Dry poultry waste can be used as a valuable fertilizer for seedbed preparation and spring fertilizing of winter crops. One of the major limitations for the direct application of organic waste in the soil is the presence of conditionally pathogenic and pathogenic microorganisms, preserving viability and virulence for a long time. The low-temperature pyrolysis (torrefaction) of pelleted litter mass at 250° C and treatment time of 60 min. allows for complete decontamination of this type of waste. Reducing the pyrolysis temperature to 155 ° C even when the treatment time was 60 min. did not fully decontaminate the litter mass. There was also a series of experiments on the use of pelleted litter mass subjected to low-temperature pyrolysis for 1 hour at 250 ° C as a fertilizer or biofuels. Key-Words: organic fertilizer, biofuels, pathogenic organisms, poultry litter, pyrolysis (torrefaction)


As the new owner of a Pentax K200D, you are serious about photography and want to take outstanding pictures. You also want to quickly and easily discover how, when, and why to use the most important features of your cutting-edge camera. David Buschs Pentax K200D Guide to Digital SLR Photography will show you how, when, and, most importantly, why to use all the cool features and functions of your camera to take eye-popping photographs. Introductory chapters will help you get comfortable with the basics of your camera before you dive right into exploring creative ways to apply the Pentax K200Ds exposure modes, focus controls, and electronic flash options. This book is chock full of hands-on tips for choosing lenses, flash units, and software products to use with your new camera. Beautiful, full-color images illustrate where the essential buttons and dials are, so youll quickly learn how to use your Pentax K200D, and use it well.


This paper examines the bus rapid transit (BRT) legacies of mega sporting events (MSEs) held in the Global South cities of Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro. It discusses the extent to which these transport systems have been operationally sustainable, post-MSE; in other words, their ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level and hence their ability to act as public good as planned and according to specific needs. It argues that in both cities, long-term operational challenges have emerged due to conflictual temporalities between the priorities of the MSE and the mid/long term requirements of a transport system, supplemented by a poor spatial contextualisation of BRT design. These include financial viability, providing a service with appropriate frequency and capacity, integration with other transport systems, and resilience to external shocks such as extreme weather. These findings have key academic and policy implications both by opening further areas of research towards MSEs as a tool to deliver sustainable urban transport, and provides important lessons for future MSE hosts and cities considering BRT.


An efficient scheme for the multiple-access multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel is proposed, which operates well also in the single user regime, as well as in a direct-sequence spread-spectrum (DS-CDMA) setting. The design features scalability and is of limited complexity. The system employs optimized low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes and an efficient iterative (belief propagation-BP) detection which combines linear minimum mean-square error (LMMSE) detection and iterative interference cancellation (IC). This combination is found to be necessary for efficient operation in high system loads /spl alpha/>1. An asymptotic density evolution (DE) is used to optimize the degree polynomials of the underlining LDPC code, and thresholds as close as 0.77 dB to the channel capacity are evident for a system load of 2. Replacing the LMMSE with the complex individually optimal multiuser detector (IO-MUD) further improves the performance up to 0.14 dB from the capacity. Comparing the thresholds of a good single-user LDPC code to the multiuser optimized LDPC code, both over the above multiuser channel, reveals a surprising 8-dB difference, emphasizing thus the necessity of optimizing the code. The asymptotic analysis of the proposed scheme is verified by simulations of finite systems, which reveal meaningful differences between the performances of MIMO systems with single and multiple users and demonstrate performance similar to previously reported techniques, but with higher system loads, and significantly lower receiver complexity.


The 5alpha-reductase-2 encoded by the SRD5A2 gene plays a critical role in male sex differentiation by converting testosterone into 5alpha dihydrotestosterone in the peripheral target tissues. In this study, we examined the SRD5A2 gene in 81 Japanese patients with micropenis (age, 0-14 yr; median, 7 yr) whose stretched penile lengths were between -2.5 SD and -2.0 SD in 39 patients (age, 0-13 yr; median, 8 yr) and below -2.5 SD in 42 patients (age, 0-14 yr; median, 6 yr), together with 100 control males (50 boys and 50 fertile adult males). Mutation analysis was performed for exons 1-5 and their flanking introns by denaturing HPLC and direct sequencing, revealing Y26X/R227Q in an 11-yr-old boy with a penile length of -2.6 SD, G34R/R227Q in a 9-yr-old boy with a penile length of -3.6 SD, and R227Q/R227Q in a 3-yr-old boy with a penile length of -2.4 SD, together with heterozygous R227Q in a control boy and a fertile adult male. Polymorphism analysis was carried out for the most frequent V89L known to reduce the enzyme activity by approximately 30% in 78 patients, except for the three patients with SRD5A2 mutations, and in the 100 control males by direct sequencing, showing that allele and genotype frequencies were similar between 78 patients with micropenis below -2.0 SD or 40 patients with micropenis below -2.5 SD and the 100 control males, the 50 boys, or the 50 fertile adult males, with no statistically significant differences. The results suggest that, in Japanese patients, micropenis can be caused by SRD5A2 gene mutations, especially by R227Q which has been shown to retain approximately 3.2% of normal enzyme activity and appears relatively frequent in Asian populations, and that V89L polymorphism is unlikely to raise the susceptibility to the development of micropenis.


Objective: The objective of the study is to examine the validity and reliability of the Turkish version of the Short Form of Young's Internet Addiction Test (YIAT-SF) for university students and adolescents. Methods: The study was conducted with four different sample groups of 1167 university students of 17-35 years of age and five different sample groups of 945 adolescents aged between 14 and 17. The validity of the scale was examined using exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and criteria-dependent validity. The reliability of the scale was analyzed using Cronbach alpha coefficient and test-retest method. Item analysis was conducted using corrected item total points correlation and item average points for 27% of top and bottom groups. Findings: Exploratory factor analysis results demonstrated that the scale was formed by 12 items and a single factor for both university students and the adolescents; and confirmatory factor analysis showed that YIAT-SF had good adaptive values for both groups and correlation analysis results determined that YIAT-SF was correlated with the applied scales within the context of criteria-dependent validity for both university students and the adolescents. Both YIAT-SF Cronbach alpha and test-retest reliability coefficients were found to be within the acceptable range for both groups. Finally, corrected item total correlation coefficients were observed to be at acceptable levels for both university students and the adolescents and t-values related to item average points for 27% of top and bottom groups were found to be significant. Result: These findings demonstrated that YIAT-SF is a reliable and valid scale for both university students and adolescents.


Abstract The Danubian window, characterized by diagenetic to low greenschist facies conditions at a high thermal gradient, is evidently of great interest for methodological studies, because high metamorphic thermal gradient conditions during low grade metamorphism have received little attention so far. The general increase in metamorphic grade from SW to NE in the Danubian window is indicated by mineral Parageneses studies, as well as by illite Kübler index (KI) measurements and organic matter reflectance (OMR). For the first time, this study distinguishes between metamorphic conditions related to Jurassic ocean floor, Cretaceous nappe stacking, post-collisional accommodation and syn-kinematic Getic detachment metamorphism and cooling after Oligocene exhumation. The occurrence of the prehnite–pumpellyite facies in the Severin–Cosustea units in the southeastern area is the result of Cretaceous metamorphism. Remnants of ocean floor metamorphism prevailed. The highest pressure is constrained by the upper stability limit of prehnite to be at around 4.0 kbar. The Danubian units situated within the diagenetic zone were not below 200 °C, due to epidote formation. The KI, OMR and mineral data, indicate diagenetic conditions. Assuming temperatures between >200 and <250 °C, pressures between 1.8 and 2.6 kbar were calculated using kinetic and numerical maturity models. Orogenic collisional Cretaceous peak pressure conditions of 4.0±1.0 kbar are found in the Danubian nappes not altered by a subsequent syn-detachment metamorphic overprint. Highest temperatures in chloritoid schists and epidote–hornblende-bearing mylonites have been inferred for samples from the northern border of the Danubian window (between >300 and <400 °C). Along a syn- to post-detachment retrograde pressure path, post-dating the chloritoid formation, the occurrence of clinozoisite+chlorite+quartz suggests temperatures >300 °C in the northwest, while the association andalusite+quartz and biotite+muscovite indicates temperatures between 370 and 400 °C at <3.5 kbar in the northeast. It is demonstrated that the slope of the regression lines between KI and OMR data gives valuable qualitative information about the relative magnitudes of P and T: the slope of the regression line for the Danubian window samples indicates normal heat flow conditions during nappe stacking and hyperthermal conditions during the formation of the Getic detachment. High thermal gradient conditions can easily be explained by partly isothermal decompression during the Getic detachment event, the elevation of the geotherm being caused by crustal thinning and rapid exhumation of the Danubian units. Probably, also a higher heat-flux prevailed at the end of the Getic detachment, at a time when the retrograde chloritoid decomposition reactions took place, documenting late-stage HT greenschist facies metamorphism.


"Decision Free Solutions" (DFS) is a generic, systemic approach to minimize risk in achieving an aim by avoiding decision making. Applying DFS will benefit those who have an aim, and those who have expertise. DFS is based on Information Measurement Theory (IMT) and the Kashiwagi Solution Model (KSM), and is congruous with the Best Value Approach (BVA). Despite BVA being an approach aimed at utilizing expertise (and thereby minimizing risk), and not a procurement system, BVA and its applications are very much intertwined with procurement. This makes it challenging to apply BVA to other fields. Establish a generic, systemic approach to implement the technologies of IMT/KSM in any field. Analyzing existing BVA and IMT/KSM documentation, identify the logic and the principles by which expertise is utilized. Define a generic, systemic approach to minimize risk and demonstrate it by applying it to a field other than procurement. Avoiding all types of decision making was identified as the core principle to ensure the utilization of expertise. An approach consisting out of four steps (labelled DICE) and the consistent application of five principles (labelled TONNNO) has been proposed. The approach has been applied to the field of Lean. A generic and systemic approach to minimize risk by avoiding decision making has been introduced which can be applied in any field. It has been applied in Lean, where it addresses several of Lean's weaknesses as perceived in practice and where it was demonstrated to reduce the risk of project failure. DFS can be considered a risk minimization method to which risk management is integral. DFS makes expertise matter.


The Hippo pathway kinase Warts phosphorylates substrates that control mitotic spindle orientation. The Hippo (Hpo; called Mst in vertebrates) signaling pathway limits cell growth by preventing the nuclear translocation of the transcriptional coactivator Yorkie (Yki; Yap in vertebrates), which promotes the expression of genes that stimulate cell proliferation. When activated, the kinase Hpo phosphorylates and activates the kinase Warts (Wts; Lats in vertebrates), which then phosphorylates Yki. Mats is a cofactor for Wts, and the scaffold protein Sav promotes the association between Hpo and Wts. Two groups report that Hippo signaling also affects spindle orientation in two different cellular contexts in Drosophila melanogaster. Neuroblasts are neural stem cells that divide asymmetrically to produce one self-renewing neuroblast and one daughter cell that divides once more to generate two neurons or glial cells. Asymmetric inheritance of determinants of cell fate requires the apically localized protein Partner of Inscuteable (Pins), which interacts with the Par complex through the adaptor protein Inscuteable (Insc). Pins also interacts with Discs large (Dlg) and Mushroom body defect (Mud), both of which also interact with the spindle pole. Thus, Pins orients cell divisions by ensuring that one spindle pole localizes to the apical side of the neuroblast. Keder et al. found that Hpo, Wts, Mats, and Sav were required for proper asymmetric division of neuroblasts in the Drosophila embryo. In wts mutants, asymmetric localization of several proteins important for asymmetric division or daughter cell fate was reduced or absent, and neuroblasts had improperly oriented mitotic spindles. Wts also interacted genetically with Canoe (Cno; Afadin in vertebrates), which cooperates with Pins to control the localization of Mud. In vitro, Wts phosphorylated the Par3 homolog Bazooka, and the authors identified three sites at which Wts phosphorylated Cno. Mutating the Wts phosphorylation sites in Cno prevented the proper localization of Cno and Dlg at the apical cortex. Genetic experiments also implicated Wts and Mats in the asymmetric divisions of embryonic muscle and heart progenitor cells. In a related paper, Dewey et al. found that Hpo, Wts, and Sav, but not Yki, were required for asymmetric division when cultured Drosophila S2 cells were engineered to divide asymmetrically in a Pins-dependent manner. Wts promoted the colocalization of Mud and Pins during mitosis in these asymmetrically dividing S2 cells. In vitro, Wts phosphorylated the coiled-coil domain of Mud, a domain that may be involved in regulating the interaction between Mud and Pins. Experiments in Drosophila wing imaginal discs indicated that Wts-mediated phosphorylation of Mud was also required for the recruitment of Mud to sites of Pin localization and for properly oriented cell divisions in this epithelial tissue. Thus, Hippo signaling influences spindle orientation through the Wts-mediated phosphorylation of the Pins-interacting proteins Cno and Mud. Reduced Hippo signaling promotes tumorigenesis by stimulating cell proliferation in a Yki-dependent manner, and these findings suggest that reduced Hippo signaling could also contribute to tumor formation by disrupting tissue organization or interfering with the asymmetric divisions that are important for controlling the balance between differentiation and self-renewal in stem cells. A. Keder, N. Rives-Quinto, B. L. Aerne, M. Franco, N. Tapon, A. Carmena, The Hippo pathway core cassette regulates asymmetric cell division. Curr. Biol. 25, 2739–2750 (2015). [Online Journal] E. B. Dewey, D. Sanchez, C. A. Johnston, Warts phosphorylates Mud to promote Pins-mediated mitotic spindle orientation in Drosophila, independent of Yorkie. Curr. Biol. 25, 2751–2762 (2015). [Online Journal]


Object recognition is achieved even in circumstances when only partial information is available to the observer. Perceptual closure processes are essential in enabling such recognitions to occur. We presented successively less fragmented images while recording high-density event-related potentials (ERPs), which permitted us to monitor brain activity during the perceptual closure processes leading up to object recognition. We reveal a bilateral ERP component (Ncl) that tracks these processes (onsets 230 msec, maximal at 290 msec). Scalp-current density mapping of the Ncl revealed bilateral occipito-temporal scalp foci, which are consistent with generators in the human ventral visual stream, and specifically the lateral-occipital or LO complex as defined by hemodynamic studies of object recognition.


: A parameter recovery procedure for the Weibull distribution function based on four percentile equations was used to develop a diameter distribution yield prediction model for unmanaged loblolly pine ( Pinus taeda L.) plantations in East Texas. This model was compared with the diameter distribution models of Lenhart and Knowe, which have been used in East Texas. All three models were evaluated with independent observed data. The model developed in this study performed better than the other two models in prediction of trees per acre and cubic-foot volume per acre (wood and bark, excluding stump) across diameter classes. Lenhart's model consistently underestimated the larger-diameter classes because it was developed originally with data mostly collected in young plantations. Knowe's model overestimated volume in sawtimber-sized trees, which could lead to overestimations of volume in older loblolly pine plantations found in East Texas. An example also is provided to show users how to use this new yield prediction system. These results support the recommendation that forest managers should use growth and yield models designed and/or calibrated for the region in which they are implemented. South. J. Appl. For. 30(1):13–20.


Life in the Fourth Age has been typified as a time of continued functional decline and reduced quality of life. Exercise might positively affect this experience. This study explored the exercise experiences of nursing home residents age 86-99 years who participated in a 6-month exercise intervention. An interpretive phenomenological approach was adopted. Twenty-one interviews were held with 14 residents at baseline and 7 residents at follow-up. Although their expectations were initially conservative, by the end of the intervention participants noted improved quality of life through better mobility, decreased fear of falling, and feelings of achievement and success. They valued the program as an opportunity to do something for themselves, to add something to their weekly routine, to meet other people, and to be more active generally. The professionalism of the exercise instructor appears to have been critical, balancing principles of safe and effective practice with the need to ensure that participants had fun in a supportive environment.


Neural network learning algorithms are widely used in medical diagnosis, bioinformatics, intrusion detection, homeland security and other fields. The common of these applications is that all of them need to extract patterns and predict trends from a large number of complex data. In these applications, how to protect the privacy of sensitive data and personal information from disclosure is an important issue. At present, the vast majority of existing neural network learning algorithms did not consider how to protect the data privacy in the process of learning. So this paper proposes two privacy-preserving back-propagation neural network protocols applied to horizontally partitioned data and vertically partitioned data separately. The two protocols are suitable for multiple participants in a distributed environment. The results of experiments show the difference of the test error rate between the proposed two protocols and the respective non-privacy preserving versions.


Robust control is used for a system with uncertainties and disturbances. Above all, the H∞ loop shaping method is known as the method achieving good control performance. However, this method takes much time to build the mathematical model of an actual plant and its uncertainty. In this paper, we propose the fixed-order controller design method which only uses frequency response data of the plant. Moreover, the controller is designed by the convex optimization. Thereby, the identification cost is expected to be less than the previous method without an increase in the calculation cost. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified through the experiment for the belt-driven two-mass system, and comparison with the previous method in the last of this paper.


Jacques Derrida contended that Marxism is dead, along with its hopes, and its discourses (1994: 52). This thesis arose from an assertion that the socialist utopia as a paradigm of perfect justice, equality and freedom, has been progressively effaced from most cultural and artistic enterprises, supplanted by economic need, political consensus, and social compromise. Class differences remain acute, yet the notion of class struggle is effectively absent across the Humanities. I propose Edward Bond's philosophical model as a unique route to reclaiming this neglected utopian function of culture. Bond's plays and theoretical writings have been marginalized by the British theatrical mainstream. This study demonstrates that Bond's creative and ideological position is incompatible with any reactionary notion of 'mainstream'. Bond's radical materialism demonstrates an inherent and inevitable critique of most genres of theatre and performance. Through an exploration of key philosophical theories that underpin the work of the dramatist, I reach a re-evaluation of aesthetics as an ambiguous medium of the dominant bourgeois ideology. Art is a repository of cognitive truths, but not of universal cognitive truths. In terms of class culture, it really forms part of a tradition "of the oppressed" (Benjamin, 1999: 248). Habermas proposes a unity of experience in the arts by bridging "the gap between cognitive, ethical, and political discourses". I contend that these discourses are undermined by bourgeois aestheticization, which distorts values and understanding, manifested in the daily delivery of most culture as an industrial enterprise. Bond contends that, "[his] philosophy ... makes ethics an ultimate reality" (Stuart, 2000: 56). Identifying an interaction between Marx's theory of reification and Nietzsche's evaluation on men of ressentiment, I construct a platform for approaching this complicated ethical question. I evaluate the dialectical validity of what Bond calls "the problem"; the "extreme" lives we lead in our liberal democracies, establishing his philosophical position not as provocatively controversial but as logical, realistic, and materialistic. Capitalist reification progressively conceals human meanmg under "the essence of commodity-structure [ ... ] in all its aspects" (Lukacs, 1990: 83). With its emphasis on the meaning of the human self, Bond's dramatic strategy is in a sense the application of Lukacs's prescription against the reified mind. For Bond, drama is crucial because it allows reified individuals to enact human choices that are impossible in their daily lives. I conclude by addressing issues that arise from Bond's involvement in Drama in Education (DIE). Bond's theoretical output is evolving into a discrete, autonomous field and needs to be approached as such. Volume II, a transcribed interview with the dramatist himself, contributes further to the issues arising from this thesis.


Pattern recognition/classification has received a considerable attention in engineering fields. In most applications, it is desirable to maintain the classification accuracy, but also reduce the classification time. The quality of a given classification technique is measured by the computational complexity, execution time of algorithms, and the number of patterns that can be classified correctly despite any distribution. In this thesis, a new method known as Grid Based Classifier was proposed. This method carries the advantages of the two previous methods in order to improve the classification tasks. The problem with the current lazy algorithms is that they learn quickly, but classify very slowly. On the other hand, the eager algorithms classify quickly, but they learn very slowly. The two algorithms were compared, and the proposed algorithm was found to be able to both learn and classify quickly. The method was developed based on the grid structure, whereby it was done to create a successful method of improving performance in classification. In the current research, the new algorithm was tested and applied to the multiclass classification of two or more categories, which are important for handling problems related to practical classification. The new method was also compared with the Levenberg-Marquardt back-propagation neural network in the learning stage and the Condensed nearest neighbor in the testing stage to examine the performance of the model. The experimental results on artificial data sets and real-world data sets (from UCI Repository) show that the new method could improve both the efficiency and accuracy of pattern classification. In real-world experiment (Haberman data set), new method allows 1% improvement in training accuracy and 1.8% improvement in testing accuracy and also allows considerable improvement in running time comparing to neural network method.


Methods for Detection of Interactions with Multiple Components Hristina Pashova Co-Chairs of the Supervisory Committee: PhD Charles Kooperberg Biostatistics PhD Michael LeBlanc Biostatistics In genetic association studies, it is typically thought that important insights will be obtained through joint modeling of genetic variants and environmental variables. However, weak effect of gene-environment interactions, and imprecise measurement of the environment make it hard to identify statistically significant interaction effects. We propose two different modeling techniques. First, for regression problems in which the main effects are already established, as is the case with many diseases or their estimation is not a priority, we propose the use of dedicated boosting. Dedicated boosting is a variation to the usual `2 boosting procedure which focuses on the interaction search in contrast to most boosting methods which address overall model prediction or classification. We compare the performance of dedicated boosting to other competing methods in the WHI data and a simulation study. Secondly, we use the idea of a structured interaction model form together with penalized regression to limit model complexity in regression problems where we believe interactions might behave in a similar way. We propose the directed LASSO, a regression modeling strategy using a pairwise fused LASSO penalty to encourage interaction model simplicity through fusion.


Neodymium laser passively Q-switched with saturable crystalline absorber and SBS-mirror is numerically studied. Explanation are given for the laser beam spot-size widening: It is shown that this phenomenon is, most probably, due to non-perfect phase conjugation at SBS process switched by intracavity radiation. Data of numerical simulations of the laser, accounting this phenomenon, are compared with experiment. It is demonstrated that calculated output energy and pulse duration are in good agreement with those measured experimentally.


An essential part of describing the damage state and predicting the damage growth in a multicracked plate is the accurate calculation of stress intensity factors (SIF). Here, a methodology and rigorous solution formulation for SIF of a multicracked plate, with fully interacting cracks, subjected to a far-field arbitrary stress state is presented. The fundamental perturbation problem is derived, and the steps needed to formulate the system of singular integral equations whose solution gives rise to the evaluation of the SIF are identified. This analytical derivation and numerical solution are obtained by using intelligent application of symbolic computations and automatic FORTRAN generation capabilities in form of symbolic/FORTRAN package, named SYMFRAC, that is capable of providing accurate SIF at each crack tip. The accuracy of the results has been validated for the two parallel interacting crack problem. Limits and sensitivity of the results for the problem of a horizontal notch interacting with ten microcracks have been analyzed.


The past decade has seen the emergence of web-scale structured and linked semantic knowledge resources (e.g., Freebase, DBPedia). These semantic knowledge graphs provide a scalable "schema for the web", representing a significant opportunity for the spoken language understanding (SLU) research community. This paper leverages these resources to bootstrap a web-scale semantic parser with no requirement for semantic schema design, no data collection, and no manual annotations. Our approach is based on an iterative graph crawl algorithm. From an initial seed node (entity-type), the method learns the related entity-types from the graph structure, and automatically annotates documents that can be linked to the node (e.g., Wikipedia articles, web search documents). Following the branches, the graph is crawled and the procedure is repeated. The resulting collection of annotated documents is used to bootstrap webscale conditional random field (CRF) semantic parsers. Finally, we use a maximum-a-posteriori (MAP) unsupervised adaptation technique on sample data from a specific domain to refine the parsers. The scale of the unsupervised parsers is on the order of thousands of domains and entity-types, millions of entities, and hundreds of millions of relations. The precision-recall of the semantic parsers trained with our unsupervised method approaches those trained with supervised annotations.


The main objective of this thesis is to apply complimentary psychophysical theories and methods to investigate human perception of odor and sensory irritation of chemical compounds present in indoor air. Three psychophysical theories: Signal Detection Theory (SDT), Threshold Theory and Luce's Choice Theory (CT) were applied to measure detection and recognition of odor and sensory irritation of two odorous irritants (pyridine and formaldehyde) by using the method of constant stimuli. Participants exhibited a superior perceptual ability for odor detection than sensory-irritation detection. Substance recognition was more associated with odor detection than sensory-irritation detection. Individual differences in sensory sensitivity and response bias were larger for sensory-irritation than for odor. Luce's CT fits well the simultaneous detection and recognition data. Perceived intensity was used for determining the near-threshold psychophysical function and for revealing how concentrations at preceding trials and the inter-presentation intervals affect odor and sensory irritation for a subsequent stimulus. As a new candidate of odorous irritants, hexanal was used as stimulus. Significant effects of concentration and interaction of concentration and time intervals were observed for odor but not for sensory irritation. However for the same sniff, the duration of sensory irritation was experienced to last longer than that of an odor. A further experiment was conducted on "chemically-sensitive" persons (CS), stringently selected from a population-based questionnaire. The results confirmed that CS-persons had tendencies of heightened odor sensitivity as compared with non-CS persons. Although the difference was not statistically significant, the sensitivity indices of odor indicated that CS-persons are a homogenous group, with a high precision in odor detection.


The antifungal activity of 30 medicinal plants belonging to different families was tested in vitro on the phytopathogenic fungus Rhizoctonia solani. The results revealed that protein extract from the galls of Quercus infectoria belonging to Fagaceae family was highly effective in inhibiting the mycelial growth of R. solani. The gall extract of Q. infectoria also inhibited the growth of other agronomically important fungal pathogens viz. Fusarium oxysporum, Cochliobolus miyabeanus, Macrophomina phaseolina, Colletotrichum gloeosporioides, Magnaporthe salvinii, Cochliobolus lunatus, Alternaria solani, Pythium aphanidermatum and Colletotrichum falcatum. A 29-kDa glycoprotein was purified from the galls of Q. infectoria by ammonium sulphate fractionation followed by gel filtration on Sephadex G-50 column. The purified protein showed the absorption maxima at 640 nm and 308 nm. The purified protein was stable even after heating at 100 °C for 10 min or autoclaving at 121 °C for 20 min. When the 29-kDa protein was treated with NaIO4 and pronase the antifungal activity was drastically reduced. The 29-kDa protein inhibited the mycelial growth of R. solani and C. miyabeanus at 2 µg level.


In this paper, we are going to present the simulation results of comparison of five queuing algorithms (Drop Tail, Fair Queuing, Stochastic Fair Queuing, Deficit Round Robin and Random Early Detection) using ns-2 as simulation environment. Comparison of the queuing algorithms is based on attack-intensity. We are checking the performance of each queuing algorithm on a particular queue limit against different attack intensities. Here an attempt has been made to cover an overview of Denial of Service (DoS) attack, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, methods of attack, DDoS attack tool kits and queuing algorithms. The results in this paper also indicate that UDP type attack traffic is more powerful as compared to TCP type attack in terms of bandwidth consumption. Keywords— DoS, DDoS, Queuing Algorithms, Attacking methods, DDoS Attack Tool Kits.


Initiated by a task in tunable microoptics, but not limited to this application, a microfluidic droplet array in an upright standing module with 3 × 3 subcells and droplet actuation via electrowetting is presented. Each subcell is filled with a single (of course transparent) water droplet, serving as a movable iris, surrounded by opaque blackened decane. Each subcell measures 1 × 1 mm ² and incorporates 2 × 2 quadratically arranged positions for the droplet. All 3 × 3 droplets are actuated synchronously by electrowetting on dielectric (EWOD). The droplet speed is up to 12 mm/s at 130 V (Vrms) with response times of about 40 ms. Minimum operating voltage is 30 V. Horizontal and vertical movement of the droplets is demonstrated. Furthermore, a minor modification of the subcells allows us to exploit the flattening of each droplet. Hence, the opaque decane fluid sample can cover each water droplet and render each subcell opaque, resulting in switchable irises of constant opening diameter. The concept does not require any mechanically moving parts or external pumps.


The critical-care environment can be a stressful place to work. As a result of stress generation, critical-care nurses must use coping mechanisms not normally needed. The Adaptation Process Phenomenon describes a sequence of behavioral patterns and responses during stressful situations, perceived or not, that can result in negative behavioral responses to stress. For critical-care nurses, negative responses can impair the ability to care for patients and families. Adaptation to stress must be identified and examined as a potential illness for critical-care nurses. Is the problem burnout, post traumatic stress disorder, or something else.


ABSTRACT Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on the lives of men. The present study investigated psychosocial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on a help-seeking sample of Canadian men, focusing on diverse aspects of their psychosocial well-being. Methods: A cross-sectional, open survey study design was used. Canadian adult men who were visiting an eHealth depression resource (HeadsUpGuys.org) were recruited to complete an online survey. Descriptive statistics, including means and standard deviations for continuous variables and frequency and percentages for categorical variables, were used to summarize survey responses. Regression analysis was utilized to identify factors associated with various mental health indicators (anxiety, depression, fear of COVID-19, suicidality). The Patient Health Questionnaire-4, Fear of COVID-19 Scale, and item 9 (suicidality item) from the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 were used to assess the mental health indicators. Results: A total of 434 men completed the study. Most respondents (79.3%; N = 344) indicated that their mental health was negatively affected by COVID-19, and two-thirds (65.5%; N = 284) conveyed that government-imposed physical distancing measures had negatively affected their mental health. Half the sample (51.2%; N = 222) reported at least moderate financial stress due to COVID-19. Nearly a third of respondents (31.1%; N = 135) reported that their current living situation has had a considerable or severe negative impact on their mental health since COVID-19. About two-fifths (37.7%; N = 94) of men felt that COVID-19 has had a negative impact on their relationship with their intimate partner. Nearly a third of respondents who were in a relationship (30.9%; N = 77) reported that they engaged in some type of abuse (primarily verbal abuse, 22.9%; N = 57) toward their intimate partner during COVID-19, and more than a quarter (27.3%; N = 68) reported being abused by their intimate partner (also primarily verbal abuse, 22.5%; N = 56). Just under half (42.2%; N = 183) of the respondents indicated experiencing suicidal ideation. Conclusion: These findings can help inform providers of health services to Canadian men, as well as policies that will be implemented during subsequent waves of COVID-19 or during future infectious outbreaks.


With the advent of globalization, economic and financial interactions among countries have become widespread. Given technological advancements, the factors of production can no longer be considered to be just labor and capital. In the pursuit of economic growth, every country has sensibly invested in international cooperation, learning, innovation, technology diffusion and knowledge. In this paper, we use a panel data set of 40 countries from 1981 to 2008 and a negative binomial model, using a novel set of cross-border patents and joint patents as proxy variables for technology diffusion, in order to investigate such diffusion. The empirical results suggest that, if it is desired to shift from foreign to domestic technology, it is necessary to increase expenditure on R&D for business enterprises and higher education, exports and technology. If the focus is on increasing bilateral technology diffusion, it is necessary to increase expenditure on R&D for higher education and technology.


PURPOSE
Recent studies have demonstrated increasing rates of financial toxicities and emotional distress related to cancer treatment. This study assessed and characterized the relationships among financial distress, emotional symptoms, and overall distress in patients with cancer.

METHODS
A cross-sectional sample of patients with cancer who visited our outpatient medical oncology and psychiatry clinics completed a pen-and-paper survey. The survey assessed demographics; cost concerns; and financial, emotional, and overall distress.

RESULTS
One hundred twenty insured patients completed the survey. Sixty-five percent reported clinically significant overall distress scores, with the same percentage reporting at least one emotional problem (worry, anxiety, depression, etc). Twenty-nine percent scored in the range of high to overwhelming financial distress. By using structural equation modeling, we found that financial distress was associated with overall distress. This association was both direct (accounting for 76% of the effect) and indirect (accounting for 24% of the effect) via mediation by emotional distress.

CONCLUSION
This cohort of patients with cancer reported significant levels of emotional distress, financial distress, and overall distress. These factors were interrelated, with both financial and emotional distress contributing to overall distress. Interventions targeted at alleviating financial distress may help to decrease levels of overall distress.


In early 1920 in Hawaii, Japanese sugar cane workers, faced with spiraling living expenses, defiantly struck for a wage increase to $1.25 per day. The event shook the traditional power structure in Hawaii and, as Masayo Duus demonstrates in this book, had consequences reaching all the way up to the eve of World War II. By the end of World War I, the Hawaiian Islands had become what a Japanese guidebook called a 'Japanese village in the Pacific', with Japanese immigrant workers making up nearly half the work force on the Hawaiian sugar plantations. Although the strikers eventually capitulated, the Hawaiian territorial government, working closely with the planters, cracked down on the strike leaders, bringing them to trial for an alleged conspiracy to dynamite the house of a plantation official. And to end dependence on Japanese immigrant labor, the planters lobbied hard in Washington to lift restrictions on the immigration of Chinese workers. Placing the event in the context of immigration history as well as diplomatic history, Duus argues that the clash between the immigrant Japanese workers and the Hawaiian oligarchs deepened the mutual suspicion between the Japanese and United States governments. Eventually, she demonstrates, this suspicion led to the passage of the so-called Japanese Exclusion Act of 1924, an event that cast a long shadow into the future. Drawing on both Japanese- and English-language materials, including important unpublished trial documents, this richly detailed narrative focuses on the key actors in the strike. Its dramatic conclusions will have broad implications for further research in Asian American studies, labor history, and immigration history.


Lakes are major depositional systems for which the related depositional processes have long been considered relatively simple. Breaking this statement, this study presents a detailed analysis of deposits in Lake Saint-Jean, the third largest natural lake in Quebec. In addition to postglacial deltaic and coastal depositional systems fringing the lake, current-controlled features such as a large subaqueous prograding wedge and three sediment drifts have been identifi ed in its central portion based on two-dimensional (2-D) acoustic high-resolution subbottom profiles. The large subaqueous prograding wedge is a 4-km-long and up to 15-m-thick heterolithic shelf-like construction in the southeastern part of the lake. The three sediment drifts are 0.1–0.5-km-long and 2–5-mthick mud mounds distributed on the lake floor in the central portion of the lake. Diatom analyses and radiocarbon dating show that the development of these current-controlled features occurred during the lacustrine phase, after the disconnection with the postglacial marine Laflamme Gulf at 8.5 cal. k.y. B.P. Depositional facies show evidence of recurrent bottom-current activity. Related deposits alternate with pelagic sedimentation stages characterized by the settling of mud and biogenic accumulations. We investigated the origin of bottom currents using a numerical simulation (SYMPHONIE, an oceanographic model), with the aim of modeling wind-induced lake-scale water circulation. Simulations suggest that the subaqueous prograding wedge and the three sediment drifts result from wind-induced bottom currents generated by storm events having wind speed greater than 10 m s–1. Such strong winds are able to significantly affect sedimentation in the central portion of Lake Saint-Jean. The
resulting wind-induced sedimentary features were integrated into a refi ned lacustrine depositional model that summarizes the evolution of a group of water bodies referred to as "wind-driven water bodies." This study applies a new tool for lake strata characterization and highlights the potential diffi culty
in differentiating them from marine deposits in the geological record.


Meaningful and simplified representations of neural activity can yield insights into how and what information is being processed within a neural circuit. However, without labels, finding representations that reveal the link between the brain and behavior can be challenging. Here, we introduce a novel unsupervised approach for learning disentangled representations of neural activity called Swap-VAE. Our approach combines a generative modeling framework with an instance-specific alignment loss that tries to maximize the representational similarity between transformed views of the input (brain state). These transformed (or augmented) views are created by dropping out neurons and jittering samples in time, which intuitively should lead the network to a representation that maintains both temporal consistency and invariance to the specific neurons used to represent the neural state. Through evaluations on both synthetic data and neural recordings from hundreds of neurons in different primate brains, we show that it is possible to build representations that disentangle neural datasets along relevant latent dimensions linked tso behavior.


Estimates of crustal and lithospheric thickness beneath ten permanent seismic stations in southern, central, and eastern Africa have been obtained from modeling S-wave receiver functions (SRFs). For eight of the examined stations, the Moho depth estimates agree well with estimates from previous studies using P-wave receiver functions (PRFs). For two stations, TSUM and BGCA, previous PRF estimates are not available, and our results provide new constraints on the Moho depth, indicating crustal thicknesses of 35 and 40 km, respectively. SRFs from four stations, BOSA, SUR, FURI, and ATD, display clear S-to-P (Sp) conversions from the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary (LAB), corresponding to lithospheric thicknesses of 155, 140, 80, and 34 km, respectively. As expected, thicker lithosphere is observed beneath the Precambrian Kaapvaal Craton (station BOSA) and the Namaqua-Natal mobile belt (station SUR) and thinner lithosphere is observed beneath the edge of the Ethiopian rift (station FURI) and the Afar Depression (station ATD). The thinner lithosphere beneath the two latter stations is consistent with the transition from continental to oceanic rifting at the Afar triple junction. For the remaining stations, bootstrap error estimates indicate that the Sp conversion from the LAB cannot be well resolved, calling into question interpretations of lithospheric structure in previous SRF studies using data from these same stations.


A method for the determination of the total metal ion concentration in samples of unknown composition after separation on a chelating resin was applied to the determination of aluminium(III) concentration in real freshwater samples, using Chelex 100 as a sorbing resin. The method, called chelating resin titration, was previously tested on synthetic samples, and allows also the evaluation of the side reaction coefficient [αM(I)] of the metal ion in the presence of the resin, which is useful for the study of metal speciation. To obtain this information, the sorption equilibria of aluminium(III) on Chelex 100 under the experimental conditions must be exactly known. These equilibria were investigated according to a previously reported method, based on the determination of the sorption curves of aluminium on Chelex 100 from solutions of known composition, sometimes containing chelating substances. It was found that the sorption of aluminium on Chelex 100 takes place by formation of three species, AlL, AlL(OH) and Al(OH)3. The corresponding exchange coefficients were determined. Despite the fact that Chelex 100 sorbs aluminium(III) strongly, it was found that the sorption from fresh waters was not quantitative, which was ascribed to the strong complexation of aluminium in the samples considered. The values of αM(I) of aluminium in some freshwater samples at natural pH and acidified up to pH 3 were determined. They were found to be much higher than those ascribable to hydrolysis or to inorganic and organic ligands present in natural waters, being for instance 1012.1 at pH 7.48 and 107.5 at pH 4.88. A similar determination carried out in a 10–3 mol kg–1 sodium chloride solution containing a known amount of aluminium at pH ≈ 8 gave log αM(I) = 14, completely ascribable to hydrolysis, showing that an accurate evaluation can be obtained by the proposed method.


Background: Diagnosis of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) relies on criteria that are constraining and potentially ambiguous. Some features are open to clinical interpretation and their prevalence unknown. This study investigated the sensitivity of current diagnostic criteria in a large group of patients with bvFTD. Methods: Forty-five patients with clear evidence of bvFTD as judged by progressive clinical decline (>3 years) with marked frontal features and significant frontal brain atrophy on brain MRI were included. Thirty-two have died; pathologic confirmation of frontotemporal lobar degeneration was found in all 18 coming to autopsy. We established the prevalence of core and supportive diagnostic features at presentation and with disease progression. Results: Only 25/45 patients (56%) showed all five core features necessary for a diagnosis of bvFTD at initial presentation and 33/45 (73%) as their disease progressed. Two core features, emotional blunting and loss of insight, were never observed in 25% and 13% of cases. Executive dysfunction, hyperorality, mental inflexibility, and distractibility were the only supportive features present in >50% of cases at initial presentation. Although not a diagnostic feature, impaired activities of daily living was present in 33/45 patients (73%). Conclusions: Strict application of the criteria misses a significant proportion of patients. Many supportive features have low prevalence and are clinically not useful. Revision of the criteria to include level of certainty (definite, probable, possible) dependent on the number of features present and the presence of ancillary information (e.g., brain atrophy, neuropsychological abnormalities, impaired activities of daily living) is encouraged. ACE = Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination; ADL = activities of daily living; bvFTD = behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia; MMSE = Mini-Mental State Examination.


Existing methods to learn visual attributes are prone to learning the wrong thing -- namely, properties that are correlated with the attribute of interest among training samples. Yet, many proposed applications of attributes rely on being able to learn the correct semantic concept corresponding to each attribute. We propose to resolve such confusions by jointly learning decorrelated, discriminative attribute models. Leveraging side information about semantic relatedness, we develop a multi-task learning approach that uses structured sparsity to encourage feature competition among unrelated attributes and feature sharing among related attributes. On three challenging datasets, we show that accounting for structure in the visual attribute space is key to learning attribute models that preserve semantics, yielding improved generalizability that helps in the recognition and discovery of unseen object categories.


A high-finesse optical cavity was employed to perform highly sensitive spectroscopy of molecular oxygen at wavelengths near 763 nm. An equivalent absorption length of ∼1 km was obtained by a 26-cm-long optical cavity with a finesse of 6000. An extended cavity diode laser was frequency locked to the cavity, and pure absorption profiles were recovered by monitoring of the cavity transmission during continuous scans of the cavity resonance through O2 rotational lines, allowing a detailed investigation of the line shapes. Phase modulation of the laser at a frequency equal to the cavity free-spectral-range frequency was employed for detection of weak absorption signals inside the cavity. A minimum detectable absorption coefficient of 6.9×10-11 cm-1 Hz-1/2 was measured. Finally, a test of the symmetrization postulate in  16O nuclei was demonstrated.


There is a growing need for public buy-in if democratic processes are to run smoothly. But who exactly is "the public"? What does their engagement in policy-making processes look like? How can our understanding of "the public" be expanded to include – or be led by – diverse voices and experiences, particularly of those who have been historically marginalized? And what does this expansion mean not only for public policies and their development, but for how we teach policy? Drawing upon public engagement case studies, sites of inquiry, and vignettes, this volume raises and responds to these and other questions while advancing policy justice as a framework for public engagement and public policy. Stretching the boundaries of deliberative democracy in theory and practice, Creating Spaces of Engagement offers critical reflections on how diverse publics are engaged in policy processes.


Federal law both cultivates and regulates employer-sponsored pension plans in the United States. Some believe that because employers have been migrating away from traditional defined benefit pension plans in the United States, the plan cultivation provisions of federal law have failed to encourage U.S. employers to offer pension benefits to their employees. However, Congress has allowed each employer to decide for itself whether to provide pension benefits to its employees and, if so, what kind of pension benefits to provide. Employers appear to have migrated away from traditional defined benefit plans primarily because employers have concluded that defined contribution plans and some hybrid plans are more compatible with their own interests and the interests of their employees than are traditional defined benefit plans.


The advent of the Global Positioning System (GPS) meant that, for the first time, the geodetic and geophysical community has a tool for measurements on a global, continental and national scale. Global GPS networks are already competing with VLBI and SLR for the measurement of inter-continental baselines and earth rotation parameters. The development of the 'high accuracy fiducial GPS technique', as described in this thesis, has produced results comparable with mobile VLBI and SLR systems, but in shorter observational periods and at lower costs. Combined with global GPS networks, which have the potential to provide time-tagged fiducial station coordinates at the observational epochs, coordinates can be determined in a global reference frame. The results in this thesis, from a fiducial GPS campaign to monitor the vertical land movement at tide gauge sites in the UK, demonstrate that millimetric precisions and accuracies can be obtained in all three components over baselines of hundreds of kilometers.
The combination of GPS with existing 2-d classical triangulation networks for mapping, engineering surveying and navigation has caused many problems, since the GPS observations are 3-d and of a superior quality. In Europe these problems have been overcome by the establishment of a new high precision reference framework, EUREF, based on fiducial GPS carried out in 1989. This thesis also describes the determination of coordinates for the UK EUREF stations and their application for geodetic control in Great Britain.


In many screening applications, the primary goal of a radiologist or assisting artificial intelligence is to rule out certain findings. The classifiers built for such applications are often trained on large datasets that derive labels from clinical notes written for patients. While the quality of the positive findings described in these notes is often reliable, lack of the mention of a finding does not always rule out the presence of it. This happens because radiologists comment on the patient in the context of the exam, for example focusing on trauma as opposed to chronic disease at emergency rooms. However, this disease finding ambiguity can affect the performance of algorithms. Hence it is critical to model the ambiguity during training. We propose a scheme to apply reasonable class weight modifiers to our loss function for the no mention cases during training. We experiment with two different deep neural network architectures and show that the proposed method results in a large improvement in the performance of the classifiers, specially on negated findings. The baseline performance of a custom-made dilated block network proposed in this paper shows an improvement in comparison with baseline DenseNet-201, while both architectures benefit from the new proposed loss function weighting scheme. Over 200,000 chest X-ray images and three highly common diseases, along with their negated counterparts, are included in this study.


Rhomboid (Rho), a cell surface, seven-transmembrane domain protein, participates in Spitz-dependent activation of the Drosophila EGF receptor (EGFR). By contrast to transient expression in other embryonic tissues, rho is expressed continuously in the embryonic and larval Midline Glia (MG) lineage and is required upstream of, or in parallel with, S, Spi, and EGFR to establish MG cell number. EGFR signaling is necessary for the expression of rho in the MG and sufficient to stimulate rho expression in additional MG progenitors. rho expression is required continuously from embryonic stage 9-17 to suppress apoptosis in the MG. Although rho misexpression can increase MG number through a non-cell autonomous mechanism, the pattern of normal rho expression suggests that it functions by enhancing autocrine or paracrine signaling among MG cells.


This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of the Theory of Constraints (TOC) research i.e. a total of 1009 journal articles published since 1984. From a bibliometric point of view, the state of the art was mapped and research gaps in the scientific literature identified, creating opportunities for future research. The Production area leads in number of publications, and applications in the Process of Ongoing Improvement in general have been receiving less attention from academics. It is also worth noting that the International Journal of Production Research has the highest concentration of published works on TOC. The results show that TOC is in continuous development with a trend of growth and therefore demands additional inquiry. The main contributions of this work are: (a) presenting a comprehensive historical review and bibliometric analysis on TOC in a manner not yet illustrated in the literature; (b) addressing potential implications and directions for the IJPR community on TOC research; and (c) offering avenues for future research on how to advance the extant literature of TOC.


Avian community structure was studied along a meadow-aspen-fir-spruce subalpine sere in northern Utah and southern Idaho during the breeding seasons of 1976, 1977, and 1978. During 1977 one of the worst droughts of this century occurred in the western United States, and comparative changes in avian community structure were documented during and after drought in the four seral stages. The number of breeding species declined most markedly during drought in aspen. Breeding communities on the forested plots during drought were least similar to predrought communities; pre- and postdrought communities were consistently most similar. Densities of singing males declined more markedly on all plots during drought than did number of species, and remained below predrought levels in 1978. Changes were also noted in avian trophic structure during drought: insectivores gen- erally declined in number, nectivorous hummingbirds completely disappeared, and the number of granivorous cardueline finch species increased. These changes can be related to changes in food resources. During drought, insect species composition and densities changed, flower phenology was 5 wk early, and one of the best coniferous cone crops in 30 yr occurred in northern Utah. Direct effects of lack of water were observed, and many bird species probably experienced water stress. Although difficult to document, indirect effects of drought on food resources are suggested for insectivores, nectivores, and possibly carnivores. The results indicate that a drought can represent an 'ecological crunch" to, and affect the structure of, temperate avian communities. However, separating the variation due to drought from inherent variation is difficult without comparative long- term studies. Avian communities in deciduous vegetation may be more greatly affected by drought than those in coniferous vegetation.


This book features Pucci, the pioneering Italian fashion brand. It features Emilio Pucci, the prince of prints, his heritage and legacy. Emilio Pucci (1914-1992) had an amazing passion for women, a visionary sense of style, and an aesthete's eye for color and design. These talents led him to create a fashion house unlike any other. By the early '50s his boutique on the isle of Capri was catering to wealthy sophisticates, heiresses and movie stars buying his 'Capri pants,' silk scarves and lightweight separates. By the end of the decade, Jacqueline Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe were wearing his dresses, and by the mid-60s the label was synonymous with the gilded lifestyle of an international jetset. Today, the house remains as vibrant as ever - Victoria Beckham, Elizabeth Hurley, and Kylie Minogue are adherents - and recently celebrated its 60th anniversary with a star-studded event in the Pucci family home, a 15th century palazzo in Florence. The Pucci story is a modern epic with its roots in renaissance Italy: the brand's founder, the Marchese Emilio Pucci di Barsento, was an extraordinary, charismatic aristocrat whose lineage extends back to the 14th century. It is a story of evolution: how a family company grew from one tiny store to an international brand with 47 boutiques worldwide (and a presence in 250 more). And finally, it is a tale of innovation: Pucci was one of the first brands to bear a logo, and a pioneer of diversification into interiors, athletic wear and accessories. It introduced free-moving, lightweight fabrics, pop art prints, and a new color palette into womenswear, and constantly pushed fabric and printing technologies. Lavishly illustrated with hundreds of photographs, drawings, and candid shots from the family archive, this luxurious XL tome captures the breathtaking elegance and drama of this unique brand. Vanessa Friedman's evocative text places Emilio's achievements in the context of fashion history, and provides insight into the remarkable Pucci dynasty. All books are bound into different original Pucci fabrics, so that fashion aficionados can choose between dozens of different covers.


Today much is already known about the internationalization patterns of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). However, the research has mainly focused on outward internationalization and more in manufacturing industry than in services (and hardly in the tourism industry). Thus, the paper undertakes an exploratory research in order to verify to what extent the common framework of analysis may explain an internationalization path of SMEs in the tourism sector. To this goal, a case study of a small tour operator in a niche market of weddings abroad in Poland is undertaken. The research seeks to match the firm's internationalization characteristics with considerations of two dominant theories of SME internationalization: stage models of gradual internationalization (so called behavioral models) and models of early and rapid internationalization (businesses called 'born globals' or 'international new ventures'). The main findings of the study are twofold. Firstly, even if the general framework of the analysis suits a case of a small tour operator well, still there is a need to adapt the general framework to industry features (in particular, in terms of organization capabilities). Secondly, a further research should also take into account heterogeneity of international activities (in terms of their antecedents and process). Even if a firm is born global, its further internationalization may well be incremental in nature. In particular, an early and rapid internationalization through imports may lead to a gradual internationalization through exports. The former may result from a proactive attitude, be strategy driven, and implied by characteristics of the market and product (well in lines with models of an early and rapid internationalization). The latter, however, may stem from a rather passive attitude with almost no resource commitment (more in lines with models of a gradual and slow internationalization).


This study presents the story of a three-year ethnographical field study, from December
2000 to December 2003, conducted at a North West based Management Consultancy.
Throughout this period the organisation experienced accelerated growth from two sites
with a workforce of twenty, to six sites with a workforce of forty-five. There were two
major IS implementation projects conducted in that period resulting in pervasive
organisational change for this growing workforce. A controlling mechanism by the
organisation's domineering Managing Director was the strategic 'planting' of two
hegemonic metaphors, in the guise of 'Tigger' and 'Eeyore', two characters from the
children's storybook Winnie the Pooh. This was done to pre-empt and avert resistance
behaviour. An objective of this study was to explore this use of metaphors to coerce
certain users into compliance with management aims in IS projects. Existing studies tend
not to report upon management's explicit use of metaphor to control workforce behaviour
in this manner. It could also be argued that this explicit use may have only been observed
due to the rich insight of this longitudinal ethnographical study. Key features of the
mechanism of metaphors 'working' in this case was the observation of a complex
network of other underlying dominant metaphors in use in the organisation, enabling the
submissive, unwavering, acceptance of the two hegemonic metaphors. A central
contribution of this study is to highlight the power of mutually reinforcing metaphors
when applied in a suitable context, so extending and reinforcing existing metaphor
research within the IS field.
XI


To what extent should a court risk chilling the right to petition the government by allowing evidence of unpopular petitioning to prove the violation of customary international law? In two recent lower court cases, plaintiffs alleging human rights abuses brought suit in federal court under the Alien Tort Statute ("ATS") based on petitioning activity, using such activity to show the connection to U.S. territory required for an ATS claim to go forward. This Essay argues that courts should not allow the use of evidence of First Amendment-protected petitioning to support a claim for which the ATS provides jurisdiction. Courts can accomplish this shift by extending the Noerr-Pennington doctrine, originally developed in antitrust law. Despite the potential to restrict a remedy for serious human rights abuses, this proposed doctrinal shift will safeguard constitutionally protected activity, keep faith with the Supreme Court's command that the scope of ATS claims be kept narrow, and help police the Supreme Court's recent announcement that the ATS doesn't give rise to liability for extraterritorial conduct.The Essay is posted on the New York University Law Review Online website.


The thirty-five chapters in this book describe various judgmental heuristics and the biases they produce, not only in laboratory experiments but in important social, medical, and political situations as well. Individual chapters discuss the representativeness and availability heuristics, problems in judging covariation and control, overconfidence, multistage inference, social perception, medical diagnosis, risk perception, and methods for correcting and improving judgments under uncertainty. About half of the chapters are edited versions of classic articles; the remaining chapters are newly written for this book. Most review multiple studies or entire subareas of research and application rather than describing single experimental studies. This book will be useful to a wide range of students and researchers, as well as to decision makers seeking to gain insight into their judgments and to improve them.


The release of volatile organic compounds to the atmosphere is harmful to human health and the environment. The printing industry is one of the highest contributors to VOC emissions in the UK. According to the Solvent Emissions Directive (1999), only 30 % (by weight) or less of solvents used in the printing industry can be released into the atmosphere as emissions; this is proving to be a challenge to the industry. Thus, the aim of this project is to develop and test a complete demonstration scale capture and regeneration system capable of reusing both, the adsorbent and the adsorbed VOC (in this case IPA).

A prototype adsorber was built and tested at a lithographic printing company for the purpose of capturing the isopropanol (IPA) emissions, under industrial conditions. The prototype itself consisted of an extractor pipe and an adsorbent cartridge placed inside a vacuum cleaner. Adsorption was carried out by drawing in air from the printing machines where vapour emitted from the dampening solution (which comprised of about 10% by vol IPA and
90% by vol water) was concentrated. Three trials of varying inlet concentrations with an adsorbent Dowex Optipore V503 (Dow) and a one trial with activated carbon (AC), was carried out at the printing facility. The time taken until the start of breakthrough was approximately 86 minutes and 250 minutes (of printing time) for Dow and AC respectively. Results showed that, until the start of breakthrough, all of the IPA entering the bed had been
captured by both adsorbents. Of the material captured on the adsorbent, the percentage that was IPA for Dow was 66 wt% to 80 wt% and the IPA percentage that was captured on AC was 54 wt%. The rest of the captured material on the adsorbents was found to be water. A higher IPA loading, however, was evident for AC as compared to Dow.

Results on microwave (MW) regenerating the two adsorbents showed that maximum regeneration of 88% for Dow and 97% for AC occurred after 12 and 13.5 minutes of microwave irradiation respectively. Tiny flashes of light across and within the whole AC bed were evident frequently during the initial stages of MW regeneration. Thus, in terms of safety, the existence of tiny sparks during AC regeneration indicates that Dow is the safer of the two adsorbents. Fractional regeneration of Dow showed that maximum IPA content was found in the regenerate collected between the 6th and 9th minute while the lowest IPA content was found between 0 and 3 minutes. For AC, the percentage of IPA in the regenerate was also found to increase with irradiation time.

An attempt was made to model the process. The first step was to obtain the pure adsorption isotherms at 298 K using an Intelligent Gravimetric Analyser (IGA). For the AC and Dow adsorbents, the Toth and the CIMF model fitted extremely well to the pure IPA and water isotherms respectively. The mixture isotherms were described by the virial equation. The results from the mixture experiments involving Dow showed ideal adsorption of the mixture; AC showed highly non-ideal behaviour. A mathematical model (compiled on Matlab), which incorporated the co-adsorption isotherms, was used to predict breakthrough times during fixed-bed adsorption. This model was able to predict breakthrough data for Dow fairly accurately.

An economic analysis was conducted which shows that AC is the cheaper of the two adsorbents to use, subject to safety considerations.

Overall, a system that captures and regenerates the IPA from the print works had been successfully developed and tested. Microwave regeneration was found to be favourable for both adsorbents since, no loss in adsorbent capacity was found after exposure to microwave radiation. On comparing the two adsorbents, Dow was found to capture a higher percentage of IPA than water as compared to AC. However, with regards to economic viability, AC was found to be the more economic adsorbent.


We describe the food habits, niche overlap and prey preferences in a predator guild comprised of tigers Panthera tigris, leopards Panthera pardus and dholes Cuon alpinus in a mountainous region of central Bhutan. Scat analyses revealed that these predators consumed 11 different prey species including livestock and rodents, of which leopards consumed 11. The combined relative occurrence of the three species, sambar Cervus unicolor, muntjac Munticus muntjac and wild pig Sus scrofa, constituted 42.7, 33.7 and 71.1% of the tiger, leopard and dhole diets, respectively, while livestock comprised 44.5, 73.4 and 15.9% of the prey consumed, respectively. Regression equations from earlier feeding trials were used to estimate the relative biomass and the numbers of prey consumed. Results showed that sambar featured more frequently than did muntjac and wild pig in the diets of tiger, leopard and dhole and contributed more relative biomass than did muntjac and wild pig. Sambar, muntjac and wild pig together provided 36.9, 28 and 63.1% of the biomass consumed by tigers, leopards and dholes respectively. All else being equal, there was evidence that all three predators ate livestock less than might have been expected on the basis of the abundance and high biomass of this prey category in the area. There was a high dietary niche overlap between the predators (Pianka's overlap index of 0.58–0.92), with a greater overlap between the two felid species than between the felids and the canid. This study provides evidence of a substantial diet overlap among the three sympatric carnivores, and thus highlights the potential for high intra-guild competition among them, especially given the relatively low density of prey.


ABSTRACT This paper explores how two distinct scholarly disciplines both concerned with place-based human behavior have independently developed an ecological framework: urban sociology's human ecology, and community psychology's ecological metaphor. A comparison of these two frameworks shows they are similar in many ways, including their foundations, processes, and legacies. These frameworks emerged independently in similar social and intellectual milieus separated by 50 years, suggesting that their similarities could be the product of convergent evolution. These similarities highlight opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration, while the differences identified by this comparison highlight opportunities for cross-disciplinary learning.


Objective We aimed to investigate the associations between diabetes and quality of life (QOL) among breast cancer survivors. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted at 34 Cancer Recovery Clubs across China from May 2014 to January 2015. Quality of life was measured by the Quality of Life Questionnaire-Core 30 (EORTC QLQ-C30) and the Quality of Life Questionnaire-Breast Cancer Module 23 (QLQ-BR23, simplified Chinese version). Information on social-demography, diagnosis and treatment of tumors, and diabetes mellitus were collected by self-reported questionnaires. Univariate analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) was performed to assess the difference in QOL between patients with or without diabetes mellitus, and multiple linear regression models were used to examine the associations after controlling for confounders. Results Diabetes, both of type 1 diabetes (T1DM) and type 2 diabetes (T2DM) significantly reduced QOL. This effect of diabetes on QOL is independent of tumor size, regional lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis and tumor stage index (TNM). After adjusting for different social-demography, diagnosis and treatment of the tumor, the tumor's stage and other chronic comorbidities, breast cancer survivors with diabetes got significantly lower scores in functional dimensions (including physical, role, emotional and social functionings measured by EORTC QLQ-C30; body image (BRBI) and future perspective (BRFU) measured by QLQ-BR23, as well as economic difficulties than those without diabetes (Padjusted<0.05). Diabetic patients also obtained higher scores in symptom dimensions, including fatigue, nausea and vomiting, pain, dyspnoea, insomnia, constipation and diarrhoea measured by EORTC QLQ-C30; side effects, breast symptoms and upset by hair loss measured by QLQ-BR23 (Padjusted<0.05). Compared to patients with T1DM, those with T2DM are likely to suffer more by loss of functioning. Conclusions Diabetes was associated with the decreased QOL for breast cancer survivors.


The Changing Academic Library, Second Edition, number 65 in the ACRL Publications in Librarianship (PIL) series, is a completely revised, enhanced, and updated edition of John Budd s The Changing Academic Library (PIL # 56, 2005). This book has been completely updated and revised to reflect the dynamic states of higher education and academic libraries. It presents a critical examination of major issues facing colleges and universities and the unique challenges that their libraries must come to grips with. Current practice is reviewed, but it is examined in the broader context of educational needs, scholarly communication, politics and economics, technology, and the nature of complex organizations. The book may be used as a text in library and information science courses, as well as an introduction for new professionals and academic administrators.


While during the last few decades developed countries were the main buyers of Iranian export items, in the last couple of years, the developing countries have become the primary destination of Iranian exports. It can be argued that a strategic shift has occurred in the Iranian export orientation. Exploration of the reasons for such a reorientation is of importance. The aim of this research is study of the impacts of international trends on the Iranian export orientation with the emphasis placed on non-oil exports. The primary question of this study is: what factors have contributed to the change in Iran's export orientation? The hypothesis posed in response to the question is that: the trend of power transition in the international political economy and intensification of the West's sanctions against Iran constitute key factors in the change. Analyzing Iran's export data, the authors have reasoned that a turn has occurred in the orientation of Iranian export. They have discussed the rise of emerging powers in the international political economy as well as the escalating tension between Iran and the West (manifested in international sanctions) as the two main factors that have contributed to this reorientation. In their point of view, the change in Iran's export orientation is probably permanent which will leave an important imprint on the geopolitical and geo-economic status of Iran.


Lang et al. studied a mechanism by which stem cells can be pluripotent but not totipotent, that is, they can be partially committed to a cell fate but remain undifferentiated. The authors noted that Pax3-positive cells were present in skin cells that also express the melanin biosynthetic enzyme dopachrome tautomerase (Dct). These cells were determined to be melanocyte stem cells, and further analysis indicated that not all of the Pax3-positive cells were also positive for Dct, suggesting that Pax3 may be involved in differentiation. Indeed, Pax3, which is known to stimulate the expression of the gene encoding the transcription factor Mitf, was shown to inhibit expression from a Dct reporter at the same concentration that activated a Mitf reporter. Mitf and Pax3 competed for binding to the Dct enhancer in chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assays. Pax3 has a binding site for the LEF/TCF family of transcription factors, which are regulated by Wnt signaling, and transfection of active β-catenin into cells expressing Pax3 and the Dct reporter abolished the repressor activity of Pax3 and displaced Pax3 from the Dct enhancer. In vitro, Pax3, Lef1, and the repressor Grg4 formed a complex and the addition of β-catenin blocked the interaction of Pax3 and Grg4 with Lef1. Confirmation that β-catenin signaling was required in vivo for Dct expression came from β-catenin knockout mouse embryos in which Pax3- and Mitf-positive skin cells were present but Dct was absent. Thus, Pax3 appears to serve to commit the cells to a melanocyte lineage through the stimulation of Mitf expression but prevents full differentiation in the absence of Wnt signaling by competing for downstream gene enhancers such as that in the Dct gene. D. Lang, M. M. Lu, L. Huang, K. A. Engleka, M. Zhang, E. Y. Chu, S. Lipner, A. Skoultchi, S. E. Millar, J. A. Epstein, Pax3 functions at a nodal point in melanocyte stem cell differentiation. Nature 433, 884-887 (2005). [PubMed]


To the Editor: Alzheimer's disease (AD) most commonly begins with insidious memory failure and later progresses to more-generalized cognitive deficits and dementia, but memory complaints also are quite common even in normal elderly people. Therefore, it is of particular importance to establish an accurate and objective laboratory test to distinguish normal elderly people from subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) who are likely to develop AD so that clinicians can make decisions on instituting therapies. Fifty consecutive individuals complaining of memory dysfunction were evaluated by the Japanese version of the Wechsler Memory ScaleFRevised (WMS-R). As described previously, the WMS-R has been validated for clinical use in the Japanese language. Subjects were functioning fairly well in the community and were neither psychoactive drug users nor excessive alcohol drinkers. Depression also was excluded by using the Geriatric Depression Scale. Thyroid function tests and vitamin B12 and folic acid levels were all within normal range. Serological test for syphilis was negative in all subjects. Global cognitive function was assessed using the MiniMental State Examination (MMSE). Because delayed episodic memory was found to be most severely impaired in MCI, scores of logical memory II, visual reproduction II, verbal paired associates II, and visual paired associates II in the WMS-R subscales were summed and expressed as ''delayed recall score'' after adjustment for age. The diagnosis of amnestic MCI was made based essentially on the following published criteria: complaint of defective memory function by patient or informant, normal activities of daily living, normal general cognitive function, abnormal memory function in the WMS-R as revealed by delayed recall score of 1.5 standard deviations (SDs) or more below age-matched control subjects, and absence of dementia. All values were expressed as mean 7SD. As a result, 28 individuals (mean age571.175.5) fulfilled the criteria, and the other 22 subjects (mean age568.578.5) were judged as having no cognitive impairment (NCI). Education did not differ significantly between the MCI (mean511.77 2.0 years) and the NCI (mean5 10.671.7 years) groups. The MMSE scores were 26.171.5 in the MCI group and 28.072.0 in the NCI group (P5.003). Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) tau protein (CSF-tau) and CSF amyloid-b1–42 peptide (CSF-Ab1–42) were quantitated as described previously. Regional cerebral blood flow in the posterior cingulate cortex (rCBFpc) was measured on (I)iodoamphetamine– single positron emission computed tomography (IMPSPECT) images according to previously described methods. Figure 1 shows receiver operating characteristic curves with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.93 for the CSF-tau, AUC of 0.72 for the rCBFpc, and AUC of 0.72 for the CSFAb1–42 (Po.05). The CSF-tau levels were significantly higher in the amnestic MCI group than in the NCI group (524.77238.6 vs 201.5789.6 pg/mL, Po.0001). The rCBFpc was significantly lower in the amnestic MCI group than in the NCI group (0.9170.12 vs 1.0070.08, P5.005), but there was no significant difference in CSFAb1–42 levels between the two comparison groups. For the distinction between amnestic MCI and NCI, the cutoff level of 341.0 pg/mL of the CSF-tau yielded a sensitivity of 83.3% and a specificity of 95.0%. To our knowledge, no study has ever described a relationship between delayed memory function and biomarkers such as CSF-tau and IMP-SPECT images in the same patient population of amnestic MCI. Despite a moderately invasive technique, CSF-tau appears to be the most appropriate indicator to support a differential diagnosis between MCI and normal elderly people. This study also demonstrates that amnestic MCI is not merely an age-associated condition, but appears to be a more pathological state that is associated with abundant neuron death, as revealed by elevated CSF-tau levels. In previous studies, it was demonstrated that CSF-tau alone or in combination with IMP-SPECT was highly predictive of developing AD in MCI subjects. Taking these results into consideration, we argue for clinical trials for early and


This chapter examines the rule from Rylands v Fletcher [1868]. The rule holds that where there has been an escape of a dangerous thing in the course of a non-natural use of land, the occupier of that land is liable for the damage to another caused as a result of the escape, irrespective of fault. The rule today is best understood through a trilogy of cases: Rylands v Fletcher, Cambridge Water Co Ltd v Eastern Counties Leather plc [1994] and Transco v Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council [2004]. The development of the rule has led to an increased overlap with ideas from nuisance and negligence.


We show that a monopolist's problem of optimal advance selling strategy can be mathematically transformed into a problem of optimal bundling strategy if four conditions hold: i. consumers and the firm agree on the probability of the states occurring, ii. the firm pre-commits to the spot prices to be charged in the advance selling stage, iii. consumers are risk-neutral, and iv. consumers and the firm do not have time preferences or when they do have time preferences, they discount future at the same rate. The result allows both researchers and practitioners to apply the insights from the well-developed vast literature on bundling to advance selling problems. In particular, we show that advance selling is more profitable than spot selling when consumer valuations across the states are independent or negatively dependent or positively dependent up to a point. We furthermore illustrate the effect of advance selling on the spot prices and consumer welfare: When the firm offers advance selling discounts, it sets higher spot prices, so consumers who do not buy in advance are worse off due to the firm offering advance selling discounts. We extend our analysis to the cases of more than two states and competition only in one of the states. We also show how advance selling can be used as an entry deterrence strategy.


Breast cancer is heterogeneous and life threatening diseases among women in world wide. The aim of this paper is to analyze and investigate a novel approach based on NSST (Shearlet transform) to diagnosis the digital mammogram images. Shearlet Transform is a multidimensional version of the composite dilation wavelet transform, and is especially designed to address anisotropic and directional information at various scales. Initially, using multi scale directional representation, mammogram images are decomposed into different resolution levels with various directions from 2 to 32. In this work we investigated five machine learning algorithm, namely SVM (Support Vector Machine), Naive Bayes, KNN LDA and MLP, which are used to categorizes decomposed image as either cancerous (abnormal) or not (normal) and then again abnormal severity is further categorized as either benign images or malignant images. The evaluation of the system is carried out on the MIAS (Mammography Image Analysis Society) database. The tenfold cross-validation test is applied to validate the developed system. The performance of the five algorithms was compared to find the most suitable classifier. At the end of the study, obtained results shows that SVM is an efficient technique compares to other methods.


A revealing tour of the lush gardens and enchanting homes of New England's Cape Cod, in more than 400 lavish color photographs and inviting text. Well known for its glorious coastline, fabulous sailing, world-renowned beaches, and delectable shellfish, Cape Cod has a long history connected to the sea. Commercial fishermen from the Old World sought shelter on its shores even before the "Mayflower" Pilgrims made their first landing at Provincetown in 1620 before going on to settle at Plymouth. In contrast to the tales of merchant seamen, whaling ships and the China trade, pirates and commercial fishermen, the Cape was settled by farmers. By 1639 the towns of Sandwich, Yarmouth, and Barnstable were already incorporated, and livestock grazed on the plentiful salt marshes nearby. Now, more than three-and-a-half centuries later, Cape Cod is home to artists and writers, fishermen and farmers, and the summer destination of generations of city dwellers-- all of whom enjoy the soft summer nights, endless beaches, and sheltered estuaries and bays abounding with succulent clams and oysters. "Cape Cod: Gardens and Houses" reveals the Cape's natural beauty, its rich architecture, and its magical gardens. Taylor Lewis's stunning color photographs and Catherine Fallin's evocative words take you on a tour inside the rooms of the Cape's most alluring houses, behind stone walls and high hedges protecting private formal gardens from the sea or from the busy street, into cottage gardens tucked away behind rambling houses, and to wildflower meadows stretching out to the marshes. We travel along the Cape's back roads and visit the Upper Cape towns of Sandwich, Falmouth, and Waquoit; the Mid-Cape from Barnstable and Yarmouthport to Brewster on the north, and from Osterville to Harwich Port on the south; Chatham and Orleans at the crook of the elbow; and the legendary Wellfleet, Truro, and Provincetown on the Lower or Outer Cape. This journey captures the wealth of the Cape's legacy and the distinct personalities of its diverse communities. Seen in elegant detail are some of the earliest houses, dating to 1678; exemplary Cape Cod-style homes; large summer "cottages" by the sea; and turn-of-the-century and contemporary pond-side residences. The Cape's New England climate, softened by the surrounding sea, is similar in many ways to that of Great Britain and Japan, and like them has lush gardens from early spring, when the crocuses and snowdrops poke up through the late winter snows, to late spring when profusely flowering fruit trees, rhododendrons, and azaleas fill the air with their color and delicate scent. Glorious roses and other flowers rich in the shades of summer flourish until late-blooming asters, dahlias, and chrysanthemums give way to the brilliant colors of fall foliage and cranberry bogs. Cape Cod gardens range from those sheltered by tall privet to those that grow nearly wild along the sea. These pages depict arched gateways heavy with the weight of climbing roses and clematis, homes bordered with bushes of blue hydrangeas or purple and white lilacs, hillsides textured with soft subtle heaths and heathers, and native Rosa rugosas, sea lavenders, and Scotch broom.


Teaching 6th grade students in a collaborative environment can be challenging. This action research project focused on using language frames to guide students in communication interactions. The research was done in a pre-engineering classroom as part of a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Program at the middle school level. Two classes of students, a total of 57 students, participated in the study. Students were provided with sentence frames that could be filled in with their own words allowing them to express their ideas and reasoning. Some of the language frames also provided students with the ability to show they are listening to other students by restating what was heard. Written surveys and collaboration rubrics were analyzed to find a small increase in communication among collaborative groups. Students' self ratings on their listening and communication skills increased as well as the opinions towards working in groups. Video observations showed a more dramatic increase in students' time spent communicating from before the treatment time. Although there is not strong data to directly support the use of language frames, students communicated with each other more and the overall classroom environment improved from the teacher point of view. Completing the action research project also provided a more in depth practice of collecting and analyzing data as a teacher.


ABSTRACT Dermatophytes are a uniquely pathogenic group of fungi that cause most common fungal infections globally. The major cause of athlete's foot is Trichophyton rubrum, a pathogen of human skin. A recent paper in this journal reported the sequencing and analysis of five additional genome sequences, including that of Trichophyton rubrum. These five join the existing two additional genome sequences to bring the total to seven dermatophyte genome sequences, a notable milestone in the study of these fungi. These additional genomes set the stage for future genome-supported studies on the biology, pathogenicity, and host specificity of this important group of pathogens. To predict how this future might play out, we review the history of Aspergillus genomics since the initial publication of the first three Aspergillus genome sequences in 2005, an event that stimulated important studies of the pathogenic Aspergillus species. From these 7 years of Aspergillus history, we offer some speculation on the future of dermatophyte studies supported by the genome sequences given the similarities, differences, and relative levels of support for studies in these two groups of fungi and the diseases they cause.


The Federal Railroad Administration sponsored a full-scale train-to-train crash energy management (CEM) technology test that was conducted on March 23, 2006, at the Transportation Technology Center in Pueblo, Colorado. The Volpe National Transportation Center directed and coordinated the contractors who implemented the test and developed the technical requirements for the test, including the conditions, the equipment tested, and the measurements made. This report describes the installation details and the results of the five occupant protection experiments conducted as part of Task Order Contract DTR S57-04-D-30008/TO6. The five experiments were conducted on board two commuter rail cars as part of the full-scale train-to-train CEM equipment collision test.


An outwardly propagating spherical flame has been used to characterise the influence of water addition on the combustion of variable steelworks gas compositions. Attention was given to the ratio of hydrogen and carbon monoxide within blast furnace gas, and the catalysing influence of water addition on the preponderant reaction kinetics. A nonlinear extrapolative technique was used to obtain values of laminar burning velocity and Markstein length for atmospheric combustion with air and change in equivalence ratio. Four disparate blast furnace gas mixtures were tested with increasing volumetric proportions of hydrogen in the range of one to seven percent, displacing other constituent fractions. A non-monotonic influence was observed, with propagation accelerated for compositions comprising smaller amounts of hydrogen, and the cooling impact of water addition shown to slow faster burning flames. Water addition was also shown to increase the effects of flame stretch on observed propagation rates, and the contrasting influences resulting from vapour fraction are discussed with respect to practical combustion instability, in addition to alternative synthesised fuels. Numerically modelled results were generated using the PREMIX coded CHEMKIN-PRO, and the performance of specified chemical reaction mechanisms evaluated in relation to the obtained experimental data.


The thin layer drying of pine forest residues consisting of bark, needles, leaves, and chips was experimentally conducted at air temperatures of 40, 50, 60, 70, and 80oC. Physical and chemical properties of fractionated forest residues were determined to evaluate its fuel properties. The experimental data obtained from thin layer drying study were fitted with Lewis, Page, and Henderson and Pabis equations to evaluate the drying behavior of the forest residues. Among the three drying models, the Henderson and Pabis model fitted well with the experimental drying data at the tested temperatures (40, 50, 60, 70, 80oC), achieving R2 values of0.992, 0.994, 0.997, 0.989, and 0.983, respectively. The drying constant k for the forest residues was increased with increase in drying air temperature and was correlated in the form of a second order regression equation. The thin layer drying data developed from this study will be useful for designing low temperature dryers for forest residues.