of the aircraft model; the camera is movably mounted in the rotary connector; the transmitting and receiving module is also arranged inside the aircraft model; the remote controller is wirelessly connected with the transmitting and receiving module; an anti-vibration pad is arranged on the outer surface of the aircraft model. The novel tunnel testing device can overcome defects in the prior art, and is simple in structure, easy to manufacture, and low in processing cost; moreover, the shooting angle of the camera can be controlled remotely.


We report in this paper in detail on the excited-state dynamics of both metal-free phthalocyanine (H2Pc) and cobalt phthalocyanine (CoPc) thin films measured by pump-and-probe experiments. Samples are excited by femtosecond laser pulses at two different photon energies, which correspond to the two maxima of the Q-band absorption. Using a test beam, we measure the differential transmission ΔT(t)/T dynamics that is spectrally resolved in the range from 1.570 to 2.470 eV (790−502 nm). When compared to a H2Pc sample, the CoPc films show a faster dynamics, which has one very fast contribution on a subpicosecond time scale, a slower part with a time constant of several picoseconds, and a subnanosecond contribution. Since the observed dynamics is independent of excitation intensity, fast exciton−exciton annihilation can be excluded for our measurements. Therefore, we attribute the observed ultrafast dynamics in CoPc to the presence of the Co atoms. In the manifold of long-living triplet states, Co atoms are resp...


The purpose of this study was to assess the ability of older adults (ages 55–69) to access, use, and understand online health information, known as eHealth literacy skills. Forty-eight older adults (mean age range = 60–65 years) participated. Participants' expressed low confidence in their perceived ability to evaluate the quality of health web sites (48%, n = 23) and apply the information retrieved in making health-related decisions (52%, n = 25). Potential avenues for promoting user confidence to retrieve trustworthy health information could support the eHealth literacy skills in this population.


Micellar COMPOSITIONS OF BLOCK COPOLYMERS CONTAINING POLIETER BIOLOGICAL AGENTS ANTI-TUMOR as drugs or antibiotics, which are used as drug delivery SYSTEMS FOR TISSUE SPECIFIC MARKED. The compositions are useful for administration BIOLOGICAL AGENTS IN THE BRAIN.


Objective:To study the influence on the subpopulations of T lymphocyte in mice administrated Fu fang hu zhang jiao nang(FHZ).Methods:Adopt 10% xanthine i.p.in mice to duplicate hyperuricemia model,and administrate drugs for 6 days beforehand.Then,to detect serum urate concentration by uricase chromatometry and the percent of CD+3、CD+4、CD+8 and CD+4/CD+8 ratio of spleen T lymphocytes by monochromic flow cytometry(FCM).Results:5.0%,2.5%,1.25% FHZ group and allopurinol group had significant differentiation respectively compared with model group(P0.01,n =8),and were lower than model group,respectively.And 5.0%,2.5% FHZ group had significant differentiation respectively compared with allopurinol group.It denoted that different dosage FHZ can respectively reduce serum urine content in hyperuricemia of mice,and even be lower than normal level.In contrast,there were no significant differences between allopurinol group,model group and normal group in the percentage of CD+3、CD+4、CD+8 cells and CD+4/CD+8 ratio in spleen lymphocytes,nor were there significant differences between normal group,model group,allopurinol group and 5% FHZ group in the percent of CD+3、CD+4、CD+8 cells or CD+4/CD+8 ratio of spleen lymphocytes.Conclusion:FHZ can obviously reduce serum urine concentration.But acute hyperuricemia in mice and FHZ do not have significant influence in spleen T lymphocyte subpopulations


This work investigates the effect of the slot opening on the torque and efficiency of a single-phase induction motor. The time-stepping finite element method is used to solve the electromagnetic coupled field in a single-phase induction motor, and then, the Maxwell stress tensor is used to investigate the mechanism of torque production and, eventually, to improve the efficiency. It shows that torque is produced in the vicinity of the slot opening as the rotating magnetic field revolves. It also shows that double layer slots, which have the main and auxiliary windings together, produce a significant amount of negative torque. This research designs the slots of the stator by controlling the slot opening as well as by appropriately introducing slot closure in such a way as to minimize negative torque so that it increases the efficiency of a single-phase induction motor.


Introduction: The gestational trophoblastic disease (GTD) is a group of pregnancy related tumours
encompassing complete and partial mole, invasive moles, choriocarcinomas and placental site trophoblastic
tumours. Amongst all GTD, hydatidiform moles are the most common form. Hydatidiform mole is a
relatively common gynecological condition which could presents like spontaneous abortion, one of the
most common gynecological emergencies.
Materials and Methods: Present study is a retrospective analysis to determine incidence of hydatidiform
mole for eight years duration.All women who were diagnosed of molar pregnancy by estimation of beta
hCG and histopathological examination during1st Jan 2010 to 31st Dec 2017 were enrolled in this study.
During the study period, there were 84 cases of Molar pregnancy out of 33856 total deliveries.
Results: The total number of deliveries reported in the study period was 33856 out of which 84 cases were
of gestational trophoblastic disease (GTD). The prevalence of GTD in this tertiary care hospital was 2.48
per 1000 deliveries. During the study period, we had received 55 samples of products of conception and
3079 hysterectomy specimens. Out of 3134 cases, 84 cases were diagnosed as GTD. Out of these 84 cases
81cases were hydatidiform mole. There were two cases of choriocarcinomas and one case of placental site
trophoblastic tumour.
Conclusion: The prevalence of hydatidiform mole was higher among all entities of gestational
trophoblastic disease. The serum beta hCG levels are very sensitive and specific for diagnosis.
Histopathological examination is helpful for confirming diagnosis.

Keywords: Molar, Hydatidiform mole, Trophoblast.


Patients with giant cell arteritis (GCA) have heterogeneity in terms of not only symptoms and findings but also extent of arterial involvement. In era of personalized medicine, therapy of patients is based on these diverse parameters.This study is aimed to identify subphenotypes of GCA, treatments have been used and outcomes in a prospective database of Eastern Mediterranean Vasculitis Centre.Among 2454 patients recorded into Hacettepe University Vasculitis Research Centre database since October 2014; 181 of them were Takayasu's arteritis and 89 of them GCA. 17 GCA patients were excluded due to missing data. Patients were grouped as Cranial GCA, Cranial GCA+ PMR, Cranial and LV GCA + PMR, Cranial and LV GCA, and LV GCA.Demographic and clinical findings, histopathological and imaging data as well as outcome was collated for each subphenotype.Of 72 patients enrolled into further analysis, a female predominance (72.2%) was observed with mean age at diagnosis of 68.3(±8.2) years. Seventy-four percent of patients had cranial GCA (Figure 1) and leading subphenotype of all patients was only cranial GCA. Usage of temporal artery biopsy (TAB), temporal artery and axillary artery ultrasonography, and imaging modalities were different according to phenotypes of GCA.Figure 1.Distribution of GCA subphenotypesOf the 38 patients having TAB, 20(42.9%) were consisted with GCA. The main histopathological finding were inflammation rich in lymphohistiocytic cells in the temporal artery (44.7%) and fragmentation and loss of integrity of the internal elastic lamina (36.8%).All of the patients have been used corticosteroids with a median starting dose of 16 mg/day(8-64) had used pulse therapy. Any of conventional DMARDS (AZA, MTX, LEF, CYC) have been used in 60 of patients. In all cases, Tocilizumab was recommended after resistant/intolerant to conventional DMARDs (n=6).Follow-up data was based on 64 patients. During a median 5,8 (±4.0) years follow-up, 6 (9.3%) patients deceased. Thirteen (20.3%) had one and more relapses, 8(61.5%) from isolated GCA group and 4(30.7%) from Only LV GCA group.GCA is less frequent than TAK in our centre. Female predominance and a seventh decade of disease onset was observed in our cohort. Heterogeneity of disease was observed in or cohort along with different frequently used diagnostic confirmatory modality among subphenotypes. Relapse rate was 20 percent during a 6-year follow up with a 83% additional DMARD usage.[1]K. Bates Gribbons1, Peter C Grayson1, et al Diagnostic Assessment Strategies and Disease Subsets in Giant Cell Arteritis: Data From an International Observational Cohort, Arthritis Rheumatology, 2020 Apr;72Table 1.Confirmatory modality of GCA diagnosis and treatments of subphenotypesOnly cranial GCA(n=38)Cranial GCA+PMR(n=6)Cranial GCA+LV GCA+ PMR(n=2)Cranial+LV GCA(n=5)LV GCA+PMR (n=7)Only LV GCA (n=14)Diagnosed confirmed by TAB(Total n=26)2042Temporal ultrasonography(Total n=24)182121PET CT/Vasculitis MR/VasculitisBT (Total n=22)13612Only steroidn=126213Pulse steroidn=148114Methotrexaten=351722167Leflunomiden=321Azatioprinen=19122113Cyclophosphamiden=11Tosilizumabn=862None declared


In the Netherlands, the 'Tabaksblat Code' (the Dutch corporate governance code of December) was a semi-private regulation instigated by the Dutch government, the stock exchange and industry associations to restore trust in the public equity markets. The aim was 'to put the relationship between listed companies and providers of capital under the microscope' in order to establish a new balance with a larger role for the shareholders (Tabaksblat, 2003, p. 59).


This article reports the author's experience of designing, teaching and evaluating a 2–day workshop on GP Consulting and Basic Counselling Skills for Family Medicine Programme trainees in Gippsland, Australia. After reviewing the objectives of the workshop and characteristics of the participants, the article outlines the process and content of the workshop. These include description of a conceptual framework, learning of specific aspects through structured exercises, and use of video review both of previously taped consultations with patients and of role-plays. Results of evaluation by self perception, both at the end of each workshop and 3 months subsequently, are reported and discussed. Overall the workshop has been found to be effective in introducing FMP trainees to key aspects of general practice consulting and basic counselling, and in providing the trainees with opportunities to increase their range of skills for patient care and counselling in general practice.


Recent years have witnessed a surge of interest in the impact of operations management related activities on the operational performance in service organisations. This recognition, has in turn, placed an emphasis on the question of where and how operations management related activities have influenced the operational performance of service firms. Our paper is an attempt to address this question. Drawing from the responses of mostly operations managers and operations directors of a sample of 190 firms based in Australia, our empirical results suggest that the performance of a service firm is influenced significantly by the antecedents of operations scheduling, service process, and logistics capabilities. Also, through multiple regression analysis, we found that operations scheduling and service process have a strong bearing on the firm's efficiency. We discuss the key contributions of our paper and offer some implications for future research on the operational performance of service firms. This paper is a work in progress. Material in the paper cannot be used without permission of the author. DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT WORKING PAPER SERIES I S S N 1 3 2 7 – 5 2 1 6


As the era of Moore's Law and increasing CPU clock rates nears its stopping point the focus of chip and hardware design has shifted to increasing the number of computation cores present on the chip. This increase can be most clearly seen in the rise of Graphic Processing Units (GPU) where hundreds or thousands of slower cores work in parallel to accomplish tasks. Programming for these chips represents a new set of challenges and concerns. A visualization of sound waves in the room was desired so that phenomena like standing waves could be quickly identified. In order to produce the visualization quickly, some form of acceleration would be required. The GPU was chosen as the accelerator using CUDA to produce the data for the simulation. The prototype was tested on a computer with an Intel Core2 Quad core CPU Q9450 and an NVidia GeForce GTX 480 GPU which contains 15 groupings of 32 compute cores for a total of 480 compute cores and has 1.5 GB of on board memory.


259 Background: According to the American Cancer Association, hepatitisB and Cinfections may raise liver cancer risk. We identify population-specific cancer-attributable hepatitis prevalence to discern disparities across race/ethnicity for liver cancer risk. Methods: Data from 1999-2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) were used to determine prevalence, unadjusted odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) for non-Hispanic-Whites (NHW), non-Hispanic-Blacks (NHB), Mexican-Americans, other Hispanics, and other race of hepatitis, taking complex sampling design into account. Results: Among those sampled, the overall highest prevalence of hepatitis infection was 66.4% in NHW for hepatitis-C and the lowest prevalence was 1.4% in Mexican-Americans for hepatitis-B surface-antigen. NHB were more likely than NHW to have hepatitis-B infections of surface-antibody (OR=1.9; 95%CI=1.8-2.0), core-antibody (3.3; 3.1-3.6), surface-antigen (5.3; 3.6-7.7), and hepatitis-C infections (1.7...


T HE LIMITS of sapwood and heartwood are, as a rule, readily apparent to the eye on a newly cut cross,section of a log cut from a healthy, normal tree. The outer annual rings, comprising the living elements of the trunk and its water,carrying tissue, are yellowish or creamy. white in colour, and contrast with the definitely darker region of the heart, wood in the inner portions of the log as, for example, in Douglas fir, yew, and Western red cedar. With some of our woods, however, such as poplar, willow, the spruces, the true firs, and Western hemlock, the heartwood has the same light colour as the sapwood, so that no definite line of demarcation between the two is apparent. Although it is true that some woods have a higher proportion of sap, wood to heartwood than others, this proportion is by no means constant -


In recent times, sustainable development has received huge attention of academia, corporations, government and society at large as there has been an increasing concern about the rapid exhausting of the earth's natural resources and related environmental issues.There has been plenty of research done on corporate social responsibility (CSR) which leads to the growing realisation that corporate inclination towards it results in sustainable development. This is important because corporates are the major users and often abusers of our limited stocks of the various forms of natural capital upon which our economic, social and cultural well-being are based. Interestingly, many authors believe that those corporations which are socially responsible are considered to be good companies by the society (customers). Thus, customer acts as a primary stakeholder and it affects the long-term survival of the business. A conceptual framework on CSR orientation has been developed for sustainable society development on the basis of two dimensions, namely, corporate orientation and consumer orientation. It has four quadrants where the best case is both corporate and consumer showing high orientation towards social responsibility. The worst scenario is Menace when both display low orientation. The quadrant Blind is also not favourable because only corporations are highly oriented whereas consumers are not.The case may be contrary when consumers are enlightened and corporations are not.The main endeavour behind this study is to unleash the power of consumer and in extreme cases employ the method of boycott to pressurise business firms to follow sustainable guidelines. Effort has been made to highlight how consumer can be a key driving force for CSR.


We are concerned with local regularity of the solutions for the Stokes and Navier-Stokes equations near boundary. Firstly, we construct a bounded solution but its normal derivatives are singular in any $L^p$ with $1<p$ locally near boundary. On the other hand, we present criteria of solutions of the Stokes equations near boundary to imply that the gradients of solutions are bounded (in fact, even further H\"{o}lder continuous). Finally, we provide examples of solutions whose local regularity near boundary is optimal.


The grinding technological process of circle flow was designed,then influence of the factors,such as grinding medium,process and parameters on the ratio surface area,particle size and activity index of the slag powder were studied in this paper. The experimental results show that bigger influence is affected due to different pre-grinding body and proper pre-grinding time can help to improve the grinding effect. The optimum plan in this paper is as follow: the maximum specific surface area,the smallest powder particle size and the maximum activity index are obtained when the slag powders are ground at steel bar for pre-grinding 15 minutes and then at ball grinding for 30 minutes.


In India, there is a severe shortage of trained healthcare professionals. Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning (DL), Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud Computing, and 5G (together referred to as disruptive technologies) offer much potential for the Global Healthcare scenario. These disruptive technologies can improve doctors' efficiency and help alleviate the shortage of doctors. While these technologies brought many benefits to developed nations, their deployment in developing countries, especially India, may have challenges. Challenges go multiple folds because these technologies are still evolving and a significant segment of deployment of disruptive technologies is in early stages even in developed nations. This paper reviews the relevant literature and tries to explain the relevance of disruptive technologies for India. It assumes that learnings from developed and developing nations can be applied to India with some modifications. Through surveying existing literature, this paper looks at what Indian Healthcare is and presents factors affecting the deployment of disruptive technologies in Indian Healthcare.


A hybrid optimization algorithm is proposed for Job-Shop scheduling problem, which is based on the combination of adaptive genetic algorithm and improved ant algorithm. The algorithm gets the initial pheromone distribution using adaptive genetic algorithm at first, then runs improved ant algorithm. The algorithm utilizes the advantages of the two algorithms and overcomes their disadvantages. Experimental results show the algorithm excels genetic algorithm and ant algorithm in performance, and it is discovered that the bigger the problem is concerned, the better the algorithm performs.


China's rural tourism still stays at the preliminary stage and accompanies some shortcomings.The paper sets forth that the nature of rural tourism is rural culture,which is also the current and increase point of rural tourism.Then,the paper introduces the Three-part Methodology of culture,that is,rural culture may fall into the following three hierarchies:rural material culture,system culture and mental culture,explaining how to foster these cultural materials in the development and utilization of rural tourism.Meanwhile,the paper points out that it should be given attention to how to develop rural tourism and protect rural culture.


Mass media's educative function has had a considerable influence in Kenya since the colonial period. The impact of mass media in shaping the contemporary worldviews—how people see and live in the world— has led to the transformation in the society. The influence of mass media especially in reinforcing commodification and economic rationalism presuppositions is profound because human beings are fundamentally creatures of habit and mass media contents are characteristically repetitive and unreflecting. Since mass media's images and messages are embedded on philosophical ideas and principles which do not simply develop under spontaneous historical, social, and cultural influences but are products of a fundamental and directing commitment at the core of human thinking, they should be subjected to an authentic critique. From the premise that there is no neutrality in mass media, this paper examines the idea of commodification and its consequences in the society, and calls for a deliberate, thought-out, philosophically consistent approach for reflecting, critiquing and responding to how mass media educates its audience.


The organization of the shipping conference -an international cartel, was approved by countries that recognized it for stabilizing routes as well as preventing excessive competition among liner shipping companies and recognized the characteristic of the liner service that is regularly repeated in the international liner shipping market. However, due to competition in bulk transportation and development of multimodal transport through new entrants, power expansion and vessel enlargement of non-aligned shipping companies; the shipping conference started collapsing, and was eventually abolished. As the shipping conference played an important role in the liner shipping market, there were changes in the competition structure of the liner shipping market, and this accordingly drove research on the effects of the abolition of the shipping conference on the liner shipping market. The effects of abolition of the shipping conference on the liner shipping market was analyzed after surveying the factors related to abolition of the shipping conference, and through the use of correlation and multiple regression analyses. Subsequent to the abolition of the shipping conference, the liner shipping companies increased global containership bottoms. Consequently, this led to fierce competition of freight charges. As a result, profitability of shipping companies diminished. However, shipping companies with a dominating cost structure recorded profits, while shipping companies with an inferior cost structure started recording a loss.


ABSTRACT This study describes a new technical set-up for particle inhalation in hamsters as well as a modified technique for the subsequent fixation of their lungs which provide a basis for a structural analysis of particle deposition and retention. For the first time an attempt has been undertaken to determine particle deposition in anatomical compartments of the lungs. Aerosols of polystyrene particles with nominal particle diameters of either 1, 3 or 6 μm were inhaled by three deeply anesthetized hamsters breathing spontaneously through an intratracheal cannula for periods up to 30 minutes. Light scattering aerosol photometry and pneumotachography were applied to monitor for each breath respired volume, breathing cycle period and particle number in inspired and expired air. Tidal volume varied between 0.50 ± 0.03 and 0.72 ± 0.02 cm among the three hamsters, breathing frequency between 34.4 ± 2.8 and 54.7 ± 8.0 min−1. Deposition fraction per breath was 0.09 ± 0.02 for 1 μm particles, 0.24 ± 0.08 for 3 μ...


purpose: study the influence of physical training for university man's simpie obesity in or si mup-ply the scientific referenced basis for the exercise of whole people. Method: adopt physical training of mediunm intension. Then comparing and analyzing the research objects'variety on all kinds of indexes. Result: after 12 weeks'tar training the ave rage winght of boys r 8. 38kg and the girls weight reduced 8. 11kg. The boys and physical training of medium intension has an obvious effect on controlling the weight. it not only can increase deplete of the ovrrmch quantity of heat but also can improve the funetion of the blood vessel. for the simple obesity's trea s treslnent,it has tiority of simple method and obvious effect.


The German law on co-determination at the plant level ( Betriebsverfassungsgesetz) stipulates that works councilors are neither to be financially rewarded nor penalized for their activities. However, lavish payments to works councilors in some large firms have generated a debate about the need to reform the law. This article offers an empirical basis for the discussion and provides representative evidence on wage payments to works councilors for the period 2001–2015. The authors find wage premia of 3–7% in OLS specifications, but observe no wage differentials in linear fixed-effects panel data specifications. Similar results are found for various subgroups of employees and when focusing on employees in particular types of firms. Hence, the results indicate that payments to works councilors are broadly in line with legal regulations.


Dendritic cell (DC)-based immunotherapy is a promising treatment alternative for drug-resistant malignancies. Identifying candidate immunostimulatory compounds that can reliably facilitate DC maturation in the context of antigen-specific therapies is a significant hurdle in the development of such immunotherapies. In this study, we present a high throughput in vitro primary cell assay to evaluate dose-dependent DC maturation in a panel of healthy donor primary cells. CD14+ monocytes from four healthy donors were isolated from leukapheresis (Leuko Pak)-derived peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC), differentiated by culture with GM-CSF and IL-4 cytokines, and then stimulated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS), CpG oligonucleotides, or a panel of novel Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) ligands. To quantify the resultant maturation, flow cytometry was used to measure the expression of cell surface biomarkers MHC-II, CD40, CD80, CD83, and CD86. While monocytes from all donors responded to the ligands tested, the intensity of activation marker expression varied between donors. LPS-induction of CD83 expression ranged from 27 to 82% of DCs amongst the 4 donors tested, highlighting the importance of multi-donor screening in interpreting quantitative results. In conclusion, a high throughput in vitro primary monocyte-derived DC differentiation assay reveals donor to donor variations that may go unobserved in screening experiments completed in cell lines or single donor primary cells sources. This assay can be used to assist researchers in lead generation, lead optimization, and mechanism of action studies of immunostimulatory compounds.


OF DISSERTATION Long-term effects of different fat sources and vitamin E supplementation on growth performance, antioxidant status, carcass characteristics, meat quality, and immune capacity of pigs with heavy slaughter weight up to 150 kg Two experiments were used to evaluate the potential interaction of fat source and vitamin E (VE) in heavy slaughter weight pigs. In Experiment 1, a total of 64 individually-fed pigs (28.41 ± 0.83 kg) were randomly assigned to 8 dietary treatments in a 4×2 factorial arrangement. Fat treatments included cornstarch (CS), tallow (TW), corn-oil (CO), and coconut-oil (CN). VE treatments were dietary α-tocopheryl acetate (ATA) at 11 and 200 ppm. In Experiment 2, a total of 72 individually fed pigs (28.55 ± 1.16 kg) were randomly assigned to 12 dietary treatments in a 2 × 6 factorial arrangement. Fat treatments were TW and CO. VE treatments included four levels of ATA (11, 40, 100, and 200 ppm) and two levels of mixed tocopherols (primarily γ-tocopherol; 40 and 100 ppm). VE deposition, growth performance, and meat quality were measured in both experiments. In both experiments, interaction between fat sources and VE were detected (P < 0.01) on plasma VE concentration, which increased (P < 0.01) with time and with increasing dietary VE, but increased faster (P < 0.05) in pigs fed with CN and TW compared to pigs fed CS and CO. Compared to CO, more saturated dietary fat sources (CN and TW) led to firmer belly (P < 0.01), which had more (P < 0.01) SFA and MUFA while less (P<0.01) PUFA. In Experiment 1, increasing dietary ATA decreased (P < 0.05) Feed/Gain in Phase 4 and Phase 5. In Experiment 2, increasing dietary ATA increased overall ADG (linear, P = 0.02), with an interaction (P < 0.05) with fat sources on cumulative ADG during Phase 1-4, wherein pigs fed CO, but not TW, had increased ADG with increasing dietary ATA. Increasing dietary ATA increased (quadratic, P < 0.05) liver SOD activity, and decreased (quadratic, P < 0.05) liver MDA content. The oxidative stability of loin was improved (P < 0.01) when dietary ATA increased over 40 ppm. In summary, both dietary fat source and VE supplementation affected the response measures.


In this paper, we mainly study the convergence properties of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) as described in Needell et al. [2]. The function to be minimized with SGD is assumed to be strongly convex. Also, its gradients are assumed to be Lipschitz continuous. First, we discuss the superior bound on convergence (of standard SGD) obtained by Needell et al. [2] as opposed to the previous work of Bach and Moulines [1]. Then, we show that this bound can be further improved if SGD is performed with importance (weighted) sampling instead of uniform sampling. Finally, we study two applications: Logistic Regression and Kaczmarz Algorithm and demonstrate faster convergence obtained from SGD with weighted (or partially weighted) sampling. 1 Stochastic Gradient Descent In stochastic gradient descent (SGD), we minimize a function F (w) using stochastic gradients in the update rule at each step. The stochastic gradients g are such that their expectation is the gradient of F (w), E[g] = ∇F (w). Now, if F (w) = Ei∼D[fi(w)], then we have g = ∇fi(w). The update rule then is as follows, wk+1 = wk − γ∇fik(w), (1) where γ is the step size and ik is drawn i.i.d from some distribution D. In this paper, we will study the convergence of SGD on the function F , with the following assumptions 1. Each fi is continuously differentiable and the gradient of fi has a Lipschitz constant Li, i.e. ‖∇fi(w1)−∇fi(w2)‖2 ≤ Li‖w1 − w2‖2 2. F is strongly convex with parameter μ, i.e. F (w1) ≥ F (w2) +∇F (w2) (w1 − w2) + μ2 ‖w1 − w2‖ 2 2, or equivalently (w1 − w2) (∇F (w1)−∇F (w2)) ≥ μ‖w1 − w2‖2


Abstract : The search for cyber leadership has followed standard military protocols: officers with proven worth in their respective fields have risen to senior ranks and assumed leadership positions in the cyber mission. Success in the traditional war paradigm, however, does not necessarily equate to success in the cyber realm. Nor does military genius based on Clausewitzian parameters necessarily manifest itself as cyber genius.


The online dictionary is a more advanced dictionary form than traditional paper dictionary and common electronic dictionary.This paper introduces the concept of the online dictionary,points out that the online dictionary possesses some advantages such as huge information capacity,real-time sharing,text complete with pictures,convenient retrieval,and timely renewing,etc.,and makes some predictions for the future development trends of online dictionary.


The number needed to treat (NNT) ratio is an effective method for measuring accuracy in melanoma detection. Dermoscopy reduces the number of false positives and subsequently unnecessary excisions. In vivo reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) is a noninvasive technique that allows examination of the skin with cellular resolution.


The idea Pyramdis of Giza could relate to Orion (only) doesn't seem to make sense. Building such Pyramids "only" to house the remains of the deceased pharaohs who ruled over Ancient Egypt doesn't make sense. What is the "real" purpose? Gerges Francis Tawdrous [1] analysed a possible relation to a cycle of moon, Mercury, Saturn and Venus : "The 2737 Egyptian Astronomic Phenomenon and Its Identical Distance". This author suggests that if using ToE-Framewor [2] [3] , a perfect clock for universe could be build if the sphere surface of earth could be related to the sphere surface of cosmos using in order to align the movements on surface and in Volume of earth to movements in sphere and Volume of cosmos.


Nanomechanical resonators offer important benefits for the sensing of physical stimuli such as the mass of an added molecule. To map out the local shape properties of the physical stimuli, such as the distribution of the mass density of a molecule, sensory information should be collected through multiple modes of a mechanical sensor. By utilizing the specific mode shapes, the spatial distribution of a physical stimulus can be reverse calculated. However, the mode shapes of a sensor may deviate from their ideal forms once analytes start to accumulate on the sensor. As a result, algorithms based on the ideal form of the mode shapes no longer work accurately. Here, we developed a theoretical framework to calculate the change in the mode shapes of a nanomechanical beam after analyte adsorption. We verified the theoretical model by performing finite element simulations and comparing the change in the mode shapes obtained from each approach. Monte Carlo simulations were performed to relate the maximum deviation in the mode shapes to the surface roughness of the sensor after analyte accumulation. By predicting the change in the mode shapes and using the corrected forms, the accuracy of the nanomechanical sensing can be improved significantly.


This paper presents an improved Parallel Feedback Active noise control (PFANC) method with adaptive noise signal decomposition using NLMS based linear prediction. The proposed method is tested for several stationary periodic signals, quasi-periodic signals and non-stationary signals buried in Additive White Gaussian noise (AWGN) under different Signal to Noise Ratios (SNR). Performance improvement in terms of Noise Attenuation Levels (NAL) exceeding 40dB have been obtained and compared with previous methods. Proposed method has lower implementation cost, lower computational delay, better noise tracking capability and better NAL performance as compared to previous methods.


abdominal ultrasound was normal. C. difficile and C. Tropi-calis were found in stool cultures. 2 consecutive sweat tests were performed, showing borderline values: 61,25 mmol/l; 67,7 mmol/l. There was no polyuria or excessive chloride loss in urine, which are typical features of Bartter ' s syndrome. Diarrhea was not present at birth, no watery stools were observed and the failure to thrive was not significant prior to admission, making the diagnosis of congenital chloride diarrhea unlikely. Genetic testing for CF showed that the infant was a delF508 mutation and G178r mutation compound heterozygote. The child showed no clinical symptoms of hypokalemia. No hyponatremia seizures were observed. Diarrhea was persistent. Rehydration therapy and antibiotic treatment significantly improved the condition.


Many extreme runoff distributions are not homogeneo us, as they are often regarded in flood frequency analysis. The aim of this article is to i dentify the different homogeneous subsets in a heterogeneous distribution and to identify the mech anisms behind the heterogeneity. The identification of the different subsets in a fu ll dataset is carried out by the use of an analytical method based on a likelihood criterion. This method is applied to runoff maxima from flood basins in Europe and Russia. The results of the investigations presented in this article show that in large regions of the case study areas the heterogeneity of an extreme runoff distribution is not so much determined by climatic mechanisms or by characteristics of a catc hment, but apparently by other factors. Heterogeneity in the south-eastern part of Russia, however, might be explainable by the influence of weakened typhoons.


In the note 'Why is GDP typically revised upwards?' by Philip Hans Franses, two related reasons for the downward bias in the first estimate of GDP growth are mentioned: • large enterprises report later than small enterprises, as a consequence of which estimates have to be made especially for the missing value of the former enterprises; • statisticians tend to underestimate the output of missing enterprises, as 'having to state that reality turned out to be better than expected has larger utility than having to report disappointing outcomes'.


As in other predominantly agricultural societies, in Eastern Turkestan, too, everyday life was punctuated by events of the life cycle. These rituals were both important vehicles for making and maintaining community and occasions for reciprocal exchange. Life-cycle rituals also involved individuals with whom kinship ties were loose or even non-existent. In contrast to religious rituals, the timing of which was prescribed by the Islamic calendar, life-cycle rituals depended on the important events of human life: birth, marriage, death and initiation rituals. Following birth the next major ritual in a boy?s life was his circumcision, which constituted the necessary precondition for him to enter the legal phase of maturity. The frequency of divorce and remarriage suggests that serial monogamy was much more frequent than polygamy. Celebrating female fertility, the transfer of presents and increased social status for the woman all run counter to the patriarchal ideology generally associated with Muslim societies.Keywords: circumcision; death rituals; eastern Turkestan; female fertility; human community; life-cycle rituals; muslim societies; polygamy


Date Authors Elar Saks Degree programme Business Information Technology Report/thesis title JavaScript frameworks: Angular vs React vs Vue Number of pages and appendix pages 42 + 1 The aim of this study was to compare the three of the most popular JavaScript frameworks in popularity, the difficulty of learning and in performance, so that the reader could make an educated decision when deciding which framework to learn or to use for the project. To understand the popularity of the frameworks, the data by the three most used software development cooperation platforms were collected and analyzed. React was found to be the most popular out of these three frameworks. The frameworks learning curve was compared by using its official technical documentation to learn about its syntax, architecture, data management, lifecycle, and in the ease of using thirdparty libraries. For the writer of this study, Vue seemed to be the easiest to learn. To compare the framework's performance a simple single page application was built and tested in each framework. Vue proved to be the fastest performing framework. In the end, it was concluded that: React is the best framework to learn when looking for a job, Vue is the best framework for small scale applications that require fast performance. Angular is most likely best suited for bigger more complex applications. Although, further research is needed to compare frameworks when building large applications.


The article contains the results of the scientific investigation of the problem of designing and functioning of heuristic learning technologies in the process of teacher training. The technology of heuristic learning is justified as a system of fundamental principles and concepts that define the objectives, tasks, content, system training organiza-tion, monitoring and evaluation of education results. Basic principles of heuristic learning: childhood centrist; productivity; subjectivity; self-knowledge, self-development and self-realization; causality; elective training (didactic choice); variability of training; pedagogical competence; professional analogies and borrowings; targeting clearly defined goals. The author outlines the meaning and defined methodological principles of designing and providing educational activities in conditions of heuristic learning in the preparation of future teachers. The analysis of technologies of heuristic learning aimed at the successful creation of an educational product – the leading goal of heuristic learning and adequately assess the course and results of independent cognitive activity. approaches professional training faculty specialists higher educational institutions beginning of the century, basic provisions of university the of new the specialization the variability academic The shows opening the legal department with women's courses in the economic and commercial direction, as well as the necessity of opening the first higher non-governmental educational institutions. The specifics of the construction of the educational process in the training of legal professionals are described. Also author described the specific features of the content of the legal education of the time, in particular: the study of the main provisions of foreign law, the introduction of the leading ideas of philosophical and economic doctrine, the history of law.null In the article the author focuses on the activities of the legal faculties of the classical universities of the early twentieth century; noted that the leading form of teaching at that time was a lecture, the only source of obtaining legal knowledge – an outline, the dominant method of teaching – dogmatic. A parallel is made in the analysis of the content of the professional training of legal professionals in the time interval as one century. The shortcomings of the content of the professional training of legal specialists were noted, the necessity of its modernization in the modern conditions of the reform of the system of higher education in general was proved. The article analyzes the modern educational process of higher legal education in Ukraine and states that it is overloaded with normative and theoretical studies.


In modern conditions it is required to intensify the activity of the state and business to improve the state of the economy. One of the priorities in this context becomes a public-private partnership. And the tourism industry is no exception. The author has made an attempt to form a mechanism to build relations on the basis of cluster approach in public-private partnership where a leading role belongs to the business. The article gives examples of successful interaction of subjects, participants in the management of tourism and identifies the main problems of the industry. The role of public-private partnerships is a development of management models for regional tourism. It is shown disadvantages of governance of regional tourism in Russia, including the uncertainty of conditions and mechanisms of state-private partnership.


This article aims to propose some formation actions in mathematical modelling for teachers of early years of education system as well as outline topics of research raised from the review of studies that analyze mathematical modeling in elementary school. To do so, we present modelling practices that have been legitimized in literature. We have also discussed researches that circulate in the field of Mathematics Teacher Education in the early years and outlined some formation actions in mathematical modelling. Finally, we point out some research topics that have raised from those analyzes that can contribute to the consolidation of research on formation of teachers of early years in mathematical modeling and to understand the peculiarity of the modelling practice in that education level.


(57) Abstract: The client - server or between a client - service providing environment between client, discloses a method and apparatus for performing intelligent transcoding multimedia data between two or more network elements. According to the present invention, the tips of the one or more code conversion about the multimedia data stored in the network element can be transferred from one network element to another network element. Acquiring one or more performance associated with one of the networks, using the hints and acquisition performance of the code conversion can be carried out code conversion adapted to the performance of the network element. The multimedia data include still image, performance and code conversion of the tips bitrate, resolution, frame size, the color quantization, color palette, color conversion from the image to text, the sound from the image, the region of interest (ROI) and includes a wavelet compression. Further video multimedia data video, the performance of and transcoding hints rate, spatial resolution, time resolution, video vector prediction includes the macro block coding and video mixing.


Growth and ontogenetic migration of greeneye Chlorophthalmus albatrossis were studied in the area from 100–400 m depths in Tosa Bay, from April 1996 to March 1997, using samples collected by an otter trawl net with a 1.3 mm mesh cod end. In the monthly changes of the standard length (SL) composition, four year classes were recognized, although the third- and fourth-year classes were not clearly separated in all the monthly samples. Individuals of 40–50 mm SL settled on the bottom of the 150–200 m depth zone from August to February. By May and June, they grew to 75–80 mm SL modal size, and migrated to 200–300 m depth. In one year after settlement, they grew to 125–130 mm SL, and migrated to 300–350 m depth. They grew to a maximum of 160 mm SL and were not sampled in the winter three years after settlement, suggesting either migration or mortality. Seasonal changes in the gonadosomatic index for combined samples of males and females showed that greeneye did not mature in Tosa Bay. It is suggested that the planktonic larvae are transported from the spawning grounds, the location of which remains unknown.


Influence of structural size on axial stress-lateral strain curves due to shear localization is investigated and a new method for determining the axial stress-lateral strain curves is proposed according to the axial stress-strain curves obtained by tests for different sizes. Using the analytical solution of the axial stress-axial strain curve based on gradient-dependent plasticity, linear regressions on the experimental axial stress-axial strain curves in strain-softening regime are carried out to calculate the number of shear band for different widths. After the number is determined, the axial stress-lateral strain curves for different sizes can be obtained according to the analytical solution of axial stress-lateral strain curve depending on the number of shear band and width of specimen. It is found that the ratio of the number of shear band to the width of specimen is a key parameter for describing the axial stress-lateral strain curves. If the ratio remains a constant, then the curves are size-independent. Otherwise, the post-peak curves are dependent on the width of specimen. For a single shear band appears in specimens with different widths, specimen with larger width leads to steeper curves and even exhibits snap-back behavior. The method proposed can also be used to analyze the problem of size effect of axial stress-circumferential strain curves. The reason for the size effect is shear localization, but the case that localization can not cause the size effect is not also impossible.


Substance abuse researchers are reporting that weekly posttreatment twelve-step (TS) meeting attendance predicts substantially superior drinking outcomes. Unfortunately, research has consistently observed a high rate of posttreatment AA attrition and underutilization. The primary aims of this analysis are to advance theory of TS affiliation and to test the feasibility of identifying patients who are at risk for posttreatment AA disaffiliation. The analysis uses Project MATCH data consisting of subjects who were assigned to the twelve-step facilitative treatment condition (N = 582). Corroborating other research, results suggest that average weekly attendance at one year posttreatment is associated with abstinent rates almost two times that of less than weekly attendance; unfortunately, over 70% of the subjects attended less than weekly. Analysis using binary logistic regression suggests seven variables can explain a large proportion of the variance among those with less than weekly or no AA attendance at the one year follow-up interval. The results are explained in terms of two theories: First, those who attend weekly may have a greater need for social support (stress and copying theory); and second, those who are a better fit within the AA culture (person-in-AA organizational fit theory). Last, a simple four variable prediction model was able to predict a large proportion of those who reported less than weekly attendance (sensitivity = .78, specificity = .77). Although research has generally reported favorable effects related to treatment, alcohol dependence is best characterized as a chronic-relapsing condition with


Tracking the human body with cameras such as the Microsoft Kinect has been a successful way to provide players with new input mechanisms in gaming. At present e.g. Tobii Technologies is attempting to offer users affordable eye tracking systems to popularize use of the devices in the game industry. The main purpose of this work is to discover if playing a First-person shooter (FPS) game with an eye tracker is more fun or immersive than playing it with more traditional input mechanisms, in this case the mouse and keyboard and the Xbox360 gamepad. A two session experiment with different input devices was conducted in this study. The first session was held during the period from January 25 to February 1, 2016. The second session was held during the period from February 9 to February 11, 2016. Experiment participants played an FPS game with three input mechanisms: an eye tracker, a mouse and keyboard and an Xbox360 gamepad. When using the eye tracker to play the game, the participant controlled the character with gaze and head movements. The experiment included six participants; five of them were male and one female. All the participants were between 21 and 30 years old. The results of the experiment indicated that using an eye tracker as an input device was more fun than using the other input devices. Nevertheless, there was no clear implication of the fact that the eye tracker would increase immersion compared to the other input devices.


There has been a growing interest in the design and development of intrusion detection systems for the Internet. One of the goals of these systems is to detect the source(s) of attack. Based on the position of the victim in the network, our scheme selects only a small fraction of routers to monitor the traffic and identify packets that bear signatures of the attack packets. From the information provided by these chosen routers, the network is pruned and another set of routers is chosen to identify the source of attack, until the source router is detected. By using the properties of the centroid tree, we present an efficient algorithm for identifying the source of the intrusion.


Abstract The aim of this Special Issue is to commemorate the genocide victims in Bosnia on the occasion of 20th anniversary of the capture of UN safe area of Srebrenica in July 1995. Recognized as the worst atrocity in Europe since 1945, the horrors of Srebrenica reverberate far beyond Bosnia with commemorations held across the globe from Canada to Australia. While there has been a growing literature on this subject over the last two decades, this Special Issue seeks to make a scholarly contribution to the study of genocide by bringing together works on understudied aspects of this period in Bosnian and European history.


There has been great debate about the potential labor market impact of the Affordable Care Act ("ACA" or "Obamacare"). Some have pointed to Massachusetts as the harbinger of what is to come nationally, while others have predicted massive dumping of employer-based insurance. An extension of this labor market debate was on full display during the summer of 2012. Critics seized on a McKinsey & Co. survey that found that Obamacare could result in thirty percent of companies dropping employer-sponsored insurance (ESI). Meanwhile, proponents of the ACA quickly and continually referred to the experience of companies in Massachusetts as a way to push back on this narrative. Surprisingly, there is bipartisan agreement that Massachusetts's own health reform efforts ("Romneycare") does in fact serve as an accurate model for what to expect under the federal law: this has complicated a lucid discussion of the ACA's potential labor market impact.


This paper reports the grown of Ni/Cu multilayers on Si monocrystalline substrates and shows some polarization investigations of Si(100) substrates. Nano structural characterization of the multilayers by high angle X-ray diffraction (XRD) and high temperature X-ray diffraction (HT-XRD) also have been presented. Annealed Ni/Cu multilayers on Si(100) substrate has been reported. The main purpose of present work is to study the Ni/Cu multilayer when it was annealed. Finally we presented the influence of bilayer and sublayer (Ni and Cu) thicknesses on the magnetic properties of multilayers.


The semi-matured palm-shaped stems of Milpa Alta cactus, Opuntia ficus-indica Mill. were used as the explants. After surface sterilization the sterile materials were established via initial culture. A ideal proliferating effect could be carried out by using the medium"MS+5.0 mg/L KT+0.5~1.0 mg/L BA+0.25~1.0 mg/L NAA". About 20 clustered plantlets could be obtained from a subcultured material with 2~3 shoots cultured on this multiplication medium for 50~60 d. Under the tissue culture condition the stem of Opuntia ficus-indica Mill. was column-shaped, while palm-shaped under the nature condition. There was no a strict requirement for exogenous hormone and basic medium for the root system formation, and even cultured on a multiplication medium with a high KT concentration, 10.0 mg/L, the well developed root system were formed on the base part of the clustered plantlets. However, the clustered plantlets were not suitable for transplantation due to the short height. The ideal medium for rooting and plantlet-strengthening is "B 5+2.0~5.0 mg/L NAA+0~0.5 mg/L KT". The plantlets were transplanted on the sand bed covered with a arch plastic shed and black sunlight-shutting net, and the survival percentage was more than 92.5%. The tip of plantlet was observed to thicken and flatten in 11-th day after transplantation. The average plant height was 9.98 cm,average width of the palm-shaped part of stem was 1.49cm, and average length, 5.29 cm, in the 64-th day after transplantation.


This new report from Mathematica's Ticket to Work program evaluation looks at the Work Incentives Planning and Assistance (WIPA) program, a grant initiative established by the Social Security Administration (SSA) in 2006. WIPA provides SSA beneficiaries with disabilities information and guidance about work incentives and how to effectively use them to find jobs and stay employed. This evaluation of the WIPA program captured important information about start-up experiences and early opportunities for program improvement. Most notably, more funding may be needed to ensure that available staffing and budget levels are met in order for WIPA, a critical element in SSA's return-to-work policy, to succeed over the long term.


Apparatus, systems, methods, and related computer program products for generating and implementing thermodynamic models of a structure. Thermostats disclosed herein are operable to control an HVAC system. In controlling the HVAC system, a need to determine an expected indoor temperature profile for a particular schedule of setpoint temperatures may arise. To make such a determination, a thermodynamic model of the structure may be used. The thermodynamic model may be generated by fitting weighting factors of a set of basis functions to a variety of historical data including time information, temperature information, and HVAC actuation state information. The set of basis functions characterize an indoor temperature trajectory of the structure in response to a change in HVAC actuation state, and include an inertial carryover component that characterizes a carryover of a rate of indoor temperature change that was occurring immediately prior to the change in actuation state.


Objective:To compare the efficacies,complications and follow-up results between open surgical revascularization and endovascular recanalization in treatment of chronic iliac arterial occlusive disease,so as to guide treatment selection of these patients. Methods:Sixty-seven patients with chronic iliac arterial occlusive disease were randomly designated to undergo open surgical revascularization or endovascular interventional therapy.The efficacies,complications and follow-up results between the two groups were analyzed and compared. Results:In the open surgical treatment group,30 cases underwent bypass operation(anatomic vascular revascularization in 24 cases and left to right femoro-femoral bypass in 6 cases),and 4 cases underwent patch angioplasty.In the interventional treatment group,7 cases underwent balloon dilatation alone,23 cases underwent balloon dilatation plus stent implantation,and interventional procedure was unsuccessful in 3 cases.Thirty days after surgery,the patency rates of reconstructed vessels of open surgical treatment group and interventional treatment group were 100% and 96.7%,and their overall effective rates were 97.1% and 84.8%,respectively.The incidences of perioperative complications of open surgical treatment group and interventional treatment group were 35.3%(12/34) and 20.0%(6/30),respectively.The follow-up period ranged from 13 to 65 months.The patency rates of the reconstructed vessels and symptom relief rates between the two groups had no significant differences during the first year after surgery(all P0.05),however,from second year after surgery,the patency rates of the reconstructed vessels and ABI value of open surgical treatment group were significantly higher than those of interventional treatment group,and the symptoms such as intermittent claudication and rest pain of open surgical treatment group were less evident(all P0.05). Conclusion:Both open surgical revascularization and endovascular interventional therapy have substantial efficacy in treatment of chronic iliac arterial occlusive disease.By comparison,open surgical revascularization has better long-term efficacy but greater risk of complications,while endovascular interventional therapy is an ideal choice for patients of old age and poor general condition contraindicating surgery.


In conjunction with soil type and climate, the use of nitrogen fertilizers is a major factor affecting nitrous oxide emissions. This study compares injection of pig slurry and pig slurry digestate at 15 or 20 cm depths with trailinghose application followed by immediate incorporation. The work was based on a laboratory microcosm experiment with undisturbed soil cylinders (0–30 cm depth) from three arable soils (Histosol, Gleysol and Plaggic Anthrosol). Soil cylinders were fertilized with pig slurry and pig slurry digestate (150 kg N/ha) and emissions of N 2 O, CH 4 and CO 2 were monitored. The comparison of application techniques over a 37-day period show that soil type and ap plication technique, had a strong (P < 0.001) impact on N 2 O emissions. Fertilization with pig slurry showed no significantly higher N 2 O emissions than pig slurry digestate. Fertilizer injection significantly increased N 2 O emissions compared to fertilization with a trailing-hose with incorporation.


Farmers always need satisfactory and easy advice from experts. To get the advice from an expert system, it should have enough knowledge about the domain. Gathering enough knowledge and representing it in a machine understandable format is time consuming and difficult job. Also, representing each and every kind of knowledge is still a research issue. Since, a single picture is worth a thousand words, it will be a good idea to acquire knowledge also in images rather than only text. Image is an easy way of communication without any boundary of language. Hence there is a need for building an expert system with content based image retrieval which could acquire and deliver the knowledge by searching the image having the similar features that is searched by the user. In the presented work, a system is developed to diagnose diseases in crops by matching the uploaded image of a diseased plant from the corpus of images. Three techniques viz. CEDD, Auto Color Correlogram and FCTH are tested and the result is presented. The automatic image based disease diagnosis in crops may help farmers in early detection of diseases and losses due to the image infestation can be reduced.


SUMMARY Laboratory and field trials were conducted to determine the efficacy of the candidate rodenticide flupropadine against the house mouse (Mus musculus L.). In laboratory feeding tests, family groups of wild mice maintained in pens and conditioned to feeding on plain foods were offered flupropadine at either 0·10%, 0·15%, 0·18% or 0·20% in pinhead oatmeal bait. Overall mortalities in replicated 21-day treatments were 66/71 (93·0%), 71/79 (89·9%), 72/70 (94·7%) and 69/75 (92·0%) respectively. In 17 field trials carried out against mice infesting farm buildings, flupropadine was used at 0·10%, 0·15% and 0·18% in oatmeal bait. Mean treatment success, estimated from live-capture and mortality data, was 88·6%, 96·2% and 96·6% respectively. Flupropadine was found to be as near effective against mice as calciferol/warfarin and the second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides difenacoum, bromadiolone and brodifacoum. In further comparison with the anticoagulants, treatment with flupropadine bait achieved markedly quicker control.


Accurate and reliable forecast of traffic flow is important to intelligent transportation systems (ITS). However, due to the non-stationary of traffic flow data, traditional point forecasting can hardly be accurate, so probabilistic forecasting methods are essential for quantification of the potential uncertainties and risks for traffic management. This paper proposes a kernel extreme learning machine (KELM)-based probabilistic forecasting method of traffic flow, and the parameters of KELM are optimized by using Quantum-behaved particle swarm optimization (QPSO) algorithm. To verify its effectiveness, traffic flow prediction using QPSO-KELM are compared with other methods. Experimental results show that QPSO-KELM has higher prediction accuracy at different confidence levels for practical applications in traffic management systems. And it will help traffic managers to make right decisions.


Item response theory (IRT) provides valuable methods for the analysis of the psychometric properties of a psychological measure. To date, however, these methods have not been used frequently by personality assessment researchers, in part because many researchers have not been introduced to the methods and in part because most of the development of IRT has taken place in applied education assessment settings, resulting in terminology that is ability focused rather than trait focused. The purpose of this article is twofold. First, an overview of IRT is presented, highlighting the concepts of the three-parameter IRT model, item and test information, and conditional standard error of measurement. Second, the psychometric properties of the (MMPI-2) PSY-5 scales are examined to demonstrate IRT's value.


In connection with the hardware system of morphing wings composed by 20 agents,via integrating visual airfoil control,process communication and aerodynamic data access modules,and owing to the use of object-oriented software,a morphing flight simulation system on the basis of variable parameter model has been developed.This system can communicate with the underlying hardware to achieve control,and can integrate target airfoil and aerodynamic parameters to provide for the flight simulation program in real-time.Meanwhile,it will show the deformation effect.The operation result manifests that this system can control the morphing wings effectively and fulfills flight simulation of morphing aircraft.


The love to students is the central part of the professional moral of teachers. It is a strong motivation encouraging both the teacher and the student to work harder. Furthermore, it can help the students in their full development in both perception and feeling. The teacher's love can be divided into three le vels: intimation, understanding, and expectation. A teacher should not only give love to his/her students, but also know how to love.


Ion chromatography (IQ has gradually developed into a preferred method for the determination of inorganic anions. And in recent years some low molecular aliphatic acid can be also separated in the ion exchange column with the development of stationary phase. But for the determination of aromatic ionic compounds there are some problems. The aromatic anions show enhanced retention due to interaction with the pi electrons of the aromatic backbone. Although the addition of an organic modifier can alleviate the difficulty, it is not the ultimate solution. lonPac AS20 column was developed using a unique polymer bonding technology and its substrate coating is aliphatic backbone. The polymer is completely free of any pi electron-containing substituents in the AS20 column. In this paper, the retention behavior of aromatic carboxylic and sulfonic acid on two hydroxide-selective columns, lonPac AS11-HC, AS 16, and the new column AS20 was also studied. The result showed that the retentions of ten compounds on three columns were different with each other because of their different column characteristics. Among them 4-chlorobenzene sulfonic acid, 3,5-dihydric benzoic acid and salicylic acid obviously exhibited the weakest retention on the lonPac AS20. It was showed that pi-pi bond function between anion and stationary phases was weakened in AS20 column because its polymer was completely free of any pi electron-containing substituents. So in this paper the AS20 was selected as an analytical column to separate ten aromatic ionic compounds, fumaric acid with conjugate bond included. The retention behavior, separation of the ten compounds and effect of temperature on their retention in the anion-exchange column AS20 (2 mm) were studied. The result showed that those compounds could be separated with each other when running in gradient program and the organic modifier was unnecessary during the separation. So it is showed that AS20 column can be used as a separating column because its polymer is completely free of any pi electron-containing substituents. Finally, the effect of temperature on the retention behavior in AS20 column was studied and it was showed that the retention of nine compounds exhibited endothermic behavior.


Using a Vienna rectifier as the machine-side rectifier of back-to-back converter is advantageous in terms of size and cost compared to three-level topologies and for this reason, the Vienna rectifier has been used in Wind Turbine Systems (WTS). This paper proposes a Model Predictive Control (MPC) method for the Vienna rectifier used in WTS with a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator (PMSG). The proposed MPC method considers the feasible eight-voltage vectors of the Vienna rectifier. In addition, the voltage vectors, which are the center voltage vectors of two feasible adjacent voltage vectors, are taken into consideration to improve the performance of the MPC method. The optimized voltage vector for the ripple minimization of PMSG currents is determined by cost function. Then, the neutral-point voltage unbalancing problem is considered for selecting the final switching set, which is generated by the space modulation method. The effectiveness and performance of the proposed MPC method is verified by simulations.


1. Budget Paper 3, p89 – the explanatory note relating to the $7.8M reduction in funding for Crown Land says the decrease "mainly reflects one-off repairs and maintenance funding in 2017-18 as part of the economic stimulus program". Under precisely which "economic stimulus program" were these one-off R&M works done? Would you please outline which one-off R&M projects under the Crown Land output were completed?


P-type Ba8Ga16CdxGe30-x (x=0.95, 1.00, 1.05, 1.10) type-I clathrates with different Cd contents were synthesized by combining melt method with spark plasma sintering (SPS). The effects of Cd content on electrical transport properties have been investigated. The results show that all samples exhibit p-type conduction. The Seebeck coefficient alpha and room temperature carrier mobility muH decrease with the increasing Cd content. The electrical conductivity sigma and the room temperature carrier concentration Np increase with the increase of Cd content. In the low temperature range (T<150 K), the carrier scattering mechanism is mainly ionized impurity mechanism, and gradually changes to an acoustical mechanism with the rising temperature. The maximum power factor value of 0.35times10-3 Wm-1K-2 is obtained at 550 K for Ba8Ga16Cd1.00Ge29.00.


A watered out zone interpretation model is set up where the relative resistivity of 4m in relation to logging series, lithological and physical information for the fault block Jin 45 in Huabei oilfield is used By means of the model, parameters on water saturation,shale index,porosity,irreducible water saturation,residual oil saturation,water phase permeability,oil relative permeability, water cut and oil displacement efficiency are determined, and a standard for dividing watered out zone is formulated The process of data from 20 wells of Jin 45 by this model demonstrates that the coincidence rate is more than 85 percent


The first writers, who, after the revival of learning in Europe, made the Greek and Roman money an object of their inquiries, took great pains to collect and explain such passages in antient authors as related to it; but very little to discover its true value. In so much, that some of them have supposed the Roman aureus to have been heavier than the Greek philippic (1); and others, that the denarius was heaver than the Attic drachm; but most of them agreed in this, that the two last mentioned coins were exactly equal. All which opinions are proved to be erroneous by the coins themselves now in being.


Formation of model describing dynamic straining of reinforced concrete requires taking into account the basic aspects influencing the stress-strain state of structures. Strength of concrete segments in crack spacing is one of the crucial aspects that affect general strain behavior of reinforced concrete. Experimental results demonstrate significant change in strength of tensed and compressed concrete segments in crack spacing both under static and under dynamic loading. In this case, strength depends on tensile strain level and the slope angle of rebars towards the cracks direction. Existing theoretical and experimental studies estimate strength of concrete segments in crack spacing under static loading. The present work presents results of experimental and theoretical studies of dynamic strength of plates between cracks subjected to compression-tension. Experimental data was analyzed statistically; the dependences were suggested to describe dynamic strength of concrete segments depending on tensile strain level and slope angle of rebars to cracks direction.


During the development of shale gas reservoirs, the mechanical parameters of shale rocks are greatly significant to guide reservoir drilling design, reservoir stimulation, scheme design, and wellbore stability evaluation. Compared with conventional gas reservoirs, the mechanical properties of shale gas reservoir are more complex and lack of the comprehensive understanding. In this study, the uniaxial and triaxial compression experiments of the Longmaxi shale in South China were conducted to understand the mechanical characteristics and damage mechanism of shale rocks. Combined with the characteristics of shale microstructure, the effects of the mechanical properties such as mineral composition, deformation, stress–strain, and fracture damage characteristics were analyzed and discussed. The results show that the stress–strain curves of shale are two main types of elastic deformation and elastic–plastic deformation. There is a significant difference in effective pressure of yield platform in different shale post-peak deformation. The effective pressure of rigid shale is 60 MPa while that of other shales is 30 MPa. With the increase of effective pressure, the increase of peak compressive strength decreases gradually, and the effect of effective pressure on compressive strength decreases gradually with the transition from the brittleness to the ductility. The higher the effective pressure of the brittleness to the ductility is, the greater the change of compressive strength with effective pressure is, and the smaller the compressive strength under low effective pressure is, the smaller the variation with pressure is. Shale rocks with relatively high brittleness under different effective pressures are mainly characterized by brittle split fracture dominated by tensile fracture, while other shales with low brittleness are dominated by single shear fracture plane.


www.PRSJournal.com 167e I this issue, Gooch et al. sought to assess the impact of the 2010 New York State Breast Reconstruction Act on the rate of immediate breast reconstruction.1 Acknowledging the importance of plastic surgery in multidisciplinary care for women with breast cancer, the New York State Breast Reconstruction Act intends to improve awareness about insurance coverage and access to breast reconstruction for women considering mastectomy. The authors performed a retrospective review of an all-payer New York State database before and after implementation of this policy. Based on their analyses, the authors conclude that the New York State Breast Reconstruction Act did not affect the annual rate of immediate reconstruction. However, methodologic issues may affect the validity of the study findings and conclusions. As we usher in health policies and other strategies to improve access to breast reconstruction in the coming few decades, it will be increasingly important to assess the impact of these interventions in a careful and thoughtful manner. Evaluating the impact of policy can be difficult because of the lack of appropriate data, inability to adjust for contextual factors, and the length of time needed to assess outcomes of interest. Furthermore, the implications of these analyses may be significant for other states considering similar policies. The authors should be commended on their effort to study the impact of this important policy to reduce disparities in access to breast reconstruction. This study has a number of strengths, including the data source, the number of years available for the analyses, and the socioeconomic and clinical characteristics used for multivariable models. The study also has several key limitations, some of which are noted in the Discussion section. As the authors have done in this study, it is common to evaluate the impact of a policy with a retrospective review of observational data. However, without a control population over this same period, there is no way to adjust for secular trends that occur with time. For breast reconstruction, there are national trends and influences that also play an important role in raising awareness about these procedures. Unfortunately, this methodologic flaw may also lead to problematic conclusions. A more appropriate study design would have been a "difference-in-differences" approach, which is considered the gold standard for assessing the impact of policies using observational data.2 In a difference-in-differences analysis, authors select another source of data in a geographic area where the policy was not enacted. The chosen outcome is then compared between these two regions over the same study period before and after implementation of the policy, while also adjusting for other available confounding factors. This approach enables adjusting for time-dependent trends that may affect the outcome. In a separate study, Mahmoudi et al. evaluated the impact of the New York State Breast Reconstruction Act on racial and ethnic disparities using a difference-in-differences approach with data from both New York and California.3 In this analysis, the authors found that the new legislation reduced disparities in the rate of immediate breast reconstruction between White and Hispanic or Latina women by approximately 9 percent in the year after implementation of the policy in New York. Similar trends were also noted for other racial and ethnic minority groups. Although increases in the overall breast reconstruction rates after passage of the New York State Breast Reconstruction Act were not dramatically different from years before 2011, it is likely that the legislation had an effect on reconstruction in patients who


This paper proposes a new decode and forward scheme with soft information relaying technique to overcome the performance degradation happening when the quality of the inter-user channel is very bad. Based on the scheme, soft log-likelihood ratio of the relay decoder is quantized, encoded, superimposedly modulated and then forwarded to the destination. The destination receiver employs an iterative superposition decoder and modified maximum a posteriori probability decoder to recover the transmitted signal from the source. The performance of the scheme is evaluated by simulation. We show that the new scheme can significantly outperform the conventional decode and forward scheme even in a very poor inter-user channel.


Polar codes have recently emerged as one of the most favorable capacityachieving error correction codes due to their low encoding and decoding complexity. However, because of the large code length required by practical applications, the few existing successive cancellation (SC) decoder implementations still suffer from not only high hardware cost but also long decoding latency. In this paper, a data-flow graph (DFG) for the SC decoder is derived. A complete hardware architecture is first derived for the conventional tree SC decoder and the feedback part is presented next. Precomputation look-ahead technique is exploited to reduce the achievable minimum decoding latency. Substructure sharing is used to design a merged processing element (PE) for higher hardware utilization. In order to meet throughput requirements for a diverse set of application scenarios, a systematic approach to construct different overlapped SC polar decoder architectures is also presented. Compared with a conventional <formula formulatype="inline"> <tex Notation="TeX">$N$</tex></formula>-bit tree SC decoder, the proposed overlapped architectures can achieve as high as <formula formulatype="inline"> <tex Notation="TeX">$(N-1)$</tex></formula> times speedup with only <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$({N}\log_{2}{N})/2$</tex></formula> merged PEs. The proposed pre-computation approach leads to a 50% reduction in latency for <formula formulatype="inline"> <tex Notation="TeX">${N} > 2^{7}$</tex></formula>, and 40% reduction for <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$N \leq 2^{7}$</tex></formula>.


In this paper, external environmental factors are considered in context as the cause of deviations in human behavior. It also emphasizes the views of thinkers and the author's own position on deviant behavior.
In our view, it is more appropriate to use the term deviant in the interpretation of concepts involving the issue of deviation than the concept of deviant behavior. Because deviation in itself means activity and movement, deviant behavior reflects an innate-behavioral trait. In these processes, the concept of deviation from a sociological point of view does not focus on the dependence of deviation on the heredity and character of the individual, but focuses on the connection of the main context with the social environment. In our view, deviation can be described as an act, activity, or lifestyle of non-compliance with a system of norms accepted by the majority in a social group or society. This definition is enshrined in the Law of the Republic of Uzbekistan "On Crime Prevention" as one of the basic concepts, which corresponds to the assessment of a person's lifestyle, actions or inactions as antisocial behavior in violation of socially accepted norms and rules of conduct.


The study aims on the procedural aspect of a settlement reached before the court in the course of proceedings. Procedural rules indicate when and in what circumstances the court has to persuade the parties to reconcile and what should be the nature of that action. In addition, the procedural law complements the range of possible reciprocal concessions made by the parties. It also sets out further requirements that have to be followed by the body of a settlement reached before the court, especially by indicating the extent of judicial control. The rules of the civil procedure also determine the effect that a settlement reached before the court has on the course of further proceedings. Thus,the aim of the above is that the rules are focused on the implementation of the postulate expressed in Article 10 of the Civil Procedure Code.


This paper addresses the problem of defining and using terms like 9early9, 9average9, and 9late9 as they are used when describing phases of grapevine development. One hundred fourteen cultivars have been compared over seven seasons and listed according to the time each attains budbreak, bloom, and maturity. Most of the vines studied demonstrate a striking consistency, relative to each other, in the onset of budbreak and bloom, but maturity is less predictable due to greater vine management variability. Associations between development phases of grapevines and various climatic indicators are discussed, and the prospect of matching cultivars to climates is raised.


In order to measure corrosion level of steel reinforcement rebar which is inside reinforced concrete structure, infrared thermographic technique was employed. Experimental test parameters were four different ambient temperatures and various levels of corrosion states (0, 1, 3, 5, 7 and 10% of weight loss). After analysis of temperature distributions of concrete surface, the amount of heat flux from the concrete surface is directly proportional to the corrosion level which is inside of concrete.