Today's IT-systems are becoming more difficult. Their relationship together grows as well as their complexity. Currently a main requirement is for people to trust more in the results and have a better understanding of the functionality. Provenance as a technical idea is a good approach for comprehending the operation of an IT-system. It will record every occurring event and its associated parts. With understanding it is possible to have a way for tracing decisions and data transformation in the system to understand the outcome of it. The Provenance idea is currently a research field. One of the involved institutes is the German Aerospace Center. The department "Simulation and Software Technology" is interested in the ongoing Provenance approach.

A present research theme, covered by this bachelor thesis, is the visualization of the Provenance data and therefore the evaluation of possible interpretation approaches. Additionally, the software architecture for this Visual Information Seeking System is questioned. The bachelor thesis is divided into three main phases. The first one is an analysis the Provenance data itself as well as the user and their requirements regarding the Provenance system. The second deals with the creation of visualization-concepts for the Provenance data. The complete software architecture was developed in the last main phase.
The final results consist of the outcome of all three main phases of the project as well as a final evaluation of them. At first, the analysis of the fundamental data and the user requirements were made to create an initial assertion about visualization possibilities. The analysis is divided between different intentions of the user regarding the Provenance data and their allocation to general visualization types. These general first assertions were the basis for the final visualization-concepts, developed in main phase 2. A visualization map, dividing the concepts into different detail level and scope size, gives the overall view about the visualization possibilities. The concepts describe the transformation of the raw data to the final view with respect to the reference model for visualization. General concepts like the representation legend, system-wide techniques or the concept of the mental map are considered as well as the elaboration of each individual one depending on its place in the visualization map. The individual build-up, its behavior and its behind algorithm is shown. Finally, the concepts were evaluated to have a first statement of their profitability, but also their limitations. In main phase 3, the developed system architecture of the visualization-panel is developed in a component-based approach. The architecture is independent of the programming-language and describes a general implementation strategy. Just as well as the visualization-concepts, it is also a kind of generic nature. A concrete implementation of both results forces the need for the evaluation of concrete properties of the field of application.


Rationale Evidence has suggested that exposure to environmental or microbial biodiversity in early life may impact subsequent lung function and allergic disease risk. Objectives To investigate the influence of childhood living environment and biodiversity indicators on atopy, asthma and lung function in adulthood. Methods and measurements The European Community Respiratory Health Survey II investigated ∼10 201 participants aged 26–54 years from 14 countries, including participants' place of upbringing (farm, rural environment or inner city) before age 5 years. A 'biodiversity score' was created based on childhood exposure to cats, dogs, day care, bedroom sharing and older siblings. Associations with lung function, bronchial hyper-responsiveness (BHR), allergic sensitisation, asthma and rhinitis were analysed. Main results As compared with a city upbringing, those with early-life farm exposure had less atopic sensitisation (adjusted OR 0.46, 95% CI 0.37 to 0.58), atopic BHR (0.54 (0.35 to 0.83)), atopic asthma (0.47 (0.28 to 0.81)) and atopic rhinitis (0.43 (0.32 to 0.57)), but not non-atopic outcomes. Less pronounced protective effects were observed for rural environment exposures. Women with a farm upbringing had higher FEV1 (adjusted difference 110 mL (64 to 157)), independent of sensitisation and asthma. In an inner city environment, a higher biodiversity score was related to less allergic sensitisation. Conclusions This is the first study to report beneficial effects of growing up on a farm on adult FEV1. Our study confirmed the beneficial effects of early farm life on sensitisation, asthma and rhinitis, and found a similar association for BHR. In persons with an urban upbringing, a higher biodiversity score predicted less allergic sensitisation, but to a lesser magnitude than a childhood farm environment.


In Punk and Revolution Shane Greene radically uproots punk from its iconic place in First World urban culture, Anglo popular music, and the Euro-American avant-garde, situating it instead as a crucial element in Peru's culture of subversive militancy and political violence. Inspired by Jose Carlos Mariategui's Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality , Greene explores punk's political aspirations and subcultural possibilities while complicating the dominant narratives of the war between the Shining Path and the Peruvian state. In these seven essays, Greene experiments with style and content, bends the ethnographic genre, and juxtaposes the textual and visual. He theorizes punk in Lima as a mode of aesthetic and material underproduction, rants at canonical cultural studies for its failure to acknowledge punk's potential for generating revolutionary politics, and uncovers the intersections of gender, ethnicity, class, and authenticity in the Lima punk scene. Following the theoretical interventions of Debord, Benjamin, and Bakhtin, Greene fundamentally redefines how we might think about the creative contours of punk subculture and the politics of anarchist praxis.


For-profit education is playing an increasingly important role in the educational landscape, with more and more students enrolling in these institutions. However, many within and outside higher education decry the 'corporatisation' of education, fearing that profit motives are beginning to override concerns of institutional and intellectual integrity. This article examines how narratives surrounding for-profit education shape public perception of institutional integrity and how these narratives are co-constructed by their audiences by highlighting as a case study Dana College, a small nonprofit liberal arts college that suspended operations in June 2010 after an unsuccessful attempt to transfer ownership to a for-profit entity. This case study illustrates how failing to account for conflicting, audience-dependent perceptions of educational integrity in an evolving educational landscape can jeopardise the future of higher education.


In the aftermath of a calamitous British performance at the 1912 Olympic games in Stockholm the British Olympic Association (BOA) announced a plan to consolidate the various units of the British Empire into a single Olympic team for the forthcoming 1916 Berlin games. Casting their eyes ahead towards Berlin, an event generating extra importance given the continued escalation of Anglo-German antagonism, the BOA conceived that a unified Greater Britain team would solidify colonial and dominion relations with the old mother country and salvage Britain's self-perceived reputation as the leader of modern sport. Efforts to maintain Britain's global sporting position by welding the United Kingdom and its colonial possessions into a formidable Olympic team faced stern opposition. The growing political independence of Britain's colonies and dominions, coupled with the perilous administrative task of selecting, organizing, and financing a transcontinental British team compounded problems with the BOA's imperial ambitions.


The use of solid biomass as feedstock for electricity generation is becoming an increasingly prominent and controversial topic in the global debate about the transition to a sustainable system of energy provision and consumption. Increasing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the combustion of fossil fuels such as coal, lignite, oil, and natural gas for electricity generation is currently the most significant driver of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate change. If produced under sustainable conditions, solid biomass can offer a potential path to addressing climate change by substituting fossil fuels and reducing GHG emissions. On the other hand, if produced and procured in an unsustainable manner, the use of biomass for electricity production can actually lead to an increase in CO2 emissions and thus have a negative overall climate effect.The production of solid biomass for electricity generation also carries with it several other social and environmental risks related to issues such as forest degradation, loss of biodiversity, land tenure/rights violations, and human rights abuses. Detailed knowledge about the origin of the supply of solid biomass used for electricity generation is thus essential for determining whether biomass-based electricity generation is genuinely contributing to sustainable development.Given the potential direct and indirect social and environmental impacts of solid biomass production, it is crucial that civil society, regulators, consumers and companies themselves have sufficient and specific information about from where the biomass entering the Netherlands one of the worlds largest consumers of biomass comes: where it is produced, what the feedstock is, and who is responsible for importing it. The question From whence (i.e. from where) the wood? has never been more relevant.This report aims to improve the social and environmental conditions under which solid biomass is produced. By examining the degree of biomass supply chain transparency provided by the six largest individual consumers of solid biomass for electricity generation in the Netherlands electric utilities E.ON, Eneco, EPZ (DELTA), GDF Suez, RWE/Essent, and Vattenfall/Nuon the report aims to increase the public and political pressure on electricity companies to take responsibility for ensuring that minimum social and environmental standards are respected throughout the biomass supply chain.


My title deliberately echoes that of Dr. Posnansky in his discussion of the historical geography of Uganda a few years ago (Posnansky, 1963). As yet there is relatively little published geographical material on the geography of settlements in Uganda. The same limitation applies to much of tropical Africa, especially to the English-speaking parts. One can read the bulk of several recent texts on Africa and emerge with very little idea of the types of houses and settlements in which most of its people still live. The capitals and the major ports, which have been given more attention, are not typical. If a fuller settlement geography of countries of Africa is to be developed it must come largely from the studies of younger African geographers. This is why I have chosen the theme. I shall try to outline a framework of study, attempt to place within this some existing contributions, and suggest some ways in which a more substantial and coherent construction may be achieved. I believe there is work to be done at all levels, some of it well suited to team study in the schools, and some to undergraduate essays or dissertations.


Recent research has demonstrated that Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are vulnerable to adversarial patches which introduce perceptible but localized changes to the input. Nevertheless, existing approaches have focused on generating adversarial patches on images, their counterparts in videos have been less explored. Compared with images, attacking videos is much more challenging as it needs to consider not only spatial cues but also temporal cues. To close this gap, we introduce a novel adversarial attack in this paper, the bullet-screen comment (BSC) attack, which attacks video recognition models with BSCs. Specifically, adversarial BSCs are generated with a Reinforcement Learning (RL) framework, where the environment is set as the target model and the agent plays the role of selecting the position and transparency of each BSC. By continuously querying the target models and receiving feedback, the agent gradually adjusts its selection strategies in order to achieve a high fooling rate with non-overlapping BSCs. As BSCs can be regarded as a kind of meaningful patch, adding it to a clean video will not affect people's understanding of the video content, nor will arouse people's suspicion. We conduct extensive experiments to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. On both UCF-101 and HMDB-51 datasets, our BSC attack method can achieve about 90% fooling rate when attacking three mainstream video recognition models, while only occluding < 8% areas in the video. Our code is available at https://github.com/kay-ck/BSC-attack.


We present a wide range of angle- and wavelength-resolved, real-time surface plasmon resonance (SPR) dispersion imaging techniques. Two-dimensional SPR dispersion images were obtained in real time by utilizing a hemicylindrical shaped prism having a high refractive index of 1.72 and a short focal length lens. Our system covers a wide range of incident angles (up to 30) and can detect wavelengths over the whole visible region, allowing us to simultaneously detect the SPR dispersion images produced by air and water substrates (refractive indices of 1 and 1.33, respectively) without scanning or moving the SPR system.


Control of nonlinear systems preceded by unknown hysteresis nonlinearities is a challenging task and has received increasing attention in recent years due to growing industrial demands involving varied applications. In the literature, many mathematical models have been proposed to describe the hysteresis nonlinearities. The challenge addressed here is how to fuse those hysteresis models with available robust control techniques to have the basic requirement of stability of the system. The purpose of the note is to show such a possibility by using the Prandtl-Ishlinskii (PI) hysteresis model. An adaptive variable structure control approach, serving as an illustration, is fused with the PI model without necessarily constructing a hysteresis inverse. The global stability of the system and tracking a desired trajectory to a certain precision are achieved. Simulation results attained for a nonlinear system are presented to illustrate and further validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.


While the term neural networks may be unfamiliar to many organizational psychologists, exciting new applications of artificial intelligence are attracting notice among organizational behavior researchers. In "Neural Networks in Organizational Research: Applying Pattern Recognition to the Analysis of Organizational Behavior", authors David Scarborough and Mark Somers bring researchers, academics, and practitioners up to speed on this emerging field, in which powerful computing capabilities offer new insights into longstanding, complex I/O questions such as employee selection and behavioral prediction. Neural networks mimic the way the human brain works, using interconnected nodes and feedback loops to "learn" to recognize even subtle patterns in vast amounts of data. They can process data far more quickly and efficiently than conventional techniques can, and produce better empirical results. They are especially useful for modeling nonlinear processes. The book traces the development of this methodology and demonstrates how it opens up new ways of thinking about traditional problems. Academic researchers will gain a design template for studying both the linear and non-linear elements of a given problem, and thus enhance their own research.


The current trend in world trade of agro-food, and the change in consumer demand patterns for food and agricultural products, has led to a fast growth of multi-national chains of retail stores in major cities in developing countries and growth in domestic retail store chains. Their presence opens a new market for high quality agro-food. While many products come from overseas, many can also be supplied locally by farmers or farmers' co-operatives or associations provided that they meet the quality and supply standards required by the store. To study and identify specific benefits from this global economic trend that can be tapped by secondary crops farmers, specifically those living in medium altitude areas, two studies were conducted in two member countries of CAPSA-ESCAP, i.e., Indonesia and the Philippines, with assistance provided by the government of France. Product certification requirements by the retailers, and best practices on product certification by the various producers and processors from farms to retailers, were studied, analysed, and collated.


While the Language for Specific Purposes approach presupposes velocity, the sociodiscursive interactionism theory (BRONCKART, 2003; 2006; 2008; SCHEUWLY; DOLZ, 2004) postulates a processual work, organized in didactic sequences which aim at the development of language capacities necessary to act in particular contexts. This perspective requires several hours of study focused on a given textual genre to ensure the comprehension of language as a social practice and of text as a semiotic instrument, which allows effective verbal communication in singular situations. Aligned with this perspective, the challenges of this paper are to analyze and illustrate possible and necessary adjustments in the Swiss proposal that can be applied to the learning-teaching process of languages for specific purposes.


It is estimated that approximately 200 million
people globally are infected with the hepatitis C virus and that roughly half
of these people live in Asia. Without treatment, it is estimated that roughly
twenty percent of those infected with hepatitis C virus progress to chronic
liver disease, then subsequently, end-stage liver disease. Thus, access to
hepatitis C testing and subsequent care and treatment of chronic hepatitis C
infection are essential to address the global burden of disease. In the United
States, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 60% of new
cases of hepatitis infection are due to injection drug use. Opioid Treatment
Programs (OTP's) dispense methadone and buprenorphine under specific federal
regulations to injection drug users diagnosed with opioid dependence. OTPs are
developing comprehensive care and treatment model programs that integrate
general medical and infectious disease-related medical care with substance
abuse and mental health services. Integrating hepatitis care services and
treatment in the substance abuse treatment settings foster access to care for
patients with hepatitis C infection, many who otherwise would not receive
needed care and treatment. This may serve as a national model for highly
cost-efficient healthcare that has a measurable outcome of improved public
health with reduced hepatitis C prevalence.


Possible mechanisms of electrolytic metal deposition from aqueous solutions of cupric, nickelous and silver ions are examined by deriving and comparing the relevant potential energy profiles with the purpose of indicating the rate-determining step. The following steps in the overall reaction are considered: ionic transfer from the solution to surface sites; surface diffusion of adsorbed ions; successive dehydration of the adions at lattice building sites. The formation of adions and adatoms in intermediate steps is distinguished and it is shown that neutral adatom formation is unlikely. The heat of activation (∆H0‡) for transfer of ions from the solution to the metal surface, depends upon the site to which transfer occurs, that to a planar site being significantly less than that to other sites (e. g. edges, kinks, etc.). Transfer to form adatoms has prohibitively high ∆H0‡ values. Lattice building is accomplished by surface diffusion of transferred adions to edges or kinks. At each of the consecutive stages of the deposition process, a change in hydration of the ion or adion occurs and has important effects on the mechanism and kinging of deposition. Direct deposition of divalent ions on to surface sites is shown to be associated with high heats of activation and low electrochemical rate constants as found experimentally for Ni2+, Fe2+ and Co2+ deposition. When the deposition reaction can occur through an intermediate redox step involving a stable ion as, e. g. in the case of copper, it is shown that lower free energies of activation can result than if the deposition of the divalent ion occurs in one step. This is consistent with the experimental behaviour found for copper deposition. At low overpotentials, it is shown that both the steps of ionic transfer and surface diffusion would have comparable rate constants in the case of copper and silver deposition whilst at higher overpotentials, the reduction of Cu2+ ions becomes rate determining at copper, whilst ionic transfer of Ag+ ions becomes rate determining at silver. This is in agreement with the behaviour observed experimentally.


This paper examines how a community resists the exploitive power of neoliberal capitalism by practices of self-determination and economic development that are grounded in Indigenous traditions and values. The sources I draw on for this examination are the decolonisation work of Taiaiake Alfred, the work on sustainable self-determination of Jeff Corntassel, the work on earth democracy of Vandana Shiva, and the writings on economic theory of Karl Polanyi and David Harvey. I argue that the Moloka`i community of Hawai`i is able to successfully assert power over a transnational corporation because the community has a strong commitment to a shared value system. This community power, though, is only strong when a critical mass of the community participates in the challenge to corporate power. Moloka`i is the last Hawaiian island. We who live here choose not to be strangers in our own land. The values of aloha `āina and mālama `āina (love and care for the land) guide our stewardship of Moloka`i's natural resources, which nourish our families both physically and spiritually. ... We honor our island's Hawaiian cultural heritage, no matter what our ethnicity, and that culture is practiced in our everyday lives. Our true wealth is measured by the extent of our generosity.


Five species of small cryptozoic skinks from the woodlands and forests of eastern Australia are diagnosed as a monophyletic group and given generic rank. The name Calyptotis De Vis 1886 is resurrected from the synonymy of Sphenomorphus for the genus. Four of the species are described as new and the one previously described species-Co scutirostrum W. Peters 1873-is reviewed. Information is provided on distribution, ecology and reproduction for each species. The interspecific and intergeneric relationships of Calyptotis are discussed. A key to the species is provided. GREER. A. E., 1983. The Australian scincid lizard genus Calyptotis Oe Vis: resurrection of the name, description of four new species, and discussion of relationships. Records of the Australian Museum 35(1): 29-59.


Objective Triage with HPV genotyping has some caveats and debates for HPV positive cases other than 16 and 18. The Swede score colposcopic scoring system has not previously been evaluated in this group of patients. Objective To use the Swede score colposcopic scoring system to compare scores and final histopathological results in women who have undergone colposcopy owing to infection with high risk-HPVs other than HPV16 and 18 and to establish new cut-off values to predict pre-malignant lesions in this group of patients. Methods This study was conducted in 613 women undergoing colposcopic evaluation because of abnormal cervical cytology together with high-risk HPV infection. All patients referred were evaluated by an expert colposcopist, given a Swede score (using the Swede score colposcopic scoring system) by using five variables (acetowhiteness, margins plus surface, vessel pattern, lesion size, and iodine staining), and had at least one biopsy procedure (either colposcopically directed or by a loop electrical excision procedure). Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, likelihood ratio values, and receiver operating characteristic curves for each clinico-pathological variable to detect low-grade and high-grade squamous intra-epithelial lesions, and any squamous cell abnormality (low-grade + high-grade squamous intra-epithelial lesions) were evaluated individually. Results Final histopathological results of the patients were normal in 53.2% of cases, low-grade lesions in 32.5% of cases, and high-grade lesions in 14.4% of cases. Swede score was ≥8 (median 7.97) for high-grade lesions and ≥5 (median 5.06) for low-grade lesions. The area under the curve values (95% CI) of Swede scores for low-grade and high-grade squamous intra-epithelial lesions, and low-grade + high grade lesions were 0.92, 0.98, and 0.96, respectively. A Swede score cut-off value ≥6 had a sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and likelihood ratios of 92%, 98%, 93%, 98%, and 50 (22.6 to 110.8), respectively, for high-grade lesions at the final pathology (P<0.001). One high-risk HPV type (except 16 and 18) was no better than another for calculating the median Swede score during colposcopy (P=0.43). Conclusions The Swede score colposcopic scoring system appears to be a useful tool for evaluating atypical cervical cytology in women with high-risk HPV infection other than HPV types 16 and 18.


This paper summarizes the main findings of the recent studies that have constructed top income and wealth shares series over the century for a number of countries using tax statistics. Most countries experience a dramatic drop in top income shares in the first part of the century due to a precipitous drop in large wealth holdings during the wars and depression shocks. Top income shares do not recover in the immediate post war decades. However, over the last 30 years, top income shares have increased substantially in English speaking countries but not at all in continental Europe countries or Japan. This increase is due to an unprecedented surge in top wage incomes starting in the 1970s and accelerating in the 1990s. As a result, top wage earners have replaced capital income earners at the top of the income distribution in English speaking countries. We discuss the proposed explanations and the main questions that remain open.


Insuring against Health Shocks: Health Insurance and Household Choices This paper provides empirical evidence on the role of public health insurance in mitigating adverse outcomes associated with health shocks. Exploiting the rollout of a universal health insurance program in rural China, I find that total household income and consumption are fully insured against health shocks even without access to health insurance. Household labor supply is an important insurance mechanism against health shocks. Access to health insurance helps households to maintain investment in children's human capital during negative health shocks, which suggests that one benefit of health insurance could arise from reducing the use of costly smoothing mechanisms. JEL Classification: D1, O1, I1


The sudden shift from single-processor computer systems to many-processor parallel computing systems requires reinventing much of Computer Science (CS): how to actually build and program the new parallel systems. CS urgently requires convergence to a robust parallel general-purpose platform that provides good performance and is easy to program. Unfortunately, this same objective has eluded decades of parallel computing research. Now, continued delays and uncertainty could start affecting important sectors of the economy. This paper advocates a minimalist stepping-stone: settle first on a simple abstraction that encapsulates the new interface between programmers, on one hand, and system builders, on the other hand. This paper also makes several concrete suggestions: (i) the Immediate Concurrent Execution (ICE) abstraction as a candidate for the new abstraction, and (ii) the Explicit Multi-Threaded (XMT) general-purpose parallel platform, under development at the University of Maryland, as a possible embodiment of ICE. ICE and XMT build on a formidable body of knowledge, known as PRAM (for parallel randomaccess machine, or model) algorithmics, and a latent, though not widespread, familiarity with it. Ease-of-programming, strong speedups and other attractive properties of the approach suggest that we may be much better prepared for the challenges ahead than many realize.


BACKGROUND
Malignant pleural effusion is associated with short life expectancy and significant morbidity. A randomized controlled trial comparing indwelling pleural catheters (IPCs) with talc pleurodesis found that IPCs reduced in-hospital time and the need for additional procedures but were associated with excess adverse events.

METHODS
Using data from the clinical trial, we compared costs associated with use of IPCs and with talc pleurodesis. Resource use and adverse events were captured through case report forms over the 1-year trial follow-up. Costs for outpatient and inpatient visits, diagnostic imaging, nursing, and doctor time were obtained from the UK National Health Service reference costs and University of Kent's Unit Costs of Health and Social Care 2011 and inflated to 2013 using the UK Consumer Price Index. Procedure supply costs were obtained from the manufacturer. Difference in mean costs was compared using nonparametric bootstrapping. All costs were converted to US dollars using the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Purchasing Power Parity Index.

RESULTS
Overall mean cost (SD) for managing patients with IPCs and talc pleurodesis was $4,993 ($5,529) and $4,581 ($4,359), respectively. The incremental mean cost difference was $401, with 95% CI of -$1,387 to $2,261. The mean cost related to ongoing drainage in the IPC group was $1,011 ($732) vs $57 ($213) in the talc pleurodesis group (P = .001). This included the cost of drainage bottles, dressing changes in the first month, and catheter removal. There was no significant difference in cost of the initial intervention or adverse events between the groups. For patients with survival < 14 weeks, IPC is significantly less costly than talc pleurodesis, with mean cost difference of -$1,719 (95% CI, -$3,376 to -$85).

CONCLUSIONS
There is no significant difference in the mean cost of managing patients with IPCs compared with talc pleurodesis. For patients with limited survival, IPC appears less costly.

TRIAL REGISTRY
isrctn.org; No.: ISRCTN87514420; URL: www.isrctn.org.


Abstract. The article discusses the grounds of buildings and structures from weak viscoelastic soils, the features of the theoretical justification for their deformations. The need for this study is due to the discrepancy between the theory of filtration consolidation and field and laboratory experiments. Within the framework of the proposed model, the constructions of solutions to the problems of loading the ground surface with typical loads that describe the stress-strain state of each phase of a two-phase medium (soil skeleton + pore water) with account of the residual pore pressure. The deviation of the calculated residual pore pressures from the experimental data is not more than 5 % (laboratory experiment), 7 % (full-scale experiment). The calculation method presented in the article allows predicting the deformation of the foundations of structures from weak water-saturated soils.


Electrokinetic soil processing is an emerging remediation technique with the capability to decontaminate low permeability soils containing heavy metals and some organics. The process consists on applying small current densities between electrodes immersed in the soil mass; the electrochemistry developed across the system causes desorption and transport of the contaminants to the electrodes where, depending on their chemistry, they precipitate, electrodeposit, or elute with the electroosmotic flow. Its potential to remove selected radionuclides (uranium-238, thorium-232, and radium-226) is assessed in the present studies. The process removed 85 to 95% uranium-238 at 1000 pCi/g activity from kaolinite. Complicating features arise (i.e. precipitation of insoluble hydroxides, high electrical gradient profiles, high energy expenditure) . The energy consumed during the process ranged between 81 to 315 kW-hr/m3 of processed soil. Due to precipitation of uranium hydroxide, the removal rate decreased close to the cathode, but enhanced tests (acetic acid depolarization, adipic acid-molded sections tests) showed it is possible to improve removal rates near the cathode at lower energy expenditure. Between 80 to 90% of thorium-232 at different activities was removed using an acid-molded enhancement technique. Thorium was strongly adsorbed onto the soil surface and also showed a strong tendency to precipitate as insoluble and gelatinous hydroxides, complicating its transport and increasing the energy expenditure during the process. Radium-226 at 1000 pCi/g precipitated as insoluble radium sulfate, preventing its transport. Use of complexing agents may be needed to achieve radium removal. The


A study was conducted to establish a reliable procedure for somatic embryogenesis and plant regeneration from callus cultures of purple food yam (Dioscorea alata L.). The procedure involved three steps; (1) culture of nodal stem segments from greenhousegrown plants to generate in vitro plantlets; (2) induction of callus from the leaf, petiole and nodal stem tissues; and (3) initiation of somatic embryo from callus. Results showed that the agar-solidified Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium containing 30 gl-1 sugar, 0.1 gl-1 α-cysteine , 10 mgl-1 calcium pantothenic acid, 2.0 mgl-1 asparagine, 2.0 mgl-1 arginine, 80.0 mgl-1 adenine sulfate (AdSO4) and 0.1 mgl-1 naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) effectively broke dormancy of lateral buds of nodal stem cultures from both 'VU-2' and 'Kinampay' varieties. Production of multiple adventitious shoots occurred after transfer of in vitro nodal pieces to the same medium added with 1.0 mgl-1 benzylamino purine (BAP) or, MSA medium. Callus was effectively induced from the vegetative tissues in MS medium added with 1.0 mgl-1 2,4-Dichlorophenoxy acetic acid (2,4-D) or, with picloram. Among the three types of explants, the nodal stem was the most suitable which produced purplish nodular embryogenic callus. A higher percentage of nodal stem-derived calli produced globular embryos in MS medium containing 1.0 mgl1 2,4-D and 0.5 mgl-1 BAP, or in 1.0 mgl-1 picloram and 0.5 mgl-1 BAP than, in the plant growth regulator-free medium (control). The maturation of embryos was facilitated by one-month culture in MS medium containing 0.1 mgl-1 ABA and 100 mgl-1 glutamine. This step improved the germination of somatic embryos in one-half strength PGR-free MS medium containing 100 mgl-1 glutamine (regeneration medium). All somatic embryoderived plantlets were morphologically normal and established well in soil.


OBJECTIVES
The purpose of this study was to assess whether a methanol extract isolated from the greater celandine Chelidonium majus L. (CME) had antioxidant effect and was able to inhibit proliferation and to induce apoptosis in leukemia cells in vitro.

METHODS
The potential antioxidant activity of CME was proved by the 1,1-diphenyl- 2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging assay. The cytotoxicity of CME was measured by the cell growth inhibition assay using murine leukemia L1210 cell line and human promyelocytic HL-60 leukemia cells. Apoptosis-inducing effect was determined by fluorescence microscopy (chromatin condensation and nuclear DNA fragmentation).

RESULTS
In the DPPH assay CME acted as a scavenger of DPPH free radical. The results on antiproliferative properties assessment clearly demonstrated that CME had a cytotoxic effect towards both leukemia cell lines in a dose-dependent manner. In addition, the human promyelocytic HL-60 cells were more sensitive to CME treatment than the L1210 cells.

CONCLUSIONS
We concluded that the extract of C. majus L. had a strong antioxidant potential and exerted the antiproliferative activity via apoptosis on leukemia cells. CME due to the presence of the isoquinoline alkaloids and the flavonoid components may play an important role in both cancer chemoprevention through its antioxidant activity and modern cancer chemotherapy as cytotoxic and apoptosis-inducing agent.


Mustard is grown in mild winter regions as late fall and in hard winter regions as late spring crop. Mustard has high  degree of adaptability under wide range of climatic conditions in Turkey. Temperature is an important weather parameter  affecting the growth and development of the mustard. The sum growing degree day (GDD) for a growing season is  related to plant development which is depends on the accumulation of heat. The aim of this study was to determine the  adaptation of mustard, under sowing seasons (spring and fall sowing) and locations in terms of crop growth (emergence,  50% flowering, physiological maturity, and sum growing degree days) and seed yield of mustard. Two-year field  experiments in a split-plot design with four replications were carried out during 2013-14 and 2014-15 growing seasons   at eight different ecological locations. These locations included Ankara, Aydin, Erzurum, Eskisehir, Isparta, Tekirdag,  Tokat and Şanliurfa provinces of Turkey-as classified by Koppen-Geiger ecological conditions. The Brassica juncea  L. (mustard seeds) were collected from wild conditions in the Konya province of Turkey. The results showed that,  sowing seasons and locations significantly affected seed yield and GDD. The maximum seed yield of 3754.9 kg ha-1  was obtained from Tokat (warm humid) during fall sowing with total accumulated GDD of 1512.1 °C for mustard. Sum  growing degree-days accumulated in different sowing seasons and locations occurred between 1132.0 °C and 2285.1 °C  depending on the related ecological conditions. Fall season crop in Aydin location had the maximum growing degree  days. Overall, fall season accumulated more growing degree days due to longer period of sunshine in comparison to  spring season with less sunshine days resulting in longer vegetation period.


The theory of two counter-propagating polarized beams interacting in a randomly birefringent fiber via the Kerr and Raman effects is developed and applied to the quantitative description of Raman polarizers in the undepleted regime. Here Raman polarizers, first reported by Martinelli, are understood as Raman amplifiers operating in the regime in which an initially weak unpolarized beam is converted into an amplified fully polarized beam towards the fiber output. Three parameters are selected for the characterization of a Raman polarizer: the degree of polarization of the outcoming beam, its state of polarization, and its gain. All of these parameters represent quantities that are averaged over all random polarization states of the initially unpolarized signal beam. The presented theory is computer friendly and applicable to virtually all practically relevant situations, including the case of co-propagating beams, and in particular to the undepleted as well as the depleted regimes of the Raman polarizer.


The main purpose of our study was to assess the effects of prenatal tobacco smoke on respiratory symptoms and on doctor consultations in a birth cohort of 445 infants who had no smoking mothers and who had no postnatal exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Before and after delivery, questionnaires and interviews with mothers were administered to solicit information on prenatal and postnatal ETS exposure. Newborns were followed‐up over six months of life, and respiratory outcomes such as runny or stuffed nose, cough with or without cold, difficult (puffed) breathing, wheezing or whistling in the chest irrespective of respiratory infection were considered. In addition, medical visits related to the occurrence of respiratory symptoms were recorded for each child over a six‐month study period. In the multivariate Poisson regression analysis, a set of potential confounders has been taken into account such as gender of child, season of birth, gestational age, maternal education, maternal atopy, presence of moulds in households and prenatal level of personal exposure to fine particles. The adjusted rate ratio (RR) estimated for the occurrence of episodes of running nose was significantly higher in infants exposed to prenatal ETS (1.40; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.11–1.68) and the corresponding RR estimates for cough, difficult breathing and wheezing were 1.49 (95% CI: 1.15–1.93), 1.96 (95% CI: 1.22–3.16) and 5.12 (95% CI: 2.86–9.16). The rate ratios of doctor consultations attributable to prenatal ETS because of cough was 1.94 (95% CI: 1.49–2.54). The risk estimate for consultations due to difficult breathing was 2.77 (95% CI: 1.76–4.36), and that for wheezing was 5.86 (95% CI: 3.56–9.64). The data strongly support the view about the impact of the in‐utero effect of passive smoking on children's respiratory health. Higher utilization rates of doctor consultations in infants attributable to prenatal ETS exposure demand the revision of public health policy, which should be focused also on cessation of smoking practices by all household members during and after the pregnancy period.


This ground-breaking bibliography by distinguished Pacific researcher Nicholas Goetzfridt examines mathematical concepts and practices in Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia. It covers number systems, counting, measuring, classifying, spatial relationships, symmetry, geometry, and other aspects of ethnomathematics in relation to a wide range of activities such as trade, education, navigation, construction, rituals and festivals, divination, weaving, tattooing, and music. In compiling nearly five hundred citations, Goetzfridt makes use of the vast resources of writing about the Pacific from the 1700s to the present. In addition to discussing Pacific knowledge systems in general, his introductory chapter includes a helpful overview of the relatively new field of ethnomathematics and important theoretical reflections on the discipline as a research program. Extensive subject and geographic indexes provide numerous ways to experience the rich heritage and history of Pacific ethnomathematical concepts covered in this book, including: the 256 possible knotted fates enabled by the Carolinian sky god Supwunumen, etak segmentation concepts in stellar based voyaging, the highly diverse counting systems of Papua New Guinea, the alignment of stone structures with stars to mark the appearance of the equinox and solstice, and contemporary educational issues in the standardized teaching of Western mathematics.


There is a growing recognition that current energy systems are unsustainable and require fundamental restructuring. While this is a significant engineering challenge it is not a matter of replacing one set of technologies with another. Technologies are embedded in a wider set of political, social and economic institutions which means that the transition from one energy system to another also requires an understanding of the interactions between the technical and non-technical. This thesis contributes to knowledge in this area by paying specific attention to energy distribution networks; the pipes and wires which deliver our energy services.

It is argued that existing approaches to the study of transitions in energy systems have largely black-boxed the network components, tending to concentrate on production and demand. However, infrastructure networks have unique technical and institutional characteristics which require a more systematic treatment. Therefore the aim of the thesis is to make more visible the interplay between actors, institutions and technologies in reproducing and transforming energy distribution networks.

For this purpose a novel analytical framework is developed which draws from economics and science and technology studies and incorporates insights from the governance literature. The framework is applied to the cases of electricity and heat distribution in the UK. It is found that following the liberalisation of energy systems, the governance of distribution networks has been siloed from the mainstream energy regime which has focused on promoting competition in other segments of the value chain. Therefore efforts to decarbonise energy supply in the UK have tended to be market based with a short term focus, rather than integrated solutions which recognise the role that flexible distribution networks can play in this transition. A number of policy recommendations are made which inform debates surrounding the development of local heat infrastructures and the reconfiguration of electricity distribution systems


A high-performance low-latency transmission system based on a concatenated code consisting of inner four-dimensional five-level pulse-amplitude-modulation (5-PAM) trellis-coded modulation and an outer Reed-Solomon (RS) code is proposed for a high-speed data link over time-dispersive channels. The implementation of high-speed sequence detection in state-of-the-art technology nodes is enabled by a novel reduced-state Viterbi detector which includes only one addition in the longest path. The bit-error-rate performance of the proposed transmission scheme for a real-world channel model is evaluated by simulations. Compared with the RS-encoded 4-PAM transmission scheme in the IEEE P802.3bj standard, the proposed transmission system achieves a signal-to-noise ratio advantage of 0.7 dB at a bit error rate of 10-6 without expanding the bandwidth.


The relationship between futures studies and education is not new, but it is an essential element for the development of our society as part of a more balanced world. The aim of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework that describes the associations between future, human temporality and images of the future. The paper provides the results of research carried out among students in Barcelona, with analyses examining images of the future and their associations with other investigations. Using a four-part typology for images of the future, we describe differences between students' perspectives on the global future, and their egocentric perspectives on their personal future. The findings are indicative of specific activities to be undertaken to maximally benefit students of secondary schools. Finally, we demonstrate that the influence of technological and catastrophic images from the media is evident in these students, leading to a distorted perspective on their own future and their role in it.


SUMMARY In Thailand, horticultural practices are a significant source of non-point source (NPS) pollution, and the government is considering best management practices (BMPs) as control measures for reducing agricultural NPS pollution to water. A prevailing assumption that farmers' reactions to regulations will be homogenous is not based on underlying insights into attitudinal positions that may explain alternative behavioural responses. This paper uses Q-methodology to identify attitudinal discourses relating to BMP uptake. The approach combines the strengths of qualitative and quantitative research in order to explore subjectivity. The study is conducted with citrus growers in the Ping river basin, where farmers are facing increasing competition from alternative water uses. Four 'discourses' or viewpoints are identified, namely conservationist, traditionalist, disinterested and risk-averse. The different attitudes of these four groups are likely to be associated with distinctive behavioural reactions to the adoption of alternative policy instruments for pollution control. These discourses could usefully inform targeted policies for the control of NPS pollution from agriculture.


The rapid technological developments can help traffic police in interacting with motor vehicle users on the highway. With the installation of closed circuit television (CCTV) so traffic disturbance and crime on the highway will be minimized because traffic flow can be monitored. If there is a traffic jam, then the traffic police officers will be able to cope. In other, if there is traffic light that goes out and accidents can be handled immediately. If there are criminal incidents on the highway can also be quickly known. The purpose of this research is to prevent and reduce crime and traffic accidents on the road with the installation of CCTV. The method used is empirical juridical, with primary and secondary data, and qualitative analysis presented descriptively. The result is that the installation of CCTV causes a significant reduction of crime. CCTV cameras mounted on red lights and busy intersections will provide information for traffic officers. It can also be combined with sensors that can capture vehicles that violate the maximum speed limit and also recording images proof with the date and time of the incident. accidents caused by drivers who break through red lights have decreased after the CCTV installation.


This dissertation examines the literary representations of massacres from the late fourteenth to the sixteenth century as challenging accepted notions of nationhood and kingship, recreating the nation as an emotional community that transcends traditional ideas of class, rank or wealth. The diachronic approach of this dissertation covers texts written over a period of two hundred years that were written in reaction to three particular massacres: the Battle of Nicopolis (September 25th, 1396), the Battle of Agincourt (October 25th, 1415), and the events of the First French War of Religion (1561-1563).
The main theoretical framework of this dissertation is the idea of emotional communities developed by Barbara Rosenwein. She demonstrates that numerous emotional communities coexisted during the same period, some dominating political and social discourses, but she does not focus on the nation as an emotional community. I use the idea of emotional communities to study how massacres created the possibility for an emotional approach to the study of the nation as an assemblage of communities that redefines itself after a major defeat. I study these communities not only as isolated groups, but also as integrated parts of the nation. The emotional charge following the massacres that created these communities puts them at the center of the new image of France developed in my works, which redefines the French nation as a community of communities and the king as its emotional leader. Through close readings of Philippe de Mezieres's Epitre lamentable et consolatoire (1397), Christine de Pizan's Epitre de la prison de vie humaine (1418), Alain Chartier's Livre des quatre dames (1418), the anonymous Tragedie du sac de Cabrieres (1545), and Pierre de Ronsard's Discours (1562-1565), I demonstrate how the early modern nation built itself following moments of crisis, with emotions as the medium of its creation, and with the king as the emotional cement between its different components.


This comprehensive treatment of network information theory and its applications provides the first unified coverage of both classical and recent results.With an approach that balances the introduction of newmodels and new coding techniques, readers are guided through Shannon's point-to-point information theory, single-hop networks, multihop networks, and extensions to distributed computing, secrecy, wireless communication, and networking. Elementary mathematical tools and techniques are used throughout, requiring only basic knowledge of probability, whilst unified proofs of coding theorems are based on a few simple lemmas, making the text accessible to newcomers. Key topics covered include successive cancellation and superposition coding, MIMOwireless communication, network coding, and cooperative relaying. Also covered are feedback and interactive communication, capacity approximations and scaling laws, and asynchronous and random access channels. This book is ideal for use in the classroom, for self-study, and as a reference for researchers and engineers in industry and academia.


Fast ice is an important component of Antarctic coastal marine ecosystems, providing a prolific habitat for ice algal communities. This work examines the relationships between normalized difference indices (NDI) calculated from under‐ice radiance measurements and sea ice algal biomass and snow thickness for Antarctic fast ice. While this technique has been calibrated to assess biomass in Arctic fast ice and pack ice, as well as Antarctic pack ice, relationships are currently lacking for Antarctic fast ice characterized by bottom ice algae communities with high algal biomass. We analyze measurements along transects at two contrasting Antarctic fast ice sites in terms of platelet ice presence: near and distant from an ice shelf, i.e., in McMurdo Sound and off Davis Station, respectively. Snow and ice thickness, and ice salinity and temperature measurements support our paired in situ optical and biological measurements. Analyses show that NDI wavelength pairs near the first chlorophyll a (chl a) absorption peak (≈440 nm) explain up to 70% of the total variability in algal biomass. Eighty‐eight percent of snow thickness variability is explained using an NDI with a wavelength pair of 648 and 567 nm. Accounting for pigment packaging effects by including the ratio of chl a‐specific absorption coefficients improved the NDI‐based algal biomass estimation only slightly. Our new observation‐based algorithms can be used to estimate Antarctic fast ice algal biomass and snow thickness noninvasively, for example, by using moored sensors (time series) or mapping their spatial distributions using underwater vehicles.


The home states of multinational enterprises have in recent years sought to use public regulation to fill the gaps left by the absence of a binding labour standards framework in international law. This article examines recent home state initiatives to address forced labour, human trafficking, and slavery in global supply chains, and their interactions with private governance initiatives. Focusing on a case study of the 2015 UK Modern Slavery Act and 2010 UK Bribery Act, we analyse two distinct legislative approaches that policy makers have used to promote corporate accountability within global supply chains and explore the varied impacts that these approaches have on corporate behaviour. Empirically, we analyse codes of conduct, annual CSR reports, and supplier terms and conditions for 25 FTSE 100 companies to shed light into the impact of the legislation on corporate behaviour. We find that legislation that creates criminal corporate liability appears to spur deeper changes to corporate strategy, and argue that in the case of the Modern Slavery Act, the triumph of voluntary reporting over more stringent public labour standards seems to have undermined the effectiveness of recent governance initiatives to address forced labour in global supply chains.


Abstract Ecological thresholds that lead to alternative community states can be exceeded through gradual perturbation or as a result of sudden disturbance. Many Great Plains streams have experienced dramatic changes in their hydrologic regime resulting from water and landuse changes that began as early as 1880. These changes, combined with the presence of many invasive species, have substantially altered the fish communities in this area. We quantified temporal changes in fish communities in 3 large river basins in relation to putative anthropogenic stressors, including increased sediment supply derived from row-crop agriculture (beginning in 1880), habitat fragmentation caused by reservoir construction (beginning in the 1950s), and reduced discharge caused by groundwater withdrawal (beginning in the 1960s). We hypothesized that these abiotic regime shifts, coupled with species invasions, would shift the system from a fish community dominated by lotic (flowing water) species to one dominated by lentic (still water) species. Further, we predicted that the timing and intensity of community change would vary across basins that experienced different types and levels of stressors. Restructuring of fish communities across the 3 river basins was driven primarily by similar increases in lentic species, with only a few declines in several large-river species. Current fish communities in these basins share <50% of the species recorded in historic collections, and these differences were driven by species extirpations and invasions. The greatest levels of community divergence over time occurred in western Kansas basins that experienced the most intense groundwater withdrawals and fragmentation by reservoirs. An alarming result from this analysis was the recent (after 1991) expansion of several invasive species in the Arkansas and lower Kansas River basins and the decline or extirpation of several native species where flow regimes are less heavily altered. Accelerating changes in the biota and habitat identified by our retrospective analysis highlight potential complications for restoring the habitat and native fish communities to a previous state.


THE STRUCTURE OF CANADIAN HISTORY. J.L. Finlay and D.N. Sprague. Scarborough: Prentice Hall Canada, 4th ed. 1993.COLONIES: CANADA TO 1867. D.J. Bercuson, K. Abel, D.H. Akenson, P.A. Baskerville, J.M. Bumsted and J.G. Reid. Toronto: McGraw - Hill Ryerson, 1992.NATION: CANADA SINCE CONFEDERATION. J.L. Granatstein. I.M. Abella, T.W. Acheson, D.J. Bercuson, R.C. Brown, H.B. Neatby. Toronto: McGraw - Hill Ryerson, 3rd. ed. 1990.ORIGINS: CANADIAN HISTORY TO CONFEDERATION. R.D. Francis, R. Jones, D.B. Smith. Toronto: Harcourt Brace & Co., 2nd ed. 1992.DESTINIES: CANADIAN HISTORY SINCE CONFEDERATION. R.D. Francis, R. Jones, D.B. Smith. Toronto: Harcourt Brace & Co., 2nd ed. 1992.THE PEOPLES OF CANADA: A PRE - CONFEDERATION HISTORY. J.M. Bumsted. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1992.HISTORY OF THE CANADIAN PEOPLES: BEGINNINGS TO 1867. M. Conrad, A. Finkel C. Jaenen. Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1993.HISTORY OF THE CANADIAN PEOPLES: 1867 TO THE PRESENT. A. Finkel, M. Conrad with V. Strong - Boag. Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1993.John Lutz, University of VictoriaWhen you think about it, textbooks for Canadian history courses represent the canon of Canadian history. Co - authored by carefully balanced teams of prominent scholars each synthesizing research in their fields of expertise, the texts either portray the forefront of contemporary scholarship or the scholarship of those who make a virtue out of deliberately and determinedly avoiding the new literature. From either point of view these are the flagship books of the profession.Textbooks usually outsell all other history books. Good ones, used well, also will be read more than the others. Moreover, they will be read by large numbers who will go through life without ever reading any other book on their national history. The texts, or the faded memory of them, will be used by many for the rest of their lives, to locate current events in their historical context.Yet, despite their importance, survey texts rarely get reviewed in academic journals. This lack of scholarly attention is more glaring now that there is more choice between texts than ever before, and a wide divergence in what is considered to be the fundamentals of Canadian history. In what follows, five teachers and a student of Canadian history review the current texts, all two - volume sets with the exception of Finlay and Sprague's single volume, The Structure of Canadian History.(f.1)Gerald Friesen, History Department, University of Manitoba was asked to put the texts in the context of debates around "Canadian culture." Christian Laville, from the Department de didactique, Faculte des sciences de l'education, Universite Laval was asked to consider the pedagogical effectiveness of the texts. Gail Cuthbert Brandt, principal of Renison College, University of Waterloo, takes a more general look but focuses particularly on the degree to which the texts reflect current feminist scholarship. Historian Kathryn McPherson of York University asks whether the texts promote critical thinking and enhance political awareness, as well as reflecting current debates in social history. Brian Young of McGill University's History Department focuses his attention on the treatment of Quebec in the texts. Finally, Jamie Disbrow tells us how students at the University of Victoria and at Camosun College in Victoria, where she took history at the undergraduate level, responded to the different texts.1. These reviews arise from panel presentations at the 1994 annual meeting in Calgary of the Canadian Historical Association.Gerald Friesen, University of ManitobaSeveral forces contributed to the sudden appearance of four textbooks within a decade and the various editions of a fifth. These forces include publisher, author, market and idea (a new "intellectual agenda"). Indeed the phenomenon can be compared to the publication of the Creighton, Mclnnis and Lower texts in the 1940s, and the subsequent Careless and Morton volumes along similar lines. …


Abstract The Siberian craton consists of crystalline rocks and superimposed Precambrian sedimentary rocks deposited in rift basins. Palaeozoic rocks, mainly carbonates, were deposited along the margins of the craton to form an outwardly younger concentric pattern that underlies an outward-thickening Mesozoic sedimentary section. The north and east margins of the Siberian craton subsequently became foreland basins created by compressional deformation during collision with other tectonic plates. The Tunguska Basin developed as a Palaeozoic rift/sag basin over Proterozoic rifts. The geological provinces along the north and east margins of the Siberian craton are immature with respect to exploration, so exploration-history analysis alone cannot be used for assessing undiscovered petroleum resources. Therefore, other areas from around the world having greater petroleum exploration maturity and similar geological characteristics, and which have been previously assessed, were used as analogues to aid in this assessment. The analogues included those of foreland basins and rift/sag basins that were later subjected to compression. The US Geological Survey estimated the mean undiscovered, technically recoverable conventional petroleum resources to be c. 28 billion barrels of oil equivalent, including c. 8 billion barrels of crude oil, 103 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 3 billion barrels of natural gas liquids.


Many years work on the development of magnetocumulative generators of ultra-high magnetic fields has led to the creation of the cascade MC-1 generator, in which a magnetic field of more than 28 MGs was recorded in 1998. This device consists of a generator solenoid (the first cascade) with internal and external diameters of 175 mm and 200 mm respectively and a length of 500 mm, and two internal cascades with diameters of 28/spl times/35 mm and 12/spl times/17 mm and a length of /spl sim/200 mm. One-cascade system of explosive compression, consisting of the main HE-charge with diameters of 360/spl times/650 mm, a length of 350 mm and a mass of /spl sim/170 kg, steel cylinder-impactor with an external diameter of 356 mm and a thickness of 7 mm, and internal HE-charge with diameters of 200/spl times/300 mm and a length of 280 mm, is located on the outside of the solenoid. The MC-1 generator solenoid is powered with a current of 4-5 MA. MC-1 generator operation time (without powering time and HE-charge detonation time) is about 15 /spl mu/s, maximum liner implosion velocity is more than 6 km/s, the magnetic field derivative reaches values of /spl sim/5 10/sub 13/ Gs/s. The diameter of the final field volume is 24 mm, its length is /spl sim/100 mm.


Areas of fresh and brackish groundwaters have been delineated in an area underlain by granulitic rocks using electrical resistivity method. A sharp boundary between fresh and brackish waters has been identified on one side of the area. Sedimentological studies have indicated that the area having brackish to saline groundwaters of chloride-/sulphate type is covered by clays of marine origin. A hydrogeological boundary with limited permeability has been identified, which seems to help the fresh water area from getting contaminated by the saline waters. The study shows that the saline groundwaters may be the result of marine environment that may have existed in the area during the geological past. It is observed that the aquifer resistivity pattern of the area compares well with the electrical conductivity pattern of the groundwater.


OBJECTIVE
A national survey was conducted to identify occupational therapists' current attitudes and values in their working relationships with parents of preschool children with developmental disabilities. This study replicated a 1987 national survey that examined therapists' relationships with parents of preschool children with cerebral palsy.

METHOD
Surveys were sent to a random sample of 400 therapists, with 199 returned from respondents who identified themselves as working with preschool children with developmental disabilities. After calculating descriptive statistics for each item in the survey, a one-way analysis of variance was performed to test for differences based on four demographic variables.

RESULTS
Respondents reported that working with parents, more than any other aspect of intervention, had the greatest impact on the progress of a child with disabilities. Consistent with the 1987 survey, respondents believed that parents focus on their own adjustment to their child's disability as well as on their child's progress more than any other issues. Therapists continue to report satisfaction when generating positive change for child and parent through education and use of clinical knowledge and skill.

CONCLUSION
Results suggest that efforts to foster family-centered intervention in occupational therapy educational programs are increasing therapists' confidence and skills in working with parents of children with disabilities. Implications for occupational therapy practice and education include a need for therapists to expand their knowledge and expertise in working effectively with vulnerable families. Educators need to focus on teaching strategies not only to refine the role of occupational therapy as a direct treatment provider, but also to incorporate creative ways to deal with the psychosocial issues of parents and families.


This thesis describes published work undertaken over the last 17 years. The main focus is the development and utilization of the microscale combustion calorimeter (MCC) and how it helps us understand the flammability of materials.

A reproducible way to quantitatively assess material flammability was needed. The simplest approach is based on the molecular structure of a material to determine which moieties influence the flammability. This approach is based on material properties that can be measured using small-scale thermal analysis methods such as Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA), Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), and the MCC. Properties such as thermal stability, heat of gasification, and heat of combustion provide key information about materials' flammability.

Tests such as LOI, UL-94 and other Bunsen burner type tests provide pass/fail type results. These types of tests are not quantitative and are dependent on physical properties and extrinsic parameters such as sample geometry and orientation. They do not provide a true measure of flammability, and formulations can be optimized to pass the test even though they are highly flammable.

A more quantitative approach is to use larger bench scale flammability tests such as cone calorimeter and Ohio State University (OSU) fire calorimeter. Although these tests are also dependent on the physical properties and test geometry, they measure properties such as burning rates, mass loss rates, and combustion efficiency under different imposed fire scenarios from which material properties can be derived.

The ultimate flammability test for a material is to subject it to a fire in a real-life scenario where other materials are present, a full-scale fire test. These tests can involve a single item or combinations of items. These tests are highly dependent on physical and material properties and are useful for making direct comparisons of one scenario to the next, for properties like flame spread and time to flashover.

Measurements have been made using all of the thermal analysis and fire test methodologies listed above. Correlations between the test methods have been drawn and the theory relating them derived. Predictive methods for estimating polymer flammability from molecular structure have been formulated using a molar group contribution approach. Methods for predicting fire performance in the bench scale tests from the small scale test measurements have also been derived. Modelling the bench scale fire performance in the quantitative tests as well as determining a probability for the rating in the pass/fail type bench scale tests for a range of polymeric materials has been undertaken. This type of work in the small- and bench-scale has helped identify materials that perform well when subjected to the harshest fire conditions in the full-scale. The ultimate goal being to save lives by preventing deaths due to fire through the development of more fire-safe materials.


In this paper, we investigate the impact of optical crosstalk on our recently proposed indoor gigabit optical wireless (OW) communication system incorporating wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). A theoretical model that allows this impact to be assessed has been proposed. The analytical results are validated via experiments. We show that the power penalty due to crosstalk in our proposed indoor WDM OW system is lower compared to that in the conventional optical fiber communication systems. In addition, it is found that the power penalty due to crosstalk is lower for the higher speed system since the receiver preamplifier-induced noise dominates the noise process. Finally, the maximum error-free beam footprint for different levels of optical crosstalk has been investigated. The results show that, for the 10- and 12.5-Gb/s systems, the maximum error-free beam footprint is only reduced by ~ 5 cm, even with comparatively strong crosstalk.


A confusional, delirious state occurring at twilight and into the evening/night has been reported in patients with dementia. This disturbance has been linked to arousal disorders with cortical deactivation. We describe a woman aged 76 years affected by severe insomnia with aberrant nocturnal behaviors, whose appearance preceded the clinical evolution that allowed a diagnosis of probable dementia with Lewy bodies (LBD). Nocturnal agitation, wandering, and falls out of bed were reported. Structured visual hallucinations (her husband, unknown people or dead relatives) were described. A neuropsychological evaluation 18 months before our observation revealed only mild reduction in short-term verbal memory. At our observation, a mild hypokinetic-rigid parkinsonism with right-side prevalence of motor symptoms (UPDRS part III: 21) was present, mildly improved (UPDRS part III: 12) after one week of levodopa therapy (300 mg/day). Diurnal fluctuations of cognition with confusional spells and excessive sleepiness were present; neuropsychological evaluations (24-hour test–retest interval) documented day-today fluctuations, MMSE score of 20.7 in more alert state and deficits (equivalent scores, calculated from the raw scores, considered pathological when equal to or less than one) in logic-executive (Weigl's Sorting Test, Raven's colored matrices 47, frontal assessment battery, phonemic and semantic verbal fluency) and visuo-constructional abilities (Rey-Osterrieth complex figure immediate and delayed copying). Brain MRI revealed diffuse cortical atrophy, SPECT imaging showed decreased presynaptic dopamine reuptake in the putamen and in the caudate nucleus. Video-polysomnography (video-PSG) demonstrated severe disorganization of sleep with subcontinuous wakefulness interrupted by short periods of NREM sleep (Fig. 1) and, during wakefulness, recurrent anomalous movements of the whole body or parts of the body, including rhythmic scratching of the head, nose, pelvic region, and legs; at times the patient attempted to climb over the bars applied to the bed or got on her hands and knees (Video 1). These manifestations occurred unchanged every night until rivastigmine 3 mg was administered: video-PSG documented considerable restoration of sleep, without confusional manifestations, in the presence of REM sleep without atonia. Three months after discharge, follow-up video-PSG confirmed partial restoration of sleep structure without abnormal behaviors. Fifteen months after a fourth follow-up video-PSG confirmed the organization of nocturnal sleep into NREM/REM periods, although insomnia persisted. A short confusional arousal (Fig. 1, black arrow) was documented. The first night of rivastigmine discontinuation, a fifth video-PSG documented the reappearance of complete insomnia with confusional behaviors: the patient repeatedly got out and even fell out of bed, fiddled with her clothing, and the recording device detaching the leads. Rivastigmine 3 mg twice a day was reintroduced leading to sudden remission of night-time symptoms, confirmed at a clinical follow up 12 months later. The night-time sleeplessness observed in this patient with incessant movements and wandering had begun before a picture of dementia appeared, and were reminiscent of sundowning. Sundowning consists of sleep-wake pattern disruption and behavioral abnormalities, peaking in the early evening and continuing into the night. There are no reports of severe insomnia with confusional behaviors as heralding symptoms of LBD. In familial alpha-synucleinopathy, insomnia and sleep-related behavioral abnormalities (vocalizations, aggressive movements, falls) were reported, based on patient histories, to antedate the parkinsonian syndrome, but as independent features. Nocturnal paroxysmal episodes in the form of REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) have been shown to harbinger synucleinopathies and are so frequent in LBD that it has been included in the diagnostic criteria as a feature suggestive of a diagnosis. However, RBD is by definition an abnormal behavior emerging during REM sleep, whereas in the described subject the confusional behaviors occurred during a state that was not scorable as REM sleep. Although sleep stage differentiation can be challenging in extrapyramidal disorders, trained scorers can reliably distinguish REM sleep from wakefulness and NREM sleep: all the motor-behavioral manifestations recorded in the described subject occurred during clearly identifiable wakefulness. RBD can be deemed a simpler manifestation of status dissociatus, which is a clinical and polygraphic condition in which the various states of being (i.e., wakefulness, NREM and REM sleep) are simultaneously present. In this case, collapse of state determinants results in the inability to identify conventional stages during sleep. However, we cannot exclude with certainty the existence of covert REM sleep during other states of being, namely during wakefulness, which might be responsible for the behavioral abnormalities observed. On the other hand, in a similar way, it has been proposed that sundowning is related to a state of conflict between elements of wakefulness and NREM sleep; in this state, the cortex, having prepared for sleep, is unable to process correctly Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this article. Potential conflict of interest: Nothing to report. Published online 19 February 2010 in Wiley InterScience (www. interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/mds.22726


Common reinforcement learning algorithms assume access to a numeric feedback signal. The numeric feedback contains a high amount of information and can be maximized efficiently. However, the definition of a numeric feedback signal can be difficult in practise due to several limitations and badly defined values may lead to an unintended outcome. For humans, it is usually easier to define qualitative feedback signals than quantitative. Hence, we want to solve reinforcement learning problems with a qualitative signal, potentially capable of overcoming several of the limitations of numeric feedback. Preferences have several advantages over other qualitative settings, like ordinal feedback or advice. Preferences are scale-free and do not require assumptions over the optimal outcome. However, preferences are difficult to use for solving sequential decision problems, because it is unknown which decisions are responsible for the observed preference. Hence, we analyze different approaches for learning from preferences and show the design principles that can be used, as well as the advantages and problems that occur. We also survey the field of preference-based reinforcement learning and categorize the algorithms according to the design principles. Efficiency is of special interest in this setting, as it is important to keep the amount of required preferences low, because they depend on human evaluation. Hence, our focus is on efficient use of the preferences. It can be stated that it is important to be able to generalize the obtained preferences, as this keeps the amount of required preferences low. Therefore, we consider methods that are able to generalize the obtained preferences to models not yet evaluated. However, this introduces uncertain feedback and the exploration/exploitation problem already known from classical reinforcement learning has to be considered with the preferences in mind. We show how to efficiently solve this dual exploration problem by interleaving both tasks, in an undirected manner. We use undirected exploration methods, because they scale better to high-dimensional spaces. Furthermore, human feedback has to be assumed to be error-prone and we analyze the problems that arise when using human evaluation. We show that noise is the most substantial problem when dealing with human preferences and present a solution to this problem.


Just as the problems often experienced by the subjects Dw, he felt that he felt scared and less confident when must appear to invitations to attend events held by the province in which he felt that he saw the future are those that have a JV high office, so he must perform as much and as good as possible so as not disappointing that attended the event. Sometimes the subject will feel relaxed but when it would appear suddenly, the subject felt his head would float and accompanied by a cold perspiration. Another case with that experienced by subjects Nt, she felt insecure and nervous just at the stage and the show lasted, but when he followed the lessons and practice feel calm and relaxed. It's just that she often felt tired and easily tired, that's because the subject has indeed physically weak, although so do not build an excitement back even consider the subject follow-class fashion show subjects could spur him to be change kepribadianya of children who closed a child that is open in everything. The latter is the subject of Da, was first subject to follow lessons fashion show she felt reluctant to follow, because the subjects felt less confident themselves to him it is all due to physical abnormalities in her contained area of her eye, because one of his eyes slightly cross-eyed, that's which causes the subject to feel embarrassed to perform and compete with temantemanya. Sometimes the subject of seeing her friends who were practicing the distance only, but will eventually end up the subject of the course is by itself. Efforts to increase self-confidence in children SLBN Pembina National-level place in the area of Lawang, is not easy as SLBN is conceivable because we encounter many different kinds of children that have a backdrop and a very unique personality. Most of they have a mental disability and physical especially numerous in-class
fashion show. To increase confidence in these children especially those experiencing speech and hearing disorders must be extra hard to build confidence in them, especially those who frequently experiencing various problems both at school and dilingkup family. Here is how the role of a teacher or coach to be able to provide and instill trust from an early age in children in order they feel no different from those of other children who have normality, so that the insecurity that had once menginggapinya not so great. The efforts of a teacher to foster and instill confidence in a person is not easy, but nevertheless would not would we as educators must continue to try to still help to they make the kids who dared to appear in public. One more thing that should be emphasized here that teach and educate these children must have an extra patience may be needed by them. Given these children, most of them had abnormalities physical and mental development requires us to be more patient as a teacher. Moreover the most importantly be able to understand, because they do not like a normal child lainnya.pengajar will provide the best for their students to instill confidence in him. Kesimpulanya is unktu increase confidence that good will could be developed if often involve themselves in in an activity that can be displayed in front of crowds. Just as experienced by children who attended one lesson art, he felt prior to follow lessons that instill confidence self, from the first they had felt unable to be performed or have courage enough to be like their normal children other. Even when they've started following these lessons sometimes they also still feel shy to appear in public much less joking and joked fellow also spelled out its themes and even their children who sometimes open and sometimes closed depending on his mood at the time. They also sometimes difficult to be able to follow each lesson given by their students. They generally liked the lesson is, just that they fear to mengekaspresikan himself. It was seen once during training, they were very enthusiastic but at the start turn one by one pupil demonstrate one of the poses that they have learned, they are reluctant to memperagakanya in public or in front of her friends. Similarly, the experienced by some children who have a low confidence level they should really be sharpened to be able to appear confident with herself own, as do various kinds of regular exercise be it outside the classroom and in the classroom. That way they will not feel bored to fast continue to follow lessons that instill how he should be able to perform confidently wherever they are, not only in school and on time
learning course. However, confidence is essential to them when and anywhere, even if they do not like other normal children, they must believe on her for as much as possible to have strong mental strength and resistance against all kinds of things that they build an become discouraged. To be able to continue to instill their confidence in us as educators must continue to provide various training routines to get them used to how the way they walked and looked at the audience while they are training. That way they will also be used to adapt to new people newly met wherever they are. Kebenyakan of those Negri SLB Pembina attended the National In Lawang, experienced the same thing ie they felt less confident if they are in public places, but some of those who have attended art lessons as fashion show, many of them who have undergone a change that is already not experience inferior, feeling embarrassed when meeting people and even a sense of trembling which is often experienced by those already no longer perceived, they already feel comfortable and begin to change the way how to behave like normal children other. According to Hakim (2002: 136), that schools can be regarded as environments that were most responsible for can develop a child's confidence after the family environment. In terms of socialization may be said that schools play a role more important than environmental families are more limited number of individuals.


The presence of abandoned housing project in Malaysia has present anxiety to various party including Federal Government and buyers. The Malaysian economy has grown 6.2% as announced by Bank Negara in its 2005 Annual Report, despite a faster rate and strong growth apparently abandoned housing project continues to be a bane of the industry, albeit on the declining. Expectation at this time is to minimize the number of abandoned housing projects to propel Malaysia into developed status as articulated in Vision 2020. This paper describes a study on factors causing the abandonment of housing projects and has been conducted based on literature review , interview with the top management in the relevant parties involved and case study. Its is aimed to identify root causes that lead to housing project abandonment, the strategy that had been taken, and the advantages and disadvantages of the existing practice as well as to propose enhancement to the present approach. The finding revealed that incompetent and poor financial management of the developers, financial difficulties as a result of inadequate cash flow, lack of feasibilities studies, competition of new residential projects, inattractive marketing strategies, inexperineced developers, higher financing cost and critical material shortage are categorised as important factors affecting abandoned housing project. Beside the said factors and analysis on the present strategies and practice, abandoned housing project is still exist due to several undisclosed causes such as lack of enforcement for control and monitoring, limtitation of juridisction as well as unavailability of Home Indemnity Insurance. These had caused the revival of abandoned housing project to be hold back. At the end of the study a recommendation has been proposed and it is expected that it will able to be used for improving the present approach of reviving abandoned housing project by taking into consideration the undisclosed root causes.


This article offers a critical reflection on the Programme "Family 500+" introduced by the Polish government and aimed at improving the financial situation of Polish families in order to increase the fertility rate. Families have been supported with the benefit of 500 PLN given for each child under 18. The article presents the results of the research carried out in 2019 on the representatives of the households (N= 3347). The interviewees most frequently pointed to the increase of the quality of living conditions and the increase in the consumption of goods and services. Approximately 80% of the interviewees have noticed the fact that the benefit boosted potential development of children by enabling them to participate in the extracurricular activities and visit leisure centers. 64,7% of the interviewees believe that the Programme let them have savings and 17,8% of respondents claim that the benefit will not contribute to their savings but will be consumed on a day-to-day basis. Despite the initial assumptions of the Programme , the policy of pronatalism was not achieved as the fertility rate did not reach the assumed level. It must be stated that even though the legislative activities constitute a milestone in the Polish pro-family policy these solutions have many disadvantages. The Programme should not be the main tool of the Polish demographic policy but just supplementary.


This paper presents a first implementation of a new module to calculate the impacts of emission reductions of air pollutants on radiative forcing into IIASA's GAINS (Greenhouse gas – Air pollution Interactions and Synergies) model. The approach extends the multi-pollutant/multi-effect approach of the GAINS model that has been used for air pollution impacts (i.e., human health and ecosystems impacts) to also consider impacts on near-term climate change from emissions of five short-lived substances.
For the initial implementation presented in this report source-receptor relationships have been developed that quantify the impacts of reductions of the various emission substances in each European country on instantaneous radiative forcing, calculated over the northern Hemisphere, the EMEP model domain, the Arctic and Alpine glaciers. These source-receptor relationships have been derived from calculations of the EMEP Eulerian atmospheric dispersion model, and employed normalized radiative forcing in each grid cell as estimated by CICERO.
The GAINS optimization module has been extended such that (a) radiative forcing for different target regions resulting from emission reductions that are optimized for health and environmental impacts of air pollutants can be calculated, (b) radiative forcing can be introduced as a separate constraint in the optimization (replacing targets for health and environmental impacts of air pollutants), and (c) combined strategies that meet constraints on radiative forcing as well as on health and environmental impacts at least costs can be identified. A sample of initial calculations is presented in this report, illustrating the relations between different environmental targets and radiative forcing. It turns out that in general cost-effective improvements of health impacts from PM2.5 and of acidification will increase radiative forcing by up to 150-200 mWm-2 in the EMEP region. In contrast, improvements in eutrophication will hardly affect radiative forcing. Furthermore, there are cheap ways to avoid some of the trade-offs between health effect and radiative forcing targets.
This initial analysis focuses on instantaneous radiative forcing over the EMEP domain. Input data and optimization routines have also been developed for carbon deposition on the Arctic and on Alpine glaciers. Analysis of the impacts of alternative emission control scenarios on these receptor regions, and optimization for such targets, will require additional work.
It needs to be emphasized that the current analysis is based on an initial data set of the impacts of radiative forcing, which only considers the direct effects of aerosols on radiative forcing. It does not include indirect effects of aerosols (for which an accurate quantification is burdened with significant uncertainties), and ignores changes in radiative forcing that result from changes in ozone burdens in the atmosphere caused by cuts of NOx and VOC emissions.


This paper presents a survey of current energy efficient technologies that could drive the IoT revolution while examining critical areas for energy improvements in IoT sensor nodes. The paper reviews improvements in emerging energy techniques which promise to revolutionize the IoT landscape. Moreover, the current work also studies the sources of energy consumption by the IoT sensor nodes in a network and the metrics adopted by various researchers in optimizing the energy consumption of these nodes. Increasingly, researchers are exploring better ways of sourcing sufficient energy along with optimizing the energy consumption of IoT sensor nodes and making these energy sources green. Energy harvesting is the basis of this new energy source. The harvested energy could serve both as the principal and alternative energy source of power and thus increase the energy constancy of the IoT systems by providing a green, sufficient and optimal power source among IoT devices. Communication of IoT nodes in a heterogeneous IoT network consumes a lot of energy and the energy level in the nodes depletes with time. There is the need to optimize the energy consumption of such nodes and the current study discusses this as well.


Turkey is distinguished with property of elements of enough power, which makes it a regional power: the location, the area, the population, and the strong economy. The creed, identity, skills and natural resources, all these factors assist Turkey to prove its domination and power in a rising shape, but its strategic concept did not appear before the present Turkish government comes in 2002 and may be, because of the dispersion of power elements in the state. The Turkish policies at that stage could be described in confronting internal, regional and international issues. It is a policy of running the variety, or (management of diversity) and from the other side, (policy of crises management). Turkey witnesses ever since discussions about the significance of the concealed true power of Turkey in the field of its international relations, and to which extent it invests them in its diplomatic relations. These discussions amount between two trends; one attempts to found legitimacy of the concept of Turkey to remain mortgaged to the connected policies with centers of powers formed outside. That is by showing Turkey's level of concealed power less than level, which it should be on, through frozen operations of evaluation connected with stage situations. The second is a trend presenting excessive optimistic estimations, mortgaging that Turkey can explode its power strictly, without new analysis and dynamic to the elements of the changing and static power which Turkey owns in the shadow of the new international situation. Ankara sticked to neutrality at the beginning of the Arab incidents towards the Tunisian Revolt in December 2010. But with the hasting of incidents in Egypt after one month from that date Ardoghan initiated by calling former president Husni Mobarak to withdraw, and Abdullah Ghoul was the first president to visit Egypt after the collapse of Mobarak, the thing that duplicated the popularity that Turkey obtains on the Egyptian sphere, and it is what was reflected in receiving Ardoghan at his visit to Egypt in September, 2011. He paid a visit heading a big delegation of businessmen. This assured Turkey's desire to enlarge its economic relation with the biggest Arab state. At the start of the Libyan Revolt in February 2011, Turkey hesitated to act. Turkey had big investments with Al-Quaddafi's regime. Therefore, it assured this significance to reach a political settlement of the Libyan crisis, at the beginning of incidents, fore-warning from seriousness of fighting like that which happened in Iraq before, the thing that harmed Turkey's picture inside Libya. But after passing the resolution of the Security Council 1973, which allowed forcing an area of air-navigation prohibition over Libya, Ankara's stand was changed by sending sea-forces to participate in the NATO operations there, beside the participation in the human aid efforts. Also, the break- out of Bahrain Revolt in February 2011 placed Turkey among numerous accounts. Turkey had large economic interests with states of the Gulf Cooperative Council, and had to respect the security specialty of Gulf region, and it did not wish to encourage Iran to interfere in the Gulf affairs. Though, Ankara wanted to rise its diplomatic role in an attempt to quiet the Shia't –Sunni tensions in the region, that harm its special interests. Ankara presented mediation.


In the context of the major changes that the the Museum of the Romanian Peasant is currently undergoing, we decided to publish an extraordinarily daring article written by Irina Nicolau in 1994, at a time when the "young" MRP she had co-founded together with Horia Bernea was experiencing another era of change and challenges as it made a fresh start after the fall of communism. With the bright reflections of young PhD candidate Dominique Belkis serving as her mirror, as in a dialogue between master and disciple, Irina Nicolau tells her story about the scars left by the communist decades on Eastern European countries and, more specifically, on Romanian culture. Being aware of the necessity to rethink the past in order to stage it in a valid discourse for the present and for the future as well, the ethnologist—who relies on intelligent emotions—speaks of mother-like museums in opposition to father-like ones, of the absent museums of her adolescence and the imaginary bridges she built in order to reach them, of the thirst for knowledge under a rigidly prohibitive political regime. More than twenty years old, Nicolau's and Belkis's reflections prove to be as valid and as topical in the present. But what would an antidote museum look like today? And, above all, could the Missionary Museum of the MRP's early days be a visionary one?


Objective: The aim of the study was to examine correlations of the plasma levels of soluble (s) CD44 standard (std), and a disintegrin and metalloproteinase (ADAM) 10, with those of the soluble Tyro3, Axl, and Mer receptors (sTAMRs) and their ligands (GAS6 and PROS1) in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and other liver diseases.Method: The subjects were 55 patients with HCC, 4 with fulminant hepatitis (FH), 18 with acute hepatitis (AH), 10 with chronic hepatitis (CH), 20 with liver cirrhosis\ (LC), and 20 healthy normal controls (NCs). Plasma levels of sCD44std, ADAM10, sTAMRs, GAS6, PROS1, des-γ-carboxy prothrombin (DCP), and des-γ-carboxy GAS6 were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.Results: The levels of sCD44std, ADAM10, sTAMRs, and Gas6 were significantly higher in HCC and other liver diseases (except CH) compared to those in NCs, but PROS1 levels in these diseases were significantly lower than those in NCs. These were significant positive correlations of sCD44std levels with ADAM10, and sMer levels in HCC and other liver diseases. SAxl was lower in stage HCC than in stage HCC, but GAS6 increased with progression of HCC stages. There was a significant positive correlation between the levels of DCP and des-γ-carboxy GAS6 in HCC. The subjects were roughly classified into three groups of HCC, inflammatory diseases, and normal controls using ratios of TAMRs and their ligands.Conclusion: The measurement of these blood factors facilitates a unified view of HCC therapy