If inorganic compounds are added to the polymers it has been observed that the mechanical properties are improved. This may be due to the individual properties of compounds and their phases present. Particle size, length/ diameter ratio and structure of the filler material have great influence on the polymer properties. In the current research 5 different rubber compound were prepared by using (SBR 1502) type of Styrene Butadiene rubber in level and each recipe reinforced with Titanium Dioxide (TiO2 ) at constant ratio (60) pphr ( part per hundred ), Stearic Acid (S.A) at variable ratio (20,40,60,80 and 100) pphr The physical properties such as Tensile ,Elongation , Young Modulus and Compression were Studied . The result show that the hardness, Fatigue, Compression, wear, increase with loading level of (S.A). But the Tensile and Elongation that increase with excited ratio of (S.A) and decrease in another Value at 100 %.


State-of-the-art sound event detection (SED) methods usually employ a series of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to extract useful features from the input audio signal, and then recurrent neural networks (RNNs) to model longer temporal context in the extracted features. The number of the channels of the CNNs and size of the weight matrices of the RNNs have a direct effect on the total amount of parameters of the SED method, which is to a couple of millions. Additionally, the usually long sequences that are used as an input to an SED method along with the employment of an RNN, introduce implications like increased training time, difficulty at gradient flow, and impeding the parallelization of the SED method. To tackle all these problems, we propose the replacement of the CNNs with depthwise separable convolutions and the replacement of the RNNs with dilated convolutions. We compare the proposed method to a baseline convolutional neural network on a SED task, and achieve a reduction of the amount of parameters by 85% and average training time per epoch by 78%, and an increase the average frame-wise F1 score and reduction of the average error rate by 4.6% and 3.8%, respectively.


The poor performance of residential foundations in past earthquakes, prompted a practical investigation to quantify the adequacy of Wellington timber dwellings' foundations, including the sub-floor bracing, sub-floor fixings and general condition of the foundation. The adequacy of a sample of 80 dwellings' foundations was assessed against the current "Light Timber Framed Construction Standard" NZS3604:1999. The NZS3604 standard was introduced in 1978 and has been subsequently tested by many New Zealand earthquakes, most significantly being the Edgecumbe earthquake in 1987. The observed damage to dwellings built to the then current NZS3604:1984, showed only negligible damage due to foundation inadequacies and as a result, the standard required only minor amendments. The most current 1999 edition of NZS3604 is therefore considered to have seismically appropriate detailing and provisions to withstand design earthquakes; so for the purposes of this study, NZS3604:1999 is assumed to be the residential benchmark for seismic adequacy. The results from the study suggest that 39% of the sample had inadequate sub-floor bracing. Overall, 16% of the sample relied solely on the strength of ordinary piles, while 11% relied entirely on large concrete anchors. 76% of dwellings had some form of fixing deficiency, ranging from degradation to incorrect or non-existent fixings. The overall condition of the sample dwellings was compared with the House Condition Survey 2005. The results of this study showed that inadequacies identified in the House Condition Survey 2005, were also prevalent in the majority of sampled dwellings in the study, including non compliance with minimum height and sub-floor ventilation requirements. However, the House Condition Survey produced by BRANZ does not assess any rented accommodations and so the condition results may be underestimated. The study sample, however includes a proportion of rented dwellings, but may still be unrepresentative of the actual average dwelling, in terms of condition and range. After identifying the common deficiencies both in the sample and also from similar studies, remedial measures were costed and applied to different foundation types based on the required strength and suitability to the existing foundation system. The remedies, to upgrade bracing, fixings and the general condition, including labour, ranged between $15 per m² and $60 per m². These costs were then projected to all Wellington City foundations, which totalled over $250 Million. It was assumed that each dwelling should be remedied to comply with the standards in NZS3604:1999 and the remedies were applied based on the average condition of the sample. To understand the anticipated losses and therefore benefits of upgrading, the estimated damage cost to residential dwellings was calculated using an Earthquake Loss Modeller, which was supplied by the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences. The cost was calculated by assuming an earthquake of Magnitude 7.5, at a depth of 7.5km centred on the Wellington fault line, around Kaiwharawhara. In order to formulate a cost saving, or economic benefit from upgrading foundations, the cost of specific damage and collapse to residential dwellings was calculated to be $2.1 Billion, assuming no remedial measures had been applied. The Mean Damage Ratio for each foundation type was then modified, based on similar earthquake damage projections based on the same Wellington earthquake scenario. Dwellings that had either significant configuration issues or were located in an area likely to experience higher earthquake shaking, were still anticipated to collapse despite applying sub-floor remedies. The cost of damage to dwellings following remedial measures was calculated at just over $1.1 Billion. Therefore, the total savings were anticipated to be around $950 Million. These results were considered as a ratio of cost over benefit which is used to understand whether the associated economic benefit is greater than the anticipated cost of remedy. The cost / benefit ratio for dwellings likely to collapse is less than 10% , while extensively damaged dwellings have a higher cost / benefit ratio of around 25%. The highest benefit was seen in Piled dwellings, where savings upwards of $500 Million were projected. The economic saving due to the application of remedial measures has the potential to reduce pressure on the public sector including emergency management systems, hospitals and organisations involved with evacuations and erection of temporary shelters. In addition, there will also be a saving for both the public and private insurers, which will facilitate the quicker reconstruction of the postearthquake society to pre-earthquake levels. For the results of this study to be beneficial to New Zealanders, the information must be disseminated and implemented using proactive initiatives. These must be targeted at the homeowner in an easily understandable format, which is focussed on better performance and savings, rather than on the worst case scenario which has been shown to increase ambivalence and fatalistic mindsets within society.


We live in an anxious world where there is a lack of trust in the communication in public places. A common way forward is to design against crime and thereby attempt to create a feeling of safety. We have chosen a different approach: to create a non-anxious system that puts trust in the user and allows her to act and to communicate. The project [visklek] aims at creating a public place that allows for social interaction and an exchange of personal stories between strangers in Vaxjo, Sweden. Trough the use of a traditional children's game, network technologies and other channels of communication, we create an ambiguous and open system for user appropriation. Our conclusion is that there is a need for play, since while playing you can break the rules of the every day life, thereby become aware of norms and try to find your own tactics.


This paper offers a descriptive portrait of income poverty among children in Germany between the early 1980s and 2001, with a focus on developments since unification in 1991. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel are used to estimate poverty rates, rates of entry to and exit from poverty, and the duration of time spent in and out of poverty. The analysis focuses upon comparisons between East and West Germany, by family structure, and citizenship status. Child poverty rates have drifted upward since 1991, and have been increasing more than the rates for the overall population since the mid-1990s. In part these changes are due to increasing poverty among children from households headed by non-citizens. Children in single parent households are by all measures at considerable risk of living in poverty. There are also substantial differences in the incidence of child poverty and its dynamics between East and West Germany.


My thesis is that the racial, religious, and ethnic diversity of the jury has a positive and important influence on the jury process. Accordingly, I believe we should select jurors in a way that encourages and enhances such diversity. While I recognize the danger that jurors who are chosen in part because of their racial, religious, or ethnic affiliation may come to believe that they have a duty to represent their particular group in some fashion, I offer a procedure for enhancing juror diversity – affirmative peremptory challenges – that minimizes this danger as much as possible. In short, this article exposes the fallacy of believe that the best way to ensure a race-neutral jury verdict is through a race-neutral selection process. Its thesis is that a racially diverse jury is more likely to render a race-neutral verdict, because it is more likely to suppress racial bias in deliberations and to challenge inferences based on thoughtless racial stereotypes. Consequently, to best ensure race-neutrality in a jury's verdict, we need to acknowledge our racial differences in selecting that jury and take steps necessary to increase the likelihood of racial diversity among the twelve jurors who will render that verdict.


Melanins are enigmatic pigments that are produced by a wide variety of microorganisms including several species of pathogenic bacteria, fungi and helminthes. The study of melanin is difficult because these pigments defy complete biochemical and structural analysis. Nevertheless, the availability of new reagents in the form of monoclonal antibodies and melanin‐binding peptides, combined with the application of various physical techniques, has provided insights into the process of melanization. Melanization is important in microbial pathogenesis because it has been associated with virulence in many microorganisms. Melanin appears to contribute to virulence by reducing the susceptibility of melanized microbes to host defence mechanisms. However, the interaction of melanized microbes and the host is complex and includes immune responses to melanin‐related antigens. Production of melanin has also been linked to protection against environmental insults. Interference with melanization is a potential strategy for antimicrobial drug and pesticide development. The process of melanization poses fascinating problems in cell biology and provides a type of pathogenic strategy that is common to highly diverse pathogens.


Chris Lamb was one of the most influential plant biologists of his time. He was director of the Plant Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute and of the John Innes Centre, two of the world's leading plant and microbial research institutions. He was recognized by the Institute for Scientific Information as one of the most highly cited researchers worldwide in plant and animal science. His field of study was plant–pathogen interactions, and he made seminal contributions to the understanding of the molecular basis of plant defence. His efforts led to discoveries such as how cell wall composition influences microbial entry, which plant genes are rapidly induced on infection, and the role of reactive oxygen and nitrogen intermediates in plant defence signalling. His work demonstrated a number of links between defence responses in plants and in animals. He believed that plant and microbial science research could be used to improve the world, and he took his belief to the local communities, to regional and national media and to Westminster. He had a skill for talent spotting, and one of his major legacies is the number of careers that he nurtured and are now flourishing at universities and institutes across the world.


The structural style within the deepest parts of the Ajdabiya Trough is defined by a system of Early - Late Cretaceous syn-depositional fault blocks bound by normal faults and basement highs devoid of syn-rift sediments, which are buried under a thick succession of Cenozoic post-rift deposits. The range of fault orientations likely reflects the conflicting influences of the ~NE-SW regional extension direction and the dominant ~N-S trending basement fabric. Mainly NW-trending normal faults dissecting Cretaceous and older rocks have been inferred from 2D seismic reflection and potential field data. Other faults trend NE-SW and E-W, and mainly cut Miocene and older strata. Some of these faults have both sinistral and dextral strike slip components and are possibly linked to on-going seismicity in the Sirt Basin and the Cyrenaica Platform. Vertical displacements on these faults are several hundred meters and are defined by large throws on Cretaceous and underlying horizons. Structural mapping confirms the presence of relay ramps associated with overlapping faults developed in the hangingwalls adjacent to west downthrowing normal faults along the eastern margin of the Ajdabiya Trough. The seismic stratigraphic framework is organised into six mega-sequences that correlate to variations in relative sea-level and/or sediment supply during Late Mesozoic and Cenozoic times. The stratigraphic architecture of the trough is largely influenced by relative sea level changes and minimal tectonic effects during the Cenozoic; observed progradation of the Paleocene, Early and Middle Eocene sequences along the trough margin is attributed to relatively rapid sedimentation rates and relatively slow rates of increase in accommodation space. Depositional environments are interpreted using the resultant facies analysis and the characterisation of the seismic reflections indicated that the geological units were deposited in marginal marine, shallow shelf and moderately deep marine environments. Special consideration is given to the principle of seismic sequence stratigraphy analysis of carbonate depositional systems where the facies group took initially place on a homoclinal ramp which later developed into a rimmed platform. This analysis additionally reveals that similar depositional architectures can be divided into systems tracts. The earliest systems tract of the Lower Eocene sequence is interpreted as lowstand prograding wedge distinguished on the basis of the component facies that indicate the dominant depositional regime. Localized debris flow or mass transport complex formed during early highstand systems tract deposition began during the Middle Eocene. The tectono‐stratigraphic analysis of the Ajdabiya Trough reveals that two major extensional pulses controlled the architecture of the trough during continental rifting with crustal stretching (β) factor ranging from 1.3 to 1.5 consistent with subsidence in the Ajdabiya Trough having been controlled by thermal cooling and isostatic adjustments of the crust beneath the trough. Growth strata within grabens and half-grabens denote persistent tectonic subsidence and demonstrate the progressive depocenter locus migration towards the north. In such a context, the current geometry of the Ajdabiya Trough is interpreted to have resulted mainly from rifting cycles and possible renewed continental extension. The investigations of the tectono‐stratigraphic controls reveal that after a period of relative tectonic quiescence, post‐rift tectonic reactivation affected the Ajdabiya Trough almost continuously since the latest Cretaceous to the Miocene. Burial history curves correlated with one-dimensional back-stripping assuming Airy isostasy shows that Cenozoic subsidence in the Ajdabiya Trough can be divided into three episodes of post-rift subsidence characterized by short and long-lived subsidence pulses and rapid sedimentation rates that may lead to development of overpressure by disequilibrium compaction.


The thesis comprises three parts. One reviews pedological research in the area, discusses the soil forming factors and considers the classification of the soils studied, A chapter is devoted to each pedogenic factor and describes its role in soil formation on the Reserve. Part two comprises a study of several small limestone grasslands. Their microtopography is described using maps which also show soils. Three surfaces are recognised; the surrounding peat surface, a sub-peat 'drift' surface and a dissected limestone surface. Each sub-group in the soil complex is described, i, e. rendzina, brown calcareous soil, acid brown earth and peat podzol: profiles, with analyses, are included. Drift or head is shown to dominate the soil parent material. A contribution from the limestone is present in the shallow soils and dominates in some rendzinas. The inter-relationships of the soils are discussed: they form a sequence reflecting increasing depth of drift. In the shallow soils plants obtain nutrients from the limestone thus offsetting leaching. In the deeper soils the limestone merely maintains free drainage, A history of the grasslands is reconstructed. The smaller areas were, almost certainly peat covered but parts of the larger ones may have remained peat free. Part three discusses eight of the main soil sub-groups on the Reserve. Their distribution, morphology and pedogenesis are considered: profiles are given with analyses. Iron humus podzols are described and the origin of their platey structure and parent material: these soils are shown to be sedentary. Theories on the formation of peaty gleyed podzols are examined in the light of the work at Moor House, Clay movement in some brown earths is discussed. The distribution pattern of the sub-groups is outlined: a drainage sequence containing calcareous members is present. Parent materials of soils on the Pennine escarpment are briefly examined. Many research colleagues in the postgraduate school of the geology department for helpful discussion, and assistance in sampling and analyses. Amongst these colleagues I am especially grateful to Dr. G. Farrow and Mr. A. Stoyel, who taught the author all he knows about steam engines and water mills. Dr. A. Marshall and Mr. K. Jones. The Natural Environmental Research Council for providing a research studentship to finance the research. Last, but by no means least, my wife for taking notes in torrential rain at Moor House, assisting with tables and text figures and, most of all, for giving much needed encouragement during the frequent disasters which occurred during the research.


Over the past decade, a number of state and local governments have amended land use regulations to permit the accessory dwelling units ("ADUs") on single-family lots. Measured by raw numbers of reforms, the campaign to secure legal reforms permitting ADUs appears to be a tremendous success. The question remains, however, whether these reforms overcome the well-documented land-use parochialism that has, for decades, represented a primary obstacle to increasing the supply of affordable housing. In order to understand more about their actual effects, this Article examines ADU reforms in a context which ought to predict a minimal level of local parochialism. In 2002, California enacted state-wide legislation mandating that local governments either amend their zoning laws to permit ADUs in single-family zones or accept the imposition of a state-dictated regulatory regime. We carefully examined the zoning law of all California cities with populations over 50,000 people (150 total cities) to determine how local governments actually implemented ADU reforms "on the ground" after the state legislation was enacted. Our analysis suggests that the seeming success story masks hidden local regulatory barriers. Local governments have responded to local political pressures by delaying the enactment of ADU legislation (and, in a few cases, simply refusing to do so despite the state mandate), imposing burdensome procedural requirements that are contrary to the spirit, if not the letter, of the state-law requirement that ADUs be permitted "as of right," requiring multiple off-street parking spaces, and imposing substantive and procedural design requirements. Taken together, these details likely dramatically suppress the value of ADUs as a means of increasing affordable housing.


The spleen plays an important role in re-moving normal and abnormal cells from the blood and in providing an immuno-logic response to encapsulated bacteria. Surgical splenectomy provides effective treatment for several pediatric disorders, such as congenital and acquired hemolytic anemias, abdominal traumas and immu-nological and metabolic disorders, but it is associated with an immediate and life-long risk of overwhelming infection. An alternative to conventional splenectomy is partial splenectomy, recommended espe-cially in children younger than 5 years of age. Recommendations for the prevention of overwhelming post-total splenectomy infection include: Pneumococcal, Haemo-philus influenzae type B and Meningococ-cal immunizations, antimicrobial prophy-laxis and prompt antibiotic treatment of acute febrile illness; conversely, there is no clear evidence indicating which preven-tion measures are to be performed in pa-tients undergoing partial splenectomy.


In recent years, South Asia has received growing attention as a region that is integrating successfully into the global economy. To maximize the benefits in terms of faster growth and poverty reduction, the region will need to strengthen regional and bilateral cooperation in several areas. In this context, closer bilateral cooperation and integration between major South Asian countries, such as between India and Bangladesh, will strengthen the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and help ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of their activities. Cultural, trade, and economic exchanges between the two countries are long standing. Rapid domestic economic development and mutual cooperation have demonstrated broad prospects for further cooperation between the two countries. A remarkable growth in two-way trade between India and Bangladesh has resulted in robust growth of the economies in the region. Compared with their strength, much potential exists for developing trade and economic relations between the two countries. This paper discusses various opportunities and associated prospects and problems in strengthening the IndiaBangladesh economic cooperation and integration agenda in the context of SAARC.


This report looks at Argentina's current debt, fiscal, and overall economic situation to see if there is justification for concerns that Argentina is facing serious economic problems that could lead to a default on its sovereign debt. The Argentine economy has grown more than 60 percent since its recovery began six years ago, has trade and current account surpluses, and has declining levels of debt relative to GDP and other indicators. It also has a large amount of reserves relative to potential debt financing shortfalls. The paper finds that there is little or no basis for the fear that Argentina might default on its sovereign debt at any time in the foreseeable future, or indeed even the more distant future.


This paper argues that the U.S. bankruptcy reform of 2005 played an important role in the mortgage crisis and the current recession. When debtors file for bankruptcy, credit card debt and other types of debt are discharged — thus loosening debtors' budget constraints. Homeowners in financial distress can therefore use bankruptcy to avoid losing their homes, since filing allows them to shift funds from paying other debts to paying their mortgages. But a major reform of U.S. bankruptcy law in 2005 raised the cost of filing and reduced the amount of debt that is discharged. The authors argue that an unintended consequence of the reform was to cause mortgage default rates to rise. Using a large dataset of individual mortgages, they estimate a hazard model to test whether the 2005 bankruptcy reform caused mortgage default rates to rise. Their major result is that prime and subprime mortgage default rates rose by 14 percent and 16 percent, respectively, after bankruptcy reform. The authors also use difference-in-difference to examine the effects of three provisions of bankruptcy reform that particularly harmed homeowners with high incomes and/or high assets and find that the default rates of affected homeowners rose even more. Overall, they calculate that bankruptcy reform caused the number of mortgage defaults to increase by around 200,000 per year even before the start of the financial crisis, suggesting that the reform increased the severity of the crisis when it came.


Diffusion processes governed by Stochastic Diffusion Equations (SDEs) are a well known tool for modeling continuous-time data. Consequently, there is widely interest in efficiently estimate diffusion parameters from discretely observed data. Likelihood based inference can be problematic, as the transition densities are rarely available in closed form. One widely used solution proposed by Pedersen (1995) involved the introduction of latent data points between every pair of observations to allow an Euler-Maruyama approximation of the true transition densities to become accurate. Marko Chain Monte Carlo methods are therefore be using to sample the posterior distribution of the latent data and model parameters .We apply the so called method to epidemic data which are discretely observed, that undergo stochastic transition rate. In this case, we introduced a new innovation scheme approach that would explore efficient MCMC schemes that are afflicted by degeneracy problem. The method that capable of sampling efficient estimate of diffusion parameters from discrete observed epidemic data with measurement error.


The United States Critical Illness and Injury Trials (USCIIT) Group is an inclusive, grassroots "network of networks" with the dual missions of fostering investigator-initiated hypothesis testing and developing recommendations for strategic plans at a national level. The USCIIT Group's transformational approach enlists multidisciplinary investigative teams across institutions, critical illness and injury professional organizations, federal agencies that fund clinical and translational research, and industry partners. The USCIIT Group is endorsed by all major critical illness and injury professional organizations spanning the specialties of anesthesiology, emergency medicine, internal medicine, neurology, nursing, pediatrics, pharmacy and nutrition, surgery and trauma, and respiratory and physical therapy. Recent successes provide the opportunity to significantly increase the dialogue necessary to advance clinical and translational research on behalf of our community. More than 200 investigators are now involved across > 30 academic and community hospitals. Collectively, USCIIT Group investigators have enrolled > 10,000 patients from academic and community hospitals in studies during the last 3 years. To keep our readership "ahead of the curve," this article provides a vision for critical illness and injury research based on (1) programmatic organization of large-scale, multicentered collaborative studies and (2) annual strategic planning at a national scale across disciplines and stakeholders.


This study aimed to examine the relationship between the consumption of ecstasy (3,4‐methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)) and cannabis, and performance on the random letter generation task which generates dependent variables drawing upon executive inhibition and access to semantic long‐term memory (LTM). The participant group was a between‐participant independent variable with users of both ecstasy and cannabis (E/C group, n = 15), users of cannabis but not ecstasy (CA group, n = 13) and controls with no exposure to these drugs (CO group, n = 12). Dependent variables measured violations of randomness: number of repeat sequences, number of alphabetical sequences (both drawing upon inhibition) and redundancy (drawing upon access to semantic LTM). E/C participants showed significantly higher redundancy than CO participants but did not differ from CA participants. There were no significant effects for the other dependent variables. A regression model comprising intelligence measures and estimates of ecstasy and cannabis consumption predicted redundancy scores, but only cannabis consumption contributed significantly to this prediction. Impaired access to semantic LTM may be related to cannabis consumption, although the involvement of ecstasy and other stimulant drugs cannot be excluded here. Executive inhibitory functioning, as measured by the random letter generation task, is unrelated to ecstasy and cannabis consumption. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


We discuss the collection and analysis of a cross-sectional and longitudinal learner corpus consisting of answers to reading comprehension questions written by adult second language learners of German. We motivate the need for such task-based learner corpora and identify the properties which make reading comprehension exercises a particularly interesting task. In terms of the creation of the corpus, we introduce the web-based WELCOME tool we developed to support the decentralized data collection and annotation of the richly structured corpus in real-life language teaching programs. On the analysis side, we investigate the binary and the complex content-assessment classification scheme used by the annotators and the inter-annotator agreement obtained for the current corpus snapshot, at the halfway point of our four-year effort. We present results showing that for such task-based corpora, meaning assessment can be performed with reasonable agreement and we discuss several sources of disagreement.


Fine and coarse root biomass, C, and N mass parameters were assessed by root size and soil depths from soil cores in plots of 32-year-old black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) Britton, Sterns & Poggenb.) from four full-sib families studied previously for drought tolerance and differential productivity on a dry and wet site. All fine and coarse root size categories had greater root biomass on the dry than on the wet site. Most of the site differences resided in 0-20 cm soil depth. The wet site had greater root N concentration than the dry site, despite the same soil N; thus, virtually no differences were observed in total fine and coarse root N mass between sites. Root N concentration declined with increases in both soil depth and root size. Fine roots (2 mm) accounted for 73% and 38% of the total fine and coarse N and C mass, respectively. The dry site had lower needle mass and more fine root mass than the wet site, demonstrating an adaptation to moisture stress change through the rebalancing of resource-obtaining organs. Drought-tolerant families had the same quantity of fine roots as drought-intolerant families but were able to support more foliage and aboveground mass per unit fine root mass than intolerant families.


Most of the literature on two-sided matching markets without transfers focuses on the case where a central planner (often an algorithm) clears the market, like in the case of school assignments, or medical residents. In contrast, we focus on decentralized matching markets without transfers, where prices are regulated and thus cannot clear the market, as in the case of taxis. In these markets, time waited in line often plays the role of a numeraire. We investigate the properties of equilibrium in these markets (existence, uniqueness, and welfare). We use this analysis to study the problem of surge pricing: given beliefs on random demand and supply, how should a market designer set prices to minimize expected market inefficiency?


A new edition of the classic text, Respiratory Care: Principles and Practice, Second Edition is a truly authoritative text for respiratory care students who desire a complete and up to date exploration of the technical and professional aspects of respiratory care. With foundations in evidence-based practice, this essential text reviews respiratory assessment, respiratory therapeutics, respiratory diseases, basic sciences and their application to respiratory care, the respiratory care profession, and much more. Edited and authored by leading experts, Respiratory Care: Principles and Practice incorporates the latest information on the practice of respiratory care into a well-organized, reader-friendly guide to help students learn to develop care plans, critical thinking skills, strong communication and patient education skills, and the clinical leadership skills needed to succeed. This text provides essential information in a practical and manageable format for optimal learning and retention. Features include Clinical Practice Guidelines, Key Points, and Respiratory Recaps to help students apply knowledge to practice and retain key information, as well as hundreds of glossary terms with clear definitions, and concise explanations of important concepts and equations. Including a wealth of full color photos and illustrations, and content cross-referenceing the NBRC examination matrices, Respiratory Care: Principles and Practice, Second Edition is the definitive resource for today's successful respiratory care practitioner. PRAISE Students Prefer Hess Over Another Textbook "I was using another text previously. I asked my students to carefully compare our current text and Hess side-by-side, and my students' vote was in favor of Hess. I have now adopted Hess for my respiratory courses. I am very pleased to see a chapter on clinical-decision-making; this is a key important feature. Also, the quality of the illustrations and photographs are fantastic!" ~ Michael Chaney, Cincinnati State Technical and Community College


Prison interpreting remains a virtually unexplored territory for researchers. As well as drawing greater attention to it, this paper aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the prison interpreting reality by describing the setting on the basis of accounts collected through observation, questionnaires and interviews with practising interpreters and other stakeholders. The data have been examined in order to identify determining factors for the prison setting with regard to interpreting. These factors have been organized according to a subject classification: domain and setting, organizational issues and security procedures, common problems and solutions, ethical principles and dilemmas, and professional role. The findings suggest that the elements particular to the setting, in this case security procedures or the conflictual rapport that is built between primary participants, have an impact on the practice and ethics of public service interpreters (PSIs), pointing to the notion that it is necessary to comprehend the environment in order to adopt an adequate ethical model and professional role.


Background Chemotherapy insensitivity continues to pose significant challenges for treating non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The purposes of this study were to investigate whether 3,6-dimethoxy-1,4,5,8-phenanthrenetetraone (NCKU-21) has potential activity to induce effective toxicological effects in different ethnic NSCLC cell lines, A549 and CL1-5 cells, and to examine its anticancer mechanisms. Methods Mitochondrial metabolic activity and the cell-cycle distribution were analyzed using an MTT assay and flow cytometry in NCKU-21-treated cells. NCKU-21-induced cell apoptosis was verified by Annexin V-FITC/propidium iodide (PI) double-staining and measurement of caspase-3 activity. Western blotting and wound-healing assays were applied to respectively evaluate regulation of signaling pathways and cell migration by NCKU-21. Molecular interactions between target proteins and NCKU-21 were predicted and performed by molecular docking. A colorimetric screening assay kit was used to evaluate potential regulation of matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) activity by NCKU-21. Results Results indicated that NCKU-21 markedly induced cytotoxic effects that reduced cell viability via cell apoptosis in tested NSCLC cells. Activation of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and p53 protein expression also increased in both NSCLC cell lines stimulated with NCKU-21. However, repression of PI3K-AKT activation by NCKU-21 was found in CL1-5 cells but not in A549 cells. In addition, increases in phosphatidylserine externalization and caspase-3 activity also confirmed the apoptotic effect of NCKU-21 in both NSCLC cell lines. Moreover, cell migration and translational levels of the gelatinases, MMP-2 and MMP-9, were obviously reduced in both NSCLC cell lines after incubation with NCKU-21. Experimental data obtained from molecular docking suggested that NCKU-21 can bind to the catalytic pocket of MMP-9. However, the in vitro enzyme activity assay indicated that NCKU-21 has the potential to increase MMP-9 activity. Conclusions Our results suggest that NCKU-21 can effectively reduce cell migration and induce apoptosis in A549 and CL1-5 cells, the toxicological effects of which may be partly modulated through PI3K-AKT inhibition, AMPK activation, an increase in the p53 protein, and gelatinase inhibition.


Strong ozone depletions and large natural variations in total ozone have been observed at high latitudes. Accurate measurements of total ozone are important so as not to misinterpret the involved processes and to track correctly the variations. The primary basis for ground-based monitoring of total ozone is the network of Dobson and Brewer ozone spectrophotometers. However, these instruments have limitations. At high latitudes, the fundamental direct sun observation used by these instruments is not possible during large parts of the year. In particular, the low sun and the resulting weak signals present a challenge. The focused sun observation method can extend the possible range of measurements using the Brewer instrument. Here, this method is discussed from the point of accuracy. Direct (synchronized) validation against the fundamental direct sun method is not possible with the current instrument configuration. Alternative methods to overcome the obstacle of nonsynchronous observations are applied. An estimate of the uncertainty of the validation is provided. The results show that the focused sun method gives data that are in line with the estimated uncertainty of the validation. No major additional uncertainty is needed to explain the observed scatter. The main conclusion is that the focused sun observation method can have an uncertainty close to the fundamental direct sun method and thus can be used to extend the possible range of observation for the Brewer ozone spectrophotometer.


This study examines the impact of leaf pulling at either bloom or at veraison. The goal was to have looser clusters and smaller berries from pre-bloom leaf removal. A block of Cabernet Sauvignon (planted 2006) was divided so that every other row was a different treatment. One row had the four-most basal leaves removed at 30% bloom (mid-May), exposing the entire fruiting zone. Continuous passes were made to ensure fruit zone exposure throughout the season. Every other row had leaves removed at the start of veraison, in mid-August. Grapes were harvested and processed at the same times, and all other vineyard and winemaking treatments were identical between treatments. Each wine received a 6-day cold soak, and 25 days of total maceration. Grapes from prebloom leaf removal had lower TA, malic acid, and tartaric acid, with a similar pH to the control. Tannin was higher in grapes with pre-bloom leaf removal, but anthocyanins were lower. Pre-bloom wine chemistry was similar except for slightly lower acidity. Color intensity and tannin was also slightly increased in the pre-bloom wine, although these differences were not very pronounced. For the triangle test, of 19 people who answered, 6 people chose the correct wine (32%), suggesting that these wines were not significantly different. In general, of those who answered correctly, no preference trends could be seen between wines. For the descriptive analysis, there were no strong trends for the descriptors used in this study. Most descriptive results were mixed, but Pre-bloom leaf pulling may have had slightly lower Acidity and higher Body. It also may have had slightly less Herbaceous/Green character, but these trends were weak. These results suggest that pre-bloom leaf removal may not always have as large of an impact as is often seen. This practice should be performed more at different sites, on different varieties, and in different vintages (perhaps rainier vintages which may benefit more from this kind of leaf pulling regimen).


The authors contrast the impact of two sources of information flow on the volatility of prices, trading activity, and liquidity in the brokered interdealer market for Government of Canada bonds. Liquidity varies with the amount of asymmetric information in the market, and order flow plays a central role in the processing of information. The authors find a two-stage adjustment process in the period before and after a scheduled 8:30 a.m. macroeconomic news announcement that is similar to the adjustment process documented by Fleming and Remolona (1999) for the U.S. Treasury market. They contrast these dynamics with the adjustment that occurs around a Government of Canada bond auction. Results are somewhat inconsistent with the patterns observed around macroeconomic news events, but are explained by theory.


Graphological investigations into nationality are not new and literature show that graphology can be applied to Hebrew, Arabic, Cyrillic and the many other forms of written expression. This paper aims to explore multi-ethnic society along with cultural and social integration. The aim is to discover any implications for graphology. The author makes the observation that Darwin's theory of evolution applies to human society. Specifically there is a struggle, no two individuals are the same and we are in a state of change. To show evidence of social diversity, the population of a part of London is examined. The developmental model proposed by the psychologist Erik H. Erikson is then applied to the arrival of people into an existing society. This then leads to the identification of twelve different types of people who may come to the attention of the graphologist. The analysis of three of these should be limited to graphologists who specialise in children. The other nine types are likely to be part of the work of any graphologist. Handwritings from these groups must show a great degree of variability from each other and may be very different from the integrated members of a population. The author therefore suggests that graphologists should know the type before starting an analysis. If interpretation is enriched by prior knowledge of sex, age and handedness, then multicultural typology information must surely be of benefit to all parties concerned.


Given the widespread availability of point cloud data from consumer depth sensors, 3D point cloud segmentation becomes a promising building block for high level applications such as scene understanding and interaction analysis. It benefits from the richer information contained in real world 3D data compared to 2D images. This also implies that the classical color segmentation challenges have shifted to RGBD data, and new challenges have also emerged as the depth information is usually noisy, sparse and unorganized. Meanwhile, the lack of 3D point cloud ground truth labeling also limits the development and comparison among methods in 3D point cloud segmentation. In this paper, we present two contributions: a novel graph based point cloud segmentation method for RGBD stream data with interacting objects and a new ground truth labeling for a previously published data set [1]. This data set focuses on interaction (merge and split between `object' point clouds), which differentiates itself from the few existing labeled RGBD data sets which are more oriented to Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) tasks. The proposed point cloud segmentation method is evaluated with the 3D point cloud ground truth labeling. Experiments show the promising result of our approach.


Multi-channel beamformer algorithms are promising solutions for noise reduction in hearing aids as they exploit the spatial distribution of the interfering signals and therefore in general lead to less signal distortion than single channel algorithms. Beamformers need a priori information about the microphone array and the direction of arrival of the target speech source. For head-worn arrays it is usually assumed that the user physically steers the arrays' look direction toward the desired speech source. This may become unsatisfying for the hearing aid user for high directivity beamformers with a small main lobe and when the target signal source is moving. In this contribution an automatic steering (electronic control of the look direction) is applied based on the dual delay line approach after Liu et al. [1]. This approach is modified to be applicable for head-mounted hearing-aid arrays. We show that the original free-field approach does not work on a head-mounted array because of the inappropriate propagation model. If we apply the true HRTF or a spherical head propagation model, the estimate is reliable within plusmn8deg degree mean estimation error for an input SNR of 10 dB or higher. However, for lower SNR the method seems to be not robust enough.


Digital information communication technologies (DICTs) play an ever-more prominent role in politics, from the technologically sophisticated presidential campaign of Barack Obama to the Twitter-inspired Occupy Wall Street movement. However, not all political groups embrace technology to the same degree. Little scholarly attention has been paid to understanding why some groups adopt DICTs and use them to achieve political goals, while others do not. This dissertation attempts to remedy this by examining what drives DICT adoption among 48 organizations involved in advocacy activities in support of and in opposition to gay rights and marriage equality. It further contributes to the literature on DICTs and politics by considering the role of national context in DICT adoption, selecting organizations based in the United States, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, and comparing patterns of DICT adoption cross-nationally. Several important findings emerge from this research. First, there is significant variation in the extent to which the 48 organizations under study adopted DICTs. There appears to be no relationship between organizational ideology and an organization's tendency to adopt DICTs, nor do the characteristics of the organizations' staff or target publics appear to influence their adoption of DICTs, although this does seem to affect the extent to which they deploy offline tools. The paper finds that first-mover advantage plays a key role in DICT adoption, with laggards finding it hard to build online momentum. Further, the amount of resources an organization is able to deploy strongly affects their ability to adopt DICTs. A number of national factors also appear to play a role in DICT adoption, particularly the competitiveness of the issue that organizations are engaged with, and the political traditions of the nation in which organizations are domiciled. Overall, this paper finds that the adoption of DICTs is a complex process, born of an interaction between an organization and its characteristics, and the environment in which it operates. The dissertation concludes by offering a model of this process, suggesting that it could help organizations build better strategies for DICT adoption, particularly when circumstances are challenging. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Communication First Advisor Michael X. Delli Carpini Second Advisor Monroe Price This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1048


The stem borer, Chilo partellus Swinhoe (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) is a pest that attacks plants in the poacea family in tropical lowland areas of Africa. Yield losses in maize are caused by the borer feeding on plant stems, leaves, grains and tussles. It is difficult to control C. partellus since larvae hide in stems. Spraying with insecticides only kills eggs and adults. Other methods used to control C. partellus include biological, physical, geneticaland cultural methods. Trap plants are used to control C. partellus and they fall under cultural practices. Trap plants are crops grown to attract pests to feed or oviposit on them hence protect target crops from pest attack. Trap plants are eco-friendly and locally available. The purpose of this study was to seek for an alternative control measure by use of trap plants to manage C. partellus. The grasses that were selected from 42 grass species at Kenya Agriculture Livestock Research Organization– Kisii for this study included Pennisetum sphacelatum, P. mezianum, Hypperhania tamba, Hyparrhenia cymbaria, Panicum maximum, Sporobolus pyramidalis, S. consimilis, Chloris gayana, Bracharia brizantha and Bracharia mulato II. These grasses were selected because they can withstand drought. The field experiments were conducted at Nyakach Sub-County in Western Kenya. The grasses were planted in plots measuring 2 m x 2 m with spacing of 30cm by 70cm in a randomized complete block design and there were three replicates. Greenhouse experiments were conducted at KALRO – Kisii. Each grass was transplanted into ten plastic pots measuring 30cm diameter and 60cm depth. The pots were arranged in rows with three replicates. Sorghum sudanensis was used as a control trap plant for C. partellus. Ten C. partellus larvae were introduced onto potted plants two weeks after transplanting. Data on the number of larvae, entry and exit holes, "leaf window", eggs and tunnel lengths were collected from five grass stems from field and greenhouse experiments one month after planting and transplanting respectvely. The grasses were selected using simple random sampling method. Subsequent data collection was done after every two weeks for 4 months. The data obtained was subjected to ANOVA and analysed using Statistical Analysis System 2010. The means that were significant were separated using the Student-NewmanKeuls test at a significance level of p = 0.05.The results of this study showed that there were significant differences in the mean number of egg batches and eggs in both field and greenhouse experiments. In the field experiments, Sorghum sudanensis and Pennisetum sphacelatum had the highest mean number of egg batches which significantly differed from those of Sporobolus pyramidalis, Hyparrhenia tamba, Bracharia brizantha, Bracharia mulato II, Chloris gayana, Pennisetum mezianum, Hyparrhenia cymbaria and Panicum maximum. Sorghum sudanensis and Pennisetum sphacelatum had the highest mean number of entry holes. Chloris gayana had lower mean number of entry holes but this did not significantly differ from those of Sporobolus pyramidalis, Bracharia mulato II, Hyparrhenia tamba, Panicum maximum and Bracharia brizantha. Sporobolus consimilis, Hyparrhenia cymbaria and Pennisetum mezianum least attracted C. partellus for feeding in both experiments.


Monika Kehoe (1986) described older lesbians as "a triply invisible minority." In this dissertation I seek to establish whether that description is still valid and, if so, why. I go on to ask, if older lesbians are culturally / discursively invisible, what are the circumstances which can enable them to be seen? and what could be gained from that visibility? By analysing a range of cultural texts I demonstrate that, although the visibility of women and of lesbians has steadily increased in recent years, older lesbians are still rarely represented in popular culture or the media. Academic research reflects this blindness: gerontology largely ignores non-heterosexual subjects, while lesbian and gay studies marginalise the old. I then use a case study of the documentary film Women Like Us (Neild and Pearson, 1990) to investigate the social and political forces which enable older lesbians to become visible, and to demonstrate the cultural importance of these representations. I conclude that older lesbians in Britain today are rendered invisible by a combination of sexism, ageism and hetero-sexism; that lack of media representation has been a decisive factor in maintaining their invisibility; and that there is a need for further research in this neglected area.


This thesis concerns the development of tools that are useful for designing machine systems and components in an virtual environment using flexible multibody dynamics. Initially, flexible multibody dynamics is briefly reviewed to explain available formalisms and possible applications of this method. Subsequently, attention is turned towards the analysis of structures that undergo large deformations and rotations using shell finite elements based on the absolute nodal coordinate formulation, ANCF. This topic is the focus for the remainder of the thesis.  The thesis is divided into three main parts. The first part acts as a general introduction to ANCF based shell finite elements and sums up available elements found in the research literature. In the end, a new ANCF element developed during this PhD project is presented which gives enhanced modeling capabilities of problems including e.g. moving boundary conditions. The second part concerns the performance and behavior of a certain class of ANCF shell elements that are developed for analysis of thin shell structures. This includes discussions on differences concerning their kinematic descriptions and disclosure of certain issues regarding their performance. Those being sensitivity to irregular mesh, poor representation of curved structures and load dependent convergence when analyzing curved structures. The final part concerns the development of a new versatile ANCF shell element. This element is distinguished by being able to describe both thin and thick curved structures. This part contains a thorough derivation of its kinematics and stiffness description, as well as numerical examples to demonstrate its performance. However, this part of the study is not yet complete.  Finally, the findings of this PhD project are summed up in a conclusion and possibilities for further studies and perspectives are outlined


1. The maximal urine osmolality in response to vasopressin during water diuresis and during hydropenia was studied in twenty patients with cirrhosis and sixteen noncirrhotic subjects under controlled dietary conditions. 2. The cirrhotic patients exhibited a significantly lower maximal urine osmolality under both experimental conditions. 3. During water diuresis decompensated and compensated cirrhotics had comparable maximal urine osmolalities after vasopressin. A decreased response of the renal tubules to vasopressin does not appear to have a significant role in the concentrating defect. 4. The cirrhotic patients had a significantly lower excretion rate of urea at high (water diuresis) and low (vasopressin antidiuresis or hydropenia) urine flow rates. The lower urine urea concentration accounted for most of the decrease observed in maximal urinary concentration. After vasopressin administration the absolute tubular reabsorption of urea was also significantly lower in cirrhotic patients. The results suggest that a decrease in the medullary urea content decreases medullary osmolality resulting in the defect in urine concentration noted in these cirrhotic patients at low urine flow rates. 5. Protein depletion or decreased urea synthesis may in part be responsible for the decreased availability of urea for the concentrating process in cirrhosis. 6. Lack of correlation between concentrating and diluting capacity in these patients suggested that decreased delivery of sodium to the distal site might not be the limiting factor common to both renal functional abnormalities observed in cirrhosis of the liver.


Acetone, butanol and ethanol (ABE) mixture separation from dilute aqueous fermentation products is an important process for the biofuel industry. Here, we present a novel approach for ABE recovery using microwave induced membrane distillation (MD). Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and octadecyl amide (ODA) functionalized CNTs were immobilized on membrane surfaces and were used in sweep gas MD separation of ABE. The ABE flux, separation factor and mass transfer coefficient obtained with CNT and CNT-ODA immobilized membranes were remarkably higher than those of the commercial pristine membrane under various experimental conditions. The ABE flux enhancement reached as high as 105, 100 and 375% for the CNIM and 63, 62 and 175% for CNIM-ODA respectively. The ABE flux obtained was nearly ten times higher than that reported previously for pervaporation. The mass transfer coefficient also increased significantly along with a lower activation energy for the modified membranes. Mechanistically speaking, the immobilization of carbon nanotubes on the active membrane layer led to preferential sorption of ABE leading to enhanced separation. This phenomenon has been validated by the reduction of contact angles for the aqueous ABE mixtures on the CNT and CNT-ODA immobilized membranes indicating enhanced interaction of ABE on the membrane surface.


Fantuzzo, McWayne, and Bulotsky (2003) describe a collaborative community research program that aims to decrease the population incidence of child maltreatment and build preschool children's competencies. This university-community collaborative has contributed substantially to the knowledge base that informs maltreatment prevention, including the development of a culturally appropriate measure of urban children's social competence, a better understanding of the deleterious effect of maltreatment on children's social and academic competencies, and the implementation and evaluation of a collaboratively developed intervention for maltreated children. Additionally, Fantuzzo and his colleagues have demonstrated their commitment to collaborate with community residents, practitioners, and agencies to apply research-based conceptualizations and empirical findings to building a community's capacity to protect its most vulnerable children. This collaborative community research program is an exemplar of the successful integration of two prevention research traditions: the investigator-driven research model (Cole et al., 1993; Weissberg & Greenberg, 1998) and the participatory action research model (Connell, Aber, & Walker, 1995; Knapp, 1995; May et al., 2002). In this commentary, I first compare the goals, assumptions, methods, benefits, and limitations of each approach to school and community prevention research (see Table 1). Next, I argue that the integration of traditional director-driven prevention research methods and participatory action research methods, as illustrated in the Fantuzzo et al. (2003) article, is essential to the goal of sustained and effective community prevention efforts. Investigator Driven Prevention Research (IDPR) Goals. The primary goal of IDPR, referred to by Fantuzzo et al. (2003) as the "standard modus operandi" is to identify efficacious prevention interventions. IDPR draws on data-driven theoretical conceptualizations of a problem (e.g., violence, substance abuse, child maltreatment) to develop and test interventions that target processes (e.g., child skills, classroom climate, or parent-child interactions) that are presumed to play a causal role in the development and/or maintenance of the problem. Prevention scientists are interested in testing the underlying theoretical conceptualization of the development of the problem as well as the efficacy of the intervention, in the hope of discovering principles of growth and change that can be applied broadly, across differing contexts. Given this goal of generalizing findings to new settings, replication of positive intervention effects is considered essential to the demonstration of an intervention's efficacy. Assumptions. IDPR assumes that the systematic process of developing interventions and the use of rigorous controls (especially randomized clinical trials) for factors other than the intervention that might account for changes on outcomes of interest produces knowledge that has broad applicability. Because prevention science researchers recognize that a program's efficacy will differ in different contexts, the long-term prevention research agenda incorporates the identification of contextual features that account for such differences in efficacy. IDPR also assumes that the researcher is the expert and that objectivity is essential to the discovery of generalizable truths. The quest for objectivity means that individuals responsible for implementing an intervention are often kept "blind" to the true goals of the intervention and to participants' assignments to different intervention conditions. Finally, LDPR assumes that following this Research and Development (R&D) stage, programs of demonstrated efficacy will be disseminated to and adopted by local communities. Methods. Because most prevention researchers are familiar with Fantuzzo et al.'s (2003) description of LDPR, repetition is not required here. …


Adipose tissue is a primary sensor for nutrient availability and regulates many functions including feed intake and energy homeostasis. This study was undertaken to determine the molecular responses of adipose tissue to differences in feed intake and feed efficiency. Subcutaneous adipose tissue was collected from two lines of pigs divergently selected for residual feed intake (RFI), a measure of feed efficiency defined as the difference between actual and expected feed intake, and from a subset of high-RFI pigs that were feed-restricted at the level of the voluntary feed intake of low-RFI pigs during the growing-finishing period. Transcriptomics analyses indicated that the number of genes that were differentially expressed ( < 0.01) between low- and high-RFI pigs ( = 8 per group at each stage) in adipose tissue was much lower when pigs were considered at 19 kg (postweaning) than at 115 kg BW (market weight). Extended investigations were performed at 115 kg BW to compare low-RFI ( = 8), high-RFI ( = 8), and feed-restricted high-RFI ( = 8) pigs. They included in silico pathway analyses of the differentially expressed (DE) genes ( < 0.01) and a complementary proteomic investigation to list adipose proteins with a differential abundance ( < 0.10). Only 23% of the DE genes were affected by both RFI and feed restriction. This indicates that the responses of adipose tissue to RFI difference shared only some common mechanisms with feed intake modulation, notably the regulation of cell cycle (including ) and transferase activity pathway. Two carboxylesterase genes (, ) involved in lipolysis, were among the most overexpressed genes in the low-RFI pigs; they were also affected by feed restriction within the high-RFI line. About 60% of the molecular changes between low- and high-RFI pigs were specific to genetic divergence in feed efficiency, independently of feed intake. Different genes and proteins known to be associated with mitochondrial oxidative metabolism were overexpressed in adipose tissue of low-RFI pigs compared with high-RFI pigs; other proteins participating in the generation of energy were also affected by feed restriction within the high-RFI line. Finally, mitochondrial antioxidant genes were upregulated in low-RFI pigs vs. high-RFI pigs. Altogether, increased oxidative and antioxidant processes in adipose tissue might be associated with improved feed efficiency.


Received: November 2016, Accepted: February 2017 Background: The reliability and safety of gas refineries are strongly associated with the reliability of other parts of the system. Defect and failure in one part of a system can cause total system breakdown or accident. The failure and damage in these equipment such as transformers and boilers results in not only the equipment damage and human injuries but also productivity reduction. The purpose of this study was safety assessment of glycol recovery unit in gas refinery by failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) technique. Materials and Methods: The present study is a descriptive-analytical study done for risk assessment of glycol recovery unit of a gas refinery in one of the southern areas of Iran. FMEA method was used to identify and detect possible failures in the system. Failure modes of a component and their causes were identified and effects of identified failures were examined, then the necessary corrective measures were recommended. Results: In this research, 105 failure modes were studied. The highest risk priority number (RPN) values obtained were 150 (while removing corrosion and welding inside TK601A/B vessel which was due lack of air ventilation) and 120 (while installing the gasket). Conclusions: FMEA technique is a useful method to prevent accidents and increase safety and productivity. FMEA can identify and assess potential risks and propose corrective action required to control the risks.


Intramammary infection leading to bovine mastitis is the leading disease problem affecting dairy cows and has marked effects on the milk produced by infected udder quarters. An experimental model of Streptococcus uberis mastitis has previously been investigated for clinical, immunological and pathophysiological alteration in milk, and has been the subject of peptidomic and quantitative proteomic investigation. The same sample set has now been investigated with a metabolomics approach using liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. The analysis revealed over 3000 chromatographic peaks, of which 690 were putatively annotated with a metabolite. Hierarchical clustering analysis and principal component analysis demonstrated that metabolite changes due to S. uberis infection were maximal at 81 hours post challenge with metabolites in the milk from the resolution phase at 312 hours post challenge being closest to the pre-challenge samples. Metabolic pathway analysis revealed that the majority of the metabolites mapped to carbohydrate and nucleotide metabolism show a decreasing trend in concentration up to 81 hours post-challenge whereas an increasing trend was found in lipid metabolites and di-, tri- and tetra-peptides up to the same time point. The increase in these peptides coincides with an increase in larger peptides found in the previous peptidomic analysis and is likely to be due to protease degradation of milk proteins. Components of bile acid metabolism, linked to the FXR pathway regulating inflammation, were also increased. Metabolomic analysis of the response in milk during mastitis provides an essential component to the full understanding of the mammary gland's response to infection.


To overcome multi-level crises, it takes transformative alliances to develop respective ideas and narratives to make the intersections of care work and ecological sustainability visible. The paper analyses three approaches along the several overlaps of care work and ecological resources. It aims to elaborate to what extent time can serve as a common currency. Furthermore, it highlights common topics and persistent differences of the analysed concepts. Thus, the paper contributes to a pluralistic feminist economic discourse that is able to head towards the abovementioned transformative alliances.


Abstract : Durra is a language designed to support the construction of distributed applications using concurrent, coarse-grain tasks running on networks of heterogeneous processors. An application written in Durra describes the tasks to be instantiated and executed as concurrent processes, the types of data to be exchanged by the processes, and the intermediate queues required to store the data as they move from producer to consumer processes. This report describes an experiment in writing task descriptions and type declarations for a subset of the Generalized Image Library, a collection of computer programs developed at the Department of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. The experiment illustrates the development of a typical Durra application. This is a three step process: first, a collection of tasks (programs) is designed and implemented (these are the GIL programs); second, a collection of task descriptions corresponding to the task implementations is written in Durra, compiled, and stored in a library; and finally, an application description is written in Durra and compiled, resulting in a set of resource allocation and scheduling commands to be interpreted at runtime. A few sample application descriptions were developed as part of the experiment and are also reported in this document. Keywords: Real time; Computer networks.


Public language policy in South Africa recognises 11 official spoken languages. In Cape Town, and in the Western Cape, three of these eleven languages have been selected for equal recognition in the public sphere. This exploratory study of Cape Town aims to establish the gap between this policy and speech practice in the public health system. Qualitative field results suggest that English and Afrikaans continue to predominate in this system, to the detriment of isiXhosa. Where medical interpreters are available, the state health services appear to be superior, particularly for unilingual isiXhosa speakers. Most facilities are however without officially trained interpreters.


Justice Hugo Black and his 1947 opinion in Everson v. Board of Education. In this opinion, Justice Black quoted Thomas Jefferson's term "wall of separation" and further added his own opinion that the wall must be high and impregnable. This meant that from that day forward the separation of church and state would be applied to all aspects of government not just the federal level. Several key factors in Justice Black's background inclined the Justice to rule unfavorably against religion. First, it is a known fact that Justice Black was a member of the KKK, an organization that was known to be particularly bigoted towards Catholics. Second, Justice Black believed Paul Blanshard's writings concerning the Catholic Church and shared his mistrust of the Catholic Church. Finally, at the time of his opinion, Justice Black was not a practicing Christian and the evidence shows that the Justice did not believe in the supernatural aspects of Christianity. This evidence supports a conclusion that Justice Black was prejudiced against religion in his decision in Everson v. Board of Education and engaged in judicial activism.


Crystalline surface species were observed at the surface of polyamide 12 materials upon accelerated aging. After detection of the depositions with scanning electron microscopy (SEM), the crystalline surface precipitations were analyzed with Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and Raman imaging microscopy. These surface species were supposed to be cyclic oligomers (dimer and trimer) of the PA12 monomer laurolactam, which are usually present in polyamide materials and tend to migrate to the surface when the material is subjected to accelerated aging. The evidence for the chemical identity of the crystalline surface structures to be mainly the cyclic dimer and trimer of laurolactam was given by melting-point identification and mass spectroscopic analysis of the methanol eluate of the surface. The Raman and FT-IR spectra of the mixture were extracted from the recorded images.


"Grounded" language learning is the process of learning the semantics of natural language with respect to relevant perceptual inputs. Toward this goal, computational systems are trained with data in the form of natural language sentences paired with relevant but ambiguous perceptual contexts. With such ambiguous supervision, it is required to resolve the ambiguity between a natural language (NL) sentence and a corresponding set of possible logical meaning representations (MR). My research focuses on devising effective models for simultaneously disambiguating such supervision and learning the underlying semantics of language to map NL sentences into proper logical forms. Specifically, I will present two probabilistic generative models for learning such correspondences. The models are applied to two publicly available datasets in two different domains, sportscasting and navigation, and compared with previous work on the same data. I will first present a probabilistic generative model that learns the mappings from NL sentences into logical forms where the true meaning of each NL sentence is one of a handful of candidate logical MRs. It simultaneously disambiguates the meaning of each sentence in the training data and learns to probabilistically map a NL sentence to its MR form depicted in a single tree structure. Evaluations are performed on the RoboCup sportscasting corpous, which show that it outperforms previous methods. Next, I present a PCFG induction model for grounded language learning that extends the model of Borschinger, Jones, and Johnson (2011) by utilizing a semantic lexicon. Borschinger et al.'s approach works well when there is limited ambiguity such as in the sportscasting task, but it does not scale well to highly ambiguous situations when there are large sets of potential meaning possibilities for each sentence, such as in the navigation instruction following task studied by Chen and Mooney (2011). Our model overcomes such limitations by employing a semantic lexicon as the basic building block for PCFG rule generation. Our model also allows for novel combination of MR outputs when parsing novel test sentences. For future work, I propose to extend our PCFG induction model in several ways: improving the lexicon learning algorithm, discriminative re-ranking of top-k parses, and integrating the meaning representation language (MRL) grammar for extra structural information. The longer-term agenda includes applying our approach to summarized machine translation, using real perception data such as robot sensorimeter and images/videos, and joint learning with other natural language processing tasks.


The emergence of "cultural creative tourism" reflects the growing integration among tourism industry, culture industry and creative industry. Cultural creative tourism is receiving an increasing amount of attention in China. Although there are rich tourism resources, cultural creative tourism of Heilongjiang Province is in initial development stage. This study explores development foundations of cultural creative tourism in Heilongjiang Province. Furthermore, the eight critical strategies were proposed to enable sustainable development of cultural creative tourism at the strategic level for Heilongjiang Province. The strategies can not only enhance local government's effectiveness and but also provide references to other regions.


Disorderly conduct laws are an amalgamation of a number of common law offenses aimed at protecting the public order, peace, and tranquility. Like their common law antecedents, modern day disorderly conduct laws proscribe behaviors such as breach of the peace, physical fighting, and fighting words, and might also criminalize behavior falling within the domain of criminal offenses such as riot, unlawful assembly, and trespass. Contrary to common legal conceptions, the criminalization of disorderly conduct is not only about policing behavior that threatens to disrupt public order or even the public's peace and tranquility, but also reflects and reinforces deeply rooted discriminatory understandings about what kinds of behavior — and which persons — violate community norms. By relying on a false dichotomy between "order" and "disorder," disorderly conduct laws construct and reinforce a hierarchy of normative behaviors that are imbued with racism, sexism, and ableism. Disorderly conduct laws "otherize" certain non-conforming behaviors, de-legitimizing them through the label of "disorderly," and in doing so exclude certain historically marginalized groups from normative conceptions of community. They do all this in part by prohibiting a wide range of behavior and conferring vast amounts of discretion to law enforcement and private citizens to target individuals for behavior regulation, physical removal, and community exclusion. In this way, disorderly conduct laws delineate and police the normative boundaries of communities. Moreover, these laws also often determine access to shared community spaces resulting in the exclusion of historically marginalized groups within these purportedly "public" spaces. Despite these harms, disorderly conduct laws persist even given the lack of concrete evidence as to the precise nature of the social harm to be prevented in each case. The article's critique demonstrates how disorderly conduct laws define and construct boundaries of communities. Viewed in this light, the article is situated within ongoing discussion within criminal legal scholarship on the broader question of role of "the community" in criminal law and criminal justice reform. This critique of disorderly conduct offers a site for problematizing unitary models of community in criminal law. The article concludes by identifying pathways to reforming the harms of the disorderly conduct regime by offering a set of reforms that rely less on consensus-driven models and more on contestatory models of democratic participation in criminal justice reform efforts that better account for the multiplicity of communities impacted by criminal law enforcement.


Since the early 1970s, scholars have argued, defined, and refined a wide range of interpretations of American women's lives. Despite the richness of the recent literature, few interpretations sufficiently credit women's family and sexual experiences for the emergence of feminism and the construction of pro-family agendas. Thus, Johnston's approach offers an opportunity to view the history of feminism and the family from a fresh perspective. Much of the literature on feminism has focused on women's oppression and victimisation, rather than on the power that women historically have exerted. Johnston's interpretation of American feminism differs from previous works because she argues that the gradual growth of feminist consciousness lies not simply in oppression or feelings of victimisation, but paradoxically in a growing sense of the empowerment of women as wives and mothers. She traces how reproduction, sexuality, domesticity, and motherhood have been socially constructed, and examines how feminists and anti-feminists have fought on the terrain of "family" issues. Johnston explores critical questions concerning American women's sexual lives. How have women's empowering experiences in the family shaped feminist consciousness and action? How have feminists confronted family issues? How have feminists confronted family issues? How have women exerted sexual power? How was it contained within the limits of patriarchal society at some times, while at the other times it fuelled the fires of feminist rebellion? How have gender and class issues affected domestic politics and feminism?


Directional excavation technology in the coal mine laneway is the important research direction of integrated excavation project. This paper studies the changes of cutting section shape and boundary values caused by the swing of boom-type roadheader's cutting arm to calculate the maximum values of compensable pose deviation when cutting, as the research basis for the accuracy analysis of boom-type roadheader's directional excavation. This paper gives the calculation method of cutting arm control, spatial modeling and analysis of cutting head position changes caused by cutting arm in thought of the three-dimensional analytic geometry, and also gives verification in the way of Matlab graphics simulation. At last, a control method to compensate section boundary by cutting arm is put forward.


A Preliminary Test Estimator is introduced based on Principal Component Regression Estimator defined in the linear regression model when the stochastic restrictions are available in addition to the sample information, and when the explanatory variables are multicollinear. It is further developed as a large sample preliminary test estimator by using Wald (WA), Likelihood Ratio (LR), and Lagrangian Multiplier (LM) tests. Stochastic properties of this estimator based on F test as well as WA, LR, and LM tests are derived, and the performance of the estimator is compared using WA, LR, and LM tests with respect to Mean Square Error Matrix (MSEM). A Monte Carlo simulation is carried out to illustrate the theoretical findings.


The study of transmission foci involves the clinical characterization of disease within a focus using active surveillance of human cases, characterization of the population group that is most frequently infected or at highest risk of becoming infected, diagnosis and treatment of infected people and identification of the conceptions, attitudes, beliefs and practices related to the disease. An entomological survey is necessary to determine the geographical distribution of species and incrimination of vector species, the ecological characteristics of the zone (macro-focus), times of the year and day of highest biting activity and places in homes in which the most frequent contact between the people and the vectors occurs. A survey of peri-domestic and wild mammals in the area is advisable to try to identify potential reservoir hosts. Using this information, it is feasible to design specific and accurate prevention and effective, rational and economic control measures and define the times of the year and locations in which these measures must be applied. In this chapter, a description of the application of the eco-epidemiological method to the study of leishmaniasis transmission foci is provided. A special emphasis is placed on the methodology, multidisciplinary work and analysis of findings.


An enantioselective catalytic vicinal diamination of styrenes is reported, which proceeds under entirely intermolecular reaction control. It relies on a chirally modified aryliodine(I) catalyst and proceeds within an iodine(I/III) manifold with conventional 3-chloroperbenzoic acid as a terminal oxidant. An environmentally benign solvent combination not only adds to the attractiveness of the process but also slows down the rate of the undesired background reaction. A total of 30 examples are presented, which consistently provide high enantiomeric excesses in the range 91-98%.


A key process in the maintenance of enhanced levels of primary production in the summer stratified regions of continental shelf seas is thermocline mixing. Current vertical exchange models however fail to accurately simulate turbulent processes in stratified regions and are heavily dependent on the inclusion of unjustified levels of background diffusion. We therefore seek to better understand internal mixing processes and to improve current turbulence models.

Using measurements of current velocity, vertical structure and turbulent dissipation rate made at a site in the Celtic Sea interior the three likely candidate processes responsible for internal mixing are investigated, they are:
Internal tide/internal waves generated at the shelf break and propagating on to the shelf.
Internal waves or lee waves generated locally by hydraulic control over shelf sea banks and bumps.
Inertial oscillations, most likely generated by changes in wind forcing.

Internal waves generated at the shelf break were found to make no significant contribution to the energy available for mixing at our site. The thermocline is shown to be held in a marginally stable state by a strong and persistent thermocline shear layer, dominated for much of the time by low frequency, inertial shear. It is suggested that sporadically enhanced levels of shear from either inertial waves or a weak internal wave field add to an already tenuous background state, potentially fuelling turbulence via instability.

Using our high quality dataset, the dependence of the turbulent dissipation rate, e, on local shear and buoyancy frequency is examined and compared to current turbulence parametisations. Traditional models based on local stability fail to replicate any of our observations, however, a simple turbulence model suggested by MacKinnon and Gregg (2003) which scales dissipation rates to low frequency N2 and S2 successfully simulates much of the characteristics of thermocline e.


Major changes have occurred in the teaching of gender since the shift from women's studies to gender studies. In some institutions gender studies became a separate and interdisciplinary track within social sciences and humanities, while in others it either lacked integration or disappeared altogether. What do these developments mean for gender in political science curricula? In this symposium scholars from different European countries, including Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom reflect on the state of gender within political science education. This introductory essay places national experiences within a broader European perspective; highlighting that gender is virtually absent from much of the political science curriculum. Gender and political science courses suffer from issues of supply (rather than demand), such as the persistent under-representation of women academics within political science as well as tight budget constraints. We argue that this is problematic and that gender should be a core part of the political science curricula for three key reasons: (i) politics is about power and power is always gendered; (ii) embedding gender in the core of political science education may positively affect gender equality in the profession and politics; and (iii) it reflects the contemporary resurgence of feminist activism across Europe. We conclude with concrete recommendations about how institutions and individuals can help address the virtual absence of gender, including: the integration of gender-related courses in politics programs; Gender & Politics related awards; big data collection projects regarding women in the profession and gender and politics teaching; and the development of leadership courses for women in politics.


A study of a project on science stand-up comedy developed in Portugal between 2009 and 2013 is presented, in which thirteen scientists, coordinated by a science communicator and a professional actor, created and presented comedy acts. Eleven of these scientists were asked about their motivations to participate, the process of performance development and the perceived value of the project. Personal motivations were highly important, but professional reasons were also mentioned. Working in a group with the guidance of coordinators, testing and re-writing the texts and gradually gaining confidence on stage were considered fundamental in the development of the shows. Additionally, a questionnaire revealed that the audience, most of whom were young adults, and held a higher education degree, were satisfied with the show. Overall, both participating scientists and audience members considered that stand-up comedy has potential for science communication.


The form and regulation of contracts is of increasing importance to agricultural economists as farmers and agribusinesses increasing rely on contracts rather than markets to acquire inputs and sell outputs. We focus on the differences between the joint and individual surplus achievable under complete versus incomplete or relational contracts, where the latter are contracts that are not verifiable by a third party and must rely upon threat of termination in order to entice mutually satisfactory performance. Using an experimental market similar to Brown, Falk, and Fehr [Brown, M., A. Falk, and E. Fehr. Relational Contracts and the Nature of Market Interactions, Econometrica, 72 (2004):747-780] we replicate the general results found by these authors, including the qualitative findings that complete contracts dominate incomplete contracts in terms of social surplus generated and that incomplete contracts significantly deviate from the minimal levels of social surplus predicted by equilibrium models featuring purely self-interested agents. We extend the Brown, Falk, and Fehr results in a fundamental way: we explicitly link individual outcomes in relational contracts (e.g, surplus, prices, quality) to the nature of subjects' social preferences, which were measured by a separate experimental protocol that was implemented prior to the experimental trading session. We find subjects with other-regarding preferences enter into relational contracts that generate levels of social surplus similar to the surplus generated under complete contracts. Furthermore, subjects with other-regarding preferences tend to locate others with similar preferences and enter into long-term trading relationships that generate these higher surplus levels. We discuss the ramifications of the results for current regulatory efforts aimed at agricultural contracts.


This paper presents a mobile phone application developed for sightseeing in Nikko, one of the cultural world heritages in Japan, using the BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) beacon. Based on our pre-research, we decided to design our application for young people who walk around the area actively, but know little about the tradition and culture of Nikko. One solution is to construct many information boards to explain; however, it is difficult to construct new guide plates in cultural world heritage sites. The smartphone is a good solution to send such information to such visitors. This application was designed using a combination of the smartphone and beacons, set in the area, so that when a tourist passes near a beacon, the application displays information about the area including a map, historical or cultural information about the temples and shrines, and local shops nearby as well as a bus timetable. It is useful for foreigners, too. In addition, we developed quizzes relating to the culture and tradition of Nikko to provide information based on the Zeigarnik effect, a psychological effect. According to the results of our trials, tourists positively evaluated the basic information and young people who used the quiz function were able to learn the historical and cultural points. This application helped young visitors at Nikko to understand the cultural elements of the site. In addition, this application has a function to send notifications. This function is designed to provide information about the local community such as shops, local transportation companies and information office. The application hopes to also encourage people living in the area, and such cooperation from the local people will make this application vivid and inspire young visitors to feel that the cultural heritage site is still alive today. This is a gateway for young people to learn about a traditional place and understand the gravity of preserving such areas. Keywords—BLE beacon, smartphone application, Zeigarnik effect, world heritage site, school trip.


Context: Hepatocellular carcinoma accounts for 1-2.5% of all cancer in America with extension to inferior vena cava and right atrium in 1-4% of the cases. Patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma invading the right heart are considered poor candidates for surgery. In the past, such patients had dismal prognosis due to complications like pulmonary embolism and sudden death. Case Report: Our patient was admitted with worsening jaundice, abdominal pain and significant weight loss. Abdominal ultrasound, elevated alfa feto-protein levels and computerized tomography pointed to the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma. Transthoracic echocardiography demonstrated two masses in the right atrium with the base of masses extending from inferior vena cava into right atrium. The patient was diagnosed to have stage IV heptaocellular carcinoma. This is associated with dismal prognosis. But after being started on sorafenib, the tumor regressed considerably and was barely discernable on echocardiography performed a month later. Conclusion: Though aggressive surgical resection is the best therapeutic approach for hepatocellular carcinoma, it may not always be possible and in such cases combination of different therapeutic approaches such as chemotherapeutic agents, radiotherapy and chemoembolization may improve survival.


Teaching Project Management module to undergraduate students is important and has been globally considered in multiple academic disciplines by many higher institutions. Students in undergraduate level encounter difficulty in understanding the topic of project management since there have no prior knowledge before the course. This paper aimed to determine the effectiveness of flipped teaching and active learning in Project Management module for undergraduate students in Civil Engineering. However, the paper discussed the effective practices in teaching and learning project management and their impacts into students' learning experience, and assessments development and marking. The Padlet and SurveyMonkey e-tools were used to collect students' feedback on the instructor practice; either by tagging comments or filling questionnaire. The results indicated that the use of multiple in-class activities and digital technology in a flipped classroom are important to enhance students' performance. It is also observed that the use of multiple assessments engaged students deeply with the course and provide deeper learning. Students' performance in summative assessments showed that there is a noticeable improve in student's scores in the current semester in contrast with previous semester where traditional teaching was practiced.


The present study investigates whether learner set up in interaction, namely in pairs or small groups, influences the frequency and outcome of lexical language-related episodes (LREs) and L2 vocabulary learning. Thirty Spanish English as a foreign language (EFL) university learners took part in the study. They worked in four groups and seven pairs on the same collaborative writing task. Research was carried out on the course of five weeks as a pre- and post- vocabulary task and an individual writing task were administered to assess vocabulary learning and retention. The quantitative analysis of the data showed that there was no significant difference between the performance of pairs and groups, although the latter produced slightly more lexical LREs than pairs and were able to solve most of them correctly. However, from a qualitative point of view, the findings suggest that small group work leads to slightly better results than pair work as the different members obtain benefits from their peers' linguistic knowledge.


The definitive account of the biggest national security issue of our time: the precipitous and politically charged revival of national missile defense. The new Bush administration has wasted no time in making national missile defense the centerpiece of its national security policy and is expected to move forward with testing and eventual deployment of a system to destroy incoming missiles in flight-even though the Russians, the Chinese, and our own European allies have expressed alarm at such action. The system's defenders say that we must press forward if America is to be secure against nuclear, biological, and chemical threats in the decades to come. There's only one problem: No one has ever shown that such a system would actually work. In Hit to Kill, Bradley Graham, a longtime military and foreign affairs correspondent for The Washington Post, tells the behind-the-scenes story of how national missile defense-once considered a discredited relic of the Cold War-was revived during the 1990s to address an emerging Third World missile threat. Graham recounts the political battles surrounding national missile defense during the Clinton administration and the technological trials and tribulations of the major defense firms involved in the project. He reports on the experts who have mobilized in the last year to question the system's unworkability and examines the scientific evidence for and against it. Over the past half century, no proposed weapons system has drawn more argument or more dollars than national missile defense, and Graham explores the reasons for the enduring debate and the costs to the nation of having failed to resolve it.