We study the compound multi-input multi-output (MIMO) broadcast channel with confidential messages (BCC), where one transmitter sends a common message to two receivers and two confidential messages respectively to each receiver. The channel state may take one of a finite set of states, and the transmitter knows the state set but does not know the realization of the state. We study achievable rates with perfect secrecy in the high SNR regime by characterizing an achievable secrecy degree of freedom (s.d.o.f.) region for two models, the Gaussian MIMO-BCC and the ergodic fading multi-input single-output (MISO)-BCC without a common message. We show that by exploiting an additional temporal dimension due to state variation in the ergodic fading model, the achievable s.d.o.f. region can be significantly improved compared to the Gaussian model with a constant state, although at the price of a larger delay.


This book is a collection of short articles on various aspects of FPGA design: synthesis, simulation, porting ASIC designs, floorplanning and timing closure, design methodologies, performance, area and power optimizations, RTL coding, IP core selection, and many others. The book is intended for system architects, design engineers, and students who want to improve their FPGA design skills. Both novice and seasoned logic and hardware engineers can find bits of useful information. This book is written by a practicing FPGA logic designer, and contains a lot of illustrations, code examples, and scripts. Rather than providing information applicable to all FPGA vendors, this book edition focuses on Xilinx Virtex-6 and Spartan-6 FPGA families. Code examples are written in Verilog HDL. All code examples, scripts, and projects provided in the book are available on accompanying website: http://outputlogic.com/100_fpga_power_tips


SYNOPSIS "Works of art are the property of mankind and ownership carries with it the obligation to preserve them. He who neglects this duty ... will be punished with the contempt of all educated people, now and in future ages."--Attributed to J.W. von Goethe (1) "Much of what they want to commercialize is sacred to us. We see intellectual property as part of our culture. It cannot be separated into categories, as [Western] lawyers would want."--North American Indian Congress, Ray Apoaka (2) "The indigenous view of the world ... is the antithesis to the Western paradigm: communitarian, not individual, focused on sharing rather than shielding things, respect for land and all living things as sacred rather than as objects ripe for exploitation and consumption." (3) These statements illustrate a fundamental tension between individualist, or "Romantic," views of property rights typically associated with Western thought, and the communal view of property rights held by indigenous peoples. Goethe's view of works of art is in keeping with the "Romantic" view of authorship, a perception that highly values the individual experience of artistic production. (4) The traditional indigenous view, in contrast, envisions property, knowledge and nature as part of an interconnected world. (5) Indigenous concerns are common throughout the world. What qualifies as an "indigenous" concern? The United Nations (UN) defines indigenous peoples according to three general characteristics. (6) First, indigenous peoples have a historical continuity with the societies that developed in particular territories before they were conquered or colonized. Second, they consider themselves to be a distinct and non-dominant sector of the present society of the territory. Third, they are "determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems." (7) The UN's definition provides a starting point for analyzing indigenous concerns. But it should be kept in mind that other factors are also relevant. For example, a 1993 International Labour Organization (ILO) (8) report revealed that, as compared to national populations, the world's indigenous people have higher rates of infant mortality, unemployment, alcoholism, disease, ill health, and incarceration. (9) Sadly, as a general rule, "indigenous and tribal peoples are always, always at the bottom of the social and economic heaps." (10) The historical backgrounds and unique characteristics of indigenous people require and justify special protection). (11) Can intellectual property rights help rectify this problem? This paper addresses this essential question by analyzing and comparing the divergent legal systems of the United States and Australia. Although these legal regimes faced similar requirements relative to indigenous populations, they have responded quite differently. In this article I will closely examine the United States and Australia's diverging legal developments in order to illuminate the underlying factors that may shape legal responses in the future. Part I will compare and contrast the respective legal systems of the United States and Australia. Part II will identify key legal decisions from each of these countries and will analyze them with respect to the "individualist" and the indigenous, communal view of intellectual property. Part III will consider certain international approaches to indigenous intellectual property rights, and will compare this to U.S. and Australian experiences. Finally, Part IV will propose how the heritage and culture of indigenous peoples can indeed be preserved through expanded intellectual property rights. I. DIVERGENT APPROACHES TO INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS: THE LEGAL REGIMES OF THE UNITED STATES AND AUSTRALIA In certain respects, the United States and Australia share similar colonial histories. …


Survey experiments often manipulate the description of attributes in a hypothetical scenario, with the goal of learning about those attributes' real-world effects. Such inferences rely on an underappreciated assumption: experimental conditions must be information equivalent (IE) with respect to background features of the scenario. IE is often violated because subjects, when presented with information about one attribute, update their beliefs about others too. Labeling a country "a democracy," for example, affects subjects' beliefs about the country's geographic location. When IE is violated, the effect of the manipulation need not correspond to the quantity of interest (the effect of beliefs about the focal attribute). We formally define the IE assumption, relating it to the exclusion restriction in instrumental-variable analysis. We show how to predict IE violations ex ante and diagnose them ex post with placebo tests. We evaluate three strategies for achieving IE. Abstract encouragement is ineffective. Specifying background details reduces imbalance on the specified details and highly correlated details, but not others. Embedding a natural experiment in the scenario can reduce imbalance on all background beliefs, but raises other issues. We illustrate with four survey experiments, focusing on an extension of a prominent study of the democratic peace.


Abstract Strict maximum residue limits in export markets are likely to place restrictions on pesticide use on vegetable crops in developing countries. In West Africa, the key factors influencing vegetable farmers' willingness to pay for biopesticides as alternatives to chemical pesticides are assessed. The key factors identified from vegetable producers' surveys are access to education and extension services, experience in pesticide use, and the effectiveness of pesticides to control new pests. The adoption of biopesticide as a substitute to chemical pesticide to control the diamondback moth on cabbage would occur more likely in Ghana, given the greater emphasis of extension on awareness and information on integrated pest management (IPM). The low level of awareness and information of farmers in Benin to make a clear difference between biological and chemical pesticides presents unrealistic expectations for biopesticide introductions now.


Java-based middleware is a rapidly growing workload for high-end server processors, particularly chip multiprocessors (CMP). To help architects design future microprocessors to run this important new workload, we provide a detailed characterization of two popular Java server benchmarks, ECperf and SPECjbb2000. We first estimate the amount of instruction-level parallelism in these workloads by simulating a very wide issue processor with perfect caches and perfect branch predictors. We then identify performance bottlenecks for these workloads on a more realistic processor by selectively idealizing individual processor structures. Finally, we combine our findings on available ILP in Java middleware with results from previous papers that characterize the availibility of TLP to investigate the optimal balance between ILP and TLP in CMPs. We find that, like other commercial workloads, Java middleware has only a small amount of instruction-level parallelism, even when run on very aggressive processors. When run on processors resembling currently available processors, the performance of Java middleware is limited by frequent traps, address translation and stalls in the memory system. We find that SPECjbb2000 differs from ECperf in two meaningful ways: (1) the performance of ECperf is affected much more by cache and TLB misses during instruction fetch and (2) SPECjbb2000 has more memory-level parallelism.


Precast Concrete Sandwich Panels (PCSP) that act as load bearing elements are
structurally and thermally efficient building elements with potential for use as an I
Industrialised Building System (IBS).
The study aims to investigate all issues related to structural performance of
PCSP. The strength characteristics of PCSP under imposed loads with both wythes
being structural wythes were established and the condition for achieving composite
behaviour was examined. Although it is possible to use any conventional flooring
system with the use of PCSP as walling elements, the structural behaviour of PCSP
under lateral load was also studied so that PCSP can be adopted as flooring elements.
This helps to reduce the number of different types of elements necessary in a
building. . A study on typical connections between PCSP elements was alsd
undertaken.
Under axial and eccentric loads, an experimental program consisting of
twelve specimens with different heights was carried out. The theoretical investigation
consists of two theoretical formulations namely, classical expressions and Finite Element Method (FEM). Comparison between non-linear FEM proposed models and
experimental data was made in order to validate the models.


Syncope is a condition that is often seen in the emergency department. Most syncope is benign, but it can be a symptom of a life-threatening condition. While syncope often requires an extensive workup in adults, in the pediatric population, critical questioning and simple, noninvasive testing is usually sufficient to exclude significant or life-threatening causes. For low-risk patients, resource-intensive workups are rarely diagnostic, and add significant cost to medical care. This issue will highlight critical diseases that cause syncope, identify high-risk "red flags," and enable the emergency clinician to develop a cost-effective, minimally invasive algorithm for the diagnosis and treatment of pediatric syncope.


Today's Transportation is known as one of the most important elements of urban development structure. Public Transportation, according to its more extensive functional capacity, can play a vital role in wider scale. Transit Oriented development by focusing on the subways is one of the special approaches in this field. Recently, Tehran Public Transport Fleet has significantly improved especially in the field of subway and BRT. Although Tehran has the potential capacity it could not only benefit from the advantages of this development, but also has imposed many social and traffic problems around stationary complexes. These are because of lack of implementation principles of TOD and the proper functioning of them. Mirdamad Station Complex plays a role in the implementation of these principles to achieve an efficient station complex. TOD is included four main principles: (1) Intensive development, (2) mixed land uses, (3) pedestrian-orientation, (4) Transportation facilities. In this study, the functional principles of TOD in the Mirdamad Station Complex are assessed using librarian data and archived studies in order to do descriptive and analytical research. As a main result the Mirdamad Station Complex, with the implementation rate of two-third of the functional principles, is in desirable condition and can be used as one of the complex station in Tehran.


Member countries of OPEC have grown flush with wealth from their oil resources. Unfortunately, this wealth has often been accompanied by violence and suffering. Nigeria, the only member of the organization in sub-Saharan Africa, has perhaps suffered the most. Since the first commercial production of oil in the Niger Delta in the 1950s propelled Nigeria to the top of Africa's oil-producing countries, the country has been wracked by regional conflicts over exploitation of its natural resources. In an effort to decrease violence and kidnappings, the Nigerian government offered an ongoing amnesty to militants in August 2009; the amnesty has kept fragile tranquility in place. Attaining lasting stability, however, is a tall order. Given the economic incentives of Niger Delta militants and the many obstacles facing the peace process, the amnesty is unlikely to reverse this history of violence. Nigeria's ongoing conflict began in the 1990s and has continued through the country's transition to democracy. The Niger Delta's multiple ethnic groups initially each claimed to be the true indigenous group of the region, with primary control over the land and its valuable resources. In December 1998, the Ijaw, one of the ethnic groups, formed the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) to protest the injustice of bearing most of the costs of oil production and receiving few of the benefits. The IYC began to disrupt Nigerian oil pipelines throughout Ijaw territory, attacking oil structures and kidnapping workers for bargaining leverage. What ostensibly began as a resource-based ethnic struggle quickly degenerated into widescale militarization of the Niger Delta as political officials offered financial support to the paramilitary groups that they believed would support their own agendas. These factions coalesced into two main forces in 2003, each an amalgamation of loosely allied, Ijaw-dominated militias: the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force (NDPVF) and the Niger Delta Vigilante (NDV). Both groups escalated attacks on the oil industry through oil bunkering, or the larcenous siphoning of oil from pipelines, which is often carried out with hacksaws. The NDPVF and NDV not only raided oil resources but also fought each other over bunkering routes, devastating" the local environment and population. This conflict escalated when the Nigerian government intervened in favor of the NDV in the summer of 2004, inciting the leader of the NDPVF, Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, to declare all-out war on the government. After Asari's arrest in 2005, the conflict shifted from an inter-group struggle to a series of attacks on the oil industry--a pattern that persists to this day. This is the unstable foundation upon which the 2009 amnesty is built. The synthesis of the ethnic conflict in the Niger Delta with the economic needs of the Delta's impoverished citizens poses a daunting challenge, both to the amnesty and to any future peace process. The language of ethnic struggle, dating back to the formation of the IYC, grants militant groups a certain legitimacy, allowing them to rationalize their actions and to draw in recruits of a nationalist bent. Asari, for example, recruited militants by emphasizing the Ijaw's "rightful control" over Nigerian oil. As the struggle between NDPVF and NDV indicated, however, militants seek not only to benefit ethnic minorities but also to profit from illegal activity. Gradually, the emphasis on the ethnic divide has been pushed aside in favor of rhetoric focused on the economic divide. Studies show that around 80 percent of Nigeria's oil wealth goes to 1 percent of its population, and militants now claim that those deprived of their country's wealth are justified in regaining it through any means. …


Pathogenic F165-positive Escherichia coli isolates of porcine and bovine origin possess gene clusters related to extraintestinal E. coli fimbrial operons pap, sfa, and afaI. Probes from different segments of the pap, sfa, and afaI operons were used in Southern hybridization to analyze 18 F165-positive, mannose-resistant hemagglutinating E. coli isolates possessing pap- and sfa-, pap- and afa-, or pap-related sequences. Only single copies of the pap-, sfa-, or afa-related sequences were found among the isolates, and the position of each sequence with respect to those of adjacent sequences was variable. Expression of the P and F adhesins individually or concurrently was associated with the presence of a single copy of pap-related sequences. Gene clusters related to pap were structurally similar to the pap operon in certain isolates or the prs operon in others. sfa-related sequences showed few internal structural polymorphisms and were structurally similar to the foc rather than the sfa operon. afa-related sequences showed many internal structural polymorphisms compared with the afa-related sequences from prototype strain KS52. These results demonstrate that the pap- and sfa-related sequences in F165-positive isolates are closely related to the prototype pap operon and foc operon of the P family and Sfa family, respectively. afa-related sequences, on the other hand, display heterogeneity and differ from the prototype afaI operon.


In the 1980s, with the rise to dominance of governments with neoliberal economic and social agendas, the public sector in major western countries underwent a process of fundamental reforms. A key aspect of the change imposed was the implementation of a market-oriented, cost-efficiency focus towards the management of public sector organisations, described collectively as the New Public Management (NPM) model (Kelsey, 1995; Boston et al, 1996; Easton 1996; Barton, 2002, 2005a, 2005b; Carnegie & West, 2005; Ball & Grubnic, 2008; Davis, 2010). This reform process included the imposition of regulatory measures requiring public sector organisations to provide annual financial reports prepared on an accounting basis comparable to those for the private sector, and incorporated an obligation to disclose (at economic values) all assets held. For public benefit entities holding heritage, cultural and community assets (HCA), this reporting requirement has been particularly problematic, entailing substantive changes to public accounting policy. This paper critiques the political ideologies and practices of the NPM model, and challenges its assumptions that private sector financial reporting requirements, based on international accounting standards and Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (GAAP), are appropriate for universal application to public benefit and other not-for-profit entities holding HCA. In particular, the paper argues against the NPM assumption that reporting all HCA in economic terms improves accountability in public benefit entities. Instead, the paper proposes an alternative reporting model based on a set of cultural rather than economic values for reporting HCA. It suggests as an exemplar the 'Wellbeing of Communities' reporting and accountability framework devised for application by an indigenous New Zealand Māori educational institution, Te Wānanga-o-Raukawa.


Disinfection/oxidation processes are a major step in the water treatment train. As high levels of inactivation or removal of pathogens and micropolluants are aimed at the design and optimized operating conditions are crucial issues for the reliability of the treatment and cost control. In this context, using computational fluid dynamics allows better evaluation of the efficiency of the treatment and guarantees its performance prior to full-scale design. Examples are given in this paper of the capability of the numerical tool in order to propose an optimized solution for a refurbishment or a new plant design. The full-scale realization confirmed the predicted quality benefit.


The pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of porcine insulin zinc suspension were studied in eight dogs with spontaneous diabetes mellitus and a lack of endogenous insulin, demonstrated by the lack of insulin secretion after an injection of glucagon and confirmed by measurement of the concentration of C-peptide during the pharmacokinetic assessments. After daily subcutaneous injections of porcine insulin zinc suspension, concentrations of insulin and glucose that differed significantly from baseline were identified using the 90 per cent range of differences. In all the dogs there was an initial peak concentration of insulin approximately three hours after the injection and a second peak after approximately nine hours in all but one of them. The serum insulin concentration remained above baseline for a mean of 15·5 hours. The concentration of glucose was reduced significantly after the injections in all except one dog, which was normoglycaemic at baseline. The action of insulin began after approximately three hours and the minimum glucose concentration occurred after approximately eight hours. The median duration of action of the insulin was approximately 14 hours, with a range from 10 to more than 24 hours.


One expects those who lead organisations to affect their performance. If not why would organisations spend so much time and money appointing and incentivising their leaders? Yet there is little evidence establishing a causal link between leaders and organisational performance. Using game-by-game linked employer-employee data for professional football in four countries over fifteen seasons we compare the performance of teams after they have sacked their Head Coach with spells where the Head Coach remains in post. We undertake a similar exercise comparing performance after a Head Coach quits with that of teams where the Head Coach remains in post. We deal with the endogeneity of Coach departures using entropy balancing to reweight teams' performance prior to the departure of a Coach so that trends in team performance prior to the departure match spells which ended with a Coach remaining in post. Consistent with theory, Head Coach quits have little or no impact on team performance whereas teams who fire their Head Coach experience small but statistically significant improvements in team performance, although this positive impact is confined to circumstances in which a team holds onto the new Coach having sacked the previous Coach. Our results lend support to the proposition that teams can benefit from Head Coach turnover, firing them when it is optimal to do so, and replacing a Head Coach during the offseason.


The ability to learn reward functions plays an important role in enabling the deployment of intelligent agents in the real world. However, comparing reward functions, for example as a means of evaluating reward learning methods, presents a challenge. Reward functions are typically compared by considering the behavior of optimized policies, but this approach conflates deficiencies in the reward function with those of the policy search algorithm used to optimize it. To address this challenge, Gleave et al. (2020) propose the Equivalent-Policy Invariant Comparison (EPIC) distance. EPIC avoids policy optimization, but in doing so requires computing reward values at transitions that may be impossible under the system dynamics. This is problematic for learned reward functions because it entails evaluating them outside of their training distribution, resulting in inaccurate reward values that we show can render EPIC ineffective at comparing rewards. To address this problem, we propose the Dynamics-Aware Reward Distance (DARD), a new reward pseudometric. DARD uses an approximate transition model of the environment to transform reward functions into a form that allows for comparisons that are invariant to reward shaping while only evaluating reward functions on transitions close to their training distribution. Experiments in simulated physical domains demonstrate that DARD enables reliable reward comparisons without policy optimization and is significantly more predictive than baseline methods of downstream policy performance when dealing with learned reward functions.


Good knowledge about Covid-19 transmission and nature prevents transmission of microorganisms and reduces the incidence of Covid-19 in the community To assess knowledge of Iraqi people about covid-19&to find the source of information about covid-19 Method: Cross-sectional study was done from 1stJune-1stJuly 2020, by electronic version of questionnaire through Google-form Any Iraqi adult can read Arabic and use the internet media (e-mails, telegram, viber, whatsapp, Facebook) or by hand to hand as hard-copy, and accepted to answer the questionnaire through friend, friend of friend, relatives, work colleagues with A Brief message Analysed by SPSS ver 23, frequencies and percentages calculated The study revealed enrolling of 700 Iraqi people from difference part of Iraq and difference were participant in it, the main age of them 230(32 9%) aged 20-29 years old, females 416(59 4%), complete secondary school388(55 4%), near 60% of them working in non-medical field, and governmental employee 364(52 0%), and there-residency in Baghdad city 457(65%), followed by holly-Karbala 8%, and bible 4%, good knowledgein prevention of Covid-19 transmission, Strength the immunity against covid-19 infection and its complication, and the Overall knowledge appear as good 691(99%) the Internet is the major source of the information about the covid-19;568(81 1%) Conclusion: most of participants had good knowledge in prevention and strength the immunity and vaccination of covid 19, and the main source of information is the internet then TV &radio © 2020 Ubiquity Press All rights reserved


The Kwyjibo deposit is the most significant of a number of examples of the iron oxide-copper-gold class of deposits to have been found in the Grenville. It is a Mesoproterozoic Cu-REE-Mo-F-U-Au iron oxide occurrence located approximately 120 km northeast of Sept-Iles, Quebec. The deposit, which comprises different textural facies of magnetite and hematite mineralization, occurs along the southeast margin of the Canatiche granitic complex. Porphyroidal leucogranite and volcanic equivalents of the Canatiche Complex are the main hosts of the mineralization. Calc-silicate rock and hornblende-biotite gneiss, possibly belonging to the supracrustal Manitou Complex, flank the deposit to the southeast and south. Magnetite is ubiquitous in the Canatiche granitoids and generally occurs as disseminations and fine agglomerations. Near the deposit, magnetite becomes progressively more abundant, forming veinlets, veins, stockworks, and pseudobreccias, culminating in locally brecciated massive magnetite, the dominant type of iron oxide concentration. Specular hematite occurs locally as disseminations and veinlets.

Mineralization at Kwyjibo is complex and multiphase and is divided into early granophile, magnetite, main polymetallic, and specular hematite stages. The main polymetallic mineralization, comprising chalcopyrite, pyrite, molybdenite, fluorite, and REE-bearing minerals, is superimposed on preexisting magnetite-rich rocks and shows little evidence of deformation. The Kwyjibo deposit has a number of features in common with other polymetallic iron oxide deposits around the world, including granitic host rocks of within-plate affinity, various textural facies of iron oxide mineralization styles, and sodic and potassic alteration zones. A close spatial association with a major deep seated structure is also postulated.

The Grenville province hosts a major anorthosite belt and is a world-class titaniferous metallogenic province. The Proterozoic era, and especially its anorogenic periods, are the main metallogenic epochs both for iron oxide-copper-gold deposits and anorthosite-hosted Ti-rich iron oxide deposits. Empirical observations suggest a possible petrogenetic relationship between these two important ore deposit types.


In this paper a novel workflow-based data acquisition and control system for Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FTICR-MS) is presented that facilitates a fast on-the-fly decision-making process for a wide variety of data-dependent experiments. Several new workflow implementations demonstrate the flexibility and benefit of this approach for rapid dynamic experimental design on a chromatographic timescale. The different sequence, evaluation, decision and monitoring modules are described using a selected set of examples. During a tandem liquid chromatography (LC)/FTICR-MS experiment the system is used to dynamically switch between various dissociation techniques such as electron capture dissociation (ECD) and sustained off-resonance irradiation (SORI) depending on the charge state of a tryptic peptide peak. The use of this workflow-based system for imaging FTICR-MS using a desorption electrospray ionization (DESI) source demonstrates the possibility of external control of the workflow by feedback from an imaging sample stage.


Surface layer and upper‐air in situ observations from two research vessel cruises and an ice station in the Weddell Sea from 1992 and 1996 are used to validate four current atmospheric reanalysis products: ERA‐Interim, CFSR, JRA‐55, and MERRA‐2. Three of the observation data sets were not available for assimilation, providing a rare opportunity to validate the reanalyses in the otherwise datasparse region of the Antarctic against independent data. All four reanalyses produce 2 m temperatures warmer than the observations, and the biases vary from +2.0 K in CFSR to +2.8 K in MERRA‐2. All four reanalyses are generally too warm also higher up in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL), with biases up to +1.4 K (ERA‐Interim). Cloud fractions are relatively poorly reproduced by the reanalyses, MERRA‐2 and JRA‐55 having the strongest positive and negative biases of about +30 % and −17 %, respectively. Skill scores of the error statistics reveal that ERA‐Interim compares generally the most favorably against both the surface layer and the upper‐air observations. CFSR compares the second best and JRA‐55 and MERRA‐2 have the least favorable scores. The ABL warm bias is consistent with previous evaluation studies in high latitudes, where more recent observations have been applied. As the amount of observations has varied depending on the decade, season, and region, the consistency of the warm bias suggests a need to improve the modeling systems, including data assimilation as well as ABL and surface parameterizations.


We investigate the stability of a collection of systems which are governed by linear dynamics and operate under limited communication. We view each system and its feedback controller as users on an idealized shared network which grants access only to a few system-controller pairs at any one time. A communication sequence, which plays the role of a network admission policy, specifies the amount of time available for each system to complete its feedback loop. Using Lyapunov theory, we give a sufficient condition for the existence of a stabilizing communication sequence and show how one can be constructed in a way that minimizes network usage. Our solution depends on the parameters of the underlying system(s) and on the number of controller-plant connections that can be maintained simultaneously. We include simulation results illustrating the main ideas.


Objective: To report the improvement in symptoms in an adolescent suffering from Tourette's Syndrome under chiropractic care. Clinical Features: A 14-year old male presented with complaints of motor tics, migraine headaches and severe "fatigue." The patient was experiencing 1,000 "violent" motor tics a day and was medicated with 6 Ibuprofen pills, 10 mgs of Abilify, and 1mg of ORAP (Pimozide) per day. Physical examination augmented with thermal and infrared thermography and radiological examination demonstrated sites of spinal subluxations. Intervention and Outcomes: The patient was cared for with the Pierce Results System.  Over the course of 30 patient visits in a period of 5 months, dramatic reductions were reported in the amount of tics experienced daily. The total number tics were reduced from 1,000 a day to 30-35 tics per day. The patient's dependence on Ibuprofuen was eliminated and his medication dosage (i.e., Abilify and Pimozide) was reduced by his medical provider. Conclusion: A patient with Tourette's Syndrome experienced subjective and objective improvements in symptoms under chiropractic care using the Pierce Results System.™ Further research is recommended to examine the effectiveness of this type of chiropractic intervention in similar patients.


We present the first micro-architectural side-channel attack which runs entirely in the browser. In contrast to other works in this genre, this attack does not require the attacker to install any software on the victim's machine ‐ to facilitate the attack, the victim needs only to browse to an untrusted webpage with attacker-controlled content. This makes the attack model highly scalable and extremely relevant and practical to today's web, especially since most desktop browsers currently accessing the Internet are vulnerable to this attack. Our attack, which is an extension of the last-level cache attacks of Yarom et al. [23], allows a remote adversary recover information belonging to other processes, other users and even other virtual machines running on the same physical host as the victim web browser. We describe the fundamentals behind our attack, evaluate its performance using a high bandwidth covert channel and finally use it to construct a system-wide mouse/network activity logger. Defending against this attack is possible, but the required countermeasures can exact an impractical cost on other benign uses of the web browser and of the computer.


Abstract: Several of the world's bear species exhibit tree-rubbing behavior, which is thought to be a form of scent-marking communication. Many aspects of this behavior remain unexplored, including differences in rub tree selection between sympatric bear species. We compiled rub tree data collected on Yellowstone National Park's Northern Range (USA) and compared rub tree selection of sympatric American black bears (Ursus americanus) and grizzly bears (U. arctos) at local and landscape scales. During 2017 and 2018, we identified 217 rub trees and detected black bears at 117 rub trees and grizzly bears at 18 rub trees, based on genetic analysis of collected hair samples. Rub trees generally were located in areas with gentle slopes and close to existing animal trails. Trees selected by black bears were typically in forested areas, whereas trees selected by grizzly bears were in forested and more open areas. Use of rub trees varied seasonally and between sexes for black bears, but seasonal data were inconclusive for grizzly bears. Black bears showed preferences for certain tree species for rubbing, but we did not find evidence that rub tree selection by grizzly bears differed among tree species. Both bear species selected trees that lacked branches on the lower portions of tree trunks and the maximum rub height was consistent with the body length of the bear species that used the tree. Although the sample size for grizzly bears was small, identifying the species and sex of bears based on genetic analysis enhanced interpretation of rub tree use and selection by bears. Scent-marking by black bears and grizzly bears on similar rub objects in well-traversed areas likely serves to enhance communication within and between the 2 species.


At the centre of media controversy, tabloids continue to be the best-read newspapers in Britain. Competing for the largest group of the British newspaper readers, these papers have been criticized for abandoning their journalistic responsibility, to the detriment of society and the media climate at large. Yet, little research has been conducted on the reception of tabloid journalism. Building on the ongoing debate about popular journalism and "tabloidization", this article draws on focus groups and interviews with 55 male and female young adult readers of the Sun and the Daily Mirror, the two circulation leaders among the popular tabloids. It provides an analysis of readers' experiences of what is often perceived of as typically "trivial" tabloid journalism, such as human interest, sport and celebrity stories, with the aim of providing a better understanding of the popularity of this kind of newspaper content. In doing so, readers' experiences are related to day-to-day routines and the social structures surrounding these, and the article shows how tabloid newspaper reading links with a wider social context.


Abstract There is evidence to suggest that certain extrinsic factors, such as footwear, may contribute to risk of running injury. Torsional shoe stiffness quantifies the resistance of a shoe to twisting about its long axis between the heel and toe box, and has been previously linked to changes in foot and ankle kinetics and kinematics during running and cutting motions. Despite the potential for torsional stiffness to influence gait and injury risk, torsional stiffness of running shoes is rarely reported in biomechanical research, and methods of quantifying shoe torsional stiffness are not currently standardised. The purpose of this study was to propose and validate a device for the quantification of torsional stiffness of a variety of types and sizes of running footwear. The device includes the measurement of shoe length. This provides required information for a more comprehensive calculation of torsional stiffness that represents the product of the area moment of inertia and the modulus of rigidity, both of which can be useful to characterise a particular type of shoe based on its shape and material properties. The results of inter-rater and intra-rater reliability analyses suggest that the device is useful for repeatable measurements of torsional stiffness in both the medial and lateral directions, as well as heel thickness.


Despite enormous advances in digital communication, the voice is still the primary tool with which people exchange ideas. However, uncompressed digital speech tends to require prohibitively high data rates (upward of 64kbps), making it impractical for many applications. Speech coding is the process of reducing the data rate of digital voice to manageable levels. Parametric speech coders or vocoders utilise a-priori information about the mechanism by which speech is produced in order to achieve extremely efficient compression of speech signals (as low as 1 kbps). The greater part of this thesis comprises an investigation into parametric speech coding. This consisted of a review of the mathematical and heuristic tools used in parametric speech coding, as well as the implementation of an accepted standard algorithm for parametric voice coding. In order to examine avenues of improvement for the existing vocoders, we examined some of the mathematical structure underlying parametric speech coding. Following on from this, we developed a novel approach to parametric speech coding which obtained promising results under both objective and subjective evaluation. An additional contribution by this thesis was the comparative subjective evaluation of the effect of parametric speech coding on English and Xhosa speech. We investigated the performance of two different encoding algorithms on the two languages.


Research on aboveground-belowground interactions has recently experienced a boost. In spite of the relative prosperity of scientific literature featuring aboveground herbivorous arthropods involved in aboveground-belowground interactions, mites have so far been under-represented. To stimulate work with mites in this area, we summarize existing research on plant-mediated interactions of aboveground herbivorous mites and belowground plant-associated organisms. A literature search revealed 17 studies dealing with plant-inhabiting mites, all of which involve the two-spotted spider mite Tetranychus urticae. We categorize the studies according to the belowground biota associated with the mite's host plants, summarize the observed effects of the belowground organisms on the aboveground mites and discuss possible interaction mechanisms. The paucity of existing studies does not yet allow one to draw general conclusions but it is apparent that these aboveground-belowground interactions are strongly context-dependent and vary among plant species and species of belowground biota. In conclusion, we argue that the wealth of knowledge on the behavior, ecology, physiology, and genetic make-up of T. urticae and its natural enemies, and ability to easily rear and perform experimental studies on this species at various spatial scales and organizational levels, make these plant-inhabiting mites perfectly-suited model organisms for future research on aboveground-belowground interactions.


Influence diagrams (IDs) are graphical models for representing and reasoning with sequential decision-making problems under uncertainty. Limited memory influence diagrams (LIMIDs) model a decision-maker (DM) who forgets the history in the course of making a sequence of decisions. The standard inference task in IDs and LIMIDs is to compute the maximum expected utility (MEU), which is one of the most challenging tasks in graphical models. We present a model decomposition framework in both IDs and LIMIDs, which we call submodel decomposition that generates a tree of single-stage decision problems through a tree clustering scheme. We also develop a valuation algebra over the submodels that leads to a hierarchical message passing algorithm that propagates conditional expected utility functions over a submodel-tree as external messages. We show that the overall complexity is bounded by the maximum tree-width over the submodels, common in graphical model algorithms. Finally, we present a new method for computing upper bounds over a submodel-tree by first exponentiating the utility functions yielding a standard probabilistic graphical model as an upper bound and then applying standard variational upper bounds for the marginal MAP inference, yielding tighter upper bounds compared with state-of-the-art bounding schemes for the MEU task.


Coach Effectiveness Training (CET) has been shown to have positive effects on a range of outcome variables, especially in young athletes (Smith & Smoll, 2005). Based on CET principles, and coupled with behavioral feedback, an individualized goal-setting intervention was developed and assessed using a replicated case study approach. Outcome variables included observed, athlete-perceived, and coach-perceived behaviors measured before the intervention and late in the season, as well as coaches' evaluations of the intervention. Four soccer coaches selected three target behaviors that they wished to improve after viewing videotaped behavioral feedback. Behavioral assessment revealed that two of the coaches achieved positive changes on all three of their targeted behaviors. A third coach improved on two of the three targeted behaviors. The fourth coach did not achieve any of the established goals. We conclude that this approach is sufficiently promising to warrant additional research, and we discuss strengths a...


Despite reports of the recession nearing an end, states will have to struggle to make ends meet well into the foreseeable future. The choices are sometimes stark: trade-offs between roads and schools, public safety and health care. The new edition of "Governing States and Localities" responds to this reality with a new, sharper focus on economic and budget pressures. The chapter on finances comes earlier in the book, helping to frame each of the subsequent issues, and a new feature called 'States under Stress' helps students see how fiscal and budgetary policy affects all areas of state and local governance. A brand-new chapter on the environment highlights the leadership role the states have taken in fighting climate change, creating green jobs, and combating pollution. Still a great blend of engaging journalistic writing, high-quality academic analysis, and the latest scholarship, the third edition has been thoroughly updated to account for such major developments as the recentralization of federalism under the Obama administration and the further politicization and rising costs of judicial elections. The authors have expanded coverage of referendums and direct democracy, as well as the increased role states play in homeland security. A series of well-designed features asks students to apply the comparative method ('A Difference that Makes a Difference'), to see how intergovernmental relations impact localities ('Local Focus'), and to see examples of how policies are actually implemented ('Policy in Practice'). This book comes is an engaging full-color design, with more than thirty maps, a vivid selection of photographs, updated tables and figures, and a marginal glossary which all combine to keep your students focused and learning.


Currently deployed client-server architectures for Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) serve millions of concurrent clients. Scaling MMOGs to this magnitude is challenging. Several techniques have been proposed in order to distribute client's load on multiple servers, e.g. spatial decomposition of the virtual world, or 'sharding', to name some. Most of the proposed solutions rely on static assignments of users to servers in the virtual world, thus, they can not cope with the volatile behavior of clients. As a consequence, some servers are overloaded, while others are underloaded. For MMOGs, computation power is a scarce resource which utilization has to be optimized in order to offer better quality of experience to the end users as well as improve the reliability of the system. In this work, we argue that it is possible to dynamically assign users to servers in order to equalize the load of the servers allocated in a MMOG. We propose a distributed load-balancing algorithm that dynamically assign clients to servers based on the current activity in the system. Our distributed algorithm also allows an MMOG to re-assign the area of responsibility between servers in a distributed, scalable, and robust way. To evaluate the performance of our algorithm we build a prototype, called Season, that can serve as a building block for a MMOG. Our results, with real and synthetic data, show that the load among servers in an MMOG is well balanced when Season is used.


The framework of credit networks provides a flexible and robust model of distributed trust, based on pairwise credit allocations representing commitments to allow transactions. Since issuing credit entails risks as well as benefits, it is unclear whether self-interested and autonomous agents will form viable credit networks. We tackle this question through an extensive simulation-based game-theoretic analysis of a 61-node credit network formation scenario, covering eight environments varying on information and cost-benefit parameters. We find that viable credit networks form in equilibrium given sufficiently high transaction value, or sufficiently low default risk. Although the amount of credit issued in equilibrium is significantly lower than in the social optimum, as is the social welfare achieved, this difference diminishes proportionally as the environment becomes more favorable overall.


We report an IgG (=immunoglobulin) electrochemical immunosensor using a newly synthesized redox-active ferrocenyl dendrimer of generation 2 (G2Fc) as a voltammetric transducer. The ferrocenyl dendrimer N(CH2CH2C(O)NHCH2CH2NHC(O)Fe(η5-C5H4)(η5-C5H5))(CH2CH2N(CH2CH2C(O)NHCH2CH2NHC(O)Fe(η5-C5H4)(η5-C5H5))2)2 (G2Fc) was used as a functional moiety to immobilize the antibody on the surface of the electrode. A sandwich immunosensor of the type IgG/Bovine serum albumin (BSA)/anti-IgG/G2Fc/glassy carbon electrode (GCE) was fabricated. The electrochemical properties of G2Fc were thoroughly studied in aqueous and non-aqueous electrolytes with varying scan rates. The incubation time was optimized for better analytical performance of the immunosensor. It is found that the developed amperometric immunosensor is sensitive to a concentration of IgG as low as 2 ng mL−1.


We report the discovery of 15 quasars and bright galaxies at 5.7 < z < 6.9. This is the initial result from the Subaru High-z Exploration of Low-Luminosity Quasars project, which exploits the exquisite multiband imaging data produced by the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) Strategic Program survey. The candidate selection is performed by combining several photometric approaches including a Bayesian probabilistic algorithm to reject stars and dwarfs. The spectroscopic identification was carried out with the Gran Telescopio Canarias and the Subaru Telescope for the first 80 deg2 of the survey footprint. The success rate of our photometric selection is quite high, approaching 100% at the brighter magnitudes (zAB < 23.5 mag). Our selection also recovered all the known high-z quasars on the HSC images. Among the 15 discovered objects, six are likely quasars, while the other six with interstellar absorption lines and in some cases narrow emission lines are likely bright Lyman-break galaxies. The remaining three objects have weak continua and very strong and narrow Lyα lines, which may be excited by ultraviolet light from both young stars and quasars. These results indicate that we are starting to see the steep rise of the luminosity function of z ≥ 6 galaxies, compared with that of quasars, at magnitudes fainter than M1450 ∼ −22 mag or zAB ∼ 24 mag. Follow-up studies of the discovered objects as well as further survey observations are ongoing.


Pavement surface characteristics are important to both the safety of the pavement surface and the comfort of the drivers. As of yet, texture and friction measurements have not been incorporated into the design of pavement surfaces. Seven different wearing surface mixtures, placed at the Virginia Smart Road pavement facility, were studied over a one year time period for both friction and texture properties. A locked wheel skid trailer and a laser profilometer were used to assess the pavement surface characteristics. Laboratory testing of the pavement wearing surface mixtures was performed to determine volumetric and mixture specific characteristics. Testing included gyratory compaction, specific gravity, maximum theoretical specific gravity, ignition testing, and gradation analysis. These material properties were used to study the impact of material properties on pavement surface characteristics. The pavement surface characteristics were analyzed using regression analysis with some measured and calculated parameters relevant to the pavement wearing surface properties. Analysis variables included the skid number at 64 kilometers per hour measured using the ASTM E501 (smooth) and ASTM E524 (ribbed) tires, the mean profile depth, the slope of a linear SN-speed model, the skid number at zero speed from the Pennsylvania State University (1) model, and the International Friction Index parameters. Analysis determined that testing particulars such as the grade of the test did not significantly affect the measured skid number. However, there is a significant difference between the skid numbers measured using the two tires. Additionally, the relationship between speed and skid resistance is assessed differently between the two test tires. Regression analysis concluded that there is a relationship between surface characteristics and HMA design properties such as the VMA, VTM, Percent Passing #200 sieve, and Binder Type. The influence of these variables on each of the analysis parameters varied.


Multicore processors often increase the performance of applications. However, with their deeper pipelining, they have proven increasingly di cult to improve. In an attempt to deliver enhanced performance at lower power requirements, semiconductor microprocessor manufacturers have progressively utilised chip-multicore processors. Existing research has utilised a very common technique known as threadlevel speculation. This technique attempts to compute results before the actual result is known. However, thread-level speculation impacts operation latency, circuit timing, confounds data cache behaviour and code generation in the compiler. We describe an software framework codenamed Lyuba that handles lowlevel data hazards and automatically recovers the application from data hazards without programmer and speculation intervention for an asymmetric chip-multicore processor. The problem of determining correct execution of multiple threads when data hazards occur on conventional symmetrical chip-multicore processors is a significant and on-going challenge. However, there has been very little focus on the use of asymmetrical (heterogeneous) processors with applications that have complex data dependencies. The purpose of this thesis is to: (i) define the development of a software framework for an asymmetric (heterogeneous) chip-multicore processor; (ii) present an optimal software control of hardware for distributed processing and recovery from violations; (iii) provides performance results of five applications using three datasets. Applications with a small dataset showed an improvement of 17% and a larger dataset showed an improvement of 16% giving overall 11% improvement in performance.


Background: The objective of this work were to study the effect of p38 MAP Kinase inhibitor (SB239063) and Vitamin (Vit) B12 on activity of p38 MAP kinase implicated in neuroinflammation. "In the central nervous system (CNS) neuroinflammatin is a common feature of age-related neurodegenerative diseases. Proinflammatory cytokines, such as IL-1β and TNFα, are produced primarily by cells of the innate immune system, namely microglia in the CNS, and are believed to contribute to the neuronal damage seen in the disease". The kinase pathways that regulate the production of IL-1β and TNFα is p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK). Recent studies suggest that Vitamin B12, in addition to its known role as a co-factor in myelin formation, has important immunomodulatory and neurotropic effects. Materials and Methods: Male wistar albino rats (weighing about 100-200gm) were obtained from animal house of institute divided in to eight groups each group having six animals. Neuroinflammation was induced in animals by the LPS (100μg/ml) followed by treatment with MAPK inhibitor (SB239063) alone (5mg/kg) and along with Vit B12 (0.5mg/ kg) for 30 days. Results: In the present study initially behavioral models (elevated plus maze apparatus, Morris water maze apparatus) were used to evaluate the memory of neuroinflammed rats which were followed by biochemical analysis. Conclusion: On the basis of result obtained from present study, it is observed that p38 MAPK inhibitor (SB239063) alone and in combination with Vitamin B12 is a novel therapeutic target for neuroinflammatory diseases.


OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to describe the clinical presentation, imaging appearance, and differential outcomes based on tumor location in 7 patients with desmoplastic infantile astrocytoma and desmoplastic infantile gangliogliomas (DIA/DIG).

METHODS
Data of 7 patients with histopathology-proven DIA/DIGs and preoperative imaging were retrospectively reviewed, and age, sex, clinical presentation, imaging characteristics, tumor location, surgical procedure, postoperative morbidity, and overall mortality were recorded.

RESULTS
Two subgroups of patients with DIA/DIGs were found to exist based on whether their tumor was located in the cerebral hemispheres or suprasellar region. Nearly all patients presented with rapidly enlarging head circumference regardless of tumor location. However, ocular abnormalities, including nystagmus and preference for downward gaze, were specific for patients with suprasellar disease. These patients experienced significant postoperative complications and had poor long-term outcomes. In contrast, patients with hemispheric tumors underwent more extensive resection than patients with suprasellar tumors, had uneventful postoperative courses, and had no documented long-term comorbidities.

CONCLUSIONS
Postoperative course and long-term outcome for patients with DIA/DIGs were correlated to the anatomical location and radiographic appearance of their tumor at presentation, despite having histologically and molecularly indistinguishable, WHO grade I tumors.


Background/Objectives: In developing countries, spirometry has not been considered a part of routine medical check-up. The purpose of the study was to establish the usefulness of spirometry as a primary screening tool in detecting air flow obstruction (AFO) during routine medical check-up (RMC). Methods: This was a hospital based, retrospective, non-randomized case series study of 3696 participants, who presented to hospital for routine medical check-up. All subjects were assisted at the Pulmonary Medicine Department, from January 2003 till December 2008 who, having met other inclusion criteria, underwent spirometry. Data were analyzed using proportion, group means, standard deviations and Pearson Chi Square test. Results: The overall yield from spirometry in detecting AFO was 211 patients (5.7%); 174 males (6.1%) and 37 females (4.4%) (P=0.158, Pearson Chi Square test). Greater age at presentation and BMI correlated significantly with AFO in the target group (P=<0.001; P=<0.005) respectively. Dyspnoea was the most frequent symptomatology observed in those diagnosed with AFO. Conclusion: These results suggest that spirometry during RMC for all persons can detect a significant number of patients with AFO particularly among the middle and older age groups with a low BMI.


This paper presents a series of narratives that can be used to define possible future trends in the global forest sector across the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), which we refer to as Forest Sector Pathways (FSPs). SSPs are part of a new scenario framework established by the climate change research community that facilitate the integrated analysis of future climate impacts, vulnerabilities, adaptation, and mitigation. The SSPs are based on five narratives describing alternative socio-economic pathways, including sustainable development, regional rivalry, inequality, fossil-fueled development, and middle-of-the-road development. The long-term demographic and economic projections of the SSPs depict a wide uncertainty range consistent with the scenario literature. However, the literature on sector-specific narratives outside of the energy and industrial sectors is currently limited, and this paper seeks to build upon existing SSP storylines by elaborating on the potential implications of SSP-related variables on forest resource management, forest product markets, wood-based bioenergy expansion, and other relevant trends in global forestry. The global forestry pathway narratives presented in this paper build on alternative futures research and multi-model inter-comparisons by further developing recent narratives with additional detail on specific issues related to the development and use of our world's forests.


Procedures for synthesizing digital polycrystalline microstructures are illustrated, from either 2D statistical data or 3D deterministic data. Finite element meshes representing the digital microstructures are generated using anisotropic and adaptive mesh refinement close to the grain boundaries. Digital mechanical testing based on crystal plasticity theory provides an estimate of the spatial distribution of strain energy within the polycrystalline aggregate. The latter quantity is used as an input for modelling subsequent static recrystallization, grain boundary motion being described within a level set framework. The kinetic law for interface motion accounts for both the stored strain energy and the grain boundary energy. The possibility to include nucleation events within the level set framework is illustrated, as well as the evolving topology of the grain boundary network. The recrystallization model is tested in different configurations and compared to the Johnson-Mehl-Avrami-Kolmogorov (JMAK) theory.


This is a story of how work gets done. It is also a study of how field service technicians talk about their work and how that talk is instrumental in their success. In his innovative ethnography, Julian E. Orr studies the people who repair photocopiers and shares vignettes from their daily lives. He characterizes their work as a continuous highly skilled improvisation within a triangular relationship of technician, customer, and machine. The work technicians do encompasses elements not contained in the official definition of the job yet vital to its success. Orr's analysis of the way repair people talk about their work reveals that talk is, in fact, a crucial dimension of their practice. Diagnosis happens through a narrative process, the creation of a coherent description of the troubled machine. The descriptions become the basis for technicians' discourse about their experience, and the circulation of stories among the technicians is the principal means by which they stay informed of the developing subtleties of machine behavior. Orr demonstrates that technical knowledge is a socially distributed resource stored and diffused primarily through an oral culture.Based on participant observation with copier repair technicians in the field and strengthened by Orr's own years as a technician, this book explodes numerous myths about technicians and suggests how technical work differs from other kinds of employment.


This article describes the efforts undertaken at the School of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology for the development of a low-cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) test-bed for educational purposes. The objective of this test-bed is to provide an avenue for the involvement of undergraduate students (primarily) and graduate students (secondarily) in UAV research. The complete design and development of all hardware interfaces of the UAV platform including the on-board autopilot is presented. Based on flight test data a linear model has been developed for the lateral and longitudinal dynamics.


Nitrogen Fixation by legume. In developing tropic countries, application of nitrogen fertilizer into pasture to improve the quality of herbage is not yet practiced widely due to the high of fertilizer cost and the low of animal farmers income. The use of legume in the form of mixed cropping in a pasture to improve the quality of pasture has been practiced in Australia and New Zealand since 50 years ago, and it still interested one to be studied and developed at present and the future. One of determinant factors as a key of the succesfull of mixed cropping in a pasture is the capability is not only depend on the kind of plant, but also influenced by many factors such as mineral nutrition, soil acidity, disease and insect, the potential of symbiosis and the adaptability of both the rhizobium and legume to soil and climate.


Chimpanzees are humanity's closest living relations and are of enduring interest to a range of sciences, from anthropology to zoology. In the West, many know of the pioneering work of Jane Goodall, whose studies of these apes at Gombe in Tanzania are justly famous. Less well-known, but equally important, are the studies carried out by Toshisada Nishida on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika. Comparison between the two sites yields both notable similarities and startling contrasts. Nishida has written a comprehensive synthesis of his work on the behaviour and ecology of the chimpanzees of the Mahale Mountains. With topics ranging from individual development to population-specific behavioural patterns, it reveals the complexity of social life, from male struggles for dominant status to female travails in raising offspring. Richly illustrated, the author blends anecdotes with powerful data to explore the fascinating world of the chimpanzees of the lakeshore.


Recently, Jelinek derived  that the number of self-dual interval orders of reduced size $n$ is twice the number of row-Fishburn matrices of size $n$ by using generating functions. In this paper, we present a bijective proof of this relation by establishing a bijection between two variations of upper-triangular matrices of nonnegative integers. Using the bijection, we provide a combinatorial proof  of the refined relations between self-dual Fishburn matrices and row-Fishburn matrices in answer to a problem proposed by Jelinek.


Exploiting information induced from (query-specific) clustering of top-retrieved documents has long been proposed as means for improving precision at the very top ranks of the returned results. We present a novel language model approach to ranking query-specific clusters by the presumed percentage of relevant documents that they contain. While most previous cluster ranking approaches focus on the cluster as a whole, our model also exploits information induced from documents associated with the cluster. Our model substantially outperforms previous approaches for identifying clusters containing a high relevant-document percentage. Furthermore, using the model to produce document ranking yields precision-at-top-ranks performance that is consistently better than that of the initial ranking upon which clustering is performed; the performance also favorably compares with that of a state-of-the-art pseudo-feedback retrieval method.


The present comparative study was done between normal and patients with diabetes and kidney disease in Diyala city in Iraq. The studied ages were ranged between 40 and more than 69. Serum samples were collected from hospitals in Diyala province. The result revealed that the serum sugar values behave in different manner than that of urine and creatinine values. The result showed that male patients percentage (50.0%) was less than male controls percentage (56.0%), while female patients percentage (50.0%) was more than female controls percentage (44.0%) With no significant differences (P> 0.05) among groups according to gender. Blood sugar, blood urea, and serum creatinine were higher in males compared to females. in males blood sugar was higher According to age, the highest age periods in patients was (50-59 year) and in control was (40-49 year), while the lowest age period in patients was (30-39 year ) and in control was (>69 year ) with high significant different between groups according to age periods. The mean value of serum sugar was high in the patients than control group with high significant differences between groups. The mean values of serum urea were high in patients from the control group with significant differences between groups. Besides, the mean values were significantly higher in Serum Creatinine in patients than controls. the mean value of Blood Sugar was higher in male patients than female with non-significant differences (P>0.05) among patients. So, the mean value of Blood Urea parameters was high in male patients than female with non-significant differences (P>0.05) among patients. Besides, the mean values of Serum Creatinine were higher in males patients than females with non-significant differences (P>0.05) between patients. Blood sugar did not settled, it goes up and down between the age forty to the age over 69.The least mean values of Blood Sugar were between (50-59) year and the highest values were between (60-69) year with non-significant differences among patients age. On the other hand, the least mean values of Blood Urea were between (40-49) year and the highest values were more than 60 years with non-significant differences among patients age. Besides, the least mean values of blood urea and Serum Creatinine lied between (40-49) years. With age, these values were elevated.


Abstract : If the steady-state simulation problem associated with a general discrete-event simulation is well-posed, then the corresponding Markov chain is Harris recurrent. For Harris chains, it is possible to develop a simulation methodology, closely related to the regenerative method, for obtaining confidence intervals associated with estimation of steady-state parameters. The passage-time problem for Harris chains is also studied, and an estimation approach for the steady-state simulation problem is outlined. Finally, it is shown that a certain family of nonlinear storage processes is Harris recurrent--the family provides an example of a Harris chain for which the classical regenerative method is inapplicable. (Author)


The subarctic front is a thermohaline structure across the North Pacific, separating colder, fresher water to the north from warmer, saltier water to the south. Levitus's [1982] data and 72 conductivity-temperature-depth/salinity-temperature-depth sections are used to show the spatial and seasonal variations of the climatological frontal zone and the characteristics of the frontal structure in synoptic surveys. The temperature gradient in the mean frontal zone is stronger in the western Pacific and decreases eastward, while the salinity gradient has less variation across the Pacific. The temperature gradient also has larger seasonal variation, with a maximum in spring, than the salinity gradient. The synoptic surveys show that the frontal zone is narrower and individual fronts tend to be stronger in the western Pacific than in the eastern Pacific. Density gradients tend to be more compensated at the strongest salinity fronts than at the strongest temperature fronts. A horizontal minimum of vertical stability is found south of the subarctic halocline outcrop. The northern boundary of the North Pacific Intermediate Water merges with the frontal zone west of 175°W and is north of the northern boundary of the subarctic frontal zone in the eastern Pacific. The shallow salinity minima start within the subarctic frontal zone in the eastern Pacific.


The interest toward omics data is growing in the field of toxicology owing to the diverse knowledge they generate, which can improve prediction and dosage profiling for more accurate safety assessment. An integration methodology is presented where high-throughput omics data are enriched with biological-pathway information to produce a novel set of biological (BIO) descriptors by decomposing omics data to meaningful clusters in terms of both their mechanistic interpretation and correlation affinity. A generalized simulated annealing algorithm is employed to estimate the optimal partition of the enriched data and accordingly produce novel descriptors based on gene content similarity. BIO descriptors are characterized by the pathway information fused to the data; thereby, they refer to groups of genes with similar biological implications rather than specific genes, which could vary across studies. The methodology is applied to an extensive proteomics data set and demonstrates that BIO descriptors are beneficial for modeling prediction, outperforming the prediction accuracy of the original omics data, and offering a readily available biological interpretation of the findings.


To understand the extent to which partisan majorities in Congress influence economic policy, we compare financial market responses in recent midterm elections to Presidential elections. We use prediction markets that track election outcomes as a means of precisely timing and calibrating the arrival of news, allowing substantially more precise estimates than a traditional event study methodology. We find that equity values, oil prices, and Treasury yields are slightly higher with Republican majorities in Congress, and that a switch in the majority party in a chamber of Congress has an impact that is only 10%–30% of that of the Presidency. We also find evidence inconsistent with the popular view that divided government is better for equities, finding instead that equity valuations increase monotonically, albeit slightly, with the degree of Republican control.


The inactivation of ribosomal protein S6 kinase 1 (S6K1) recapitulates aspects of caloric restriction and mTORC1 inhibition to achieve prolonged longevity in invertebrate and mouse models. In addition to delaying normative aging, inhibition of mTORC1 extends the shortened lifespan of yeast, fly, and mouse models with severe mitochondrial disease. Here we tested whether disruption of S6K1 can recapitulate the beneficial effects of mTORC1 inhibition in the Ndufs4 knockout (NKO) mouse model of Leigh Syndrome caused by Complex I deficiency. These NKO mice develop profound neurodegeneration resulting in brain lesions and death around 50–60 days of age. Our results show that liver-specific, as well as whole body, S6K1 deletion modestly prolongs survival and delays onset of neurological symptoms in NKO mice. In contrast, we observed no survival benefit in NKO mice specifically disrupted for S6K1 in neurons or adipocytes. Body weight was reduced in WT mice upon disruption of S6K1 in adipocytes or whole body, but not altered when S6K1 was disrupted only in neurons or liver. Taken together, these data indicate that decreased S6K1 activity in liver is sufficient to delay the neurological and survival defects caused by deficiency of Complex I and suggest that mTOR signaling can modulate mitochondrial disease and metabolism via cell non-autonomous mechanisms.


In quasicrystals, any given local patch—called an emperor—forces at all distances the existence of accompanying tiles—called the empire—revealing thus their inherent nonlocality. In this chapter, we review and compare the methods currently used for generating the empires, with a focus on the cut-and-project method, which can be generalized to calculate empires for any quasicrystals that are projections of cubic lattices. Projections of non-cubic lattices are more restrictive and some modifications to the cut-and-project method must be made in order to correctly compute the tilings and their empires. Interactions between empires have been modeled in a game-of-life approach governed by nonlocal rules and will be discussed in 2D and 3D quasicrystals. These nonlocal properties and the consequent dynamical evolution have many applications in quasicrystals research, and we will explore the connections with current material science experimental research.


Computers can be utilized to control instruments, machines, motors, devices etc. to
automate tasks. Presently, an automation system had been constructed and
successfully used to conduct the physics experiments to study the levitation force in
the Bi-Sr-Ca-Cu-O (BSCCO) high Tc superconductor series. This research project
aims to improve the automation system. Two major improvements were made; first,
converting the existing automation system into a Web based automation system and
replacing the DOS based QBasic program with Windows based user interface . The
Web based automation system can be remotely controlled and monitored by users in
remote locations by using only their web browsers; as if they (the users) are sitting
right in front of the automation system! This is achieved by programming the server
computer (which was interfaced to the automation system) to load Java Applets
containing the user interface required to control the automation system, into the
remote user's web browser The Web based automation system is also capable of
remote data acquisition or DAQ, whereby experimental data can be remotely
acquired by the user through File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Three major types of test
essential for the study of superconducting levitation forces were also integrated into the user interface. The tests are: detection of magnetic hysteresis, detection of
stiffness loops for increasing distance and detection of magnetic stiffness for
decreasing distance. Each test requires varying degrees of control over a stepper
motor's movement. The stepper motor is the key component of the automation
system and is used to vary the distance between the magnetic materials in small,
controlled, steps of 0.05 mm per movement. Both the user interface and the Web
based features were developed using a graphical programming language called
LabVIEW. The Web based automation system was used to conduct a series of
experiments to study the levitation forces of Cadium (Cd) doped Bi-Sr-Ca-Cu-O
(BSCCO) high Tc superconductor series. Users are successful in logging into the
automation system to control, monitor and acquire data remotely from the
automation system in real time. The Web based automation system was successful in
detecting magnetic hysteresis for all the superconductor samples measured. Further,
magnetic stiffness loops were also detected over all samples. Analysis of the
magnetic hysteresis and stiffness loops showed agreement with work done by Chang
and Moon, two prominent researchers in the field of superconductor research.


System Dynamics modelling is a promising tool to teach secondary school students how complex systems (such as the climate on earth) work, as well as to give these students the opportunity to experience how System Dynamics modelling can be used in science. However, research to date has shown that students have a strong need for support to be able to create System Dynamics models themselves. Therefore, this PhD thesis investigates two intermediate representations that can help students bridge the gap between their (informal) prior knowledge and the formal System Dynamics modelling language: text summaries and drawing summaries.
The first study investigated the students' ability to create a drawing summary from a short science text. The results showed that students were able to draw the important role players of the system (sun, Earth, atmosphere) but failed to draw all the processes occurring between them.
The second study investigated the influence of creating a drawing or a text summary as a bridging representation for a System Dynamics modelling task. It was concluded that for both the drawing and the text condition information was lost in the process of creating the summary and the model. More specifically, students had trouble with the translation from verbal to non-verbal representations: the drawing condition lost more information in the process of creating the drawing summary, while the text condition lost more information in the process of creating the model.
In the third study the influence of integrating summary- and model representation was investigated. It was concluded that integration was detrimental when two non-verbal representations were integrated (drawing and model), while it was beneficial when a verbal and a non-verbal representation were integrated (text and model).
The fourth and final study investigated the influence of a five month training in creating drawing summaries on science topics on students' ability to create drawing summaries on a new topic and their ability to create a model. The results suggest that the training was beneficial for students in senior general secondary education (HAVO), while not having an effect on pre-university secondary education students (VWO).


Trump claimed almost a billion of tax losses on his 1995 tax return. Trump did not lose anything like that in economic substance because he never put that much money into his transactions. If he never put it, he did not lose it. Trump must have treated part of the $3.4 bank debt as a cost and tax basis, while inconsistently, not correcting his cost when it turned out not be paid. Sheppard and Lipton have proposed an S corporation or Gitlitz theory, which if applicable would allow the fake loss as a tax deduction, but real estate developers did not use S corporations in the early and middle 1990's because S corporations trapped all losses inside the corporation where they were wasted. Trump might have reduced basis in real property, rather than taking an immediate income or NOL reduction. In any event, the losses do not "impinge on the world" and courts take away fake tax losses when they see them. "Legal" means that a court would uphold the tax loss when fully aware of the facts and with capable briefing by adversaries. The standards for reporting losses allow the taxpayer to report that this loss might be available, but it probably is not. "Legal" does not include claims that were not caught by a smart agent, which were in fact fraudulent.The legality of Trump's claimed losses has some bearing on the current election. Even beyond the election, we need to understand his claim to ensure that such an awful result never happens again.


Objectives Evidence is limited regarding the quality of prescribing to children. The objective of this study was to apply a set of explicit prescribing indicators to a national pharmacy claims database (Primary Care Reimbursement Service) to determine the prevalence of potentially inappropriate prescribing in children (PIPc) in primary care. Primary and secondary outcomes measures To determine the overall prevalence of potentially inappropriate prescribing (PIP) in children in primary care. To examine the prevalence of PIPc by gender. Design and setting Cross-sectional study. Application of indicators of commission of PIP and omission of appropriate prescribing to a national prescribing database in Ireland. Participants Eligible children <16 years of age who were prescribed medication in 2014. Results Overall prevalence of PIPc by commission was 3.5% (95% CI 3.5% to 3.6%) of eligible children <16 years of age who were prescribed medication in 2014. Overall prevalence of PIPc by omission was 2.5% (95% CI 2.5% to 2.6%) which rose to 11.5% (95% CI 11.4% to 11.7%) when prescribing of spacer devices for children with asthma was included. The most common individual PIPc by commission was the prescribing of carbocisteine to children (3.3% of eligible children). The most common PIPc by omission (after excluding spacer devices) was failure to prescribe an emollient to children prescribed greater than one topical corticosteroid (54% of eligible children). PIPc by omission was significantly higher in males compared with females (relative risk (RR) 1.3; 95% CI 1.0 to 1.7) but no different for PIPc by commission (RR 1.0; 95% CI 0.7 to 1.6). Conclusion This study shows that the overall prevalence of PIP in children is low, although results suggest room for improved adherence to asthma guidelines.


Introduction: Depression constitutes the most prominent of affective disorders encountered in old age. Major depression, found in some 5% of older persons in the community, and minor depression, found in some 10- 20%, is associated with increased risk of physical disability.
Material and Methods: The study was conducted as a survey of all residents aged 60 years and older. A house-to-house survey was conducted to identify individuals eligible for inclusion in the study. All eligible individuals present in their homes on the day of survey and who gave their consent to participate were included in the study.
Results: The mean score on Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) for the study population was 0.39+1.54 with females scoring slightly higher (0.41+2.25) as compared to males (0.38+1.19). Importantly the GDS scores were found to be highest for the age group 80-89 at 2.14+5.34. The GDS scores showed a significant upward trend as the age advanced.
Conclusions: The mean GDS scores among elderly in Himachal Pradesh is lower indicating a lower prevalence of depression as compared to studies conducted across different parts of world. This could be because joint family norm is still the predominant form of family setting in Himachal Pradesh which helps prevent loneliness and compensates for economic insecurity among elders.


Information on speaker characteristics can be useful as side information in improving speaker recognition accuracy. However, such information is often private. This paper investigates how privacy-preserving learning can improve a speaker verification system, by enabling the use of privacy-sensitive speaker data to train an auxiliary classification model that predicts vocal characteristics of speakers. In particular, this paper explores the utility achieved by approaches which combine different federated learning and differential privacy mechanisms. These approaches make it possible to train a central model while protecting user privacy, with users' data remaining on their devices. Furthermore, they make learning on a large population of speakers possible, ensuring good coverage of speaker characteristics when training a model. The auxiliary model described here uses features extracted from phrases which trigger a speaker verification system. From these features, the model predicts speaker characteristic labels considered useful as side information. The knowledge of the auxiliary model is distilled into a speaker verification system using multi-task learning, with the side information labels predicted by this auxiliary model being the additional task. This approach results in a 6% relative improvement in equal error rate over a baseline system.


This study investigates the inclination towards entrepreneurship among university students in the northern region of the Peninsular Malaysia. Specifically, it aims to examine the relationship between entrepreneurship education and inclination towards entrepreneurship. The influence of demographic characteristics and family business background on university students' inclination towards entrepreneurship is also being examined.An empirical test carried out on the data gathered from questionnaires demonstrates that two entrepreneurship education variables are found to have statistically significant relationship on the inclination towards entrepreneurship. At the meantime, two demographic variables and a family business background variable have an effect on university students' inclination towards entrepreneurship.Finally, based on the findings, the implications of the study have been forwarded.


 Video surveillance and face recognition systems have become the subject of increased interest and controversy after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. On the positive side, there is the lure of a powerful tool to aid national security. On the negative side, there are fears of an Orwellian invasion of privacy. Given the ongoing nature of the controversy, and the fact that face recognition systems represent leading-edge and rapidly changing technology, this is a major current topic in the area of social impact of technology. This paper analyzes the interplay of technical and social issues involved in the widespread application of video surveillance for person identification. Index Terms  video surveillance, face recognition, biometrics, privacy, social impact of technology, computers and society, ethics and computing.


The design of thermally coupled distillation sequences explicitly including the possibility of divided wall columns (DWC) is described. A DWC with a single wall can be considered thermodynamically equivalent to a fully thermally coupled (FTC) subsystem formed by three separation tasks (a Petlyuk configuration in the case of three-component mixtures). It is shown how to systematically identify all the sequences of separation tasks that can produce configurations that include at least a DWC. Feasible sequences that explicitly include DWCs are enforced through a set of logical relationships in terms of Boolean variables. These logical relationships include as feasible alternatives from conventional columns (each column must have a condenser and a reboiler) to FTC systems (only one reboiler and one condenser in the entire system). A comprehensive disjunctive programming formulation for finding the optimal solution is presented. The model is based on the Fenske, Underwood Gilliland equations. However, the disjunctive formulation allows easily the use of any other shortcut, aggregated or even rigorous model without modifying much the structure of the model. Two illustrative examples illustrate the procedure. © 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 59: 1139–1159, 2013


To evaluate the role of pulsatile insulin administration, hepatic glucose production (HGP) and utilization were studied in type I diabetic patients in the fasting state and during a euglycemic insulin (1 mU · kg−1 · min−1 i.v.) clamp with continuous and pulsatile insulin administration. In the latter study, insulin was infused at twice the continuous rate with 3-min-on/7-min-off intervals, thereby reducing total insulin delivery by 40%. The restraining effect of pulsatile insulin on basal HGP (1.91 ± 0.35 mg · kg−1 · min−1) was equipotent to continuous insulin exposure (1.80 ± 0.17 mg · kg−1 min−1). During the insulin-clamp studies, HGP was equally suppressed by pulsed (0.62 ± 0.12 mg · kg−1 min−1) as by continuous insulin infusion (0.63 ± 0.12 mg · kg−1 · min−1). Insulin-stimulated glucose utilization was not significantly altered in either study (2.55 ± 0.27 vs. 2.92 ± 0.23 mg · kg−1 min−1). When in further studies the total insulin dose given during the pulsatile study was infused continuously (0.6 mU · kg−1 · min−1), HGP in the basal state and residual HGP during the insulin-clamp study were 25–30% higher than in the pulsatile experiments, whereas glucose utilization was not significantly different. In conclusion, by reducing total hormone delivery by up to 40%, but given in a pulsatile fashion, insulin is equally potent in controlling HGP as continuous insulin administration. This greater efficacy of pulsatile exposure in suppressing HGP is accompanied by an equipotent effect on glucose utilization. Application of pulsatile insulin substitution in intravenous-pump users may reduce systemic hyperinsulinemia and, in the long run, insulin resistance by reversing downregulation of insulin receptors.


How do couples build intimacy in an era that valorizes independence and self-responsibility? How can a man be a good husband when full-time jobs are scarce? How can unmarried women find fulfillment and recognition outside of normative relationships? How can a person express their sexuality when there is no terminology that feels right? In contemporary Japan, broad social transformations are reflected and refracted in changing intimate relationships. As the Japanese population ages, the low birth rate shrinks the population, and decades of recession radically restructure labor markets, Japanese intimate relationships, norms, and ideals are concurrently shifting.

This volume explores a broad range of intimate practices in Japan in the first decades of the 2000s to trace how social change is becoming manifest through deeply personal choices. From young people making decisions about birth control to spouses struggling to connect with each other, parents worrying about stigma faced by their adopted children, and queer people creating new terms to express their identifications, Japanese intimacies are commanding a surprising amount of attention, both within and beyond Japan. With ethnographic analysis focused on how intimacy is imagined, enacted, and discussed, the volume's chapters offer rich and complex portraits of how people balance personal desires with feasible possibilities and shifting social norms.

Intimate Japan will appeal to scholars and students in anthropology and Japanese or Asian studies, particularly those focusing on gender, kinship, sexuality, and labor policy. The book will also be of interest to researchers across social science subject areas, including sociology, political science, and psychology.


In this chapter, we analyzed ad hoc on demand distance vector (AODV), dynamic source routing (DSR), and destination-sequenced distance vector (DSDV) routing protocols using different parameters of QoS metrics such as packet delivery ratio (PDR), normalize routing overhead, throughput, and jitter. The aim of this chapter is to determine a dif ference between routing protocol performance when operating in a large-area MANET with high-speed mobile nodes. After the simulations, we use AWK to analyze the data and then Xgraph to plot the performance metric. After that we use one-way ANOVA tools to confirm the correctness of the result. We use NS-2 for the simulation work. The comparison analysis of these protocols will be carrying out and in the last, we conclude that which routing protocol is the best one for mobile ad hoc networks.


Entrepreneurial orientation has emerged as a major construct in entrepreneurship literature. However, existing definitions of entrepreneurial orientation mainly focus on explorative behavior like innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking. Based on the long tradition of research on entrepreneurial functions, we argue that exploitative activities are no less an entrepreneurial endeavor than explorative activities. Following this understanding, we elaborate a broader conceptualization of the entrepreneurial orientation construct. In an empirical study with 346 established companies, we explore its effect on the performance of internationalization. Entrepreneurial orientation in its broader conceptualization positively influences the international performance and the effect is by far stronger than the one observed in existing studies. The reason for this is that both explorative and exploitative dimensions matter and equally drive the international performance. Entrepreneurial orientation positively influences the growth of the international activities as well. However, its effect is much lower. Whereas the explorative dimensions tend to foster the international growth, the exploitative dimensions do not show any effect.


Background Maternal perinatal depression has been associated with behavioural problems in their children. In the ALSPAC cohort, ante- and post-natal depression had independent effects on child behaviour at 4 years. The strongest risk factor for maternal perinatal depression is pre-existing anxiety or depression suggesting that women with perinatal depression might have experienced mental health problems in the preconceptional period. We examined the association between maternal anxiety in the preconceptional period and childhood behaviour at 3 years of age in the Southampton Women's Survey (SWS). Methods The SWS is a population based cohort study of 12,583 women aged 20 to 34 years who were assessed when not pregnant. Women who subsequently became pregnant and their children (n = 3158) were followed up. All women enrolled during the latter half of recruitment completed the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), a short screening instrument with good sensitivity for depression and anxiety disorders; a score ≥3 was categorised as positive for significant psychological distress. At 3 years, child behaviour was assessed with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire administered to parents and used to characterise hyperactivity, conduct disorders and emotional problems; standard definitions were used for borderline and definite cases of each behavioural problem. Prevalence ratios for child behaviour problems, adjusted for the influence of potential confounding factors, were obtained using binary regression. Results Of 1,518 children (52% boys) followed to age 3 years of age, whose mothers had completed the GHQ-12 before pregnancy, 290 (19%) had hyperactivity, 366 (24%) had conduct disorders and 499 (19%) had emotional problems. 27% of mothers had evidence of preconceptional distress and 42% of postnatal depressive symptoms. In univariate analyses, preconceptional distress was associated with a 48% increased risk of emotional problems [prevalence ratio (PR) 1.48 (95% CI: 1.19, 1.94)]. In analyses adjusted for potential confounding factors (postnatal depression, maternal educational attainment, receipt of benefits, number of children, sleep duration and maternal work), preconceptional distress was associated with a 36% increased risk of emotional problems [PR 1.36 (95% CI: 1.08, 1.71)]. Maternal preconceptional distress was not associated with either hyperactivity or conduct disorders at 3 years of age. Conclusion We found that maternal preconceptional mental health problems are associated with emotional problems among their children at 3 years of age, independent of the effect of postnatal depression and other confounding factors. These findings suggest that recognition of women with psychological distress during preconception might facilitate the prevention of childhood emotional problems.


Throughout this investigation, paddles from the SIMEM concrete mixer plant
were selected as the subject for this wear analysis. The numbers of paddles studied
are twenty. The performance and wear progress of the paddles were monitored
periodically. In this project, six types of hard facing alloy were welded onto the same
base metal, cast manganese materials. Hard surfacing is an effective method of
modifying the surface properties without changing the whole materials of the paddle.
These hard-facing alloys (severe wear resistant and moderate impact resistance
characteristics) were welded onto the surfaces and edges of each paddle respectively
(each hard facing alloys on three paddles). These welds were as cross lines of 20 mm
apart all over the top surface of each paddle and full weld on the front side edges for
maximum wear protection. Each weld bead deposited is 3 to 4mm thick and 5 to
6mm wide.Two paddles were selected without any hard facing protective layers in this
analysis as a reference purpose. Hard facing alloys used in this research are high
Chromium high Carbon alloys (Paddles AI, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, A7, A9, A11),
Complex Chromium Carbide alloys with Boron (Paddles B1 , B2, B3, B4, B5 and
B6) and Tungsten Carbide material on paddle B7, B9 and B11. The main parameters
measured were the side dimensions loss, thickness loss, volume loss and mass loss.
Data collection was collected on a monthly basis in order to obtained higher
accuracy. Two sets of paddles were used for each type of hard facing. As one set is
in the measuring stage, the next set is fitted in the concrete mixer.