There is no single word that describes the powwow. Powwow is Indian. Although nowadays there is an emphasis on contest dancing, it is still the same as when I grew up. The powwow is a place of healing, praying, dancing, and singing. A place to join others in pride and respect.... When you're feeling sad, come to a powwow and you'll be happy again. There will be a feeling you didn't have when you first came there.--Tony Brown, in Powwow Country. (1) The term powwow, Algonquin in origin, meant a person of power, perhaps a "medicine man," or a gathering for healing ceremonies. (2) (The Algonquin family of American Indian languages were spoken from Labrador to Carolina and westward to the Great Plains). Powwow has now come to mean an organized gathering of tribal people where friendships are renewed and traditional activities such as drumming, singing, dancing, and feasting are celebrated. Powwows are held in communities all over North America, usually during the summer. They may be small or large, last for a few hours or a few days, be held indoors and outdoors, on reservations, campgrounds, athletic fields, and in school gymnasiums. There are contest (competitive) powwows and traditional (non-competitive) powwows. They may be organized by individual families, tribal councils or other tribal organizations, community groups, museums, and Native student groups. One can see regional and tribal differences in powwow dance, regalia, food, and ceremony in powwows held in different parts of the continent. Powwows usually have a commercial side, with trade in arts and crafts and concessions of all sorts. The following lesson (pages 6-9), "Everything the Indian Does Is In a Circle," is a version of one of eleven lessons in a unit of study about powwows and American Indian culture that I helped develop for middle school students in the Denver Public Schools. (3) (This lesson, taught early in the unit, is intended to "set the stage;" it is not a comprehensive presentation about powwows.) The larger unit was designed to develop students' understanding of powwows as more than dance contests, elaborate regalia, of the sale of fry bread--they are a contemporary symbol of Indian philosophy and a reinforcement of Indian culture, tribal cohesion, and individual identity. The unit provides a cultural context for the music, dance, and ceremony of the powwow, so that learning about (and possibly attending) a powwow can be a meaningful, as well as exuberant, experience for students. General Guidelines While powwows can be spectacular, a spectator with little knowledge of American Indian traditions would miss much of the meaning of the regalia, ceremony, music, and dance. Before attempting to teach the lesson, teachers should complete some basic reading, talk with American Indian people, and if possible, attend a powwow. An uninformed teacher could do more harm than good (without intending to) by perpetuating cultural or historical inaccuracies or stereotypes instead of presenting accurate content. Government policies such as forced attendance at boarding schools, forced removal and land takeover, and relocation from reservations to urban areas, have had long-term effects on many Indian people. Some missionary efforts have been corrosive of American Indian culture and society. Also, inter-tribal and inter-racial marriages have made genealogy and the question "who is a Native American" complex. For these reasons, if there are Indian students in classes that are studying the powwow, teachers are cautioned as follows: * Do not attempt to identify students as American Indian based upon their names or physical features (factors such as intermarriage and assimilation have made it impossible to accurately identify American Indians by their physical features or their names); * Do not assume that students wish to be publicly identified as Indian (many Indian people do not like to be singled-out, and some, for a variety of reasons, do not identify with their Indian heritage, hold traditional values, or practice traditional ways); * Do not expect Indian children to be familiar with and participate in their tribal histories and cultural traditions (there are many Indian children, particularly in urban areas, who are not familiar with their own history and traditions and many adults are not familiar with the history and traditions of tribes other than their own). …


We study two methods for differentially private analysis of bounded data and extend these to nonnegative queries. We first recall that for the Laplace mechanism, boundary inflated truncation (BIT) applied to nonnegative queries and truncation both lead to strictly positive bias. We then consider a generalization of BIT using translated ramp functions. We explicitly characterise the optimal function in this class for worst case bias. We show that applying any square-integrable post-processing function to a Laplace mechanism leads to a strictly positive maximal absolute bias. A corresponding result is also shown for a generalisation of truncation, which we refer to as restriction. We also briefly consider an alternative approach based on multiplicative mechanisms for positive data and show that, without additional restrictions, these mechanisms can lead to infinite bias.


Low-molecular weight oligo(carbonate-ether) diols are important raw materials for polyurethane formation, which with tunable carbonate unit content (CU) may endow new thermal and mechanical performances to polyurethane. Herein, facile synthesis of oligo(carbonate-ether) diols with number average molecular weight (Mn) below 2000 g mol-1 and CU tunable between 40% and 75% are realized in high activity by immortal copolymerization of CO2/propylene oxide (PO) using zinc-cobalt double metal cyanide complex (Zn-Co-DMCC) in the presence of sebacic acid (SA). Mn of the oligomer is in good linear relationship to the mole ratio of PO and SA (PO/SA) and hence can be precisely controlled by adjusting PO/SA. Besides, the molecular weight distribution is quite narrow due to the rapid reversible chain transfer in the immortal copolymerization. High pressure and low temperature are favorable for raising CU. In all the reactions, the weight fraction of propylene carbonate (WPC) can even be controlled as low as 2.0 wt %, and the catalytic activity of Zn-Co-DMCC is above 1.0 kgg-1 cat. (C) 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem, 2012


Due to persecution, Sabean Mandaeans have fled Iraq in large numbers. Although there is widespread suffering and vulnerability in Iraq, the Mandaeans are a special case, since they have no safe enclave within Iraq to which they can return and their pacifism makes them especially vulnerable to violence. Ted Honderich's Principle of Humanity is used to argue that countries able to do so, meaning wealthy Western nations in particular, should take steps to guarantee the Mandaeans a safe homeland where they can not only live but also maintain their cultural identity.


Flour blends produced from pearl millet, green gram, and tigernut pomace were evaluated for their chemical composition and pasting characteristics. Sixteen runs (flour blends) were generated using optimal mixture design of response surface methodology and used for the determination of functional properties. Four blends were thereafter chosen for the evaluation of the proximate composition, antioxidant, and pasting characteristics. The functional properties of the flour blends had significant (p<0.05) Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), R2, and Adjusted R2 values. An increase in green gram and tigernut pomace flours addition resulted in higher values of ash, crude protein, crude fat, crude fiber, carbohydrate and energy values. The antioxidant properties of the flour blends especially in run 13 (85% pearl millet flour, 5% green gram flour and 10% tigernut pomace flour) showed an increase in total phenol, flavonoid and DPPH contents. The pasting profile viscosities were generally low. Pearl millet, green gram and tigernut pomace flour blends could effectively be utilized in the production of complementary food as well as baked products that required low viscosity.


Private Finance Initiative (PFI)
projects aim to develop public facilities using private funds. Installment
interest payments must be predominant in PFI project costs. The proportion of
installment interest depends upon the business period, payment method, interest
rate, and other factors. However, prediction of the installment interest is not
simple. Cost simulation based on various assumptions has been required for
planning PFI finance project. A simplified estimation formula for installment
interest rate based on cost evaluations using wide range of comparable
conditions is proposed in this paper. The applicability of the proposed formula
is also discussed and verified. The proportion of installment interest of a PFI
project can be estimated to sufficient accuracy using the proposed formula.


An industrial scale falling film reactor (FFR) using gaseous SO 3 / liquid Alkylbenzene –as operating system- is analyzed for multiplicity and stability. The analysis has shown that up to 5 steady state solutions may exist. The existence of a highly multiplicity states is explained by the coupling between absorption and reaction. The system kinetic parameters have found to play an effective role on the stability behavior. An analytic solution is found for a special case of the liquid reactant in  excess, this solution is performed by using eigen analysis. A mathematical procedure is also introduced to estimate the bifurcation points.


The ecological impacts of organic pollutants on freshwater ecosystems have attracted immense scientific, regulatory, and public attention over the past fifty years. In part, this reflects the significant role that freshwater ecosystems play as a repository for anthropogenic chemicals relative to other systems. Some of the most severe ecological impacts have been documented in freshwater ecosystems from persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as polychlorinated biphenyls, polychlorinated dioxins and furans, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Such chemicals can reside for long periods in freshwater sediments, which can then constitute a continual source to the environment even when direct inputs have ceased. Exposure of freshwater biota at lower trophic levels to persistent chemicals can result in transfer to, and ecological impacts at, higher trophic levels through bioaccumulation and biomagnification. In contrast to historically significant organic pollutants, the pervasive nature of new pollutant classes (e.g. pharmaceuticals, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, and perfluorinated surfactants) in global freshwater ecosystems is beginning to be recognized but the full spectrum of their ecological impacts is poorly understood. In this chapter we review documented and potential ecological impacts of organic chemicals in freshwater ecosystems. We focus predominantly on effects at the population, community, and ecosystem levels but, to the extent that our understanding of impacts at these higher levels is predominantly extrapolated from information derived at lower levels, we also include information at the organism and sub-organism level. In addressing each chemical class, impacts on microbial, plant, invertebrate, fish, and fish-eating bird populations are considered where data exists.


An unsymmetric bis(perfluorostyryl)furan with a cyanovinyl unit was prepared (F1). Its crystallographic structure was resolved along with its cyano vinylene (1) and unsubstituted (2) aldehyde precursors. F1 was found to form ribbons involving C–H⋯F interactions, while also having multiple intermolecular contacts, including C–F⋯Fπ and π–π interactions. These contacts also occurred when F1 aggregated in 9:1 water/THF mixtures. When the supramolecular contacts are engaged, the emission intensity of F1 increases, with absolute emission yields of 9 and 25% occurring in aggregates and powder, respectively.


If the broad definition of inflammation proposed by Marchand, with the adherence of many other pathologists, is accepted, it may be said that except for congenital anomalies, retrogressive changes such as amyloid, and tumors, the lesions of the human endocardium all have certain features that may be regarded at least in part as inflammatory. ENDOCARDIAL SCLEROSIS Valve leaflets, especially aortic and to a lesser degree mitral, as well as the mural endocardium, particularly that of the septum near the aortic orifice, frequently exhibit fibrous thickening, atheroma and calcification which justify the conclusion that the lesion is essentially the same as intimal arteriosclerosis. Indeed, the association of such endocardial sclerosis with sclerosis of the aorta is almost constant. In the aortic leaflets the fibrosis is especially prominent at the attached bases of the valves and is still most conspicuous in this situation after the entire leaflet becomes notably thickened and stiff.


Aspergillosis of the lungs is a disease caused by an exceedingly common mold, Aspergillus fumigatus . It is a disease which clinically and pathologically so closely resembles tuberculosis that it usually escapes recognition and is diagnosed as tuberculosis. This mistake may even be made at necropsies; for the ulcerations of the bronchi, the pneumonic and emphysematous areas, the cavities and pleurisies are much the same in one disease as in the other. There is a common belief that this mold is purely saprophytic; that it can live only on preexisting lesions in the lungs; that it cannot attack living tissues because it has no primary pathogenic powers. To show its pathogenic properties, nine rabbits were inoculated intravenously with varying doses of spores, from a pure culture of Aspergillus fumigatus furnished by Dr. Thom of Washington. In March, 1926, the pathologist of the Flagler Hospital, St. Augustine, Fla., inoculated three rabbits. One


An alloplastic spermatocele is implanted to obtain spermatozoa from the epididymis. It is known that, in an alloplastic spermatocele, spermatozoa deteriorate qualitatively and quantitatively as the time interval after implantation increases. 39 Kelâmi-Affeld alloplastic spermatoceles were implanted at the epididymal heads in minipigs. Castration and pathological-anatomical examination of the specimens were performed weeks to months after the operation. It became evident that fibrosis and granulation tissue in the area of the incised epididymal head with occlusion of the opened epididymal tubuli were the causes of aspermia developing in all cases. Apart from normal wound healing, there is additional formation of fibrosis and granulation tissue due to postoperative microbleeding and inflammatory reactions. It may be possible to reduce these complications by microsurgical techniques.


A high performance router (DS-router) which supports DiffServ models by IETF effectively, is presented in this paper. This new router can work at OC-192 line-rate (10 Gb/s), provide 320 Gb/s non-locking switch capability, and facilitate true end-to-end quality of service (QoS) an an IP-network. Some features of the architecture and the design-implement of router are emphasized in this paper. According to the analysis of simulation results (delay, jitter etc.), we can draw the conclusion that DS-router can meet different QoS requirements ordered by the multiple classes of traffic very well.


ePortfolio-platforms are popular tools to facilitate and promote lifelong learning. One of their major usage scenarios is enabling users to document their learning outcomes in an institution-independent way beyond formal learning settings. Aside this, ePorfolios are also promoted as a way to facilitate qualitative assessment in courses. The latter scenario introduces a short-term usage perspective that can be counterproductive for establishing sustainable long-term usage practices. In this paper, we analyse the usage data of the ePortfolio-platform mahara.at with respect to the prevalent usage patterns. This instance was active from 2007 until 2019 and featured more than 22.000 users from nearly 200 different institutions. As part of the analysis, we reviewed the activity on the platform on the basis of users' login behaviour and content creation activities. Activity data shows that ~ 50% of the users used the platform for only half a year and sustainable usage practices over longer durations of time can hardly be observed. Both logins and content creations show cyclic patterns which correspond to the academic year. Based on these indications we conclude that users used the instance mainly for course-based scenarios rather than as a lifelong-learning portfolio.


BACKGROUND
Targeted ERBB2/HER2 inhibitors are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of breast, gastric, and esophageal cancers that overexpress or amplify HER2/ERBB2, as measured by immunohistochemistry (IHC) and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), respectively. Activating mutations in ERBB2 have also been reported and are predicted to confer sensitivity to these targeted agents. Testing for these mutations is not performed routinely, and FISH and IHC are not applied outside of these approved indications.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
We explored the spectrum of activating ERBB2 alterations across a collection of ∼ 7,300 solid tumor specimens that underwent comprehensive genomic profiling using next-generation sequencing. Results were analyzed for base substitutions, insertions and deletions, select rearrangements, and copy number changes.

RESULTS
Known oncogenic ERBB2 alterations were identified in tumors derived from 27 tissues, and ERBB2 amplification in breast, gastric, and gastroesophageal cancers accounted for only 30% of these alterations. Activating mutations in ERBB2 were identified in 131 samples (32.5%); amplification was observed in 246 samples (61%). Two samples (0.5%) harbored an ERBB2 rearrangement. Ten samples (2.5%) harbored multiple ERBB2 mutations, yet mutations and amplifications were mutually exclusive in 91% of mutated cases.

CONCLUSION
Standard slide-based tests for overexpression or amplification of ERBB2 would fail to detect the majority of activating mutations that occur overwhelmingly in the absence of copy number changes. Compared with current clinical standards, comprehensive genomic profiling of a more diverse set of tumor types may identify ∼ 3.5 times the number of patients who may benefit from ERBB2-targeted therapy.


Prevalent models based on artificial neural network (ANN) for sentence classification often classify sentences in isolation without considering the context in which sentences appear. This hampers the traditional sentence classification approaches to the problem of sequential sentence classification, where structured prediction is needed for better overall classification performance. In this work, we present a hierarchical sequential labeling network to make use of the contextual information within surrounding sentences to help classify the current sentence. Our model outperforms the state-of-the-art results by 2%-3% on two benchmarking datasets for sequential sentence classification in medical scientific abstracts.


In a previous communication I 1 discussed lesions of the oral cavity caused by electrogalvanic discharges between dissimilar metallic dentures and reported thirty consecutive cases measured for electric current. Since that time I have been privileged to make a careful study of more than 300 additional cases which contained various dissimilar metallic dentures. From this study, I feel justified in forming certain definite conclusions. I have confirmed, by repeated experiments, that human saliva, whether acid, alkaline or neutral, makes a good electrolyte through which metallic electrons freely circulate from a higher to a lower electropotentiality. Thus, within every oral cavity which contains dentures such as plates, bridges, crowns, or fillings of dissimilar elemental consistency, there is constituted a complete galvanic battery. This newly discovered oral cavity phenomenon is in keeping with a fundamental law of electrophysics discovered by Galvani in 1786—later verified by Volta— which declares that when dissimilar metals


Background Co-endemicity of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) necessitates that these diseases should be considered concomitantly to understand the relationship between pathology and to support disease management and control programs. The aims of the study were to assess the prevalence of filarial infection in asymptomatic Leishmania donovani infected individuals and the correlation of Wuchereria bancrofti infection with progression to clinical visceral leishmaniasis (VL) in Bihar, India. Methodology/Principal findings Within the Muzaffarpur-TMRC Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) area, a cohort of Leishmania seropositive (n = 476) or seronegative individuals (n = 1130) were sampled annually for three years for filarial infection and followed for progression to clinical VL. To corroborate the results from the cohort study, we also used a retrospective case-control study of 36 VL cases and 71 controls selected from a subset of the HDSS population to investigate the relationship between progression to clinical VL and the prevalence of filarial infection at baseline. Our findings suggest a higher probability of progression to clinical VL in individuals with a history of filarial infection: in both the cohort and case-control studies, progression to clinical VL was higher among filaria infected individuals (RR = 2.57, p = 0.056, and OR = 2.52, p = 0.046 respectively). Conclusion This study describes that progression to clinical VL disease is associated with serological evidence of prior infection with W. bancrofti. The integration of disease programs for Leishmania and lymphatic filariasis extend beyond the relationship of sequential or co-infection with disease burden. To ensure elimination targets can be reached and sustained, we suggest areas of co-endemicity would benefit from overlapping vector control activities, health system networks and surveillance infrastructure.


To evaluate the effect of seaweed on the development of gerbera (Gerbera jamesonii Bolus), an experiment under greenhouse conditions was conducted at the Department of Agricultural Production, University Center for Biological and Agricultural Sciences (CUCBA), in 2013. Sixty gerbera plants of the «Pink elegance» va- riety were used and seaweed was applied to the substrate as rec- ommended by the commercial products Alga 600, Seaweed and Osmocalm, setting aside controls. Treatments were applied by transplantation every 15 days a total of 7 times, following a completely randomized distributed design with 15 replicates. Analysis of variance and a Tukey mean comparison test (p≤0.05) were applied using the NCSS statistical pack- age. The variables evaluated were: number of leaves, number of flower stems, stem length (cm), and diameter of the capitulum (in cm). The average effect of the different treatments on the variable number of leaves surpassed controls. Re- garding the number of stems, Alga 600 produced a higher amount than the other treatments (2). The length of stems in the treated plants exceeded controls (18.42 cm). Osmocalm produced the highest average length at 30.91 cm. The average value for the diameter of the capitula was lower in controls (4.96 cm), as diameters up to 7.71 cm were observed with Osmocalm. Significantly, the second crop produced capitula diameters of up to 11.5 cm with Alga 600, and 11.7 cm with Seaweed.


Small fruits production is an important agricultural activity in Trentino, a mountain region in the North East of Italy. Between 2000 and 2010 cultivated areas almost doubled, while output increased from about 15 to more than 30 MEUR per year. Overall, this made soft fruits a viable alternative for local growers to the more traditional, and commercially-mature, apple production. This development was recently challenged by the emergence of Drosophila suzukii, first detected in the area in 2009. In order to provide a first estimate of the pest's economic impact, the five host crops mostly affected by the pest infestation (strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, blackberry and cherry) were singled out. Business data coming from the grading of infected samples at the level of marketing co-op were used. It was assumed that quantity reductions caused by infestation in Trentino do not affect market prices but, given that the damages vary during harvesting season, production losses were valued on a weekly basis with the corresponding weekly output.


Background Accurate measurement devices are required to objectively quantify physical activity. Wearable activity monitors, such as pedometers, may serve as affordable and feasible instruments for measuring physical activity levels in older adults during their normal activities of daily living. Currently few available accelerometer-based steps counting devices have been shown to be accurate at slow walking speeds, therefore there is still lacking appropriate devices tailored for slow speed ambulation, typical of older adults. This study aimed to assess the validity of step counting using the pedometer function of the ADAMO Care Watch, containing an embedded algorithm for measuring physical activity in older adults. Methods Twenty older adults aged ≥ 65 years (mean ± SD, 75±7 years; range, 68–91) and 20 young adults (25±5 years, range 20–40), wore a care watch on each wrist and performed a number of randomly ordered tasks: walking at slow, normal and fast self-paced speeds; a Timed Up and Go test (TUG); a step test and ascending/descending stairs. The criterion measure was the actual number of steps observed, counted with a manual tally counter. Absolute percentage error scores, Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC), and Bland–Altman plots were used to assess validity. Results ADAMO Care Watch demonstrated high validity during slow and normal speeds (range 0.5–1.5 m/s) showing an absolute error from 1.3% to 1.9% in the older adult group and from 0.7% to 2.7% in the young adult group. The percentage error for the 30-metre walking tasks increased with faster pace in both young adult (17%) and older adult groups (6%). In the TUG test, there was less error in the steps recorded for older adults (1.3% to 2.2%) than the young adults (6.6% to 7.2%). For the total sample, the ICCs for the ADAMO Care Watch for the 30-metre walking tasks at each speed and for the TUG test were ranged between 0.931 to 0.985. Conclusion These findings provide evidence that the ADAMO Care Watch demonstrated highly accurate measurements of the steps count in all activities, particularly walking at normal and slow speeds. Therefore, these data support the inclusion of the ADAMO Care Watch in clinical applications for measuring the number of steps taken by older adults at normal, slow walking speeds.


Abstract This study examines the processing of the implicature of "might" (NOT must). The literature on implicatures contains both studies that suggest rapid computation of scalar implicatures, and studies that provide evidence for extra processing costs in generating them. The present study extends existing work by comparing "might" to "must", and by adapting a paradigm that integrates experimental sentences into a natural discourse within a game. The experiment employed the visual world paradigm, using a guessing game with a confederate: in critical trials participants' eye movements were recorded while they listened to utterances (guesses) made by a confederate. Our results show a delay in incorporating the 'not must' implicature of "might", which is comparable in size to previous studies finding delays in implicature computation. Hence our results provide further support for the notion that implicatures incur processing cost, based on different implicature triggers and using an experimental paradigm based on natural dialogue.


Domains Motivation, goal orientation and perseverance Key stages Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, Key Stage 5 Subscales Learned helplessness; Mastery orientation Description This instrument is based on the Student Behaviour Checklist. Participants respond by using the likert scale to indicate how much they agree with item statements. Example When you begin a difficult problem, your attempts are half-hearted Link http://cab.unime.it/journals/index.php/MJCP/article/view/1024 Psychometry Implementation


Abstract

Adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH) has strong and direct lipid-lowering effects in man. All apoB-containing lipoproteins, i.e. VLDL, LDL, Lp(a), are reduced by 25-30%. In contrast, levels of HDL increase about 10%. In hepatic cell cultures, ACTH inhibits expression and secretion of apoB.

In this thesis we corroborate that the reduced apoB synthesis, seen in hepatic cell systems, is also operative in vivo in man, using intestinal lipoprotein production after fat intake as a model system. We also observed that the inhibition of lipoprotein particle synthesis induced by ACTH did not result in impaired lipid processing and transport. We hypothesise that ACTH treatment leads to the production of fewer but larger lipoproteins, which is an attractive concept since recent data indicate that the adverse effects of hyperlipidemia is related to the number of atherogenic particles rather than to molar concentrations of plasma lipids, or lipoprotein lipid levels.

In agreement with the findings in vivo, ACTH did not affect lipid synthesis or secretion from hepatic cell cultures.

Taken together, these data strongly indicate that the effects of ACTH on lipoprotein metabolism are primarily a consequence of decreased production of apoB, and consequently on lipoprotein production and secretion. Since most hypolipidemic drugs act by facilitating the removal of lipoproteins and/or decrease lipid synthesis, ACTH or ACTH analogues may provide an attractive alternative or complement to currently available medications.

When exploring possible animal models for more detailed mechanistic studies, we found that species differences in lipid transport made the rat an unsuitable model for further investigations. The effects of ACTH on diet-induced hyperlipidemia in the rabbit, however, were similar to those in man, providing an experimental tool for further studies of ACTH in vivo.


A predominantly pyrimidine-rich sequence (purine in the template strand, 32 of 37 bases) is located between a functional TATA element and the corresponding transcription start site region of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae iso-1-cytochrome c (CYC1) gene. By using linker deletions and gene fusion techniques, the functional characteristics of this pyrimidine sequence were examined. Results indicate that the function of this element is to limit the accumulation of full-length mRNAs with 5' ends which map upstream of the pyrimidine-rich sequence. Data suggest that the 5'-noncoding region of the CYC1 gene possesses signals for mRNA 3'-end processing.


Maximum entropy principles in nonextensive statistical physics are revisited as an application of the Tsallis relative entropy defined for non-negative matrices in the framework of matrix analysis. In addition, some matrix trace inequalities related to the Tsallis relative entropy are studied.


Sound velocities of PbTe have been determined to 14 GPa using an ultrasonic interferometric method, which allowed for a detailed investigation of the characteristic variations of P and S wave velocities across the phase transitions from F m 3 ¯ m?> (B1) to the orthorhombic Pbnm to P m 3 ¯ m?> (B2). Elastic bulk and shear moduli and their pressure derivatives have been determined by fitting the measured velocities using a finite-strain approach. Based on the measured velocities and Debye theory, an estimate is made of the acoustic phonon contribution to the thermal conductivity, considering inter-phonon interactions only. By combining this result with previous determinations of the thermal conductivity due to electrons, the combination was found to have a significantly lower value than the previously determined total thermal conductivity. This is interpreted as evidence for coupling between the low-lying transverse optic (TO) and longitudinal acoustic (LA) modes, allowing the transfer of thermal energy from the acoustic to the optic modes. Possible explanations are discussed in the paper.


Since the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was identified as the causative agent of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) represents a worldwide threat to public health and the economy. It has been estimated that 35.3 (32.2-38.8) million people were living with HIV globally at the end of 2012. HIV has two major types, HIV-1 and HIV-2, which are further divided into groups, subtypes and recombinant forms. Globally, over 90% of HIV infections belong to HIV-1 group M viruses. Despite of the successful use of highly active antiretroviral therapy, the high genetic diversity of the HIV genomehas challenged the development of drugs and vaccines. Twenty-five years of research into development of a vaccine to prevent or control HIV-1 infection doesn't lead to available protective vaccines. The aim of this book is to provide an overview of the status of research within the HIV vaccine.


In this study a compact method will be given to determine the quasi-static TEM parameters of the open and shielded three-layer microstrip lines. These parameters are the line capacitance, characteristic impedance, guide wavelength, effective dielectric constant, and potential distribution on the line. The developed formulation can be used to analyze the reduced-layer type of microstrip lines, shielded double-layer microstrip lines, double-layer microstrip lines, shielded microstrip lines, and open microstrip lines. It has been found that the results calculated by using the analytical expressions obtained in the present article are in very good agreement with the calculated results by using the other methods given in the literature.


This paper studies a new and highly efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methodology to perform Bayesian inference in low-photon imaging problems, with particular attention to situations involving observation noise processes that deviate significantly from Gaussian noise, such as binomial, geometric and low-intensity Poisson noise. These problems are challenging for many reasons. From an inferential viewpoint, low-photon numbers lead to severe identifiability issues, poor stability and high uncertainty about the solution. Moreover, low-photon models often exhibit poor regularity properties that make efficient Bayesian computation difficult; e.g., hard non-negativity constraints, non-smooth priors, and log-likelihood terms with exploding gradients. More precisely, the lack of suitable regularity properties hinders the use of state-of-the-art Monte Carlo methods based on numerical approximations of the Langevin stochastic differential equation (SDE), as both the SDE and its numerical approximations behave poorly. We address this difficulty by proposing an MCMC methodology based on a reflected and regularised Langevin SDE, which is shown to be well-posed and exponentially ergodic under mild and easily verifiable conditions. This then allows us to derive four reflected proximal Langevin MCMC algorithms to perform Bayesian computation in low-photon imaging problems. The proposed approach is demonstrated with a range of experiments related to image deblurring, denoising, and inpainting under binomial, geometric and Poisson noise.


A new switched-current analogue memory is presented which is addressable and optimised for speed and power. The memory cell is based on the well-known basic current copier with performances enhanced by suppressing the static current source and adding other elements. The speed requirements are achieved by using cascode transistors to drive currents on the read and write buses.


Many modern computer vision and machine learning applications rely on solving difficult optimization problems that involve non-differentiable objective functions and constraints. The alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) is a widely used approach to solve such problems. Relaxed ADMM is a generalization of ADMM that often achieves better performance, but its efficiency depends strongly on algorithm parameters that must be chosen by an expert user. We propose an adaptive method that automatically tunes the key algorithm parameters to achieve optimal performance without user oversight. Inspired by recent work on adaptivity, the proposed adaptive relaxed ADMM (ARADMM) is derived by assuming a Barzilai-Borwein style linear gradient. A detailed convergence analysis of ARADMM is provided, and numerical results on several applications demonstrate fast practical convergence.


Abstract The crystal chemistry of seven crystal fragments taken from differing regions of the same colorless to yellow-greenish tourmaline macro-crystal from pegmatite pockets in aplite veins (island of Elba, Italy) was studied with a multi-disciplinary (SREF, XRDT) and multi-analytical approach (EMPA, SIMS). EMPA and XRDT studies showed relationships between color and chemical zoning and crystal- growth evolution, indicating which fragments could be considered representative of the chemical evolution of the genetic micro-environment in which the crystal developed. Results showed that the colorless fragment is an elbaite while the yellow-greenish crystal fragments are Mn2+-rich (up to 1.34 apfu) and belong to the alkali group and fluor subgroup. They are characterized by dehydroxylation and alkali-defect type substitutions that cooperate in reducing Li and increasing Mn contents. The Y site is populated by Al, Li, and Mn2+, and the Z site by Al and Mn2+ (up to 0.10 apfu). In contrast with data in the literature, Mn2+ populates both octahedral sites according to the order-disorder reaction: YMn + ZAl ↔ YAl + ZMn. As Mn2+ content increases, progressive disorder takes place. This disorder is quantitatively lower than that of the ZMg in dravite, due to the low structural tolerance of the small Z cavity in the incorporation of larger cations by the ZR2+ → ZAl substitution. Relationships of direct proportionality between lattice parameters and both  and  are observed. The expansion of both octahedra, as well as of lattice parameters, increases linearly as a function of YMn2+ and ZMn2+. The latter has greater weight in dictating unit-cell variations, due to the degree of size mismatch between ZMn2+ → ZAl and YMn2+ → YLi substitutions, and the way in which the Z octahedra are articulated in the structure.


There are a number of ways to reproduce an image, for an example gamut mapping, halftoning and compression. To find the best reproduction among a number of variants of the same reproduction algorithm, a psychophysical experiment can be carried out. Image difference metrics have been introduced to eliminate these experiments. To do this the metrics must reflect the perceived image difference. One way to evaluate the overall performance of image differnece metrics is to compute the correlation coefficient between perceived and predicted image difference. This does not always reflect the true performance of the metric, therefore we propose to use the ranking based on the predicted image difference for each scene as a data set for the rank order method. This results in a z-score similar to the overall perceived image difference, the correlation coefficient between metric z-score and perceived z-score reflects the overall performance of the image difference metrics.


Mobility pattern of device users plays a crucial role in a wide range of mobile computing applications, including data forwarding, content sharing, information search and advertising. Hence, it is important to characterize the mobility path information of users, so as to accurately predict user mobility. In this paper, we introduce two typical user mobility patterns: standard Markov and semi-Markov models. Especially, we experimentally explore the correlation of community and geography information in Mobile Social Networks (MSNets), and analyze user sojourn time distribution over communities. Both of theoretical analysis and trace-driven simulation results show that semi-Markov model is more effective in characterizing user mobility pattern and further making more accurate mobility prediction compared with standard Markov model.


The simian virus 40 virion assembly process was studied with pulse-labeling kinetics of virion proteins, CsCl gradient analysis, electron microscopy, and low-salt gel electrophoresis. The results obtained are consistent with the model of gradual addition and organization of capsid proteins around simian virus 40 chromatin. Empty virions, as observed in the CsCl gradient by previous workers, were found to be the dissociation product of immature virus. Histone H1 was found in simian virus 40 chromatin and virion assembly intermediates but not in the mature virion banding at 1.34 g/ml in the CsCl gradient.


This paper describes Research and Development of disaster information temporary network which is assumed vehicles as network nodes. And it assumes that a refuge, a hospital, and the local government existing in the area in 2 km every direction, exist around ten places. The target of R&D is set-up and connection of wireless communication network by the means of different plural wireless communication among them, for less than 30 minutes, after emergency vehicles arrive at the disaster spot. As wireless communication means which is put on vehicles, it assumes the existing radio system or near practical use system in Japan, and the domestic DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communication) system which have been already put to practical use in ETC (ARIB STD-T75), 700 MHz band Intelligent Transport Systems (ARIB STD-T109), and European and American DSRC system (IEEE 802.11p) are referred. The communication data assume a sound and Web information. For relay communication and different plural wireless communication of the transmission speed, we will evaluate communication quality and effectiveness by computer simulation and prototype, this year.


In recent years, the size and the speed of axial flow type hydraulic turbines have been continuously increased, leading to an increase of the fluid exciting forces due to rotor-stator interactions in hydraulic machines featuring both rotor and stator. In addition, the use of composite material for the blades of large hydraulic machines is increasingly investigated. Such flexible and lightweight hydrofoils can however easily experience self-excited vibration such as flutter effect. Fluid exciting forces generated in hydraulic machines might cause resonance, fatigue of the blade and finally damage. This paper aims to evaluate fluid exciting forces produced by rotor-stator interactions in axial flow turbines and the hydro-elastic response to the flutter of a flexible hydrofoil. To evaluate fluid exciting forces due to rotor-stator interactions, experiments are carried out using a closed-loop water channel featuring an axial flow turbine. The pressure distribution on the blade surface and the influence of axial distance between rotor and stator on the pressure fluctuations amplitude on the blade surface are investigated. A good agreement between experimental and numerical values is found. Regarding the flutter effect, FSI (Fluid Structure Interaction) simulation of one hydrofoil coupling RANS (Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations) and FEM (Finite Element Method) simulation is carried out to study the three-dimensional behaviour of the flutter.


In applications such as space and surgical robotics, the use of thin, lightweight manipulators and cable-driven end- effectors results in flexibility of the manipulator. In bilateral teleoperation, however, any flexibility in a link or joint of the robot reduces the transparency of teleoperation. In this paper, we analyze master-slave teleoperation transparency under slave robot joint elasticity and evaluate the added benefits of using extra sensors at the end-effector of the elastic-joint robot. It is shown that velocity (or position) feedback from the output shaft of the elastic joint improves free-space position tracking performance, which in the absence of such feedback is hampered by the joint's anti-resonance. Also, when the interaction forces with an environment are measured by a force sensor and fed back to the user, end-effector velocity feedback improves hard-contact force tracking performance. If the operating trajectories correspond to low frequencies, both free-space position tracking and hard-contact force tracking are satisfactory regardless of end-effector feedback, yet the elasticity in the joint will be transmitted to the user during a hard contact task unless end-effector velocity feedback is used.


Every child must have a "medical home" if health care is to be effective, rural Nebraska pediatrician Thomas Tonniges, M.D., FAAP, told first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and others at a March 15 health care forum near Des Moines, Iowa. In his three-minute testimony before the "Conversations on Health" forum, Dr. Tonniges chose to address immunizations, family and government involvement in health care, and what he views as detrimental federal regulations. Dr. Tonniges, a member of the AAP Board of Directors, spoke on his own behalf, as a general pediatrician in private practice.


In this paper, a new nonlinear dynamic system, new three-dimensional fractional order complex chaotic system, is presented.
This new system can display hidden chaotic attractors or self-excited chaotic attractors. The Dynamic behaviors of this system have been considered analytically and numerically. Different means including the equilibria, chaotic attractor phase portraits, the Lyapunov exponent, and the bifurcation diagrams are investigated to show the chaos behavior in this new system. Also, a synchronization technique between two identical new systems has been developed in master- slave configuration. The two identical systems are synchronized quickly. Furthermore, the master-slave synchronization is applied in secure communication scheme based on chaotic masking technique. In the application, it is noted that the message is encrypted and transmitted with high security in the transmitter side, in the other hand the original message has been discovered with high accuracy in the receiver side. The corresponding numerical simulation results proved the efficacy and practicability of the developed synchronization technique and its application


This is the first English translation of an eighth-century Tibetan Buddhist scripture called Kun byed rgyal po mdo. The text is especially interesting in that it attempts to deconstruct the traditional Buddhist doctrinal and practical structure and presents a rather unusual feminist perspective on Buddhist spirituality. Considering the present interest in the feminist understanding of reality, Neumaier-Dargyay (University of Alberta) presents an extremely timely topic to the Western reader. The text itself may seem to be rather technical to the general reader. Besides the translation, however, it has a good synopsis of the conceptual and historical context of the text, which can serve as a thorough introduction to Tibetan Buddhism as well


The relationship between endoscopic findings and hemodynamics was studied in 262 patients. The endoscopic findings were classified into 3 groups; 1) Type 1: case with esophageal varices. 2) Type 2: case with esophago-cardiac varices. 3) Type 3: case with fundic varices. The hemodynamics were examined using late phase venography after conventional abdominal angiography. The blood vessels of type 1 resembled those of type 2, and 72% of the cardiac varices were connected with esophageal varices. On the other hand, the blood vessels of type 3 were completely different from those of type 1 and type 2, and 84% of the fundic varices were connected with large gastro-renal shunts. From these results, I have been applying endoscopic in injection sclerotherapy for types 1 and 2, and Hassab's operation for type 3. The rates of hemostasis were 100%, 93% and 100% in types 1, 2 and 3, respectively. The rates of disappearance of the varices after treatment were 78.7%, 87% and 100% in types 1, 2 and 3, respectively. It is concluded that good therapeutic results can be obtained when an appropriate therapeutic method is selected. Treatment should be based on the hemodynamics associated with the endoscopic findings of esophago-gastric varices.


This study aimed to morpho-anatomical characterize leaves of plants with hypoglycemic effect used by the Maracanã community of São Luís-MA. It was selected two vegetal species with lack of morpho-anatomical studies, which were Cissus verticillata (L.) Nicolson & C. E. Jarvis (Vitaceae) and Caesalpinia ferrea Mart. ex. Tul. var. leiostachya Benth (Leguminoceae). The botanic material was collected in the Dom Delgado University City, UFMA. It was realized paradermic and transverse sections free hand with blade support, using astra blue and basic fuchsin as colorants. The laminas were observed and photographed in optic microscopic. Cissus verticillata presented simple and opposite leaves, with membranous consistency, serrated margin, and acute top and cordate base. The mesophyll is dorsiventral composed by palisade and spongy parenchyma. Central rib with presence of reserve parenchyma and angular chollenchyma with some points of ring deposition. Caesalpinia ferrea presented smooth and simple leaves, uniseriate epidermis, curled cuticles and presence of stomata on both sides. Central rib with fundamental parenchyma composed by spherical cells and angular chollenchyma. The reported morphoanatomic characters of C. verticillata and C. ferrea leaves contribute to the identification and characterization of the quality of these vegetables, improving knowledge verification of plant species authenticity.


The aim of this study was to gather information on the consequences of hospital bed closures on acute admission patterns. Each November during 1986–1988 we carried out a survey of requests and referrals for acute medical admission to Northwick Park Hospital (NPH). Between the first study in 1986 and the second study in 1987, 15 acute medical and 16 surgical beds were closed. In 1986 the hospital was 'full' and closed overnight to admissions from general practitioners (GPs) on 3/25 days. In 1987 this had increased to 16/27 days and in 1988 it was closed overnight on 20/31 days. Because GPs found it unreasonably difficult to admit patients to NPH, the number of patients referred by them fell from 55.8% of all admissions to 49.8% and 44.3%, while the number of self-referred patients rose from 27.1% to 34.5% and 39.1%. An increasing proportion of elderly patients had to be admitted to acute medical beds: those over 75 years of age represented 24.8% of admissions in 1986, 43.7% in 1987, and 43.8% in 1988. These changes have had important effects on our medical practice, and we suggest that audits of this type are necessary to quantify these changes. We make suggestions for improving such medical audits in the future.


More than 80 million women in Africa and around the world have been damaged by the practice of female genital mutilation. As Somali refugees are accepted into New Zealand and others immigrate from African countries where the practice is still prevalent, health professionals need to be aware of what legal, ethical and cultural considerations are involved.


How does advertising position itself in consumer culture? In what ways does it 'create' desire and wants? This richly illustrated, incisive text produces the most complete critical introduction to advertising culture.

Advertising in Modern and Postmodern Times:
provides a comprehensive discussion of the main theories
shows you how real adverts work, together with reproductions of advertising images and copy
demonstrates how advertising constructs subjects
provides an instructive historical overview of advertising
explores the relationship between advertising and industrial capitalism


OBJECTIVE
To investigate the association of expression of c-kit (marker of interstitial cells of Cajal, ICC) in colon with slow transit constipation (STC) in rats.

METHODS
Slow transit constipation (STC) rat model was induced by intragastric administration of compound diphenoxylate. Western blotting was used to measure the expression of c-kit in colon of STC rats (model group) and normal rats (control group). Gray scale ratio of c-kit to β-actin was used as the relative quantity of c-kit.

RESULTS
Fecal quantity per day of STC group was (1.3±0.7) g/100 g, significantly lower than that in normal rats [(1.6±0.9) g/100 g, t=10.798, P<0.05]. In model rats, the time of discharge of the first black fecal was (461.6±150.8) min, significantly longer than that in normal rats [(351.3±119.9) min, t=2.291, P<0.05]. Western blotting revealed that the average values of gray scale ratio of c-kit in proximal colon were 0.277±0.077 and 0.576±0.081 (t=10.719, P<0.05), in distal colon were 0.280±0.075 and 0.571±0.079 (t=10.700, P<0.05) in model group and control group respectively.

CONCLUSION
Down-regulation of c-kit expression in proximal colon and distal colon is associated to the pathogenesis of slow transit constipation in rats.


Cochinmicins I, II, and III are competitive endothelin antagonists produced by Microbispora sp. ATCC 55140. The cochinmicins are cyclic depsipeptides containing six alpha-amino acids and a pyrrolecarboxylic acid. Based upon MS, 1D and 2D NMR, and LC data, the structures and absolute stereochemistries of the cochinmicins have been assigned. All three components have the same basic sequence and contain one equivalent each of D-allo-threonine, D-alanine, L-phenylalanine, D-phenylalanine, 5-chloropyrrole-2-carboxylic acid (or pyrrole-2-carboxylic acid in cochinmicin I), plus two equivalents of 3,5-dihydroxyphenylglycine (DHPG). The phenylalanine residues were differentiated via a methanolysis product which contained only one of the phenylalanine residues. Both DHPG residues have the D configuration in the more active cochinmicins I and III. Cochinmicin II contains both D- and L-DHPG and these residues have been differentiated in the sequence based upon 1H NMR data.


Harlequin syndrome is a rare autonomic disorder characterized by unilateral facial flushing and sweating with contralateral anhidrosis induced by exercise, heat, and emotion. It is usually idiopathic but could be the first manifestation of several serious underlying medical conditions. Medical or surgical treatments are not required for idiopathic Harlequin syndrome, but social and psychological factors may indicate sympathectomy or botulinum toxin injection. In this article, we report a case of idiopathic Harlequin syndrome and review the literature.


Osteosarcoma of the foot is exceedingly uncommon, and as a result, very little is known about patient and tumor characteristics. In addition, the prognosis may be grim due to delayed presentation and misdiagnosis. A delayed diagnosis of osteosarcoma, regardless of location, may not only reduce long-term survival but also modify the treatment plan, resulting in less favorable functional and cosmetic outcomes. Here we report the diagnostic and therapeutic challenges associated with chondroblastic osteosarcoma involving the metatarsal bone of the foot in a 47-year-old woman treated with wide local excision with right second metatarsectomy and non-vascularized fibular graft reconstruction along with adjuvant chemotherapy.


How to obtain informative representations of molecules is a crucial prerequisite in AI-driven drug design and discovery. Recent researches abstract molecules as graphs and employ Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) for task-specific and data-driven molecular representation learning. Nevertheless, two "dark clouds" impede the usage of GNNs in real scenarios: (1) insufficient labeled molecules for supervised training; (2) poor generalization capabilities to new-synthesized molecules. To address them both, we propose a novel molecular representation framework, GROVER, which stands for Graph Representation frOm self-superVised mEssage passing tRansformer. With carefully designed self-supervised tasks in node, edge and graph-level, GROVER can learn rich structural and semantic information of molecules from enormous unlabelled molecular data. Rather, to encode such complex information, GROVER integrates Message Passing Networks with the Transformer-style architecture to deliver a class of more expressive encoders of molecules. The flexibility of GROVER allows it to be trained efficiently on large-scale molecular dataset without requiring any supervision, thus being immunized to the two issues mentioned above. We pre-train GROVER with 100 million parameters on 10 million unlabelled molecules---the biggest GNN and the largest training dataset that we have ever met. We then leverage the pre-trained GROVER to downstream molecular property prediction tasks followed by task-specific fine-tuning, where we observe a huge improvement (more than 6% on average) over current state-of-the-art methods on 11 challenging benchmarks. The insights we gained are that well-designed self-supervision losses and largely-expressive pre-trained models enjoy the significant potential on performance boosting.


Objective: The nursing image is built on a tripod of the public, nursing students, and nurses. Determining how each leg of this tripod perceives the nursing is crucial to improving the professional image. This study aimed to determine the nursing image perceptions among nurses at a private hospital group in Istanbul.Material-Method: This descriptive-cross-sectional study was carried out with 428 nurses at four private hospitals affiliated with a foundation university in Istanbul. Data were collected through a random sampling method using a self-administered questionnaire, including a personal information form, and The Image Scale for Nursing Profession. Data analysis was performed using descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U test, and Kruskal Wallis-H variance analysis. Results: Nurses generally perceived the nursing image as positive with a median score of 169 (160-177) out of 210. Nursing image for gender and professional status subscales was perceived more negatively than others, with median scores of 23 (19-28) and 19 (17-22), respectively. Nurses who were female (p=0.007), younger than 22 years (p=0.001), unwilling to re-choose nursing as a career (p=0.001), had professional experience less than a year (p=0.002), and worked more than 55 hours a week (p=0.000) perceived nursing image more negatively.Conclusion: The results of this study showed that nurses working at a private hospital group had positive perceptions of the nursing image at a high level, except in terms of gender and professional status. Reflecting a gender equality perspective on nursing management, employing only undergraduate nurses for nursing, and planning an effective work schedule are recommended.


During recent years a marked interest has appeared in the literature in studies on the relation between dietary fat and serum lipids. Investigations have been performed with regard to the amount and, above all, with regard to the composition of the fat supplied. It has been shown that administration of fat containing a large proportion of unsaturated fatty acids lowers the serum lipids (Ahrens et al. 1954, 1957). Most of these studies have been carried out in adult humans, in whom, of course, it is often difficult to limit all extra dietary factors influencing the serum lipids. In newborns, however, it is possible to control such factors, and, in addition, to test a given fat from the beginning of life, thus avoiding the influence a previous diet might have on the results. It is established that the serum lipids are low at birth, and then subsequently increase (Senn and McNamara,


Abstract To produce realistic test specimens with realistic flaws, it is necessary to develop appropriate procedure for corrosion flaw production. Tested specimens are made from steels commonly used in power plants, such as carbon steels, stainless steels and their dissimilar weldments. In this study, corrosion damage from NaCl water solution and NaCl water mist are compared. Specimens were tested with and without mechanical bending stress. The corrosion processes produced plane, pitting and galvanic corrosion. On dissimilar weldments galvanic corrosion was observed and resulted to the deepest corrosion damage. Deepest corrosion flaws were formed on welded samples. The corrosion rate was also affected by the solution flow in a contact with the specimens, which results in a corrosion-erosive wear. Produced flaws are suitable as natural crack initiators or as realistic corrosion flaws in test specimens.


Introduction News reports about the high salaries top management of charity organizations get and about controversial investments in false business could lead to a decrease in people"s intention to donate money to a charity organization. This could cause serious problems for charity organizations, since their existence depends on donations from the population. In this study two models have been proposed and tested, in order to determine the factors that influence people´s intention to continue donating to a charity organization and what factors have an influence on people´s trust in a charity organization.
Theoretical discussion The first model is about a person"s intention to continue donating money to a charity organization. According to former studies on this topic there are a few factors considered to be important for a person"s intention to donate. Trust in a charity organization, affinity with the cause of a charity organization, moral obligation to donate, and donating experience are factors that could positively influence people"s intention to continue donating to a charity organization, while perceived opportunism or risk is a factor that could negatively influence people"s intention to continue donating to a charity organization.
Due to the negative news reports, the assumption is that people"s trust in charity organizations is decreasing. Therefore, the second model that is proposed is about the antecedents of a person"s trust in a charity organization. Based on former studies the antecedents in the proposed model are trust propensity, the three trustworthiness factors benevolence, integrity and ability, familiarity with charity organizations in general, the reputation of the charity organization, communication with stakeholders and perceived opportunism or risk.
Method In order to test the models a questionnaire was designed with both existing and new scales. The questionnaire was implemented both online and paper based. In total 304 respondents , mostly from the eastern part of the Netherlands, participated in the study. All respondents have been donating to charity organizations before they participated.
Results A regression analyses was performed to test the models. The results show that the model on a person"s intention to continue donating to a charity organization explains 54 % of the variance in a person"s intention to donate. Of the factors in the model, only moral obligation to donate did not significantly contribute to explaining a person´s intention to continue donating to a charity organization.
The model about trust explains a person"s trust in a charity organization for almost 80 %. The factors reputation, familiarity and trust propensity did not significantly contribute to explaining a person´s trust in a charity organization. Discussion To maintain or increase people"s intention to continue donating to a charity organization, charity organizations should pay attention to their communications with donors in order to show them that they are trustworthy and not engaging in opportunistic behaviour. Further, charity organizations could conduct research into the characteristics of the people that have affinity with the cause of their organization in order to be able to focus on the right target group and be able to communicate sufficiently with them.
Trust is one of the factors that explains a large part of a person´s intention to donate to a charity organization. Therefore, it is important for charity organizations to focus on the factors that have an influence on a person´s trust in their organization. Perceived integrity of the organization is the primary factor that positively effects a person´s trust. Therefore, this is definitely a factor that a charity organization should pay attention to in its behaviour and communication.


Data analysis for the LISA Technology package (LTP) experiment to be flown aboard the LISA Pathfinder mission requires the solution of the system dynamics for the calculation of the force acting on the test masses (TMs) starting from interferometer position data. The need for a solution to this problem has prompted us to implement a discrete time-domain derivative estimator suited for the LTP experiment requirements. We first report on the mathematical procedures for the definition of two methods; the first based on a parabolic fit approximation and the second based on a Taylor series expansion. These two methods are then generalized and incorporated into a more general class of five-point discrete derivative estimators. The same procedure employed for the second derivative can be applied to the estimation of the first derivative and of a data smoother allowing defining a class of simple five-point estimators for both. The performances of three particular realizations of the five-point second-derivative estimator are analyzed with simulated noisy data. This analysis pointed out that those estimators introducing large amount of high-frequency noise can determine systematic errors in the estimation of low-frequency noise levels.


"Tawny" is an autosomal recessive coat color mutation found in a wild population of Mus musculus molossinus. The inbred strain MSKR carries the mutation. The causative gene Mc1r(taw) of the tawny phenotype is the second recessive allele at the melanocortin 1 receptor locus and is dominant to the first recessive allele, "recessive yellow" (Mc1r(e)). The Mc1r(taw) gene has six nucleotide substitutions, and its forecasted transcript has three amino acid substitutions (i.e., V101A, V216A, W252C). Though the nucleotide substitutions leading to V101A and V216A exist in various mouse strains, the nucleotide substitution leading to W252C exists in only tawny-colored mice. Thus this substitution is considered to be responsible for the expression of the tawny coat color. The frequency of the allele having this nucleotide substitution was 9.21% in the wild M. m. molossinus population inhabiting Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture, Japan, where the ancestral mice of the MSKR strain were captured.


In order to minimise the impact on the natural environment, the move from prescriptive to performance-based specifications for concrete materials and construction has become a critical issue in highway bridge design and construction. The Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) has been moving away from prescriptive specifications since the mid 1980's starting with introduction of end-result based specifications for compressive strength. Today, MTO uses payment adjustment formulas for quality indicators measured on hardened concrete that include: compressive strength, air void system parameters and, for high performance concrete, rapid chloride permeability. However, the move to true performance-based specifications is impeded by the limited range of test methods available today and by the lack of verifiable links between test results obtained at the time of construction and the actual service life of the concrete structure. The paper describes attempts to evaluate, under realistic field conditions, the applicability of existing non-destructive test methods such as permeability to water, air penetrability, and electrical resistivity.


Globalization trends in integrated circuit (IC) design are leading to increased vulnerability of ICs against hardware Trojans (HT). Recently, several side channel parameters based techniques have been developed to detect these hardware Trojans that require golden circuit as a reference model, but due to the widespread usage of IPs, most of the system-on-chip (SoC) do not have a golden reference. Hardware Trojans in intellectual property (IP)-based SoC designs are considered as major concern for future integrated circuits. Most of the state-of-the-art runtime hardware Trojan detection techniques presume that Trojans will lead to anomaly in the SoC integration units. In this paper, we argue that an intelligent intruder may intrude the IP-based SoC without disturbing the normal SoC operation or violating any protocols. To overcome this limitation, we propose a methodology to extract the power profile of the micro-controllers instruction sets, which is in turn used to train a machine learning algorithm. In this technique, the power profile is obtained by extracting the power behavior of the micro-controllers for different assembly language instructions. This trained model is then embedded into the integrated circuits at the SoC integration level, which classifies the power profile during runtime to detect the intrusions. We applied our proposed technique on MC8051 micro-controller in VHDL, obtained the power profile of its instruction set and then applied deep learning, k-NN, decision tree and naive Bayesian based machine learning tools to train the models. The cross validation comparison of these learning algorithm, when applied to MC8051 Trojan benchmarks, shows that we can achieve 87% to 99% accuracy. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work in which the power profile of a microprocessor's instruction set is used in conjunction with machine learning for runtime HT detection.


Most practical FPGA designs of digital signal processing applications are limited to fixed-point arithmetic owing to the cost and complexiry of floating-point hardware. While mapping DSP applications onto FPGAs, a DSP algorithm designer, who often develops his applications in MATLAB, must determine the dynamic range and desired precision of input, intermediate and output signals in a design implementation to ensure that the algorithm fidelity criteria are met. The first step in a flow to map MATLAB applications into hardware is the conversion of the floating-point MATLAB algorithm into a fixed-point version. This paper describes an approach to automate this conversion, for mapping to FPGAs by profiling the expected inputs to estimate errors. Our algorithm attempts to minimize the hardware resources while constraining the quantization error within a specified limit


Fatty acid esters of hydroxy fatty acids (FAHFAs) are newly discovered long-chain fatty acids. However, the major endogenous FAHFAs in healthy human circulation, their correlation with cardiovascular (CV) biomarkers, and their anti-inflammatory effects have not been investigated and remain unclear. In the present study, a total of 57 healthy subjects were recruited. Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-MS) was developed for the simultaneous determination of seven FAHFAs, four long-chain fatty acids, and four non-traditional circulating CV-related biomarkers. We found two major types of FAHFAs in healthy human circulation, palmitoleic acid ester of 9-hydroxystearic acid (9-POHSA), and oleic acid ester of 9-hydroxystearic acid (9-OAHSA). Both 9-POHSA and 9-OAHSA had a strong positive correlation with each other and were negatively correlated with fasting blood glucose, S-adenosyl-l-homocysteine (SAH), and trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO), but not with l-homocysteine. 9-POHSA was also positively correlated with l-carnitine. Moreover, we confirmed that both 9-POHSA and 9-OAHSA exhibited an anti-inflammatory effect by suppressing LPS stimulated cytokines, including IL-1β and IL-6 in RAW 264.7 cells. In addition, palmitoleic acid also had a positive correlation with 9-POHSA and 9-OAHSA. As far as we know, this is the first report showing the major endogenous FAHFAs in healthy subjects and their CV protection potential which might be correlated with SAH and TMAO reduction, l-Carnitine elevation, and their anti-inflammatory effects.


Purpose: To analyse the effectiveness of the use of Tolvaptan and the adequacy of Tolvaptan prescription at a tertiary level hospital. Methods: Prospective observational study of Tolvaptan prescrip - tion from October of 2010 to December of 2011. Results: 30 patients (60.0% males) were included, 50.0% of which were diagnosed with heart failure and 30.0% with SIADH. Tolvaptan allowed achieving sodium levels higher than 135 mEq/L in 53.3% of the patients with a mean baseline value of 125.3±7.3 mEq/L. The median treatment duration was 5.0 days (interquartile range=3-45). A significant increase of uric acid associated to Tolvaptan treatment was observed. The prescription was in agreement to what has been established in GFT in 63.3% of the cases. Conclusions: Tolvaptan increases sodium levels by 7.5 mEq/L, both in SIADH-associated hyponatremia and in heart failure, with an appropriate safety profile.


Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection causes siginificant morbidty and mortality in immunopromised patients. Though it is usually silent in immunocompetent adults, rarely it can cause serious life-threatening complications. Gastrointestinal tract is one of the commonly involved organs, where it produces a spectrum of clinical manifestation ranging from mild non-specific abdominal pain and diarrhoea to severe infection with toxic megacolon and death. We present a 65-year-old immunocompetent male patient admitted with acute colonic obstruction secondary to CMV-induced colonic stricture, highlighting the importance of considering it as a differential diagnosis for colonic obstruction and reviewing its management.


This paper examines the role behavioral factors play in the successful implementation and use of performance management systems that are based on critical success factors, key performance indicators and the balanced scorecard. Case study research was performed which identified 18 individual behavioral factors to be important. The research also showed that the use stage in a systems implementation project has to be performed well in order to assure a regularly used performance management system.


A moored floating or shore-based platform 11 is provided with a plurality of different renewable energy converter systems. The systems may include wave energy converters 12, wind generators 14 and 15, solar collectors (20, Fig 4), sea current turbines 16 and ocean thermal energy converters. The power generated by the systems may be cabled to nearby power grids or may be used in the hydrolysis of water to form oxygen and hydrogen for fuel cells. The platform may be hexagonal in plan view and several platforms may be joined to form a larger integrated structure (Fig 7). The platforms may provide facilities (29, Fig 5) for fish farming and may incorporate housing 35, warehousing and industrial units. A raft of joined platforms may be used for coastal protection and/or as a harbour for ships 34.


This thesis explores the processes used by managers to plan and manage acquisitions undertaken by Australian firms. Haspeslagh and Jemison's (Haspeslagh & Jemison, 1991a) process perspective was used to frame the study. The research problem addressed by this thesis is stated as: Is Haspeslagh and Jemison's process framework applicable to the planning and management of acquisitions undertaken by managers of Australian acquiring firms? Research into the management of acquisition integration is an important topic for academic study for several reasons. First, prior acquisition research has been fragmented, and provides insufficient explanation of acquisition performance. Second, the present study examines Haspeslagh and Jemison's (1991a) process framework, which has influenced a key stream of acquisition research yet has not received empirical testing. Third, the focus of this research on the planning and management of acquisitions in practice responds to King, Dalton, Daily, and Covin's (2004) calls for investigation of the antecedents of post acquisition performance. Finally, this research is important because it has the potential to substantially improve the success of acquisitions, thus improving the financial performance of those firms, and reducing the negative impact upon a firm's clients and employees. A qualitative research design was selected for the research, using two organisations, a professional services firm (ProfServCo), and an insurance company (InsureCo). Data collection comprised document analysis and semi-structured interviews of approximately two hours' duration with 11 managers from ProfServCo, and 12 managers from InsureCo. Within-case and between-case analysis was conducted. The thesis makes 30 research findings in relation to the management of acquisitions. The findings provide limited support for Haspeslagh and Jemison's (1991 a) framework overall, with evidence of the stages of idea, justification, integration, and results. However, not all of the specific components and activities within the stages were found in the cases. The findings have direct implications for the resource-based view of the firm, and support prior research with regard to the strategic reasons for acquisitions. Further, this research highlighted the importance of evaluating acquisitions across multiple levels, and the need to develop evaluation tools that link the firm's acquisition strategy and assessment of acquisition performance. The thesis makes 11 findings related to how managers plan acquisitions. It was found that developing a detailed understanding of the resources, knowledge, and dynamic capabilities being acquired is important. The research extends prior research, finding that planning integration across management, relationship, and resource processes, considering the differences between offices and business units, the use of an iterative planning style, and codification of the acquirer's approach are necessary. The findings highlight that acquirers underestimate the complexity, cost, and timeframe of acquisition integration. Further, the research found that definition of the integration Managers role, identification of the resources, knowledge, and dynamic capabilities required to support acquisition integration, and access to firm ¬wide relationship networks are important factors in acquisition success. The thesis concludes by developing a revised acquisition framework emphasising a multi- dimensional approach to strategy development and integration. The research has a broad range of implications for theory, research, and management practices related to planning and managing successful acquisitions.


An important problem in the use of density estimation for data analysis is whether or not observed features, such as bumps are "really there", as opposed to being artifacts of the natural sampling variability. Here we propose a solution to this problem, in the challenging two dimensional case, using the graphical technique of Signi…cance in Scale Space. Color and dynamic graphics form an important part of the visualization method.


A probabilistic secret sharing scheme is a joint probability distribution of the shares and the secret together with a collection of secret recovery functions. The study of schemes using arbitrary probability spaces and unbounded number of participants allows us to investigate their abstract properties, to connect the topic to other branches of mathematics, and to discover new design paradigms. A scheme is perfect if unqualified subsets have no information on the secret, that is, their total share is independent of the secret. By relaxing this security requirement, three other scheme types are defined. Our first result is that every (infinite) access structure can be realized by a perfect scheme where the recovery functions are non-measurable. The construction is based on a paradoxical pair of independent random variables which determine each other. Restricting the recovery functions to be measurable ones, we give a complete characterization of access structures realizable by each type of the schemes. In addition, either a vector-space or a Hilbert-space based scheme is constructed realizing the access structure. While the former one uses the traditional uniform distributions, the latter one uses Gaussian distributions, leading to a new design paradigm.


Free-standing lithium niobate nanowires (LiNbO_3) are synthesized by the hydrothermal route. The polarization response of the second harmonic generation (SHG) signal is measured in a single nanowire and used to identify the crystal orientation by matching with bulk LiNbO_3 nonlinear optical susceptibility. The electrical manipulation of a LiNbO_3 nanowire and its monitoring through the SHG signal in a fluidic setup are demonstrated.


The asymmetric Hopfield model is used to simulate signaling dynamics in gene regulatory networks. The model allows for a direct mapping of a gene expression pattern into attractor states. We analyze different control strategies aimed at disrupting attractor patterns using selective local fields representing therapeutic interventions. The control strategies are based on the identification of signaling bottlenecks, which are single nodes or strongly connected clusters of nodes that have a large impact on the signaling. We provide a theorem with bounds on the minimum number of nodes that guarantee control of bottlenecks consisting of strongly connected components. The control strategies are applied to the identification of sets of proteins that, when inhibited, selectively disrupt the signaling of cancer cells while preserving the signaling of normal cells. We use an experimentally validated non-specific and an algorithmically-assembled specific B cell gene regulatory network reconstructed from gene expression data to model cancer signaling in lung and B cells, respectively. Among the potential targets identified here are TP53, FOXM1, BCL6 and SRC. This model could help in the rational design of novel robust therapeutic interventions based on our increasing knowledge of complex gene signaling networks.


New medical technologies are products of human mind and the result of development in the field of diagnostic techniques, pharmacotherapy and biotechnology. Transplantation medicine, which is also a new medical technology, differs from the others in that it requires a living organ obtained from a dead person or a living donor. Development of market economy and globalization have made the new technologies available almost in every country. Along with them some expectations have come up among the societies, that what is possible--soon will be available. This applies also to transplantation medicine. However, its availability is restricted by flawed or misinterpreted regulations, ethical and social barriers, and financial potential. Transplantation process depends enormously on economical conditions and attitude of both the society, and the medical profession.


This paper presents a mobile sensor deployment algorithm within a hybrid sensor network, which consists of some mobile sensors and a relatively large number of static sensors. For a target tracking task, a cluster is constructed and updated dynamically for tracking upon detection of an event. A cluster construction algorithm in a sparsely deployed sensor network is addressed. Mobile sensors are used to fill the coverage holes inside the cluster. A scalable mobile sensor deployment algorithm based on static sensor cluster is presented and analyzed. Minimum spanning circle (MSC) of a polygon acts as the metric for dynamic clustering. Simulations have been used to verify the proposed algorithms.


Parallel to the growingly increasing rate in elderly populations, demands for care and health services seem to be rapidly augmenting [1]. Elderly patients highly require and use Emergency Medical Services (EMS) [2-5], that demand more needed resources of EMS [3,6,7] and they often arrive by ambulance to the hospitals in developed countries [7-10]. Existing evidences indicate that, in Tabriz, a small proportion of patients in hospital emergency departments are dispatched to use EMS. The first report of conducted study in Tabriz among people aged 60 or more showed the dominated unawareness about EMS, terms of EMS use, EMS phone number, and its free services among Iranian elderly people [11]. As demonstrated, one obstacle regarding services use is the lack of awareness about such services [12]. While, there is a high correlation between awareness and use of service [13]. Due to the high rate of illiteracy (more than 60%) [14] and low public awareness among elderly in Tabriz, they do not have proper understanding about EMS and its terms of using that leads them to not conveniently demand some of their essential services. Therefore, to draw attention and to increase awareness about the present services among elderly population seems incumbent. In conclusion, to increase the efficiency of provided services, a particular and multi-dimensional attention should be paid in to the processes, social context, social conditions of target groups, and even apparently settled issues.


RISC refers to Reduced Instruction Set Computer. Which means the computer that consists of RISC processor contains reduced (simple) instructions for performing necessary and required operations. Any chip if considered as processor, it should have the capability of performing certain operations like arithmetic, logical, control and data transfer. For performing these operations, a processor should contain some major blocks as Control unit (CU), Flexible computational unit (FCU), Program counter (PC), Accumulator, Instruction register, Memory and additional logic. RISC actually enhances the performance of processor by considering the factors like simple architecture construction and instruction set, easy instruction set for decoding and simplified control architecture. This paper proposes a simple 32 bit RISC processor by using Peres reversible logic gates, which is expected to reduce the size then the conventional architecture that is based on carry save logic adder approach. The synthesis and simulation is carried out using XILINX ISE 12.3i and HDL is developed using VHDL language.


ABSTRACT The problem of motor lateralization in ontogenesis is important for understanding adaptation development. In our experiment adolescent (P28–P30) and adult (P120) rats were trained in an eight-arm radial maze and their motor behaviour compared during training. During learning, the adult rats typically started by moving either left or right direction in the central arena in choosing the way in the maze. The adult rats also developed behavioural tactics to enter maze arms at 45° or 90° relative to the previously visited arm. The adolescent rats showed no directional preference and no clear behavioural tactics when entering maze arms. Based on our findings, we propose that motor lateralization increases the efficacy of food search and leads to the elaboration of behavioural tactics. Data obtained may reflect the fact that motor behaviour specialization develops gradually during ontogenesis and is helpful for adaptation to the environment.


The technology revolution in automobile industry initiated an electric drive vehicle (EV) introduced and becomes a trend as the need to embrace the sustainable technology in the twenty-first century. Recent years, the renascent interest in the transition from gasoline-fuelled vehicle to the electric vehicle being more emphasize because of it promising technology to create a green environment with zero emission of greenhouse gasses and independent on fossil fuel. However, the mistrust of public and even car companies on the range of EV and battery life threatened the market of adoption. Thus, a study is conducted to identify the issues and drives of using EV in automobile industries and to study the future trend of EV in Malaysia. The mixed approach of qualitative and quantitative methods is applied in this study. A STEEPV analysis is employed in this study as a foresight methodology. Survey questionnaire distribution used to determine the key issues and drives and its correlating impact-uncertainty analysis. The finding revealed top two drivers, the availability and affordability of EV related service and equipment, and society willingness to adopt the novel technology. These drivers were used to construct future scenario analysis to propose a foresight of four diverse possibilities that might encounter in time horizon of future 10 to 15 years. A strong correlation signified which both drivers must be co-existed to emerge a positive environmental sustainable future scenario building. The studied uncertainties that might affect the future of EV would be beneficial to the automobile industries and future researcher.


OBJECTIVE
To describe the use of cognitive techniques and to review studies on the efficacy of CBT in the treatment of depression.

METHOD
A non-systematic review of the literature of original studies complemented with data from meta-analyses and specialized textbooks.

RESULTS
The fundamentals of cognitive-behavioral therapy in the treatment of depression are described and the evidence of short- and long-term efficacy is reviewed. The use of pharmacological therapy in conjunction with CBT is also discussed.

CONCLUSIONS
CBT in the treatment of depression is one of the therapeutic modalities with the highest empirical evidence of efficacy, whether applied alone or in combination with pharmacotherapy.


Accurate scale estimation and occlusion handling is a challenging problem in visual tracking. Recently, correlation filter-based trackers have shown impressive results in terms of accuracy, robustness, and speed. However, the model is not robust to scale variation and occlusion. In this paper, we address the problems associated with scale variation and occlusion by employing a scale space filter and multi-block scheme based on a kernelized correlation filter (KCF) tracker. Furthermore, we develop a more robust algorithm using an appearance update model that approximates the change of state of occlusion and deformation. In particular, an adaptive update scheme is presented to make each process robust. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperformed 29 state-of-the-art trackers on 100 challenging sequences. Specifically, the results obtained with the proposed scheme were improved by 8% and 18% compared to those of the KCF tracker for 49 occlusion and 64 scale variation sequences, respectively. Therefore, the proposed tracker can be a robust and useful tool for object tracking when occlusion and scale variation are involved.


In this letter, we investigate the problem of estimating the multipath signal delays in an asynchronous direct-sequence/code-division-multiple-access (DS/CDMA) system operating over a doubly-selective fading channel. A novel blind estimation procedure is proposed which only requires knowledge of the spreading code of the user of interest, but no prior information as to the transmitted data symbols and the structure of the multiaccess interference. Numerical examples are provided to assess the performance of the proposed algorithm.


Objectives. How to best structure an IP licensing agreement taking account of embedded optionalities and other terms negotiated between licensor and licensee via a case study involving a prototypical options-based business model (biotech industry). Methodology. Binomial lattice simulation. Findings. It shows how IP management practices would change depending on who pays for the development costs, controls the continuation/development or abandonment option and thereby appropriates more of the embedded option's value. It presents alternative (iso-value) menu licensing term choices (different combinations of royalty vs. fixed upfront fee or milestone payments) that are fair and optimal in properly accounting for optionality embedded in the R&D development and related licensing structures. Research limits. An extension of our study lies in the collection of a dataset of remuneration structures of (market-based) licensing transactions in the biotech-pharmaceutical industry so as to empirically validate our pricing technique. Practical implications. Real options thinking leads to different perspectives on how patent licensing agreements should be structured properly accounting for which party controls the embedded optionality. Originality of the study. It proposes a comprehensive real options approach to: (a) appraise the IP asset capturing the value of optionality embedded in the underlying drug R&D program; (b) consider the licensor and licensee perspectives in negotiating the terms of the IP licensing agreement providing guidelines on how to determine its optimal remuneration structure reflecting a fair sharing of project value and embedded optionality among the parties; (c) offer a tool for IP portfolio management that helps a licensor prioritize internal R&D projects accounting for managerial flexibility and optimal licensing design under uncertainty.


Orphans and other vulnerable children (OVC) are among the most vulnerable population groups in Africa. Without support and protection, they are exposed to the risk of abusive labor, lack of education, malnutrition, disease, and death. Estimates indicate that 20 percent of children in Sub-Saharan Africa are OVC. They constitute such a large group that, to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), OVC concerns need to be mainstreamed into relevant World Bank projects and programs. This brief note refers to the toolkit designed as a web-based product to make it a widely accessible, live document. It draws on a large array of experiences and material from international agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), hence helping to disseminate lessons - good and bad - learnt in a variety of settings. The Toolkit is organized in four parts and twenty-four sections.


Drop-on-demand (DOD) inkjet printing is well characterized and a well-studied problem, but nonaxisymmetric effects are typically ignored, while these effects can severely reduce the print-head performance and its stability. In this paper we first review nonaxisymmetric droplet formation originating from geometrical effects. We then focus on the possibility that observed nonaxisymmetry arises from surface instabilities of the meniscus by a Rayleigh-Taylor-like (RT) mechanism. It is shown theoretically that the meniscus can become RT unstable beyond a critical acceleration. A comparison with data extracted from high-speed recordings of the meniscus oscillations show that the critical accelerations are exceeded. Using the time duration that the critical acceleration is exceeded and the maximal growth rate, the extent of growth of the unstable wave is estimated.


Cyber–physical systems (CPS) have been widely employed as wireless control networks. There is a special type of CPS which is developed from the wireless networked control systems (WNCS). They usually include two communication links: Uplink transmission and downlink transmission. Those two links form a closed-loop. When such CPS are deployed for time-sensitive applications such as remote control, the uplink and downlink propagation delay are non-negligible. However, existing studies on CPS/WNCS usually ignore the propagation delay of the uplink and downlink channels. In order to achieve the best balance between uplink and downlink transmissions under such circumstances, we propose a heuristic framework to obtain the optimal scheduling strategy that can minimize the long-term average control cost. We model the optimization problem as a Markov decision process (MDP), and then give the sufficient conditions for the existence of the optimal scheduling strategy. We propose the semi-predictive framework to eliminate the impact of the coupling characteristic between the uplink and downlink data packets. Then we obtain the lookup table-based optimal offline strategy and the neural network-based suboptimal online strategy. Numerical simulation shows that the scheduling strategies obtained by this framework can bring significant performance improvements over the existing strategies.


A public theologian will have two questions constantly in mind: Where is the public square with which I am expected to engage? And, what are its terms of engagement? Both questions necessarily involve examining the nature and role of the media as it touches upon the given context, and it is the intention in this article to reflect upon the challenges and opportunities of undertaking public theology in an environment where, (a) significant sections of the mass media accord very low priority to serious discussion of current issues and (b) voices offering a 'faith' perspective, or seeking even to draw upon the language of conviction or moral value, are at worst unwelcome and at best misunderstood. What does it look like to do public theology in a 'straitened' public square? What challenges are presented and how might they be met?


Abstract. Mixed-phase clouds are globally omnipresent and play a major role in the Earth's radiation budget and precipitation formation. The existence of liquid droplets in presence of ice particles is microphysically unstable and depends on a delicate balance of several competing processes. Understanding mechanisms that govern ice initiation and moisture supply are important to understand the life-cycle of such clouds. This study presents observations that reveal the onset of drizzle inside a ∼600 m deep mixed-phase layer embedded in a stratiform precipitation system. Using Doppler spectra analysis, we show how large supercooled liquid droplets are generated in Kelvin-Helmholtz (K-H) instability despite ice particles falling from upper cloud layers. The spectral width of supercooled liquid water mode in radar Doppler spectrum is used to identify a region of increased turbulence. The observations show that large liquid droplets, characterized by reflectivity values larger than −20 dBZ, are generated in this region. In addition to cloud droplets, Doppler spectral analysis reveals the production of the columnar ice crystals in the K-H billows. The modelling study estimates that the concentration of these ice crystals is 3 ∼ 8 L−1, which is at least one order of magnitude higher than that of primary ice nucleating particles. Given the detail of the observations, we show that multiple populations of secondary ice particles are generated in regions where larger cloud droplets are produced and not at some constant level within the cloud. It is therefore hypothesized that K-H instability provides conditions favorable for enhanced droplet growth and formation of secondary ice particles.