Results from our laboratory have suggested a pathway involving angiotensin II type 1 (AT(1)) receptors and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in angiogenesis induced by electrical stimulation. The present study investigated if similar mechanisms underlie the angiogenesis induced by short-term exercise training. Seven days before training and throughout the training period, male Sprague-Dawley rats received either captopril or losartan in their drinking water. Rats underwent a 3-day treadmill training protocol. The tibialis anterior and gastrocnemius muscles were harvested under anesthesia and lightly fixed in formalin (vessel density) or frozen in liquid nitrogen (VEGF expression). In controls, treadmill training resulted in a significant increase in vessel density in all muscles studied. However, the angiogenesis induced by exercise was completely blocked by either losartan or captopril. Western blot analysis showed that VEGF expression was increased in the exercised control group, and both losartan and captopril blocked this increase. The role of VEGF was directly confirmed using a VEGF-neutralizing antibody. These results confirm the role of angiotensin II and VEGF in angiogenesis induced by exercise.


The Geography of Urbanism in Roman Asia Minor investigates how Roman urbanism manifested itself in Asia Minor during the first three centuries CE, particularly with regards to its spatial patterning over the landscape and the administrative, economic and cultural functions cities fulfilled, and how cities developed in terms of size and monumentality. It also addresses to what extent this was a result of political and socio-cultural and economic context and to what extent 'structural determinants', such as the physical topography, agricultural potential and climate (including the shifts/changes therein) influenced the observed patterns. As Asia Minor was already dotted by cities long before the Romans got a hold on this area during the second century BCE, this work compares urbanism of the first three centuries CE with the patterns of cities during the first millennium BCE (Classical and Hellenistic period particularly) and the Byzantine and Ottoman patterns, creating a long term perspective. The book contains an appendix with the information for the 500 cities and 1000 villages in Asia Minor.


Interdisciplinary geophysical, geochemical and botanical studies were performed to recognize the problem of salinity of Quaternary sediments in the place, where woolly rhinoceroses were discovered at the beginning of the 20th century. Geoelectric methods (high resolution geoelectric research with electromagnetic conductivity meter) enabled construction of maps of the distribution of conductivity of near-surface sediments. Variation of conductivity with depth was recognized with penetrometer-based geoelectric measurements. Measured conductivity mainly depends on the level of mineralization (salinity) of underground water filling the pores and voids of poorly consolidated Quaternary sediments and partly underlying Miocene strata. Several samples were taken from geological boreholes. The analysis of these cores enabled estimation of salt (chloride ion) content in the solid phase of sediments. This content varies from place to place and with depth in an unpredictable way. The highest values reached 8.5 wt%. Generally, on the basis of a qualitative comparison, the salinity data gained from sampled cores correlate with distribution of apparent conductivity obtained with geoelectric methods. Nevertheless, in some places there is a discrepancy between geophysical and geochemical data, especially for penetrometer versus borehole data. It may be partly explained by an unavoidable difference in location of the geological borehole and penetrometer site (technically this cannot be the same place). During botanical field studies a group of vascular plants growing on saline soils (halophytes) was found. Halophytes indicate a higher salt concentration in the soil. Their aggregations are extremely rare in the Carpathian region. The pattern of halophytes distribution reflected the presence of saline water sources, and their flows and soils affected by them. Generally, the distribution of halophytes showed a good correlation with the distribution of high-conductivity anomalies determined with the surface geoelectric survey.


Richard Rorty believes that philosophy in the West is the result of a conflict between religion and science. In fact, philosophy seeks to clarify the border between religion and science, so neither of them would be able to overstep its explanatory or predictive potentialities. He remarks that we do not have such a thing as philosophy in the East. This paper intends to ask two questions: what is the nature of the comparable conflict in an Eastern country, Iran, and what are its effects on aesthetic studies? I will draw on the idea of the conflict between theology and mysticism. The main difference between these two sides is the methods each uses to achieve the truth: literal and symbolic interpretation. This conflict happens inside religion and not between religion and science. Consequently, all aspects of society would assemble under the influence of a single paradigm, religion, that dominates all other aspects, including philosophy and science and their practitioners. Nevertheless, with the introduction of modern science and philosophy, and also the historical exhaustion of mysticism, there is a new type of conflict. Now, religion finds itself jointly in conflict with both modern philosophy and science. What is at the center of this conflict is aesthetics.


Background The attribution of personal relevance, i.e. relating internal and external stimuli to establish a sense of belonging, is a common phenomenon in daily life. Although previous research demonstrated a relationship between reward and personal relevance, their exact neuronal relationship including the impact of personality traits remains unclear. Methodology/Principal Findings Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we applied an experimental paradigm that allowed us to explore the neural response evoked by reward and the attribution of personal relevance separately. We observed different brain regions previously reported to be active during reward and personal relevance, including the bilateral caudate nucleus and the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (PACC). Additional analysis revealed activations in the right and left insula specific for the attribution of personal relevance. Furthermore, our results demonstrate a negative correlation between signal changes in both the PACC and the left anterior insula during the attribution of low personal relevance and the personality dimension novelty seeking. Conclusion/Significance While a set of subcortical and cortical regions including the PACC is commonly involved in reward and personal relevance, other regions like the bilateral anterior insula were recruited specifically during personal relevance. Based on our correlation between novelty seeking and signal changes in both regions during personal relevance, we assume that the neuronal response to personally relevant stimuli is dependent on the personality trait novelty seeking.


"A Short History of Decay (1949)" is E. M. Cioran's nihilistic and witty collection of aphoristic essays concerning the nature of civilization in mid-twentieth-century Europe. Touching upon Man's need to worship, the feebleness of God, the downfall of the Ancient Greeks and the melancholy baseness of all existence, Cioran's pieces are pessimistic in the extreme, but also display a beautiful certainty that renders them delicate, vivid, and memorable. Illuminating and brutally honest, "A Short History of Decay" dissects Man's decadence in a remarkable series of moving and beautiful pieces.


A major historical phenomenon of our century, exile has been a focal point for reflections about individual and cultural identity and problems of nationalism, racism, and war. Whether emigres, exiles, expatriates, refugees, or nomads, these people all experience a distance from their homes and often their native languages. Exile and Creativity brings together the widely varied perspectives of nineteen distinguished European and American scholars and cultural critics to ask: Is exile a falling away from a source of creativity associated with the wholeness of home and one's own language, or is it a spur to creativity?

In essays that range chronologically from the Renaissance to the 1990s, geographically from the Danube to the Andes, and historically from the Inquisition to the Holocaust, the complexities and tensions of exile and the diversity of its experiences are examined. Recognizing exile as an interior experience as much as a physical displacement, this collection discusses such varied topics as intellectual exile and seventeenth-century French literature; different versions of home and of the novel in the writings of Bakhtin and Lukacs; the displacement of James Joyce and Clarice Lispector; a young journalist's meeting with James Baldwin in the south of France; Jean Renoir's Hollywood years; and reflections by the descendents of European emigres. Strikingly, many of the essays are themselves the work of exiles, bearing out once more the power of the personal voice in scholarship.

With the exception of the contribution by Henry Louis Gates Jr., these essays were originally published in a special double issue of Poetics Today in 1996. Exile and Creativity will engage a range of readers from those whose specific interests include the problems of displacement and diaspora and the European Holocaust to those whose broad interests include art, literary and cultural studies, history, film, and the nature of human creativity.

Contributors. Zygmunt Bauman, Janet Bergstrom, Christine Brooke-Rose, Helene Cixous, Tibor Dessewffy, Marianne Hirsch, Denis Hollier, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Linda Nochlin, Leo Spitzer, Susan Rubin Suleiman, Thomas Pavel, Doris Sommer, Nancy Huston, John Neubauer, Ernst van Alphen, Alicia Borinsky, Svetlana Boym, Jacqueline Chenieux-Gendron


The objective of this study was to propose Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models and non-parametric Malmquist indexes to evaluate the efficiency of 11 livestock farms in the Pantanal region. These farms took out a loan from 'Fundo Constitucional de Financiamento do Centro-Oeste' - FCO (Constitutional Financial Fund for the Midwest), a line of credit for financing heifer retention. The beneficiaries were the farmers whose properties met the following conditions: farms located in the plain of Pantanal, with at least 50% of native pasture; farms that were part of managerial capacity building projects intended to ensure better management and animal performance indexes; and farms with pasture areas where the activity could potentially evolve. The management of the loan on 11 farms were studied in relation to the technology introduced in the period from 2004 to 2008. Five properties presented technical efficiency below 1, that is, the technical management efficiency with the objective to increase the cattle through heifer retention and the purchase of higher genetic quality heifers was not achieved. However, the index of technological progress was above 1 on all tested farms, which means that technology was in fact incorporated in all properties, which resulted in total factor productivity growth on all farms. The main objective was fully met, even on the technically inefficient farms.


We examine the determinants of low income transitions using first-order Markov models that control for initial conditions effects (those found to be poor in the base year may be a nonrandom sample) and for attrition (panel retention may also be non-random). Our econometric model is a form of endogeneous switching regression, and is fitted using simulated maximum likelihood methods. The estimates, derived from British panel data for the 1990s, indicate that there is substantial genuine state dependence in poverty. We also provide estimates of low income transition rates and lengths of poverty and non-poverty spells for persons of different types.


This article argues that opposition political parties can play an important role in determining when and how a democracy exits a small war. Recent theoretical and empirical research on small wars has further uncovered the restrictions and constraints that democratic societies place on their government's war strategies. However, the mechanisms through which public opinion constrains and pressures government strategies have received relatively less academic attention. This article examines the role that opposition political parties play in providing an avenue through which society can shape foreign policy—namely, the exiting from small wars. It argues that opposition political parties can be instrumental in determining democracies' war termination in three ways: through 'elite cuing', applying electoral pressure, or winning an election and assuming government.


The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) is a nonprofit, non-political organization that does innovative agricultural research and capacity building for sustainable development with a wide array of partners across the globe. ICRISAT's mission is to help empower 600 million poor people to overcome hunger, poverty and a degraded environment in the dry tropics through better agriculture. ICRISAT belongs to the Alliance of Centers of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).


We present a striking new Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observation of the rich cluster Abell 2218 taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. HST's restored image quality reveals a sizable number of gravitationally lensed features in this cluster, significantly more than had been identified by using ground-based telescopes. The brightest arcs are resolved by HST and show internal features that enable us to identify multiply imaged examples, confirming and improving the mass models of the cluster determined from ground-based observations. Although weak lensing has been detected statistically in this and other clusters from ground-based data, the superlative resolution of HST enables us to individually identify weakly distorted images more reliably than hitherto, with important consequences for their redshift determination. Using an improved mass model for the cluster calibrated with available spectroscopy for the brightest arcs, we demonstrate how inversion of the lensing model can be used to yield the redshift distribution of ~ 80 faint arclets to R ≃ 25. We present a new formalism for estimating the uncertainties in this inversion method and review prospects for interpreting our results and verifying the predicted redshifts.


In order to answer questions about how much rain fell during Hurricane Floyd and its input into rivers researchers looked at satellite river gauge and radar data. They took a radar map and put it into a GIS with watershed maps and the other data. The location of rainfall was tracked through gauges and much of it was interpolated. The extent of the storm totals were compared using these different ways measuring rainfall. For the Tar River rainfall input measures were close to the gauge measures. Researchers used a calculation in places where there weren't gauges or radar to estimate discharge. Greenville received 22.9 inches of rain during Floyd. Satellites measured rainfall over the ocean to get the full picture of rainfall during a storm. Extreme rainfall events are increasing due to climate change. The 1999 season was not the highest but part of an upward trend. Prior to Dennis and Floyd there was an extended pool of warm ocean water and this led to increased rainfall. Rainfall rankings are a measure of relative climate change and show that Floyd was extreme in the global sense. Similar global rankings that include storms from the past may be helpful in predicting the future.


This paper reconciles two widely used decompositions of GDP into trend and cycle that yield starkly different results. The Beveridge-Nelson (BN) decomposition implies that a stochastic trend accounts for most of the variation in output, whereas the unobserved-components (UC) implies cyclical variation is dominant. Which is correct has broad implications for the relative importance of real versus nominal shocks. We show the difference arises from the restriction imposed in UC that trend and cycle innovations are uncorrelated. When this restriction is relaxed, the UC decomposition is identical to the BN decomposition. Furthermore, the zero-correlation restriction can be rejected for U.S. quarterly GDP, with the estimated correlation being -0.9.


By making photonic crystals in ferroelectric and ferromagnetic materials, field-provoked tunability of photonic crystals is broadening the interest in new applications of on-chip photonic devices. We report a nano-precise fabrication of various designs of photonic crystals in these non-conventional materials using the focused ion beam milling technique. Standard methods are developed and parameters for different materials are calibrated. Optical responses such as bandgaps and polarization status changing from planar film waveguide system with these patterns have been examined on ferromagnetic materials.


This paper presents S2E, a platform for analyzing the properties and behavior of software systems. We demonstrate S2E's use in developing practical tools for comprehensive performance profiling, reverse engineering of proprietary software, and bug finding for both kernel-mode and user-mode binaries. Building these tools on top of S2E took less than 770 LOC and 40 person-hours each.
 S2E's novelty consists of its ability to scale to large real systems, such as a full Windows stack. S2E is based on two new ideas: selective symbolic execution, a way to automatically minimize the amount of code that has to be executed symbolically given a target analysis, and relaxed execution consistency models, a way to make principled performance/accuracy trade-offs in complex analyses. These techniques give S2E three key abilities: to simultaneously analyze entire families of execution paths, instead of just one execution at a time; to perform the analyses in-vivo within a real software stack--user programs, libraries, kernel, drivers, etc.--instead of using abstract models of these layers; and to operate directly on binaries, thus being able to analyze even proprietary software.
 Conceptually, S2E is an automated path explorer with modular path analyzers: the explorer drives the target system down all execution paths of interest, while analyzers check properties of each such path (e.g., to look for bugs) or simply collect information (e.g., count page faults). Desired paths can be specified in multiple ways, and S2E users can either combine existing analyzers to build a custom analysis tool, or write new analyzers using the S2E API.


Women Peasant Poets in EighteenthCentury England, Scotland, and Germany: Milkmaids on Parnassus. By SUSANNE KORD. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Camden House, 2003. xiii + 325 pp. £40. The last paragraph of the body of this book (there follow useful short bio/ bibliographies of fourteen Women Peasant Poets) sets out what the author claims has been demonstrated, and asserts a reshaping of our whole notion of what can be Art. The very word and its capitalization are a ground for difficulty, since it is part of Professor Kord's feminist/Marxist argument that, with a capital letter, Art refers to 'the sanctification of art throughout its reception since the eighteenth century as trans cenden tally human, moral, or humane' (p. In). Women poets and peasant poets are denied access to this realm, since, she suggests, the whole canon is a simple demonstration of bourgeois male power choices intent on cutting out women and peasant writers. It will give a good flavour of the difficulty and nature of the argument if I simply quote this final paragraph: Feminist scholarship on predominantly bourgeois women's literature has long since established that Art as conceptualized by male philosophers, aestheticists, and literati has a gender. The reception of peasant poets, read in the context of the eighteenth- century bourgeois aesthetic debate, indicates equally clearly that Art also has a class. Both statements run counter to the most essential pretense necessary for the establishment of (masculine bourgeois) Art: that of Art's complete freedom from nonaesthetic functionality and purpose and Art's corresponding aesthetic independence from biographical, social, or political context. Once recognized as bourgeois and male, Art loses its ability to lay claim to this essential Zweckfreiheit, which has furnished the basic premise underlying the process of canonization and the establishment of literary criticism in the nineteenth century and informed many interpretive traditions, from Old Historicism to New Criticism to Autonomieasthetik, in the twentieth. Art reconsidered as an expression of power relations is endowed with functionality and purpose: to perpetuate the aesthetic values and perceptions of middleclass men. It does this by upholding a class- and gender-based monopoly on Culture to which only few exceptions are admitted. Beyond those exceptions, the rare canonized woman author and - so far - the only two canonized lower-class writers, the literature of women and peasants is either ignored entirely or subject to evaluation by different criteria from those applied to the works of 'true' (bourgeois male) Artists - for example, in the declassification of their work as autobiographical and specific rather than transcendent and universal, or in the definition of the interest in the work as historical and social rather than aesthetic. Thus, traditional twentieth-century criticism continues the work begun in eighteenth -century aesthetics and validated in nineteenth- century canonization: largely unaware of the principal contradiction between its faith in Artistic Zweckfreiheit and the social power it wields, largely unable or unwilling to perceive nonbourgeois and non-masculine art forms as Art, literary criticism replicates these power relations ad infini turn. Let us examine this in detail. There is material to agree with in this/ as in the whole book, whose scholarship and thoroughness I would not wish to belittle. But one has to swallow important fundamentals to go along with the argument/ and grant assumptions and simplifications which the discussion and evidence do not fully bear out. …


This dissertation focuses on high-speed circuit design for the integration of hybrid optoelectronic interconnects. It bridges the gap between electronic circuit design and optical device design by seamlessly incorporating the compact Verilog-A model for optical components into the SPICE-like simulation environment, such as the Cadence design tool. Optical components fabricated in the IME 130nm SOI CMOS process are characterized. Corresponding compact Verilog-A models for Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) device are developed. With this approach, electro-optical co-design and hybrid simulation are made possible. The developed optical models are used for analyzing the system-level specifications of an MZM based optoelectronic transceiver link. Link power budgets for NRZ, PAM-4 and PAM-8 signaling modulations are simulated at system-level. The optimal transmitter extinction ratio (ER) is derived based on the required receiver's minimum optical modulation amplitude (OMA). A limiting receiver is fabricated in the IBM 130 nm CMOS process. By sideby-side wire-bonding to a commercial high-speed InGaAs/InP PIN photodiode, we demonstrate that the hybrid optoelectronic limiting receiver can achieve the bit error rate (BER) of 10−12 with a -6.7 dBm sensitivity at 4 Gb/s. A full-rate, 4-channel 2-1 length parallel PRBS is fabricated in the IBM 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS process. Together with a 10 GHz phase locked loop (PLL) designed vii from system architecture to transistor level design, the PRBS is demonstrated operating at more than 10 Gb/s. Lessons learned from high-speed PCB design, dealing with signal integrity issue regarding to the PCB transmission line are summarized.


This thesis focussed on the diagnostic use of metabolic products and enzymes found in plasma, urine and muscle of the horse, the identification of which can reveal physiological or pathological changes in muscle metabolism. In this thesis analyses of carbohydrate-, lipid- and protein metabolites have been performed as well as analyses of the purine nucleotide cycle, the creatine metabolism and the oxidative phosphorylation. With these analyses we studied metabolic myopathies in the horse as well as metabolic effects of normal and intensified training and exercise. The application of these diagnostic techniques in treating horses with atypical myopathy revealed the pathogenesis of a new disorder of lipid metabolism in equines, namely acquired multiple acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency (MADD), which appears to have a large and emerging prevalence in Europe and elsewhere. Several hypotheses for prevention and treatment of this disorder are presented in this thesis. The diagnostic analysis of creatine-, carbohydrate- and purine metabolism as well as oxidative phosphorylation was performed in healthy horses and horses with MADD. The goal of this study was to ascertain if, apart from the lipid metabolic disorder, the exogenic toxic insult associated with MADD disrupted any other metabolic cycles or reactions. Examples of general metabolic parameters for myopathic damage found included plasma creatine kinase (CK) and lactic acid, as well as urinary creatine and uric acid. Very low activity of the enzyme phosphoglycerate mutase (PGAM) and severely decreased activity of ATP-synthase were found in some patients. The effects of intense exercise and (intensified) training on protein (amino acids) and lipid (organic acids, carnitines) metabolism were studied. Ten Standardbred horses were trained for 32 weeks, divided into four phases, including a phase of intensified training for five horses. At the end of each phase, a standard exercise test (SET), was performed. Plasma amino acid, fatty acid and carnitine concentrations, before and after each SET, were measured. Training significantly reduced mean plasma aspartic acid concentration, whereas exercise significantly increased the plasma concentrations of alanine, taurine, methionine, leucine, tyrosine and phenylalanine and reduced the plasma concentrations of glycine, ornithine, glutamine, citrulline and serine. Concentrations of lactic acid, total nonesterified fatty acids, 3-OH-isobutyric acid and C2-carnitine were significantly increased following all SETS in exercised horses, whereas beta-hydroxybutyric acid, C3- and C4-carnitine were significantly decreased. No significant effect of training and intensified training was found. Our findings suggest that plasma acylcarnitine profile in the equine species might reflect skeletal muscle carnitine metabolism following exercise thereby providing a possible practical method to investigate potential disorders in carnitine metabolism in horses suffering from myopathy. A study to determine the effect of alfa-tocopherol acetate (vitamin E; 4 mg/kg BW/day) on glucose metabolism, peripheral insulin sensitivity and anti-oxidant status, showed that at this dose neither glucose metabolism nor peripheral insulin sensitivity were significantly altered. In addition, alfa-tocopherol acetate administration did not improve the measured parameters of antioxidant status.


This paper describes the final outcome of a mixed quantitative and qualitative research study designed to determine the degree to which experienced classroom teachers in Scotland are finding leadership roles in schools as a result of having undertaken professional development through the Chartered Teacher Programme. The standards-based Chartered Teacher development in Scotland resonates very clearly with a range of current European and worldwide conceptualisations of how and why teachers may find leadership roles in schools. The development of such roles is intended to have a major influence on the improvement of school students' learning experiences, (Smylie & Denny 1990) and that this will generate increased achievement for all (Yorke-Barr & Duke 2004). In addition, Fullan (2002) and Hargreaves (2003) argue powerfully that transformation in the learning cultures of schools is rooted in effective leadership and emphasise the centrality of improving students' learning in any such transformation. Fullan's focus on developing conditions which value learning as an individual and collective good, chimes equally clearly with the conceptual framework underpinning the Chartered Teacher development as does Hargreaves's contention that only distributed and shared leadership is likely to be a sustainable model for delivering these aspirations. In the Scottish context, Connelly and McMahon (2007) have already suggested that Chartered Teachers are beginning to appreciate the ways in which they were deriving professional benefit from their experiences but have acknowledged a weak evidence base for any impact beyond their own classrooms. While there had been clear expectations that such an impact would be evident, that is unlikely to occur without the support and nurturance of teachers who have leadership and/or management roles in their schools (Liebermann and Miller 2005). In addressing the key issue described above, the following Research Questions were posed: In what kinds of leadership do Chartered Teachers engage? What frameworks and mechanisms exist for developing leadership roles in schools for Chartered Teachers? What conflicting factors encourage and inhibit Chartered teachers from taking on such roles? The paper provides a detailed analysis of the ways in which this evolving model is supporting teachers as leaders with a view to assisting practitioners and researchers to focus on worthwhile areas of development and further enquiry. The findings indicate both positive and negative teacher experiences and may have potential relevance for practising teachers, school managers and researchers as this particular model, already attracting interest world-wide, evolves in Scotland.


In this paper, we adopt a multimodal emotion recognition framework by combining eye movements and electroencephalography (EEG) to enhance emotion recognition. The main contributions of this paper are twofold. a) We investigate sixteen eye movements related to emotions and identify the intrinsic patterns of these eye movements for three emotional states: positive, neutral and negative. b) We examine various modality fusion strategies for integrating users external subconscious behaviors and internal cognitive states and reveal that the characteristics of eye movements and EEG are complementary to emotion recognition. Experiment results demonstrate that modality fusion could significantly improve emotion recognition accuracy in comparison with single modality. The best accuracy achieved by fuzzy integral fusion strategy is 87.59%, whereas the accuracies of solely using eye movements and EEG data are 77.80% and 78.51%, respectively


Parker Solar Probe (PSP) observations during its first encounter at 35.7 R⊙ have shown the presence of magnetic field lines that are strongly perturbed to the point that they produce local inversions of the radial magnetic field, known as switchbacks. Their counterparts in the solar wind velocity field are local enhancements in the radial speed, or jets, displaying (in all components) the velocity–magnetic field correlation typical of large amplitude Alfvén waves propagating away from the Sun. Switchbacks and radial jets have previously been observed over a wide range of heliocentric distances by Helios, Wind, and Ulysses, although they were prevalent in significantly faster streams than seen at PSP. Here we study via numerical magnetohydrodynamics simulations the evolution of such large amplitude Alfvénic fluctuations by including, in agreement with observations, both a radial magnetic field inversion and an initially constant total magnetic pressure. Despite the extremely large excursion of magnetic and velocity fields, switchbacks are seen to persist for up to hundreds of Alfvén crossing times before eventually decaying due to the parametric decay instability. Our results suggest that such switchback/jet configurations might indeed originate in the lower corona and survive out to PSP distances, provided the background solar wind is sufficiently calm, in the sense of not being pervaded by strong density fluctuations or other gradients, such as stream or magnetic field shears, that might destabilize or destroy them over shorter timescales.


Enterprise system (ES) is being considered an important phenomenon in the corporate use of information technology, enhancing organizational cross functional efficiency and effectiveness through the integration of all the information flowing through a company. The implementation and use of this system involve high expenditure and risk and it has a great impact in every aspect of an adopting organization. The wrong selection of this system would have an adverse effect on the company performance. So the selection of this system deserves considerable attention from the practitioner and researcher.In this study, our objective is to identify the influencing factors on the ES selection process from the existing theory and investigate them in real life situation from the client and vendor's perspectives.To fulfil the first objective of the study, we have made a comprehensive review on ES literature and synthesized an integrated framework of influencing factors on the ES selection process. To fulfil the other objective, we have made a qualitative empirical study through multiple case study approach. To collect necessary in-depth information, we have used purposive sampling and general interview guide approach. The integrated framework has guided us in empirical study and the cross case analysis of empirical data has been performed on the basis of this framework from the view point of client and vendor.The result of this study shows that there exists a good fit between client and vendor views about the influencing factors on the ES selection process, in spite of insignificant imbalance between them. The result also reveals that most of the influencing factors of integrated framework have been recognized both by client and vendor with some diversity. Three new influencing factors: geographical proximity, requirement specification and sales skill of vendor have emerged from the study.


In this volume, Herbert Brownell, the man Dwight D. Eisenhower said would make an outstanding president, recounts his achievements and trials as one of the GOP's presidential operative in the 1940s and 1950s and as Attorney General at a crucial time in American history. Instrumental in getting Eisenhower to run for office and wielding considerable influence over many of the president's decisions, Brownell had to make many tough and controversial recommendations. In his memoirs he recalls his relationship with the president and the difficult issues confronting them, including civil rights, McCarthyism, illegal aliens, anti-trust laws and national security vs. individual rights. "I am often amused when people pine about going back to the 'quiet days' of Eisenhower", writes Brownell, who served during an administration that faced not only the wrath of segregationists and Communist witch hunters but also the resolution of an increasingly unpopular war in Korea and a new definition of American-Soviet relations following Joseph Stalin's death. Particularly difficult,but among the high points of the Eisenhower administration for Brownell, were the painstaking gains made in the area of civil rights. Despite personal attacks by the opposition on his integrity, he tenaciously supported and enforced the Supreme Court's decision in "Brown vs. Board of Education" and Little Rock desegregation. Going beyond the years he spent on Eisenhower's cabinet, Brownell describes the events and people that have influenced his colourful life, including those from his early years in Nebraska, his apprentice years in New York as he joined the opposition to Tammany Hall, his stints as chairman of the Republican party and manager of Thomas Dewey's two unsuccessful presidential campaigns, and his 62-year private law career. Brownell's memoirs, filled with history, anecdotes, personal observations and subtle humour, reveal a highly intelligent and modest man who achieved great accomplishments - developing the first civil rights act since Reconstruction, preserving national security while protecting individual rights - by doing what he thought was right, not by being politically correct.


Reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization was employed to prepare prodrug polymer carrier systems with the chemotherapeutic agent camptothecin (Cam) and the kinase inhibitor dasatinib (Dt). Copolymers were prepared as dense polyethylene glycol brushes via direct copolymerization of the prodrug macromonomers with polyethylene glycol methacrylate (O950, FW ∼ 950 daltons). The brushes display controlled drug release profiles with little burst or late-phase release aberrations. Hydrolysis studies of the hydrophilic copolymers conducted in human serum showed 33 ± 1.7 and 22 ± 2.4% drug release over the course of 144 h for the ester linked Dt and Cam respectively. Polymer morphology was also shown to play a key role in drug release rates. Copolymers with the drug distributed in the copolymer segment showed faster release rates than diblock copolymers where the hydrophobic drug molecules were localized in discreet hydrophobic blocks. The latter materials were shown to self-assemble into polymeric micelles with the drug block separated from the aqueous phase. Live animal imaging in PC-3 (human prostate cancer cell line) tumor xenographs showed that the fluorescently labeled copolymer brushes were trafficked to the tumor 24 hours post injection. Ex vivo analysis of the harvested tissues showed that polymer accumulated in the tumor with kidney excretion. In vitro cytotoxicity measurements conducted in K562-S and K562-R cells demonstrated ability of the macromolecular conjugates to release active drugs. The direct copolymerization of different drug classes into controlled copolymers via RAFT, together with their favorable release profiles, suggest these carriers merit further study as therapeutic systems.


The articulated human figure made of wax or wood has been a common tool in artistic practice since the 16th century. Its mobile limbs enable the artist to study anatomical proportion, fix a pose at will, and perfect the depiction of drapery and clothing. Over the course of the 19th century, the mannequin gradually emerged from the studio to become the artist's subject, at first humorously, then in more complicated ways, playing on the unnerving psychological presence of a figure that was realistic, yet unreal--lifelike, yet lifeless. Silent Partners locates the artist's mannequin within the context of an expanding universe of effigies, avatars, dolls, and shop window dummies. Generously illustrated, this book features works by such artists as Poussin, Gainsborough, Degas, Courbet, Cezanne, Kokoschka, Dali, Man Ray, and others; the astute, perceptive text examines their range of responses to the uncanny and highly suggestive potential of the mannequin.


Peristomal lichen sclerosus affecting colostomy sites Sir, Lichen sclerosus typically affects the genital area. We describe two patients with an unusual extra-genital presentation of lichen sclerosus. Patient 1 was a 72-year-old lady who presented with a 3-month history of a painful, ulcerated, eruption around her colostomy site. This had been fashioned 3 years earlier after emergency surgery for a large and benign diverticular mass. Recently, her stoma bag had become difficult to fit, and poor occlusion had resulted in progressive faecal leakage. Application of topical betamethasone valerate 0 ́1% (Betnovate, Glaxo-Wellcome, Uxbridge, Middlesex, U.K.) and fluocinolone acetonide 0 ́025% (Synalar, Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, Cheshire, U.K.) cream provided mild relief, but were ineffective in controlling her ulcerated eruption. She had been troubled by pruritus vulvae and ani for 12 years. On examination, there was a white circumferential indurated plaque with a rim of ulceration, purpura and bullae over the lateral edge around the colostomy site (Fig. 1a). In the anogenital region there were white atrophic patches with an erythematous edge. No other sites were affected. A biopsy from the peristomal skin showed an atrophic epidermis, homogeneous hyaline change in the papillary dermis and a dense band-like infiltrate of chronic inflammatory cells, characteristic of lichen sclerosus. Contact allergic dermatitis was excluded by negative patch-testing to the European Standard and Steroid Series, stoma bag, barrier material and adhesive. She was admitted and treated with clobetasol propionate 0 ́05% cream (Dermovate, Glaxo-Wellcome) to both peristomal and vulval areas. The peristomal inflammatory changes settled steadily over the next 2 months. Four months later, she had a relapse of her peristomal lichen sclerosus. This was controlled with clobetasol propionate 0 ́05%, neomycin 0 ́5%, nystatin 100,000 U/g cream (Dermovate-NN, Glaxo-Wellcome), applied twice daily for 2 weeks, followed by the intermittent use of clobetasol propionate 0 ́05% cream. By 2 months the peristomal skin had largely returned to normal. Patient 2 was an 84-year-old lady who presented with a 1-year history of a peristomal eruption around her colostomy site, formed after an abdominoperineal resection for a Duke's A rectal carcinoma. She had suffered from pruritus vulvae for 10 years. On examination there was a white thickened plaque with a smooth surface around the stoma (Fig. 1b). No other extragenital lesions were noted. Similar white atrophic patches were present over the vulva. A clinical diagnosis of peristomal lichen sclerosus with vulval involvement was made, and confirmed on biopsy of the vulva which showed a focal chronic inflammatory infiltrate with homogenization of the dermal collagen. She was treated with 0 ́05% clobetasol propionate (Dermovate) cream, to both her vulval and peristomal sites. The peristomal skin returned to normal within 4 weeks. There has been no relapse since and she remains well. In a review of 5207 patients diagnosed with lichen sclerosus, Meffert et al. found genital involvement alone in 85%, truncal involvement alone in 15%, and concurrent genital and truncal involvement in 7%. Infrequent sites of involvement have included the infraorbital skin, scalp, scrotum, palms and soles. To our knowledge there have been no reported cases of lichen sclerosus over the peristomal skin of a colostomy site. The more common dermatoses over peristomal sites are enzyme-induced irritant contact dermatitis, and less frequently allergic contact dermatitis to various components of the pouch, barrier materials and adhesive. A number of cases of pyoderma gangrenosum have also been described in peristomal skin. The cause of lichen sclerosus remains unclear. Mechanisms involving genetic, hormonal and autoimmune factors may all play a part. In our two patients we suspect that repeated mechanical trauma or irritancy precipitated lichen sclerosus by the isomorphic (KoÈbner) phenomenon. Other unusual sites of extragenital lichen sclerosus where the KoÈbner


In this paper the important problem is to understand the fundamental concepts of various filters and apply these filters in identifying a shark fish type which is taken as a case study. In this paper the edge detection techniques are taken for consideration. The software is implemented using MATLAB. The main two operators in image processing are Gradient and Laplacian operators. The case study deals with observation of Shark Fish Classification through Image Processing using the various filters which are mainly gradient based Roberts, Sobel and Prewitt edge detection operators, Laplacian based edge detector and Canny edge detector. The advantages and disadvantages of these filters are comprehensively dealt in this study.


When we first encounter the narrator of Austerlitz, he is wandering around the unfamiliar town of Antwerp with, he tells us, "unsicheren Schritten" (1; 9). As well as reflecting the unfamiliarity of the locale, these "uncertain steps" evince a proud modesty characteristic of the classic Sebaldian narrator, a wanderer who discreetly relays the stories of the people and places he is privileged to encounter. Although Sebald does not use the phrase, steps of this sort, unpurposed yet unerring, are made with what is commonly known in German as somnambule Sicherheit: the legendary surefootedness of the sleepwalker. The convergence of sleepwalking and certainty in a single phrase poses an interesting challenge to one of the central tenets of the English-language canonization of Sebald, for his writing has been most highly valued for its ability to move the reader through apparent certainties towards a salutary uncertainty. But somnambule Sicherheit also presents the possibility that the current may be reversed, that narrative may move under cover of uncertainty towards certainty. That Sebald criticism has not been more troubled by this possibility is in no small part due to the fact that it tends to deploy the notion of sleepwalking with a minimum of reflection on its theoretical ramifications. To evoke some of the complexities of this matter, I first offer a brief cultural history of sleepwalking, as well as a brief account of the topic of uncertainty in Sebald criticism. Most of my argument, however, involves an extended comparative analysis of sleepwalking in Sebald's Austerlitz and Hermann Broch's 1933 trilogy The Sleepwalkers. Although these writers have not previously been the object of any sustained comparison, sleepwalking in Broch's novels illuminates much that is left implicit on the topic in Sebald's fiction and points toward some difficult questions regarding the role of aesthetics and agency in Sebald's work.


In the battle for U.S. health care, patients and doctors are losing. Who Killed Health Care? shows how to win the war. One of the nation's most respected health care analysts, Regina Herzlinger exposes the motives and methods of those who have crippled America's health care system-figures in the insurance, hospital, employment, governmental, and academic sectors. She proves how our current system, which is organized around payers and providers rather than the needs of its users, is dangerously eroding patient welfare and is pushing costs out of the reach of millions. Who Killed Health Care? then outlines Herzlinger's bold new plan for a consumer-driven system that will deliver affordable, high-quality care to everyone. By putting insurance money in the hands of patients, removing the middleman in the doctor-patient relationship, and giving employers cost relief, consumers and physicians will be empowered to make the system work the way it should. Herzlinger describes in precise detail how her innovative program will provide Smaller, disease-focused medical facilities that provide complete care for patients A national system of medical records that provides privacy with confidential access by approved practitioners Mandatory performance evaluations of all hospitals and all other medical organizations Mandatory health insurance with subsidies for those who cannot afford it Who Killed Health Care? is a call to arms that must be answered; the welfare of every American hangs in the balance. "A brilliant analysis! A must-read." -- Bill George, Professor, Harvard Business School and Former CEO of Medtronic "As it becomes more and more obvious to everyone that our current health care system is unsustainable, this is the book that had to be written." -- Daniel H. Johnson, Jr. MD, former president of the American Medical Association "Regina Herzlinger's ideas to tackle the crisis of the U.S. health care system are based on keen knowledge of the system's existing difficulties along with insights that introduce the reader to new streamlined choices that have the potential of getting both quantity and cost under control." -- Joseph Kennedy, founder, chairman, and president, Citizens Energy Corporation, CEO, Citizens Health Care, former representative (D-Mass) "Regina Herzlinger! offers a vision of the way things can be, should be, and will be sooner or later. The only question is: how long do we have to wait?" -- Greg Scandlen, founder, Consumers for Health Choices "Regi Herzlinger has brilliantly articulated a better way -- embracing the principles of competition and innovation that cause every other sector of our economy to thrive. Discharging American health care from the ICU can only happen by putting individual Americans -- not politicians and bureaucrats -- back in charge of their health care decisioins." -- U.S. Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla), M.D. "Following on the heels of her landmark Market-Driven Health Care, Herzlinger lays it on the line with her expose of what many who work in the health care industry have felt in their gut. Now it is articulated in an entertaining and must-read portrayal, with you and me as the only way out." -- Dennis White, executive vice president for strategic development, National Business Coalition on Health "A wonderful Orwellian romp through issues which carry a deadly irony. The killers of health care are, of course, the third parties, each of which has an itchy palm and a commitment to profit or power which exceeds the commitment to service, with each engaging the others within a politically shaped box. Rarely has the case for the public been made with so much force, foresight, and wit, and a better way forward shown so clearly." -- James F. Fries, MD, Professor of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine "You can practically hear the war chants as Professor Herzlinger sets out her view of what's wrong with the health care system and how to fix it. You'd best read it so you can decide which side you will be on when the battle is joined." -- Paul Levy, CEO, Beth Israel Hospital, Boston, MA "Regina Herzlinger, the nation's leading expert on consumer-driven health care, has given us a brilliant analysis of the flaws in our health care system and what it will take to get it back on track. Her latest book is a must-read." -- Bill George, Professor of Management Practice, Harvard Business School, Former CEO, Medtronic, and author of Authentic Leadership "You don't have to agree with her diagnosis and prescription for the U.S. health care system, but you do have to read her book. Once again, Professor Herzlinger has put together a well researched, well written, and very provocative blueprint for the future of health care." Peter L. Slavin, MD, President, Massachusetts General Hospital


We employ first-principles total energy and phonon calculations to address the structure and stability of Al2Fe and Al5Fe2. The observed structure of Al2Fe, which is reported as stable in the assessed Al-Fe phase diagram, is distinguished by an unusually low triclinic symmetry. The initial crystallographic structure determination additionally featured an unusual hole large enough to accommodate an additional atom. Our calculations indicate that the hole must be filled, but predict that the triclinic structure is unstable relative to a simpler tetragonal structure based on the prototype MoSi2. This tetragonal structure is interesting because it is predicted to be nonmagnetic, electrically insulating, and high density, while the triclinic structure is magnetic, metallic, and low density. We reconcile this seeming contradiction by demonstrating a high vibrational entropy that explains why the triclinic structure is stable at high temperatures. Finally, we note that orthorhombic Al5Fe2 is also destabilized by the tetragonal structure but may be stabilized at high temperatures, again by vibrational entropy and partial occupancy associated with the diffusion of Al atoms along channels.


Observing a strange disappearance of doctrine within the church, Kevin Vanhoozer argues that there is no more urgent task for Christians today than to engage in living truthfully with others before God. He details how doctrine serves the church--the theater of the gospel--by directing individuals and congregations to participate in the drama of what God is doing to renew all things in Jesus Christ. Taking his cue from George Lindbeck and others who locate the criteria of Christian identity in Spirit-led church practices, Vanhoozer relocates the norm for Christian doctrine in the canonical practices, which, he argues, both provoke and preserve the integrity of the church's witness as prophetic and apostolic.


The ownership and management of forested land by women in the United States has been largely unexamined. It may be inappropriately discounted, especially in regions such as the South, where private land ownership is extensive and forest industry is an important component of the economy. Here several data sources on female forest and woodland ownerloperators are examined, focusing on the southern U.S. states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. It is clear that female-operated farms and farmlands are increasing, and that female farm operators employ different land use strategies from their malelother counterparts. Ownership of forest land (including both farm woodlands and private forests) is higher in the South than in other parts of the United States, although recent data are not available for the region. Many integrated research questions are directed toward examination of frequently asserted hypotheses: that women view forested land differently from malelother counter-parts; that they have differing goals; and that despite constraints, women can maintain economic and ecological health through their management decisions.


5 The study determined the availability, access and utilization of information communication technologies among staff of women in agriculture sub-programme of agricultural development programmes in north central zone of Nigeria. Four states were randomly selected which include Benue, Kogi and Nassarawa states, and the Federal Capital Territory. The multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select a sample size of eighty (80) WIA staff. Interview schedule was used to collect data from the respondents. Frequency count, percentage and mean score were used to analyze the data collected. Factor analysis with principal factor model with interaction and varimax rotation was used to determine the major constrains to the use of ICTs. The result of the study showed the mean age of the respondents to be 47.25 years with average working experience of 20.66 years and 14years as WIA staff. All (100%) the respondents were aware of radio, video machine, television and telephone and majority of them were aware of the other modern ICTs except for fax machine, GIS, Skype, face book and digital camera. Only a few (40% for telephone and 33.8% for radio) of them had ICT tools in their offices but majority (92.5% for radio and 88.8% for television) of them had personal ICTs. Majority (87.0%, 85.0% and 80.0%) of the WIA staff had access to telephone, television and radio respectively but very few (32.5% for computer 28.8% for internet and 8.8% for printer) of them had access to the modern ICT facilities. Majority (89.5%) of the few that accessed the internet did so for browsing to get information. The findings also showed that radio (M=3.70), Video machine (M=3.58), television (M=3.14) and telephone (M=3.49) were used by the respondents to a large extent. Majority (56.2% used radio for root and tuber processing and 62.5% used telephone for Fruit and vegetable processing) of them staff used a few ICTs for their WIA activities. Radio (M=3.06), television (M=2.88) and telephone (M=3.68) were perceived to be very important to the 6 respondents in their official duties. Also, lack of training opportunities (M=2.25), insufficient availability of ICT facilities (M=2.06) and lack of technical know-how (M= 2.05) were perceived by the respondents to be serious constraints to the use of ICTs. 1. Based on the major findings it was concluded that majority of the respondents were still within active years and could access and use available ICT facilities and that though majority of them were aware of the ICT facilities, majority of them could not affectively operate most of the modern ICTs except for radio, video machine, television and telephone and to some extent, computer. Majority of them did not use most of the ICTs for official functions because they were constrained by lack of training opportunity, insufficient availability of ICT facilities and lack of technical knowhow among other constraints perceived by the respondents to be serious to the use of ICTs for their official functions. The study, among other things recommended setting up of projects that will enable WIA staff to have more access to ICT tools and establishment of functional ICT centres with departments for WIA in all the states which will create more awareness, better accessibility and higher usage of ICT tools by the WIA staff.


Image
compression is widely applied to medical imaging, remote
sensing applications, biomedical diagnosis, multimedia applications and so on
[1]-[4]. In many cases, considering the factor of image quality, we use a
lossless compression method to compress the image.

In this
thesis work, we propose bit-error aware lossless compression algorithms for
color image compression subject to bit-error rate during transmission. Each of
our proposed algorithms includes three stages. The first stage is to convert
the RGB images to YCrCb images, and the second stage predicts the transformed
images to generate the residue sequences. Optimization algorithms are used to
search the best combination of the image conversion and prediction. At the last
stage, the generated residue sequences are encoded by
several residue coding algorithms, which are 2-D and 1-D bi-level block coding,
interval Huffman coding and standard Huffman coding algorithms. Key parameters, such as color transformation
information, predictor parameters and residue coding parameters, are protected by
using (7,4) Hamming code during image transmission,

The
compression ratio (CR) and peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR)
are two significant performance indicators which are used to evaluate the
experimental results. According to the experimental
results, the 2-D bi-level block coding algorithm is verified as the best coding
method.


Since the Kyoto Protocol entered into force in February 2005, many Parties to the Protocol have shifted their domestic policies into high gear to achieve the quantitative reductions in greenhouse gas emissions undertaken for the period from 2008 to 2012. While the basic design of environmental taxation in European countries has received widespread attention, its actual performance has not been systematically assessed. This report aims at examining, against pre-determined criteria (e.g. impact on costs and prices, competition and trade, environmental impacts and recycling mechanisms), how effectively environmental taxation systems are functioning. Most importantly, the report analyses the political dynamics behind these systems and how they have changed the 'optimal' tax design into a 'politically feasible' tax design.


This study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a luteinizing hormone releasing hormone (LHRH) fusion protein immunization on reproductive traits in ram lambs including the changes in histology and ultrasonographic appearance of testis. Thirty native ram lambs at 19 weeks of age were divided into control (C, n = 10), immunization (I, n = 10) and castration (E, n = 10) groups. Animals in immunization group were immunized against LHRH using ovalbumin-LHRH-7 (OL) protein generated by recombinant DNA technology as a primary and a booster injection at 19 and 23 weeks of age respectively. Animals were bled via jugular venepuncture at 2-week intervals to determine LHRH antibody and testosterone concentrations. Bi-weekly ultrasonographic examination of the testes was performed to determine the changes in ultrasonographic appearance as the age increased. Biopsied testicular tissues taken at 19, 29 and 41 weeks age were also evaluated. At 41 weeks of age, animals were slaughtered. Semen and epididymis were evaluated for the presence of sperm cells. Testicular development and sperm production were suppressed in the immunized animals. Semineferous tubule diameters decreased, basal membrane of the tubule was thickened and hyalinized in immunized ram lambs. While testes of control animals gained their normal ultrasonographic appearance as the age increased, immunized animals had uniform hypoechogenic testicular structure as observed at 19 weeks of age until slaughter. Simultaneous histological and ultrasonographic evaluations indicated that the changes in testicular histology could partly be monitored via ultrasonographic imaging. Nevertheless, it is difficult to claim that ultrasonographic image reflects the exact changes in such instances. In conclusion, these results indicate that recombinant OL fusion protein is effective in immunocastration in ram lambs and has a potential to be used as an alternative to physical castration. Further research studies should be conducted to help assess reproductive status of testes from ultrasound images.


Waterjet technology has matured rapidly and become one of the mainstream precision machine tools since commercialized in the late 1970's. Waterjets have several inherent features that are superior to most conventional machine tools. Abrasive-waterjets are nowadays highly automated with PC-based CAD/CAM software that controls and operates the hardware (pump, nozzle, abrasive feeding, traverse, and accessories) for precision machining. Most sources of machine errors have been minimized for optimum operations. Abrasive-waterjets are capable of machining most materials up to about 0.3 m thick with square edges. Abrasive-waterjets are often applied as a finishing tool or, for extreme precision parts, as a net shaping tool. For very tough materials, the use of abrasivewaterjet for net shaping often helps to minimize the wear of expensive contact tools, leading to improved productivity and significant cost savings (reduction of work stoppage, part rejection, and tool replacement due to increase in the tool life). For fatigue-critical applications, low-cost secondary dry-grit blasting was successfully applied to induce residual compressive stresses on abrasive-waterjet-machined edges of aircraft metals, enhancing their fatigue lives at least three times over those of CNC-milled counterparts.


Abstract Developing tropical cyclones are often observed with significant displacements between their surface and upper level circulation centers. The slope is in the direction of the convective cloud mass which also is displaced from the surface center during the early stage of development. As the cyclone intensifies, the surface and upper level centers become vertically aligned. Three representative tropical cyclones in the western North Pacific with extensive aircraft reconnaissance are discussed to illustrate this phenomenon.


The present corpus study aimed to examine whether Basque (OV) resorts more often than Spanish (VO) to certain grammatical operations, in order to minimize the number of arguments to be processed before the verb. Ueno & Polinsky (2009) argue that VO/OV languages use certain grammatical resources with different frequencies in order to facilitate real-time processing. They observe that both OV and VO languages in their sample (Japanese, Turkish and Spanish) have a similar frequency of use of subject prodrop; however, they find that OV languages (Japanese, Turkish) use more intransitive sentences than VO languages (English, Spanish), and conclude this is an OV-specific strategy to facilitate processing. We conducted a comparative corpus study of Spanish (VO) and Basque (OV). Results show (a) that the frequency of use of subject pro-drop is higher in Basque than in Spanish; and (b) Basque does not use more intransitive sentences than Spanish; both languages have a similar frequency of intransitive sentences. Based on these findings, we conclude that the frequency of use of grammatical resources to facilitate the processing does not depend on a single typological trait (VO/OV) but it is modulated by the concurrence of other grammatical features.


Using detailed travel surveys conducted by the Metropolitan Council of the Minneapolis/St Paul (Twin Cities) Region in Minnesota for 1990, 2000-2001, and 2010-2011, this paper conducts a detailed analysis of journey-to-work times, activity allocation and accessibility. This study corroborates previous studies showing that accessibility is a significant factor in commute durations. Adjusting land use patterns to increase the number of workers in job-rich areas and the number of jobs in labor-rich areas is a reliable way of reducing auto commute durations. The finding that accessibility and commute duration have a large affect on the amount of time spent at work shows that activity patterns are influenced by transportation and the urban environment in very impactful ways. The descriptive results of this analysis show a measurable decline in the time people spend outside of their homes as well as the amount of time people spend in travel over the past decade. Although trip distances per trip are not getting any shorter, the willingness to make those trip is declining, and as a result fewer kilometers are being traveled and less time on average is being allocated to travel.


Introduction: Rotavirus is the major cause of acute gastroenteritis (AGE) in infants and young children all over the world. The objective of the study was to compare different methods for detecting rotavirus and to assess the burden of rotavirus as a causative agent for AGE in children younger than five. Methods: This case control study included 65 children with AGE and 35 healthy control children. They were chosen from the Pediatric Department of Zagazig University Hospitals from October 2014 to March 2015. Stool samples were obtained and assayed for rotavirus by the immunochromatography test (ICT), enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and quantitative real time RT-PCR (qr RT-PCR). Results: Fifty out of the 65 patients (76.9%) were positive for qr RT-PCR. Forty-five (69.2%) and 44 (67.7%) were positive for ICT and ELISA, respectively. There was a significant association between the severity of the disease as determined by the Vesikari score and rotavirus infection. Conclusion: This study demonstrated that ICT is a useful method for the rapid screening of group A rotavirus in fecal specimens, because it is rapid, inexpensive, easy to perform, and requires very little equipment. In addition, this study highlights the substantial health burden of rotavirus AGE among children less than five.


Domestic financial market development is a key determinant of a currency's international status, and financial depth and market liquidity are two essential attributes for an international currency. This paper discusses the status of the People's Republic of China's (PRC) financial markets and their depth and liquidity conditions. The paper also compares the PRC's financial markets with those in developed and emerging economies, contemporaneously and historically. The paper finds that the PRC's financial markets are not as deep and liquid as those in developed economies, and are much less so than those with international currencies. To support the internationalization of the renminbi, the PRC needs to remove several major obstacles to deepen its financial markets and improve their liquidity conditions.


Numerical overcurrent Relay is a type of protective relay that operates when a pre-set value exceeds a charge current. Because of its standard technology, numerical relay is better known as present generation relay. Overcurrent relay protects power systems in any aspect of the power network , i.e. transmission lines, transformers, generators or motors, against excessive currents. A relay program that is over-current is coded using the MPLAB platform. With the help of MATLAB Simulation the overcurrent is achieved. By varying the source voltage and the load resistance, we can find the usual load current values (In rms) and automatically increase the load circuit value when the short circuit element is inserted in that model that is being viewed as being overcurrent. Overcurrent data is trained in Artificial Intelligence (Neural Network) and implemented through coding in the NRDE Board. In NRDE testing software, a trip command is observed when overcurrent condition is reached.


This study presents a conceptual replication of Adya and Lusk's (2016) forecasting decision support system (FDSS) that identifies the complexity or simplicity of a time series. Prior studies in forecasting have argued convincingly that the design of FDSS should incorporate the complexity of the forecasting task. Yet, there existed no formal way of determining time series complexity until this FDSS, referred to as the Complexity Scoring Technique (CST). The CST uses characteristics of the time series to trigger 12 rules that score the complexity of a time series and classify it along the binary dimension of Simple or Complex. The CST was originally validated using statistical forecasts of a small set of 54 time series as well as judgmental forecasts from 14 representative participants to confirm that the FDSS successfully distinguished Simple series from Complex ones. In this study, we (a) replicate the CST on a much larger set of data from both statistical and judgmental forecasting methods, and (b) extend and validate the series classification categories from the binary Simple-Complex used in the original CST to Very Simple, Simple, Complex, and Very Complex thus adding an ordinal link between the two previous binary designations. Findings suggest that both the replication and extension of the CST further validate it, thereby greatly enhancing its use in the practice of forecasting. Implications for research and practice are discussed.


Clearing forms the core part of a smooth and efficiently functioning financial market infrastructure. Traditionally, it has been provided by clearing houses, most of which today act as a 'central counterparty' (CCP) between the two sides of a trade. The rapid growth of cross-border trading has sparked discussion on the most efficient industry structure - particularly in Europe and the US. At the heart of this discussion lies the question of whether the implementation of a single clearing house creates greater benefits than a more competitive but interlinked market structure. This is the starting point for this book, which analyses the efficiency of clearing and clearing industry structure. Along with clear-cut definitions and a concise characterisation and descriptive analysis of the clearing industry, the book determines the efficiency impact of various cross-border integration and harmonisation initiatives between CCPs. This serves to identify the most preferable future structure for the clearing industry.


The agreements selected here, some 300 in total, cover those multilateral treaties which are open to all states, and which regulate trade, money, finance and environmental protection, and facilitate the negotiation of international contract and the enforcement of arbitral awards and judicial decisions. The book aims to provide a complete and coherent picture of the global economic legal and institutional system. It is intended to serve the needs of scholars, internal business lawyers, government officials and legislators working in this field, as well as those engaged in the operation of international trade.


This paper investigates the performance and emission characteristics of HCCI engines fueled with oxygenated fuels (ethanol blend). A modeling study was conducted to investigate the impact of ethanol addition on the performance, combustion and emission characteristics of a Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) engine fueled by diesel. One dimensional simulation was conducted using the renowned commercial software for diesel and its blend fuels with 5% (E5) and 10% ethanol (E10) (in vol.) under full load condition at variable engine speed ranging from 1000 to 2750 rpm with 250 rpm increment. The model was then validated with other researcher's experimental result. Model consists of intake and exhaust systems, cylinder, head, valves and port geometries. Performance tests were conducted for volumetric efficiency, brake engine torque, brake power, brake mean effective pressure, brake specific fuel consumption, and brake thermal efficiency, while exhaust emissions were analyzed for carbon monoxide (CO) and unburned hydrocarbons (HC. The results showed that blending diesel with ethanol increases the volumetric efficiency, brake specific fuel consumption and brake thermal efficiency, while it decreases brake engine torque, brake power and brake mean effective pressure. In term of emission characteristics, the CO emissions concentrations in the engine exhaust decrease significantly with ethanol as additive. But for HC emission, its concentration increase when apply in high engine speed. In conclusion, using Ethanol as fuel additive blend with Diesel operating in HCCI shows a good result in term of performance and emission in low speed but not recommended to use in high speed engine. Ethanol-diesel blends need to researched more to make it commercially useable.


The aim of this paper is a discussion of some applications of results from discourse studies in the field of education. The major structures of discourse are discussed, in particular the semantic, pragmatic, schematic and conversational structures. These structures are then taken as the abstract basis for a cognitive model of discourse comprehension. A brief sketch is given of the main results of current experimental work on discourse processing. Discourse comprehension appears not only to be determined by knowledge and other factors of the cognitive set of language users (beliefs, opinions, attitudes, etc.), but also changes this set, e.g. in processes of learning. Applications in the study of education are discussed in the framework of the following issues, representing the 'textual' dimensions of education: (i) classroom dialogue and interaction, (ii) reading and comprehension, (iii) textbooks, (iv) teaching discourse and communication, and (v) discourse analysis. It is argued that learning in these various dimensions of education should respect the basic results obtained about comprehension. Language learning is urged to take place within a broad integrated framework for the acquisition of discourse and communication skill.


One challenge in text processing is the treatment of case insensitive documents such as speech recognition results. The traditional approach is to re-train a language model excluding case-related features. This paper presents an alternative two-step approach whereby a preprocessing module (Step 1) is designed to restore case-sensitive form to feed the core system (Step 2). Step 1 is implemented as a Hidden Markov Model trained on a large raw corpus of case sensitive documents. It is demonstrated that this approach (i) outperforms the feature exclusion approach for Named Entity tagging, (ii) leads to limited degradation for semantic parsing and relationship extraction, (iii) reduces system complexity, and (iv) has wide applicability: the restored text can feed both statistical model and rule-based systems.


The result of the research is the formulation of chloride-activated high-strength cement paste with accelerated hardening, increased strength, and without heat treatment. The cement paste was activated by introducing a chloride-containing additive into the cement-water system. The additive was synthesized by keeping the cement in a 3 % hydrochloric acid solution, i.e. under conditions of acid corrosion of the binder. The additive is the solid part of the cement-HCl suspension, aged for 24 hours at a ratio of solid and liquid phases of 1:10. The optimized amount of additive is 5 % by weight of dry cement. The effect of the additive on the hardening kinetics, structure, and strength of the activated cement paste was studied. It was established that acid corrosion products of cement have structure-forming activity. A significant increase of the compressive strength of the activated cement paste relative to the control sample was found over the entire hardening interval (1–3–7–28 days). At the daily age of normal hardening, the strength of activated cement paste increased by 165 %. At 28 days of age, the strength increased by 42 %. The X-ray phase and infrared spectral analysis results suggest the following. The acceleration of setting and the increase in the strength of the cement composite is realized due to the intensification of hydration processes and the binding of portlandite, the early formation of structure-forming phases as ettringite and Kuzel salt Са4Al2(ОН)12Cl(SO4)0.5∙6H2O (analog of Friedel's salt), as well as weakly crystallized calcium hydrosilicates with a tobermorite-like structure.


ABSTRACTAir pollution due to PM2.5 is of public concern in Korea. Ambient PM2.5 can penetrate indoors through the building envelope, affecting the indoor PM2.5 concentrations. Most people stay indoors for approximately 80% of every day, implying that their primary exposure to PM2.5 could be determined by the indoor air. This study aims to investigate the infiltration of ambient PM2.5 through the building envelop in apartment housing units in Korea. The on-site infiltration test method, by using a blower-door depressurization procedure, was suggested in order to maintain an identical indoor-outdoor pressure difference among the tests. On-site experiments were conducted in 11 apartment housing units to estimate the PM2.5 infiltration factors. The results showed that the average infiltration factor of all the test housing units was 0.65 ± 0.13 (average ± standard deviation), with a minimum of 0.38 and a maximum of 0.88. Furthermore, the results from the relation of the building airtightness data to the infiltration factors suggests that a leaky housing unit with high ACH50, or a high specific effective leakage area (ELA), would be more significantly influenced by the ambient PM2.5. The study demonstrated that the suggested infiltration test procedure was useful to assess the infiltration factors in conditions of controlled indoor-outdoor pressure differences in real housing units.


Rodents, like other wild animals, are subject to a wide variety of parasitic infestation. Although wild animals are usually infected with several species of parasites, they seldom suffer massive deaths or epizootic. This is due to the normal dispersal and territorialism of most species. Despite the fact that most wild animals tolerate their parasite burdens fairly well, the animals will succumb when crowded and suffering from malnutrition. This study investigated the occurrence and the variety of intestinal parasites among the different sub-populations of Praomys delectorum in Taita and Kyulu Hills. Microscopic studies were conducted on the digesta of the animals. Threedifferent species of intestinal parasites were identified i.e. Hymenolepis sp, Trichostronglus sp and Trichuris sp. All the animal groups were found to have the ova and the adult Hymenolepis sp and only the Kyulu group had Trichuris species ova. The percentage infection varied between 25% and 63.16% across all the sub-populations. The Kyulu sub-population with the leastanthropogenic disturbance or a more stable ecosystem had the highest prevalence of parasites (63.16%). Of the Taita Hills sub-populations, Ngangao, with the least anthropogenic disturbance and lowest population of Praomysdelectorum, had the lowest prevalence of intestinal parasites at 25%. Density of rodent population, habitat type and degree of anthropogenic disturbance are factors that determine the occurrence and prevalence of intestinal parasites in the animal species under study.


Despite several decades of research into segmentation techniques, automated medical image segmentation is barely usable in a clinical context, and still at vast user time expense. This paper illustrates unsupervised organ segmentation through the use of a novel automated labelling approximation algorithm followed by a hypersurface front propagation method. The approximation stage relies on a pre-computed image partition forest obtained directly from CT scan data. We have implemented all procedures to operate directly on 3D volumes, rather than slice-by-slice, because our algorithms are dimensionality-independent. The results picture segmentations which identify kidneys, but can easily be extrapolated to other body parts. Quantitative analysis of our automated segmentation compared against hand-segmented gold standards indicates an average Dice similarity coefficient of 90%. Results were obtained over volumes of CT data with 9 kidneys, computing both volume-based similarity measures (such as the Dice and Jaccard coefficients, true positive volume fraction) and size-based measures (such as the relative volume difference). The analysis considered both healthy and diseased kidneys, although extreme pathological cases were excluded from the overall count. Such cases are difficult to segment both manually and automatically due to the large amplitude of Hounsfield unit distribution in the scan, and the wide spread of the tumorous tissue inside the abdomen. In the case of kidneys that have maintained their shape, the similarity range lies around the values obtained for inter-operator variability. Whilst the procedure is fully automated, our tools also provide a light level of manual editing.


This article gives a brief review of the possibilities and the range of applicability of the scale model as a means of hydraulic research into changes undergone by a sea coast. Considering only the action of waves on a sea shore, some of the conditions for its representation in correct similitude on the model are as follows:__ 1) Reproduction of the main aspects of wave propagation__i.e. refraction, diffraction, reflection__which requires an undistorted model; 2) Reproduction of the mode of wave generation, for waves from the open sea generally do not produce the same beach profiles as local wind waves; 3) Reproduction of the effect of waves on the beach material. It is very difficult to choose a suitable model material as Froude similitude is seldom achieved; not only the grain size of the material, but especially its density must be carefully determined if it is to show the same "potential transportability" as the prototype material. The model and prototype materials should, in theory, be in similitude with regard to the following properties:__ (i) Grain acceleration from rest and sinking velocity; (ii) Sediment discharge for a given wave size; (iii) Respective proportions of bed and suspended sediment loads. These conditions cannot generally be reconciled, except in very special cases where a very local effect is investigated to a comparatively large scale. The choice of a bed material and the corresponding model scale distortion and wave reproduction scales thus finally depends on the type of problem to be solved. This may also apply to the mode of wave generation. In view of this difficulty, an attempt has been made to classify such problems, as follows:__ Investigation of problems associated with sediment drift along a coast and changes in the shore line. The all-important requirement here is to reproduce the sediment drift as affected by wave obliquity, most of which takes place within the area between the breaking waves and the top edge of their wash. In this case, even though wind waves may sometimes be involved, paddle generating equipment may be adequate if rapidly adjustable for direction so as to enable the energy spectrum resulting from the various wave directions during the year to be reproduced. This type of representation provides a perfectly acceptable means of studying the development of a coastal spit, the silting-up of a harbour, methods of keeping a lagoon in open communication with the sea, etc. Though these models are usually slightly distorted and involve a certain amount of compromising, they can nevertheless be made to supply some very interesting indications. It is difficult, however, to use them for really accurate quantitative interpretation of the effects of the requisite structures and the determination of their dimensions. Investigation of the development of a beach cross-section and erosion due to head-on wave attack. This type of problem necessitates a more precise reproduction of wave action throughout the developing cross-section and, especially, of sediment drift out to sea. It is difficult to reproduce these effects with a paddle type generator, for the outward current along the sea bed associated with real-life wind waves is not reproduced On the model. Wind generating facilities may prove necessary in such cases; a 600 square meter tank featuring a set of thirty-four 2 H.P. fans has been built at SO.-GR. E.A.H. to investigate a protection scheme for a beach subjected to wind waves at various sea level conditions. The adjustment of such a model is obviously a very delicate matter; an essential prerequisite is the reproduction of developments observed in real life, with the waves and water levels which are likely to have caused them. The authors have found by experience that such effects can be very satisfactorily reproduced with such wind wave generating equipment, which also enables very fiat beaches to be obtained on the model with very little scale distortion. Conclusion. An experimental hydraulic model study can contribute some very interesting indications for problems associated with the effect of wind waves on coasts and beaches; such information provides very useful guide lines for coastal development and protection work, despite the difficulty of reproducing to a correct scale the effects of the various factors associated with wave type and propagation upon the shore. Though a model with slight scale distortion and conventional wave generating equipment is generally adequate to study the effects of oblique wave attack upon a sea shore, a study of shore erosion under practically head-on wave attack may, to be really accurate, also require means of simulating wind wave formation in order to reliably reproduce the action of such waves, or to produce the requisite "seaward" drift of the model shore material.


GATA6 is a zinc finger transcription factor expressed in the colorectal epithelium. We have examined the expression of GATA6 in colon cancers and investigated the mechanisms by which GATA6 regulates colon cancer cell invasion. GATA6 was overexpressed in colorectal polyps and primary and metastatic tumors. GATA6 was strongly expressed in both the nuclear and cytoplasmic compartments of the colon cancer cells. GATA6 expression was upregulated in invasive HT29 and KM12L4 cells compared with the parental HT29 and KM12 cells and positively correlated with urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) gene expression. Small interfering RNA (siRNA) knockdown of GATA6 resulted in reduced uPA gene expression and cell invasion. GATA6 bound to the uPA gene regulatory sequences in vivo and activated uPA promoter activity in vitro. uPA promoter deletion analysis indicated that the promoter proximal Sp1 sites were required for GATA6 activation of the uPA promoter. Accordingly, GATA6 physically associated with Sp1 and siRNA knockdown of Sp1 decreased GATA6 activation of the uPA promoter activity suggesting that Sp1 recruits GATA6 to the uPA promoter and mediates GATA6 induced activation of the uPA promoter activity. On the basis of our results, we conclude that GATA6 is an important regulator of uPA gene expression, and the dysregulated expression of GATA6 contributes to colorectal tumorigenesis and tumor invasion.


This paper draws on evidence from a series of expert focus groups to question the function of "informed consent" in online transactions. Informed consent and related concepts have a key role in much privacy research and are an integral part of much data protection legislation. The research methodology used in this paper was focus groups with expert participants and the paper describes this approach in detail. Four expert groups, with participants from civil society organizations, data protection professionals, public sector organizations and small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) took part in the focus groups which ran for a total of 10 hours. This paper reports on the results from the focus groups in terms of a) privacy policies, b) control over the use of personal data, c) consent as a response to regulatory requirements and d) the nature of informed consent. The evidence from the focus groups questions the extent to which informed consent operates in online interactions. This suggests a number of novel research directions that arise from the analysis. The paper ends by suggesting alternative ways of addressing "informed consent" in online interactions.


The major modes of public transportation in the city of Addis Ababa are buses and taxis. There is no rail transit within the city. Existing public transportation is of a low quality due to the limited number of buses and taxis, poor management, and bad behavior of drivers. Despite these prevailing problems, efforts to make an empirical study of the city's urban transportation are insignificant. This research aims to develop an ordered logit model to examine citizens' perceptions of the bus condition, as a determining factor for their choice of bus transportation, and to develop a binary logit model to analyze traveler choice behavior. A diagnostic analysis is undertaken based on the 2 models. The results show that citizens' perceptions of the 3 chosen bus condition aspects (fare, convenience, and frequency) have a significant influence on public transport mode choice.


Cooper and Nyborg (2008) derive a tax-adjusted discount rate formula under a constant proportion leverage policy, investor taxes and risky debt. However, their analysis assumes zero recovery in default. We extend their framework to allow for positive recovery rates. We also allow for differences in bankruptcy codes with respect to the order of priority of interest payments versus repayment of principal in default, which may have tax consequences. The general formula we derive differs from that of Cooper and Nyborg when recovery rates in default are anticipated to be positive. However, under continuous rebalancing, the formula collapses to that of Cooper and Nyborg. We provide an explanation for why the effect of the anticipated recovery rate is not directly visible in the general continuous rebalancing formula, even though this formula is derived under the assumption of partial default. The errors from using the continuous approximation formula are sensitive to the anticipated recovery in default, yet small. The "cost of debt" in the tax adjusted discount rate formula is the debt's yield rather than its expected rate of return.


For the New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA, sustaining the city's 178,000 units of public housing for future generations is a significant and increasingly difficult task. Faced with aging infrastructure and cuts in federal funding, the city has turned to private sector partnerships for new ways to finance the upkeep of its buildings. The 2013 Land Lease Initiative, NYCHA's unrealized plan to generate funds by renting underutilized open space to residential developers, demonstrated economic potential but overlooked opportunities to repair critical deficiencies in the urban design and energy-efficiency of its public housing developments. This thesis suggests that passive-solar design strategies can influence a more sustainable approach to public housing revitalization, integrating site-sensitive infill development with existing building upgrades. Focusing on the Douglass Houses in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I analyze how the Land Lease Initiative's high-rise massing would worsen existing buildings' access to natural sunlight, and I suggest an infill development model that preserves solar access to existing facades while connecting the superblocks to the surrounding urban fabric. My research then explores the application of sunspace additions to existing public housing to expand living spaces while simultaneously reducing heating demand. I conclude with a discussion of financial plausibility and large-scale impact on NYCHA's overall housing portfolio. This investigation aims to create an integrated process that links new development and public housing upgrades across site, building, and dwelling scales. by Jeffrey Geisinger Submitted to the Department of Architecture on May 21, 2015 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Architecture Studies Thesis Co-Supervisor: Christoph Reinhart Title: Associate Professor of Building Technology Thesis Co-Supervisor: Brent Ryan Title: Associate Professor of Urban Design and Public Policy Improving In Place: A Passive Solar Design Approach to Public Housing Redevelopment


Two important issues in the current mobile cellular networks are: Firstly, the traffic on the internet has shifted from the file downloads to the video and audio streaming, secondly, the energy efficiency of cellular networks is a major concern. Particularly, the ever-increasing number of users with the exponential growth of high-data-rate traffic demand creates new challenges for wireless access providers. On the one hand, service providers want to satisfy the growing mobile data traffic demands but on the other hand, they try to reduce the operational costs and carbon emissions by decreasing the energy consumption. In this work, we explicitly quantify the tradeoff between quality of experience (QoE) and energy efficiency in a heterogeneous cellular network. We investigate an optimal resource on-off switching framework that minimizes the energy consumption of a heterogeneous cellular network while satisfying a desired level of quality of user experience. Considering an ON/OFF bursty arrival process, we introduce recursive equations to obtain the buffer starvation probability, as a QoE metric, of a mobile device (MD) for streaming services. The MD is in the coverage area of a femtocell base station (FBS) which is implemented at the cell edge of a macrocell base station (MBS). The buffer starvation event occurs whenever the mobile device's buffer gets empty, and after each such event, the media player of the MD restarts the service after a certain amount of packets are prefetched (start-up or initial buffering delay). Our results have the potential to reduce carbon emissions of cellular networks by reducing the energy consumption throughout the network, while guaranteeing a target starvation probability to mobile users.


OBJECTIVES
To provide an evidence base for clinical practice guidelines (CPG) for the management of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in older adults.

METHODS
PubMed, Cochrane library, and Japan Centra Revuo Medicina databases were searched for articles published between 1990 and 2019. Quality of the evidence was assessed using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation system, with some modifications.

RESULTS
Among 702 identified articles, there were 5 post-hoc analyses of randomized controlled trials and 10 observational studies. Meta-analysis of the former yielded a mean difference of the van der Heijde-modified total Sharp score of -2.79 (95% confidence interval [CI] - 3.74 to -1.84) for treatment with tumor necrosis factor inhibitors. The risk ratio (RR) for the American College of Rheumatology 50% response rate, and for serious adverse events was 2.83 (95%CI 1.90 to 4.21) and 1.32 (95%CI 0.53 to 3.31), respectively, for Janus kinase inhibitors. Meta-analysis of the observational studies yielded an RR for disease activity score-28 remission and serious infections of 0.76 (95%CI 0.64 to 0.91) and 1.92 (95%CI 1.31 to 2.81) for older-versus-younger patients receiving biological disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs, respectively.

CONCLUSION
This systematic review provides the necessary evidence for developing CPG for the management of RA in older adults.


First principles study of electronic and mechanical properties of ternary phase Zr2TiAlZr2TiAl intermetallic compound has been carried out by using full potential linear augmented plane wave (FP-LAPW) method. Our calculated lattice parameter is in good agreement with the experiment. We find the magnetic phase of the compound to be stable with a magnetic moment of 1.95 μB. The major contribution to the total magnetic moment arises mainly from the Ti atom with the local magnetic moment of 1.22 μB. From the density of states plots we find the Ti-d and Zr-d to dominate at the Fermi level (EF ) with enhanced crystal field splitting and exchange splitting found in Ti. The mechanical stability of the compound is confirmed from the calculated elastic constants, and we find the compound to be ductile in nature from the calculated Pugh's ratio and Cauchy's pressure.