OBJECTIVE
This study aimed to review the clinicoradiographic findings in 16 patients with unilateral cochlear neuromas.

STUDY DESIGN
The data included in this presentation were obtained from a retrospective case review.

SETTING
The study was conducted at a tertiary care academic institution.

PATIENTS
Patients of any age, gender, or race with a unilateral cochlear neuroma participated.

INTERVENTIONS
Standard audiometric and radiographic assessment was performed.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Progressive sensorineural hearing loss was measured.

RESULTS
Sensorineural hearing loss is out of proportion to the size of the tumor (< 8 mm in all 16 patients).

CONCLUSIONS
Gadolinium-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging in the axial and coronal planes can help identify cochlear neuromas in selected patients with unilateral sensorineural hearing loss.


In carotid artery disease (CAD) the basilar artery (BA) may act as an important intracranial collateral to supply hypoperfused middle cerebral artery (MCA) territories. Transcranial Doppler studies were performed to study the dependency between BA hemodynamics in relation to the MCA perfusion status. BA and MCA blood flow velocities (BFV), pulsatility indices (API) and cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) were assessed in 40 patients with a progressive MCA hypoperfusion due to progressive CAD. All patients had patent cervical segments of their vertebral arteries with an antegrade vertebral flow profile. Duplex studies were performed to diagnose the severity of CAD. Hypoperfusion of the MCA was diagnosed by the degree of vasoparalysis assessed by a Diamox procedure. Analysis showed that the basilar BFV significantly increased in cases of progressive CAD, the basilar PI decreased but the basilar CVR remained unchanged. However, in cases of bilateral hemodynamic significant CAD and bilateral exhausted CVR in the MCA territory, the basilar artery did not exhibit an increase of BFVs or a decrease of the basilar PI, but the basilar CVR showed a significant decrease. Basilar artery CVR is not impaired if this artery has a function as intracranial collateral in CAD. However in cases of bilateral hypoperfused MCA territories the basilar artery does not function as a collateral pathway. The basilar CVR declines under these circumstances which merely reflects the exhausted hemodynamics in the anterior/posterior borderzones. This situation might lead to an increased stroke risk in the distal basilar supply zones.


Background: Psychogenic nonepileptic events (PNEE) are paroxysmal events that resemble epileptic seizures but are caused by psychological factors. Coordination of care has been recommended as one strategy to integrate care and improve outcomes. We aim to evaluate patient outcomes in a multidisciplinary pediatric psychogenic nonepileptic events clinic that includes care coordination. Methods: All patients referred to the multidisciplinary psychogenic nonepileptic events clinic were entered into a prospective database. Follow-up calls were made by the clinic nurse at 1 and 3 months following the visit. Results: A total of 101 unique patients were reviewed. Ninety-six appointments were scheduled, and 83 appointments were completed (86%). Social work identified barriers in 38 patients, and 76% of those assisted completed their appointment. At 1 month, two-thirds of families were reached, 50% were accepting of the diagnosis, and 70% had clinical improvement in events. By 3 months, 75% had clinical improvement, 76% were receiving mental health services, and 73% were accepting of the diagnosis; however, more had also returned to the emergency department. Families needing assistance from social work tended to have worse outcomes. Increase in acceptance was nearly statistically significant (P = .058) from 1 to 3 months; however, it was not so for clinical improvement in events (P = .623). Conclusions: Implementation of a multidisciplinary team with care coordination allowed for follow-up for children and adolescents with psychogenic nonepileptic events and mitigation of barriers to care and can improve clinical outcomes. After being seen in our clinic, many families had accepted the diagnosis, most of the patients reached had event improvement and were successfully linked with counseling at the 1- and 3-month follow-ups.


Recent research has demonstrated the importance of boundary effects on the overall connection probability of wireless networks but has largely focused on convex deployment regions. We consider here a scenario of practical importance to wireless communications, in which one or more nodes are located outside the convex space where the remaining nodes reside. We call these "external nodes" and assume that they play some essential role in the macro network functionality e.g. a gateway to a dense self-contained mesh network cloud. Conventional approaches with the underlying assumption of only line-of-sight (LOS) or direct connections between nodes fail to provide the correct analysis for such a network setup. To this end we present a novel analytical framework that accommodates for the non-convexity of the domain and explicitly considers the effects of non-LOS nodes through reflections from the domain boundaries. We obtain analytical expressions in 2D and 3D which are confirmed numerically for Rician channel fading statistics and discuss possible extensions and applications.


Abstract Biologically active compounds such as carotenoids/isoprenoids, vitamins, steroids, saponins, sugars, long chain fatty acids, and amino acids play a very important role in coordinating functions in living organisms. Determination of those substances is indispensable in advanced biological sciences. Engineered stationary phase in LC for the analysis of biomolecules has become easier with the development of chromatographic science. In general, C18 column is being used for routine analysis but specific columns are being used for specific molecule. Monolithic columns are found to have higher efficiency than normal column. Among recent introduction, triacontyl stationary phases, designed for the separation of carotenoid isomers, are widely used for the estimation of carotenoids. In comparison to conventional C18 phases, C30 phases exhibited superior shape selectivity for the separation of isomers of carotenoids. It is also found useful for better elution and analysis of tocopherols, vitamin K, sterols, and fatty acids. Vitamin K, E, and their isomers are also successfully resoluted and analyzed by using C30 column. Amino bonded phase column is specifically used for better elution of sugars, whereas phenyl columns are suitable for the separation and analysis of curcuminoids and taxol. Like triacontyl stationary phase, pentafluorophenyl columns are also used for the separation and analysis of carotenoids. Similarly, HILIC column are best suited for sugar analysis. All the stationary phases are made possible to resolute and analyze the target biomolecules better, which are the future of liquid chromatography. The present article focuses on the differential interaction between stationary phase and target biomolecules. The applicability of these stationary phases are reported in different matrices.


Amino acids often cocrystallize with water molecules, which make them pseudopolymorphs of their anhydrous forms. In this work, we discuss in detail the hydrogen bond patterns in anhydrous L-proline and DL-proline and its pseudopolymorphic forms: L-proline monohydrate and DL-proline monohydrate. For this propose, the crystal structure of L-proline anhydrous was determined from synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction data and refined using the Rietveld method. Special emphasis is given to the role played by the water molecule in the hydrogen bond network observed in the crystalline structures.


The objective of the study: to evaluate postponed outcomes of comprehensive treatment with use of valve bronchial block in patients with limited fibrous cavernous pulmonary tuberculosis.Subjects and methods. Treatment outcomes of 97 patients suffering from chronic destructive pulmonary tuberculosis with lesions within one lobe were analyzed. Valve bronchial block (VBB+) was used in 42 patients, and it was not used in 55 patients (VBB-). In addition to anti-tuberculosis chemotherapy, artificial pneumoperitoneum was used in all patients as a part of the treatment.Results. Postpones treatment outcomes were followed in 83 patients: in 38 from the Group VBB+ and in 45 from Group VBB-. Clinical cure was achieved in 28/38 (66.7%) patients in Group VBB+ and in 16/45 (29.1%) in Group VBB-, p <0.01. A lethal outcome was registered in 2 (4.8%) patients in Group VBB+ and 10 (18.1%) in Group VBB-, p <0.03.


Objective:To investigate the efficacy of piperacillin/tazobactam combined with indolicidin in the prevention of lethality in two rat models of polymicrobial peritonitis. Design:Prospective, randomized, controlled animal study. Setting:Research laboratory in a university hospital. Subjects:Adult male Wistar rats. Interventions:Adult male Wistar rats were given an intraperitoneal injection of 1 mg of Escherichia coli 0111:B4 lipopolysaccharide or had intraabdominal sepsis induced by cecal ligation and puncture. For each model, all animals were randomized to receive isotonic sodium chloride solution intraperitoneally, 1 mg/kg indolicidin, 120 mg/kg piperacillin/tazobactam, and 1 mg/kg indolicidin combined with 120 mg/kg piperacillin/tazobactam. Each group included 20 animals. Measurements and Main Results:Main outcome measures were: bacterial growth in blood, peritoneum, spleen, liver, and mesenteric lymph nodes; endotoxin, interleukin-6, and tumor necrosis factor-α concentrations in plasma; and lethality. All compounds reduced significantly bacterial growth and lethality compared with saline treatment. Treatment with indolicidin resulted in significant decrease in plasma endotoxin and cytokine levels, whereas piperacillin/tazobactam exerted the opposite effect. The combination between indolicidin and piperacillin/tazobactam proved to be the most effective treatment in reducing all variables measured. Conclusion:Indolicidin may have potential therapeutic usefulness alone and when associated with piperacillin/tazobactam in polymicrobial peritonitis.


In this work the leaching of black shale ore and froth flotation concentrates produced from the black shale was studied. The complex black shale contained various sulphide minerals (alabandite, sphalerite, pyrrhotite, pentlandite, violarite, chalcopyrite, pyrite). Concentrations of base metals in the ore were Fe 13.2%, Mn 0.97%, Ni 0.3%, Zn 0.57%, Cu 0.23% and Co 0.03%. The base metal content was two to three times higher in the flotation concentrate than in the ore. Ore and concentrate were leached in shake flasks and stirred tank reactors at pulp density of 10 to 20%, pH 1.2 to 2.0 and 60 to 77°C. A thermophilic enrichment culture related to Sulfolobus metallicus was applied. The pulp was aerated with ambient air and dinitrogen gas was used in a control test. Experimental duration was from 12 to 49 days. Leaching of Mn, Fe, Zn, Ni, Cu, and Co was up to 96, 52, 99, 99, 97 and 76%, respectively. Mn and Zn were rapidly leached within the first 2 to 3 days. In test with the ore, metal recovery was negatively affected by precipitate formation towards the end of leaching period. The H2SO4 consumption was in the range of 177 to 346 g/kg ore and 11 to 122 g NaOH/kg ore was consumed respectively. In bioleaching tests with flotation concentrates the H2SO4 consumption was from 205 to 415 g/kg concentrate and 73 to 183 g NaOH/kg concentrate was consumed, respectively. The final redox potential varied between 423 and 710 mV vs. Ag/AgCl. In experiments with fine ground ore, -50 8m, the ferric iron was at best 64% of dissolved total iron. Compared with coarser material (250-355, 710-1000 8m) leaching proceeded best with fine ground ore -50 8m). In tests with coarse ore (710-1000 8m). dissolved ferric iron was up to 97% of the total dissolved iron. Mechanical stirring and fine particles caused increase of dead cell numbers during leaching. The study demonstrates that the thermophilic enrichment culture can leach complex black shale ore at high pulp density and temperature.


Sea Surface Temperature (SST) is an important physical quantity of the ocean system. The accurate prediction of SST is essential for studying physical ocean phenomena and forecasting the ocean environment information. In this paper, a SST prediction approach based on 3-Diminsional Convolutional Neural Network (3D CNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network with attention mechanism is proposed, which considers the spatial correlation and temporal dependency of SST data. Firstly, the machine learning algorithm XGBoost is used to extract the long period time features of each SST data. Then the 3D CNN is used to capture the spatial correlations among SST field data composed of multiple observation points in a selected sea area, followed by the LSTM model to extract the time dependency features of the SST field time series data, and the attention mechanism is added to weight the output of each step of LSTM model to adjust the prediction results and improve the prediction accuracy of the approach. A series of experimental results show that the proposed approach has lower complexity, higher training efficiency and prediction accuracy, which is significantly better than the existing prediction models.


The nucleation and growth of electrodeposited Mn oxide rods has been investigated by preparing deposits on Au coated Si at varying deposition times between 0.5 s and 10 min. The deposits were investigated using high resolution scanning and transmission electron microscopy. A model for the nucleation and growth of Mn oxide rods has been proposed. Nucleation begins as thin sheets along Au grain boundaries and triple points. As these nucleation sites are consumed, nucleation spreads across the grains. Nucleation of sheets in close proximity causes agglomeration and the formation of rounded particles. Some of these rounded particles then accelerate in growth, initially in all directions and then primarily in the direction normal to the sample surface. Accelerated growth normal to the sample surface leads to the formation of rods. As rods grow, the growth of other particles accelerates and they become rods themselves. Eventually the entire sample surface is covered with rods 15–20 μm long and about 2 μm wide. The sheet-like morphology of the deposits is retained at all stages of deposition. Electron diffraction analysis of 3 s and 6 s deposits shows that the sheets are initially amorphous and then begin to crystallize into a cubic spinel Mn3O4 crystal structure. High resolution imaging of the 6 s sample shows small crystalline regions (∼5 nm in size) within an amorphous matrix.


After the earthquake events, building damage assessment is detected by experts. However, in fact, it takes a long time to conduct the assessment process during field survey. Also, it is worried about ensuring the safety of the surveys. In recent years, structural health monitoring has been attempted. This paper suggests a damage evaluation method based on temperature measurement using thermoelectric devices. The cyclic loading tests were conducted as parameters with the loading amplitude; three types of constant amplitude, and three types of variable amplitude with gradual decrease, gradual increase, and random amplitude, totaling six types of dynamic cyclic bending. As a result of applying the damage evaluation method to the loading test, it was confirmed that the cumulative damage calculated from the temperature measurement and the cumulative damage calculated from the input displacement were almost equal. In addition, seismic response analysis was conducted using an analytical model of a four-story building, and the effectiveness of the measurement method using thermoelectric devices was examined. The results of seismic response analysis shows that the natural frequency of the primary mode of the displacement response was lower than 4Hz, and the results of the sweep loading test confirmed that the thermoelectric devices captured the waveform of the temperature up to 4Hz.


Protein storage vacuoles (PSVs) within barley (Hordeum vulgare) aleurone cells contain abundant K, Ca, Mg and P reserves. These minerals are transported from the PSV and are used to support growth of the embryo. In this study, the regulation of transport through slow-vacuolar (SV) ion channels in the tonoplast of barley aleurone PSVs was examined using the patch—clamp technique. Okadaic acid (OA), an inhibitor of protein phosphatase types 1 and 2A, reduced whole-vacuole SV currents by 60%. This inhibition by OA was overcome by exogenous calcineurin. Adding ATP (200 µM) to the bath solution as a substrate for kinase activity decreased SV channel activity by 70%. This reduction in activity was prevented by the kinase inhibitor H-7. From these data, it is concluded that protein phosphorylation can inhibit SV channel activity, and that both the protein kinase and protein phosphatase involved in this regulation are present at the PSV tonoplast. Whole-vacuolar SV currents were significantly higher when 2 mM ATP was used to bathe PSVs than with 200 µM ATP. Calmodulin-like domain protein kinase (CDPK) at either ATP concentration increased SV channel activity by ∼ 150%, implying that protein phosphorylation can also stimulate SV channel activity. When PSVs were treated with the ATP analog AMP-PNP, SV channel activity was not reduced. Hence, ATP hydrolysis is not essential for sustained SV channel activity. A model in which SV channel activity is regulated by protein phosphorylation at two sites is presented.


Cell signaling networks are complex and often incompletely characterized, making it difficult to obtain a comprehensive picture of the mechanisms they encode. Mathematical modeling of these networks provides important clues, but the models themselves are often complex, and it is not always clear how to extract falsifiable predictions. Here we take an inverse approach, using experimental data at the cell level to infer the minimal signaling network. We focus on cells' response to multiple cues, specifically on the surprising case in which the response is antagonistic: the response to multiple cues is weaker than the response to the individual cues. We systematically build candidate signaling networks one node at a time, using the ubiquitous ingredients of (i) up- or down-regulation, (ii) molecular conversion, or (iii) reversible binding. In each case, our method reveals a minimal, interpretable signaling mechanism that explains the antagonistic response. Our work provides a systematic way to infer molecular mechanisms from cell-level data.


ABSTRACT
 The Eastern, Western, and Egyptian strains of alfalfa weevil are pests introduced to North America on three separate occasions, now they share partially overlapping geographic ranges, covering most of the continental United States. Behavior, susceptibility to parasites, and subtle morphological differences separate the strains. The difficulty in differentiating among these strains morphologically has led to the application of molecular phylogeny approaches including restriction fragment-length polymorphism characterization and sequencing of mitochondrial genes. While valuable for strain identification, this approach cannot identify interstrain hybrids because mitochondrial markers are maternally inherited. The work reported here extends previous findings by comparing over 7 Kb of sequence from two mitochondrial and four nuclear loci to increase the resolution of molecular phylogeny for these weevils. The related clover leaf weevil, also an occasional pest of alfalfa, was included in the analysis because the molecular phylogeny of this weevil has not been examined to date. Analysis of nuclear loci indicate that the clover weevil is a distinct species. Furthermore, while the three alfalfa weevil strains are separable based on mitochondrial sequence data they cannot be separated using nuclear loci suggesting that they are all recently diverged members of the same species. These data refine the relationships among these strains and may find application in design of better control strategies.


In this study, a non-linear control system was designed and proposed to control the greenhouse climate conditions. This control system directly uses the information of sensors, installed inside and outside the greenhouse. To design this proposed control system, the principles of a non-linear control system and the concepts of equilibrium points and zero dynamics of system theories were used. To show the capability and applicability of the proposed control system, it was compared with an integral sliding mode controller. A greenhouse with similar climatic conditions was used to simulate the performance of the integral sliding mode controller. In this study, it was seen that the integral sliding mode control system was more accurate; however, the actuator signals sent by this control system were not smooth. It could damage and depreciate the greenhouse equipment more quickly than the proposed non-linear control system. It was also shown that the regulation of the temperature and humidity was performed very smoothly by changing the reference signals according to the weather conditions outside the greenhouse. The ability of these two control systems was graphically demonstrated for temperature and humidity responses as well as for the signals sent to the actuators.


Introduction Cervical cancer is the most common cancer among women in Sub-Saharan Africa. Cervical cancer is treatable if detected timeously, yet only 20% of South African women have ever been for a Pap smear in their lifetime due to limited access to screening, transport or child care responsibilities. Objective To evaluate the acceptability of self-collection for cervical cancer screening. We aimed to identify which self-collection device women prefer and if they would consider using them for routine cervical cancer screening. Methods HIV-positive women (>18 years) from urban and rural HIV clinics were interviewed following an education session on HIV, human papillomavirus (HPV) and cervical cancer. Participants were shown three self-collection devices; (i) an Evalyn cervical brush, (ii) a Delphilavager and (iii) a tampon-like plastic wand before completing a short questionnaire. Results A total of 106 women from the urban (n = 52) and rural (n = 54) clinic were interviewed. Overall 51% of women preferred the cervical brush, while fewer women preferred the tampon-like plastic wand (31%) or lavage sampler (18%). More than 75% of women from the rural site preferred the cervical brush, compared to 22% from the urban site (p < 0.001). Women from the urban clinic preferred the tampon-like plastic wand (45%) and then the lavage sampler (33%), as compared to women from the rural clinic (19% and 4%, respectively). Conclusion Women from urban or rural settings had different preferences for the various self-collection devices. Patient self-collection with HPV testing may be an acceptable way to improve coverage to cervical cancer screening in high risk HIV-seropositive women.


Securitisation has long since been an important factor in international finance markets. This finance method that became popular in the United States of America during the early 1980is is still very much in its infant stages of development in South Africa. The initial objective of this paper is not only to provide an explanation of the mechanics of securitisation but also to evaluate the present development of securitisation in South Africa to determine the level of progress of securitisation as a method of finance. The crux of this paper is however to determine if securitisation can act as a viable alternative to traditional methods of funding property. To obtain an answer to this question the author investigated the current South African legislative environment to establish if it supports securitisation as a property finance tool. The next step involved the evaluation of the different elements of the securitisation framework to establish if real estate securitisation is a viable method of financing real estate in South Africa. Ultimately the author found that except for some limiting conditions, the South African regulatory environment does indeed support real estate securitisation. There is however room for improvement in the existing legislation.


In patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS) with large vessel occlusion (LVO), baseline ischemic core extent is one of the main criteria needed before a decision is made for mechanical thrombectomy (MT).1 The measurement method and the thresholds depend on the time from symptom onset. According to the selection criteria used in most positive MT trials within 6 to 12 hours after onset,2 it is currently recommended to offer MT to patients with stroke within 6 hours from onset if their Alberta Stroke Program Early Computed Tomography Score (ASPECTS) is ≥6.1 More recent trials for patients with stroke with an unknown onset or a late onset (i.e., >6 hours) have also shown benefits of MT if the core infarct volume was below a certain threshold.3,4 Both of these algorithms imply that, ischemic lesions being irreversible, the initial infarct core can only remain the same or grow bigger, and a large initial infarct can only lead to a final infarct that will be at least as large. Final infarct volume is ultimately what shows the extent of brain lesions, and its size has been shown to be correlated with the clinical outcome.5


In metropolitan railway systems, the average commuting time keeps increasing as the scheduled speed increases, and this leads to a decline of rail service usage and competitiveness. Therefore, effective express operation for urban trains is required to improve the scheduled speed. In this study, based on the obtainable time shortening efficiency and economic viability, several express operations are suggested for urban railways and these suggestions are compared by considering high performance trains with acceleration/deceleration and maximum speed improvement. As a result, the optimum express system, which can minimize the cost for sidetrack construction, is suggested.


Despite the significant success in various domains, the data-driven deep neural networks compromise the feature interpretability, lack the global reasoning capability, and can't incorporate external information crucial for complicated real-world tasks. Since the structured knowledge can provide rich cues to record human observations and commonsense, it is thus desirable to bridge symbolic semantics with learned local feature representations. In this chapter, we review works that incorporate different domain knowledge into the intermediate feature representation.These methods firstly construct a domain-specific graph that represents related human knowledge. Then, they characterize node representations with neural network features and perform graph convolution to enhance these symbolic nodes via the graph neural network(GNN).Lastly, they map the enhanced node feature back into the neural network for further propagation or prediction. Through integrating knowledge graphs into neural networks, one can collaborate feature learning and graph reasoning with the same supervised loss function and achieve a more effective and interpretable way to introduce structure constraints.


In this paper, an extension of an m-D (multidimensional or multivariable) polynomial factorization method is investigated. The method is the "root perturbation method" which is recently proposed by the author. According to this method, one sets to zero all complex variables, except one variable, and factorizes the 1-D polynomial. Furthermore, the values of these variables vary properly. In this way, one can "built" the m-dimensional polynomial in its factorized form. However, in the "root perturbation method", an assumption is that the 1-D polynomial must have discrete roots. In this paper, a solution is given in the case that the 1-D polynomial may have multiple roots. This is achieved by a proper transformation of the complex variables. The present method is summarized by way of algorithm. A numerical (3-D) example is presented.


Obesity is known to increase maternal morbidity and mortality. We describe a case of obstructive sleep apnea due to obesity and discuss our treatment of the resulting pulmonary hypertension. A patient was transferred to our hospital at 29 weeks' gestation with severe anasarca and more than a 100-pound weight gain during pregnancy. Pulmonary hypertension due to obstructive sleep apnea was diagnosed. The patient was treated with nasal continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) during sleep and remained in the hospital the remainder of her pregnancy. She had a massive spontaneous diuresis during her hospital stay and lost more than 100 pounds. She was delivered at term via cesarean section because of transverse lie. Preoperative hemodynamic monitoring confirmed the diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension. This represents the first case in the literature of obstructive sleep apnea leading to pulmonary hypertension in pregnancy. This patient responded well to nasal CPAP as evident by the massive diuresis and good maternal outcome.


Under the impact of an infinitely extended edge phase dislocation, optical vortices (screw phase dislocations) induce scintillation enhancement. The scintillation index of a beam consisting of two Gaussian vortex beams with ±1 topological charges through weak oceanic turbulence is researched via derivation and phase screen simulation. Different combinations of two types of phase discontinuities can be obtained by changing the overlapping degree and the phase difference of two coherent Gaussian vortex beams. The scintillation indexes for them verify that the formation condition of the phenomenon is the coexistence of two types of phase discontinuities. And the enhanced scintillation index can be several orders of magnitude larger than that of a plane wave under weak perturbation (Rytov variance). This phenomenon could be useful for both optical vortex detection and perturbation measurement.


With increasing demand and rising fuel costs, both travel time and cost of intercity passenger transportation are becoming increasingly significant. Around the world, high-speed rail (HSR) is seen as a way to mitigate the risk of volatile petroleum prices while alleviating demand on highways and at airports. Ridership is the critical element in determining the viability of a large capital, long-term transportation investment in terms of costs, revenue, and the resulting societal impacts. This research provides a systematic, consistent methodology for analyzing system wide modal ridership. The proposed methodology can be used to estimate the modal ridership under the proposed HSR network scenarios. The study analyzes the potential for high-speed rail as a part of the existing multimodal transportation system in a region in terms of ridership. Although this study does not explicitly consider capital costs, capital investment (e.g., network design and HSR speed), along with exogenous demographic, technological, economic, and policy trends, are used to project ridership over time. Population, fuel efficiency, HSR speed, and fuel price trends are the important variables considered for this study. The application of the methodology is two-fold, and the modeling approach makes a case for a fundamental shift from the current perspective of HSR viability. First, a user and community impact assessment (i.e., travel time, safety, and vehicle operating cost savings) of HSR is conducted in the same manner as traditional transportation system evaluation to provide comparative conclusions regarding intercity transportation alternatives. Emissions and energy consumption impacts are also considered due to the increasing national relevance of environmental sustainability and energy security. Second, the model presented in this study analyzes both ridership and impacts within the same systematic framework to assess the long-term impacts on the individual transportation modes, total system metrics, and efficacy of alternate policies. Although the methodology is extendable and modular to incorporate any mode in any region, experiments are conducted for the Midwest corridor in the United States. Average HSR speed is tested to demonstrate the model's ability to capture the sensitivity of ridership to a specific design consideration. This study represents an important step toward a consistent, comprehensive economic analysis of HSR in the United States


Chronic stimulation of cerebellar granule cells with N‐methyl‐D‐aspartate (NMDA) or KCl induces a specific activation of the enzymes directly involved in glutamate neurotransmitter synthesis. Phosphate‐activated glutaminase (PAG) activity is enhanced in cultured granule neurons incubated with 150 μM NMDA or 25 mM KCl. Other enzymes are not affected by this treatment like lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and glutamate dehydrogenase (GLDH), which is also a mitochondrial enzyme but not directly involved in neurotransmitter synthesis. This effect is dependent on protein synthesis and is induced after 12 hr of NMDA or KCl stimulation. Kinetics of PAG activity showed that Km values were unaffected, in contrast to Vmax values that were increased approximately 70% and 215% over control by NMDA and KCl treatment, respectively. For GLDH, we found two isoforms that were affected differentially by the experimental conditions. Western blot analysis clearly evidenced an increase of approximately 120–180% in the amount of PAG in NMDA‐ and KCl‐treated cells, whereas GLDH was not significantly modified. These results demonstrate that the NMDA‐ and KCl‐induced activation of PAG are not due to the modification of the preexisting enzyme, but to an increase in the synthesis of this enzyme. This suggests that NMDA receptor stimulation during critical periods of the cerebellar granule cell development leads to the activation of gene expression involved in the process of cell differentiation. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Sexual selection theory suggests that females might prefer males on the basis of testosterone (T)-dependent secondary sexual traits such as song. Correlational studies have linked high plasma T-levels to high diurnal song output. This has been confirmed in experiments where T-levels were kept high at times when natural T-levels have decreased. However, surprisingly little is known about the relation between T-levels during the early breeding season and song. In many passerine birds males sing at a high rate at dawn early in the breeding season, referred to as the dawn chorus. In blue tits (Parus caeruleus), the dawn chorus coincides with the fertile period of the female, whereas diurnal song occurs throughout the breeding season. Previous studies on blue tits showed that characteristics of the dawn chorus correlate with male reproductive success. We experimentally elevated plasma T-levels in male blue tits during the pre-fertile and fertile period. Our aim was to test whether increased plasma T-levels affect dawn song characteristics and increase the amount of diurnal song. Although T-implants successfully raised circulating T-levels, we did not find any difference between T- and control males in temporal performance measures of dawn song or in diurnal song output. Our results suggest that either there is no direct causal link between song output or quality and individual T-levels, or experimental manipulations of T-levels using implants do not permit detection of such effects during the early breeding season. Although we cannot exclude that individual T-levels are causally linked to other (e.g. structural) song parameters, our results cast doubt on T-dependence as the mechanisms that enforces honesty on song as a sexually selected trait.


Clock synchronization is an important issue for the design of a network composed of small sensor nodes. Based on the two-way timing message exchange mechanism and assuming an exponential network delay distribution, many analytical results have been presented in the literature by applying the techniques from statistical signal processing. This paper derives the minimum variance unbiased estimator for the clock offset for both symmetric and asymmetric exponential delay cases. For the asymmetric delays, it is shown to be a function of both the minimum and the mean link delays. This result is a very significant contribution since only the minimum link delay observations have been used to estimate the clock offset in the past. For the symmetric case, it is shown to coincide with the maximum likelihood estimator. In addition, the result is also applicable to clock synchronization problem in general computer networks.


This paper presents a segmentation method that exploits object based region merging to delineate the context of the image under investigation. There are two main steps. Initially, primitive objects are obtained by morphological operations that generate spectrally homogenous primitives. We assume that primitives are components of semantic objects that are of interest. Next, these primitives therefore are modeled and merged based on expectation maximization. We presented the results of the experiments applied to QuickBird images of rural and urban areas taken from the city of Ankara, Turkey. Experimental results demonstrate the capabilities of these methods along with their limitations.


Six families are presented with multiple cases of ovarian cancer, mainly serous cystadenocarcinoma. Three families had concomitant aggregation of breast cancer, suggesting genetic determinants common to both tumors. The exceptional cancer risk in these families prompted prophylactic oophorectomy in 14 asymptomatic women from four families. Review of the original microscopic sections from 8 women revealed that 3, representing two families, had abnormalities of ovarian surface epithelium and mesothelial tissue, which may be of etiologic significance and portend neoplastic changes. To enable early detection and prevention of ovarian cancer, new diagnostic techniques and etiologic studies should be applied whenever possible to high‐risk families.


Enterprise model development is essentially a labour-intensive exercise. Human experts depend heavily on prior experience when they are building new models making it a natural domain to apply Case Based Reasoning techniques. Through the provision of model building knowledge, automatic testing and design guidance can be provided by rule-based facilities. Exploring these opportunities requires us not only to determine which forms of knowledge are generic and therefore re-usable, but also how this knowledge can be used to provide useful model building support. This paper presents our experiences in identifying and classifying the knowledge which exists in IBM's BSDM Business Models and applying AI techniques, CBR and RuleBased reasoning together with a symbolic simulator, to provide more complete support throughout the enterprise model development life cycle. Key-words Enterprise Modelling, Model Development Life Cycle, Case Based Reasoning, Business Modelling, Process Modelling, Knowledge Management, BSDM, Formal Method.


This article examines the sonic elements of Antonin Artaud's 1935 production of Les Cenci, Artaud's infamous attempt to realize his proposed 'theatre of cruelty'. The aim is to qualify the critical opinion that Artaud was a failed theatre practitioner by analysing the conceptual complexity and potential effectiveness of the sound design for this production. Artaud utilized new sonic technologies and an aesthetic arguably derived in part from Balinese gamelan music to affect audience members on a physiological level, prefiguring the vibrational force and ultrasonic ambitions of modern sonic warfare. This analysis engages a range of primary and secondary materials, including an extant recording of music and sound effects used for the production, and is situated with reference to an estimated acoustic 'horizon of expectations' of Artaud's audiences and to neuroscientific conceptions of how the brain processes auditory input.


Abstract A grounded theory approach was used to generate theory about clients' perceptions of polysomnography, and the relationships between these perceptions and compliance with therapy. Interviews were conducted with two groups of clients: those who complied with recommended therapy (Continuous Positive Airways Pressure) and those who did not. Compliance with suggested therapy appeared to be related to the degree of benefit derived by the client. In addition, there were problems with the process of diagnosis and follow-up that impacted on client satisfaction and may have influenced their compliance. These findings have highlighted issues which have been used to generate theories that will be tested in future research.


For high temperature automotive application, IC products are required to pass stringent high temperature storage stress test (e.g. 5000hrs at 150 deg C), hence requires reliable wire bonds. Such requirement is especially challenging with fine pitch Au & Cu wire bond (e.g. bond pad pitch < 70um and bonded ball diameter < 58um), more-so on low k wafer technology with bond-over-active requirement.


López-Segovia, M, Palao Andrés, JM, and González-Badillo, JJ. Effect of 4 months of training on aerobic power, strength, and acceleration in two under-19 soccer teams. J Strength Cond Res 24(10): 2705-2714, 2010-The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of the training executed by 2 under-19 teams from the first Spanish division on aerobic power, strength, and acceleration capacity. Two under-19 soccer teams that competed in the same league were evaluated on 2 occasions. The first evaluation (E1) was done at the beginning of the competitive period, and the second evaluation (E2) was done 16 weeks later, coinciding with the end of the first half of the regular season. The following were evaluated: lower-body strength through jump height with countermovement with and without load (CMJ/CMJ20), speed of the Smith machine bar movement in a progressive load test of full squats (FSL), acceleration capacity in 10, 20, and 30 m (T10, T20, T30, T10-20, T10-30, T20-30), and maximal aerobic speed (MAS). Team A executed complementary strength training, and training loads were determined with regard to the speed with which each player moved the bar in FSL. Between the evaluations, the training sessions of each team were recorded to assess their influence on the changes in E2. Team A significantly improved its MAS (p < 0.01) and its application of strength in the CMJ20 (p < 0.05) and FS20-30-40 (p < 0.01), while significantly worsening their acceleration capacity in all the splits (p < 0.01). Team B slightly worsened its MAS and significantly improved its application of strength in the CMJ20 (p < 0.01) and FS50-60 (p < 0.05). Its acceleration capacity improved insignificantly except for in the 20- to 30-m interval/T20-30 (p < 0.05). The present study demonstrates that the use of loads as a function of the speed of movement, without the need to determine maximum repetitions is a methodology that is adequate for the improvement of the application of strength in under-19 soccer players.


We analyze two pre-supernova (SN) and three post-SN high-resolution images of the site of the Type II-Plateau supernova SN 2006my in an effort to either detect the progenitor star or to constrain its properties. Following image registration, we find that an isolated stellar object is not detected at the location of SN 2006my in either of the two pre-SN images. In the first, an I-band image obtained with the Wide-Field and Planetary Camera 2 on board the Hubble Space Telescope, the offset between the SN 2006my location and a detected source ("Source 1") is too large: ≥0.08′′, which corresponds to a confidence level of non-association of 96% from our most liberal estimates of the transformation and measurement uncertainties. In the second, a similarly obtained V-band image, a source is detected ("Source 2") that has overlap with the SN 2006my location but is definitively an extended object. Through artificial star tests carried out on the precise location of SN 2006my in the images, we derive a 3 σ upper bound on the luminosity of a red supergiant that could have remained undetected in our pre-SN images of log L/L⊙ = 5.10, which translates to an upper bound on such a star's initial mass of 15 M⊙ from the STARS stellar evolutionary models. Although considered unlikely, we can not rule out the possibility that part of the light comprising Source 1, which exhibits a slight extension relative to other point sources in the image, or part of the light contributing to the extended Source 2, may be due to the progenitor of SN 2006my. Only additional, high-resolution observations of the site taken after SN 2006my has faded beyond detection can confirm or reject these possibilities.


The features of the electrode surface film during Li-metal deposition and dissolution cycles are essential for understanding the mechanism of the negative electrode reaction in Li-metal battery cells. The physical and chemical property changes of the interface during the initial stages of the reaction should be investigated under operando conditions. In this study, we focused on the changes in the optical properties of the electrode surface film of the negative electrode of a Li-metal battery. Cu-based electrochemical surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy (EC-SPR) was applied because of its high sensitivity to optical phenomena on the electrode surface and its stability against Li-metal deposition. The feature of SPR reflectance dip depends on the optical properties of the electrode surface; namely, the wavelength and depth of the reflectance dip directly connected the refractive index and extinction coefficient (color of electrode surface film), which was confirmed by reflectance simulation. In the operando EC-SPR experiment, various changes in optical properties were clearly observed during the cycles. In particular, the change in the extinction coefficient was more remarkable at the second process than the first process of Li-metal deposition. By electrochemical quartz-crystal microbalance (EQCM) measurements, surface film formation was confirmed during the first Li-metal deposition process. The remarkable change in the extinction coefficient is based on the color change of the surface film, which is caused by the chemical condition change during Li-metal deposition cycles.


This article explores the impact of organizational involvement on political participation in mainland China. The formal organizations in China today differ in the nature of organization and membership, which in turn lead to different effect on political participation. In contrast with the Communist Party and the "mass organizations," the reemerging civic associations have more voluntary and active members. Although providing similar benefits of vertical connections to official access and information as other formal organizations, they uniquely transcend the boundaries of the administrative or work units to bring together people with dissimilar background. Analysis of a nationwide survey data shows that involvement in the Party or mass organizations provides some advantages in participation through official channels, while the constraining effect on unconventional activities did not materialize. Involvement in civic associations significantly facilitates all types of political participation.


Summary Herby cheese (Otlu peynir) is widely produced and consumed in eastern parts of Turkey, and is generally made from sheep milk. The objectives of this study were to determine some properties of fresh and ripened herby cheese samples. Samples (20 fresh and 20 ripened) of herby cheese were collected from retail markets in Van, and analysed chemically and biochemically. Higher levels of dry matter, salt, fat and titratable acidity (%) were found in ripened cheeses. Also lipolysis and protein degradation were higher in ripened herby cheese samples than in fresh samples. Urea-polyacrylamide gel electropherograms of ripened cheese samples showed that higher degradation of s-casein than of -casein occurred.


THE NEUROPROTECTIVE POTENTIAL OF STN DBS AND THE ROLE OF BDNF By David Luke Fischer Parkinson's disease (PD) is a chronic, neurodegenerative disease that affects one percent of the population over the age of sixty. To our knowledge, there is no therapy that can slow the progression of the disease. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of either the subthalamic nucleus (STN) or the globus pallidus interna (GPi) is well established to provide significant therapeutic efficacy in alleviating the motor symptoms of PD, yet our understanding of effects on disease progression remains limited. Previous studies have shown that long-term, high-frequency stimulation of the STN halts degeneration of the substantia nigra induced by intrastriatal 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) injections and significantly increases brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in the nigrostriatal system, primary motor cortex and entopeduncular nucleus (EP). These results suggest that STN DBS can induce plasticity within basal ganglia circuitry and has the potential to provide neuroprotection in PD. In order to examine the role of BDNF in the neuroprotective effects of STN DBS, I examined in our 6-OHDA rat model if blockade of the trophic receptor for BDNF, tropomyosin-related kinase type 2 (trkB), would alter the afforded protection. I also examined the effect of trkB antagonism on the recovery of motor function provided by STN DBS for unilaterally lesioned rats. Beyond elucidation of the mechanism for STN DBS-mediated neuroprotection, I evaluated if STN DBS would similarly facilitate nigral neuroprotection against α-synuclein overexpression-mediated toxicity. Lastly, I evaluated if DBS of the EP, the homologous structure of the GPi in the rat, would result in similar results as STN stimulation, namely alleviation of a unilateral motor deficit, nigral neuroprotection and increased BDNF. The data demonstrate that BDNF plays a critical role in the neuroprotective effects of STN DBS and in the alleviation of a unilateral motor deficit. The data also show that STN DBS is unable to provide neuroprotection against α-synuclein overexpression-mediated insult, but I call into question the usefulness of this model for the question of if STN DBS is disease modifying. I also present data that support abandoning EP DBS in the rat as an appropriate model of GPi DBS for PD. I conclude with remarks on the implications of this work for the clinic, including the use of a common variant in the gene for BDNF as a biomarker that may allow the development of 'precision medicine' approaches for the refinement of current medical practice guidelines for PD. Copyright by DAVID LUKE FISCHER 2015


Massive globular clusters (GCs) contain at least two generations of stars with slightly different ages and clearly distinct light element abundances. The Na-O anticorrelation is the best studied chemical signature of multiple stellar generations. Instead, low-mass clusters usually appear to be chemically homogeneous. We are investigating low-mass GCs to understand what the lower mass limit is where multiple populations can form, mainly using the Na and O abundance distribution. We used VLT/FLAMES spectra of giants in the low-mass, metal-poor GC Terzan 8 that belongs to the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy to determine abundances of Fe, O, Na, α-, Fe-peak, and neutron-capture elements in six stars observed with UVES and 14 observed with GIRAFFE. The average metallicity is [Fe/H] = −2.27±0.03 (rms = 0.08), based on the six high-resolution UVES spectra. Only one star, observed with GIRAFFE, shows an enhanced abundance of Na and we tentatively assign it to the second generation. In this cluster, unlike what happens in more massive GCs, the second generation seems to represent at most a minority fraction. We discuss the implications of our findings, comparing Terzan 8 with the other Sgr dSph GCs, and to GCs and field stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, Fornax, and in other dwarfs galaxies.


The main approach of this paper is the importance of using educational software as teaching means to foster education through Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), This work emphasizes on the experiences of having used a piece of educational multimedia software (MULTIFILO) to improve Philosophy and Society (a subject taught in SUM Holguin), thus enhancing the quality of the teaching - learning process, which favours the students´ administration of learning.


Artificial Intelligence doubtlessly will lead to several changes in today's world. There will be massive shifts in employment markets with more and more automated jobs and others newly created. Many, if not all employees, will have to acquire new skills if they do not want to end jobless and be replaced by a machine. On an international scale, artificial intelligence might lead to a new world order with China and the US fighting a cold tech war in which Europe is not even part of the picture. Regulation, international cooperation and diplomacy will aim to remedy adverse effects. In this scenario, two areas will be of particular importance: Ethics and Education.


Mixing is considered as a critical process parameter (CPP) during process development due to its significant influence on reaction selectivity and process safety. Nevertheless, mixing issues are difficult to identify and solve owing to their complexity and dependence on knowledge of kinetics and hydrodynamics. In this paper, we proposed an optimization methodology using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based compartmental modelling to improve mixing and reaction selectivity. More importantly, we have demonstrated that through the implementation of surrogate-based optimization, the proposed methodology can be used as a computationally non-intensive way for rapid process development of reaction unit operations. For illustration purpose, reaction selectivity of a process with Bourne competitive reaction network is discussed. Results demonstrate that we can improve reaction selectivity by dynamically controlling rates and locations of feeding in the reactor. The proposed methodology incorporates mechanistic understanding of the reaction kinetics together with an efficient optimization algorithm to determine the optimal process operation and thus can serve as a tool for quality-by-design (QbD) during product development stage.


Abstract Objective. Nephroureterectomy with bladder cuff excision has been the gold standard treatment for upper tract transitional cell carcinoma (UTTCC) for more than 60 years. However, endoscopic treatment of urothelial tumours of renal pelvis and ureter is gaining acceptance as a conservative treatment modality. Material and methods. A review in the English language of the Medline and Pub Med databases was performed using the keywords upper urinary tract transitional cell carcinoma and endoscopic management. There was a particular emphasis on treatment outcomes from published series. Results. Endoscopic treatment of UTTCC alone for high-grade tumours is not advised owing to high rates of both local recurrence and disease progression, while many authors do not recommend primary endoscopic management of UTTCC in elective situations if pathological analysis and tumour grade cannot be obtained. Conclusion. Endourological management of UTTCC has become an accepted treatment option in highly selected patients, provided long-term close surveillance to detect and treat recurrences is ensured.


The current-density distribution and giant magnetoimpedance (GMI) properties are theoretically described for the homogenous ferromagnetic wires and composite wi res consisting of an inner conductive core covered by an outer ferromagnetic coa ting. The numerical simulation shows that the current is distributed much close r to the surface for the Cu/FeCoNi composite wires than for FeCoNi homogenous f erromagnetic wires at the same frequency and with the same geometric size and m agnetic structure. When obvious MI effect can be observed, the skin effect has a lready been strong in its ferromagnetic coating. The skin effect is still an imp ortant factor for the GMI effect in composite wires. Above a certain frequency o f about 4MHz, the driving current will flow through the ferromagnetic coating ma inly and the electromagnetic interactions become weaker, the MI behavior in the composite wire becomes similar to that in the homogenous ferromagnetic wire.


In 712 patients, mapping of the prostate by six systematic ultrasound-guided core biopsies was performed without major side effects using the "biopyt gun". The histologic findings provided data on patients with normal and those with abnormal prostates on digital rectal examination (DRE). Only 3 of 72 (4%) nonurologic patients with normal prostate-specific antigen (PSA; less than 4 ng/ml) had prostate cancer. In patients with firm prostates on DRE and normal PSA, 13 out of 101 (13%) had prostate cancer. In patients in whom PSA was greater than or equal to 4 ng/ml, 92 of 158 (58%) had prostate cancer. In patients with clinical stage B or C and PSA less than 4 ng/ml, 20/56 (36%) had prostate cancer, compared to 155 of 187 (83%) patients with PSA greater than or equal to 4 ng/ml. Transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) seemed not to be useful in screening for prostate cancer, due to its low specificity of 54%, although in patients with clinical stage B or C TRUS identified 157/175 (90%) patients with prostate cancer. For staging prostate cancer we compared in 103 men with pelvic lymph node dissection the value of digital rectal examination, computerized tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), PAS, TRUS, and random systematic biopsy for identification of lymph-node-positive patients before radical prostatectomy. CT had a sensitivity of only 7% and a specificity of 96% in detecting lymph nodes, whereas MRI had a sensitivity of 50% and a specificity of 100%.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


In the year of 2009, these are traumatic and historic times. Within 14 months, the US stock market has fallen over 47% from its October 2007 high. The main cause of this financial crisis is simple, bad bank practices. This cause many people to have a loss in their wealth. Therefore, it can clearly seen that one of the purposes of writing this thesis is to educate the population to understand the right method and the right instrument to invest in stock market, to achieve their financial goals. If one must know how to profit or stand out in the stock market, one must learn from the best, which is none other than Warren Buffett himself. Over the past 25-years, Berkshire has grown at a compound rate of 23.2% per year, nearly double than the market, which is only 12%.

Warren Buffett believed a technique called Value Investing. Basically, the essence of value investing is buying stocks at less than their intrinsic value (fair value). Although value investing can be proven successful in United States of America (USA), there is no research studies that give evidence it can applied successfully in Indonesia. Even if on the assumption that value investment can be applied and proven successful in Indonesia capital market, what kind of stocks would Warren Buffett pick to gain enormous amount of profit and beat the market on average? Thus, by having this gap, this research is pursued.

 The process of creating a portfolio based on Warren Buffett teaching, one must see from two perspective, from quantitative and qualitative persepctives. Quantitative criteria is based on Return on Equity (ROE), Return on Asset (ROA), Debt to Equity Ratio (DER) and the value of a business. Qualitative criteria is based on whether the company has sustainable competitive advantage component and whether the company has honest, rational and capable people.
 Thus, out of 400 public listed companies, 7 solid companies are selected. They are Astra Agro Lestari Tbk (AALI), Tambang Batubara Bukit Asam Tbk (PTBA), International Nickel (INCO), Semen Gresik Tbk (SMGR), H.M. Sampoerna Tbk (HMSP), Telkomunikasi Indonesia Tbk (TLKM) and Bank Raykat Indonesia Tbk (BBRI). They are all liquid companies (LQ-45), best in their own industry, good management team (high ROE and ROA), low risk (low DER), positive cash flow and most importantly, they are all below their intrinsic value.
 To test whether the concept that is used by Warren Buffett is applicable in Indonesia is to see whether the performace of the portfolio (which contain 7 selected companies) will performed better than the market, in good times (2007) and bad times (2008). In bull times (2007), the portfolio beat the market (IHSG) by 48%. Furthermore, the performance of the portfolio performed better than the market by 1% in bear times (2008).
One interesting finding, throughout 2007 to 2009. Although the market is down by 22%, the performance of the portfolio gain 4%, beat the market by 26%. With this result, it can conclude that Warren Buffett technique could be implement in Indonesia Stock Market (BEI). It basically shows that Value Investing can beat the market, both good times and bad times.
By using Return Risk Adjusted (RRA) method, in the period of 2007 (bullish times), The average return from the portfolio is 0.959481 or 95.95% in one year. On the other hand, the market return is 0.512862 or 51.29%. The portfolio has beta of 1.020500. The value of R-Square (R2) in the portfolio is 0.833579. The performance of the porfolio using Sharpe measurement is as much as 52.367070 and the market is 28.597934. The performance of the portfolio using Treynor meausrement is as much as 0.855893 and the market is 0.426820. Using Jensen measurement, the portfolio will give a return as much as 0.437869 or 43.79% above the market. Lastly, using appraisal ratio of the portfolio is 64.408866. By using serveral measurement, it shows that a portfolio that is formed using Warren Buffett techinques in good times (Bullish times) achieve higher performance (using RRA method) than the general market.
In the bearish times, The average return from the portfolio has loss of 46.75%. On the other hand, the market return has also a loss of 47.65%. The portfolio has beta of 1.043602. The value of R-Square (R2) in the portfolio is 0.580482. The performance of the porfolio using Sharpe measurement is as much as -16.205591 and the market is -22.557668. The performance of the portfolio using Treynor meausrement is as much as -0.531049 and the market is -0.563204. Using Jensen measurement, the portfolio will give a return as much as 0.033557 or 3.36% above the market. By using serveral measurement, it shows that a portfolio that is formed using Warren Buffett techinques in bad times (Bearish times) achieve higher performance (using RRA method) than the general market.
By using different measurement, apart from using Holding Period Return or Return Risk Adjusted, the author conlcude that the portfolio performance using Warren Buffett techniques able to implement and able to make decision making in selecting stocks in Indonesia Stock Market (IDX). The reason is because it able to beat the market, in good times (2007) and bad times (2008). This thesis also shown an evidence of how each of the selected stocks really invested in Indonesia Stock Exchange, which is shown in Appendix 7. However, there are several short-comings from the result of this thesis.
Firstly, different companies do not has the same methodology and procedure creating Profit/Loss Statement and Balance sheet. Secondly, although the result of this thesis is based on long term view (like 10 years), the data is used only cover a short period of time (which is 5 years). Lastly, the condition of public companies in Indonesia still does not have enough transparency among investors. Nevertheless, there are several points that need to be considered in order to give more accurate result.
Firstly, those future students who are interested and further this research need to follow the principals and philosophy of Warren Buffett, especially selecting public companies that are fundamentally strong and has durable competitve advantage. Secondly, by taking careful look at each company's procedure of creating Profit/Loss Statement. Thirdly, one must focus on the company which has foreign debt as it will expose to the fluctuation of the currency. Lastly, one must consider the weakness of Return on Asset (ROA), Return on Equity (ROE) and also Present Value (PV) as growth (r) and discount value (i) is easily manipulated or influenced. Thus, one must implement with utmost care due to its sensitivity and impact to its formula.


Regulation of gene expression is essential for normal physiological functions; thus deregulation of gene expression is common in disease conditions. One level of regulation of gene expression is performed by noncoding RNAs, among which microRNAs (miRNA) are the best studied. Abnormal expression of these molecular players can lead to pathogenic processes such as heart disease, immune system abnormalities, and carcinogenesis, to name but a few. Of a length of 18–25 nucleotides miRNAs are involved in binding partial complementary sequences within the 3′-UTR (3′-untranslated region) of the target mRNAs. Depending on the type of neoplastic transformation, miRNAs can act both as oncogenes (oncomirs) or as tumor suppressors. Because of the great importance of miRNAs, most researches focus on either their role as biomarkers or their potential as therapeutic targets. Herein, we present the review of microRNA biology, function, and tumorigenic potential with emphasis on their role in lung cancer.


Code-mixing is a common phenomenon in communities of high heterogeneity and Hong Kong shows no exception to this. English, Japanese Kanji, and vernacular Cantonese are permeated and mixed with Chinese virtually in every sector of the economy. Commercial print advertising, which draws on visual and linguistic resources to attract consumers, provides an ideal microcosm model of the code-mixing phenomenon in Hong Kong. A total of 125 code-mixed print advertisements produced in Hong Kong between 2008 and 2009 were analyzed. It is found that there are different reasons for people to mix English, Japanese Kanji, and vernacular Cantonese in print advertisements. Mixing English is the norm in Hong Kong advertising industry. Japanese Kanji mainly mixes in advertisement to achieve positive country-of-origin effects. Vernacular Cantonese is still in its infancy and has yet to enter the mainstream of advertising. The code-mixing practices in advertisement reflect the relative importance of the mixed languages in Hong Kong society. The use of these codes is complementary to the dominant language to get across the message.


Our research centers around finding hardware and software components that enable us to mimic biological entities and colonies within the context of multi-agent systems. Specifically, we use control networks with fieldbus or wireless data links to connect distributed hardware and software modules. Although there are many implementations of multi-agent systems, most literature seems to focus on the algorithmic aspects. In this paper, we describe how LonWorks control networks, coupled with minimal custom electromechanical devices, can be used to construct multi-agent systems. Important issues include real-time system constraints, fault-tolerance, synchronization, and, of course, solving the robotic tasks at hand. We describe three proof-of-concept projects currently underway: a biped walking robot; an hexapod colony; and a complex autonomous vehicle. It is believed that attributes observed in these projects can be used to build application-specific systems for automation, space exploration, hazardous materials operations, etc.


In 1986, a group of university astrophysics institutes in eleven Western European countries established a federation known as the European Astrophysics Doctoral Network (EADN). The aims of the EADN, then and now, are to stimulate the mobility of postgraduate students in astrophysics within Europe, and to organize pre-doctoral astrophysics schools for graduate students at the beginning of their PhD research. The network has by now expanded to include about 30 institutes in 17 Western European countries, and ways are being actively sought for expanding the EADN even further to include Eastern and Central Europe. The coordinators have been Prof. Jean Heyvaerts (France) until 1992, Prof. Loukas Vlahos (Greece) 1992-1993 and myself since 1993. The network is financially supported by the European Union "ERASMUS" and the "Human Capital & Mobility" programmes as well as by national funds.


As one of the most promising approaches for the automatic generation of VLSI chips, the concept of "silicon compilers" was presented. A silicon compiler is a software system which accepts the behavioral or functional description of the chip and directly translates it to the layout patterns of the VLSI masks. In order to realize a design automation aid for full-custom VLSI chips for nonprofessional chip designers such as programmers, we have selected asynchronous architecture as the target model of the compiler and have been developing a silicon compiler system. A VLSI chip based on this architecture model consists of asynchronous modules which hold the control information internally. The behavior of the chip is controlled only by local communication among these modules. The silicon compiler system accepts the purely functional specifications of the chip, written by the hardware specification language ISPC, and directly translates it to the layout patterns in the form of CIF codes. By selecting an effective architecture model, it is possible to realize the silicon compiler system through simple translation programs which analyze the functional description of the chip and extract from it the configuration of components and the control information and through a library of the asynchronous modules which are generally defined with suitable parameters.


In recent years many contributions have appeared which examine the effects of corporate and personal taxation on firm financial policy. However, there has yet to appear an adequate explanation of why corporations continue to distribute dividends despite their disadvantageous tax treatment. We study this problem anew, in the context of an overlapping generations growth model with corporations financed by equity. Among our findings are: (1) capital owned by corporations may well be undervalued, even in the long run; (2) as a result of such undervaluation, firms may find it in the best interest of their stockholders to distribute dividends; and (3) an increase in the tax on distributions, while depressing the return to personal saving, may lead to an increase in the capital intensity of the economy. We also consider the criterion firms will use in evaluating new investment projects.


Feature extraction plays an important role in face recognition system as it can reduce dimensions and reserve the most significant features which need to be classified and recognized. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) has been one of the popular techniques that used in pattern recognition related research areas. Researches have been also carried out to improve the performance of this technique, mainly based on tensor type and incremental type. Incremental Bi-Directional Principal Component Analysis (IBDPCA) is one of the latest improved versions of PCA which combined the merits from tensor and incremental type. However, IBDPCA lacks of the moderations between the latest and previous data when updating the means. This can leads to difficulty in evaluating the data accurately due to larger size of previous data, and also more memory waste. This paper proposed a technique which overcomes the limitations by adopting the IBDPCA with forgetting factors, in order to downweight the previous overloaded data with relevant factors. To evaluate the proposed technique, two experiments were carried out to compare it with IBDPCA on two different databases: FERET and CMU PIE. The experiment results indicate the better performance in recognition rate by using the proposed algorithm. Keywords—Principal Component Analysis, incremental, forgetting factors, PCA, IBDPCA


One of the open problems in on-line packing is the gap between the lower bound Ω(1) and the upper bound O(d) for vector packing of d-dimensional items into d-dimensional bins. We address a more general packing problem with variable sized bins. In this problem, the set of allowed bins contains the traditional "all-1" vector, but also a finite number of other d-dimensional vectors. The study of this problem can be seen as a first step towards solving the classical problem. It is not hard to see that a simple greedy algorithm achieves competitive ratio O(d) for every set of bins. We show that for all small e > 0 there exists a set of bins for which the competitive ratio is 1 + e. On the other hand we show that there exists a set of bins for which every deterministic or randomized algorithm has competitive ratio Ω(d). We also study one special case for d = 2.


This paper shows how loosely coupled compute resources, managed by Condor, can be leveraged together with IBM OmniFind to implement a scalable environment for text analysis based on the Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA). Text analysis can be used to extract valuable knowledge from unstructured text data such as entities and their relationships. When applied to large amounts of data e.g., in the magnitude of several million documents, the process can be too time consuming to react to business needs. This becomes a particular problem when the rule sets, dictionaries, or taxonomies used by the text analysis components are changed to extract new information for a particular business purpose. Such changes may require that the entire set of documents must be reanalyzed. In the scenario motivating this work a constantly growing set of currently 10 million documents needs to frequently be re-processed to accommodate such changes. The text analysis algorithms deployed are very complex and compute intensive, requiring currently about 20 CPU-years for a full re-analysis. Through the distributed architecture discussed in this paper the re-analysis can be performed in one calendar month by opportunistically leveraging compute nodes from a heterogeneous Condor pool.


Abstract Hepatitis C is a major health problem worldwide, frequently resulting in cirrhosis and increasing the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma significantly. In recent years, the advent of direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) has dramatically improved the therapeutic outcomes in hepatitis C patients. In the last two years, several new DAA combinations have been approved for the treatment of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, including elbasvir/grazoprevir, sofosbuvir/velpatasvir, sofosbuvir/velpatasvir/voxilaprevir, and glecaprevir/pibrentasvir. The newly approved DAA regimens may be prescribed with other drugs simultaneously, increasing the potential of pharmacokinetic interactions. Therefore, the knowledge and management of drug–drug interactions (DDIs) with DAAs should be considered a key issue in HCV therapy. This review summarizes researches of DDIs focusing on newly approved DAAs (elbasvir, grazoprevir, velpatasvir, voxilaprevir, glecaprevir, pibrentasvir) for patients undergoing HCV treatment to provide clinical consideration for comedication. With respect to DDIs, newly approved DAA regimens, including elbasvir/grazoprevir, sofosbuvir/velpatasvir, sofosbuvir/velpatasvir/voxilaprevir, and glecaprevir/pibrentasvir, are safely applicable.


Classically hormones are defined as molecules that are secreted by endocrine glandular or neurosecretory cells into the blood stream and transported to their target tissue where they induce physiological processes at very low concentrations. Studies on the potential origin and the evolution of cell-to-cell communication systems suggest that exocrine pheromones (food signals and toxins) might have been the primitive bioregulatory molecules of unicellular organisms for chemical communication with each other and with the biosphere. The broad distribution and the structural diversity of pheromones suggests that these molecules and their receptors were predecessor modules of cell communication systems in metazoa. Neurosecretory cells, as we find them in Cnidarians, possibly served as basic modules for the evolution of neurohormonal systems of higher animals. Studies on genetic model organisms, such as Drosophila or the mouse, have demonstrated that chemical communication between neighbouring or more distant cells does not just involve endocrine and neurosecretory cells, but also unexpectedly tissues and organs such as the heart or the adipose tissue (e. g. the leptin signalling pathway). Comparative endocrinology could show that molecular components of hormonal systems represent signalling networks that are generally used during cellular communication processes and the differentiation of cell types during ontogenesis. Some of their functions are evolutionarily conserved, others not, as disscussion on steroid hormones and the prolactin signalling pathway will demonstrate.


An injection of vasopressin and its analog into ventral hippocampus facilitated the formation of avoidance response and inhibited the behavioural habit in the process of extinction. Opposite effects occurred after administration of oxytocin and its fragment. The changes observed in the avoidance paradigms motivated by fear seem to be related to effects of the peptides under study on the processes of learning and memory.


Absolute cross sections for double electron transfer in H- + H+ collisions have been measured for center-of-mass energies from 0.5 keV to 12 keV. Clear oscillations in the cross section are observed which are in excellent agreement with earlier measurements at lower energies by Brouillard et al (1979) as well as Peart and Dolder (1979). After an oscillation maximum at 3 keV center-of-mass energy the cross section decreases for increasing energy with no indication of further oscillations.


This paper examines the export growth affected by various economic indicators (GDP, Import, Per Capita Net National Income, Balance of Payment, Exchange Rate and Industrial Production, using data from 1980-81 to 2014-15. In the study the relationship between exports and economic growth in India is indicated by using Karl Pearson's coefficient of correlation and multiple correlations. T-test helps to study the significance of relation. Diversification of India's exports is depicted through import ratio. The paper concludes that the exports are mainly affected by three indicators (GDP, Import and PCNNI), and the change in the policies should be made accordance with them. The study also attempts to test the mechanisms of Export-Led Growth in India by taking a time series data from 1980-81 to 2014-15. It applies Ordinary Least Square method to investigate the relationship between Gross National Product, Total Exports, Manufactured Exports and Investment. The result of the study supports the Export-Led-Growth Hypothesis (ELGH) in India.


This study examines moral exemplar coaches to better understand how they are able to maintain integrity in the high-stakes environment of NCAA Division-I college sport. In-depth interviews based on moral exemplar and moral identity development theories were conducted with peer-nominated, "moral exemplar" Division-I collegiate head coaches (n = 12). Interviews elicited themes of moral exemplarity, including, for example, having an internalized moral compass and engaging in ongoing personal and professional growth. Illuminating themes and mechanisms by which these coaches develop and sustain moral identity can inform applied work with coach education efforts for current and future members of the profession. Lay Summary: This study looks at coaches who are known by their peers and athletic directors as having strong morals and integrity despite the challenges they face balancing the competing values of fostering athlete well-being with winning while working in the highly competitive environment of National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I athletics.


inactive (nonremodeling) bone surfaces, particularly evident in the adult skeleton. BLC's are thinly extended over bone surfaces, have flat or slightly ovoid nuclei, connect to other BLC's via gap junctions, and send cell processes into surface canaliculi. BLC's can be induced to proliferate and differentiate into osteogen ic cells and may represent a source of "determined" osteogenic precursors . BLC's and other cells of the endosteal tissues may be an integral part of the marrow stromal system and have important functions in hematopoiesis, perhaps by controlling the inductive microenvironment. Because activation of bone remodeling occurs on inactive bone surfaces, BLC's may be involved in the propagation of the activation signal that initiates bone resorption and bone remodeling. Evidence also suggests that BLC's are important in the maintenance of the bone fluids and the fluxes of ions between the bone fluid and interstitial fluid compartments for mineral homeostasis.


Quantum simulation of Lattice Gauge Theories has been proposed and used as a method to overcome theoretical difficulties in dealing with the non-perturbative nature of such models. In this work we focus on two important bottlenecks that make developing such simulators hard: one is the difficulty of simulating fermionic degrees of freedom, and the other is the redundancy of the Hilbert space, which leads to a waste of experimental resources and the need to impose and monitor the local symmetry constraints of gauge theories. This has previously been tackled in one dimensional settings, using non-local methods. Here we show an alternative procedure for dealing with these problems, which removes the matter and the Hilbert space redundancy, and is valid for higher space dimensions. We demonstrate it for a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ lattice gauge theory and implement it experimentally via the IBMQ cloud quantum computing platform.


Aim: To determine the clinical, anthropometric, and laboratory parameters that could be used for differentiating central precocious puberty from premature thelarche in girls who had breast development between the ages of 3 and 8 years. Material and Methods: The study included 344 girls (196 girls with idiopathic central precocious puberty, 148 girls with premature thelarche) who underwent gonadotropin- releasing hormone stimulation tests for breast development. Age at diagnosis, bone age, anthropometric measurements, basal/stimulated hormone levels were recorded. Univariate regression analysis was performed to determine the parameters that could be used for differentiating precocious puberty from premature thelarche. Significant parameters in univariate analyses were grouped according to the thresholds determined using receiver operating characteristic curves and reevaluated through multivariate analysis. Results: The bone age, height-standard deviation score, body mass index-standard deviation score, and growth velocity-standard deviation score at diagnosis were found to be higher; pubertal stages were found to be more advanced; uterus and ovary volumes were found to be larger; and the basal/peak luteinizing hormone, follicle-stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone/follicle-stimulating hormone levels were found to be higher in the subjects with precocious puberty. There was no difference between estradiol levels between the two groups. The best thresholds to differentiate the two groups were found as 0.65 IU/L (78% sensitivity, 100% specificity), 1.9 IU/L (100% sensitivity, 72% specificity), 0.25 (67% sensitivity, 100% specificity) and 1.1 (69% sensitivity, 71% specificity), respectively, for basal luteinizing hormone, follicle-stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone/follicle-stimulating hormone ratio, and the growth velocity-standard deviation score. Conclusion: In girls presenting with early breast development, a basal luteinizing hormone level of ≥0.65 IU/L and a luteinizing hormone/follicle-stimulating hormone ratio of ≥0.25 are sensitive ways to demonstrate activation of the hypothalamo-pituitary-gonadal axis. Among these, the variable that gives the best sensitivity and specificity is the measurement of basal luteinizing hormone levels (≥0.65 IU/L), which can be used as a screening test in the diagnosis of central precocious puberty.


Many text documents in the legal domain are created in order to express the reasoning steps a decision maker followed in reaching conclusions. For example, refugee law determinations are documents that express the reasoning steps a member of the Refugee Review Tribunal in Australia followed in order to infer conclusions regarding the status of an applicant. Although, it is reasonable to expect that a mapping between the reasoning steps used by a decision maker and the structure of the document produced would clearly be apparent, a number of authors have discovered that such a mapping is by no means obvious. In order to develop legal knowledge based systems that generate documents from their own reasoning steps, discourse analysis is invoked to bridge the gap and perform the mapping. In this paper, we articulate a heuristic that we use to generate a plausible document structure without the use of discourse analysis. Without discourse analysis, the heuristic cannot contribute to our understanding of the process employed by decision makers to convert reasoning to text. Nevertheless, the heuristic can mimic the process. The heuristic has been trialed with a small sample of refugee law determinations by extracting the reasoning steps from each determination and applying the heuristic to reproduce each document's


Although distance learning has no less effectiveness than on campus education (Young J, 2000), is still unclear why Greek students adopt the HOU for their postgraduate studies. This research addresses the following questions: "What makes the Greek students to decide to pursue their postgraduate degree via the HOU instead of the on campus one? Which are the factors affecting their decision? Which are the most important of them?" This research followed the survey methodology with the use of email questionnaires which followed the snow ball technique, while the results were analysed by the Dedoose software. The findings indicated that reasons like financial needs, time, flexibility and job prospects are influencing students towards their decision, while factors like family and friends are the catalysts in that direction. Our analysis suggests that the results can help HOU understand that need to help students overcome their contemporary societal barriers towards a better future.


ABSTRACT Multiple Attribute Decision Analysis (MADA), known to be simple and convenient, is one of the most commonly used methods for Effectiveness Evaluation of Fighter (EEF), in which the attribute weight assignment plays a key role. Generally, there are two parts in the index system of MADA, i.e. performance index and decision index (or label), which denote the specific performance and the category of the object, respectively. In some index systems of EEF, the labels can be easily obtained, which are presented as the generations of fighters. However, the existing methods of attribute weight determination usually ignore or do not take full advantage of the supervisory function of labels. To make up for this deficiency, this paper develops an objective method based on fuzzy Bayes risk. In this method, a loss function model based on Gaussian kernel function is proposed to cope with the drawback that the loss function in Bayes risk is usually determined by experts. In order to evaluate the credibility of assigned weights, a longitudinal deviation and transverse residual correlation coefficient model is designed. Finally, a number of experiments, including the comparison experiments on University of California Irvine (UCI) data and EEF, are carried out to illustrate the superiority and applicability of the proposed method.


Cooperative driving refers to a notion that advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) sharing the control with human driver and completing driving task together. One of the key technologies is that the ADAS can identify the driver's driving intention in real time to implement consistent driving decisions. Based on driving simulator (DS) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) experiments, this study established a model of driver's brake intention identification with machine-learning algorithms and analysed cerebral cortex activity mechanism of the driver's brake intention with parametric test. This study suggested that the test accuracy of the model established here was 90.91%. Moreover, the activity in the Brodmann area 7 (BA7), BA17, and BA40 in cerebral cortex was significantly different between the driver with braking intention and those with driving at constant speed (
 p
 <; 0.05). The study presented here not only identified the driver's driving intention through fNIRS for the first time, but also analysed the brain activity of the drivers when he had the braking intention. It lays a foundation for the future research on the driving cognitive model about human perception and driver's driving intention identification.


Abstract            The 2019 Corona Virus Disease (Covid-19) pandemic has spread throughout the region, including Inhu District, SimpangKelayang Village. The economic aspect is the impact that gets the most attention after the health aspect. The main problem that occurs in SimpangKelayang Village is that the economy of the business owner community is down (weak) due to the pandemic. Economic recovery must immediately be designed to overcome the economic crisis so that economic conditions do not sink into an economic depression. Through qualitative research methods, this study aims to reveal how the activities of the business community are trying to move from economic downturn during the COVID-19 pandemic. The economic recovery studied departs from Todaro & Smith's theory of the economic crisis. In SimpangKelayang Village the majority of the people are entrepreneurs, so the economic recovery strategy is to rely on the community business sector in developing trade, implementing digitalization in business and utilizing assistance in the form of Direct Cash Assistance (BLT), Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (UMKM) and Economic Enterprises in the Save Village. Borrow (UEK-SP). Through the stretching of the business community, which is supported by assistance from the government as a driver of business development, finally the economy of the business community has experienced a significant increase as evidenced by the emergence of household savings and an increase in the amount of income.


The high-quality software product is one of the most important goals of software engineering in general, source coding or implementation phase is one of the main steps of the software development process; when this phase is going in a good way and according to the source code quality standards and rules, the final product will be a high-quality product. This research focuses on the issues that can affect source code quality, such as errors, faults, defects, and failures; a practical system model will be provided (proposed) to predict some possible types of errors and defects and suggests some guidance and recommendations on source code error detection and analysis.


We describe a $\tilde{O}(d^{5/6})$-query monotonicity tester for Boolean functions $f:[n]^d \to \{0,1\}$ on the $n$-hypergrid. This is the first $o(d)$ monotonicity tester with query complexity independent of $n$. Motivated by this independence of $n$, we initiate the study of monotonicity testing of measurable Boolean functions $f:\mathbb{R}^d \to \{0,1\}$ over the continuous domain, where the distance is measured with respect to a product distribution over $\mathbb{R}^d$. We give a $\tilde{O}(d^{5/6})$-query monotonicity tester for such functions.
Our main technical result is a domain reduction theorem for monotonicity. For any function $f:[n]^d \to \{0,1\}$, let $\epsilon_f$ be its distance to monotonicity. Consider the restriction $\hat{f}$ of the function on a random $[k]^d$ sub-hypergrid of the original domain. We show that for $k = \text{poly}(d/\epsilon)$, the expected distance of the restriction is $\mathbb{E}[\epsilon_{\hat{f}}] = \Omega(\epsilon_f)$. Previously, such a result was only known for $d=1$ (Berman-Raskhodnikova-Yaroslavtsev, STOC 2014). Our result for testing Boolean functions over $[n]^d$ then follows by applying the $d^{5/6}\cdot \text{poly}(1/\epsilon,\log n, \log d)$-query hypergrid tester of Black-Chakrabarty-Seshadhri (SODA 2018).
To obtain the result for testing Boolean functions over $\mathbb{R}^d$, we use standard measure theoretic tools to reduce monotonicity testing of a measurable function $f$ to monotonicity testing of a discretized version of $f$ over a hypergrid domain $[N]^d$ for large, but finite, $N$ (that may depend on $f$). The independence of $N$ in the hypergrid tester is crucial to getting the final tester over $\mathbb{R}^d$.


It is well known that level of banks" credit plays an important role in economic developments. Indian banking sector has played a seminal role in supporting economic growth in India. Recently, Indian banks are experiencing consistent increase in non-performing assets (NPA). In this perspective, this paper investigates the trends in NPA in Indian banks and its determinants. The panel regressions, fixed effect allows evaluating the impact of selected macroeconomic variables on the NPA. The Panel regression result indicates that the GDP growth, change in exchange rate and global volatility have major effects on the NPA level of Indian banking sector.


Abstract The New Public Management movement regards citizens as customers and, accordingly, focuses on the quality of services provided by public-sector organizations. Since this approach negatively affected democratic values, there has been a shift of the focus from consumer satisfaction and quality of services to quality of governance. The latter implies the improvement of the relationship between government and citizens as active members of the community. Over the last twenty years, participatory budgeting (PB) has become a popular form of co-production intended to improve the quality of local governance. The aim of the article is to provide a comparative analysis of the use and role of PB in Croatia, Poland and Slovakia and to identify the models of PB used in selected countries. In order to compare the case studies of municipalities in selected countries, a qualitative analysis has been used and the classification of PB models applied. Most analyzed local units use the "Porto Alegre adapted for Europe" model, but the "Consultation on public finances", "Representation of Organized Interest" and "Proximity participation" models are also represented. The main findings are that PB indeed enables better allocation of public sources according to citizens' needs (various public services were delivered following the trend of social innovation and co-creation), but the problem lies in the low amount assigned for PB from public budgets and the relatively low interest of citizens to participate in the PB processes. PB might also bring certain risks linked with its implementation, e.g. misuse of the idea for political reasons or additional costs of projects delivered in the PB process.


The emerging sharing economy has disrupted the housing and transportation sectors. The underlining business model exploits underutilized infrastructure through sharing. In this paper, we explore sharing economy opportunities in electricity sector. There are considerable obstacles to sharing electricity. First, the flow of electricity is governed by Kirchoff's Laws and we cannot prescribe a point to point path for its flow. Second, regulatory and policy obstacles may impede sharing opportunities. As a result, early adopters will be in the context of behind-the-meter sharing opportunities. In this paper, we study one of these opportunities. Specifically, we consider a collection of firms that invest in storage to arbitrage against the time of use pricing they face. We show that the investment decision of the firms form a Nash equilibrium which supports the social welfare. We offer explicit expressions for optimal storage investments and equilibrium prices for shared storage in a spot market. Finally, we use field data to assess the performance of our proposed sharing scheme.


The year 1921 witnesses the opening of the Catholic University and the inauguration of courses and lectures in the Faculty of Philosophy. The present work intends to trace the development and the evolution of the philosophical school which sprang from programmes drafted in connection with the Rivista di filosolia neo-scolastica. Drawing from unpublished documentation in the Archives of the Catholic University itself, it focuses on the presence of this institution on the philosophical scene, analysing methods and contents of syllabuses, following design patterns in the contributions of the teaching staff to the Italian philosophical dabate, and hinting at publications promoted by this Faculty. This essay wishes to offer new elements for the evaluation of the antiidealistic controversy led on by teachers of this University, of their preoccupations about orthodoxy and of their privileged reference to doctrines of medieval scholasticism in connection with the study of modern and contemporary philosophy.