Russia's inability to impede the eastward expansion of NATO and its frustration over NATO's unilateral military action in Kosovo have forced Moscow to seek closer strategic understanding with China and India. While Yevgeny Primakov's controversial reference to a "strategic triangle" among Russia, China, and India might not materialize, it is a fact that each of these states is involved in a somewhat similar dynamic. Each is consolidating its relationship with the others, while also expanding its relations with the United States. In terms of strategic payoffs, this partnership will yield them, at a minimum, enhanced benefits of bilateral cooperation with each other and, at a maximum, it can serve to circumscribe US influence. This potential partnership is a blueprint for the next Cold War and poses a threat that could affect the lives of everyone in the United States in a significant way. This article discusses the motivation for a triangular strategic partnership among Russia, China, and India, the challenges to US international strategy resulting from such a partnership, and suggestions for avoiding a return to the days of Cold War tensions. Of course any speculation about future international relations must be made with caution in the weeks and months after the destruction of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon. At this writing, it is unclear what will be the full course of the US retaliation for those acts of terror, and how other nations around the globe will ultimately respond. Motivation for an Alliance Joint opposition to Western dominance is one motivation for a Russia-China-India strategic partnership. NATO enlargement, as well as the West's renewed strategic interest in the southern republics of the former USSR, became a new powerful catalyst for Russia's move eastward. In November 1995, Defense Minister Pavel Grachev warned that in response to NATO's planned eastward expansion, Russia would also turn to its east to seek new allies.(1) It was conceived in Moscow that the strengthening of ties with China would lead to the formation of a new balance of power in Asia that could be advantageous to Russia. Plans were made for a strategic partnership not only with China, but also with India and Iran. One of the goals of such an alliance would be to prevent the West from gaining a foothold in Central Asia and the Caucasus. The progress reached in Russian-Chinese-Indian relations in recent years cannot be attributed purely to their joint opposition to a unipolar, US-dominated world. Such an approach would be simplistic and would underestimate the great potential for complementary ties--military, economic, political, and cultural-- among the three neighbors sharing more than 4,000 kilometers of common border. Operation Allied Force spurred Russia and India to consolidate their friendship further, with the two countries signing a Declaration of Strategic Partnership and other agreements of importance during the visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to India in the first week of October 2000. Military technical cooperation, joint research and development, and training constitute the main aspects of the strategic partnership. This partnership brings Russia and India another step closer to a triangular strategic alliance with China. (2) India and Russia pledged to work together for the establishment of a multipolar world based on the sovereign equality of all states. The two sides expressed their "determined opposition to the unilateral use or threat of use of force in violation of the UN Charter, and to intervention in the internal affairs of other states, including under the guise of humanitarian intervention." (3) This reflected the general unease in the international community about NATO's war on Yugoslavia a nd the economic blockade against Iraq. Military sales play a prominent role in the relationship. During 1990-1996, India's arms purchases from Russia totaled $3. …


Since the first edition of Theory and Practice of the European Convention on Human Rights in 1978, this book has become a reference in the field of human rights in Europe. It provides a systematic and comprehensive overview of the functioning of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and its application by the European Court of Human Rights. As a result of the increase in the number of Parties to the Convention from 22 in 1989 to 46 today and of the coming into force of Protocol No. 11, the protection of human rights in Europe and the case law of the Court have seen a dynamic development during the last decade. This is reflected in this fourth edition of Theory and Practice of the European Convention on Human Rights. Particular attention is paid to the changes that have taken place in the supervisory system as a result of the coming into force of Protocol No. 11 and to the central part that the Court plays in these changes. This edition also anticipates the entry into force of Protocol No. 14, which will again bring changes to the system. The result is a very accessible and easy-to-use reference book, which provides an essential source of information for the practitioners and theorists in the field of human rights.


Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the prevalence and perceived outcomes of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use in secondary care patients and to find out determinants for CAM utilization and perceived effectiveness and side-effects.
 Materials and Methods: Patients who met the eligibility criteria in this cross-sectional study were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire. Patients' medications and relevant details were verified from the medical notes. A logistic regression analysis was performed and the significance level set at α = 0.05.
 Results: A total of 240 in-patients were interviewed. The prevalence of CAM use during admission, within 1 month, within 1 year, and at some point in life was 90.4%, 68.8%, 37.9%, and 8.3%, respectively. Diverse reasons for CAM use or non-use were cited. Nearly two-thirds of patients (63.1%) perceived CAM effectiveness and approximately half (57.6%) were aware of its side-effects. The determinants for CAM use at some point in life and perceived effectiveness could be predicted approximately 20% by two models: Logit P use = 3.404 − 1.044 × Educ + 1.314 × Ward − 1.539 × Consider and Logit P eff = 3.244-0.995 × Gender-0.025 × Age − 1.503 × Consider.
 Conclusion: Patients decided to use CAM for various reasons and perceived different outcomes. The specific CAM use and its outcomes warrant further studies.


Abstract. Feedbacks between vegetation and other components of the climate system are discussed with respect to their influence on climate dynamics during the late Quaternary, i.e., the last glacial-interglacial cycles. When weighting current understanding based on interpretation of palaeobotanic and palaeoclimatic evidence by numerical climate system models, a number of arguments speak in favour of vegetation dynamics being an amplifier of orbital forcing. (a) The vegetation-snow albedo feedback in synergy with the sea-ice albedo feedback tends to amplify Northern Hemisphere and global mean temperature changes. (b) Variations in the extent of the largest desert on Earth, the Sahara, appear to be amplified by biogeophysical feedback. (c) Biogeochemical feedbacks in the climate system in relation to vegetation migration are supposed to be negative on time scales of glacial cycles. However, with respect to changes in global mean temperature, they are presumably weaker than the positive biogeophysical feedbacks.


This article studies the judicial resolution of business deadlock. Asset valuation, a necessary component of business divorce procedures, can pose serious problems in case of closely-held businesses such as general partnerships and limited liability companies (LLCs). Courts face the challenge of designing valuation mechanisms that will trigger the owners to truthfully reveal their private information. We theoretically and experimentally assess the ex post judicial design and properties of judicially-mandated Shotgun and Private Auction mechanisms. In the former mechanism, the court would require one owner to name a buy-sell price, and the other owner would be required to either buy or sell his or her shares at the named price. In the latter mechanism, the court would mandate both owners to simultaneously submit a price to buy the other owner's assets. Our experimental findings support our theory: The Shotgun mechanism with an informed offeror is superior to the Private Auction in terms of an equity criterion. In the Shotgun mechanism, the informed offeror has an incentive to truthfully reveal his private information and, as a result, an equitable outcome is more likely to be achieved. The analysis presented in this article provides an equity rationale for the judicial implementation of the Shotgun mechanism in business divorce cases, and demonstrates the empirical feasibility of our proposal.


Embedding education for sustainability, in Faith Based Organisations' (FBOs) school curricula in Uganda, puzzles. Any progressive education system should be dynamic-always calling for timely transformations in content, instructional methodologies, imparted values, skills and attitudes, to remain holistic. Once these are adequately embraced, the system tends to remain vibrant and relevant to the institutions, the learner and the community. However, in Uganda especially in education institutions of FBOs, Education for Sustainability (EfS) - a universally conceived aspect of holistic learning seems not to be whole-heartedly attended to either by omission or unawareness. Problems centre mainly on ideological and operational premises. These include lack of awareness, lack of goodwill of key stakeholders to plan for and manage EfS and lack of competent teachers in EfS aspects. Answers to these problems in essence centre on the theoretical underpinning of this reportcurricular transformation. Secondly, proper capacity building, integrative planning, financing and management to enable sustainable programme growth and development should also be enhanced.


The fuzzy logic controller, FLC, it is part of the control with artificial intelligence (AI), and implies obtaining of improved signal wave forms at output and reduction of oscillations (such as output speed variation, torque variation, current variation for the three phases) comparatively with the classic control. This paper presents two cases of FLC for exterior permanent magnet synchronous machines, PMSM, (Ld=Lq), with 25 rules and with 49 rules. The FLC is developed to have less computational burden, which makes it suitable for real time implementation. The dynamic performances of permanent magnet synchronous machines opens new possibilities of large scale application of PMSM which has a high torque density, with low losses/torque ratio, high power factor and quick torque and speed response. For the real time implementation we have made reference to the digital signal processor controller board DS1104.


There has always been a common perception that religion and politics are particularly and uniquely intertwined in Middle Eastern culture. While the anecdotal evidence for this perception is overwhelming, there have been few cross-sectional, large-n studies which have attempted to confirm this perception and explain why this close connection between religion and politics in the Middle East exists. Accordingly, this study uses the Minorities at Risk dataset to test this perception with regard to ethnic conflicts by comparing ethnic conflicts in the Middle East to those occurring in the rest of the world. The results show that on all measures used here, religion is at least twice as powerful an influence on Middle Eastern ethnic conflicts as it is on such conflicts in the rest of the world. However, other than this, Middle Eastern ethnic conflicts are not distinguishable from ethnic conflicts occurring elsewhere. These results hold up even when controlling for the region's Islamic and autocratic nature.


We evaluated the effectiveness of 2-phenylethanol (PET) in combination with acetic acid (AA) as a binary lure for monitoring male and female obliquebanded leafroller, Choristoneura rosaceana (Harris). Studies were conducted in apple, Malus domestica Borkhausen, orchards treated with or without sex pheromone dispensers for mating disruption (MD). Open polypropylene vials, closed membrane cups, and rubber septa loaded with AA and/or PET in varying amounts were first evaluated in a series of trapping experiments. Membrane cups loaded with 800 mg of PET were as effective as 10-mg septa, but longer lasting, and were comparable to the open vials. A membrane cup AA lure was effective in tests, but further work is needed to increase its release rate and extend its activity. Catches of codling moth, Cydia pomonella (L.), and C. rosaceana were unaffected by combining PET with (E,E)-8,10-dodecadien-1-ol, the sex pheromone of codling moth, pear ester, (E,Z)-2,4-ethyl-decadienoate, and AA lures. Adding (E)-4,8-dimethyl-1,3,7-nonatriene to this blend to enhance codling moth catch, significantly reduced catches of C. rosaceana. PET+AA was a more attractive binary lure than AA plus phenylacetonitrile (PAN) for C. rosaceana. The addition of PET or PAN to traps already baited with the sex pheromone of C. rosaceana significantly reduced male catches. Traps baited with PET+AA placed in blocks not treated with MD caught significantly fewer C. rosaceana than traps baited with sex pheromone. In comparison, sex pheromone-baited traps in MD blocks caught ≤ 1 male moth per season which was significantly lower than total moth (> 10) or female moth (≥ 3) catch in these blocks with PET+AA. A high proportion (> 70%) of trapped females were mated in both untreated and MD-treated orchards. Further refinement of this binary, bisexual lure using membrane cup technology may allow the establishment of action thresholds and improve management timings for C. rosaceana.


This paper presents a technique for motion detection that incorporates several innovative mechanisms. For example, our proposed technique stores, for each pixel, a set of values taken in the past at the same location or in the neighborhood. It then compares this set to the current pixel value in order to determine whether that pixel belongs to the background, and adapts the model by choosing randomly which values to substitute from the background model. This approach differs from those based upon the classical belief that the oldest values should be replaced first. Finally, when the pixel is found to be part of the background, its value is propagated into the background model of a neighboring pixel. We describe our method in full details (including pseudo-code and the parameter values used) and compare it to other background subtraction techniques. Efficiency figures show that our method outperforms recent and proven state-of-the-art methods in terms of both computation speed and detection rate. We also analyze the performance of a downscaled version of our algorithm to the absolute minimum of one comparison and one byte of memory per pixel. It appears that even such a simplified version of our algorithm performs better than mainstream techniques.


A mutant producing very high levels of the acetamidase enzyme encoded by the amdS gene has been isolated in a strain containing the amdA7 mutation, which itself causes high levels of this enzyme. Genetic analysis has shown that this mutation, designated amdI66, is adjacent to the amdS gene and is cis-dominant in its effect. The amdI66 mutation has little effect on amdS expression when present in strains not containing the amdA7 mutation. Two other amdA mutations investigated also interact with the amdI66 mutation to result in high acetamidase levels. No interaction between amdI66 and any of the other putative regulatory genes affecting amdS expression has been observed. The amdI66 mutation has been located by fine structure mapping at the extreme end of the controlling region, which has previously been defined by genetic mapping (HYNES 1979). Analysis of this region has been extended by mapping new mutations resulting in loss of amdS expression. One of these defines the most extreme site capable of mutation to loss of gene function found so far.


 Abstract — Introduction: Students make plans for their career and are keen in exploring options of employment in those carriers. They make their employment choice based on their desires and preferences. This study aims to identify Sciences after obtaining appropriate education prefer to work as clinicians, university faculty, or full-time researchers. There are limited studies in Saudi Arabia exploring the university student's employment choices and preferences. This study would help employers to build the required job positions and prevent misleading employers from opening undesired positions in the job market. Methodology: The study included 394 students from third and fourth years both male and female among the eighth programs of college of applied medical sciences, King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences (KSAU-HS), Riyadh campus. A prospective quantitative cross-sectional study was conducted; data were collected by distributing a seven item questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS. Results: Among the participants, 358 (90.9%) of them chose one of the three listed career choices, 263 (66.8%) decided to work as hospital staff after their education, 75 students (19.0%) chose to work as a faculty member in a university after obtaining appropriate degree, 20 students (5.1%) preferred to work as full-time researcher after obtaining appropriate degree, the remaining 36 students (9.1%) had different career goals, such as obtaining a master degree after graduating, to obtain a bachelor of medicine and bachelor in surgery degree, and working in the private sector. The most recurrent reason behind the participants' choice was "career goal", where 276 (70.1%) chose it as a reason. Conclusion: The findings of the study showed that most student's preferred to work in hospitals as clinicians, followed by choice of working as a faculty in a university, the least choice was to be working as full-time


In this paper we evaluate critically the popular Mundell–Fleming model from the heterodox standpoint of the exogenous interest-rate approach. We criticize the assumptions of exogenous money supply, 'perfect' international capital markets and inelastic exchange-rate expectations. We show that in a more realistic framework none of the main results of the Mundell–Fleming model on the relative effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policies is valid, either in floating and fixed exchange-rate regimes. We conclude that, within certain very asymmetric bounds, the Central Bank has the power to determine the domestic interest rate exogenously even in open economy with free capital mobility and that there is no automatic market mechanism to ensure the automatic adjustment of the interest rate and exchange rate to sustainable levels.


Equisetalean fossil plant remains of Early to Middle Triassic age from New South Wales are described. Robust and persistent nodal diaphragms composed of three zones; a broad central pith disc, a vascular cylinder and a cortical region surrounded by a sheath of conjoined leaf bases, are placed in Nododendron benolongensis n.sp. The new genus Townroviamites is erected for stems previously assigned to Phyllotheca brookvalensis which bear whorls of leaves forming a narrow basal sheath and the number of leaves matches the number of vascular bundles. Finely striated stems bearing leaf whorls consisting of several foliar lobes each formed from four to seven linear conjoined leaves are described as Paraschizoneura jonesii n.sp. Doubts are raised about the presence of the common Permian Gondwanan sphenophyte species Phyllotheca australis and the Northern Hemisphere genus Neocalamites in Middle Triassic floras of Gondwana.


Acoustic methods used in fish abundance estimation constitute a key part of the analytic assessment that makes the basis for abundance estimation of marine resources. The methods rely on power-budget equations and calibrated systems. Different formulations of power-budget equations and calibration factors have been proposed for use in scientific echo sounder and sonar systems. There are unresolved questions and apparent inconsistencies in prior literature related to this field. A generic (instrument independent) and unifying theory is presented that attempts to explain the different power-budget and calibration factor formulations proposed and used in prior literature, and how these are mutually related. Deviations and apparent inconsistencies in this literature appear to be explained and corrected. This also includes different (instrument specific) formulations employed in important modern scientific echo sounder systems, and their relationship to the generic theory of abundance estimation. Prior literature is extended to provide more complete power-budget equations for fish abundance estimation and species identification, by accounting for echo integration, electrical termination, and the full range of electrical and acoustical echo sounder parameters. The expressions provide a consistent theoretical basis for improved understanding of conventional methods and instruments used today, also enabling improved sensitivity and error analyses, and correction possibilities.


We consider the Hopfield model with N neurons and an increasing number M = M(N) of randomly chosen patterns. Under the condition M 2/N → 0, we prove for every fixed choice of overlap parameters a central limit theorem as N → ∞, which holds for almost all realizations of the random patterns. In the special case where the temperature is above the critical one and there is no external magnetic field, the condition M 3/2 log M ≤ N suffices. As in the case of a finite number of patterns, the central limit theorem requires a centering which depends on the random patterns. In addition, we describe the almost sure asymptotic behavior of the partition function under the condition M 3/N → 0.


Title of Thesis: LARGE AREA ALL-ELASTOMER TACTILE SENSORS FOR ROBOTIC SKINS Peter Block, Master of Science, 2014 Directed by: Professor Sarah Bergbreiter Department Mechanical Engineering and The Institute for Systems Research This work demonstrates the first low cost, all-elastomer capacitive tactile arrays compatible with roll-to-roll manufacturing. A new manufacturing process has been developed in which elastomer sheets are covered with a stencil, spray coated with conductive elastomer on one or both sides, and stacked to create the sensor array. These arrays are highly flexible and can withstand large strains. Sensor costs are below $0.12/sensor in small quantities. Some variants in the fabrication process result in a slightly curved sensor so the change in capacitance is highly nonlinear at low pressures, but approaches theoretical sensitivities at higher pressures. The sensors have been determined to be highly sensitive, with a sensor resolution of 0.5 Pa and reveal a repeatable response from 1 kPa up to 120 kPa. A variety of materials ranging in modulus, thickness and texture were investigated for static, dynamic, and spatial location testing. LARGE AREA ALL-ELASTOMER TACTILE SENSORS FOR ROBOTIC SKINS


Abstract. Soil erosion in Alpine areas is mainly related to extreme topographic and weather conditions. Although different methods of assessing soil erosion exist, the knowledge of erosive forces of the snow cover needs more investigation in order to allow soil erosion modeling in areas where the snow lays on the ground for several months. This study aims to assess whether the RUSLE (Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation) empirical prediction model, which gives an estimation of water erosion in t ha yr−1 obtained from a combination of five factors (rainfall erosivity, soil erodibility, topography, soil cover, protection practices) can be applied to mountain areas by introducing a winter factor (W), which should account for the soil erosion occurring in winter time by the snow cover. The W factor is calculated from the ratio of Ceasium-137 (137Cs) to RUSLE erosion rates. Ceasium-137 is another possible way of assessing soil erosion rates in the field. In contrast to RUSLE, it not only provides water-induced erosion but integrates all erosion agents involved. Thus, we hypothesize that in mountain areas the difference between the two approaches is related to the soil erosion by snow. In this study we compared 137Cs-based measurement of soil redistribution and soil loss estimated with RUSLE in a mountain slope affected by avalanches, in order to assess the relative importance of winter erosion processes such as snow gliding and full-depth avalanches. Three subareas were considered: DS, avalanche defense structures, RA, release area, and TA, track area, characterized by different prevalent winter processes. The RUSLE estimates and the 137Cs redistribution gave significantly different results. The resulting ranges of W evidenced relevant differences in the role of winter erosion in the considered subareas, and the application of an avalanche simulation model corroborated these findings. Thus, the higher rates obtained with the 137Cs method confirmed the relevant role of winter soil erosion. Despite the limited sample size (11 points), the inclusion of a W factor in RUSLE seems promising for the improvement of soil erosion estimates in Alpine environments affected by snow movements.


Examination of dissections and reconstructions made from serial sections and observations of blood flow in small transparent animals have been used to describe the heart and associated blood vessels in the larva (ammocoete) of all three living families of lampreys. Particular emphasis has been placed on describing the condition in ammocoetes spanning the complete range in larval body size and on resolving the serious descriptive and nomenclatural anomalies in the literature. During early larval life (7-30 mm), the sinus venosus becomes almost entirely separated from the liver by a collagenous barrier which develops on the anterior face of the latter organ. However, at no stage in larval life is a transverse septum developed between the pericardial and perivisceral cavities. The four chambers of the heart (sinus venosus, atrium, ventricle and conus arteriosus) are separated by valves, each of which has a pair of leaflets which open and close. The junctions of the left anterior and posterior cardinal veins and of the right anterior and posterior cardinal veins are united transversely where they meet the right and left descending ducts of Cuvier. Since this allows the lateral transfer of blood between the right and left sides of the cardinal veins, it presumably facilitates the distribution of different volumes of blood to the different-sized ducts of Cuvier. The large right duct passes dorsoventrally straight into the sinus venosus, while the smaller and slightly more posterior left duct descends in a channel on the anterior face of the liver, from which it receives further blood before finally entering the sinus venosus below the level of entry of the right duct. In 47% of animals examined, the more dorsal region of the left duct also passed straight into the sinus venosus at a level comparable with that of the right duct. In addition to the ducts of Cuvier, the sinus venosus receives blood directly from a single ventral hepatic vein and a single inferior jugular vein. Except in very young ammocoetes (< 12 mm), the dorsal aorta, and the anterior mesenteric artery which arises from its dorsal surface, curve to the right in the cardiac region of the trunk. This shift in location, which parallels that described for fossil osteostracans, permits the oesophagus to be suspended above the heart by vertical strands of connective tissue hanging from the mid-ventral surface of the notochord.


Rolling bearing simulations are very computationally in tensive. Serial simulations may take weeks to execute, and there is a need to use the potential of parallel comput ing. The specific structure of the rolling bearing problem is used to develop suitable scheduling strategies. The authors discuss the system of stiff ordinary differential equations arising from a bearing model and show how to numerically solve these ordinary differential equations on parallel computers. Benchmarking results are presented for two test cases on three platforms.


Using Gaussian Constants, a self-contained paraxial theory for rotationally distributed-index media has been formulated. The differential equations governing a ray transfer in inhomogeneous media have been derived together with an analytical solution and a numerical calculation method. The Lagrange-Helmholtz invariant for inhomogeneous media is presented, and a homogeneous model equivalent to ray transfer in inhomogeneous media is proposed. A numerical example is added to confirm the analysis.


Threshold voltages of alternating currents passing through the head as determined with flickering phosphenes as an index were plotted as a function of frequencies, and 7 conspicuous minima were found in the curve. It was shown that these minima are the result of differential sensitivity of 7 types of receptor having their own time-constants. Based on the fact that the electrical sensitivity of the eye as measured by an ac of any optimal frequency is selectively enhanced on exposure of the retina to weak spectral lights of wavelengths of a certain limited range, a spectral response curve was determined for each kind of receptor. The response curves determined in this way had so sharp peaks well localized on definite parts of the spectrum that the optimal wavelength for each kind of receptor could be determined with sufficient accuracy. The optimal wavelengths and resonance frequencies of the receptors are as follows: red (650 mµ) 77 cycles per sec; orange (610 mµ) 62.5 cps; yellow (575 mµ) 52.5 cps; green (515 mµ) 42.5 cps; blue (465 mµ) 35 cps; violet (415 mµ) 28.5 cps; rod or scotopic receptor (507 mµ) 20 cps.


Hotspots (active fires) indicate spatial distribution of fires. A study on determining influence factors for hotspot occurrence is essential so that fire events can be predicted based on characteristics of a certain area. This study discovers the possible influence factors on the occurrence of fire events using the association rule algorithm namely Apriori in the study area of Rokan Hilir Riau Province Indonesia. The Apriori algorithm was applied on a forest fire dataset which containeddata on physical environment (land cover, river, road and city center), socio-economic (income source, population, and number of school), weather (precipitation, wind speed, and screen temperature), and peatlands. The experiment results revealed 324 multidimensional association rules indicating relationships between hotspots occurrence and other factors.The association among hotspots occurrence with other geographical objects was discovered for the minimum support of 10% and the minimum confidence of 80%. The results show that strong relations between hotspots occurrence and influence factors are found for the support about 12.42%, the confidence of 1, and the lift of 2.26. These factors are precipitation greater than or equal to 3 mm/day, wind speed in [1m/s, 2m/s), non peatland area, screen temperature in [297K, 298K), the number of school in 1 km2 less than or equal to 0.1, and the distance of each hotspot to the nearest road less than or equal to 2.5 km.


Reactive oxygen species (ROS), e.g. superoxide, hydrogen peroxide, peroxynitrite, are important mediators for many cell signaling processes. In the central nervous system, cardiovascular function is tightly regulated by cell signaling in specific nuclei (the subfornical organ (SFO), paraventricular nucleus (PVN), and rostral venterolateral medulla (RVLM)) and an imbalance of ROS in these nuclei contributes to the development cardiovascular diseases, e.g. hypertension. There are limitations to quantify and localize ROS in brain tissue. The current state-of-the-art method to measure ROS in the brain is in situ quantification of dihydroethidium (DHE) fluorescence using confocal microscopy. DHE is a cell permeable compound, which upon reaction with ROS forms red fluorescent 2-hydroxyethidium. However, in situ DHE imaging has a number of technical problems. Recent developments with in vivo DHE methods may circumvent these problems but, this methodology has not been well established for brain, particularly cardioregulatory nuclei. The aim of this study was to test whether in vivo DHE methodology using either systemic or direct brain administration of DHE, may be an alternative to in situ DHE. Mice were injected with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) (8 micrograms/g i.p.) to elicit ROS production in the brain. In control groups we injected saline or LPS and tempol (200 microliters of 10 mM tempol, i.p.), which is a ROS scavenger. Three hours later mice were injected with DHE (150 microliters of 150 micrograms/mouse, i.p.) and brains were harvested one hour later. In a second experiment we administered DHE via an intracerebroventricular (ICV, 1 microliter of 10 micromolar DHE) cannula (including the same controls), which allows direct delivery of DHE to the brain. Our results show that LPS caused increased DHE fluorescence intensity in the SFO, RVLM and PVN but not in control areas e.g. the cortex when DHE was administrated intraperitoneally. Saline- and tempol-treated mice showed much lower DHE fluorescence. The distribution pattern was similar in both experiments. In conclusion, this study shows that DHE administered either systemically or directly into the brain leads to effective detection of LPS-induced ROS formation in brain centers important in cardiovascular homeostasis and may be an important alternative to in situ DHE.


Mathematics Teacher Educators (MTEs) help preservice teachers in transitioning from students to teachers of mathematics. They support PSTs in shifting what they notice and envision to align with the collective vision encoded in the AMTE and NCTM standards. This study analyzes drawings and descriptions completed at the beginning and end of a one-year teacher education program—snapshots depicting optimized visions of teaching and learning mathematics. This study analyzed drawings-and-descriptions by cohort and by participants. The findings suggest that the task can be used as formative assessment to inform supports for specific PSTs such as choosing a cooperating teacher or coursework that challenges problematic beliefs. It can also be used as summative assessment to inform revision of coursework for the next cohort.


We propose a fully automated approach to calibrating multiple cameras whose fields of view may not all overlap. Our technique only requires waving an arbitrary textured planar pattern in front of the cameras, which is the only manual intervention that is required. The pattern is then automatically detected in the frames where it is visible and used to simultaneously recover geometric and photometric camera calibration parameters. In other words, even a novice user can use our system to extract all the information required to add virtual 3D objects into the scene and light them convincingly. This makes it ideal for Augmented Reality applications and we distribute the code under a GPL license.


: The integration of the Eastern-European states into the Soviet Union's sphere of influence at the end of the Second World War represented a complex process that aimed all the vital sectors in those states. In a relatively short period of time, the political, economic, social and cultural life of the Eastern-European states was radically transformed, according to the models imposed by Moscow. The Soviet Union imposed its control over Eastern Europe because it had strategic, political, military and economic interests in this region. The states in this region became, after the Soviet Union broke relations with its former Western allies, the main suppliers of resources for the recovery of the soviet economy. The soviet control over the Eastern-European economies took many forms: from the brutal transfer of raw materials, finite products and technology during the first years after the war, to more subtle methods, as the establishment of "mixed enterprises", the initialization of bilateral agreements and finally by establishing the COMECON. The establishment of the COMECON in January 1949 was one of the measures taken by Moscow in order to counteract the effects of the Marshall Plan and to consolidate the Soviet influence in the satellite-states from Eastern Europe. This measure was preceded by other actions meant to strengthen Moscow's political, economic and ideological control over these states.


Background: The quality of blood transfusion services (BTS) is essential for the treatment of patients who need blood or blood products. BTS involve several steps, including the acquisition of the donor's blood, blood grouping, unexpected antibody screening, blood storage, transfusion, etc. There is a need to check the effectiveness of all elements in the BTS can be assessed and monitored by an external quality assessment. Aim: To assess and evaluate the performance of ABO and Rh(D) blood grouping and unexpected antibody screening of the selected World Health Organization (WHO) South-East Asia Region Member country laboratories. Methods: WHO Collaborating Centre on Strengthening Quality of Health Laboratories (Thailand) organized a regional external quality assessment scheme for blood group serology (REQAS-BGS) between 2002 and 2008 for laboratories in countries of the WHO South-East Asia Region. Test items for ABO and Rh(D) blood groupings and unexpected antibody screening and identification were distributed three cycles per year to BTS laboratories in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand. By the end of the project, a total of 20 BTS laboratories had participated for differing lengths of time. Results: It was found that 87.5%, 93.3%, 81.3%, 92.3%, 100% and 87.5% of laboratories returned the test results in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2008, respectively. Laboratories with excellent quality or a trend of quality improvement for ABO and Rh(D) blood grouping, unexpected antibody screening and identification during the six years were 60% (12/20), 50% (10/20), 52.9% (9/17) and 81.8% (9/11), respectively. At the initiation of the scheme, most laboratories were using substandard methods for ABO and Rh blood groupings, i.e. performing only direct blood grouping alone but subsequently adopted the standard methods, i.e. performing both direct and reverse blood groupings. Conclusion: REQAS-BGS in South-East Asia countries has been useful for assessing, monitoring and improving the quality of testing. Challenges such as high costs and regulatory requirements for international shipment of blood samples could be solved by amending the regulation(s) for shipment, or establishing a national EQAS.


In preschool, children encounter their first experiences in forming and joining social groups outside their family. It is natural for them to experiment with social interactions while learning about their world. In this guide, teasing and bullying are addressed as a continuum of intentionally hurtful behavior, from making fun of someone to repetitive physical abuse. Creating a caring environment at the beginning of school reduces the need for children to assert themselves through negative behavior such as teasing and bullying. With "The Anti-Bullying and Teasing Book," teachers of young children can address this behavior before it develops.Special features of this book: Information on family-school partnerships to engage families in the development of a caring community and to reinforce teachings about empathy and mutual respect. Techniques to teach children how to think about and manage their feelings in a safe and appropriate way. Tips for teaching children how to act appropriately as a "bystander." Children who stand by while a friend is being teased and bullied may be uneasy or even scared that they might be next. They feel powerless and learn negative ways to interact with others. Teachers have the opportunity to work with bystanders, helping them to develop the confidence to stand up for a friend. As a result, children will become more able to stand up for themselves and not tolerate teasing and bullying behavior. "The Anti-Bullying and Teasing Book" creates an environment that reinforces the positive messages essential to children's sense of safety and well-being. Some such messages are quoted from "Hurt-Free Schools" by M. Christine Mattise: If you are hurt on the playground, someone will come to see if you are all right. If you are alone, you are welcome to join in a game. If you are being teased, other children will come and tell the teaser to stop. If you need help, ask an adult. When certain social milestones and goals are achieved, children can easily live and work within their world. According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) Code of Ethical Conduct, these goals can be stated in terms of "democratic life skills," which include the ability to: see one's self as a worthy individual and a capable member of the group. express strong emotions in non-hurting ways. solve problems ethically and intelligently. be understanding of the feeling and viewpoints of others. work cooperatively in groups, with acceptance of the human differences among members. Teachers have a major influence on how children view themselves within the larger world. Children mimic teachers' language and interactions. By creating a climate of mutual respect, teachers can help children learn to develop empathy and treat others fairly and kindly, and to stand up for themselves and their friends in safe and developmentally appropriate ways. "The Anti-Bullying and Teasing Book" will help teachers create a school environment in which all children feel comfortable, safe, and welcome.


Introduction Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM) is a multisystem disorder that increases the risk of complications for both mother and child. In most cases, GDM resolves postnatally and NICE recommend a fasting plasma glucose (FPG) measurement at the 6-week postnatal check, to ensure this. However we believe an oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT) would be a more sensitive marker of abnormal glucose metabolism compared to FPG, especially as the long-term cost of managing impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) or type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) is significant. Methodology Postnatal OGTT data for women with GDM, delivering between 09/2008–09/2013 at West Middlesex Hospital, was collected. Of 1115 women, 786 attended for postnatal OGTT (70.4% uptake). Results Of 786 women undergoing a 6-week postnatal OGTT, 133 (16.9%) had an abnormal result: 34 were diagnosed with T2DM, 34 with elevated FPG alone and 32 with both elevated FPG and 2-hour value. Strikingly, 67 (50.3%) had an elevated 2-hour value at OGTT with a normal FPG: 59 with IGT (2-hour value 7.8–10.9 mmol/L) and 8 with T2DM (2-hour value ≥11 mmol/L), all of which would have been misdiagnosed as normal. Furthermore, 5 women with impaired fasting glucose (6.1–6.9 mmol/L) but a 2-hour value indicative of T2DM would be misdiagnosed. Conclusion Half of women diagnosed with GDM who have persistent IGT/T2DM are overlooked under current UK guidelines. Given the increasing prevalence of T2DM and its long-term complications, this is a missed diagnostic opportunity. Therefore we recommend that all women with GDM should be offered an OGTT postnatally.


1. Plant traits that enhance the attraction of the natural enemies of their herbivores have been postulated to function as an 'indirect defence'. An important underlying assumption is that this enhanced attraction results in increased plant fitness due to reduced herbivory. This assumption has been rarely tested. 2. We investigated whether there are fitness consequences for the charlock mustard Sinapis arvensis, a short-lived outcrossing annual weedy plant, when exposed to groups of large cabbage white (Pieris brassicae) caterpillars parasitized by either one of two wasp species, Hyposoter ebeninus and Cotesia glomerata, that allow the host to grow during parasitism. Hyposoter ebeninus is solitary and greatly reduces host growth compared with healthy caterpillars, whereas C. glomerata is gregarious and allows the host to grow approximately as large as unparasitized caterpillars. Both healthy and parasitized P. brassicae caterpillars initially feed on the foliage, but later stages preferentially consume the flowers. 3. In a garden experiment, plants damaged by parasitized caterpillars produced more seeds than conspecific plants damaged by unparasitized caterpillars. Reproductive potential (germination success multiplied by total seed number) was similar for plants that were not exposed to herbivory and those that were damaged by parasitized caterpillars and lower for plants that were damaged by healthy unparasitized caterpillars. However, these quantitative seed traits negatively correlated with the qualitative seed traits, individual seed size and germination success, suggesting a trade-off between these two types of traits. 4. We show that parasitism of insect herbivores that feed on reproductive plant tissues may have positive fitness consequences for S. arvensis. The extent to which plant fitness may benefit depends on parasitoid lifestyle (solitary or gregarious), which is correlated with the amount of damage inflicted on these tissues by the parasitized host.


The authors document the research output of 34 central banks from 1990 to 2003, and use proxies of research inputs to measure the research productivity of central banks over this period. Results are obtained with and without controlling for quality and for policy relevance. The authors find that, overall, central banks have been hiring more researchers and publishing more research since 1990, with the United States accounting for more than half of all published central bank research output, although the European Central Bank is rapidly establishing itself as an important research centre. When controlling for research quality and relevance, the authors generally find that there is no clear relationship between the size of an institution and its productivity. They also find preliminary evidence of positive correlations between the policy relevance and the scientific quality of central bank research. There is only very weak evidence of a positive correlation between the quantity of external partnerships and the productivity of researchers in central banks.


We investigate an Ethernet passive optical network (EPON) architecture accommodating multiple wavelengths for cost-effective and gradual capacity upgrades. We demonstrate the successful implementation of this multiwavelength PON (MWPON) architecture with dual feeder fiber using a reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (RSOA) at each optical network unit (ONU). The scalability of this MWPON is limited by the power of feeding light, RSOA operating conditions, temperature variations, and Rayleigh backscattering. We report on the possibility of a 16-user network with 20 km of feeder and 2.0 km of distribution fiber. With temperature controlled ONUs, the MWPON may deliver eight distinct wavelengths for upstream access with 10 Gbits/s aggregate capacity.


We have numerically studied a taper-microsphere coupling system with coupled-mode theory by introducing a mode-coupling mechanism. Transmission and reflection coefficients have been obtained directly through numerical calculation for a spherical silica microcavity. In the presence of the modal coupling mechanism, the optimal condition for transferring the light energy into the microsphere is no longer the critical coupling point. Instead, it should be in the under-coupling regime and can be reached by optimizing the size of the fiber taper and the taper-microsphere gap.


The U.S. economy has gained roughly 2.8 million jobs since early 2010. That may be cold comfort, considering that more than 8 million jobs have been lost since the recession began. The Federal Reserve has lowered its policy rate as far as it can go, and the economy is flush with liquidity. Yet the unemployment rate remains persistently high. From policymakers to private citizens, the debate continues over what to do to help the labor market adjust. Disagreements stem, in part, from the complicated nature of the labor market itself. There are many moving parts, and the authors examine several here, pointing out that a "one size fits all" approach may not accommodate the differences across various sectors of the economy. The authors examine structural change, "frictions" in matching workers with job openings, lack of consumer and business confidence, the severity of the past recession, and other factors to help inform and illuminate this complex policy debate.


The evolution of IP and ATM share some common drivers. Both of them are addressing efficient network resource utilisation. In order to evaluate the options and combinations offered by these technologies the DIANA project is looking into the areas where ATM and IP both overlap and complete each other, that is QoS interworking between ATM and IP. This is achieved by investigating RSVP-over-ATM approach. This solution is compared with two IP level approaches: Differentiated Services and Scalable Resource Reservation Protocol (SRP).


Loss-of-function mutations in PARK2, the gene encoding the ubiquitin ligase Parkin, are the most common cause of autosomal recessive Parkinson's disease. But just seven short years ago, the cellular function of Parkin was completely unknown; even the enzyme's subcellular localization was uncertain. That all changed, however, when Richard Youle and colleagues demonstrated that Parkin is specifi cally recruited to damaged mitochondria, promoting their engulfment and removal by autophagosomes (1). The discovery led to an explosion of interest in how defects in mitochondrial quality control lead to neurodegeneration. As an E3 ubiquitin ligase, Parkin was fi rst proposed to target misfolded proteins to the proteasome for degradation, an idea that fi t nicely with the role played by protein aggregation in neurodegenerative diseases. But some evidence suggested that Parkin might have a mitochondrial function. Studies in Drosophila revealed that the ligase interacts genetically with PINK1, a mitochondrial kinase that is also linked to early-onset Parkinson's disease. Flies lacking either protein developed swollen mitochondria and gradually lost their indirect fl ight muscles (2, 3). "I was working on the role of mitochondria in apoptosis," explains Youle, from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland. "I had a medical student, Derek Narendra, join the lab for one year. He was more interested in clinically related things, so I had him look at Parkin. I suggested he fuse it to GFP and do some cell biology." GFP-tagged Parkin was predominantly cytosolic, even in cells undergoing apoptosis. However, Narendra then treated cells with the mitochondrial toxin paraquat, an herbicide linked to the development of Parkinson's-like symptoms in farm workers. "In certain cases, Parkin translocated from the cytosol to the mitochondria," Youle recalls. The uncoupling agent carbonyl cyanidem-chlorophenylhydrazone (CCCP), which depolarizes the mitochondrial inner membrane, had an even stronger effect, prompting Parkin's complete relocalization to mitochondria. By using a cell line containing a mixed population of healthy and dysfunctional mitochondria, Narendra et al. found that Parkin was selectively recruited to the mitochondria with lower membrane potentials. "Then Derek made a really amazing discovery," Youle recalls. "You only have to add the uncoupler for 30 minutes to see Parkin translocate to mitochondria. However, he also left the uncoupler on the cells for 48 hours. When he came back, the mitochondria were gone. I'd never seen anything like it in my life!" Narendra and colleagues confi rmed that, after 48 hours in the presence of CCCP, mitochondria were completely eliminated from cells expressing Parkin. But the organelles persisted in cells lacking the ubiquitin ligase, indicating that Parkin is required for the removal of damaged mitochondria. Previous studies had shown that dysfunctional mitochondria are eliminated by autophagy, in which double-membraned autophagosomes engulf fragments of the organelle and deliver them to lysosomes for degradation (4). Narendra et al. found that Parkin promotes the recruitment of autophagosomes to depolarized mitochondria and their subsequent removal via the autophagy pathway. "This was a big discovery and it was a competitive fi eld, so we wanted to get it out quickly," Youle says. In a follow-up paper, the researchers found that the PINK1 kinase, which is normally imported into healthy mitochondria and rapidly degraded, is stabilized on the surface of depolarized mitochondria, where it promotes the recruitment of Parkin (5). More recently, Youle and colleagues have demonstrated that PINK1 switches on Parkin's ubiquitin ligase activity by phosphorylating ubiquitin itself (6). "The story has moved quickly since 2008," says Youle. "It's been exciting." Once activated, Parkin ubiquitinates numerous mitochondrial outer membrane proteins (7). "For me, a lot of the outstanding questions now are downstream," Youle says. "How do the ubiquitin chains generated by Parkin recruit the autophagy machinery?" Disease-associated mutations in PINK1 and Parkin block this pathway and cause defective mitochondria to accumulate inside cells (5), a process that could be especially deleterious for long-lived cells such as neurons. "We and a number of other groups are interested in drugging this pathway," Youle explains. "If you could activate it, you might improve mitochondrial quality control, particularly in patients with mitochondrial diseases or in aging and Parkinson's disease." "This landmark publication by Richard Youle's group illustrates the tremendous power of cell biology to uncover both basic and disease-linked mechanisms," says Jodi Nunnari, an academic editor at JCB and expert in mitochondrial biology. "In this particular case, the experiments opened up an entirely new way of thinking about Parkinson's and provided new tools that have now unraveled how defective mitochondria are eliminated from the cell by mitophagy."


BACKGROUND
Increased vulnerability to mood disorders has been reported during perimenopause. Fluctuating estrogen levels accompany the perimenopausal transition. Thus, estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) has been proposed as a potentially effective treatment for mood disorders occurring during perimenopause.

METHOD
We examined the efficacy of ERT in the treatment of depression in 16 perimenopausal women with DSM-IV-defined major depressive disorder who were participating in the Mood Disorders Research Program at the Department of Psychiatry of the University of California, Los Angeles. Ten antidepressant- and ERT-naive women received ERT alone. Six women who were nonresponders or partial responders to an antidepressant received ERT in addition to existing treatment with fluoxetine. The Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAM-D) was administered to all patients at baseline and weekly thereafter during the 8-week open-protocol trial. Partial response was operationalized as a final HAM-D score < or = 50% of the baseline score. Remission was defined as a final HAM-D score < or = 7.

RESULTS
All patients exhibited clinical improvement as measured by HAM-D scores after the first week of treatment. Of the 10 perimenopausal depressed women receiving ERT alone, 6 remitted, 3 partially responded to treatment, and 1 did not respond by the end of the trial. Of the 6 women receiving antidepressant treatment with ERT, 1 patient remitted and 5 had a partial response by the end of the trial.

CONCLUSION
This small study suggests that for some antidepressant-naive perimenopausal women with clinical depression, ERT may have antidepressant efficacy. In depressed women who have minimal response to a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, ERT may augment response. Further controlled trials are needed.


In certain applications, AND/XOR (Reed-Muller), and ORlXNOR (Dual
form of Reed-Muller) logic have shown some attractive advantages over the
standard Sum of Products (SOP) and Product of Sums (POS). Bidirectional
conversion algorithms between SOP and AND/XOR also between POS and
ORlXNOR based on Sparse and partitioning techniques are presented for multiple
output Boolean functions. The developed programs are tested for some
benchmarks with up to 20 inputs and 40 outputs.
A new direct method is presented to calculate the coefficients of the Fixed
Polarity Dual Reed-Muller (FPDRM) from the truth vector of the POS. Any
Boolean function can be expressed by FPDRM forms. There are 211 polarities for
an n-variable function and the number of sum terms depends on these polarities.
Finding the best polarity is costly interims of CPU time, in order to search for the
best polarity which will lead to the minimum number of sums for a particular
function. Therefore, an algorithm is developed to compute all the coefficients of
the Fixed Polarity Dual Reed-Muller (FPDRM) with polarity p from any polarity q.
This technique is used to find the best polarity of FPDRM among the 211 fixed
polarities. The algorithm is based on the Dual- polarity property and the Gray code
strategy. Therefore, there is no need to start from POS form to find FPDRM
coefficients for all the polarities. The proposed methods are efficient in terms of
memory size and CPU time. A fast algorithm is developed and implemented in C
language which can convert between POSs and FPDRMs. The program was tested
for up to 23 variables. A modified version of the same program was used to find
the best polarity. For up to 13 variables the CPU time was less than 42 seconds.
To search for the optimal polarity for large number of variables and to
reduce the se arch time 0 ffinding the 0 ptimal polarity 0 fthe function, two new
algorithms are developed and presented in this thesis. The first one is used to
convert between P OS and Positive Polarity Dual Reed-Muller (PPDRM) forms.
The second algorithm will find the optimal fixed polarity for the FPDRM among
the 211 different polarities for large n-variable functions. The most popular
minimization criterion of the FPDRM form is obtained by the exhaustive search of
the entire polarity vector. A non-exhaustive method for FPDRM expansions is
presented. The new algorithms are based on separation of the truth vector (T) of
POSs around each variable Xi into two groups. Instead of generating all of the
polarity sets and searching for the best polarity, this algorithm will find the optimal
polarity using the separation and sparse techniques, which will lead to optimal
polarity. Time efficiency and computing speed are thus achieved in this technique.
The algorithms don't require a large size of memory and don't require a long CPU
time. The two algorithms are implemented in C language and tested for some
benchmark. The proposed methods are fast and efficient as shown in the
experimental results and can be used for large number of variables.


The impact of land cover change in the intertidal zone (8.2% of the total surface area) on meteorology was evaluated using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model during summer (19 21 August 2016) and winter (9 11 February 2016). The heat flux change in the intertidal zone due to the tidal effects was greater in summer than in winter. During high tide in summer, the heat flux increased before sunrise and after sunset and decreased after sunrise and before sunset. During low tide, the overall heat flux decreased. In winter, a notable feature was the positive sensible heat flux before sunrise and after sunset during high tide due to a high sea surface temperature. The horizontal and vertical impacts of the tidal phenomena on the coastal meteorology were more pronounced during high tide than during low tide. The temperature decreased in inland areas and intertidal zone in summer afternoons, and increased at sea in winter mornings. The water vapor mixing ratio during the summer period increased in inland from the coastline. The wind speed during high tide at sea increased overall in summer and winter due to the decreased roughness length. During the summer period, the westerly wind speed significantly increased in the lower atmosphere (within 0.4 km) over coastal areas, and the easterly wind speed increased at the heights (approximately 1 km) of the return current of the sea breeze. These horizontal and vertical variations in sea breeze circulation induced horizontal meteorological differences in the Seoul metropolitan areas (approximately 30 km away from the coastline) and vertical differences within the planetary boundary layer (approximately 1.5 km altitude). Article history: Received 25 April 2019 Revised 23 November 2019 Accepted 7 January 2020


— This review paper creates a bridge between MIML classification framework and Image annotation. There are generally four classification frameworks, known as Single Instance Single Label (SISL), Multi-Instance Learning (MIL), Multi-Label Learning (MLL) and Multi-Instance Multi-Label Learning (MIML). This paper introduces various classification frameworks with examples and related algorithms. An annotation is one type of metadata that can be attached to any video, image (2D/3D), text, audio and other data in the form of explanation, comments, navigation or presentational markup. This paper briefly introduces different types of annotation, annotation dataset, techniques and current research challenges in annotations


Electronic commerce as one of the most important innovation aspects in the process of doing business is used by many organizations and companies in the world. Cooperatives as the main part of the country's economy have fundamental role in improving and promoting economy. Therefore, innovation methods and tools, new processes and perform business tasks such as e-commerce will play an important role in the success of cooperatives. In this study in the first stage the infrastructures will be considered and those as a requisite will be explained for development of e-commerce in cooperatives establishment and implementation involves having an appropriate infrastructure and technical readiness, to support cultural, social and legal institutions. The aim of this study is to identify bottlenecks in development of e-commerce with cooperatives in Gilan province and finally priorities of this infrastructure, successful implementation of e-commerce needs to choose an appropriate strategy. Therefore, in the second stage based on a variety of previous researches and literature study related to topics and fuzzy analysis network process is attempting to select the most appropriate of e-commerce model in cooperatives. In this study statistical population includes two groups.


Solid waste that comes along with the waste water from house hold gets deposited at the bottom of the drain. With passage of time, this solid waste starts decomposing and starts releasing methane. Methane is an important greenhouse gas which is non-toxic, but highly flammable. It is also an asphyxiant and can be fatal. For this reason, every year many people die while cleaning solid sewage of choked drains. Methane emission measurements from three drains of Kolkata were made during 2009-10. The results are presented in this communication. It is found that methane emission is ~4-100 times greater than that from paddy field. Data obtained in this work will be a valuable input for making reliable prediction of methane loading in the atmosphere and alert workers of danger to take adequate safety measure before cleaning sewage sediments.


The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is poised to become the global standard for low data rate, low energy consumption wireless sensor networks (WSN). By assigning the same sets of contention access parameters for all data frames and nodes, the contention access period (CAP) of the slotted IEEE 802.15.4 medium access control (MAC) currently provides a priorityindependent channel access functionality and no service diiTerentiation. Several recent WSN applications such as wireless body sensor networks, however, may require service dilTerentiation and traf6e prioritization support to accommodate potential highpriority traffic (e.g., alarms or emergency alerts). By allowing dilTerent sets of access parameters and data frame lengths for differentpriority classes, this paper develops a Markov-chain-based analytical model of the CAP of the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC with service dilTerentiatlon, under unsaturated traffic conditions. In particular, given two priority classes, our analytical model is used to evaluate the performance of a simple, yet eiTective, contentionwindow-based service dilTerentiation strategy, in terms of the resulting throughput, average frame service time and access priority for each priority class. The accuracy of the analytical model is validated by extensive ns-2 simulation.


International and national use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is high in the general population and among patients. The level of knowledge about CAM among health care professions is low, but an interest in receiving education about this field has been observed. Concerning surgical care, previous studies indicate a wide range of CAM use among patients, but the level of knowledge among health care professions is poorly investigated, both internationally and in Sweden. Concerning CAM therapies in the management of signs and symptoms in surgical care, transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation (TENS) was used with a variety of effectiveness and osteopathic medicine was found to be poorly investigated in this context. The overall objective of this thesis was to investigate CAM in the surgical context with a focus on health care professions' perceptions and understanding and the usefulness of therapy in symptom management in clinical settings. Both inductive (paper I; semi structured interviews, n=16) and deductive (paper II; questionnaire, n=737) methods were used to investigate perceptions and understanding of CAM among Swedish health care professions in surgical care. TENS as a pain relieving complement during the transition from epidural analgesia (EDA) to general analgesia after major abdominal surgery was investigated in a randomized controlled trial design (paper III; n=20). Osteopathic intervention in management of chronic signs and symptoms after thoracotomy was investigated with a single-subject research design (paper IV; n=8). The results reveal that surgical health care professions understand and perceive CAM as a wide range of therapies, remedies and systems. Their self valued level of knowledge was low, both concerning CAM and CAM research, but a desire was found to gain knowledge about CAM. A majority of the participants would consider learning a CAM therapy. Dialog about and referral to CAM occurred, but to a limited extent. Concerning therapy usability, TENS was not found to significantly relieve pain, promote recovery or reduce consumption of analgesics. In addition, comments from nurses and patients indicated that TENS treatment obstructed postoperative care. A significant improvement was observed in the osteopathic intervention in stiffness and benefits for pain, but not in breathing. The comprehensive conclusion of the thesis is that Swedish health care professions recognise the concept of CAM and some of its therapies, but their knowledge is in general low. Concerning therapy usability and the effectiveness of CAM in surgical care, the context is essential; TENS after major abdominal surgery in EDA elimination is questionable as concerns pain and its clinical application, while osteopathy may be beneficial in the management of chronic signs and symptoms after thoracotomy.


What's wrong with foreign aid? Many policymakers, aid practitioners, and scholars have called into question its ability to increase economic growth, alleviate poverty, or promote social development. At the macro level, only tenuous links between development aid and improved living conditions have been found. At the micro level, only a few programs outlast donor support and even fewer appear to achieve lasting improvements. The authors of this book argue that much of aid's failure is related to the institutions that structure its delivery. These institutions govern the complex relationships between the main actors in the aid delivery system and often generate a series of perverse incentives that promote inefficient and unsustainable outcomes. In their analysis, the authors apply the theoretical insights of the new institutional economics to several settings. First, they investigate the institutions of Sida, the Swedish aid agency, to analyze how that aid agency's institutions can produce incentives inimical to desired outcomes, contrary to the desires of its own staff. Second, the authors use cases from India, a country with low aid dependence, and Zambia, a country with high aid dependence, to explore how institutions on the ground in recipient countries also mediate the effectiveness of aid. Throughout the book, the authors offer suggestions about how to improve aid's effectiveness. These suggestions include how to structure evaluations in order to improve outcomes, how to employ agency staff to gain from their on-the-ground experience, and how to engage stakeholders as "owners" in the design, resource mobilization, learning, and evaluation processes of development assistance programs. Contributors to this volume - Krister Andersson, Center for the Study of Institutions, Population and Environmental Change, Indiana University Matthew R. Auer, Associate Professor of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University Roy Gardner, Professor of Economics, Indiana University Clark C. Gibson, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of California Elinor Ostrom, Professor of Government, Indiana University Sujai Shivakumar, National Research Council, Washington D.C. Christopher J. Waller, Chair of Economics, University of Notre Dame


Bismuth vanadate BiVO4 is one of the most promising materials for photoelectrochemical water splitting, with recent work highlighting the improved photocatalytic activity of quantum sized BiVO4 compared with the crystalline phase. Herein, we report a theoretical investigation of the structural, optical and catalytic properties of the (BiVO4)4 clusters through a combination of density functional theory methods (ab initio molecular dynamics, time-dependent density functional theory, transition state theory). The enhanced solar water oxidation efficiency of BiVO4 quantum-sized clusters is linked with the localisation of the spin density on the cluster surface, and the dramatic reduction, compared with the crystalline BiVO4 phase, of the Gibbs energy of activation and Gibbs energy of reaction associated with the hydrogen transfer process between water and BiVO4. Our results illustrate the main effects associated with the reduction of dimensions (from bulk to quantum-size) on the main steps of water oxidation mechanisms. This understanding can contribute to the design of efficient BiVO4 quantum sized water-splitting photocatalysts.


Improving the students learning experience is closely connected with the promotion an implementation of an assessment strategy whose effectiveness relies on the quality of the formative aspect. Assessment can promote or hinder learning and it is therefore a powerful force to be reckoned within Education. The literature on assessment makes it quite clear that assessment shapes and drives learning in powerful, though not always helpful, ways (Ramsden, 1997).

If we assume that assessment should maximise the opportunities for those assessed to learn and develop, the tendency to reduce assessment purely to a classification device should be counteracted. The demonstration of knowledge should reflect deeper forms of learning rather that regurgitation and parroting of undigested information. Furthermore traditional forms of assessment such as essays and end of term examinations, -which are still predominantly used in higher education in Ireland as the sole assessment methods- while they may be valid and reliable methods for collecting evidence of acquisition of theoretical knowledge, they rarely afford students the opportunity to apply knowledge to key professional scenarios.
Recent studies (Hyatt, 2005; Juwah & al., 2004; Bryan & Clegg; 2006; (Swinthenby, Brown, Glover, Mills, Stevens & Hughes, 2005; Nicol, 2010; Torrance & Prior 2001) have advocated the encouragement of dialogue around learning and assessment as a means to enhance the formative aspect of assessment. Pedagogical dialogue and formative assessment share common principles such as the emphasis on the process (MacDonald, 1991); the need for negotiation of meaning and shared understanding of assessment criteria (Boud, 1992)(Chanok 2000)(Harrington & Elander 2003; Harrington & al. 2005) (Sambell & McDowell 1998) (Higgins Hatley& Skelton, 2001; (Norton, 2004; Price & Rust, 1999; O'Donovan, Price & Rust 2000; Rust, Price & O'Donovan, 2003) and the development of reciprocal commitment between assessors and assesses (Hyland 1998; Taras, 2001). This chapter describes the introduction of an assessment portfolio for module "Curriculum Assessment" informed by the above principles.
The key outcomes from the three implementation and evaluation phases of the portfolio suggest the format adopted promoted a shift of emphasis from assessment product to assessment process, the development of a shared understanding of assessment criteria, the establishment of a mutual relationship between assessors and assesses based on commitment and trust and heightened students and teachers' self-awareness both in personal (efficacy) and professional (competence) terms. The research also highlights how multiple voices within the reflective evaluation process can contribute significantly to the restructuring and development of the future curriculum and assessment method that closely meets the need of learners.

Key words: pedagogical dialogue, shared understanding, constructivist approaches to assessment, formative assessment, formative feedback


The performance of a laboratory-scale sequencing batch reactor (SBR) of 20-litre capacity was evaluated for simultaneous removal of soluble COD (SCOD), NH4+?N and phosphorus by changing the compositions and concentrations of substrates under different combinations of REACT period. The total cycle period of 10 h comprised 0.5 h FILL period, 8 h REACT period, 1 h SETTLE period and 0.5 h IDLE/DRAW period with the react period being divided into two combinations of anoxic (A) and aerobic (O) react period namely (4 h + 4 h) (A/O) and (3 h + 3 h + 2 h) (A/O/A). The initial SCOD concentration was kept constant at 2000 mg/l while the initial NH4+?N concentrations were taken as 90 mg/l and 180 mg/l as N tentatively. Results for total phosphorus accumulation capacity indicated that the A/O/A combination was more conducive to total phosphorus uptake at 90.26 mg P/g MLVSS than the A/O combination in the aerobic reaction period which followed the initial 3-h anoxic react period.


Learning rapidly and competently has become a pre-eminent strategy for improving organizational performance in the new knowledge era. Improving dynamic learning capability is an exclusive strategy for corporate success in construction industry. Thus engineering design firms should implement OL to accomplish a state of readiness for change and develop a competence to respond and identify future business potentials. This study aims to analyze the relationship between organizational learning (OL) and performance improvement (PI) in civil engineering design firms of Turkish construction industry. OL structure in engineering design firms incorporates five constructs: organizational environment, strategy development and implementation, supportive leadership, leveraging knowledge, and learning capability. The empirical data was collected through a questionnaire survey conducted to engineering design firms registered to the Turkish Chamber of Civil Engineers. The hypothesized model relationships were tested using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results show that each of the variables has a different role and significant positive impact on the OL process and organizational PI. The variables "Supportive leadership" and "Learning capability" proved to be strongly significant and positively related to organizational performance in engineering design firms. In engineering design firms, supportive leadership is needed in order to establish a participative cultural environment that helps design a new form of organization which emphasizes learning, flexibility, and rapid response. Learning capability is the potential to explore and exploit knowledge through learning flows that make possible the development, evolution and use of knowledge stocks enacting engineering design firms and their members to add value to the design business.


[1] We perform an observationally based evaluation of the cloud ice water content (CIWC) and path (CIWP) of present-day GCMs, notably 20th century CMIP5 simulations, and compare these results to CMIP3 and two recent reanalyses. We use three different CloudSat + CALIPSO ice water products and two methods to remove the contribution from the convective core ice mass and/or precipitating cloud hydrometeors with variable sizes and falling speeds so that a robust observational estimate can be obtained for model evaluations. The results show that for annual mean CIWP, there are factors of 2–10 in the differences between observations and models for a majority of the GCMs and for a number of regions. However, there are a number of CMIP5 models, including CNRM-CM5, MRI, CCSM4 and CanESM2, as well as the UCLA CGCM, that perform well compared to our past evaluations. Systematic biases in CIWC vertical structure occur below the mid-troposphere where the models overestimate CIWC, with this bias arising mostly from the extratropics. The tropics are marked by model differences in the level of maximum CIWC (∼250–550 hPa). Based on a number of metrics, the ensemble behavior of CMIP5 has improved considerably relative to CMIP3, although neither the CMIP5 ensemble mean nor any individual model performs particularly well, and there are still a number of models that exhibit very large biases despite the availability of relevant observations. The implications of these results on model representations of the Earth radiation balance are discussed, along with caveats and uncertainties associated with the observational estimates, model and observation representations of the precipitating and cloudy ice components, relevant physical processes and parameterizations.


Neural ordinary differential equations (ODEs) have attracted much attention as continuous-time counterparts of deep residual neural networks (NNs), and numerous extensions for recurrent NNs have been proposed. Since the 1980s, ODEs have also been used to derive theoretical results for NN learning rules, e.g., the famous connection between Oja's rule and principal component analysis. Such rules are typically expressed as additive iterative update processes which have straightforward ODE counterparts. Here we introduce a novel combination of learning rules and Neural ODEs to build continuous-time sequence processing nets that learn to manipulate short-term memory in rapidly changing synaptic connections of other nets. This yields continuous-time counterparts of Fast Weight Programmers and linear Transformers. Our novel models outperform the best existing Neural Controlled Differential Equation based models on various time series classification tasks, while also addressing their fundamental scalability limitations. Our code is public.


Older adults often remember less negative information than young adults, constituting a positivity effect. In the present study, we examined the effect of culture on this age-related positivity effect and the influence of view of aging on emotional memory by examining culture in two different ways: 1) geographical location and 2) ethnic grouping. We assessed emotional memory recall using an emotional memory picture task (Chung, 2010) and view of aging using a View of Aging Task (Levy & Langer, 1994). Our results showed that Chinese older adults in China held the most positive view of aging, followed by older adults in Hong Kong, and then Chinese immigrants and Caucasian older adults in the US. Emotional memory performance, however, did not follow the same cultural trajectory. Caucasian US older adults were the only group that recalled more positive pictures than their younger counterparts. All other older groups of East Asian origin showed a more balanced emotional recall rate of positive and negative pictures. These findings not only demonstrate the decoupling of view of aging and emotional memory, but more importantly, suggest that culture as defined by geographical location and ethnic grouping indeed yield different findings in attitudes and cognition – immigrants in the US held similar views of aging to Caucasian US participants (same location), but was in fact more similar in performance to the other two Asian groups in emotional memory recall (same ethnic grouping).


ABSTRACT Objectives: Hepatitis B is a viral infection primarily affecting people from culturally diverse communities in Australia. While vaccination prevents infection, there is increasing mortality resulting from liver damage associated with chronic infection. Deficits in the national policy and clinical response to hepatitis B result in a low diagnosis rate, inadequate testing and diagnosis processes, and poor access to hepatitis B treatment services. While research identifies inadequate hepatitis B knowledge among people with the virus and primary health care workers, this project sought to identify how specialist clinicians in Australia negotiate cultural diversity, and provide often complex clinical information to people with hepatitis B. Design: A vignette was developed and presented to thirteen viral hepatitis specialist clinicians prior to an electronically recorded interview. Recruitment continued until saturation of themes was reached. Data were thematically coded into themes outlined in the interview schedule. Ethical approval for the research was provided by the La Trobe University Human Research Ethics Committee. Results: Key messages provided to patients with hepatitis B by clinical specialists were identified. These messages were not consistently provided to all patients with hepatitis B, but were determined on perceptions of patient knowledge, age and highest educational level. While the vignette stated that English was not an issue for the patient, most specialists identified the need for an interpreter. Combating stigma related to hepatitis B was seen as important by the specialists and this was done through normalising the virus. Having an awareness of different cultural understandings about hepatitis B specifically, and health and well-being generally, was noted as a communication strategy. Conclusion: Key core competencies need to be developed to deliver educational messages to people with hepatitis B within clinical encounters. The provision of adequate resources to specialist clinics will assist in addressing gaps in the clinical response to hepatitis B.


This paper presents an implementation of autonomous indoor aerial gripping using a low-cost, custom-built quadrotor. Such research extends the typical functionality of micro air vehicles (MAV) from passive observation and sensing to dynamic interaction with the environment. To achieve this, three major challenges are overcome: precise positioning, sensing and manipulation of the object, and stabilization in the presence of disturbance due to interaction with the object. Navigation in unstructured, GPS-denied environments is achieved using a visual SLAM algorithm that relies on an onboard monocular camera. A secondary camera, capable of detecting infrared light sources, is used to estimate the 3D location of the object, while an under-actuated and passively compliant manipulator is designed for effective gripping under uncertainty. The system utilizes nested PID controllers for attitude stabilization, vision-based navigation and gripping. The quadrotor is therefore able to autonomously navigate, locate and grasp an object, using only onboard sensors.


: Background : Exercise trainings with blood-flow restriction have been effective in improving various physical factors and can be a unique and beneficial method in the field of medicine. Therefore, the current study aimed to compare the effects of one session of resistance training with and without blood-flow restriction of arm on changes in serum levels of growth hormone and lactate in athlete females. Materials and Methods : To perform the current clinical trial, 30 basketball players aged 23-30 years were randomly divided into three groups: traditional resistance training (intensity of 80% 1RM), resistance training with blood-flow restriction (intensity of 30% 1RM) and control group. Training started with one set of 30 repetitions and ended with two sets up to fatigue with the rest time of 30 seconds. Blood samples were taken before and immediately after completing exercise training. Results : Post-test findings indicated a significant increase in the serum levels of growth hormone in two training groups compared to pre-test, but the amount of lactate ion in all three groups significantly reduced compared to the pre-test ( P <0.05). Also, growth hormone levels in groups with and without blood-flow restriction increased significantly compared to the control group ( P =0.001 and P =0.026, respectively). conclusion : The pattern of growth hormone and lactate changes in both groups, with and without blood-flow restriction are similar to each other. It seems that for those who are not able to lift heavy weight, low intensity resistance training with blood-flow restriction can be replaced with traditional high-intensity training.


Abstract This paper presents the results of performance monitoring under real winter weather conditions, controlled laboratory testing and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of a wall mounted ventilation air inlet heat convector. For real winter weather monitoring, the wall-mounted convector was installed in a laboratory room of the Engineering Building of the School of Construction Management and Engineering. Air and hot water temperatures and air speeds were measured at the entrance to the convector and in the room. The hot water temperature was controlled at 40, 60 and 80 °C. The monitoring results were later used as boundary conditions for a CFD simulation to investigate the air movement in the room. Controlled laboratory testing was conducted in laboratories at the University of Reading, UK and at Wetterstad Consultancy, Sweden. The results of the performance investigation showed that the system contributed greatly to the room heating, particularly at a water temperature of 80 °C. Also adequate fresh air was supplied to the room. Such a system is able to provide an energy efficient method of eliminating problems associated with cold winter draughts.


The greatest fear of many families in serious financial trouble is that they will lose their homes. Bankruptcy offers a last chance for families save their houses by halting a foreclosure and by repaying any default on their mortgage loans over a period of years. Mortgage companies participate in bankruptcy by filing proofs of claims with the court for the amount of the mortgage debt. In turn, bankruptcy debtors pay these claims to retain their homes. This process is well-established and, until now, uncontroversial. The assumption is that the protective elements of the federal bankruptcy shield vulnerable homeowners from harm. This Article examines the actual behavior of mortgage companies in consumer bankruptcy cases. Using original data from 1700 recent Chapter 13 bankruptcy cases, I conclude that mortgage servicers frequently do not comply with bankruptcy law. A majority of mortgage claims are missing one or more of the required pieces of documentation for a bankruptcy claims. Fees and charges on claims often are poorly identified and do not appear to be reasonable. The bankruptcy data reinforce concerns about the overall reliability of the mortgage service industry to charge homeowners only the correct and legal amount of the debt and to comply with applicable consumer protection laws. Mistakes or misbehavior by mortgage servicers can have grave consequences. Bloated claims can jeopardize a family's ability to save their home in bankruptcy. On a system level, mistakes or misbehavior by mortgage servicers undermine America's homeownership policies for all families trying to buy a home. The data also reinforce concerns about whether consumers can trust financial institutions to adhere to applicable laws. The findings are a chilling reminder of the limits of formal law to protect consumers. Imposing unambiguous legal rules does not ensure that a system will actually function to safeguard the rights of parties. Observing the reality that laws can underperform or even misfire has crucial implications for designing legal systems that produce acceptable and just behavior.


Botanical cotton trash mixed with lint reduces cotton's marketability and appearance. During cotton harvesting, ginning, and processing, trash size reduction occurs, thus complicating its removal and identification. This trash causes problems by increasing ends down in yarn formation and thus processing efficiency. The Uster® High Volume Instrument (HVI) and Shirley Analyzer are extensively used to determine trash levels in cotton lint, but they do not specifically identify its origin. This study was performed to determine the potential for recognizing differences between botanical cotton trash mixtures via near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy and attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared (ATR/FT-IR) spectroscopy, and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). A "proof of concept" was demonstrated that showed the promise of NIR and ATR/FT-IR spectroscopy along with TGA to be employed to identify binary mixtures of botanical cotton trash. In the case of the ATR/FTIR results, the leaf and seed coat mixtures in the presence of cotton yielded the lowest accuracy of the trash mixtures. This might have arisen from the presence of noncellulosics in the samples.


China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 after almost 15 years of negotiations, making extensive commitments to open its markets to foreign investment and liberalize trade in goods and services. China represents a huge potential market for foreign telecommunications service providers; yet, in practice, foreign involvement in this market is extremely limited. This article identifies key commercial and legal barriers to foreign entry into China's telecommunications service market, exploring areas of apparent non-compliance with WTO rules and China's justifications for its current approach. This research provides a case study of China's WTO compliance, the significance of obligations contained in China's Accession Protocol, and the meaning of Members' WTO commitments more generally under the General Agreement on Trade in Services. The article raises important considerations for China as it finalizes its telecommunications law, which has been in the drafting stages for many years. Oxford University Press 2010, all rights reserved, Oxford University Press.


This thesis deals with symetric block cipher encryption of disc image at sector level. Examines possibilities of using open source multiplatform encryption libraries in Windows enviroment. It also describes the algorithms by which the encryption can be implemented. Simple application shows that it is possible to implement disc image encryption using OpenSSL library in operating system Windows so that disc image can be readable in operating system Linux. Consecutive Total Commander demo plugin also shows this functionality.


List of Contributors. 1. Introduction (Apostolis K. Salkintzis and Nikos Passas). 1.1 Evolving Towards Wireless Multimedia Networks. 1.2 Multimedia Over Wireless. 1.3 Multimedia Services in WLANs. 1.4 Multimedia Services in WPANs. 1.5 Multimedia Services in 3G Networks. 1.6 Multimedia Services for the Enterprise. 1.7 Hybrid Multimedia Networks and Seamless Mobility. 1.8 Book Contents. References. PART ONE: MULTIMEDIA ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES. 2. Multimedia Coding Techniques for Wireless Networks (Anastasios Delopoulos). 2.1 Introduction. 2.2 Basics of Compression. 2.3 Understanding Speech Characteristics. 2.4 Three Types of Speech Compressors. 2.5 Speech Coding Standards. 2.6 Understanding Video Characteristics. 2.7 Video Compression Standards. References. 3. Multimedia Transport Protocols for Wireless Networks (Pantelis Balaouras and Ioannis Stavrakakis). 3.1 Introduction. 3.2 Networked Multimedia-based Services. 3.3 Classification of Real-time Services. 3.4 Adaptation at the Video Encoding Level. 3.5 Quality of Service Issues for Real-time Multimedia Services. 3.6 Protocols for Multimedia-based Communication Over the Wireless Internet. 3.7 Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP). 3.8 RTP Payload Types. 3.9 RTP in 3G. References. 4. Multimedia Control Protocols for Wireless Networks (Pedro M. Ruiz, Eduardo Mart -nez, Juan A. Sa-nchez and Antonio F. Go-mez-Skarmeta). 4.1 Introduction. 4.2 A Premier on the Control Plane of Existing Multimedia Standards. 4.3 Protocol for Describing Multimedia Sessions: SDP. 4.4 Control Protocols for Media Streaming. 4.5 Session Setup: The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). 4.6 Advanced SIP Features for Wireless Networks. 4.7 Multimedia Control Panel in UMTS: IMS. 4.8 Research Challenges and Opportunities. Acknowledgement. References. 5. Multimedia Wireless Local Area Networks (Sai Shankar). 5.1 Introduction. 5.2 Overview of Physical Layers of HiperLAN/2 and IEEE 802.11a. 5.3 Overview of HiperLAN/1. 5.4 Overview of HiperLAN/2. 5.5 IEEE 802.11 MAC. 5.6 Overview of IEEE 802.11 Standardization. 5.7 IEEE 802.11e HCF. 5.8 Simulation Performance of IEEE 802.11. 5.9 Support for VoIP in IEE 802.11e. 5.10 Video Transmission Over IEEE 802.11E. 5.11 Comparison of HiperLAN/2 and IEEE 802.11E. 5.12 Conclusions. References. 6. Wireless Multimedia Personal Area Networks: An Overview (Minal Mishra, Aniruddha Rangnekar and Krishna M. Sivalingam). 6.1 Introduction. 6.2 Multimedia Information Representation. 6.3 Bluetooth1 (IEEE 802.15.1). 6.4 Coexistence with Wireless LANs (IEEE 802.15.2). 6.5 High-Rate WPANs (IEEE 802.15.3). 6.6 Low-rate WPANs (IEEE 802.15.4). 6.7 Summary. References. 7. QoS Provision in Wireless Multimedia Networks (Nikos Passas and Apostolis K. Salkintzis). 7.1 Introduction. 7.2 QoS in WLANs. 7.3 RSVP over Wireless Networks. 7.4 QoS in Hybrid 3G/WLAN Networks. 7.5 UMTS/WLAN Interworking Architecture. 7.6 Interworking QoS Considerations. 7.7 Performance Evaluation. 7.8 Performance Results. 7.9 Conclusions. Acknowledgements. References. 8. Wireless Multimedia in 3G Networks (George Xylomenos and Vasilis Vogkas). 8.1 Introduction. 8.2 Cellular Networks. 8.3 UMTS Networks. 8.4 Multimedia Services. 8.5 IMS Architecture and Implementation. 8.6 MBMS Architecture and Implementation. 8.7 Quality of Service. 8.8 Summary. 8.9 Glossary of Acronyms. References. PART TWO: WIRELESS MULTIMEDIA APPLICATIONS AND SERVICES. 9. Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) (Alessandro Andreadis and Giovanni Giambene). 9.1 Introduction to WAP Protocol and Architecture. 9.2 WAP Protocol Stack. 9.3 WAP languages and Design Tools. 9.4 WAP Service Design Principles. 9.5 Performance of WAP over 2G and 2.5G Technologies. 9.6 Examples of Experimented and Implemented WAP Services. References. 10. Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) (Alessandro Andreadis and Giovanni Giambene). 10.1 Evolution From Short to Multimedia Message Services. 10.2 MMS Architecture and Standard. 10.3 MMS Format. 10.4 Transaction Flows. 10.5 MMS-based Value-added Services. 10.6 MMS Development Tools. 10.7 MMS Evolution. References. 11. Instant Messaging and Presence Service (IMPS) (John Buford and Mahfuzur Rahman). 11.1 Introduction. 11.2 Client. 11.3 Design Considerations. 11.4 Protocols. 11.5 Security and Protocols. 11.6 Evolution, Direction and Challenges. 11.7 Summary. References. 12. Instant Messaging Enabled Mobile Payments (Stamatis Karnouskos, Tadaaki Arimura, Shigetoshi Yokoyama and Bala-zs Csik). 12.1 Introduction. 12.2 Instant Messaging Mobile Payment Scenario. 12.3 The Generic MP and IM Platforms of IMMP. 12.4 Design of an IM-enabled MP System. 12.5 Implementation. 12.6 Security and Privacy in IMMP. 12.7 Conclusions. References. 13. Push-to-Talk: A First Step to a Unified Instant Communication Future (Johanna Wild, Michael Sasuta and Mark Shaughnessy). 13.1 Short History of PTT. 13.2 Service Description. 13.3 Architecture. 13.4 Standardization. 13.5 Service Access. 13.6 Performance. 13.7 Architecture Migration. 13.8 Possible Future, or PTT Evolving to PTX. 14. Location Based Services (Ioannis Priggouris, Stathes Hadjiefthymiades and Giannis Marias). 14.1 Introduction. 14.2 Requirements. 14.3 LBS System. 14.4 Available LBS Systems. Acknowledgement. References. Index.


The main aim for the oral delivery of most of the drugs as potential therapeutic agents is their extensive presystemic metabolism, instability in acidic environment resulting into inadequate and erratic oral absorption. Parenteral route of administration is the only established route that overcomes all these drawbacks associated with these orally less/inefficient drugs. But, these formulations are costly, have least patient compliance, require repeated administration, in addition to the other hazardous effects associated with this route. Buccal cavity was found to be the most convenient and easily accessible site for the delivery of therapeutic agents for both local and systemic delivery as retentive dosage forms, because it has expanse of smooth muscle which is relatively immobile, abundant vascularization, rapid recovery time after exposure to stress and the near absence of langerhans cells. Direct access to the systemic circulation through the internal jugular vein bypasses drugs from the hepatic first pass metabolism leading to high bioavailability.