Learning automata are a major branch of machine learning designed to find the optimal action to a learning task in a random environment. Interactions with environment and repetitive learning of a number of individual units, which are independent and structurally simple, enable the learning automata to tackle complex learning problems.
Systems built with learning automata have been successfully employed in many difficult learning situations over the years. They have also been investigated in solving optimisation problems. However, the performance of the learning automata in solving complex optimisation problems, such as high-dimensional optimisation problems and
multi-objective optimisation problems, has not been fully
investigated. Therefore, this thesis is devoted to exploring the potential of learning automata in solving complex optimisation problems. In the thesis, Function Optimisation by Learning Automata (FOLA) and Multi-objective Optimisation by Learning Automata (MOLA) have been developed for single and multi-objective complex
optimisation problems respectively.

In FOLA, the search domain of a complex optimisation problem is divided into cells and represented by cell values. Each automaton of FOLA conducts dimensional search actions according to the path values which are calculated based on the cell values situated on the searching path. During the optimisation process, cell values are
continuously updated using the values of the automata states, and stored in memory. In this way, the information obtained prior to the current state can be collected and efficiently used. With these approaches, FOLA is able to undertake search in continuous states and achieve accurate solutions efficiently. To fully analyse the performance of FOLA, it has been tested based on twenty-two benchmark functions, which represent a wide range of challenging optimisation problems. FOLA has been compared with ten Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs), which are widely used for solving complex optimisation problems nowadays, and four newly-proposed EAs which have been reported to solve the same benchmark functions promisingly in literature. The experimental results have demonstrated the superiority of FOLA over the other EAs for most benchmark functions, in terms of the convergence rate and accuracy of finding optimal solutions. FOLA has shown its capability to solve high-dimensional multi-modal problems. The experiment also shows that FOLA is able to greatly reduce computation time, especially for high-dimensional functions.

Most optimisation problems existing in the real world have more than one objective. These problems aim to find evenly distributed Pareto fronts which are the plots of the objective function values of the optimal solutions. They can be tackled by combining the multiple objectives into one single objective function that can be solved by a single-objective optimisation algorithm. However, this method suffers from the drawback of large computation
load, and has difficulty in finding non-convex Pareto fronts. Therefore, it is important to develop alternative optimisers that can be used for complex multi-objective problems. Based on FOLA, MOLA is proposed to solve complex multi-objective optimisation problems. MOLA mainly comprises two processes: the process of searching and the process of learning from neighborhood. The process of searching is carried out through a tournament that is
held between Pareto global search and Pareto local search. This tournament can lead to a better trade-off between exploitation and exploration, which is a critical factor in finding the optimal solution. In the process of learning, the relationship of neighborhood among the non-dominated solutions is investigated, as it is believed that useful information that can benefit the search is embeded in neighborhood. Based on the relationship, non-dominated
solutions are updated based on their neighbors. Through these processes, MOLA is able to find evenly distributed Pareto fronts for complex optimisation problems. MOLA has been compared with two popular weighted-sum based algorithms, Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm (MOGA) and Multi-Objective Particle Swarm Optimiser (MOPSO), on four multi-objective benchmark functions that comprise
low and high-dimensional models, convex and non-convex models, and continuous and discontinuous models respectively. Besides, MOLA has been also compared with the latest developments of Pareto front-based multi-objective algorithms, Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm based on Decomposition (MOEA/D) and Non-dominated Sorting
Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II), on the basis of thirteen widely used multi-objective functions, which comprise complex Pareto set shapes. The simulation results have shown that MOLA greatly exhibits its superiority over the other algorithms, as it can find accurate and evenly distributed non-dominated solutions, and its Pareto fronts are wider than those obtained by the other algorithms. Besides, MOLA consumes less computation time, whilst
finding more accurate non-dominated solutions.

In the thesis, the application of FOLA and MOLA in solving optimal power flow problems of power systems has been investigated. Optimal power flow problems are very important in power system operation and planning, especially economic power system dispatch and voltage
stability enhancement problems, which have attracted more and more attention around the world. FOLA has also been applied to solve the power flow problems which concern with fuel cost minimisation, voltage profile improvement and voltage stability enhancement, based on the IEEE 30-bus and IEEE 57-bus systems. FOLA is fully compared with improved Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) and Genetic Algorithm (GA). The simulation results have demonstrated that FOLA
is able to offer more accurate solutions with shorter computation times, in comparison with the improved PSO and GA, particularly on the IEEE 57-bus system. FOLA is also applied to solve the optimal power flow problems in the power systems where the operation condition varies for a short period time. Although the varying operation condition is considered here, these problems are considered as static problems in a short period of time. In this case, the fluctuating power output will affect the power flow
calculation, and it can cause instability which results in severe detriments in the power systems. In this case, an algorithm which can provide security to the power systems is highly demanded. Simulation studies have been carried out among FOLA, the improved PSO and GA, based on the modified IEEE 30-bus and 57-bus systems, which are embedded with time-varying power outputs. The simulation results have demonstrated that FOLA is able to track the changes of
the power system configuration more rapidly and accurately than the improved PSO and GA, particularly when voltage stability is involved in the objective function. Besides, FOLA is able to offer more accurate solutions with shorter computation time, in comparison with PSO and GA. FOLA is also compared with two recently-proposed EAs,
Comprehensive Learning Particle Swarm Optimiser (CLPSO) and
Cooperative Particle Swarm Optimisation (CPSO), based on the IEEE 118-bus system. Advantages of FOLA have been demonstrated by the fact that FOLA reduces the fuel cost greatly and enhances the voltage stability of the power system. Nowadays, wind power is expected to be largely increased in power systems, due to its inexhaustible and nonpolluting merits. However, it brings new
challenges to power system operation when wind power is connected to the grid of power systems. The study is undertaken on the modified IEEE 30-bus power system and new England test power system, which are incorporated with fixed-speed and variable-speed wind generators
respectively. MOLA has been fully compared with MOEA/D and NSGA-II in solving the multi-objective optimisation problem, which aims to reduce the operational cost and enhance voltage stability simultaneously. The simulation results have demonstrated that MOLA performs better than MOEA/D and NSGA-II, as MOLA can find wider and
evenly distributed Pareto fronts, and obtain more accurate Pareto optimal solutions efficiently. Additionally, MOLA consistently finds larger hypervolume and smaller diversity metric than MOEA/D and NSGA-II under different circumstances. MOLA has presented its superiority by finding wider Pareto fronts than MOEA/D and obtaining
more accurate solutions than NSGA-II, while using much less function evaluations. MOLA has also been applied to solve the multi-objective optimisation problem in deregulated market, which aims to maximise the social benefit and enhance voltage stability in the IEEE 30-bus power system. MOLA greatly increases the social benefit and improves
the voltage stability. It can find wide and evenly distributed Pareto fronts, and obtain accurate Pareto optimal solutions efficiently.


Cities emerge from the spatial concentration of people and economic activities. But spatial concentration is not enough; the economic viability of cities depends on people, ideas, and goods to move rapidly across the urban area. This constant movement within dense cities creates wealth but also various degrees of unpleasantness and misery that economists call negative externalities, such as congestion, pollution, and environmental degradation. In addition, the poorest inhabitants of many cities are often unable to afford a minimum-size dwelling with safe water and sanitation, as if the wealth created by cities was part of a zero-sum game where the poor will be at the losing end. The main challenge for urban planners and economists is reducing cities' negative externalities without destroying the wealth created by spatial concentration. To do that, they must plan and design infrastructure and regulations while leaving intact the self-organizing created by land and labor markets. The balance between letting markets work and correcting market externalities through infrastructure investment and regulation is difficult to achieve. Too often, planners play sorcerer's apprentice when dealing with markets whose functioning they poorly understand. The role of the urban planner is then, first, to better understand the complex interaction between market forces and government interventions, infrastructure investment and regulation, and second, to design these interventions based on precise quantitative objectives. Each city's priorities would depend on its history, circumstances, and political environment. But maintaining mobility and keeping land affordable remains the main urban planning objective common to all cities.


Many numerical techniques for the description of quantum systems that are coupled to a continuous bath require the discretization of the latter. To this end, a wealth of methods has been developed in the literature, which we classify as (i) direct discretization, (ii) orthogonal polynomial, and (iii) numerical optimization strategies. We recapitulate strategies (i) and (ii) to clarify their relation. For quadratic Hamiltonians, we show that (ii) is the best strategy in the sense that it gives the numerically exact time evolution up to a maximum time $t_\text{max}$, for which we give a simple expression. For non-quadratic Hamiltonians, we show that no such best strategy exists. We present numerical examples relevant to open quantum systems and strongly correlated systems, as treated by dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT).


Fractal behavior and long-range dependence are widely observed in measurements and characterization of traffic flow in high-speed computer networks of different technologies and coverage levels. This paper presents the results obtained when applying fractal analysis techniques on a time series obtained from traffic captures coming from an application server connected to the Internet through a high-speed link. The results obtained show that traffic flow in the dedicated high-speed network link have fractal behavior when the Hurst exponent is in the range of 0.5, 1, the fractal dimension between 1, 1.5, and the correlation coefficient between –0.5, 0. Based on these results, it is ideal to characterize both the singularities of the traffic and its impulsiveness during a fractal analysis of temporal scales. Finally, based on the results of the time series analyses, the fact that the traffic flows of current computer networks exhibit fractal behavior with a long-range dependency is reaffirmed.


In-containing skutterudites have long attracted much attention and debate partly due to the solubility limit issue of indium in CoSb3. The isothermal section of the equilibrium phase diagram for the In–Co–Sb system at 873 K is proposed using knowledge of the related binary phase diagrams and experimental data, which explains the debated indium solubility that depends on Sb content. In this paper, a series of In-containing skutterudite samples (InxCo4Sb12−x/3 with x varying from 0.075 to 0.6 and In0.3Co4−ySb11.9+y with y changing from −0.20 to 0.20) are synthesized and characterized. X-ray analysis and scanning electron microscopy images indicate that, up to x = 0.27, single-phase skutterudites are obtained with lattice constant increasing with In fraction x. A fixed-composition skutterudite In0.27±0.01Co4Sb11.9 was determined for the Co-rich side of In–CoSb3 which is in coexistence with liquid InSb and CoSb2. Indium, like Ga, is expected, from DFT calculations, to form compound defects in In-containing skutterudites. However, relatively higher carrier concentrations of In-containing skutterudites compared to Ga-containing skutterudites indicate the existence of not fully charge-compensated compound defects, which can also be explained by DFT calculations. The net n-type carrier concentration that naturally forms from the complex defects is close to the optimum for thermoelectric performance, enabling a maximum zT of 1.2 for the fixed skutterudite composition In0.27Co4Sb11.9 at 750 K.


This study gives a brief historical view of the little known complement to the sales tax, the use tax. Supreme Court decisions regarding the use tax are analyzed with special emphasis given to those that shaped the Quill Corp v. North Dakota decision. As a result of the Quill decision there has been great effort put forth by the Streamlined Sales Tax Project (SSTP) to harmonize the nation's tax codes and lessen the burden on firms from collecting use taxes on remote sales. Current legislation that has resulted from the SSTP's efforts to satisfy the Commerce Clause are also discussed, along with their potential economic impacts.


One method for minimizing climate change is to capture CO2 from power plants and inject it into the deep ocean, thus reducing the magnitude and rate of change of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and the surface ocean. Many discharge options are possible, with varied mixing and retention characteristics. The ocean's capacity is vast, and mathematical models suggest that injected CO2 could remain sequestered for several hundred years. While theoretical and laboratory studies support the viability of ocean storage, field experiments are necessary to realistically evaluate the environmental impact.


We present a personalized recommender system using neural network for recommending products, such as eBooks, audio-books, Mobile Apps, Video and Music. It produces recommendations based on customer's implicit feedback history such as purchases, listens or watches. Our key contribution is to formulate recommendation problem as a model that encodes historical behavior to predict the future behavior using soft data split, combining predictor and auto-encoder models. We introduce convolutional layer for learning the importance (time decay) of the purchases depending on their purchase date and demonstrate that the shape of the time decay function can be well approximated by a parametrical function. We present offline experimental results showing that neural networks with two hidden layers can capture seasonality changes, and at the same time outperform other modeling techniques, including our recommender in production. Most importantly, we demonstrate that our model can be scaled to all digital categories, and we observe significant improvements in an online A/B test. We also discuss key enhancements to the neural network model and describe our production pipeline. Finally we open-sourced our deep learning library which supports multi-gpu model parallel training. This is an important feature in building neural network based recommenders with large dimensionality of input and output data.


Problem. As Seventh-day Adventist conferences receive beginning pastors into the field from colleges and seminaries or those who have made a change in career, the ministerial secretary is charged with overseeing their paths toward ordination. But the conference ministerial secretary faces several challenges that must be addressed such as visiting all the pastors in the field, driving long distances to personally meet pastors, and arranging time with the pastors. If deliberate and intensive mentoring is not fostered, no support will be felt by beginning pastors. Furthermore, the pastors are accountable to several entities, including the conference administration, the local church, their spouses, and of course to God. The problem is likely to develop where the beginning pastor is experiencing solo ministry with minimal training in preparation for ordination. Additionally, a weak economy has restricted conference personnel from placing beginning pastors in mentoring, supervision, or intern positions. Furthermore, include the fact that many senior pastors have been unwilling to add the responsibility of training a beginning pastor to their agendas. The question then becomes, how will beginning pastors receive pastoral mentoring unless someone guides them? Attention needs to be given by a pastor of experience—who will walk beside the beginning pastor. Method. A group of eight beginning pastors in the Indiana Conference of Seventh-day Adventists volunteered as the candidates for this pilot project to participate in the formation of a model for nurturing beginning pastors. For six months beginning pastors participated in a one-hour monthly meeting for building a mentor relationship with the ministerial secretary. This was a time of sharing experiences, asking questions, reflective listening, addressing challenges, and praying together. Local church issues were addressed by the beginning pastor and the ministerial secretary. These six sessions provided a context for the beginning pastor to experience live application of the mentoring model. An exit interview was conducted after six months of relationship-building with each of the eight beginning pastors. This exit interview included starter questions that the ministerial secretary asked. Data from these interviews was used to determine if growth occurred during the mentoring process. The interview sessions with the eight beginning pastors was completed during September 2011. Results. The beginning pastors responded that the presence of a mentor to discuss "live" church situations provided the support they needed to empower their pastoral ministry. Face-to-face conversations developed trust as the beginning pastor and ministerial secretary identified with one another through their storytelling journeys. This identification factor became crucial to developing a trust throughout this mentoring relationship. The beginning pastors and ministerial secretary prayed together, studied mentoring together, and dialogued regarding church matters. Beginning pastors acknowledged that a mentoring relationship takes time to develop. However, as the dialog proceeded in the one-hour sessions, it was necessary to keep the time focused in order to meet the various individual schedules of the group. From this mentoring project the beginning pastors and ministerial secretary experienced a) accountability by their session attendance; b) empowerment from grasping the perspective of Clinton and Stanley's Constellation model and their three mentoring functions (intensive/occasional/passive) continuum (See Appendices C and D); c) the necessity of evaluation after acknowledging the need for mid-course revisions during the six sessions; d) motivation and vision to transfer the mentoring model to themselves as well as lay church leadership, peer pastors, and youth; e) mentor and mentee initiative by acknowledging the benefit of pursuing partners with special competencies; f) mutual learning from discussions and storytelling; g) listening by the ministerial secretary as the beginning pastors shared their concerns; h) reflection by contemplating the application of mentoring principles in their context; i) an understanding of succession leadership by expressing a desire to implement mentoring training in local churches; j) the contribution of structure that kept the six sessions organized; and k) the incarnational model of faceto-face presence as mentoring partners for six monthly sessions. The eight beginning pastors and the ministerial secretary collected the above insights from their mentoring relationship by sharing experiences and discussing Connecting, the book by Clinton and Stanley (1992). Conclusions. When evaluating the six monthly sessions, this writer noted that a mentoring relationship flourishes with a) increasing trust levels, b) quality and quantity time investment, c) respect for one another's competencies, d) partner accountability, e) reflection during and following the sessions, f) a mutual learning attitude, and g) intentional listening skills. These factors foster a successful mentoring relationship for the mentor-mentee covenant, usually six to 18 months. A mid-course evaluation might have improved the sessions with the beginning pastors. Additional communication, intentionality, reviews, and planning could have determined how much structure was necessary. However, the beginning pastors gave positive responses to a) the praying together, b) listening to family and church life stories, c) the book dialogue, and d) relationship building. By a) exploring OT and NT mentoring models, b) reviewing secular and religious authors' mentoring models, and c) investing six monthly sessions with beginning pastors, it became evident that beginning pastors need an incarnational model, a presence with whom they can identify. That presence may include a) the Ministerial Secretary of the Indiana Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, b) peer pastors in the Indiana Conference of Seventh-day Adventists with needed mentoring competencies, c) community mentors in Indiana Conference's territory who can be contemporary "guides by the side," or d) all of the preceding partners. The presence of such mentors willing to come along beside the mentees might be called paracletes who extend the Holy Spirit's ministry.


Fisheries that intersect with the high seas, or areas beyond national jurisdictions (ABNJ), are ecologically, institutionally, and politically complex. These fisheries also generate enormous economic and social benefits, and have the potential to generate even greater benefits and wealth under improved management regimes that incorporate incentives. Governance gaps within international instruments for ABNJ fisheries are well recognized. However, reform through a global process is slow and highly contingent upon political will. While the need for incentives is critical to make up for the gaps in governance, the gaps themselves and the multilateral nature of ABNJ fisheries management make it impossible to achieve first best solutions. Thus, a new theory of change for ABNJ fisheries is needed that mixes State regulation and economic incentives in a way that achieves "smart,�? sustainable, and equitable management. Drawing on the vast multidisciplinary literature and insights from the Common Oceans Global Think Tank on ABNJ fisheries, this publication presents nine principles for utilizing "smart mixes�? of regulatory and incentive-based tools (instruments). The following nine principles for smart instrument mixes are explained further in the publication, bolstered by examples and case studies: 1. Ensure compatible instrument combinations 2. Calibrate interventions towards points of least resistance, lowest cost, and maximum impact 3. Sequence or scale interventions as necessary to achieve goals 4. Empower participants to act as surrogate regulators and enable voluntary initiatives 5. Maximize opportunities for net gain outcomes 6. Consider and harness the responsiveness of stakeholders (bottom-up matters) 7. Consider top-down relationships, opportunities, and constraints 8. Monitor and adapt the smart mix in light of its effectiveness 9. Assess performance and adoption of better interventions ABNJ fisheries are broad in scope and scale, and are composed of heterogeneous States and fishers with varied incomes and motivations. The result is that risks, expected costs, speed of transformation, scale of investments, and returns from these fisheries are highly variable. Thus, the nine principles should not be viewed as prescriptive. Instead, the principles provide guidelines for managers and policy makers to reflect on existing management, and steer stakeholders through an adaptive process to effect change. The biggest takeaway is that there is no single solution or path. Instead, these principles indicate solid directions to proceed, tempered by general conditions found across case studies presented here and in the wider OPP body of knowledge.


We argue that the Great Inflation experienced by both the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1970s has an explanation valid for both countries. The explanation does not appeal to common shocks or to exchange rate linkages, but to the common doctrine underlying the systematic monetary policy choices in each country. The nonmonetary approach to inflation control that was already influential in the United Kingdom came to be adopted by the United States during the 1970s. We document our position by examining official policymaking doctrine in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1970s, and by considering results from a structural macroeconomic model estimated using U.K. data.


Let's face it: almost everyone fears growing older. We worry about losing our looks, our health, our jobs, our self-esteem - and being supplanted in work and love by younger people. It feels like the natural, inevitable consequence of the passing years, but what if it's not? What if nearly everything that we think of as the 'natural' process of aging is anything but? In "Agewise", renowned cultural critic Margaret Morganroth Gullette reveals that much of what we dread about aging is actually the result of ageism - which we can, and should, battle as strongly as we do racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry. Drawing on provocative and under-reported evidence from biomedicine, literature, economics, and personal stories, Gullette probes the ageism that drives discontent with our bodies, our selves, and our accomplishments - and makes us easy prey for marketers who want to sell us an illusory vision of youthful perfection. Even worse, rampant ageism causes society to discount, and at times completely discard, the wisdom and experience acquired by people over the course of adulthood. The costs - both collective and personal - of this culture of decline are almost incalculable, diminishing our workforce, robbing younger people of hope for a decent later life, and eroding the satisfactions and sense of productivity that should animate our later years. Once we open our eyes to the pervasiveness of ageism, however, we can begin to fight it - and Gullette lays out ambitious plans for the whole life course, from teaching children anti-ageism to fortifying the social safety nets, and thus finally making possible the real pleasures and opportunities promised by the new longevity. A bracing, controversial call to arms, "Agewise" will surprise, enlighten, and, perhaps most important, bring hope to readers of all ages.


Aerosol contamination of an aircraft cabin by infectious passengers is a concern of passengers, aircrew and the aviation industry This may be especially important during a pandemic, such as COVID-19, where the full extent of aerosol transmission is not well understood A statistical method to determine the number of infectious passengers on board along with a mathematical model estimating the contaminant concentration of aerosols in the cabin and the number of inhaled infectious particles by passengers is presented An example is used to demonstrated how the results can be estimated during normal operations and emergency conditions with malfunctions of the air conditioning and pressurization system which are responsible maintaining clean cabin air This type of information can assist the aviation industry in providing the end users of aircraft travel, i e passengers and aircrew, with reasonable cabin contaminant guidelines Accomplishing this in a timely manner requires the combination of modeling adjusted by experimentation Physically testing all aircraft for each of these conditions would be time consuming, expensive and impractical Incorporating a model towards solving these problems can serve to bridge the gaps between a finite number of experimental results


Objective: The goal of this study was to evaluate the reliability of the Animal Rescue and Transportation Sling (ARTS) for emergency and clinical use in horses.
Design: A retrospective study of the use of the ARTS in the hospital and field.
Setting: The medical records of 158 horses referred to the Equine Hospital, University of Zurich, and 23 records from the Large Animal Rescue.
Animals: The ARTS was used in 121 standing and 60 recumbent horses. Seventy-eight horses were sedated, 47 patients were under general anesthesia when the sling was applied and no sedation or anesthesia was required in 56 horses.
Interventions and Main Results: The ARTS was applied in crane and helicopter rescue operations to stabilize horses that required lifting (n=41), during emergency transportation (n=24), to facilitate induction of general anesthesia (n=4) or recovery from general anesthesia (n=51). Additionally, the sling was used to immobilize horses with fractures (n=29), to reduce weight-bearing in horses with severe lameness (n=12), to support horses with disorders of the CNS (n=7), to help recumbent horses rise (n=9), and to provide support for horses after repair of large abdominal hernias (n=4). Acceptance of the ARTS by the horses was scored as excellent (n=153), good (n=19) and poor (n=6), and the sling was not tolerated in 3 horses. Only after long-term use (weeks) did the skin over certain pressure points become irritated, resulting in superficial pressure sores.
Conclusions: The ARTS was reliable, safe, and easy to use. It proved to be ideal for a wide variety of emergencies.


This article reports the special efforts of the largest community college district in the country to assist its largest ethnic group to succeed. The Los Angeles Community College District consists of nine campuses; the Latino student population ranges from 22–75 percent of the total number of students. In this article, using questionnaire data from the Transfer and Retention of Urban Community College students (TRUCCS) Project, we compare Latino to non-Latino students in terms of both academic and non-academic outcomes. We conclude with the description of special efforts by the district to serve its constituents through special clubs, organizations, and other special programs aimed at the Latino population.


When commenting on the ability of NBA teams it is commonplace to cite a young team's inexperience as a negative and the experience of a veteran laden team as a positive. However, there is a lack of empirical investigation into the effects of player or coach experience on team performance. In this paper I analyze the effects of player, coach, and team experience levels on franchise postseason wins. This study uses hand gathered panel data detailing the 804 NBA seasons played by 30 NBA franchises between 1979 and 2008. I find that increased postseason player experience increases a team's ability to make the playoffs while not increasing their ability to win in the playoffs. A coach's postseason experience does contribute to a team's ability to win in the playoffs. I also find that teammate experience, a proxy variable for team chemistry, significantly increases a team's postseason success. I also offer plausible explanations for these effects. These results should be of interest to team executives, league analysts, and NBA commentators as it provides quantitative insight to an issue that has previously been based almost entirely on conjecture.


ABSTRACT Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) was purified from grapevines infected with grapevine leafroll-associated viruses 4 (GLRaV-4) and 5 (GLRaV-5), two putative closteroviruses. Reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was performed on this dsRNA using degenerate oligonucleotides designed to amplify an approximately 550- to 650-nucleotide fragment from the heat shock protein 70 homolog (HSP70) of the known closteroviruses. RT-PCR products of the appropriate molecular weight were gel-isolated and cloned into the plasmid vector pGEM-T. Clones of RT-PCR products generated by using these primers on dsRNA isolated from a plant infected with GLRaV-4 were sequenced. This sequence was used to develop an immunocapture RT-PCR (IC-RT-PCR) detection protocol capable of detecting GLRaV-4. Similar clones were made from dsRNA isolated from a plant infected with GLRaV-5. These clones were also sequenced. The two sequences were compared, and RT-PCR primers were developed that were able to amplify cDNA from both. These experiments demonstrate that degenerate primers that amplify closterovirus HSP70 sequences can be used to successfully generate sequences useful for IC-RT-PCR detection of these viruses. These data also suggest that it is feasible to use HSP70 sequences to design PCR primers capable of more general PCR detection of multiple GLRaV serotypes. Lastly, the presence of closterovirus-like HSP70 sequences in these putative closteroviruses implies that they are indeed members of this taxonomic group.


Before becoming a serious woodworker, I was preoccupied with
other art forms, primarily contemporary poetry and fiction. Film,
sculpture, painting, music, and performance also seemed to be
powerful genres in which the imagination could manifest itself most
directly, and influence human lives with a magical force. As an
undergraduate in the early 1970's, I received a degree in
literature. At that time the poetry readings I attended in New York
City were as important as the books and ideas to which I was exposed
in a progressive classroom situation. What I gained from this
experience was a particular sense of aesthetics which I still
practice to some extent as a woodworker. It is a way of thinking
about material, a consideration of the maker's responsibility, a
sense of open form, and a consciousness of balancing the old and the
new. These ideas established in those days are quite literally the
matrix from which I began to practice woodworking.


Biosorption of copper from aqueous solutions by Carissa carandas and Syzygium aromaticum was investigated in batch mode. Biosorptivity of both of these biosorbents has been correlated with the pH change, agitation time and dose of adsorbent and concentration of metal ions in the solution. Biosorbent Carissa carandas leaf powder showed higher sorption efficiency than that of biosorbent Syzygium arometicum powder under identical experimental conditions. Also, the adsorption of Cu(II) onto Syzygium arometicum was best described by the Langmuir isotherm model. The maximum adsorption capacities estimated from Langmuir isotherm model for Cu(II) were 54.2 mg/g and 76.61 mg/g for Carissa carandas and Syzygium arometicum respectively.


Storfjorden, Svalbard, is an area of intense brine formation. The brine is cold, dense, rich in oxygen and CO2, and has reduced pH. Storfjorden is unique because it contains well-preserved agglutinated foraminifera dating back to the beginning of the last deglaciation. We have investigated the distribution of calcareous and agglutinated benthic foraminifera, benthic oxygen and carbon isotopes, calcium carbonate, total organic carbon, and ice-rafted debris in five cores from Storfjorden comprising the Holocene and the deglaciation. The purpose of the study is to reconstruct brine formation in the past under different climate scenarios. The data indicate that in Storfjorden the ratio of agglutinated to calcareous benthic foraminifera can be taken as a measure of the strength of brine formation. The foraminiferal data, which are supported by stable isotopes, degree of fragmentation, and geochemical parameters, signify that brine formation intensified during cold periods and weakened during warm periods. During the deglaciation, increased brine flow coincides with the Older Dryas, the Intra-Allerod Cold Period, and the Younger Dryas. Brine formation increased from circa 8200 years B.P. reaching periodic maxima during the last 4000 years B.P. in response to the unstable climate. Maximum brine production correlates with the Dark Ages Cold Period circa 1500–1100 years B.P. and the Little Ice Age circa 600–100 years B.P. Lower production correlates with the Roman Warm Period circa 2500–2000 years B.P. and the Medieval Warm Period circa 1000–700 years B.P.


This dissertation studies political decision making through a veto players approach which entails identifying those political actors with the power to veto the decision, and understanding the political outcome as a product of the interaction of these actors. The veto players literature so far takes veto players as simple, domestic actors with given preferences that are common knowledge to everyone. This approach leaves out any strategic interaction that may take place among veto players as it treats them as commonly known preference profiles, and thus creates serious gaps in the literature. This dissertation aims to fill these gaps in the literature by treating veto players, and those third parties that the veto players are accountable to as strategic actors in the game of politics which may take place in limited-information settings. The second important factor that the literature has not explored yet is the emergence of new veto players. This dissertation acknowledges that in certain policy areas the set of relevant veto players may include foreign actors as well as domestic ones, and analyzes how the emergence and the existence of these new players influence political decision making and the resulting policies. Finally, the fact that veto players in a political system are either elected or appointed, and thus are usually accountable to those who effect or appoint them, is the third factor that the veto players literature has yet to take into account. This dissertation includes those third parties as strategic players in the game of political decision making, and thus contributes towards filling out this gap in the literature. The chapters investigate general questions on institutions and political decision making while drawing upon specific examples from Turkish politics using formal analysis, and game theoretical and statistical tools.


BACKGROUND: Oncology nurses have a higher risk and rate of compassion fatigue (CF) compared to professionals in other specialties. CF exhibits tangible negative outcomes, affecting nurses' health and professional practice. OBJECTIVES: Early‐career oncology nurses' unique CF experiences lack thorough scientific exploration. This secondary analysis seeks to qualitatively augment this paucity and illuminate targeted interventions. METHODS: Open‐ended interviews were conducted with five early‐career inpatient oncology nurses. Subsequent transcripts were explored for CF themes secondarily using thematic analysis. FINDINGS: Themes indicate that early‐career oncology nurses enjoy connecting with patients and families, but over‐relating, long patient stays, and high patient mortality rates trigger CF. Symptoms include internalizing patients' and families' pains and fears, being haunted by specific patient deaths, feeling emotionally depleted, assuming that all patients will die, and experiencing burnout, physical exhaustion, and hypervigilance protecting loved ones.


Beginning in the 1970s, the "Chicago School" of antitrust has exercised significant influence over antitrust policy governing vertical restraints. Some scholars have decried Chicago's influence, claiming that Chicago's policy prescriptions rest upon over-simplified and unrealistic economic models. These "Populist" scholars have urged courts to ban such restraints or at least presume them unlawful absent a very strong justification.This article rebuts many of the charges Populists have leveled against Chicagoans. To be sure, Chicagoans often claim that their prescriptions with regard to vertical restraints rest upon "price theory." However, close analysis reveals that the Chicago approach to vertical restraints articulated by Lester Telser and Robert Bork during the 1960s is founded upon the so-called New Institutional Economics associated with Ronald Coase and Oliver Williamson, which recognizes and depends upon several departures from the perfect competition model that is the foundation of price theory. For instance, Chicagoans argue that vertical restraints such as minimum resale price maintenance and exclusive territories can encourage dealers to promote the manufacturer's product, thereby enhancing consumer demand for it. This argument depends expressly or implicitly upon several departures from perfect competition and the resulting transaction costs of relying upon an unfettered market to distribute the manufacturer's product. For one thing, the argument assumes the existence of product differentiation and advertising, both of which have no place in perfect competition. The argument also assumes that at least some dealers will behave in an opportunistic fashion; such opportunism is also inconsistent with the perfect competition model. Finally, the argument assumes that bargaining and information costs - also departures from perfect competition - prevent manufacturers from contracting directly with dealers regarding the sort of promotional services that dealers should provide. Ironically, the Populist critics of Chicago themselves adhere to several tenets of outmoded economic theory. For instance, while Populists purport to assert a "normative" approach, divorced from economic theory, their approach in fact rests upon economic assumptions. For example, while Populists claim that vertical restraints interfere with the "freedom" of dealers to sell how and where they please, they have offered no normative theory of freedom that would not ban all contracts which, by their nature, restrain the autonomy of the parties to them. Instead, Populists distinguish vertical restraints on the purely economic ground that manufacturers supposedly employ market power to "impose" such restraints on unwilling dealers. Moreover, Populists assert that manufacturers can achieve the benefits of vertical restraints by contracting with dealers on an individual basis for desired promotional services. Both of these arguments rest upon (false) price theoretic premises.


INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: The endoscopic technique of enucleation of the prostatic adenoma with Holmium laser (HoLEP) was introduced in 1998 by Peter Gilling. The enucleation technique and holmium laser production technology has remained almost unchanged for 20 years. After years of research, Lumenis has developed a system capable of modify the production of the Holmium laser pulse with the Moses technology in order to optimize the laser to lithotripsy and enucleation of the prostate. In the video we show how Moses technology can improve HoLEP execution. METHODS: The Moses technology allows to modify the shape of the laser pulse and therefore of the plasma bubble produced by the interaction between Holmium laser and water. The laser energy in HoLEP is used in two different ways, one is vaporization of prostate tissue making the incisions prior to the enucleation; the second mode exploits the mechanical effect called "photoacoustic effect", due to the expansion of the plasma bubble, resulting in a pressure wave that propagates to promote cleavage of tissues in course of detachment of the adenoma from the capsule during enucleation. RESULTS: As shown the application of Moses technology during HoLEP allows a better interaction between laser and prostatic tissue; during incisions the MoSES is able to produce a vaporization of greater depth, therefore more effective, during anterograde incision; the oblong plasma bubble allows the tissue flaps to be kept out of the way, while proceeding retrograde, allowing the capsular plane already exposed to be kept under visual control, optimizing the course and duration of the incisions. The photoacoustic effect produced with Moses technology allows obtaining a longer detachment of the tissues with respect to the conventionally produced impulse, resulting in a greater efficiency in enucleation due to the separation of longer tissue segments and for better exposure of the plan. CONCLUSIONS: The Moses technology makes the HoLEP more effective when performed by an expert operator due to reduction of incision and enucleation times and is able to simplify the learning curve for beginners given due to the better development and exposure of enucleation plans. Source of Funding: none


Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.'One of the great literary curios of the twentieth century Save Me the Waltz is the first and only novel by the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald. During the years when Fitzgerald was working on Tender is the Night, which many critics consider to be his masterpiece, Zelda Fitzgerald was preparing her own story, which strangely parallels the narrative of her husband, throwing a fascinating light on Scott Fitzgerald's life and work. In its own right, it is a vivid and moving story: the confessional of a famous glamour girl of the affluent 1920s and an aspiring ballerina which captures the spirit of an era.


"Tyler Hoffman brings a fresh perspective to the subject of performance poetry, and this comes at an excellent time, when there is such a vast interest across the country and around the world in the performance of poetry. He makes important connections, explaining things in a manner that remains provocative, interesting, and accessible."---Jay Parini, Middlebury College "American Poetry in Performance: From Walt Whitman to Hip Hop" is the first book to trace a comprehensive history of performance poetry in America, covering 150 years of literary history from Walt Whitman through the rap-meets-poetry scene. It reveals how the performance of poetry is bound up with the performance of identity and nationality in the modern period and carries its own shifting cultural politics. This book stands at the crossroads of the humanities and the social sciences; it is a book of literary and cultural criticism that deals squarely with issues of "performance," a concept that has attained great importance in the disciplines of anthropology and sociology and has generated its own distinct field of performance studies. American Poetry in Performance will be a meaningful contribution both to the field of American poetry studies and to the fields of cultural and performance studies, as it focuses on poetry that refuses the status of fixed aesthetic object and, in its variability, performs versions of race, class, gender, and sexuality both on and off the page. Relating the performance of poetry to shifting political and cultural ideologies in the United States, Hoffman argues that the vocal aspect of public poetry possesses (or has been imagined to possess) the ability to help construct both national and subaltern communities. "American Poetry in Performance" explores public poets' confrontations with emergent sound recording and communications technologies as those confrontations shape their mythologies of the spoken word and their corresponding notions about America and Americanness."


Although many of their advocates consider the agile and plan-driven software development methods polar opposites, synthesizing the two can provide developers with a comprehensive spectrum of tools and options. Real-world examples argue for and against agile methods. Responding to change has been cited as the critical technical success factor in the Internet browser battle between Microsoft and Netscape. But overresponding to change has been cited as the source of many software disasters, such as the $3 billion overrun of the US Federal Aviation Administration's Advanced Automation System for national air traffic control. The author believes that both agile and plan-driven approaches have a responsible center and overinterpreting radical fringes. Agile and plan-driven methods both form part of the planning spectrum. Thus, while each approach has a home ground within which it performs very well, and much better than the other, a combined approach is feasible and preferable in some circumstances.


Over 35 recipes to help you build, test, and run Spring applications using Spring Boot About This Book * Learn to create different types of Spring Boot applications, configure behavior, and add custom components * Become more efficient in testing, deploying, and monitoring Spring Boot based applications * This is a practical guide that will help Spring developers to develop and deploy applications using Spring Boot Who This Book Is For If you are a Spring Developer who has good knowledge level and understanding of Spring Boot and application development and now want to learn efficient Spring Boot development techniques in order to make the existing development process more efficient, then this book is for you. What You Will Learn * Create Spring Boot applications from scratch * Configure and tune web applications and containers * Create custom Spring Boot auto-configurations and starters * Use Spring Boot Test framework with JUnit, Cucumber, and Spock * Configure and tune web applications and containers * Deploy Spring Boot as self-starting executables and Docker containers * Monitor data using DropWizard, Graphite, and Dashing In Detail Spring Boot is Spring's convention-over-configuration solution. This feature makes it easy to create Spring applications and services with absolute minimum fuss. Spring Boot has the great ability to be customized and enhanced, and is specifically designed to simplify development of a new Spring application. This book will provide many detailed insights about the inner workings of Spring Boot, as well as tips and recipes to integrate the third-party frameworks and components needed to build complex enterprise-scale applications. The book starts with an overview of the important and useful Spring Boot starters that are included in the framework, and teaches you to create and add custom Servlet Filters, Interceptors, Converters, Formatters, and PropertyEditors to a Spring Boot web application. Next it will cover configuring custom routing rules and patterns, adding additional static asset paths, and adding and modifying servlet container connectors and other properties such as enabling SSL. Moving on, the book will teach you how to create custom Spring Boot Starters, and explore different techniques to test Spring Boot applications. Next, the book will show you examples of configuring your build to produce Docker images and self-executing binary files for Linux/OSX environments. Finally, the book will teach you how to create custom health indicators, and access monitoring data via HTTP and JMX. Style and approach This book is a cohesive collection of recipes that provide developers with a set of connected guidelines on how to build, configure, and customize their application, starting from the design and development stages, all the way through testing, deployment, and production monitoring.


A recording night sky photometer which surveys the sky in 3 min 53 sec and possesses high spectral purity has been constructed and is in use at Sacramento Peak, New Mexico. The photometer is used to record the night sky emission lines at 5577, 5890, and 6300 A. It employs three interference filters 6 inches in diameter, of about 15 A band width, of about 70% transmission, and centered upon the above emission lines. It also employs a single element quartz birefringent filter used to modulate the emission lines. This arrangement of filters was first employed by Blamont and Kastler [ Ann. geophys.7, 73 ( 1951)] and has been effectively used by Koomen et al. [ Koomen Lock Packer Scolnik Tousey , J. Opt. Soc. Am.44, 827 ( 1954)]. The ac signal in the photomultiplier is then proportional to the emission intensity. This combination of filters provides high spectral purity and corresponding freedom from the effects of continuum in the vicinity of the emission lines.


Retrobulbar hemorrhage (RBH), sudden space occupying or expanding intraorbital lesions, herniation, or swelling lead to decrease in visual acuity secondary to orbital trauma. RBH must be diagnosed and treated as early as possible without delay. The purpose of this article is to give a insight on various treatment options for RBH. MEDLINE database was used to perform literature review. RBH patients are classified into RBH classes I to III according to three different clinical and radiological manifestations of acute RBH. Three categories of manifestations of acute RBH serve as a diagnostic tool that may help in the determination of treatment options.


To eliminate the common-mode leakage current in the transformer less photovoltaic grid- connected system, an improved single-phase inverter topology is presented. The improved transformer less inverter can sustain the same low input voltage as the full-bridge inverter and guarantee to completely meet the condition of eliminating common-mode leakage current. Both the unipolar sinusoidal pulse width modulation (SPWM) as well as the double frequency SPWM control strategy can be applied to implement the three-level output in the presented inverter. The high efficiency and convenient thermal design are achieved thanks to the decoupling of two additional switches connected to the dc side. Moreover, the higher frequency and lower current ripples are obtained by adopting the double-frequency SPWM, and thus the total harmonic distortion of the grid-connected current are reduced greatly. Furthermore, the influence of the phase shift between the output voltage and current, and the influence of the junction capacitances of the power switches are analyzed in detail. Finally, a 1-kW prototype has been simulated and tested to verify the theoretical analysis of this paper.


Tandem mass spectrometry has long
been used as a tool to extract structural information from an analyte ion.
However, the information obtained in a tandem mass spectrometry experiment is
dependent on both the ion type subjected to activation and the type of
dissociation method used. Several activation methods, including electron
capture dissociation (ECD), electron transfer dissociation (ETD), and
ultraviolet photodissociation (UVPD) have emerged with a common objective to
maximize the number of sequence informative product ions. There is merit,
though, in mass spectrometry-based approaches which maximize selective
cleavages, serving to concentrate product ion signal into relatively few
fragmentation channels or to introduce a weak-spot into a peptide or protein.
Ion/ion reactions can be used as a means to transform peptide and protein ions
to new ion types which demonstrate highly selective fragmentation channels.
Here, the utility of introducing selective cleavages via ion/ion reactions is
demonstrated. In one example, a series of proton transfer ion/ion reactions are
utilized to concentrate and move the precursor ion signal into a mass-to-charge
region most likely to maximize cleavages at aspartic acid and proline, aiding
in low abundance protein identification. In another example, various types of
ion/ion reactions are utilized to unambiguously sequence cyclic peptides in the
gas-phase.


This article aims to shed light on a neglected area of history by focusing on the following questions: how did the right-wing military regime installed in Brazil in�E uence the overthrow of Salvador Allende? What was the relation between the two countries during the previous years of the Chilean coup d'etat? To what extent did Brazil and the United States act as partners in this event? By way of an in-depth archival exploration of one historical example using newly declassi�C ed documents, this work aims to open up new possibilities for a wide range of studies on the relations between military governments in South America.


[Extract] Whereas the ancients steadfastly acknowledged mortality, contemporaries, as Bail repeatedly shows in Homesickness, are usually bent on repressing or outrunning it. Within the novel their constant movements from land to land, from museum to museum, with never a mention of fixed itinerary or purpose, inevitably raise the question of why they travel. One of them, Borelli, enjoying his own speculative powers and to impress his fellow traveller Louisa, suggests: "Tourism compresses time and events ... In a sense we actually live longer. At least that's what a tourist somehow feels" (83). Later, however, he encounters a less acquiescing listener in his long-lost relative Hector, to whom he rehearses this theory: "there is a time factor to consider. We, ah travellers, operate in a condensed unreal time. For us, even time is summarized" (131). His uncle, building on the time premise and noting an anxiety shared by others in the group, quickly cuts through to the motivation suppressed in this reformulation: "You're nervous. Why else would you be busy making a fool of yourself? For all your travelling about, the fancy hotel rooms, at the end is death. Travelling is postponing it" (135). Homesickness has been most frequently discussed in terms of its "fertile inventiveness", its satirical targets, its modern and postmodern concerns, and its exploration of dilemmas raised by contemporary tourism. Easy to miss within its stunning pageant of extraordinary collections, real and imagined, and its cavalcade of tumultuous events, is a preoccupation with mortality. Although Bail has stated that the book is "really about knowledge or lack of it", as well as "states of mind and speculations which I am offering or complaining about", death remains, as I hope to demonstrate, the intransigent given of the narrative, as it is of human existence. An absence that is ever-present, it is arguably a source of hidden motivation in spheres as disparate as sexual coupling and hotel hygiene, and an unspoken but major concern that drives the tourists' seemingly pointless peregrinations.


Conceived both as a eulogy and a meditation on violence, fear and loss, 'Untitled II (for M.)' references a traumatic event through word, image and object relations across series of displaced sites.The work engages with an event that took place at Victoria Park in London in 2003. The event, condensed into four lines of poetry, is first resituated within a domestic corridor space by projecting the lines of the poem through a sculptural apparatus made up of 209 pieces of hanging mirrored glass. Here the text becomes fragmented and refracted onto the surrounding surfaces. Resituated in a disused Observatory, only six shards of the original 209 mirrored glass pieces remain as part of the sculptural apparatus for 'Untitled II (for M.)'. However, the sound accompanying the piece, recorded by sound artist Mikhail Karikis, is taken from the first incarnation of the artwork. The poem, again projected through the apparatus, is fragmented and refracted to create a dynamic constellation of moving word-images on the interior walls of the Observatory. The work was exhibited as part of the '(Dis)locating Specificity' conference at University College London.


Modern debates concerning the protections afforded by the Suspension Clause of the U.S. Constitution have taken place within the Supreme Court's chosen methodological approach in this context, which openly calls for careful attention to the historical backdrop against which the Clause was drafted. This approach is hardly surprising given that long ago Chief Justice John Marshall declared that when the Founding generation constitutionalized "this great writ," they invoked "[t]he term...in the [C]onstitution, as one which was well understood." No matter how well the Founding generation understood the content, reach, and application of the "privilege of the writ of habeas corpus," however, significant portions of the relevant historical backdrop to the ratification of the Suspension Clause remain lost to the annals of history. In particular, the details surrounding one of the most consequential periods in the history leading up to the adoption of the Suspension Clause — namely, the treatment and legal classification of the American colonists by the British during the American Revolutionary War — remain largely unexplored in legal scholarship. Professor Tyler seeks to recover and tell this story here by drawing upon a wealth of sources, including: archival documents, parliamentary debates, contemporary press accounts, colonial papers, diaries and private papers of key participants, and significant decisions and rulings of the British courts. As these materials reveal, determinations regarding the reach and application of the English Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, rather than solely the common law writ of habeas corpus, were of tremendous consequence during this important period in Anglo-American legal history. Where the Act was in force and where prisoners could claim its protections, the legal framework demanded that such persons be charged criminally and tried in due course or otherwise be discharged. Significantly, the privilege associated with the English Act did not speak merely to process; it further imposed significant substantive constraints on what causes would be deemed legal justification for detention in the first instance. The important role that the Act played in the Revolutionary War legal framework, moreover, suggests that modern jurisprudence has underappreciated the Act's enormous influence upon the development of habeas law in the Anglo-American tradition. Finally, the history recovered here demonstrates more generally that during the Revolutionary War, suspension, geography, and allegiance each played significant roles in determining the availability of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus to those who would claim its protections.


This thesis tells a story about how the Iranian Government commands and controls homosexual men through disciplining and normalization. The main focus of this study is to clarify and inform how homosexual men can experience their lives in Iran. The study is built on storytelling based on a documentary film and different literature.Be Like Others (2008), also known as Transsexuals in Iran created by Tanaz Eshaghian, Desiring Arabs (2007) written by Joseph A. Massad, What's really wrong with the Middle East (2011a) and Unspeakable Love, Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East (2011b) by Brian Whitaker. The various informational sources, informs about how homosexual men experience their everyday life and what has pushed them to undergo a gender reassignment treatment or surgery. Why they among other things are forced to go through surgery that changes their gender identity or expression to fit into the norm in Iran. But also tells different stories and news affecting LGBTQ life situations in the Middle East and what needs to change in order to improve their daily life. The Iranian government implements various regulations and laws that discipline and normalize Iranian inhabitants resulting in gay men changing expression or identity to fit into the norm. Homosexuality in Iran is a controversial subject, for instance, when the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Columbia University in New York on 24th September 2007, he took the opportunity to express that Iran is a LGBTQ-free state. This statement led the author to tell a story about various situations and how life is for homosexual man in Iran. In the narrative storytelling, a discussion about whether homosexual men in Iran exists or not and under what conditions of life they survive, based on discipline and normalization of Iran, takes place. The study's main conclusions is that the Iranian government controls people to maintain the normal gender role and relations and therefore to maintain this normal heterosexual norm through disciplining and normalization.


The prediction of lithology is necessary in all areas of petroleum engineering. This means that to design a project in any branch of petroleum engineering, the lithology must be well known. Support vector machines (SVM's) use an analytical approach to classification based on statistical learning theory, the principles of structural risk minimization, and empirical risk minimization. In this research, SVM classification method is used for lithology prediction from petrophysical well logs based on petrographic studies of core lithology in a heterogeneous carbonate reservoir in southwestern Iran. Data preparation including normalization and attribute selection was performed on the data. Well by well data separation technique was used for data partitioning so that the instances of each well were predicted against training the SVM with the other wells. The effect of different kernel functions on the SVM performance was deliberated. The results showed that the SVM performance in the lithology prediction of wells by applying well by well data partitioning technique is good, and that in two data separation cases, radial basis function (RBF) kernel gives a higher lithology misclassification rate compared with polynomial and normalized polynomial kernels. Moreover, the lithology misclassification rate associated with RBF kernel increases with an increasing training set size.


Context
Subclinical hypothyroidism (SHypo) has been associated with atherosclerosis, but no conclusive clinical trials assessing the levothyroxine impact on carotid atherosclerosis exist.

Objective
To assess the impact of treatment of SHypo with levothyroxine on carotid atherosclerosis.

Design and Setting
Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial nested within the Thyroid Hormone Replacement for Subclinical Hypothyroidism trial.

Participants
Participants aged ≥65 years with SHypo [thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), 4.60 to 19.99 mIU/L; free thyroxine level within reference range].

Intervention
Levothyroxine dose-titrated to achieve TSH normalization or placebo, including mock titrations.

Main Outcome Measures
Carotid intima media thickness (CIMT), maximum plaque thickness measured with ultrasound.

Results
One hundred eighty-five participants (mean age 74.1 years, 47% women, 96 randomized to levothyroxine) underwent carotid ultrasound. Overall mean TSH ± SD was 6.35 ± 1.95 mIU/L at baseline and decreased to 3.55 ± 2.14 mIU/L with levothyroxine compared with 5.29 ± 2.21 mIU/L with placebo (P < 0.001). After a median treatment of 18.4 months (interquartile range 12.2 to 30.0 months), mean CIMT was 0.85 ± 0.14 mm under levothyroxine and 0.82 ± 0.13 mm under placebo [between-group difference = 0.02 mm; 95% CI, -0.01 to 0.06; P = 0.30]. The proportion of carotid plaque was similar (n = 135; 70.8% under levothyroxine and 75.3% under placebo; P = 0.46). Maximum carotid plaque thickness was 2.38 ± 0.92 mm under levothyroxine and 2.37 ± 0.91 mm under placebo (between-group difference -0.03; 95% CI, -0.34 to 0.29; P = 0.86). There were no significant interactions between levothyroxine treatment and mean CIMT, according to sex, baseline TSH (categories 4.6 to 6.9, 7.0 to 9.9, and ≥10 mIU/L), or established cardiovascular disease (all P for interaction ≥ 0.14).

Conclusion
Normalization of TSH with levothyroxine was associated with no difference in CIMT and carotid atherosclerosis in older persons with SHypo.


Today's, a common problem in cities is increasing delay and reducing the speed of traffic. On the other wise increasing costs of acquisition in urban area are not allow new routes and highways. Also construction of new highway or street such as Imam Ali highway and Sadr highway in Tehran lead to develop new applications (such as BRT lane ,...) And become quickly saturate and less efficient. Therefore traffic Management could be more effective in controlling traffic with lower costs. Variable message sign is one of these management solutions. For this purpose, two parallel streets ENGHELAB and JOMHORI are selected to study. The result of this research show that implementation of this variable message sign when accident occur and abstraction the road and using strategy of change way can reduce 100 sec/km of delay time and reduce fuel consumption to 400 lit/hr that it means saving about 667 thousand dollar in fuel consumption and delay time.


We derive constraints on cosmological parameters and tests of dark energy models from the combination of baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) measurements with cosmic microwave background (CMB) data and a recent reanalysis of Type Ia supernova (SN) data. In particular, we take advantage of high-precision BAO measurements from galaxy clustering and the Lyman-alpha forest (LyaF) in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). Treating the BAO scale as an uncalibrated standard ruler, BAO data alone yield a high confidence detection of dark energy; in combination with the CMB angular acoustic scale they further imply a nearly flat universe. Adding the CMB-calibrated physical scale of the sound horizon, the combination of BAO and SN data into an "inverse distance ladder" yields a measurement of H-0 = 67.3 +/- 1.1 km s(-1) Mpc(-1), with 1.7% precision. This measurement assumes standard prerecombination physics but is insensitive to assumptions about dark energy or space curvature, so agreement with CMB-based estimates that assume a flat Lambda CDM cosmology is an important corroboration of this minimal cosmological model. For constant dark energy (Lambda), our BAO + SN + CMB combination yields matter density Omega(m) = 0.301 +/- 0.008 and curvature Omega(k) = -0.003 +/- 0.003. When we allow more general forms of evolving dark energy, the BAO + SN + CMB parameter constraints are always consistent with flat Lambda CDM values at approximate to 1 sigma. While the overall chi(2) of model fits is satisfactory, the LyaF BAO measurements are in moderate (2-2.5 sigma) tension with model predictions. Models with early dark energy that tracks the dominant energy component at high redshift remain consistent with our expansion history constraints, and they yield a higher H-0 and lower matter clustering amplitude, improving agreement with some low redshift observations. Expansion history alone yields an upper limit on the summed mass of neutrino species, Sigma m(nu) < 0.56 eV (95% confidence), improving to Sigma m(nu) < 0.25 eV if we include the lensing signal in the Planck CMB power spectrum. In a flat Lambda CDM model that allows extra relativistic species, our data combination yields N-eff = 3.43 +/- 0.26; while the LyaF BAO data prefer higher N-eff when excluding galaxy BAO, the galaxy BAO alone favor N-eff approximate to 3. When structure growth is extrapolated forward from the CMB to low redshift, standard dark energy models constrained by our data predict a level of matter clustering that is high compared to most, but not all, observational estimates.


This paper investigates the tensile behavior of plain regular braided fabric reinforced composites subjected to uniaxial load. An experimental program is performed to characterize the stiffnesses and strengths of a number of braid composites. Two different material systems, i.e., carbon/epoxy and glass/epoxy, were investigated in this study, each with three different braiding angles. A theoretical approach, based on a bridging micromechanics model, is employed to predict the tensile properties of the braid composites only using monolithic fiber and matrix properties and the fabric geometric information as input parameters. These parameters are easily obtainable before or after composite fabrication, and determination of them is described in the paper. Unit cell geometry of the braided fabric in the composite was represented by either elliptic or sinusoidal cross section combined with the same undulation function, and a comparative study has been performed. After the unit cell of the braid composite has been divided into slices and the bridging model has been applied, an assemblage based on iso-stress or iso-strain assumption was adopted to obtain the overall properties of the composite. Although both the assumptions give reasonable predictions for the stiffness of glass/epoxy braid composites, significant differences exist between the predictions from the iso-stress approach and those from the iso-strain approach for the strength of the glass/epoxy composites and for the stiffness and strength of the carbon/epoxy composites. The iso-strain approach combined with the elliptic geometric description exhibits the best accuracy, and the predicted stiffnesses and strengths for the two material systems thus obtained are all within 13% discrepancy with the experimental data.


A FORTRAN 77 computer program (LEVSEEP), developed to analyze levee underseepage on IBM PC compatible microcomputers with an 8087 math coprocessor. The software and associated equipment plots cross sections and piezometer data; calculates seepage flow and substratum pressure; analyzes landside berm, river side blanket, cutoff and relief well control measures; and finally, estimates the construction cost of these alternatives.


This paper details a feasibility study of estimating excitation system parameters during on-line operation using time-domain system identification. This study concentrates on identifying the appropriate exciter model, developing an input signal that would provide a proper level of perturbation such that the dynamics of the system can be captured, analyzing the effects of both sys- tematic and random noise, developing algorithms to perform the parameter estimation, testing, and validating the obtained system parameters. This study established a strong basis for estimating the system parameters during on-line operation.


Substrate specificity and selectivity of a biocatalyst are determined by the protein sequence and structure of its active site. Finding versatile biocatalysts acting against multiple substrates while at the same time being chiral selective is of interest for the pharmaceutical and chemical industry. However, the relationships between these two properties in natural microbial enzymes remain underexplored. Here, we performed an experimental analysis of substrate promiscuity and chiral selectivity in a set of 145 purified esterases from phylogenetically and environmentally diverse microorganisms, which were assayed against 96 diverse esters, 20 of which were enantiomers. Our results revealed a negative correlation between substrate promiscuity and chiral selectivity in the evaluated enzymes. Esterases displaying prominent substrate promiscuity and large catalytic environments are characterized by low chiral selectivity, a feature that has limited commercial value. Although a low level of substrate promiscuity does not guarantee high chiral selectivity, the probability that esterases with smaller active sites possess chiral selectivity factors of interest for industry (>25) is significantly higher than for promiscuous enzymes. Together, the present study unambiguously demonstrates that promiscuous and selective esterases appear to be rare in nature and that substrate promiscuity can be used as an indicator of the chiral selectivity level of esterases, and vice versa.


The importance of physical activity to health and wellness has been established incontrovertibly. There is a linear relationship between physical activity and health—those who maintain an active and fit way of life live longer, healthier lives.1 Those who are unfit and sedentary very predictably develop chronic diseases prematurely and die at a younger age.1 This association between activity level and health status exists in various major subgroups of the population. It doesn't matter whether you study men or women, various ethnic groups, diverse nations, children or the aged, the results are always the same: people who are active and fit live longer, healthier lives. This is no longer news.

Exercise, therefore, is medicine that every patient needs to take. Its tremendous and proven clinical benefits should not be denied any patient. Especially in patients who have chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease and hypertension to list just three. Likewise, anyone who is at risk for these chronic diseases should consider exercise an essential vaccine to greatly lower risk of illness and almost certainly extend life. The ready availability of this powerful therapy means that a patient's exercise habits should be assessed at every clinical visit and used by the clinician in the management of every patient.2

Unfortunately, the medical community has resisted attempts to utilise exercise as a medication, believing that doctors prescribing exercise has no effect on our patient's behaviour. That just does not make sense! On a daily basis, we physicians convince our patients to undertake therapy that is …


This article introduces complexity into understandings around the relationships between human rights, being transgender, and interacting with the prison-industrial complex. It looks at struggles and interventions against neoliberal mainstream agendas that do not address the underlying causes of state violence against transpeople, especially trans women of color. This essay employs in-depth research and analysis primarily employing the lens and tools of intersectional subalternity, personal experience, and extensive community activism around these complex issues to show that human rights struggles that do not challenge neoliberal politics generally fail to meet the needs of trans people facing massive structural violence with the prison industrial complex. Despite this failure, there are also on the ground methods that are proving effective in addressing these issues on a small-scale and attempting to extend these shifts into the macro realm.


In times with elevated CO2 levels and global warming there is a need of finding alternatives to carbon based energy carriers. One such environmental friendly solution could be H2 produced by living organisms. Cyanobacteria are good candidates since they can produce H2 from sunlight and water through the combination of photosynthesis and H2 producing enzymes i.e. nitrogenases and/or [NiFe]-hydrogenases. This thesis investigates the maturation and transcriptional regulation of [NiFe]-hydrogenases in cyanobacteria, with a special focus on hydrogenase specific proteases. The core of all hydrogenases consists of the small and large subunit. The large subunit in which the catalytic site is located goes through an extenstive maturation process which ends with a proteolytic cleavage performed by a hydrogenase specific protease (HupW/HoxW). This thesis shows that within the maturation process of hydrogenases, the proteolytic cleavage is probably the only step that is specific with respect to different types of hydrogenases i.e. one type of protease cleaves only one type of hydrogenase. Further in-silico analysis revealed that these proteases and the hydrogenases might have co-evolved since ancient time and that the specificity observed could be the result of a conserved amino acid sequence which differs between the two types of proteases (HupW/HoxW). A number of different transcription factors were revealed and shown to interact with the promoter regions of several of the genes encoding maturation proteins. The results indicate that the hydrogenase specific proteases are regulated on a transcriptional level in a similar manner as the hydrogenases they cleave. This thesis contributes with knowledge concerning transcriptional regulation and protein regulation of hydrogenases which will be useful for designing genetically engineered cyanobacteria with an improved and adjustable H2 production.


The Bornean Oxypilinae species previously included in the genus Hestiasula Saussure, 1871 are revised. External morphology and genital characters of Sundaian taxa differ considerably from the Indian type species H. brunneriana Saussure, 1871, necessitating taxonomic and nomenclatural changes. The genus Catestiasula Giglio-Tos, 1915 is reinstated. It is characterized by the apomorphic partial fusion of the dorsal and ventral laminae of the left phallomere, and by the complete reduction of the apical process. It is represented on Borneo with two species, C. nitida (Brunner de Wattenwyl, 1893) and C. moultoni Giglio-Tos, 1915. An additional species, C. seminigra (Zhang, 1992) n. comb. occurs in continental SE Asia. Two new genera are described, united by the lack of styli, the presence of dorsal carinae on the subgenital plate, and the unique morphology of the dorsal lamina of the left phallomere, but differing in the morphology of head and forelegs. Astyliasula gen. nov. accommodates A. phyllopus (De Haan, 1842) n. comb. and related species from the Sunda Islands and continental SE Asia: A. basinigra (Zhang, 1992) n. comb., A. hoffmanni (Tinkham, 1937) n. comb., A. javana (Beier, 1929) n. comb., A. major (Beier, 1929) n. comb., A. inermis (Wood-Mason, 1879) n. comb., and A. wuyshana (Yang & Wang, 1999) n. comb.. Hestias sarawaca Westwood, 1889 is removed from synonymy with A. phyllopus and reinstated as A. sarawaca (Westwood, 1889) n. comb.. The monotypic taxon Pseudohestiasula borneana gen. nov. sp. nov. is erected for a Bornean endemic more closely related to Astyliasula than to the other genera. Hestiasula is now restricted to H. brunneriana and related species from India and adjacent countries. The tribe Hestiasulini Giglio-Tos, 1915 stat. rev. is proposed for all genera more closely related to Hestiasula than to other Oxypilinae, that is Hestiasula , Ephestiasula , Catestiasula , Astyliasula , and Pseudohestiasula . New data on the ecology and distribution of all Bornean Hestiasulini as well as a key to the Oxypilinae of Borneo are provided.


The present work deals with the resuspension of small nondeformable particles from multilayer deposits in a turbulent boundary layer. A kinetic force-balance approach was adopted to model particle motion at the point of detachment, whereby intermolecular interactions were modeled by the Lennard-Jones potential. The rate of change of the number of particles was estimated for each discrete layer based on existing kinetic models. In particular, the kinetic equations of Lazaridis and Drossinos (1998), LD, and Friess and Yadigaroglu (2001), FY, were implemented and compared using lattice arranged deposits. The influence of exposure time and friction velocity was investigated through the obtained resuspension rates. It was found that the single-layer resuspension rates were substantially affected by the layer position within the deposit as well as considerably influenced by both the exposure time and the friction velocity. Moreover, the numerical results demonstrate that the LD kinetic estimates higher resuspension rates compared to the FY kinetic only for short exposures to the flow, predominantly due to a different expression for the fraction of exposed particles. In addition, the present study recognized the time dependence (i.e., a short-term vs. long-term regime) of the resuspension rate observed both experimentally (Wu et al., 1992; Wang et al., 2012) and by model predictions (Lazaridis and Drossinos, 1998; Friess and Yadigaroglu, 2001; Reeks and Hall, 2001) and confirmed the inverse dependence of the resuspension rate with time in long-term regime. Two regimes were also identified while evaluating the resuspension rate for a range of friction velocities, viz., a low-friction regime in which the resuspension rate increases with friction and a high-friction regime in which the opposite behaviour was observed.


markdownabstractSince the beginning of the 21st century 'partnerships' have received increasing attention on the development agenda. Governments and NGOs seek alliances with firms to increase the effectiveness of their development efforts. Partnerships have been pioneered in infrastructure projects, millennium villages, the provision of health services and (micro)credits. The increasing involvement of firms in development partnerships is particularly noticeable. Key note speech and contribution by Noreen Hertz.

But what is the logic of these partnerships and to what extent do they really provide a novel approach to development? Is it a tool or an aim? What problems are partnerships supposed to solve and how effective are they? Can partnerships also provide an excuse for not doing enough? Is there a discrepancy between the ideals and the reality of partnerships?

Also includes the background paper of Professor Rob van Tulder, RSM Erasmus University, Business-Society Management.


An ad hoc wireless network is a temporary and dynamic environment where a group of mobile nodes with radio frequency transceivers communicate with each other without the intervention of any centralized administration or established infrastructure. Due to the limited transmission range of each mobile node, communication sessions between two nodes are usually established through a number of intermediate nodes, which are supposed to be willing to cooperate while forwarding the messages they receive to their destination. Unfortunately, some of these intermediate nodes might not be trustworthy and might be malicious, thereby forming a threat to the security and/or confidentiality of the exchanged data between the mobile nodes. This paper proposed a partially distributed dynamic model for security against such misbehaving nodes and ensured secure routing in mobile ad hoc networks and it also proposes to make network time delay efficient. The proposed scheme is partially distributed in the sense that supplementary information is propagated amongst nodes implicitly during route establishment rather than the flooding of explicit packets. This supplementary information (in the form of GMC) is used as a cautionary measure against misbehaviour of a node rather than directly considering the accused node as "misbehaving". Co-operation is induced first, using a dynamic time-out based mechanism that threatens misbehaving nodes by blocking all communications with them in accordance to the severity of their misbehaviour. The timer for which a node is blocked depends upon past communication with that node and the frequency of its misbehaviour locally, i.e., LMC and globally, i.e., GMC. Different weights are assigned to both LMC and GMC for efficacy of system performance. Secondly, a dynamic credit allotment mechanism that reciprocates a node's behaviour by allotting Chips to it is employed. It precisely examines the overall behavior of a node in the network by considering not only its forwarding behaviour with the host node but also supplementary information received regarding its behaviour from other nodes. It was also concluded that if we use least spaning tree for the MANET then the time efficiency has been increased.


Gaussian processes (GPs) provide a powerful non-parametric framework for reasoning over functions. Despite appealing theory, its superlinear computational and memory complexities have presented a long-standing challenge. State-of-the-art sparse variational inference methods trade modeling accuracy against complexity. However, the complexities of these methods still scale superlinearly in the number of basis functions, implying that that sparse GP methods are able to learn from large datasets only when a small model is used. Recently, a decoupled approach was proposed that removes the unnecessary coupling between the complexities of modeling the mean and the covariance functions of a GP. It achieves a linear complexity in the number of mean parameters, so an expressive posterior mean function can be modeled. While promising, this approach suffers from optimization difficulties due to ill-conditioning and non-convexity. In this work, we propose an alternative decoupled parametrization. It adopts an orthogonal basis in the mean function to model the residues that cannot be learned by the standard coupled approach. Therefore, our method extends, rather than replaces, the coupled approach to achieve strictly better performance. This construction admits a straightforward natural gradient update rule, so the structure of the information manifold that is lost during decoupling can be leveraged to speed up learning. Empirically, our algorithm demonstrates significantly faster convergence in multiple experiments.


A dimensional analysis was performed to correlate the fuel bed fire rate of spread data previously reported in the literature. Under wind condition, six pertinent dimensionless groups were identified, namely dimensionless fire spread rate, dimensionless fuel particle size, fuel moisture content, dimensionless fuel bed depth or dimensionless fuel loading density, dimensionless wind speed, and angle of inclination of fuel bed. Under no-wind condition, five similar dimensionless groups resulted. Given the uncertainties associated with some of the parameters used to estimate the dimensionless groups, the dimensionless correlations using the resulting dimensionless groups correlate the fire rates of spread reasonably well under wind and no-wind conditions.


We review the scientific literature since the 1960s to examine the evolution of modeling tools and observations that have advanced understanding of global stratospheric temperature changes. Observations show overall cooling of the stratosphere during the period for which they are available (since the late 1950s and late 1970s from radiosondes and satellites, respectively), interrupted by episodes of warming associated with volcanic eruptions, and superimposed on variations associated with the solar cycle. There has been little global mean temperature change since about 1995. The temporal and vertical structure of these variations are reasonably well explained by models that include changes in greenhouse gases, ozone, volcanic aerosols, and solar output, although there are significant uncertainties in the temperature observations and regarding the nature and influence of past changes in stratospheric water vapor. As a companion to a recent WIREs review of tropospheric temperature trends, this article identifies areas of commonality and contrast between the tropospheric and stratospheric trend literature. For example, the increased attention over time to radiosonde and satellite data quality has contributed to better characterization of uncertainty in observed trends both in the troposphere and in the lower stratosphere, and has highlighted the relative deficiency of attention to observations in the middle and upper stratosphere. In contrast to the relatively unchanging expectations of surface and tropospheric warming primarily induced by greenhouse gas increases, stratospheric temperature change expectations have arisen from experiments with a wider variety of model types, showing more complex trend patterns associated with a greater diversity of forcing agents. WIREs Clim Change 2011 2 592–616 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.125


Background and study aims: The English National Health Service Bowel Cancer Screening Programme (NHSBCSP) is one of the world's largest organized screening programs. Minimizing adverse events is essential for any screening program. Study aims were to determine rates and to examine risk factors for adverse events. Patients and methods: Bleeding and perforations in NHSBCSP colonoscopies between August 2006 and January 2012 were examined. Logistic regression was used to examine risk factors for adverse events, including age, gender, polyp size, morphology, and location. For accurate attribution of adverse events, procedures with resection of only one polyp ("single-polypectomy") were analyzed in detail. Results: 130 831 colonoscopies (167 208 polypectomies) were analyzed, including 30 881 single-polypectomies. Overall bleeding rate was 0.65 %, rate of bleeding requiring transfusion was 0.04 % and perforation rate was 0.06 %. Polypectomy increased bleeding risk 11.14-fold and perforation risk 2.97-fold. Cecal location (but not elsewhere in the proximal colon) and increasing polyp size were the two most important risk factors for bleeding and perforation. After adjustment for polyp size, the odds ratio (OR) relative to the distal colon for bleeding requiring transfusion after cecal snare polypectomy was 13.5 (95 %CI 3.9 – 46.4) and for perforation after cecal nonpedunculated polypectomy it was 12.2 (95 %CI 1.2 – 119.5). Conclusion: This is the largest study focusing on polyp-specific risk factors. We have confirmed that the greatest risk factor for both post-polypectomy bleeding and perforation is polyp size. This is the first demonstration of substantial and significantly increased risk for both noteworthy bleeding (requiring transfusion) and perforation from cecal polypectomy for a given polyp size, compared with elsewhere in the colon.


In studying the social, political, and economic history of Bengal during 50 critical years, this book unravels the complex relationship between imperialism and nationalism in Calcutta and its hinterland. Here, Ray analyzes both the long-term goals and short-term parochial preoccupations of Bengali nationalists in their struggle against imperialism. He examines how well the Bengalis fared on the all-India platform, how and why Bengali nationalism became divided within the region, and the movement's ability to penetrate from elite Calcutta to the grassroots of provincial Bengali society. Throughout, Ray effectively demonstrates that the dynamics of political change in Bengal lay in the increasing conflict between the European commercial and administrative elite and the Indian business and professional groups before, during and after World War I.


The great Russian filmmaker and film theorist Sergei Eisenstein has become the subject of renewed interest a century after his birth. A decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, with fresh material on his life and art now consequently available, a more complex picture of Eisenstein is emerging. This collection—featuring the work of major film theorists and Russian scholars—offers the first post–Soviet reconsideration of Eisenstein's contribution to world cinema.

The contributors address themes previously avoided by Soviet critics, such as sexuality, religion, gender, and politics, in The Battleship Potemkin, October, Alexander Nevsky, and Ivan the Terrible. Of particular concern here is Eisenstein's struggle with Soviet censorship, which resulted in a tenuous balance between the pressures of the state and his goals as an artist. Essays explore the manner in which Eisenstein's later theoretical writings reveal continuity with the better-known earlier work, issues of historical revisionism, and the relationship between autobiography and the films.

Eisenstein at 100 presents a rich and profound picture of Eisenstein the man, the director, and the film theorist.


Drought is one of the most limiting factors in agricultural production worldwide. The aim of this work was to evaluate the per se response to drought stress of three maize (Zea mays L.) semi-inbred lines (CHIH, COAH, and ARZM) during the anthesis and grain filling stages. These semi-inbred lines (BC1S1) are S1 offspring of crosses between drought-tolerant maize and a high-yield line bred by the Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo (CIMMYT). Materials were evaluated during a 15-d controlled drought and post-drought irrigation reestablishment period. The photosynthetic rate decreased by 50% in CHIH during drought and it recovered after stress was removed. Proline levels increased 2.3 times in COAH during stress and nonsignificant increases were observed in ARZM or CHIH. However, glycine betaine accumulated at 1061-1133 ng mg-1 fresh weight (FW) before stress, but decreased to 879-1000 ng mg-1 FW during drought stress. The trehalose concentration increased 1.8 times in ARZM (5.60 ng mg-1 FW) under drought stress and remained at similar levels in CHIH (6.48 ng mg-1 FW) and COAH (8.63 ng mg-1 FW) before and during drought stress. In contrast, trehalose-6-phosphate decreased 33% to 38% under drought stress in all three BC1S1 entries and recovered its initial levels after irrigation. Grain biomass loss under drought stress was 54% for ARZM, 48.2% for COAH, and only 26.5% for CHIH. These results showed that CHIH, COAH, and ARZM are drought-tolerant and suggest that osmoprotectant accumulation might play a key role in their physiological performance and grain biomass trait.


Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have demonstrated high power conversion efficiency (PCE) but inferior long-term stability and remarkable hysteresis. To date, the most efficient PSCs have a n–i–p device architecture and use Li-TFSI/t-BP as standard bi-dopants for the hole-transporting layer (HTL). However, such dopants not only induce deleterious effects on stability but also significantly affect the hysteresis of PSCs. Here, we demonstrate that a fluorine-containing hydrophobic Lewis acid dopant (LAD) can be employed as an effective dopant for PTAA to realize an exceptional fill factor of 0.81 and a record PCE as high as 19.01%, the highest value among the ever reported PSCs based on a novel dopant in the HTL, versus 17.77% for the control device with Li-TFSI/t-BP doped PTAA. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case in which a PSC based on a novel dopant for the HTL shows higher efficiency than a PSC based on the state-of-the-art bi-dopants Li-TFSI/t-BP. Besides, the LAD-based PSC displays lower J–V hysteresis and much better long-term stability of up to 70 days under air exposure without encapsulation. We believe that this work will pave a new avenue for high-efficiency, hysteresis-less and stable PSCs exploring hydrophobic dopants as alternatives to hydrophilic Li-TFSI/t-BP.