The value of an educational ideal lies in the potential it has to inspire and guide teachers and educators towards their central aims; the promise, however, all too often remains unrealized. We have known, ever since Socrates awakened us to this insight, that to fail to think seriously about the choices we make as citizens or about the decisions taken by government is to live a life that is not worth living because all-important questions about what is right and just are simply ignored. Socrates' insight comes to mind on reading the discussion in this issue of Journal of Thought of the teaching of social studies in schools today. Robert A. Waterson and A. G. Rud make the case that democratic bankruptcy threatens if the potential the social studies have for fostering educational ideals such as critical thought and civic engagement is squandered. When the emphasis in schooling increasingly falls on standardized curricula, competency tests, and formulaic approaches, we risk losing sight of the need to teach in such a way that students develop the moral and intellectual virtues that will enable them to make informed decisions and exercise good judgment. This article draws attention to three thoughtful and stimulating approaches to teaching social studies that take seriously the importance of discussion, controversial issues, and problem solving, and that require of teachers the very qualities and dispositions these programs seek to develop in students. In a wide-ranging survey of Chinese education from classical times to the present day, James Z. Yang and William C. Frick remind us that the same ideal of reflective thought appears as early as the work of Confucius in his comment that a person who studies but does not think is lost. It is also worth adding, in the same context, Lao Tzu's observation that extensive knowledge is not the same as wisdom. Regrettably, the ideal of critical judgment implicit in these philosophical ideas gave way to increasingly rigid and illiberal practices in teaching and education in China, the worst excesses coming during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s when political ideology, propaganda, and anti-intellectualism dominated education at every level. With respect to the educational reforms that have been underway in China since the 1980s, the authors identify a tension in contemporary Chinese education between fostering creativity and independent thought in technical fields of study while at the same time imposing constraints in other areas of the curriculum where intellectual freedom might lead to political dissent. One is reminded immediately of John Passmore's observation in the 1960s that the Soviet attempt to restrict innovative thinking to technical areas was breaking down. There is nothing mysterious here. Passmore had introduced the idea of the critical spirit, as distinct from the possession of critical ability, to capture the idea of an attitude or an outlook that a person brings to whatever is at issue. Once this spirit is engendered, it is practically impossible to confine it arbitrarily to certain approved areas. The idea of the critical spirit is also relevant when we come to the article by Gary W. Houchens and John L. Keedy who focus in particular on the efforts of school principals as they endeavor to promote student achievement. Their article builds on the pioneering research of Argyris and Schon in the 1970s which characterized attempts to describe and explain the actions and procedures that people follow in addressing problems in their professional context as 'theories of practice.' Houchens and Keedy report on a recent study (by Houchens) examining the action strategies and achievements of four principals as they attempted to exercise instructional leadership in their schools. One interesting result suggests that principals readily alter their strategies to achieve their goals ("single-loop learning") but are less inclined to question the underlying assumptions on which the strategies are based ("double-loop learning"). …


Introduction A Critical Reader in International Communication and Globalization in a Post Modern World PART ONE: RESEARCH IN INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION AND GLOBALIZATION: CONTRADICTIONS AND DIRECTIONS International Communication and Globalization - Oliver Boyd-Barrett Contradictions and Directions International Communication Research - James Halloran Opportunities and Obstacles PART TWO: AN OVERVIEW OF COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY, DEREGULATION POLICY AND THEIR IMPACT ON THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES Communications Technologies - Ralph Negrine An Overview Communication and the Globalization Process in the Developing World - Ali Mohammadi PART THREE: THE NEW PARADIGM AND GLOBAL MORALITY International Communication - Cees Hamelink Global Market and Morality Taming Modernity - Majid Tehranian and Katherin Kia Tehranian Towards a New Paradigm PART FOUR: GLOBALIZATION, CULTURE AND THE CONTROL OF DIFFERENCE Cultural Globalization and Cultural Imperialism - John Tomlinson International Communication - Richard Maxwell The Control of Difference and the Global Market


Abstract The purpose of this paper is to prove the existence of a solution of the following periodic boundary value problem in the presence of an upper solution β and a lower solution α with β ≤ α, where ƒ(t, u, v) satisfies one side Lipschitz condition.


The /sup 106,108,110,112,11/ /sup 4,116/Cd(p,t) reactions have been investigated at E-italic/sub p/ = 26 MeV. Enhancement factors for the ground-state to ground-state transitions have been extracted and compared with predictions for two-nucleon transfer strengths. No evidence for a sizable admixture of the intruder configurations in the ground states is deduced from this experiment.


Accumulation chambers are recommended for wells with low bottom-hole pressure and high productivity index. An insert chamber is one type of accumulation chamber used when casing conditions do not allow installation of dual-packer chambers or when lowering the point of gas injection below the top of the perforations. For insert-chamber installations, formation gas must travel downward through the annular space between the casing and chamber. A complicated two-phase-flow process takes place in this annulus, with formation gas trying to move upward and accumulate at the top while the liquid is moving downward carrying some formation gas with it. To avoid accumulation of formation gas in this annular space, it is important to vent free gas to the surface. An installation with a port to vent formation gas increased production by 70%.


Background: Selection programs for growth and stress traits in cultured fish are fundamental to the improvement of aquaculture production. The gilthead sea bream (Sparus aurata) is the main aquacultured species in the Mediterranean area and there is considerable interest in the genetic improvement of this species. With the aim of increasing the genomic resources in gilthead sea bream and identifying genes and mechanisms underlying the physiology of the stress response, we developed a cDNA microarray for gilthead sea bream that is enriched by suppression substractive hybridization with stress and immunorelevant genes. This microarray is used to analyze the dynamics of gilthead sea bream liver expression profile after confinement exposure. Results: Groups of confined and control juvenile fish were sampled at 6, 24, 72 and 120 h post exposure. GeneSpring analyses identified 202 annotated genes that appeared differentially expressed at least at one sampling time (P < 0.05). Gene expression results were validated by quantitative PCR of 10 target genes, and K-means clustering of differently expressed genes identified four major temporal gene expression profiles. Set 1 encompassed a rapid metabolic readjustment with enhanced uptake and intracellular transport of fatty acids as metabolic fuels. Set 2 was associated with a wide variety of tissue repair and remodeling processes that were mostly mediated by the stress response of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Sets 3 and 4 encompassed the re-establishment of cellular homeostasis with increased intracellular trafficking and scavenging of reactive oxygen species (ROS), accompanied by a bidirectional regulation of the immune system and a general decline of ROS production. Conclusions: Collectively, these findings show the complex nature of the adaptive stress response with a clear indication that the ER is an important control point for homeostatic adjustments. The study also identifies metabolic pathways which could be analyzed in greater detail to provide new insights regarding the transcriptional regulation of the stress response in fish. Background Selective breeding to ameliorate stress susceptibility has long been established in terrestrial vertebrates of economical relevance [1], but cultured fish are essentially nondomesticated species and selection programs for growth and stress traits are still in their infancy [2,3]. In salmonids, however, a genetic component exists for the stress-mediated response of cortisol [4-6], and selective breeding for lowand high-cortisol responders has been performed in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) after handling and exposure to a confinement stressor [7,8]. In carp (Cyprinus carpio), a high heritability has also been found for the stress-related increases in plasma cortisol levels after cold shock exposure [9]. Progeny of gilthead sea bream (Sparus aurata) from parents selected for lowor high-cortisol response also show divergent responses [10], although in this species low-cortisol responders can be more sensitive to handling and confinement [11]. This finding is indicative that parameters other than plasma cortisol levels must be considered to fully understand the regulation of stress * Correspondence: email@example.com 1 Fish Nutrition and Growth Endocrinology Group, Department of Biology, Culture and Pathology of Marine Fish Species, Institute of Aquaculture Torre de la Sal (CSIC), 12595 Ribera de Cabanes, Castellón, Spain Full list of author information is available at the end of the article Calduch-Giner et al. BMC Genomics 2010, 11:193 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/11/193 Page 2 of 18 responsiveness and susceptibility. For instance, the cortisol peak is indicative in gilthead sea bream of the intensity and duration of stressor when data found in the literature are compared, but a bimodal rise after acute stress confinement has been reported by some authors [12,13], which would be indicative of some exhaustion of the hypothalamic-pituitary-interrenal axis. By contrast, protein and transcript levels of glucose-regulated protein 75 (GRP75/mortalin), a mitochondrial chaperone of the HSP70 family, are increased by both acute and chronic stress confinement in liver tissue [14]. In addition, transcriptional and promoter analyses of duplicated growth hormone receptors (GHR) indicate that GHR-II rather than GHR-I is a stress sensitive gene in gilthead sea bream [12,15]. With the advent of "omic" technologies, a significant portion, if not all, of the set of transcripts, proteins or metabolites that a study wishes to consider can be determined in one assay. cDNAand oligo-arrays are in fact powerful tools for the gene expression profiling of many thousands of genes, and various zebrafish (Danio rerio), medaka (Oryzias latipes) and fugu (Takifugu rubripes) microarrays have been developed for toxicogenomics, immunity, development and environmental stress research [16]. Genomic resources in fish species of interest in aquaculture are also continuously growing and species-specific microarrays are now available in salmonids [17-21], flatfish [22,23] and catfish [24,25]. In the case of gilthead sea bream, a highly cultured fish throughout the Mediterranean, a first microarray with 10,176 clones from a cDNA library of embryonic and larval origin has been developed by Sarropoulou et al. [26] to analyze gene expression profile during early development and cortisol treatment. Recently, a second microarray has been constructed and used in developmental studies by Ferraresso et al. [27]. The aim of the current study is to gain more understanding of the physiology of the stress response using a third gilthead sea bream microarray, enriched by subtractive hybridization (SSH) with stress and immunorelevant genes. Time series analyses of data revealed the complexity of the adaptive stress response and underscore the utility of this custom-made array to analyze homeostatic adjustments to stress. This understanding will have practical implications on fish culture and management. Results Microarray construction A total of 36,870 gilthead sea bream nucleotide sequences were available for the construction of a cDNA sea bream microarray. Most were sequenced either from tissue EST collections made available by the Consortium of Marine Genomics Europe or from SSH libraries constructed, as described herein, from target tissues after stress and parasite challenges (for details see Construction of SSH libraries in Methods section), and some were obtained from public databases. The number of assembled sequences was 19,069: 12,409 singletons and 6,660 contigs with two or more ESTs in depth [http://www.sigenae.org/aquafirst]. Clone sequences derived from confinement and pathogen SSH libraries [GenBank: FP331359-FP339571, FP339630FP340170] were represented in 4,851 unique sequences, and most of these (3,161) were novel gilthead sea bream sequences. The entire list of assembled sequences was annotated by BLASTX search on the UniProt database and 6,064 unique sequences showed a significant similarity (E value < 10-5) to known genes. Taking into account contigs that were homologous to the same gene, the final number of unique genes on the microarray was 4,876. This platform has been assigned the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) accession number GPL8467. It was possible to assign gene ontology (GO) annotations to 6,193 features and the most prevalent GO categories at level 3 (biological processes and molecular functions) are summarized in Table 1. Expression analysis To analyze the time course of the response to stress, fish of 110-130 g body weight were sampled at 6, 24, 72 and 120 h after transfer from 500-l tanks (8-10 Kg/m3) to cylinder net baskets of 10-l volume (117-123 Kg/m3). Given this body weight,, the rearing density for control fish is near to optimum for gilthead sea bream. The analysis of the hepatic gene expression profile after 10-fold increase in fish density (the confinement stressor) identified 660 unique transcripts as differentially expressed genes (P < 0.05, one-way ANOVA by time and condition). Among these, 202 transcripts were annotated genes, and the time course of changes in upand down-regulated genes at each sampling point is shown in Figure 1A. After 6 h of confinement, a relative low number of genes (54) were differentially expressed. The maximal number of differentially expressed genes (189 genes) was attained at 24 h, and after that the number of differentially expressed genes decreased progressively to 77 at 120 h. Analysis by Blast2GO revealed the involvement of these differentially expressed genes in a wide variety of processes including among others biosynthetic processes, transport, cell communication, response to stress and regulation of metabolism and catabolism (Figure 1B). K-means clustering of differentially expressed genes identified four major expression patterns displaying distinct temporal profiles (Figure 2). The first cluster set was composed of 21 genes that showed an early up-regulation at 6 h after confinement. The second cluster set was composed of 51 genes that displayed a delayed and strong up-regulation at 24 h with a fast recovery to control levels by 120 h. The third cluster set was composed of 57 genes with a late but more sustained stress induction that was still evident after 120 h of confinement exposure. The fourth cluster set was Calduch-Giner et al. BMC Genomics 2010, 11:193 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/11/193 Page 3 of 18 composed of 54 genes that showed a persistent down-regulation at 24 h through to 120 h of confinement exposure. In each K-means cluster, FatiGO analysis for the overrepresentation of GO-terms suggested the enrichment in some biological processes, although adjusted P-values (Fisher exact test) did not fall in the range of statistical significance (P < 0.05). The entire list of up-regulated genes (sets 1, 2 and 3) is shown in Additional file 1. The most distinctive fea


The Dutch Embassy in Istanbul held auctions in order to sell any goods left behind usually upon death by members of the Dutch 'nation' living there. Similar to Renaissance and early-modern Europe, traditionally auctions were held to settle debts and raise income to support widows or orphans. Between 1725 and 1750 sixteen of these auctions have been recorded. They concern the possessions of merchants and other members of the Dutch nation. This paper will discuss which types of commodities were sold, to whom they were sold and finally will consider one specific auction. This particular case concerned the auction of Ankara-based Dutch mohair merchant Abraham de la Fontaine and his wife Petronella Gasparina. After his bankruptcy and following arrest for a number of crimes, De la Fontaine was taken to Istanbul, where he was imprisoned. His capitulatory protection was withdrawn and the case continued at the Divan-i Humayun. In 1740 he requested the public sale of his belongings that were kept in the Dutch Embassy, so he could pay off some pressing debts. A registration was made in the chancery records that his wife owned three baskets with jewellery and clothes. At closer inspection, the contents of the baskets are the items that were put up for sale. The paper will subsequently discuss these belongings as well as their buyers. These commodities, as forms of material culture, provide an entry into the relatively new approach of material culture within the field of Ottoman studies, and give insights in the mixed material wealth of eighteenth-century Ottoman Istanbul.


Since the previous version of this chapter was published (Swan, Hudmon, & Khroyan, 2003), many advances in the science of nicotine dependence have occurred. Although progress has been significant, nicotine dependence remains a substantial global problem, the solution of which will require sustained effort at the basic, genetic, environmental (individual and macro levels), and treatment levels. In this chapter, we highlight some of the most significant developments in the field of nicotine dependence research over the past 10 years. These highlights include an increased understanding of the role of individual variation in relevant neurochemical and metabolic pathways; the emergence of neuroimaging technologies that further specify areas in the brain that are influenced by environmental cues to smoke; a remarkable series of genetic epidemiological studies that have identified and replicated an association between variation in the CHRN A5-A3-B4 nicotinic gene cluster on chromosome 15 and nicotine dependence; a more complete picture of individual-level variables that influence risk for nicotine dependence, including gender, cultural, and psychiatric comorbidities; the recent development of new assessment tools for nicotine dependence; and a summary of empirically based behavioral and pharmacological treatments for nicotine dependence. We close the chapter with a review of the recent and current macroenvironmental contextual factors in which the science has taken place in the past decade, including the master settlement agreement between the states and the tobacco industry, the impact of continued public health efforts, evidence of the cost-effectiveness of treatment for nicotine dependence, implications of health care reform for tobacco use counseling, the emergence of potential reduced exposure products into the marketplace, and global efforts at tobacco control.

Keywords:

smoking cessation;
clinical trials;
tobacco control;
risk factors;
neurobiology


In this paper the authors want to verify, in a sample of seven European countries, if there is a relationship between firm size and the ability to obtain product, process and organisational innovation. If such relationship exists, they try to understand if this may be attributed to a different allocation of key resources or to some "intrinsic" differences. Besides the analysis of the overall sample, the authors look specifically at Italy, making a comparison with the international context. The authors find that small firms (from 10 to 15 employees) have a disadvantage respect to medium and large firms in the innovative capacity; with partial exception of process innovation, this can be explained by a different allocation of key resources, like RD there are anyway some peculiarities: medium (from 16 to 50 employees) Italian firms have a higher capacity in process innovation respect to the average of the sample, while all dimensional classes suffer in organisational innovation; in the end, in all kinds of innovation the distance between small and medium/large firms in Italy is not significantly different than the average of the sample.


We demonstrate a low-cost 343 nm solid-state laser delivering up to 20 μJ per pulse, with a pulse width of 2.3 ns at a repetition rate of 100 Hz. The 343 nm is obtained through a third harmonic generation of a passively Q-switched 1030 nm Yb:YAG laser with pulse energy of 190 μJ at 100 Hz and a pulse width of 5.4 ns. The IR-UV conversion efficiency is 10.4%, comparable to that achieved with mode-locked IR lasers. The light source is electronically controlled for easy synchronization with a detection circuit. The low repetition rate specifically targets applications exploiting the millisecond scale lifetime of lanthanides employed in fluoroimmunoassay measurements for time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy. Low repetition rate and even pulse-on-demand operation is demonstrated. © 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement


PT SLJ Global Tbk is a company engaged in forestry and timber industry which also has its own forest as the source of its raw materials. In the log timber supply chain, there are risks that have the potential to harm the company such as the amount of wood raw materials ordered not in accordance with the initial demand and weather factors that affect the delivery time which results in delays in shipping log wood sent via pontoon ships and rafts to the company. This study aims to analyze and develop mitigation strategies on log timber supply chain risks at PT SLJ Global Tbk. The method used is the Supply Chain Operation Reference (SCOR) as the basis for identifying the risks of each supply chain activity and the House of Risk (HOR) method is used to identify risk events and risk agents causing them. As a result, 30 risk events were obtained which were categorized into 5 processes, namely plan, source, make, delivery and return with 39 risk agents identified. It is


This study was performed by the Department of Engine and Emissions Research under an SwRI® Internal Research and Development Program. The objective of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a system design that was an advancement over SwRI's patented Protection of Aftertreatment Systems from Sulfur (PASS) technology.[1,2] A Lean NO x Trap (LNT) was employed as the sulfur-sensitive emissions reduction device. Lean Sulfur Traps (LST) and Rich Sulfur Traps (RST) were formulated to provide the sulfur protection. Testing was performed to evaluate the efficiency of the LNT, the sulfur poisoning of the LNT, the efficiency of the LST, and the regeneration and protection characteristics of the PASS-2 system. The program successfully demonstrated that an LST upstream of an LNT does provide protection for the LNT from the adverse effects of fuel-borne sulfur. The work also demonstrated that the LST could be desulfurized, with all of the product sulfur species passing through the LNT, without adversely affecting its performance. These two results validated the PASS-2 advanced system design. The data also suggested that an LST could be effective at storing sulfur from 8 ppm sulfur diesel exhaust at very high efficiency for a minimum of 50,000 miles. A single desulfurization of the LST could release most of the stored sulfur in less than five minutes, with only a minor impact on fuel economy. A temporary deactivation of the LNT was reversed within five minutes, so the NO x emission impact would also be very minor. The lack of high temperature required to regenerate the LNT would result in significantly increased durability of the LNT. In essence, the PASS-2 system could be used to maintain emissions efficiency over 435,000 miles for heavy-duty applications, with an estimated nine desulfurizations of the LST during that period, when the system is fully developed.


OBJECTIVE:To investigate the expression and significance of cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2) in tongue squamous cell carcinoma (TSCC)and tongue precancerous lesion.METHODS:The immunohistochemistry was taken to detecte the different expressions of COX-2 in 3 groups:TSCC (47 cases),tongue precancerous lesion (12 cases) and normal tongue tissue(10 cases).The relationships between the expressions of COX-2 and the pathological characteristics,preoperative chemotherapy,TNM staging,cell differentiation,and lymph node metastasis were analysed respectively.RESULTS:COX-2 was not expressed obviously in normal tongue tissues,while expressing a positive rate as 63.8% in TSCC and 31.3% in tongue epithelial dysplasia.Compared to normal tongue tissues and tongue epithelial dysplasia,the expression of COX-2 was significantly stronger in TSCC(P=0.000).There was no significant difference of COX-2 expressions in metastasis group and non-metastasis group(P=0.750).The expression of COX-2 in TSCC had no relation with preoperative chemotherapy,clinical states,lymph node metastasis and the degree of cell differentiation(P0.05).CONCLUSIONS:COX-2 has different expression levels between TSCC and tongue precancerous lesion,which plays an important role in pathogenesis and development squamous cell carcinoma of tongue.The slight diffrence of expressions of COX-2 in different groups of carcinoma tissues indicates that COX-2 may be a sign of targeted therapy.


The Nazi poster was a good means to promote Nazism to the Germans. The Nazi Party and Hitler knew about how to use propaganda for their ends. This explained how propaganda could work toward an observer. Hitler anticipated that the Germans were made of masses that were quick to respond. The propaganda policy of the Nazi Party was concrete and realistic, planned specifically to persuade the masses. This type of propaganda was repeated constantly until the masses could understand it. The most important point in the Nazi poster was Its realistic grasp of mass psychology. The Nazis chose and applied a suitable propaganda to reach the masses. Such Nazi propaganda confused German voters to support Nazism during the period of crisis and discord. The Nazi political poster greatly contributed to the Nazi fundamental propaganda policy.


Abstract A series of l-(chlorophenyl)-2-aminopropanes previously shown to suppress appeti-tive-controlled behavior were compared with d -amphetamine and methamphetamine on an avoidance procedure. Rats trained to press a lever to avoid intermittent electroshocks were used. In alternate 10-minute periods, a rat received a time-out (TO) when no responding on the lever was necessary. The discrimination between the two periods was cued by appropriate visual stimuli. The two lowest doses that suppressed the appetitive-controlled behavior were studied. With the unsubstituted amphetamines, the rats produced high response rates during both the avoidance and TO periods with a reduction in the number of shocks received. On the whole, the chloro-substituted compounds produced relatively small increases in the rats' response rates with little or no change in the number of shocks received. These results indicate that, at the doses used, the chloro-substituted compounds produced less CNS stimulation than did d -amphetamine or methamphetamine.


We retrospective analysis the clinical liver transplantation follow-up with the clinical factors on long-term survival of the graft and receptor influence,selection postoperative 3 years in the diagnosis of cases,treatment,patients complication of various non-medical adverse factors(compliance) survey analysis and review.Results show most postoperative patients can have good compliance,cooperate to transplant physicians postoperative therapy,follow-up and mental healthy guidance,but some patients because of personal,hospitals and other reasons for not good get follow-up,with complications and cannot be handled in time and affect long-term life.There are many uncertain factors post-liver transplantation,in order to have long-term high quality survival,we must pay attention to follow-up work.Formulate and follow strict standard of follow-up system to ensure timely find complications and psychological problems.Complications of timely discovery and properly handle for graft to long-term survival and functional intact provided protection.In the patient adherence often warn their follow-up and guiding the health importance.


Abstract Mosquitoes play an important role in transmission of large number of diseases including malaria, filariasis and arboviral diseases. Increasing application of synthetic insecticides may be resulted in resistant to insecticides. Furthermore, it may have adverse effects on the environment and human health. Currently, one of the most effective alternative approaches under the biological control programs is using of natural larvicidal agents derived from plants. The larvicidal properties of essential oil obtained from the aerial parts of an indigenous plant, Satureja bachtiarica was evaluated against two mosquito vector, Anopheles stephensi and Culex quinquefasciatus. In addition, the analysis of essential oil was investigated by Gas chromatography-Mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Forty-one compounds, representing 98.42% of the essential oils have been identified. The main constituents were carvacrol (22.66%), p-cymene (15.89%), borneol (14.05 %), 1,8-cineole (10.45%) and thymol (7.27%). Five different concentrations of essential oil were evaluated against the late 3rd and early 4th instars larvae of An. stephensi and Cx. quinquefasciatus. The LC50 and LC90 values against An. stephensi larvae were 24.27 and 54.24 ppm and for Cx. quinquefasciatus were 44.96 and 114.45 ppm after 24 hours of exposure, respectively. In conclusion, results of study clearly indicated that the essential oils of S. bachtiarica possessed remarkable larvicidal properties and could serve as an alternative to synthetic insecticides for control of mosquito larvae.


Objective To investigate the operative procedure and the therapeutic effects of femoral intertrochanteric fracture by using proximal femoral nailing (PFN). Methods Forty six patients with femoral intertrochanteric fractures were treated from February 2007 to August 2008. All of cases were underwent internal fixation of PFN. Results All patients were followed up from 6 months to 24 months, with an average of 13.5 months. The X-ray films at follow-up showed that bony healing was achieved including 1 case of delayed-union followed with anti-rotation screw cutting out, 1 case of malunion and 2 cases of sliding out with lag screw. According to the Harris criterion, the excellent rate of hip function was 93.2%. Conclusion The proximal femoral nail in treatment of femoral intertrochanteric fractures can provide counteraction of rotation, promote fixation stability, enhance fracture healing facilitate early rehabilitation and decrease complication.


This article explores elder abuse in a hospitalised population. We wanted to identify details related to psychological and emotional abuse in the older population in our region and to determine the importance of the Elderly Abuse Suspicion Index (EASI©) in comprehensive geriatric assessments.


we present a new multiple service provider model of operation for the Internet delivery of data mining services. So the collaboration becomes especially important because of the mutual benefit it brings. For this kind of collaboration, data's privacy becomes extremely important: all the parties of the collaboration promise to provide their private data to the collaboration, but neither of them wants each other or any third party to learn much about their private data. One of the major problems that accompany with the huge collection or repository of data is confidentiality. The need for privacy is sometimes due to law or can be motivated by business interests. Performance of privacy preserving collaborative data using secure multiparty computation is evaluated with attack resistance rate measured in terms of time, number of session and participants and memory for privacy preservation. Many anonymization techniques, such as bucketization and generalization, have been designed for privacy preserving publishing. Present work has shown that generalization loses considerable amount of information, especially for high-dimensional data. Bucketization, not clearly prevent membership disclosure and do not clear separation between sensitive and quasi-identifying attributes.


The invention provides a method for displaying a mobile terminal image and mobile terminal. The method includes the steps that parameters of layers to be composited in a data frame obtained currently are compared with preset parameter threshold values; when the comparison result between the parameters of the layers to be composited and the parameter threshold values is a first comparison result, the layers to be composited are composited to the on-line image through a on-line composition mode, according to the on-line composition mode, all the layers to be composited in the data frame obtained currently are directly composited to be the on-line image; the on-line image is directly transmitted to a displayer to be displayed; the first comparison result is that the parameters of the layers to be composited are smaller than the parameter threshold values. By the adoption of the method and the mobile terminal, the number of times of memory read-write can be reduced in the process of image composition, so that the bandwidth is saved.


Motivations are extremely complicated in English and Chinese. They hold the similarities and the differences. Comparison and analysis of motivation will play an active role in finding out the development of the words. And then research about the motivation helps to tap historical, cultural and social changes. Meanwhile, it also shows the ethnic character and the natural styles and futures. All of this has great influence on intercultural communication, languages comparison teaching and language translation.


THE Fourth General Meeting commenced at IO A.M.; Mr. HUSBAND in the Chair. -Re.ort of Parliamentary Committee.-Dr. GIBBON read the Report of the Parliamentary Committee. On the motion of Mr. SOUTHAM, seconded by Dr. WEBSTER, the Report was ordered to be received and laid on the table. The Address in Surgery was delivered by Mr. NUNNELEY. It was published at page I43 of last week's JOURNAL. Mr. CARDEN (Worcester) moved-" That the cordial thanks of the meeting be given to Mr. NUNNELEY for his valuable address." Dr. MACLEOD (Glasgow) seconded the motion, which was carried unanimously.


The three-dimensional equations of elasticity are solved for a flat elliptical crack which has nonuniform shear stresses applied to its surfaces. An alternating method is used to determine the mode two and mode three stress intensity factors for a semielliptical surface crack in the surface of a finite thickness solid. These stress intensity factors are presented as a function of position along the crack border for a number of crack shapes and crack depths. This same technique is followed to determine the mode one stress intensity factors for the semielliptical surface crack which has normal loading applied to its surface. Mode one stress intensity factors are presented and compared with the results obtained from previous work.


The loss of foundation characteristics is very important to predict the structure born sound in rooms. The level of the structure born sound is often evaluated in the plan stage of the building project and tends it to be demanded evaluation in a short time. A method of Yamahara that foundation is assumed to be no mass and to be rigid surface foundation is generally used in the evaluation of input loss of foundation. However, it is difficult to use the method of Yamahara as for the cases that long and thin foundations which in itself cannot consider to be rigid in comparison with the hardness of the neighboring ground. From the above a simplified evaluation method of soft foundations using an advantage of Yamahara's method is suggested. In addition, measurements of the input loss of foundation of three buildings excited by the railroad vibration were carried out and this method is applied to these measurement results and is confirmed the validity.


The processes of magnetization and concentration dependence of the real and imaginary parts of the complex permeability at 50 MHz multi-heterogeneous systems based on composites (Co 40Fe 40B 20) X (SiO 2) 100-X. Found that cyclic deposition of composites in argon and argon with the addition of oxygen provides a heterogeneous multi-layer film with higher permeability after the percolation threshold than the composites produced in argon


We present results from an Andromeda Galaxy (M31) survey of star-forming regions based on 24 μm luminosity for H2O masers, NH3(1,1) and NH3(2,2) lines, and Hydrogen recombination lines (H66α). Although five H2O masers were detected in the initial survey of 206 regions towards M31, we do not detect additional masers in a follow up survey of 300 similar luminous 24 μm regions. We do not detect NH3(1,1), NH3(2,2), or H66α lines in any of the 506 regions. The typical rms noise for 244 kHz channels in individual spectra is 2.5 mJy. Additionally, averaging and medianing 446 NH3(1,1), NH3(2,2), and H66α spectra and 441 H2O spectra, shifted to the correct radial velocity as indicated by CO and HI, yields no detection for any observed line. The typical rms noise for 244 kHz channels in stacked spectra is 0.13 mJy. The non-detection of NH3(1,1) provides an upper limit on the typical NH3(1,1) integrated flux in a M31 giant molecular cloud. A comparison with typical Milky Way (MW) NH3(1,1) integrated fluxes scaled to the distance of M31 shows an ambiguity in consistency between our upper limit on the M31 NH3 content and the typical MW NH3 content depending on the use of the near or far distance in our MW flux scaling method. To resolve this ambiguity, we also examine the relationship between NH3(1,1) integrated flux and Herschel 500 μm flux density (i.e., the NH3 abundance) for giant molecular cloud-sized regions in M31 and the MW. Comparing this relationship between M31 and the MW independently indicates that our upper limit on the typical M31 NH3 abundance is consistent with the typical MW NH3 abundance. The non-detection of H2O provides an upper limit on H2O maser peak flux density. Comparing this upper limit with typical MW H2O maser peak flux densities scaled to the distance of M31 indicates that our upper limit on the M31 H2O maser luminosity is consistent with the typical MW H2O maser luminosity. Subject headings: dark matter galaxies: individual (M31) galaxies: kinematics and dynamics ISM: clouds ISM: molecules Local Group masers proper motions radio lines: galaxies


Vegetation self-organisation in water-limited ecosystems in semi-arid climates has been extensively studied by means of numerical simulation using a set of different reaction-diffusion-equations. Most of such models and studies have been concerned with the long-term steady ecohydrological steady states on domains with periodic boundary conditions and forced by steady rainfall. A vast majority of the modelling literature on vegetation self-organisation exists around near-equilibrium conditions. One of the clearest examples of this is that most of the published numerical results have been obtained by evolving near-equilibrium initial conditions to asymptotic steady states, since researchers have been historically interested in the resilience and stability of the systems to perturbation around converged, steady (equilibrium) states and little interest has been given to the transient states which lead to the equilibrium states. Nonetheless, ecohydrological theory recognises that dryland ecosystems can often be far-from-equilibrium systems, in quasi-permanent transient condition, exhibiting non-linear responses to boundary conditions and forcings. This prompts the question of how different the behaviour of the system can be when far-from equilibrium.


The present invention relates to a genome-replication-deficient and transcription-competent negative-strand RNA virus, which can be used for the expression of transgenes and in particular for the area of vaccine development.


Before Angelo Mai's publication of the Vatican Palimpsest in 1822 the de Re Publica was known to modern scholars only from the tantalizing fragments and paraphrases scattered about in Late Latin authors, ranging in extent from the Somnium Scipionis, the famous definition of uera lex preserved by Lactantius and the portion of Cicero's preface to Book v quoted by St Augustine to the incomplete sentences gleaned from Nonius, Priscian, and Isidore. Although the Palimpsest enabled men to form a better picture of the plan and scope of the whole treatise, it has nevertheless remained fragmented, and this for several reasons.


Starting from analysis of the failures of high voltage equipment,sequential control effecting on HXD3C electric locomotive high voltage equipment was researched,and measure to eliminate high voltage and high frequency during switching off main circuit breaker was put forward by sequential control optimization,by which,safety operation of locomotive high voltage equipment was realized,test and operation showed good result.


Latency is an explicit and possibly insidious issue associated with distributed interactive simulations (DISs), whether they are legacy simulations or simulations based on the DIS protocol or on the HLA (High Level Architecture) and RTI (Run-Time Infrastructure) standards. The implementation details of individual simulations, whether located entirely in one room or geographically distributed across a continent, will directly impact the latencies between various elements of the simulation. At SYSTRAN Corp., we have developed a Windows NT-based system, called SNAPpy (Simulation Network Analysis Project), that seeks to provide tools to both measure and reduce the latency associated with DISs. SNAPpy includes two major sections: an NIU (network interface unit) that is multi-threaded and built on an SMP (symmetric multiprocessor) and Windows NT platform, and the SNAP latency measurement section. This paper reviews the architecture of SNAPpy, going into specific details about its make-up and performance. Finally, SNAPpy's potential as a translator of legacy simulations into the HLA/RTI domain is described, and we introduce the SNAP-Lite Latency Measurement System, a new SYSTRAN product.


Background: Subclinical rickets is the early stage of rickets which can be defined as a state where there are no clinically appreciable changes of rickets but is characterized by biochemical changes which include the following Low or normal calcium, Low phosphorus, raised alkaline phosphatase and Low Vitamin D or raised Parathyroid hormone (PTH) levels. Radiological changes are often subtle to detect in sub clinical rickets. The objective of the present study was to estimate the prevalence of subclinical rickets in the age group 6 weeks to 15 years in tertiary care centre and to study their clinical profile.Methods: Hospital based Cross sectional study was conducted among 156 children in the age group 6 weeks to 15 years over a period of 1 year at a tertiary care centre in South Bangalore. Evaluation and diagnosis of Subclinical rickets was done using various biochemical parameters such as Calcium, phosphorus and alkaline phosphatase and Wrist X ray.Results: Overall Prevalence of Subclinical Rickets among the study group was 57 (36.5%). Sub clinical rickets was more common among Females (41.4%). Significant difference was observed in time spent for outdoor activities among children with (7.18±3.2 hrs) and without (9.04±4.4 hrs) subclinical rickets. Vitamin D supplemented group had lower prevalence of Subclinical rickets. 26% of them had Wrist Changes for sub clinical rickets. Significant decrease in Serum calcium and phosphorus was observed between subjects with and without subclinical rickets.Conclusions: Prevalence of Subclinical Rickets in children aged between 6weeks to 15 years is significantly high. Optimal exposure to sunlight and Vitamin D supplementation can bridge the deficiency gap.


This study analyzes how World War I impacts two Progressive Era reforms—Prohibition and women suffrage—both positively and negatively. While the war promoted the passage of two constitutional amendments, it reduced the two movement's commitment to reform that would benefit the society. Prohibition became quasi-authoritarian, intruding individual rights; suffrage turned conservative by adopting racist justifications in order to win support. This paper proposes a hypothesis that could explain this turn from progressivism to authoritarianism and conservatism, and discuss the two movements in detail to support the hypothesis.


Low molecular weight cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) can be trapped as droplets or particles inside a polymer binder, forming polymer dispersed cholesteric liquid crystal (PDCLC) systems, which are typically used for smart windows, displays, and optical sensors. While dispersing a single CLC mixture via emulsification, rendering reflective PDCLC films upon drying with a stable optical response, is well studied, the incorporation of distinct microdroplets inside a PDCLC coating is barely explored. Here, structural colored PDCLC coatings are prepared by mixing distinctive thermosensitive photonic microdroplets, featuring an optical time–temperature response that is visualized as a reflective color loss or shift dependent on the composition of the CLC mixtures. The presented optical time–temperature response is induced by diffusion of CLCs between adjacent liquid crystal domains via interconnecting passageways, causing an irreversible optical response until homogeneous mixing is attained. Hence, blending distinct CLC microdroplets in a polymer matrix provides a facile and scalable method for fabricating optical time–temperature integrators; moreover, alternative optical time–temperature responses can be realized when adjusting the composition of the photonic mixtures, demonstrating the potential of this method to acquire novel photonic applications based on low molecular weight CLCs.


Objective To focus attention on nitric oxide donor drugs.Methods A number of literature involved was analysed,rearranged and summed up.Results and Conclusions The review provides a reference to the research and development of nitric oxide donor drugs.


An improved exit device can be used with a door having anyone of a plurality of latch arrangements including a vertical latch arrangement with latch assemblies at the top and bottom of the door, a lateral latch arrangement with a latch assembly near the center of the door, and a combination vertical and lateral latch arrangement. In addition, the exit device can be associated with latch assemblies which are either concealed within the door or mounted on the surface of the door. The exit device includes a channel shaped slide member which is adapted to be connected with vertical and/or lateral latch assemblies. When a crossbar is depressed, the slide member is moved along a vertical path to actuate the associated latch assemblies from an engaged condition to a disengaged condition. The slide member can also be moved by a suitable outside actuator, such as a thumbpiece or knob. The exit device is advantageously provided with a holdback or dogging cam which is rotated to hold the slide member in a position in which the latch assemblies are disengaged. In addition, the exit device may be provided with a deadlatching dog which is operated from a locking position to a release position as the crossbar is depressed.


phenomenologically. "These 3-year-olds,' it might be said, "are very impressed with the phenomenology of their present beliefs, which serve as their paradigms. They can hardly regard their present beliefs as false; and given the paradigmatic status of such beliefs, the children cannot conceive of false beliefs, whether their own past beliefs or others' beliefs. Conceptual development occurs when they become aware of the difference between the phenomenological contents of their present beliefs and the external states of affairs that are presented to them in those beliefs, and that is what allows for falsity." Is this point the one addressed in Gopnik's section 5.3, on "reality seduction'? If so, her answer is not clear. The contrasting results about imaginings of blue dogs and pink cats are consistent with the foregoing phenomenological interpretation; the phenomenology of a present belief is as of something real and the phenomenology of imagining is not like that; this would explain the differences children exhibit with respect to belief and imagining. As for the experiment about belief sources, Gopnik does not make it clear why a change in the ability to identify sources is meant to show that the child's conception of belief is not phenomenological. Why should a child not have to learn that states of certain phenomenological types could have several different sources, or that certain phenomenologically identified states can come in degrees? I found Gopnik's remarks about expertise compelling and clearly helpful in connection with problems about ascribing functional properties in the third-person case. But I feel skeptical about their explaining the first-person case. One's ability to self-ascribe a present belief of one's own is doubtless a more sophisticated ability than the ability to have an unreflexive belief. But that ability does not appear to me to be like the expertise of a chess-master, for it seems too "automatic." Now of course the chess-master's judgments appear automatic at the conscious level, and that is Gopnik's point, even though they rely on a subpersonal analysis of complex clues from the chessboard. The point is that one appears to be in a position to self-ascribe a present thought just in virtue of having it. Thus the move to the reflexive thought is automatic in a way beyond the chess-master's: Unlike the chess-master's subpersonal methods of sizing up the board, one's mechanisms for ascribing current thoughts do not look around for and analyze clues. At least, that is what I am inclined to say.


The Arecibo Galaxy Environment Survey (AGES) is one of several H i surveys utilising the new Arecibo L-band Feed Array (ALFA) fitted to the 305m radio telescope at Arecibo ⋆ . The survey is specifically designed to investigate various galactic environments to higher sensitivity, higher velocity resolution and higher spatial resolution than previous fully sampled, 21 cm multibeam surveys. The emphasis is on making detailed observations of nearby objects although the large system bandwidth (100 MHz) will allow us to quantify the H i properties over a large instantaneous velocity range. In this paper we describe the survey and its goals and present the results from the precursor observations of a 5 ◦ × 1 ◦ region containing the nearby ( ∼ 10 Mpc) NGC 628 group. We have detected all the group galaxies in the region including the low mass (M HI ∼ 10 7 M ⊙ ) dwarf, dw0137+1541 (Briggs, 1986). The fluxes and velocities for these galaxies compare well with previously published data. There is no intra-group neutral gas detected down to a limiting column density of 2 × 10 18 cm − 2 . In addition to the group galaxies we have detected 22 galaxies beyond the NGC 628 group, 9 of which are previously uncatalogued. We present the H i data for these objects and also SuperCOSMOS images for possible optical galaxies that might be associated with the H i signal. We have used V/V max analysis to model how many galaxies beyond 1000 km s − 1 should be detected and compare this with our results. The predicted number of detectable galaxies varies depending on the H i mass function (HIMF) used in the analysis. Unfortunately the precursor survey area is too small to determine whether this is saying anything fundamental about the HIMF or simply highlighting the effect of low number statistics. This is just one of many questions that will be addressed by the complete AGES survey.


The 2008 price crisis in the world markets for fuel, chemical fertiliser and agricultural commodities, including rice, came as a shock to producers and consumers. While rice producers in principle will gain from high international prices of rice these price effects were not completely translated to equivalent increases in farm gate prices. However, the 2008 food price crisis may have raised the expectations of rice farmers even in low productivity areas of Northeastern Thailand and prompted them to intensify production in spite of price hikes for chemical fertiliser and fuel. The data collected in three provinces in Thailand (Buriram, Ubon Ratchathani, Nakon Panom) under the DFG research project "Impact of Shocks on the Vulnerability to Poverty: Consequences for Development of Emerging Southeast Asian Economies" provides a good basis to study adjustments of rural farm households to these recent price changes. On the basis of a mathematical programming model using the concept of typical farm households, the effects of adjustments decision on household income-generating activity to changes in relative prices was simulated. Results show that adjustments are strongly influenced by the household's resource endowment and their objective function. Households with a high share of non-residential household members and those who put emphasis on household food security are unlikely to show a strong supply response. Under a profit maximisation regime, however, an expansion of rice production is more likely to take place. Incorporating risk into the model allows the analysis of the effects of price changes on expected poverty by comparing cumulative distribution functions of household income with existing provincial poverty lines.


Traditional image-based pose estimation methods tend to perform poorly in occlusion and darkness. Thus, researchers established sensor-based pose estimation methods such as radio frequency and infrared to resolve the challenges. Nevertheless, traditional sensors remain the weakness of high cost and low flexibility. In this article, we propose the multimodal network PerUnet to establish a WiFi-based human pose estimation network. Benefitting from the powerful multihead attention mechanism and Unet-like architecture, PerUnet fuses fine-grained pose features and contextual information of WiFi channel state information (CSI) to achieve precise pose estimation. Moreover, we propose the attention-based denoising (ABD) method to overcome traditional filters' disadvantages and help PerUnet extract pose features from CSI. To evaluate the performance of PerUnet, we establish the novel multimodal dataset Wi-Pose composed of images, CSI, and pose annotations. The experimental results demonstrate that PerUnet achieves a competitive performance of WiFi-based pose estimation on Wi-Pose. To further promote the research on WiFi-based human pose estimation, Wi-Pose has been publicly available at https://github.com/NjtechCVLab/Wi-PoseDataset.


Independent investigations of nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) and of stripes in high-$T_c$ cuprates find a small deviation of doped-hole density $h$ from the doping level of $La_{2-x}Sr_xCuO_4$. The value observed with NQR, $ x - h \approx 0.02$, agrees closely with the density of itinerant holes, $\tilde{p}$, responsible for suppression of 3D-AFM, as obtained from stripe incommensurability. The stripe model's assumption that doped holes in $La_{2-x}Sr_xCuO_4$ reside at oxygen sites, and that doped electrons in $Ln_{2-x}Ce_xCuO_4$ ($Ln = Pr, Nd$) reside at copper sites, is (to a large degree) confirmed with NQR. The NQR finding of doped-hole probabilities in oxygen and copper orbitals of $HgBa_2CuO_{4+\delta}$ and other oxygen-enriched high-$T_c$ cuprates, $P_p \simeq P_d \simeq 1/2$, as well as of oxygen-doped $YBa_2Cu_3O_{6+y}$, $P_p \simeq 2P_d \simeq 2/3$, is interpreted with the stripe model in terms of excess oxygen atoms in the $CuO_2$ planes and $CuO$ chains.


This report focuses on foreign sources of financing, i.e. foreign direct investment, international debt issues, new equity capital, international bank lending and portfolio equity flows.


In July to August 1984, a lot of phytoseiid mites collected by the author from Northeast China eighteen species of the genus Amblyseius identified. Among them five are new species, two are Chinese new. records, one is newly described for its male, and ten known species: Amblyseius arientalis Ehara, A. querci Liang a Ke, A. makuwa Ehara, A. herbicolus (Chant), A. pse-udolongispinosus Xin, Liang et Ke, A. oguroi Ehara, A. rademacheri Dosse A. tsugawai Ehara, A. wuyiensis Wu et Li, A. prunii Liang et Ke. The type specimens are kept in Guangdong In. stitute of Entomology.Amblyseius alpigenus sp. nov, (figs. l-4).This species is similar to A. multidentatus (Chant) and A. obtusm (Koch), but it differa from multidentatus in having much longet setae L1 and L4 and shortei setae L9. This species diers from the latter two species in the shape of spermatheca and location of ventrianal po-res.Holotype ♀, paratype 1♀, 25. VII. 1984, Wenquan (42°N, 128°E), Mt. Changbai, Jilin Province, on giass.Amblyseius magnus sp. nov. (figs. 5-11)This species is similar to A. eujeniae Gupta and A. charui Gupta, but it can be separated from the latter two by the dorsal shield much larger, the location of ventrianal pores, and the shape of spermatheca.Holotype ♀, Allotype ♂, 7. VII. 1984, Jingpohu (43.8N, 129.3°E), Ningan County, Hei-longjiang Province, on Larix sp., paratypes 5♀♀, 7-10. VII. 1984, Mudanjiang City, and Jingpohu, on Larix sp..Amblyseius changbaiensis sp. nov. (figs. 12-16)This species resembles A. charui Gupta, but can be distinguished from the latter in the setae L9 and M2 longer, the ratio of the genital shield to ventrianal shield, and the shape of spermatheca.Holotype ♀, paratypes 2♀♀, 17. VII. 1984, Baishan station, Antu County (42°N, 127,8°E), Mt. Changbai, on unknown plant.Amblyseius jilinensis sp. nov. (figs. 17-20)This species similar to A. moril Ehara in the dorsal chaetotaxy and the shape of ventri- anal shield, but differs from the latter in the setae M2, L1, L4 and L5 longer, setae 9. shorter, and the shape of spermatheca.Holotype ♀, 24. VIL 1984, Gongzhulin (43.6°N, 124.8°E), Huaide County, Jilin Province, on Artemisia sp., paratypes 2♀♀, 24-28. VII. 1984, Changchun City (43.9°N, 125.3°E) and Gonghulin, on Artemisia sp..Amblyseius subreticulatus sp. nov. (figs. 21-26)This species is similar to A. reticulatus (Oudemans), but is different from the latter in the following characters: Preanal pore present on the ventrianal shield and with three macrosetae on leg IV in subrettculatus, whereas preanal pore absent and with one macroseta in reticulatus. Ventrianal shield longer than wide in this species, while equal in the latter species, The shape of spermatheca is also different in both two species.Holotype ♀, allotype ♂, VII. 1984. Haerbin City (45.8°N, 126.7°E) Heilongjiang Province, on Artemisia sp., paratypes 8♀♀, VII-VIII. 1984, Haerbin, Heilongjiang Province; Changchun City (43.9°N, 125.5°E), Jilin Province; Xingcheng (40.6°N, 120.7°E), Liaoning Province; on Pyrus sp.; 5♀, 23. VI. 1983, Wulumuqi City (43.7° N, 87.5°E) Xinjiang, on-grass, colle-cted by Zhang Wei-guang; 1♀, X. 1983, Qingjiang County (28.1°N, 115.5°E), Jiangxi Province, on citrus, collected by Zhao Feng-xia.Amblyseius (Amblyseius) kaguya Ehara, 1966 (figs. 27-32)Male: The shape and chaetotaxy of the dorsal shield are same as in female, but its body; smaller than female. setae S1 and S2 on the dorsal shield. Ventrianal shield connected with peritrematal shield, with three pairs of preanal setse and on3 pair of preanal pores. Sperma-todactyl L-shaped.Specimens observed. 6♀♀, 1♂, 29. VII. 1984, Mt. Qianshan, Liaoning Province.Amblyseius (Amblyseius) kaguya Ehara was described only in female collected in Japan. The male is described for the first time.Amblyseius astutus (Beglarov), 1960. (figs. 33-35)New record from China.Distribution: Heilongjiang, Lianoning; USSR.Habitat plant. Populus sp., Salis sp., Pyrus sp.Amblyseius okanagensis (Chant), 1957 (figs. 36-38) New record from China, Distribution: Liaoning; USSR; Canada


Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is the largest type of herpes virus DNA virus, called the CMV becauseit amplifies infected cells as it reproduces gradually inside those cells . The study included collecting 110blood samples for sick women and we visited Al-Ramadi Teaching Hospital with ear , nose, tonsils andeye swabs. Also urine samples were taken, the media of Blood Agar and MacConkey Agar were grownwith Smears and swabs .The findings of the current study showed that 89 women out of a total of 110 wereinfected with CMV virus at a rate of 80.6 % by virus-specific IgG antibody, which is proof that the infectionis old while 21 women were not infected by a 19 % percentage of CMV virus due to the absence of IgG andIgM antibodies .Results showed that 78 were positive for bacterial infection among the 89 women livingwith CMV, 87.6 %, while 11 among 21 women without CMV were positive for bacterial infection. The 87.6% proportion of bacterial infections associated with virus infection is high as compared to the 52.3 % ratioof people without this virus, and this suggests the growing role of infection in the system. The study findingsalso found that the highest incidence of CMV virus infection was 82.3 % in the age group of infected women(21-30 years) and that the highest incidence of CMV virus infection was 92.6 % in pregnant women whohad no abortion, while the lowest rate of CMV infection was women who had three miscarriages, 46 % .


A computer model has been designed to simulate vectorcardiograms with both normal and abnormal ventricular conduction. These include right and left bundle branch block, myocardial infarction, and ventricular extrasystoles. The close clinical correlation obtained for simulated normal conduction, myocardial infarction, and bundle branch block has confirmed the general validity of the model. The model could assume some importance as a means of developing clinical criteria for diagnosing the site of origin of ventricular extrasystoles.


Objective
To explore prognosis and remission-related factors in lupus nephritis (LN) patients.

Methods
Patients diagnosed as LN by renal biopsy in Tongji Hospital Affiliated to Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology between Jan 1, 2011 and July 31, 2016 were enrolled. All related baseline clinical data was recorded and regular follow-up was performed. Kaplan-Meier curves was used to analyze partial remission and complete remission rates. Log-rank test was performed to compare remission rates of patients with nephrotic-range proteinuria (24-hour proteinuria≥3.5 g) and without nephrotic-range proteinuria (24-hour proteinuria<3.5 g). Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses were performed to evaluate the remission-related factors in different periods.

Results
A total of 115 patients, with 88.7% female and (31.5±9.5) years mean age, were followed up for up to 5 years. During follow-up period 2 patients died and 1 dialyzed. The 6-, 12-, 24- and 36- and 48-month renal partial remission and complete remission rates were 33.3%, 58.2%, 71.5%, 84.0%, 89.6%, and 18.9%, 40.5%, 67.3%, 79.4%, 87.0%, respectively. Patients without nephrotic-range proteinuria had higher complete remission than patients with nephrotic-range proteinuria (HR=2.01, 95%CI 1.15-3.34, P=0.014), but there was no difference in their partial remission (HR=1.33, 95%CI 0.74-2.43, P=0.341). Multivariate Cox regression model indicated that every 1 g/L increase in baseline level of serum albumin was associated with increased 8% and 9% risk, respectively, in partial remission (HR=1.08, 95%CI 1.01-1.15, P=0.024) and complete remission (HR=1.09, 95%CI 1.01-1.07, P=0.038).

Conclusions
Around half of LN patients reach remission during 1 year. Patients without nephrotic-range proteinuria have higher complete remission, and serum albumin is a remission-related factors.

Key words:
Lupus nephritis; Remission, spontaneous; Risk factors; Cohort studies


The review and analysis of the book 'Rights, and redemption: history, law and Indigenous people' by Ann Curthoys, Ann Genovese and Alexander Reilly is discussed. The book analyzes the treatment of historical facts by Australian courts when Indigenous litigants are involved and attempts to bridge the gap between historians and the judiciary by clarifying mutual misconceptions of each other's discipline and considering how a meaningful account of the past can be constructed in Indigenous case law. Review(s) of: Rights and Redemption: History, Law and Indigenous People, by Ann Curthoys, Ann Genovese and Alexander Reilly UNSW Press, Sydney, 2008 304 pp. ISBN 978 0 868408 07 1.


Behavioural marital therapy (BMT) has developed from the application of social exchange and social learning theories to the understanding and modification of marital interaction. Encouraging high rates of exchange of positive behaviours, and training in communication skills, have been the major focuses of BMT till recently. While these strategies produce therapeutic change, there are still many couples whose marriages do not improve with this sort of therapy. Recent developments have focused on the role of cognitive, affective and situational variables in marital interaction. Outcome research has shown the value of cognitive and affective interventions in their own right, but it is unclear if the addition of these interventions will enhance the efficacy of BMT.


In the analysis of distortions occurring in rolling-element bearings, it is common to neglect the stiffening effect of shafting outside the bearing region. The magnitude of such an effect will be dependent primarily on the bearing width-to-bore ratio, the shaft geometry, and the location of the bearing on the shaft. An estimate is given of the stiffening effect for a wide range of these variables. In addition, brief consideration is given to the parallel situation existing at the outer ring housing.


Keywords: Distributed Algorithms ; Consensus ; Unification ; Authentication ; Byzantine Fault Tolerance ; Total-Order Broadcast ; Reduction ; State Machine Replication ; Performance Attack ; Bounded Delay These Ecole polytechnique federale de Lausanne EPFL, n° 5975 (2013)Programme doctoral Informatique, Communications et InformationFaculte informatique et communicationsInstitut d'informatique fondamentaleLaboratoire de systemes repartisJury: Prof. W. Zwaenepoel (president), Prof. A. Schiper (directeur), Prof. A. Ailamaki, Prof. R. Rodrigues, Prof. R. van Renesse (rapporteurs) Public defense: 2014-2-14 Reference doi:10.5075/epfl-thesis-5975Print copy in library catalog Record created on 2014-02-12, modified on 2017-05-12


This article explores a number of themes in feminist
 historical writing in Ontario history. It points to the different genres in
 which such work first appeared, assesses how feminist work has expanded or
 altered our knowledge of various periods and themes of the existing literature,
 and examines the contributions made by feminist historians to new areas of
 research. It concludes with a discussion of areas yet to be considered and
 suggests possibilities for new feminist frameworks for Ontario
 history.


This thesis investigates the fatigue pull-through failures of steel roof batten to rafter connections and proposes suitable design equations to enhance the safety of thin steel roof battens in cyclones. Suitable design equations were developed based on both linear and nonlinear damage theories by carefully investigating the factors affecting the failure via small and full-scale experimental studies and associated numerical studies. The proposed design equations have the potential to replace the current Australian design method based on complex and time-consuming prototype cyclic tests, and also those used in many other countries.


OBJECTIVE I2 of CDI tablets were determined by uv-visible spectrophotometry.METHODS I2 of CDI tablets had a maximum absorption at 356nm by uv-visible spectrophotometry.RESULTS Linear relations hip is in the range of 12~60 μg·mL-1.The average recovery was 99.89% and RSD was 0.83%.CONCLUSION This method is simple,accurate and reproducible and can be used for the quality control in the process of drug production.


Based on the good utility of experimental data of various period in reliability growth experiment to evaluate reliability index in the present case according to the sampling data from binary and exponential life experiment, a new sample space sequencing (i.e. lexicographic order) is given to provide a point estimator and confidence lower bound of the reliability of current period. From theory and instances, it has been proved that this procedure, which overcomes some shortcomings concernedoby Huang [4], is uniformly better than the classical approach. The conculsions of Theorem 2.4 and 3.4 not only include practical background of reliable growth experiment, but also improve greatly the practicable operation on this new process.


The « Carte d'identite de Francais » (ID card for French citizens) was enacted in France starting in October 1940. This paper examines the cooperation between the statistical service of the French finance ministry and the French interior ministry in order to implement the card during German occupation. Each of these actors cooperated for reasons that are analyzed in detail. The intervention of the statistical service in the delivery process of the new document for the identification of nationals occasionally hampered some repressive law enforcement objectives. However, other statistical service initiatives fully embraced the logic of the Vichy regime's most sinister motives.


Lobar consolidation of cryptococcal pneumonia is rarely reported in immunocompetent hosts. We report a healthy 25-year-old woman who presented with pneumonia in her left lower lobe. A poor response to empiric antibiotics was noted, and a subsequent investigation disclosed high titers of serum cryptococcal antigen (CSA titer >1:1024). Gomori-methenamine silver staining of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid disclosed cryptococci with a cryptococcal antigen titer of 1:128. The patient's symptoms improved with resolution of the consolidation of the left lower lobe of the lung after treatment with fluconazole. We also reviewed the literature.


Based on the Wu's scheme [C.F. Wu, J.L. Chen, L.C. Kwekl, and C.H. Ohel, Phys. Rev. A 73 (2006) 012310], we prepare the general N-qubit W state. We find that the concurrence of two qubits in general N-qubit W state is only related to their coefficients and we successfully apply the general N-qubit W state to quantum state transfer and quantum state prepare like that in two-qubit system.


The author discusses two emerging facets of trade secrets law: the inevitable disclosure doctrine and negative trade secrets. The doctrine of inevitable disclosure posits that an employee who has knowledge of a former employer's trade secrets can be enjoined from employment with a new employer on the theory that the employee will not be able to work for the new employer without inevitably disclosing the former employer's trade secrets. The recent 1995 decision by the Third Circuit in PepsiCo, Inc. v. Redmond has spurred mass judicial recognition of this doctrine. However, courts have inconsistently applied the doctrine, resulting in significant uncertainty to both employers and employees. While not as pronounced as the recognition of the inevitable disclosure doctrine, the author also highlights the increased recognition of "negative" trade secrets. Negative trade secrets consist of an employee's knowledge of what not to do, i.e., the dead ends that an employee has encountered through research and development. The author argues that the next logical step in trade secrets law is for a court to combine the inevitable disclosure doctrine and negative trade secrets, and enjoin an employee on the theory that the employee cannot work for a new employer without inevitably disclosing the former employer's negative trade secrets. The merger of these two doctrines could result in an increase in the amount of inevitable disclosure claims being litigated, and thereby magnify the uncertainty that already surrounds this doctrine. To counter this threat, the author suggests that courts apply a good faith standard, and refuse to enjoin an employee on the theory of inevitable disclosure absent evidence of bad faith.


For crude oil produced from typical Jurassic,Cretaceous,Permian and Carboniferous in Junggar Basin,the proportion of mixed oil was tested and analyzed by some technologies of gas chromatography,chromatography-mass spectrometry and carbon isotope. In addition,the geochemical characteristics of mixed oil were studied. The results illustrate that:(1) for mixed oil,the relationship between its carbon isotopic value and its proportion is linear; (2) Pristane/Phytane (Pr/Pn) of mixed oil from both Jurassic and Cretaceous increases with an increase of oil proportion of Jurassic; (3) both C23/C19of tricyclic terpane and content of gammacerane increase with a decrease of oil proportion of Jurassic; (4) Pr/Pn of mixed oil from both Permian and Carboniferous increases with an increase of oil proportion of Carboniferous and (5) both C23/C19 of tricyclic terpane and content of β-carotane increase with a decrease of oil proportion of Carboniferous.


The following interview was reprinted with permission from LA Yoga Magazine. Dr. Robert E. Svoboda, B.A., M.S., is the first Westerner to have completed a full education in an Indian Ayurvedic medical college.. Author of 11 books on Ayurveda, he is also known In India as one of the world's foremost experts in Ayurveda. Julie: Where did you begin this journey? Dr. Svoboda: I was often sick as a child. I'm sure part of it had to do with having been born in what they called at that time, an oil camp. Let's just say I've been around hydrocarbons for a long time. And so I had various physical challenges when I was younger. Julie: You became interested in medicine because of not being well as a child? Dr. Svoboda: Yes, finding out in what ways I was not well and how might I get better and just the whole question of the nature of wellness and ill health. Julie: Was a doctor someone who you thought had control over your health condition? Dr. Svoboda: I'm not sure that I ever projected onto a physician an aura of some sort. It was more the attitude of being able to on the one hand evaluate a situation, come to a quick and hopefully efficient conclusion about a diagnosis and a treatment plan and then put it into effect that interested me. Julie: Are you still the only Westerner ever to have graduated from an Ayurvedic College in India? Dr. Svoboda: No, there are two or three others, there's, I think, a Spanish guy. There was a Japanese woman, who I grant you was not a Westerner but still an alien. And then there is Kristofer Edlund from Sweden, who has just graduated from a college in Varanasi. Julie: But it's still that unusual, even though this was twenty years ago? Dr. Svoboda: Yes, it's still unusual, but it's not so difficult anymore. Before, there was no provision for having foreigners around. Who knew what they might do, or would they study properly, or would they all go berserk at an inopportune moment and then create some problem for the institution. Julie: Who do you consider your teachers to be? Dr. Svoboda: Dr. Lad was a convenient person for them to shove me off onto because he spoke English and he had recently been made the residential medical officer at the hospital. So they introduced him to me in early February of 1974. But Dr. Lad and I both regard Vaidya Nanal as our teacher. Vaidya Nanal was the son of the doctor who had established this particular college in the first place, and for many years Vaidya Nanal was the most eminent Ayurvedic doctor in Pune. Julie: Can you talk a little about studying Ayurveda in India at that time? Dr. Svoboda: The mode of teaching was shifting from focusing on a more strictly guru/student disciple relationship to one that was more focused on, at least externally, replicating a British style of education. Therefore they had the college, the various classes and teachers teaching those classes according to what the syllabus said they should teach. There was another group in the college who focused on the more traditional approach and there was a general sort of sense of struggle between the two. What it boiled down to was whether Ayurveda should be preserved as a system of medicine, or new knowledge and techniques from allopathy, homeopathy, etc. imported into it. Or whether in fact ideas and techniques and substances from Ayurveda should be exported into other medical systems and everything sort of integrated into one system. Julie: Isn't that the same debate today? What do you think? Dr. Svoboda: That is very much the same sort of debate today. You see, if there were something for Ayurveda to integrate into, if modern medicine was actually a system, instead of simply a group of therapies, then that would potentially, at least, offer the possibility of some sort of debate. But as far as I can see, there is no system of modern Western medicine. …


Oxadisilole-fused benzisoxazoles or naphthisoxazoles were obtained through 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition of arynes with nitrile oxides in good yields at room temperature. Key to the procedure is the simultaneous in situ generation of reactive nitrile oxides from arenecarbohydroximoyl chlorides and aryne reactants from benzobis(oxadisilole) or 2,3-naphthoxadisilole. One oxadisilole-fused benzisoxazole is a new precursor of a benzyne formed by a phenyliodination/fluoride-induced elimination protocol. By using this benzyne, cycloadducts were synthesized in good yields. The de-oxadisilole reaction of some of the oxadisilole-fused benzisoxazoles could be easily conducted with a 1.0 M solution of tetrabutylammonium fluoride in THF at room temperature.


The invention relates to a TPMS testing system which comprises a shielding box, a module to be tested, a probe, a receiving antenna, a frequency spectrograph, a signal generator, a function signal generator and an environment control device connected with the shielding box, wherein the probe and the receiving antenna are arranged in the shielding box and are connected with the frequency spectrograph through a coaxial line, the signal generator in a first test station is arranged outside the shielding box, one end of the signal generator in a third test station is connected with the probe in the shielding box and the other end of the signal generator in a third test station is connected with the function signal generator, the environment control device connected with the shielding box comprises a temperature control device used for regulating and controlling temperature in the shielding box and simulating an environment in an automobile tire. According the technical scheme, the TPMS testing system can be used for quickly testing a tire pressure monitoring system and has the advantages of high detection speed, comprehensive function, high efficiency and capabilities of testing the system flexibility, shortening test time and reducing cost.


Multimedia systems are typically standalone and CD-ROM-based, with very static and well-defined interfaces. Recently, we have observed that future multimedia (MM) systems require data from different sources, stored across several sites in a wide-area network (WAN). For example, customized news on demand requires a combination of videos, charts, maps, animation, audio, and text. Such MM systems are expected to handle data streams with equal efficiency and reliability from the temporal, synchronization, and functional perspectives. To verify this, note that as technology advances consumers are becoming less tolerant of lingering requests, delays in responses, data loss, jittery presentation, and unreliable service. Because this type of system must deliver data in a timely fashion, a resource reservation question arises (derived from the discussion in Shenker et al. [1995]):


: In view of the uneven distribution of water resources in time and space and the prominent problems of water environment, this paper puts forward a calculation method of Available Amount of Effective Water Resources considering the guaranteed rate of incoming water and the rate of reaching the standard of water quality. Taking Taizhou City of Zhejiang Province as an example, the Water Resources Carrying Capacity was analyzed. The results show that the current water resources carrying capacity in Taizhou is generally in a loose state, but there is a serious problem of uneven spatial distribution. On the Spatial Balance Principle, strengthening water saving from the demand side and increasing the available water resources from the supply side are important measures to improve the carrying capacity and promote spatial balance.


Research has indicated that informal cooperative learning (ICL) can make the environment in a classroom more conducive for teaching and learning. Through ICL, students could focus their attention on the material taught in class and help each other in the learning process. However, implementing ICL may require more time and effort from the lecturers because they need to prepare teaching materials and different tasks for class activities. Some-times it may be difficult for the lecturer to monitor all students in the groups when implementing ICL. Thus, this study aimed to explore the im-plementation of team-teaching in ICL classroom. The action research meth-od was used in this study where the researchers themselves involve in im-plementing ICL through team-teaching, evaluate the process, do reflection and change the practice based on the evidence gathered. The participants were 32 first-year-students who were mainly exposed to the traditional method of lecture. Students and lecturers' activities, behaviors, interac-tions, and reflections were recorded in a research journal and later analyzed to determine the students' and lecturers' experience in ICL classroom con-ducted through team-teaching. The findings showed that it was easier to monitor and facilitate the students as well as to manage the class by imple-menting ICL through team-teaching. In addition, the workload of the lectur-ers has reduced which in turn gave them more time to plan, prepare and or-ganize teaching materials.


OBJECTIVES
Reports suggest a trend for physician practices to change ownership from physicians to hospitals. It remains unclear how this change affects quality of patient care. We report the effect of a change to hospital ownership on the use of care management processes (CMPs) and health information technology (IT) among practices in the United States.

STUDY DESIGN
Trend analyses of 3 large national surveys of physician practices.

METHODS
We included 2 cohorts of practices: large practices with 20 or more physicians and small/medium practices with fewer than 20 physicians. The main outcomes were the changes in CMP and health IT indices among practices that were acquired by hospitals. We used multivariate logistic regression to assess these changes.

RESULTS
Large practices acquired by hospitals had larger increases in their CMP index than those that remained physician-owned (11.0-point increase vs 7.0-point decrease; adjusted P = .03). Small/medium practices acquired by hospitals had smaller but significantly higher increases in their CMP score (3.8 points vs 2.6 points; adjusted P = .04). Among all practices, there were no significant differences in the change of the health IT index.

CONCLUSIONS
We found a significant increase in the use of CMPs among practices that were acquired by hospitals and no difference in health IT use. These findings suggest that a trend for hospitals to own physician practices may have a positive effect on chronic disease management and quality of care.


Many open-domain questions are under-specified and thus have multiple possible answers, each of which is correct under a different interpretation of the question. Answering such ambiguous questions is challenging, as it requires retrieving and then reasoning about diverse information from multiple passages. We present a new state-of-the-art for answering ambiguous questions that exploits a database of unambiguous questions generated from Wikipedia. On the challenging ASQA benchmark, which requires generating long-form answers that summarize the multiple answers to an ambiguous question, our method improves performance by 15% (relative improvement) on recall measures and 10% on measures which evaluate disambiguating questions from predicted outputs. Retrieving from the database of generated questions also gives large improvements in diverse passage retrieval (by matching user questions q to passages p indirectly, via questions q' generated from p).


Abstract : Plasma densities are usually measured by determining the electron densities by a variety of techniques. Under certain circumstances, it is desirable also to know the identities of the associated ions as well as their densities and location relative to the electrons and to know what and how many neutral atoms and molecules are present. A straightforward means of accomplishing this at least qualitatively is through vacuum ultraviolet absorption spectroscopy, since most ions, atoms, and molecules have their resonance absorption spectrum lines in this region. Quantitative measurements require the knowledge of oscillator strengths and line shapes for the respective resonance lines. Such knowledge is by no means complete, but enough information is available to make this technique a useful one. The general considerations in applying this technique are discussed, along with a numerical example using the 1470A resonance line of xenon. (Author)


welfare policy. Recipients of aid or paternalism are generally silent players in this account, unlike that of much recent social welfare scholarship. The contest, or conflict, here is between different groups of political and economic elites, not between elites and their laborers. Another minor criticism is the lack of analysis of antebellum paternalism and its relationship to the postbellum version. The authors mention paternalism and slavery but devote little attention to comparing the two kinds of paternalism. But even with these caveats, Southern Paternalism and the American Welfare State will be rewarding reading for those interested in regionalism, race and labor, or social welfare policy.


Regarding side effects and tolerability of β blockers, Kotecha and colleagues state: "Although β blockers are often associated with side effects, data from randomised trials consistently show no true difference compared with placebo in dizziness, diarrhoea, increased blood sugar concentration, or depression …


Abstract Neonicotinoids are systemic pesticides used to control harmful insects. These pesticides, which are nerve agents, cause many harmful effects to insects, especially to individual bees, such as damaging memory and reducing queen numbers. Here, we present a review concerning the determination and control of neonicotinoids residues in the agri-food sector, considered of vital importance to maintain food quality and safety. We discuss the different sample treatments and methods of analysis for the screening and quantification of neonicotinoids. Even though high-performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detection and mass spectrometry (HPLC-UV and HPLC-MS) are the most widely used analytical methods for the determination of these pesticides, there are alternative spectroscopic methods that can provide valuable information. We have thus carried out a critical discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the different sample treatments and different techniques that have been developed in the last decade for the quantification of neonicotinoids in samples from the agri-food sector.


The present paper summarizes some recent efforts related to uranium nitride composite fuel concepts, where the uranium nitride is "shielded" from water by one or more secondary phases. This work shows selected results from the analysis of advanced cladding for UN-based composite fuels with various secondary phases, including U3Si5, U3Si2, UB2, and UB4. These fuels are analyzed with various cladding, including Zircaloy, Stainless Steel, and several commercial alloys (Kanthal AF and APMT). Selected three-dimensional burn-up dependent equilibrium core analysis results with thermal feedback are compared for UO2 and several UN-based composite fuels with UB2 and UB4. In this case, the UB2 or UB4 content as a tertiary phase has been optimized to match the performance of an Integral Fuel Burnable Absorber (IFBA).


Objective
To investigate clinical characteristics and risk factors of brain metastasis in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC).

Methods
From 2010 to 2015, patients over 18 years of age, with pathologically confirmed HNSCC at the time of diagnosis, were identified using SEER database of the National Cancer Institute. Incidence of brain metastasis and survival data of the patients were calculated. Kaplan-Meier method was used to calculate survival rate. Logistic univariate and multivariate analysis was used to analyze the correlations between age, sex, T stage, N stage and brain metastasis.

Results
We identified 60410 patients with HNSCC, 45745 were males and 14665 were females, with a median age of 63 years old (18-110 years old). 2245(3.72%) had distant metastasis and 80(3.56%) had brain metastasis. The median survival time of patients with brain metastasis was 3 months (0-61 months). The 1-year, 2-year and 3-year survival rates were 17.6%, 10.6% and 3.5%, respectively. The risk factors associated with brain metastasis were primary tumor site, histological grade and T stage.

Conclusions
The incidence of brain metastasis in patients with HNSCC is low, but the prognosis is poor. Once brain metastasis occurs, survival time of the patients is short. The highest rate of brain metastasis was found in nasopharynx, followed by oropharynx and oral cavity, and the least in larynx. In addition, the poorer differentiation of the tumors, and the later T stage, the higher risk of brain metastasis.

Key words:
Head and neck cancer; Brain metastasis; Risk factor; SEER database


Senior citizens are a major change in the constellation of consumer behavior and trends in Thailand and around the world. The paper is aimed at studying the impact of senior citizens' consumer behavior on health, financial, and media information and digital literacy. The main objectives were to explore the modern consumer behavior of senior citizens in three important areas: health, financial, and media information and digital literature, as well as to provide some recommendations for senior citizens to improve the quality of life in the three above areas. The quantitative research method was used with senior citizens in five districts of Bangkok. About 400 groups were selected by using random sampling method. In the area of health, the results showed that most of them suffered from non-communicable diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and kidney disease. In the area of finance, the results showed that the financial support government and from their family and kins are the most important assistance. In the areas of media information and digital literacy, the results showed that they need help in these areas in order to access health care, financial support and any assistance provided by both the private and public sectors.


We present a GPU-driven method for the fast computation of specular reflections on curved objects. For every reflector of the scene, our method computes a virtual object for every other object reflected in it. This virtual reflected object is then rendered and blended with the scene. For each vertex of each virtual object, a reflection point is found on the reflector's surface. This point is used to find the reflected virtual vertex, enabling the reflected virtual scene to be rendered. Our method renders the 3D points and normals of the reflector into textures, and uses a local search in a fragment program on the GPU to find the reflection points. By reorganizing the data and the computation in this manner, and correctly treating special cases, we make excellent use of the parallelism and stream-processing power of the GPU. In our results we show that, with our method, we can display high-quality reflections of nearby objects interactively.


The increasing demand for precise load forecasting for distribution networks has become a crucial requirement due to the continual surge in power consumption. Accurate forecasting of peak loads for distribution networks is paramount to ensure that power grids operate smoothly and to optimize their configuration. Many load forecasting methods do not meet the requirements for accurate data and trend fitting. To address these issues, this paper presents a novel forecasting model called Prophet-LSTM, which combines the strengths of the Prophet model's high trend fitting and LSTM model's high prediction accuracy, resulting in improved accuracy and effectiveness of peak load forecasting. The proposed algorithm models the distribution network peak load using the Prophet-LSTM algorithm. The researchers then analyzed the experimental data and model of the algorithm to evaluate its effectiveness. We found that the Prophet-LSTM algorithm outperformed the Prophet and LSTM models individually in peak load prediction. We evaluate the proposed model against commonly used forecasting models using MAE (mean absolute error) and RMSE (root mean square error) as evaluation metrics. The results indicate that the proposed model has better forecasting accuracy and stability. As a result, it can predict the peak load of distribution networks more accurately. In conclusion, this study offers a valuable contribution to load forecasting for distribution networks. The proposed Prophet-LSTM algorithm provides a more precise and stable prediction, making it a promising approach for future applications in distribution network load forecasting.


We discuss the energy of the excited 2$^+$ state in the unbound nucleus $^{26}$O using the three-body model of $^{24}$O+$n$+$n$. This model fully takes into account the continuum effects as well as the dineutron correlation of the valence neutrons. The present calculation yields the energy of 1.354 MeV, which is slightly smaller than the unperturbed energy, 1.54 MeV. The energy shifts for the ground and the 2$^+$ states with respect to the unperturbed energy suggest that 0$^+$ and the 2$^+$ states in $^{26}$O show a typical spectrum well described by a short-range pairing interaction acting on two valence nucleons in the same orbit.


No significant differences were found in the ventilatory response to CO2 in a group of very low birthweight infants evaluated for apnea. Twenty-two infants were divided into two groups based on the presence or absence of IVH. Group I consisted of 11 infants (BW 1050±380g, GA 28±1 wk), 8 suffering from Grade III, and 3 from Grade IV IVH. Eleven infants (BW 1130 ±210g,GA 28±2 wk) comprised Group II, the control population. Group I was examined at 44±9 weeks postconceptual age, and Group II at 42±10 weeks (P 0.05). Ventilatory response to CO2 was measured by a computerized waveform analyzer.The results of the study are presented below:In the group of infants with apnea, IVH did not affect the slope or position of the CO2 response curve, the baseline data, nor the frequence of arousal prior to test completion. These responses did not correlate with IVH severity. The increased incidence of apnea with IVH does not seem to be related to a compromised response to CO2.


We study the existence of weak solutions for a parametric Robin problem driven by the p(x)-Laplacian. Our approach relies on the variable exponent theory of generalized Lebesgue-Sobolev spaces, combined with adequate variational methods and the Mountain Pass Theorem.


We describe a systematic methodology for generating performance test cases for current generation microprocessors. Such rest cases are used for: (a) validating the expected pipeline flow behavior and timing; and, (b) detecting and diagnosing performance bugs in the design. We cite examples of application to a real, superscalar processor in pre- and post-silicon stages of development.


A new method for generating speech spectrograms is presented. This algorithm is based on an autocorrelation function whose parameters are chosen provide processing gain and formant resolution, while minimizing pitch artifacts in the spectrum. Crisp formants are produced, and the power ratio of the formants can be adjusted by pre-filtering the data. The autocorrelation process is functionally equivalent to a time-smoothed, windowed Wigner distribution. The process is an improvement over the normal FFT implementation since it requires much less data to resolve the speech formants, and it is an improvement over the un-smoothed Wigner distribution since the cross-terms normally associated with the Wigner distribution are greatly attenuated by the smoothing operation.