The emerging theory of graph limits exhibits an analytic perspective on graphs, showing that many important concepts and tools in graph theory and its applications can be described more naturally (and sometimes proved more easily) in analytic language. We extend the theory of graph limits to the ordered setting, presenting a limit object for dense vertex-ordered graphs, which we call an orderon. As a special case, this yields limit objects for matrices whose rows and columns are ordered, and for dynamic graphs that expand (via vertex insertions) over time. Along the way, we devise an ordered locality-preserving variant of the cut distance between ordered graphs, showing that two graphs are close with respect to this distance if and only if they are similar in terms of their ordered subgraph frequencies. We show that the space of orderons is compact with respect to this distance notion, which is key to a successful analysis of combinatorial objects through their limits. We derive several applications of the ordered limit theory in extremal combinatorics, sampling, and property testing in ordered graphs. In particular, we prove a new ordered analogue of the well-known result by Alon and Stav [RS\&A'08] on the furthest graph from a hereditary property; this is the first known result of this type in the ordered setting. Unlike the unordered regime, here the random graph model $G(n, p)$ with an ordering over the vertices is not always asymptotically the furthest from the property for some $p$. However, using our ordered limit theory, we show that random graphs generated by a stochastic block model, where the blocks are consecutive in the vertex ordering, are (approximately) the furthest. Additionally, we describe an alternative analytic proof of the ordered graph removal lemma [Alon et al., FOCS'17].


We have earlier shown an advantage in overall survival for malignant lymphoma (ML) patients who received combined Interleukin-2 (rIL-2) and interferon alpha (IFN-α) immunotherapy after autologous stem cell transplantation (AutoSCT) in comparison with historic controls. On the basis of these results, we initiated a control prospective randomized multicenter 2-arm study, comparing the same combined immunotherapy treatment versus control for patients with malignant lymphoma after AutoSCT. One hundred nine patients were included in this study. After AutoSCT, patients were randomized either to the treatment group or to the control group. Patients in the treatment group received daily subcutaneous injections of rIL-2 6×106 IU/m2/d for 5 consecutive days followed by 2-weeks rest period. Subsequently, they were treated daily with rIL-2 6×106 IU/m2/d combined with INF-α 3×106 U/d for 5 consecutive days per week for 4 consecutive weeks. After 4 weeks of rest, IFN-α 3×106 U was administered for the next 6 months 3 times per week. Patients in the control group were followed up at the outpatient clinic. There was a significant enhancement of survival (P=0.05) and a clear trend in disease-free survival in favor of NHL patients receiving post-AutoSCT immunotherapy, in comparison with the control group. Eighty-nine percent of patients with NHL treated with immunotherapy were alive and 64% were disease free. In the control group, 66% of patients survived and 46% were disease free. Among the HL patients no significant differences were observed regarding survival, disease-free survival, and relapse rate. No serious toxicity events were observed. These results suggest that outpatient administered immunotherapy with IFN-α and rIL-2 is relatively well tolerated and may intensify remission in NHL patients, but not HL patients after AutoSCT.


Incidence of thyroid tumors has been triplicated in United States and other countries during the last three decades. There is a 2.1-fold increase of thyroid carcinoma from 2001 to 2010 in Sri Lanka. Though there is a higher incidence of thyroid tumors, their malignancy rate is low. Ultra Sound Scanning (USS) and fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) are used as the main pre-operative diagnostic methods. However, histopathological examination of surgical sections is used as the gold standard in determining the malignancy of the thyroid nodules. In order to prevent unnecessary surgeries and the re-operations, effective pre-operative diagnosis is important. As most of other tumours, thyroid tumours too originated as a result of single or multiple genetic alterations or mutations of molecular markers like BRAF, RAS, RET/ PTC and TERT. These markers can be effectively used to determine the disease prognosis. The presence of any of these markers in the thyroid nodule represent a 100% positive predictive value and therefore it can be used for the clinical management of the patients. The use of molecular markers can significantly increase the diagnostic accuracy of thyroid malignancies. The combined use of molecular markers with the clinical findings and other pre surgical procedures including USS and FNAC can increase the diagnostic capability of the thyroid tumors. This can also be used for the individualized surgical approaches and post-surgical management of the patients.


This paper is on the research result for analyzing the performance of GLORY(GLobal Resource management sYstem) used for Web Server Cluster system, which was developed at ETRI(Electronic and Telecommunication Research Institute). The paper includes the definition of Web Server Cluster System, the characteristics of the system, user oriented system performance, current performance enhancement methods, computer simulation model for GLORY and its experimental results for the performance of GLORY. GLORY is composed of 2048~1,000,000 units of PCs, and is used for Internet servers. From the results of the simulation experiments, we notice that GLORY has enough capacity to fully serve the appropriate level of Internet services. Also, the results show that Web server service time is longer than that for network transmission time but requires more DNS than expected, and that 100Mbps LAN is good enough for directly connecting Internet to the Web servers while not affecting the total system performance.


Objectives: Malnutrition is a characteristic feature of cleft lip with or without palate (CL/P). This study aims to retrospectively quantify the physical growth status, evaluate the feeding methods, and identify the possible correlation of CL/P types with growth failure. Methods: The length and weight of 508 infants with CL/P and 118 healthy infants were recorded at the date of admission. The weight-for-age (W/A), length-for-age (L/A), and body mass index-for-age (BMI) of the infants were calculated. Results: The L/A values were significantly lower in the infants with cleft lip (CL, 123 cases) and cleft lip with palate (CLP, 122 cases) than those of the control infants (p < 0.01). The W/A values of the infants with CP (263 cases) and CLP were significantly lower than those of the control infants (p < 0.05). However, the BMI index was not significantly different between any of the studied groups and the controls. In the mixed feeding group, the infants with CL and CP showed significantly lower L/A (p < 0.05) and W/A (p < 0.05), respectively. Conclusion: Physical growth issues were more common in the infants with CP and CLP. Because this was a retrospective study, the foods supplied to the patients were not strictly uniform, therefore, a prospective study with unified food supplement may be needed to confirm these findings.


When an accretion disk surrounds a binary rotating in the same sense, the binary exerts strong torques on the gas. Analytic work in the 1D approximation indicated that these torques sharply diminish or even eliminate accretion from the disk onto the binary. However, recent 2D and 3D simulational work has shown at most modest diminution. We present new MHD simulations demonstrating that for binaries with mass ratios of 1 and 0.1 there is essentially no difference between the accretion rate at large radius in the disk and the accretion rate onto the binary. To resolve the discrepancy with earlier analytic estimates, we identify the small subset of gas trajectories traveling from the inner edge of the disk to the binary and show how the full accretion rate is concentrated onto them as a result of stream–disk shocks driven by the binary torques.


A fair scheduling mechanism called distributed elastic round robin (DERR) is proposed in this letter for IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs operated in a distributed manner. To quantify the fairness, we not only derive its fairness bound, but also observe the fairness through ratios of throughput and weight using a simulation approach. By numerical comparisons among DERR, distributed deficit round robin (DDRR), and IEEE 802.11e, we demonstrate that DERR outperforms the other two mechanisms in performance and fairness.


How to search and find information help for debates on abortion, physician assisted suicide and the need for special prosecutors to investigate shootings by polic officers in New York State.


We demonstrate a Web 3.0 application that organizes social events for friends in the larger San Francisco Bay Area using real data from available web sources. We use a collection of techniques that will be at the heart of the next wave of applications on the web; entity extraction, querying federated databases, efficient spatial reasoning, temporal reasoning, practical RDFS++ reasoning, reasoning over preferences, social network analytics, activity planning and activity recognition.


Our goal in the present article to give an insight on some important questions to be asked when choosing a Kriging model for the analysis of numerical experiments. We are especially concerned about the cases where the size of the design of experiments is relatively small to the algebraic dimension of the inputs. We first fix the notations and recall some basic properties of Kriging. Then we expose two experimental studies on subjects that are often skipped in the field of computer simulation analysis: the lack of reliability of likelihood maximization with few data and the consequences of a trend misspecification. We finally propose an example from a porous media application, with the introduction of an original Kriging method in which a non-linear additive model is used as an external trend.


Reaction between furan and the dialkynyl ester (CF3CC)2CPhO2CPh 1a in dichloromethane at 50 °C gave four rearranged 1 : 1 adducts, (Z)-5-(α-benzoyloxybenzylidene)-1,4-bis(trifluoromethyl)-8-oxa-tricyclo[4.3.0.02,9]nona-3,6-diene 11a(major product), 4-benzoyloxy-3,8-bis(trifluoromethyl)-1,1a,-2,8c-tetrahydro-4H-1,2,8b-epoxymethenocyclopropa[c]fluorene 15, the corresponding 3H-compound 16 and 8,9-dibenzoyl-4,7-bis(trifluoromethyl)-2-oxatetracyclo[188.8.131.52.3,504,9]non-7-ene 13avia the common intermediate 2-benzoyloxy-2-phenyl-4,10-bis(trifluoromethyl)-7-oxapentacyclo[184.108.40.206.1,3-0.5,908,10]dec-3-ene 8a formed from the Diels–Alder adduct by intramolecular (π2s+π2s+π2s) cyclo-addition. The corresponding reaction with the ester (CF3CC)2CMeO2CMe 1b gave analogously the diketone 13b(major product) and a mixture of the (E)- and (Z)-isomers of the triene 11b; a 2 : 1 adduct, 4-acetoxy-3-methyl-5,11-bis(trifluoromethyl)-8,1 5-dioxahexacyclo[10.2.1.0.2,110.4,90.5,70.6,10]-pentadeca-2,13-diene 10 was also isolated. A mixture of cyclopentadiene and the ester 1a(2 : 1 molar ratio), heated at 50 °C, yielded mainly the bis-Diels–Alder adduct α,α-bis(3-trifluoromethyl-bicyclo[2.2.1]hepta-2,5-dien-2-yl)benzylbenzoate 7a, together with the rearranged 1 : 1 adduct, diketone 13c. Similarly, the major product from the reaction of an excess of cyclopentadiene with ester 1b at 50 °C was the bis-Diels-Alder adduct 7b, but a 1 : 1 molar ratio of reactants at 20 °C gave the mono Diels-Alder adduct 1-(3-trifluoromethylbicyclo[2.2.1 ]hepta-2,5-dien-2-yl)-1-(3,3,3-trifluoropropynyl)ethyl ethanoate 6d in high yield. The bis adduct 7a was stable at 50 °C, but the mono adduct 6d underwent slow intramolecular (π2s+π2s+π2s) cycloaddition, cf., the furan reactions, and the intermediate 8d so formed rearranged to a mixture of 8,9-diacetyl-4,7-bis(trifluoromethyl)-tetracyclo[126.96.36.199.3,504,9]non-7-ene 13d and 1-acetoxy-1-[4,7- bis(trifluoromethyl)tetracyclo-[184.108.40.206.3,504,9]non-7-en-9-yl]ethene 18. In the presence of traces of water, the ketone 13d was only a minor product with the major products being the substituted ethene 18 and two diastereoisomers of 1-acetoxy-1-[4,7-bis(trifluoromethyl)tetracyclo[184.108.40.206.3,504,9]non-7-en-9-yl]ethanol 19.


Biosensor substrate materials are a key research focus in the field of sensors. Blu-ray discs (BDs) as universal sensor substrates are advantageous in comparison with other substrates (conventional paper and polycarbonate) in terms of easier activity treatment and higher density of reactive groups on the film surface. In this study, a novel and simple microfluidic biosensor based on BD coating film was developed by treating with sodium hydroxide solution and a piece of filter paper at slightly elevated temperatures. There are no significant physical damages to the substrate morphology, and the aging effect is minimal. The unique wetting, optical, and self-cleaning properties of the modified surfaces can be demonstrated in the paper. We have tested this new type of biosensor substrates for assay applications (the determination of total amino acids in tea leaves), which showed excellent performance in terms of sensitivity and reproducibility. The novel biosensor substrate material based on a simple BD coating film displayed preferable merits with easy making, low cost, easy using, and extensive application prospect.


Background: Blindness is defined by World Health Organisation as having a visual acuity of <3/60 in the better eye. Thirty-seven million people are blind worldwide. One million and four hundred thousand are children. The causes of blindness in children vary according to region and socioeconomic development. The aim of our study is to identify a range of potential issues relating to parental awareness and perceptions of common eye diseases affecting children. Materials and Methods: The type of study was population-based, prospective, cross-sectional study conducted on parents of 200 children ranging from 0 to 16 years of age, attending Paediatric Ophthalmology clinic during the month of August and September 2014. This was an open-ended questionnaire-based study and only the participants who consented were enrolled in the study. Results: The most common eye problem detected among 200 of children was refractive errors. The incidence of refractive errors was found to be 103 out of 200 (51.5%). This is followed by 71 (35.5%) cases of squint/strabismus. Of 200 parents, 150 (75%) think the present eye condition of their child will reduce the eyesight. However, they did not know about the nature of the eye problem. Forty-four (22%) parents did not know anything about the eye condition of their child. Seventy (35%) parents were apprehensive about the use of spectacles in the children suffering from refractive errors. One hundred and six (53%) parents came to know about the eye problem of their child from the teacher of the child and 63 (31.5%) parents got information from their family doctor. Conclusions: As the number of mothers attending the eye department with the child is high, so there is more need of educating the mothers about the eye conditions of the child. Education and socioeconomic conditions affect the knowledge and awareness level of the parents regarding eye problems. Most of the children attending outpatient department were found to be in the age group of 5-8 years. This may point toward factors like dietary deficiency of Vitamin A and other important nutrients. Commonest eye problem was of refractive errors among children.


There are essentially 3 types of hepatobiliary disorders associated with parenteral nutrition (PN) therapy: steatosis, cholestasis, and gallbladder sludge/stones. Reported prevalence rates of PN-associated liver disease (PNALD) vary greatly, and there are distinct differences between adult and pediatric patients. Various etiologic factors have been evaluated for significance in contributing to PNALD, including enteral feeding history, septic events, bacterial overgrowth, length of intestinal resection, and prematurity/low birth weight. Etiologic factors specifically related to the PN formulation or nutrient intake have also been evaluated, including excessive calorie intake, dextrose-to-lipid ratio, amino acid dose, taurine deficiency, IV fat emulsion (IVFE) dose, carnitine deficiency, choline deficiency, and continuous vs cyclic infusion. Minor increases in serum aminotransferase concentrations are relatively common in patients receiving PN therapy and generally require no intervention. The primary indicator of cholestasis is a serum conjugated bilirubin >2 mg/dL. When a patient receiving PN develops liver complications, it is necessary to rule out all treatable causes and minimize other risk factors. All potential hepatotoxic medications and herbal supplements should be eliminated. Modifications to the PN regimen that may be helpful include reduction of calories, reduction of IVFE dose to <1 g/kg/d, supplementation of taurine in the infant, and use of cyclic infusion. Initiation of even small amounts of enteral nutrition and use of ursodiol may be beneficial in stimulating bile flow. In the long-term PN patient with severe and progressive liver disease, intestinal or liver transplantation may be the only remaining treatment option.


Mn-doped 2D perovskite powders are promising phosphors for warm white light-emitting diodes (LEDs). However, it remains a challenge to solve the problem of lead toxicity and improve the photoluminescence quantum yields (PLQYs). Here, we have successfully prepared Mn-doped 2D Sn-based perovskite materials ((C8H17NH2)2Sn1−xMnxBr4). The PLQYs of (C8H17NH2)2Sn1−xMnxBr4 (x = 0.26) powders reach up to 42%. The as-prepared (C8H17NH2)2Sn1−xMnxBr4 exhibits a single broad photoluminescence (PL) band, differing from the dual peaks of Mn-doped lead halide perovskite quantum dots. Theoretical conclusions and experimental results show the competitive relationship between self-trapped exciton (STE) emission from the host crystal and dopant Mn d–d transition emission. With increasing Mn dopant concentration, the PL spectra exhibit red shifts and the full width at half-maximum (FWHM) becomes larger, which is constructive for warm white LEDs. The fabricated warm white LEDs based on (C8H17NH2)2Sn1−xMnxBr4 show a warm white light correlated color temperature (CCT; 3542 K) and a high color-rendering index (Ra, 88.12). Our work provides new possibilities for optoelectronic devices based on lead-free perovskite materials.


The experiments reported in this thesis attempted to directly study the process of look-ahead during problem solving. Recent work has suggested that interface manipulations that increase look-ahead during problem solving lead to improvements in performance. However, evidence has been indirect, and there have been few attempts specifically made to quantify look-ahead span, changes that may occur over time and possible interactions with the task environment. An initial experiment required users to specify 3 moves in advance while solving the 8-puzzle. The strict enforcing of look-ahead by even a small number of moves was unsuccessful in terms of improving problem performance. In fact, results indicated that such move enforcement may negatively affect performance. Subsequent experiments, using both the 8-puzzle and Water Jars problems, provided participants with a motivation to plan using a Scoreboard system that rewarded greater planning and look-ahead. Results found this approach to be more viable, as the interface appeared to support the opportunistic planning behaviour frequently undertaken by participants. Across a series of experiments, increased look-ahead led to more efficient problem solving performance compared to controls, while leaving total time to solution unaffected. Look-ahead span increased to approximately 11 steps when transforming the same start-state to a goal-state over trials on the 8-puzzle. When a new solution path had to be generated for each new problem start-state, look-ahead still increased over trials, but only to a span of approximately 4 steps. This look-ahead span was also observed during Water Jars performance when the Scoreboard manipulation was present. A manipulation of 'system response time' (SRT) on Water Jars problems also led to improved performance but indicated an adaptation to the manipulation, leading to a lesser impact of SRT than previous manipulations. The results are discussed in relation to existing studies of planning, performance and the role that look-ahead may have in future studies of problem solving.


Impact on the family resulting from children's emotional and behavioral problems, with particular attention to relationships between such family impact and use of mental health services, is explored in this article. Data come from the Great Smoky Mountains Study, an epidemiologic, longitudinal study of children's mental health problems and service use in a rural region of the southeastern United States. Reported measures include the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Assessment, Child and Adolescent Service Assessment, and Child and Adolescent Impact Assessment. Youths who first used services when they were 10–15 years of age showed significantly higher rates and levels of family impact than similar youths who did not enter services. Such impacts were most notable in the areas of parental well-being (e.g., depression, worries) and parents' sense of competence to handle the child's problems. Youths in this age range who used services but were not new to the system showed somewhat higher rates of family impact than youths who were new to the system, particularly in the area of parental use of mental health services. We discuss these findings in terms of service provision and further research needs.


Giardia duodenalis is an important zoonotic protozoon, which can infect a variety of animals, causing diarrhea and even death of animals or humans. Dairy cattle have been implicated as important sources of human G. duodenalis. However, the information about the prevalence and genetic diversity of G. duodenalis in dairy cattle in China's Yunnan Province remains limited. This study investigated the occurrence and multilocus genotyping of G. duodenalis of Holstein cattle in Yunnan Province, China. A total of 524 fresh fecal samples of Holstein cattle were randomly collected from 8 farms in Yunnan. In this study, 27.5% (144/524) of tested samples were positive for G. duodenalis infection. The highest infection ratio was found in preweaned calves (33.7%), and the infection rates of postweaned calves, growing cattle, and adult cattle were 24.5%, 23.0%, and 17.3%, respectively. The sequence analysis of SSU rRNA gene showed that the predominant assemblage of G. duodenalis in this study was assemblage E (97.9%, 141/144), whereas assemblage A was identified only in three samples (2.1%, 3/144). All G. duodenalis-positive samples were further assayed with nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) targeting β-giardin (bg), triosephosphate isomerase (tpi), and glutamate dehydrogenase (gdh) genes, and 87, 41, and 81 sequences were obtained, respectively. Mixed infection of assemblages A and E of G. duodenalis was detected in three samples. Multilocus genotyping yielded 23 multilocus genotypes (MLGs). This is the first study that reveals the prevalence data of G. duodenalis in Holstein cattle in Yunnan Province, and the results of this study provided baseline data for the prevention and control of G. duodenalis infection in Holstein cattle in Yunnan Province, China.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the benefits of post-stenting radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy for unresectable esophageal carcinoma.

METHODS
Fifty-three patients with unresectable esophageal carcinoma were randomly divided into two groups: patients in group A (n = 27) were treated with stenting alone, and those in group B (n = 26) were treated with stenting followed by radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy. Comparison was made by assessing their survival time, quality of life (QOL), degree of dysphagia, and stenting-related morbidity, respectively.

RESULTS
There was no statistically significant improvement in dysphagia and QOL between the two groups. Although there was no difference in the frequency of stenting-related complications, re-stenosis occurred much less frequently in group B patients (P = 0.007). The mean survival time of patients was 245 +/- 41 days and 262 +/- 43 days in group A and group B, respectively. There was no significant difference between the two groups (P = 0.813).

CONCLUSION
Besides decreased recurrence of stenosis, post-stenting radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy does not provide additional benefits for survival.


Modern distributed systems often rely on so called weakly-consistent databases, which achieve scalability by sacrificing the consistency guarantee of distributed transaction processing. Such databases have been formalised in two different styles, one based on abstract executions and the other based on dependency graphs. The choice between these styles has been made according to intended applications: the former has been used to specify and verify the implementation of these databases, and the latter to prove properties of programs running on top of the databases. In this paper, we present a set of novel algebraic laws (i.e. inequations) that connect these two styles of specifications; the laws relate binary relations used in a specification based on abstract executions, to those used in a specification based on dependency graphs. We then show that this algebraic connection gives rise to so called robustness criteria, conditions which ensures that a program running on top of a weakly-consistent database does not exhibit anomalous behaviours due to this weak consistency. These criteria make it easy to reason about programs running on top of these databases, and may become a basis for dynamic or static program analyses. For a certain class of consistency models specifications, we prove a full abstraction result that connects the two styles of specifications.


We perform a massive evaluation of neural networks with architectures corresponding to random graphs of various types. We investigate various structural and numerical properties of the graphs in relation to neural network test accuracy. We find that none of the classical numerical graph invariants by itself allows to single out the best networks. Consequently, we introduce a new numerical graph characteristic that selects a set of quasi-1-dimensional graphs, which are a majority among the best performing networks. We also find that networks with primarily short-range connections perform better than networks which allow for many long-range connections. Moreover, many resolution reducing pathways are beneficial. We provide a dataset of 1020 graphs and the test accuracies of their corresponding neural networks at https://github.com/rmldj/random-graph-nn-paper


As a new and energetic realm of economic development, an innovative engine of social development, and a strategic tool for shaping national competitiveness, big data significantly effects peoples lives. However, improved social awareness of data value and vigorous development of big data platforms mean that big data security is increasingly hindering the promotion of big data applications. Meanwhile, as big data technology and framework continue to evolve, researchers still have different understandings of the core ideas and key features of big data security, and a unified big data security framework has yet to be established. Currently, determining the state-of-the-art of big data security technology is urgently needed to provide reference for research aimed at solving key big data security issues. Following a typical big data system technology framework, this review builds a novel big data security technology framework around big data security requirements. With this framework, state-of-the-art key big data security technologies are systematically summarized from three aspects: big data secure sharing and trusted services, big data platform security, and big data security supervision, which includes the main security mechanisms involved in big data business processes and system technology frameworks. Finally, big data security technologys core issues and development trends are summarized.


A Land Grid Array (LGA) is an area array component similar to a Ball Grid Array (BGA), but without solder balls attached to the bottom surface of the package. Due to the absence of solder balls, the LGA package has a lower thickness as compared to an equivalent BGA package. Accordingly, this reduces the thickness of the module assembly. This is a critical consideration especially for modules using stacked packages. On the other hand, the lower standoff height of the solder joints could have an impact on the performance of the package during temperature cycling. For high density modules, along with 'minimizing' the thickness, it is desirable to avoid increasing the package size in the length and width directions. This allows maintaining the same number of Inputs/Outputs (I/Os) as a comparable BGA device and accommodates the package on existing Printed Circuit Board (PCB) designs. For this reason, the LGA package used for the current research was identical to the BGA device that is currently used for the stacked package, but without solder balls on the bottom side. The stacked package utilizing these LGA devices and the modules were assembled using Sn3.8Ag0.7Cu lead-free solder. The reliability of the assembly was assessed using thermal cycling test. Based on the results, the first failure was recorded at the end of 1250 thermal cycles, whereas the comparable stacked package using BGA components was able to withstand 1500 cycles without failures. Dye & pry analysis was also performed on the failed stacked packages as a part of failure analysis.Copyright © 2010 by ASME


Otto Rene Castillo (Guatemala, 1936-1967) was a political intellectual. As the consequence of his organizing activities at the University of Guatemala he was tortured, imprisoned, and then exiled. In 1955 he shared the Central American Poetry Award with Roque Dalton. After a period of study at the University of Leipzig, he returned to Guatemala in 1966 and joined the FAR (Armed Rebel Forces). In March 1967, having subsisted on roots for fifteen days, his guerrilla group was ambushed and captured. After four days of torture Castillo was put to death and his body incinerated.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.


Enabling real time applications in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) demands certain delay and bandwidth requirements which pose more challenges in the design of networking protocols. Therefore, enabling such applications in this type of networks requires energy and Quality of Service (QoS) awareness in different layers of the protocol stack. In many of these applications (such as multimedia applications, or real time and mission critical applications), the network traffic is mixed of delay sensitive and reliability demanding data. Hence, QoS routing becomes an important issue. In this paper, we propose an Energy Efficient and QoS aware multipath routing protocol (we name it shortly as EQSR) that maximizes the network lifetime through balancing energy consumption across multiple nodes, uses the concept of service differentiation to allow high important traffic (or delay sensitive traffic) to reach the sink node within an acceptable delay, reduces the end to end delay through spreading out the traffic across multiple paths, and increases the throughput through introducing data redundancy. EQSR uses the residual energy, node available buffer size, and Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) to predict the best next hop through the paths construction phase. Based on the concept of service differentiation the EQSR protocol employs a queuing model to handle both real time and non-real time traffic. By means of computer simulations, we evaluated and studied the performance of our routing protocol and compared it with another protocol. Simulation results have shown that our protocol achieves lower average delay and higher packet delivery ratio than the other protocol.


The use of a centrifugal disk atomizer to produce chemically sprayed CdS films is described. The film growth rate has been found to depend on substrate temperature, solution concentration, and feed rate. The films grown on glass substrates have been studied by electron microscopy and x-ray diffraction. A fine-grained wurtzite structure has been obtained.


Abstract— Three days following a single injection of reserpine (10 mg/kg, i.p.) the activity and amount of dopamine‐β‐hydroxylase (DBH) are increased nearly 2‐fold in the noradrenergic cell bodies of the nucleus locus coeruleus of rat. To determine if this increased accumulation of DBH is due to an increased rate of enzyme synthesis, [3H]amino acids were infused into the IVth ventricle of reserpine‐and saline‐injected rats. This method was 35 times more effective than intracisternal infusion and 600 times more effective than intravenous infusion. DBH protein was isolated from the locus coeruleus by immunoprecipitation and SDS‐electrophoresis. These steps proved crucial for the complete isolation of DBH from other labelled proteins. Indeed, only 10–15% of the immunoprecipitate was finally identified as labelled DBH protein. The rate of incorporation of [3H]leucine into DBH protein of locus coeruleus was increased to 181%, of control following reserpine, whereas that into TCA‐precipitable protein was unchanged. A similar result was obtained using [3H]lysine. In contrast, the apparent half‐life of the enzyme did not change following reserpine. The relative rate of synthesis of DBH ([3H]DBH/3H‐total protein), denoting selectivity of response, was increased in the locus coeruleus of reserpine‐treated rats to 154% of control (P < 0.01). These findings indicate that increased synthesis accounts for the observed increase in DBH protein in the locus coeruleus following reserpine administration.


Abstract Three species of the genus Neothada, including N. cancellata, N. hades and N. major, collected from the rhizosphere of mosses in Khuzestan, southwestern Iran, are redescribed and illustrated. Neothada hades and N. major are new records from Iran. Neothada hades has 14 longitudinal incisures excluding the lateral field, body length of 586 (505–674) µm, stylet 10.5 (10.0–10.8) µm in length bearing distinct basal knobs, and an elongated-conical tail 70.4 (65–74) µm long with a finely to bluntly rounded terminus. N. major possesses 18–20 longitudinal incisures excluding the lateral field, body length of 657 (600–728) µm, stylet 10.9 (10.3–11.7) µm long with basal swellings but not distinct knobs, and an elongated-conical tail 78.2 (70–83) µm long ending to a finely to bluntly rounded terminus. Molecular phylogenetic studies of the two species (N. hades and N. major) with 664 bp of D2-D3 expansion segments of 28 S rDNA revealed that they form a clade with N. cancellata.


The question of how the concept of human rights-so crucially important for the implementation of justice in a rapidly globalizing world-relates to the plurality of cultures and religions has still not been solved. Controversies such as those over land rights in Aboriginal Australia and Asian values in Southeast Asia have shown this repeatedly. In such cases, discussion eventually becomes focused on the universality of human rights, not just the global scope of the idea itself but the universal validity of catalogues of specific rights such as those contained in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December 10, 1948). There is something arbitrary and unsystematic about such charters, as is shown by the rather different emphases in the African and Islamic documents which were meant to correct the UN's lack of universality.2 But if, in attempting to explore this problem seriously, one appears to tamper with the principle of universality, one can easily be accused of diluting the ethical force of human rights by questioning their applicability to every human being without exception. Nothing could be further from my mind, so before explaining what I wish to do in this paper I shall first set out some presuppositions that I take to be axiomatic: 1. Our starting point is the dignity of the human, the unique value of each individual human life as a world constituted by consciousness, an originating source of free acts, which is therefore an end in itself and must never be misused as a means to other people's ends.3 This principle is reflected in formulations such as dignitas humana in the social teaching of the Catholic Church, which goes back to the biblical doctrine of the creation of human beings in the image of God, or in the unique status of the human being in the Buddhist scale of existence, on which neither animals nor gods but only humans are in a position to grasp the reality of their situation and strive for definitive release from the chain of becoming; hence the severity of the prohibition on taking human life as the third of the four cardinal offences


Performance of a reactor designed for the hydrolysis of Zn in the two-step Zn/ZnO solar thermochemical cycle for hydrogen production is explored. Technically, complete hydrolysis of Zn in the hydrogen production step remains a major barrier to implementation, and much attention has been given to Zn nano-scale reacting aerosols as a solution. The success of this continuous process depends on achieving high particle yields and high conversions in the aerosol. A key challenge is to control the flow field in aerosol reactors to keep the particles entrained in the flow without deposition on the reactor wall. The ability of a new reactor concept based on transverse jet fluid dynamics to control the flow field and rapidly cool the Zn vapor is investigated. In the transverse jet reactor, evaporated Zn entrained in an Ar carrier gas issues vertically into the horizontal tubular reactor through which cooler H2O and Ar flow. Particles are formed in the presence of steam at ∼ 450K. The trajectory of the jet is controlled via the effective velocity ratio, R, which is the square root of the ratio of the kinetic energy of the jet to that of the cross-flow. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model indicates that the trajectory of the jet can be controlled so that the majority of the Zn mass is directed down the center of the reactor, not near the reactor walls for R = 4.25 to R = 4.5. Experimentally, maximum particle yields of 93% of the mass entering the reactor are obtained at R = 4.5.© 2012 ASME


We consider a broad class of Continuous Time Random Walks (CTRW) with large fluctuations effects in space and time distributions: a random walk with trapping, describing subdiffusion in disordered and glassy materials, and a Lévy walk process, often used to model superdiffusive effects in inhomogeneous materials. We derive the scaling form of the probability distributions and the asymptotic properties of all its moments in the presence of a field by two powerful techniques, based on matching conditions and on the estimate of the contribution of rare events to power-law tails in a field.


This paper presents an optimized design on surface acoustic wave (SAW)-based pressure sensor, which is composed of a broadband reflective delay line and a bond substrate underneath the diaphragm. Using the equivalent circuit model (ECM), the SAW device was simulated, and the effect of inter-digital transducer structure, acoustic aperture and number of finger pairs on the performance of the system was studied. To determine the geometry and configuration of the sensor, Finite Element Method (FEM) was used to calculate the diaphragm bending and stress/strain distribution. From the ECM simulation and FEM analysis, the optimal design parameters were determined, and a new 440 MHz reflective delay line on 41deg YX LiNbO3 was developed, the measured reflection coefficient S11 results in time domain shows a good agreement with simulated one, low loss, sharp reflected peaks and high dynamic separation between the peaks were observed. The SAW device was successfully applied to pressure measurement, and the experiment results approve it is working satisfactorily


The conventional methods of administering vitamin K to the newborn infant are not ideal. Oral administration of oily solutions involves the danger of lipid pneumonia as well as of damage caused by the irritating naphthoquinones themselves. Parenterally injected oily solutions of synthetic vitamin K cause encapsulation of the oily depot and are slowly absorbed. This disadvantage has in part been overcome by the use of water-soluble derivatives. However, the irritant effect of the naphthoquinones remains. Moreover, an injection into a newborn infant should if possible be avoided. Percutaneous administration of vitamin K would overcome all these disadvantages and popularize the general use of this preventive medium. It is true that this route of administration is incompatible with exact dosage. However, vitamin K seems generally to be so overdosed that even the loss of a material part of the usual 1 mg. dose would not be critical. Sells, Walker and Owen


Snowoff (SO) date—defined as the last day of observed seasonal snow cover—is an important governor of ecologic and hydrologic processes across Alaska and Arctic-Boreal landscapes; however, our understanding and capacity for the monitoring of spatial and temporal variability in the SO date is still lacking. In this study, we present a 6.25 km spatially gridded passive microwave (PMW) SO data record, complimenting current Alaskan SO records from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) and Landsat, but extending the SO record an additional 13 years. The PMW SO record was validated against in situ snow depth observations and showed favorable accuracy (0.66–0.92 mean correlations; 2–10 day mean absolute errors) for the major climate regions of Alaska. The PMW SO results were also within 10 days of finer spatial scale SO observational records, including Interactive Multisensor Snow and Ice Mapping System (IMS), MODIS, and Landsat, for a majority (75%) of Alaska. However, the PMW record showed a general SO delay at higher elevations and across the Alaska North Slope, and earlier SO in the Alaska interior and southwest regions relative to the other SO records. Overall, we assign an uncertainty +/−11 days to the PMW SO. The PMW SO record benefits from the near-daily temporal fidelity of underlying brightness temperature (Tb) observations and reveals a mean regional trend in earlier SO timing (−0.39 days yr−1), while significant (p < 0.1) SO trend areas encompassed 11% of the Alaska domain and ranged from −0.11 days yr−1 to −1.31 days yr−1 over the 29-year satellite record. The observed SO dates also showed anomalous early SO dates during markedly warm years. Our results clarify the pattern and rate of SO changes across Alaska, which are interactive with global warming and contributing to widespread permafrost degradation, changes in regional hydrology, ecosystems, and associated services. Our results also provide a robust means for SO monitoring from satellite PMW observations with similar precision as more traditional and finer scale observations.


The Keldysh-Green function approximate solutions of the correlation effects on the charge-exchange probabilities for a scattered atom from a three-atom linear chain within the Anderson model are compared with exact results for different velocities of the moving atom.


The global ageing population puts a burden on healthcare systems not only from the point of view of cost-related aspects, but also from the senior patients' point of view who tend to be predominately empowered regarding their own health management, digitally-skilled and demanding for personalized health protocols and solutions. Silver Digital Patients can be defined as seniors that master improved abilities of using digital technology in their daily activities, including in monitoring their health, who prove increased interest in having access to the best healthcare to preserve as much as possible their independence and health. An active, decent and safe life for seniors is at its best in their own homes; therefore, a remote health monitoring represents the most appropriate way to smooth the disruptive degenerative age-related factors, together with the important benefit of relieving the expenditures for senior institutionalizations. In this respect, emerging senior-centered technologies have the potential to provide a reliable support for building the most appropriate healthcare provision and environment. Internet of Health Things (IoHT) is a concept for a great variety of devices connected to the Internet that are able to gather a huge amount of diverse data - like health or environmental parameters - in order to keep a close remote watch on the patient, to improve the diagnose of his/her health status and to establish a better preventative healthcare. Edge computing brings the potential of improving the performance and responsiveness of IoHT by allowing the real-time collected data to be pre-processed closer to the source, which can be extremely important for time-sensitive health data in order to identify and trigger anticipatory or reactive health actions. This paper presents a case study -" Non-invasive monitoring and health assessment of the elderly in a smart environment (RO-SmartAgeing)" project - that evaluates the opportunities brought by IoHT and edge computing for a monitoring application. The general objective of this project is to demonstrate the potential of some emerging technology for the positive transformation of how healthcare services are provided to the seniors and to healthcare provider. According to its current development state, a proposed IoHT-based architecture of the monitoring application and a data analytics demo for a health parameter is presented.


The study on utilization of carrot pomace powder (CPP) and germinated chickpea flour (GCF) in biscuits was undertaken to upgrade the nutritional quality and assess the acceptability. The biscuits were prepared from composite flours by incorporating 5, 8 and 10 parts of germinated chickpea flour and similar corresponding parts of carrot pomace powder in to wheat flour. The biscuits were analyzed for their physical properties, chemical composition and sensory properties. The spread ratio of the biscuits increased from 6.1 to 8.4 with the increase of CPP and GCF in the blends. With the increase in the concentration of CPP and GCF, there was an increase in protein, ash and crude fiber contents. The crude fiber content of the biscuits supplemented with 10% CPP and GCF was the highest (3.2%). The biscuits supplemented with CPP and GCF up to 8% level were of acceptable sensory quality.


In recent years the use of polymers has become increasingly significant in almost all
areas of industry. Polyurethanes in particular can be produced in an extremely large
range of formulations, and with a wide range of properties. The research carried out
here was based on polyurethane foams used within the automotive industry for seating
and insulation.
One of the biggest problems facing the manufacturers of polyurethane foam is that of
releasing a part from its mould without causing damage to either the part or the mould
itself. Traditional methods of manufacture involve the use of a steel or aluminium
mould, coated with a sacrificial, normally wax-based, release agent in order to allow
effective part removal. Various environmental and financial issues are associated
with the use of these release agents, and this research, therefore, aimed to provide an
alternative to their use.
Many companies use moulds manufactured from polymeric materials for short run
production, and occasionally it has been observed that in certain cases a PU foam part
can be released without using a sacrificial release agent. However, the issue of
predicting release of PU foam from a polymer mould is something of a 'black art',
and in most cases a company will continue to use a sacrificial release agent in order to
prevent any possibility of parts sticking in the mould. The author of this work has shown that the low surface energy of a polymer allows
un-aided polyurethane foam release under certain conditions. It has also been shown
that, contrary to a large school of thought, the roughness of the substrate had a large
effect on the ability of a polymer surface to release. The foam composition was also
significant.
Crucially it has been shown that, given the input of the surface energy of a polymer
substrate, its roughness and the composition of the foam, it is possible to predict
whether or not un-aided release should be possible, and a model has been produced in
order to allow this prediction for the foams under consideration. This model will
provide a company with the ability to identify possible polymeric mould materials,
and levels of finishing for these moulds, which have the potential to allow un-aided
release of polyurethane parts.


We generalize the Susceptible-Infected-Removed (SIR) model for epidemics to take into account generic effects of heterogeneity in the degree of susceptibility to infection in the population. We introduce a single new parameter corresponding to a power-law exponent of the susceptibility distribution at small susceptibilities. We find that for this class of distributions the gamma distribution is the attractor of the dynamics. This allows us to identify generic effects of population heterogeneity in a model as simple as the original SIR model which is contained as a limiting case. Because of this simplicity, numerical solutions can be generated easily and key properties of the epidemic wave can still be obtained exactly. In particular, we present exact expressions for the herd immunity level, the final size of the epidemic, as well as for the shape of the wave and for observables that can be quantified during an epidemic. In strongly heterogeneous populations, the herd immunity level can be much lower than in models with homogeneous populations as commonly used for example to discuss effects of mitigation. Using our model to analyze data for the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Germany shows that the reported time course is consistent with several scenarios characterized by different levels of immunity. These scenarios differ in population heterogeneity and in the time course of the infection rate, for example due to mitigation efforts or seasonality. Our analysis reveals that quantifying the effects of mitigation requires knowledge on the degree of heterogeneity in the population. Our work shows that key effects of population heterogeneity can be captured without increasing the complexity of the model. We show that information about population heterogeneity will be key to understand how far an epidemic has progressed and what can be expected for its future course.


While sexual violence occurs in all wars, its extent varies dramatically. During the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the sexual abuse of Bosnian Muslim women by Bosnian Serb forces was so systematic and widespread that it comprised a crime against humanity under international law. In Rwanda, the widespread rape of Tutsi women comprised a form of genocide, according to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Yet sexual violence in some conflicts is remarkably limited despite other violence against civilians. Even in some cases of ethnic conflict, sexual violence is limited; the conflicts in Israel/Palestine and Sri Lanka are examples. Some armed groups, such as the Salvadoran and Sri Lankan insurgencies, appear to effectively prohibit their combatants engaging in sexual violence against civilians. The form of sexual violence varies as well. In some conflicts, it takes the form of sexual slavery; in others, state agents engage in sexualized torture of persons suspected of collaborating with insurgents; in others, combatants target women of particular groups during ethnic or political cleansing; in still others, individuals engage in it opportunistically; and in some conflicts, all or nearly all forms occur. In some wars, women belonging to particular groups are targeted; in others, the attacks are much less discriminate. In some wars, only females are targeted; in others, males are as well. Some acts of wartime sexual violence are committed by individuals; many are committed by groups. Some acts occur in private settings; many are public, in front of family or community members.


Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) has become an increasingly utilized biological adjunct in orthopedics, particularly in sports medicine. Cartilage repair is one such application for which PRP has been utilized. Osteochondral lesions of the talus are common athletic injuries, and they present a difficult clinical problem in part because of the poor biological environment of cartilage healing. The current authors' are investigating the use of PRP with reparative and restorative techniques, including arthroscopic bone marrow stimulation and autologous osteochondral transplantation, respectively. The hypothesis is that the bioactive molecules and growth factors contained within PRP will stimulate a healing response for the differentiation of fibrocartilage such that it resembles a more hyaline-like microstructure, in addition to enhancing bony incorpoaration. In addition to these anabolic pathways, there is also recent evidence to suggest that PRP may inhibit the catabolic processes of arthritis. This article presents the indications and treatment strategy for using PRP in the surgical treatment of osteochondral lesions of the talus.


Products of phosphate oxidation in a weak alkaline medium in the electrolysis and in the reaction, photosensitized by chlorophyll, are studied. It is shown that besides perphosphates, pyrophosphate can be formed under electrochemical phosphate oxidation. Phosphate was used as an electron donor and the air oxygen was an electron acceptor in the red-ox reaction, photosensitized by chlorophyll. The reaction was accompanied by the decrease of inorganic phosphate content in the reaction medium and by the phosphorylation of ADP to ATP. The mechanism of photophosphorylation is discussed on the basis of the data obtained.


In free radical polymerization diffusion-controlled processes take place simultaneously to the normal chemical reactions. Despite extensive efforts to model such processes a consistent model for the design of a polymerization reactor has not yet been established. In this article a semiempirical model describing the conversion, polymerization degree, and molecular weight distribution (MWD) for the free radical polymerization is developed for the entire course of the reaction. The model includes the change of termination, propagation, transfer, and initiation rate. By simultaneous parameter estimation from the conversion and degrees of polymerization data the model parameters have been determined for isothermal polymerizations of methyl methacrylate (MMA) and styrene (ST). The simulation results for the conversion, degrees of polymerization, and MWD are in good accordance with experimental data for suspension and bulk polymerization of MMA and ST up to very high conversions. The influence of diffusion on the propagation rate in case of polymerization of MMA is negligible compared to the influence of the cage effect on the radical efficiency; in case of ST polymerization both effects must be included in the kinetic model. The model presented is also tested for polymerizations conducted in the presence of solvent and/or chain transfer agents.


Amino-functionalized H2N-Zr-Ce-SBA-15(H2N-ZCS) mesoporous materials with unique hexagonal platelet morphologies and short channels were synthesized by a post-grafting method using [1-(2-amino-ethyl)-3-aminopropyl] trimethoxysilane(AAPTS) and tetraethyl orthosilicate(TEOS) as a silica source,zirconyl chloride and cerous nitrate as precursors,and pluronic P123 triblock copolymer as a structure directing agent.The as-synthesized materials were characterized by low-angle X-ray diffraction(LXRD),transmission electron microscopy(TEM),scanning electron microscopy(SEM),Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy(FT-IR),thermogravimetry(TG),and N2 adsorption/ desorption isotherms.Characterization revealed that the functionalized H2N-ZCS mesoporous materials have unique hexagonal platelet morphologies with short channels and they possess a highly ordered two-dimensional hexagonal mesoporous structure similar to conventional SBA-15.The uptake of anionic dye onto the organic functionalized H2N-ZCS and H2N-SBA-15 were compared.The results demonstrate that H2N-ZCS materials have higher adsorption rates and adsorption capacities compared with H2N-SBA-15.The resultant H2N-ZCS materials with short channels are superior to conventional SBA-15 in terms of fiber morphology facilitating molecular diffusion when used in adsorption,separation,and catalytic processes.


Using multiple HPLC steps, we have identified and purified a 68-kDa polypeptide (as estimated by gel permeation HPLC) to apparent homogeneity, from primary Sertoli cell-enriched culture medium, that consisted of two monomers of 35 (alpha chain) and 33 kDa (ss chain) on SDS-polyacrylamide gel running under reducing conditions. Partial N-terminal amino acid sequence analysis of these two monomers revealed sequences of NH2-DXGESGVDLADRL (SODEX-alpha) and NH2-XXDTGESGVDLADXL (SODEX-ss), which are identical to rat extracellular superoxide dismutase (SODEX) with the exceptions that SODEX-alpha and SODEX-ss are missing, respectively, four (Trp-Thr-Met-Ser) and two (Trp-Thr) amino acids from their N-termini, compared to rat SODEX, suggesting that the cleavage sites of the SODEX gene in the testis are different from that of other organs. Studies by sequential use of reverse transcription and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using two SODEX primers have demonstrated the expression of SODEX in the heart, brain, lung, kidney, epididymis, testis, Sertoli, and germ cells, with low expression in the liver and ovary and no expression in the uterus, spleen, or thymus. Nucleotide sequence analysis of this 447-base pair PCR product from Sertoli cells revealed that its sequence is equivalent to the sequence of previously published rat SODEX. During testicular maturation, the SODEX steady-state mRNA level increased significantly from 20 to 60 days of age and then declined at 90 days of age. Such an increase in the testicular SODEX expression during maturation is not likely a result of an up-regulation by germ cells, since germ cells isolated from either 20- or 60-day-old rats when cocultured with Sertoli cells failed to elicit an increase in SODEX expression in the cocultures. Using primary Sertoli cell cultures in vitro, it was found that Sertoli cell SODEX expression was stimulated by interleukin-1alpha but not by either interferon-gamma or basic fibroblast growth factor. These results illustrate that Sertoli cells as well as germ cells synthesize and/or secrete a testicular variant of SODEX that may provide essential clues to understanding superoxide radical-mediated damage in the gonad.


In the current literature, the primary determinants of terrorist attack casualty rates have been attributed to religious fundamentalism. While zealotry, martyrdom, and the pursuit of salvation certainly empower religious fundamentalists with the liberty to decimate human targets, I argue that the sustaining necessity to recruit more terrorists from within the population, not religious fundamentalism alone, is an important predictor of the brutality of an attack. When targets are located within a potential recruitment population, there is an imminent need to restrict violence, as unnecessary collateral damage turns potential supporters away, rather than attracts them. Conversely, transnational attacks occurring outside the recruitment population abrogate these restrictions on violence. I test this argument on terrorist attacks from 1998–2005 and find empirical evidence that transnational attacks are a predictive cause of high casualty rates in a target population.


BACKGROUND
Inconclusive evidence exists in the literature with regard to the additional effect of the use of dentifrice on plaque removal. The present study was undertaken to test whether the use of dentifrice during toothbrushing contributes to the instant cleaning efficacy of the brushing procedure.

METHODS
Three groups of patients, 40 subjects each, were randomly assigned to one of three dentifrices that differed with respect to the relative dentin abrasivity (RDA) value. After a 48-hour plaque accumulation, subjects brushed under supervision in a split-mouth order with or without the use of dentifrice (total time=2 minutes).

RESULTS
Plaque reductions varied between 51% and 58% for the three dentifrices. The overall analysis showed a mean difference of 3% in plaque reduction in favor of brushing without dentifrice (P=0.017). The type of dentifrice did not influence this observed difference (P=0.506). Also, the order of the brushing procedure (starting the brushing procedure with or without dentifrice) had no interaction with the effect of dentifrice on the brushing (P=0.187).

CONCLUSIONS
The use of dentifrice does not contribute to the instant mechanical plaque removal during manual toothbrushing. A higher dentifrice abrasivity does not seem to contribute to increased plaque removal with a manual toothbrush. It appears that the mechanical action provided by the use of a toothbrush is the main factor in the plaque-removing process.


Electrostatic low frequency surface modes propagating along an interface between a dusty plasma and vacuum with frequencies of the order of the dust plasma frequency are investigated using a fluid model where the dust dynamics and dust charge fluctuations are taken into account. The dispersion properties and damping of these dust acoustic surface modes due to charge fluctuation effects are derived.


Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) was the first human virus found to encode microRNAs (miRNAs), but the function of these miRNAs has been obscure. Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is associated with EBV infection, and the EBV-encoded LMP1 is believed to be a key factor in NPC development. However, detection of LMP1 protein in NPC is variable. Here, we report that EBV-encoded BART miRNAs target the 3′ UTR of the LMP1 gene and negatively regulate LMP1 protein expression. These miRNAs also modulate LMP1-induced NF-κB signaling and alleviate the cisplatin sensitivity of LMP1-expressing NPC cells. Consistent with a previous study on the NPC C666-1 cell line and C15 xenograft, we found abundant expression of BART miRNAs in NPC tissues. Furthermore, DNA sequencing revealed that the 3′ UTR of LMP1 is highly conserved in NPC-derived EBV isolates. The data provide insight into the discrepancy between LMP1 transcript and protein detection in NPC and highlight the role of the EBV miRNAs in regulating LMP1 downstream signaling to promote cancer development.


The Sahel Growth Pole Project of Burkina Faso objectives are to promote shared prosperity based on engines growth and ways of local life, and reduce poverty and isolation of the Sahel region. This will be achieved through the creation of conditions for business development and job creation in the project area. Some planned activities can have negative effects on the environment during implementation or during their operation. The Environmental and Social Management Framework (ESMF) has been prepared to ensure that environmental and social concerns of the project activities are taken into account from the planning to the implementation and monitoring / evaluation stages of the project. This Environmental and Social Management Framework identifies the risks associated with different project interventions in targeted production systems and defines mitigation measures to be implemented during project implementation. The project area has the following biophysical issues: very few water courses and bodies (with the exception of the Lake of Oursi which is a Ramsar site, where no project activities are foreseen); very few forests; etc. Existing environmental liabilities are significant with the damage already caused by mining activities (industrial, semi-mechanized and artisanal mining) to soils, grazing areas and water resources.


The government of Canada provides financial support for a movie filmed in Canada but it provides even greater tax incentives if the movie qualifies as a Canadian content production. Canadian content for tax credit purposes is regulated by the Canadian Audio-Visual Certification Office (CAVCO), a branch of the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), who jointly administer the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit Program (CPTC) and the Film or Video Production Services Tax Credit Program (PSTC). Only one of these tax credits may be claimed for a particular production. Canadian content for broadcast purposes is regulated by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). The Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA) reviews the government guidelines and provides advice on topics regarding the film and television industry. The CPTC Guidelines set out the requirements for qualifying for Canadian content tax credits for films. The focus of this essay is on Appendix I of the CPTC Guidelines, the CAVCO Producer Control Guidelines, and specifically the requirement that the Canadian producer have 100% copyright ownership for at least 25 years. The three issues arising from this requirement are less investment opportunities for producers, an incongruity between CAVCO and CRTC guidelines and government goals. Finally, the first two problems are the result of the CAVCO Producer Control Guidelines not only being very strict but also being just a formality. I argue that 100% copyright ownership should not be a requirement of qualifying for Canadian content tax credits for films, or that the 25-year condition should be lowered, or both.


Abstract The aim of this work was the evaluation of drought severity development in the Czech Republic for the period 1971-2015 by the means of the Effective Drought Index (EDI). Annual values of the EDI index were determined using the method of effective precipitation for 14 localities spread throughout the Czech Republic (Central Europe). The seven categories were created according to obtained index values for the drought conditions determination for years during the period 1971-2015 through the percentile method. The annual index values were compared with acquired 2nd, 15th, 45th, 55th, 85th and 98th percentiles. Both the years with precipitation unfavourable conditions: 1972, 1973, 1984, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993 and 2015 and the years with precipitation favourable conditions: 1977, 1987, 1995, 2001, 2002 and 2010 were determined. Precipitation conditions in the growing season from 61st to 180th day of the year were also analysed. This evaluation was conducted during the period 1971-2015 through the ten-day index values which were compared with acquired 2nd, 15th, 45th, 55th, 85th and 98th percentiles. Dry growing seasons occurred in 1973, 1974, 1976 and 1993. Wet growing seasons occurred in 1987, 2006 and 2010. Trend analysis of annual index values was performed through the Mann-Kendall test. Highly statistically significant increasing linear trends (P < 0.01) were found for four localities (Uherský Ostroh, Vysoká, Znojmo-Oblekovice and Žatec); statistically significant increasing trends (P < 0.05) were found for three localities (Brno-Chrlice, Lednice and Lípa). Based on the extrapolation of the trend, a slightly higher effective precipitation can be expected during the year in a substantial part of the country. However, these findings do not necessarily mean an optimal supply of agricultural land with water. Precipitation exhibits considerable unevenness of distribution through time. Given the increasing evapotranspiration demands of the environment their availability is limited.


Resting energy expenditures (REEs) were measured in 40 alcoholic cirrhotic (AC) patients by indirect calorimetry and corrected for 24-h urinary creatinine and excretion. These REEs were compared according to the stage of severity of the cirrhosis, the nutritional status, and the presence or absence of alcoholic hepatitis (AH). Mean REE was not significantly different between the Child class A, B, and C patients, even when corrected for 24-h urinary creatinine. Mean REE was significantly less in malnourished AC than in well-nourished patients (1308 +/- 285 vs. 1531 +/- 255 kcal, p less than 0.02). However, when measured energy expenditure was corrected for 24-h urinary creatinine, the difference between the two groups of patients disappeared (1800 +/- 540 kcal/g creatinine in malnourished patients vs. 1890 +/- 780 kcal/g creatinine in well-nourished patients). Finally, there was no significant difference between the REE, corrected or not, for the 24-h urinary creatinine in AC with or without AH. Thus, when REE is normalized to lean body mass, represented by 24-h urinary creatinine, the metabolic activity in AC is not dependent on the severity of the cirrhosis, nutritional status, or existence of AH.


Air quality in California's intensively farmed Central Valley violates regulatory particulate matter limits nearly year-round. Little is known about the amount of fugitive dust produced by individual agronomic operations. This study measured the respirable fraction, covering particles ≤ 4 μm in aerodynamic diameter and the influences of climate, soil, and implement conditions on dust production. Respirable dust was collected at the implement from 18 cultural operations for a complete annual crop cycle on 22, 4097-m 2 plots, 11 km west of Davis, CA. Plots included conventional and organic corn (Zea mays L.) and tomato [Lycopersicon lycopersicum (L.) Karsten] fields as well as fields with a winter cover crop or fallow plots followed by wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). The 266 samples were collected with standard cyclone samplers mounted directly on each implement as the dust source (average height of 94 cm above ground). Sampling near the dust source measured the relative respirable-particulate-matter production from each operation. The highest average respirable-dust concentration was 10.3 mg/m 3 air from soil ripping and land planing, carried out on dry surface soil. The lowest dust concentration was from disking of corn stubble (0.3 mg/m 3 ) into soil during the wet season. Approximately 64% of all operations were performed during hot and dry weather, producing 83% of the annual respirable dust for this three-crop system. Among the measured environmental and implement conditions, air temperature, soil moisture, wind speed, and tractor speed were significantly correlated with the dust concentration in an exponential model.


The widespread thioredoxin superfamily enzymes typically share the following features: a characteristic α-β fold, the presence of a Cys-X-X-Cys (or Cys-X-X-Ser) redox-active motif, and a proline in the cis configuration abutting the redox-active site in the tertiary structure. The Cys-X-X-Cys motif is at the solvent-exposed amino terminus of an α-helix, allowing the first cysteine to engage in nucleophilic attack on substrates, or substrates to attack the Cys-X-X-Cys disulfide, depending on whether the enzyme functions to reduce, isomerize, or oxidize its targets. We report here the X-ray crystal structure of an enzyme that breaks many of our assumptions regarding the sequence-structure relationship of thioredoxin superfamily proteins. The yeast Protein Disulfide Isomerase family member Eps1p has Cys-X-X-Cys motifs and proline residues at the appropriate primary structural positions in its first two predicted thioredoxin-fold domains. However, crystal structures show that the Cys-X-X-Cys of the second domain is buried and that the adjacent proline is in the trans, rather than the cis isomer. In these configurations, neither the "active-site" disulfide nor the backbone carbonyl preceding the proline is available to interact with substrate. The Eps1p structures thus expand the documented diversity of the PDI oxidoreductase family and demonstrate that conserved sequence motifs in common folds do not guarantee structural or functional conservation.


AIM
To evaluate the presentation patterns of a cohort of children diagnosed with coeliac disease (CD) at Christchurch Hospital, New Zealand.

METHODS
Children aged 16 years or less diagnosed with CD at Christchurch Hospital, Christchurch, New Zealand, over the 11 year period between 2000 and 2010 were identified retrospectively. Diagnosis of CD was based upon standard histological criteria of endoscopically-obtained duodenal biopsies. Overlapping search methods were used to identify all relevant diagnoses within the time period. Endoscopy reports and histology findings were reviewed to confirm diagnosis. The numbers of diagnoses per year were calculated and changes in annual rates over the study period were delineated. Available records were reviewed to ascertain presenting symptoms, baseline anthropometry and the indication for referral for each child. In addition, the results of relevant investigations prior to diagnosis were accessed and reviewed. These key investigations included the results of coeliac serology testing (including tissue transglutaminase and endomysial antibodies) as well as the results of tests measuring levels of micronutrients, such as iron. In addition, the histological findings of concurrent biopsies in the oesophagus and stomach were reviewed.

RESULTS
Over the 11 year study period, 263 children were diagnosed with CD at this New Zealand paediatric facility. Children were diagnosed from late infancy to 16.9 years: the largest subgroup of children (n = 111) were diagnosed between 5 and 12 years of age. The numbers of children diagnosed each year increased from 13 per year to 31 per year over the 11 years (P = 0.0095). Preschool children (aged less than 5 years) were more likely to have low weight, and to have diarrhoea and abdominal pain prior to diagnosis. Older children (over 5 years of age) most commonly presented with abdominal pain. Fifty-six (21.6%) of the 263 children were diagnosed following screening in high risk groups, with 38 of these children having no symptoms at diagnosis. Mean weight Z scores were lower in children aged less than five years than children aged 5-12 years or older children (-0.4096 ± 1.24, vs 0.1196 ± 0.966 vs 0.0901 ± 1.14 respectively: P = 0.0033).

CONCLUSION
Increasing numbers of children were diagnosed with CD in this New Zealand centre over this time, with varied presentations and symptoms.


In this study, the physical and chemical changes of a poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)-modified epoxy system were examined to understand the effect of the curing conditions on its final morphology. The curing process of the PMMA–epoxy reactive system was complementarily analyzed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy in the near range (FT-NIR) and fluorescence spectroscopy. The relationships among (1) the chemical conversion of the curing reaction, (2) the first moment of the fluorescence emission band (〈ν〉) arising from a chromophore chemically bonded to the epoxy reactive system, (3) the phase-separation process, and (4) the dynamics of the epoxy thermoset during its curing process are discussed. From a chemical point of view, FT-NIR did not reveal any significant change in the curing reaction with the presence of 2 wt % PMMA. However, in terms of physical changes, the analysis of the fluorescence response clearly showed variations in the curing reaction due to the presence of the thermoplastic polymer. Also, fluorescence allowed the estimation of the glass-transition temperature of the system with curing when the reaction was diffusion-controlled, whereas Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy was not sensible enough. In the second part of this study, scanning electron microscopy images of the PMMA-modified epoxy system were analyzed to understand the effect of the temperature on the final morphology when the amount of thermoplastic was below the critical volume fraction. A linear dependence between the inverse of the mean area of the thermoplastic-rich domains and the inverse of the absolute temperature was obtained. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2010


Nepal, a country located between India and China, is one of the world's least developed countries. Access to electricity is a problem throughout Nepal. Both for the grid connected areas that suffer from power cuts up to 16 hours a day during the dry season, and for remote areas where lack of money, infrastructure or even the location itself set limits for the electrification.In the eastern part of Nepal, around 100 km south of Mount Everest is Thade, a small mountain village with about 200 residents. Until 2015 the village only had an old, dilapidated school building that was in such bad condition that it could barely be used. Therefore, many of the children in the village did not go to school, and it was only the families with enough money that could send their children to a better school. Other children had to walk for hours to reach the nearest school.With contribution and support from a Swedish-Nepali non-government organisation (NGO) a new school opened in May 2015. One year later there are 42 children at the Grace Academy School. One of the main problems for the school today is that they do not have any electricity, which places limitations on both teachers and students.The purpose of this study was to investigate if it is possible, in a simple and sustainable way use a solar cell system with battery storage to meet the basic needs for electricity of the school.The aim was to build a simulation model, of the energy system, in MATLAB's Simulink® program and then validate the result from that model to the result from the commercial solar system program PVsyst. Tilt and orientation of the panels was optimized specifically for Thade School to get as much electricity as possible from the prevailing conditions.Further, the aim was to, through interviews and conversations with the residents in the village and people connected to the school project, gain an understanding of how electrification of Thade School would affect the school, the teachers and the students, as well as the village and its residents.In general, Nepal has very good conditions for solar power, with around 300 days of sunshine annually. According to the residents of Thade, the weather is usually clear and sunny early in the morning, but after 10am it most often becomes cloudy and foggy. Hence investigation whether solar power in Thade would work is interesting.Electrification of the school would allow for easier learning and most likely increase the status of the school in the surrounding area. It would be easier for students and stuff to get information from the outside world, especially if their plan for Internet access is incorporated in the future. The interest for teachers to come to Thade would perhaps increase. Today the school has a hard time getting good teachers to come, to teach and live in the small mountain village. The children attending the school would also have a better chance to compete with other children to enter University or further educations. The advantages of electrification for Thade are clear. Three different cases were simulated, with different assumptions of the solar radiation. The results showed that solar power could cover about 95 % of the annual demand, based on the needs that were reported as needed today.


Adult rats maintained at 20-22 degrees C, were exposed to 4 degrees C for 30-60 min and injected with 50 or 100 mg/kg 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) in an attempt to achieve a similar degree of chemical sympathectomy of nerves terminating among the adipocytes and the smooth muscle cells of the blood vessels in the interscapular brown adipose tissue (BAT). After 1, 4 or 10 days the pads of BAT were removed and small sections from each pad prepared for electron microscopy; the remaining tissue was used for noradrenaline (NA) analysis for fluorescence histochemistry. Ultrastructural observations showed that 24 h after the 6-OHDA injection virtually all noradrenergic nerve terminals were distorted and contained aggregates of degenerated cell organelles. The destruction could be correlated with a disappearance of fluorescent varicosities and a reduction of measurable NA to 8-12% of the control value. There was no differential toxic effect of 6-OHDA on the terminals among the adipocytes compared to those associated with blood vessels. Thus, treatment with 6-OHDA is more effective than previous attempts using immunological or surgical methods to produce sympathectomy, because both of the latter methods only eliminate the innervation of the blood vessels and spare the nerve terminals of the adipocytes. 4 days after 6-OHDA injection there was no improvement in the morphology of the terminals but after 10 days there was an increase in the number of terminals and axons with a normal appearance and this was paralleled by an increase in extractable NA to 50% of the control value. Because of the relatively rapid recovery of NA content and reappearance of terminals of normal appearance within 10 days after 6-OHDA injection, these animals should be injected weekly when a more permanent sympathectomy of adipocytes and blood vessels is desired.


Reports on anatomical variations and anomalies are very important in keeping track of changes that occur in the human body during development. Not only does it help to explain some of the disease conditions affecting people, but it can aid in describing the aetiology of some of these conditions. The current observation indicated the presence of unusual bilateral foramina in the middle cranial fossa communicating with the sphenoid air sinuses. They were located anterolateral to the sella turcica and medial to the superior orbital fissure behind the optic canal. The complexity of sphenoid bone development and non fusion of some of its parts may lead to abnormal foramina like the ones seen in this case. Since observations were made on a prepared dried skull, the contents of the foramina were not verified. Another observation in the same skull was the bilateral abnormally joined anterior and posterior clinoid processes. The two were joined by a thick bar of bone (Interclinoid bar). Any outgrowth from the posterior clinoid process may compress the surrounding neuro-vascular structures especially the internal carotid artery. In the present case, the clinical history of the patient was not available to corroborate this observation. Knowledge on the described abnormalities of this skull may be useful for radiologists, neurosurgeons, endocrinologists as well as anthropologists. Key words: Middle cranial fossa, bilateral foramina, Sphenoid sinuses


This project aims to convert production sand waste from oil & gas exploration & production process to be high value silica-based product, Zeolites, and explore opportunities to lower amount of sand waste disposal to landfill. This is one key item in Circular Model for Oil & Gas Exploration & Production. Zeolites is a microporous crystalline aluminosilicate material, which possess a superior characteristic in terms of high surface area. Therefore, it is widely utilized in many industries such as adsorbent, ion exchange, and catalysts in oil refining and petrochemical industry.
 In this work, various types of zeolites were synthesized from PTTEP production sand waste, to prove concept of turning sand waste to high value-added product, called zeolite. In normal operation, sand waste was sent to dispose as landfill about 50 Ton/annual. To synthesize zeolite from sand waste, there are three main steps, which are 1) Sand Pretreatment, 2) Silica Extraction, and 3) Zeolite Synthesis. Firstly, sand waste from petroleum production were pretreated by water and acid washing. Then, nanosilica was extracted out from pretreated sand by boiling the pretreated sand in NaOH solution at temperature 150 C for 4 hrs, then precipitate them to get the nanosilica substances. It was further used as a reactant source for zeolite synthesis. In the last step, the extracted silica was reacted with Structure Directing Agent (SDA); zeolite template, under optimal condition of hydrothermal treatment process to obtain zeolites product.
 Zeolites synthesis from production sand waste was firstly initiated and successfully achieved in lab phase, to prove of concept for extracting silica source as a substance for zeolite synthesis. Various types of zeolites (Silicalite-1, ZSM-5, Faujasite (FAU), Mordenite, and Zeolite A) can be synthesized from PTTEP sand waste with synthesis yield 80%, 68%, 85%, 40%, and 81%, respectively. This indicates that silica source from production sand waste can be utilized as a reactant source for zeolites synthesis. The next phase of prototype unit is under design phase, to allow unit can be operated more versatile, and automatically run. From this novel technology, it is expected to reduce an amount of production sand waste disposal out from separator to landfill about 50 Ton/year. The synthesized zeolites from prototype phase will be further applied in many potential applications such as an adsorbent in wastewater treatment process, as catalyst, and moisture adsorbent in oil & gas dehydration unit. New findings and requirements discovered during the prototype test will be used to iteratively optimize and improve the design of the sand to zeolites process for future industrial-scale implementation.


This paper introduces a novel measurement set-up dedicated to the characterization of the evolution of the high-frequency shielding-effectiveness of gaskets due to corrosion and ageing. The measurement set-up is based on the recently introduced stripline set-up which has been validated previously up to 40 GHz. Compared to the original stripline set-up, the adapted set-up has a removable "clamping module" which can be easily mounted and removed from the set-up. The clamping module allows to age the gasket inside e.g. a climate chamber while always keeping the gasket under the same compression rate. As the clamping module can be made out of different materials, it allows to study the influence of shielding-effectiveness of gaskets when applied to different materials. In order to avoid parallel leakage inside the measurement set-up, a high-performant gasket needs to be compressed below the module. Based on full-wave simulations, it is shown that the shielding-effectiveness given by this gasket underneath the clamping module is the main determining factor for the dynamic range of the set-up. In addition, a first set of measurements show the validity of the measurement set-up and approach.


This study is interested in teachers' use of digital technology for differentiation of teaching in early school years, focusing in particular on teaching reading and writing. The study is qualitative in nature and is based on field studies in grade 2 (aged eight), along with focus groups involving teachers who work with and around pupils. Two research questions have served as a guideline for the study: 1. What characterises teachers' experiences and didactic usage of digital technology when teaching children (to read and write), and 2. How is digital technology used to promote different dimensions of reading and writing processes? The empirical material has been analysed through thematic analyses and with Luke and Freebody's four resourses model as a theoretical perspective. The results show that teachers use digital technology to differentiate teaching in various ways; by illustrating, motivating, individualising and making the didactic content accessible, for example. Digital technology is used when teaching children to read and write in order to promote both individual skills and activities promoting communication and creating meaning. Digital technology appears to provide opportunities for teachers to offer particular support within the classroom framework and offer pupils tasks at custom levels, thereby helping to provide a more inclusive didactic space. This study highlights teachers' somewhat ambivalent approach and balancing of different didactic choices in relation to digital technology.


Structured peer-to-peer overlay maintenance mechanisms require efficient methods to find stale routing table entries and replace them with new entries in a way that retains the desired routing behavior. Futhermore, overlay maintenance algorithms require to be devised to handle peer churn, the continuous process of node arrival and departure. Existing strategies of selecting new entries for routing tables are usually based on logical identifiers or proximity. Non-trust neighborhood selection criterion is used. Over the past decade, a respectable number of e-commerce companies, such as Amazon, eBay, and NetFlix, have deployed trust in ranking their products and suppliers. Such rankings are capitalized as effective incentives and low-cost mechanisms, letting e-commerce companies enhance product marketing and sales management. Since the use of trust has brought many benefits to e-commerce companies, we propose to introduce trust to structured P2P overlay maintenance. In this paper, we propose a trust-based maintenance strategy, using quantified "trust" as the judge criterion for neighbor selection and next-hop selection during routing, considering different aspects of trust in common structured P2P systems. The simulation results show that our maintenance strategy, applying to Chord, leads to lower maintenance overhead, while the mean hops of queries are slightly increased but remain O(logN), where N denotes the network size, compared with original Chord.


Adenoviral (Ad) vector-mediated strategies for cancer gene therapy mandate a vector that is capable of efficient expression of the therapeutic gene specifically within the target tumor cells. In one approach to the development of cancer cell-specific vectors, Ad vectors have been targeted at the level of transduction to achieve the selective delivery of the therapeutic gene. In an alternative approach to the derivation of cancer cell-specific vectors, Ad vectors have been targeted at the level of transcription by placing the therapeutic gene under the control of transcriptional regulatory sequences that are activated in tumor cells, but not in normal cells, and therefore target expression selectively to the tumor cell. In this report, we demonstrate that a higher degree of specificity for cancer cells can be achieved by combining the complementary approaches of transductional and transcriptional targeting, each of which is imperfect or "leaky" by itself.


A system for quantitative analysis of myocardial perfusion tomograms is proposed. The system starts with an automated delineation of the total left ventricle, including possible perfusion defects, to determine the mass and shape of the myocardium. Next, polar maps or bulls-eyes are computed from the delineation, which can then be compared to reference bulls-eyes to detect perfusion defects. The proposed system differs in three main aspects from currently available bulls-eye algorithms. First, radial slices are used rather than short-axis slices. In this way three-dimensional gradient information is retained, in particular near the base and the apex of the left ventricle. Moreover, the reproducibility of this method is expected to be superior, since the interactive selection of short axis slices through the left ventricle is eliminated. Second, the left ventricle is automatically delineated using a flexible computer model in order to obtain higher reproducibility. The resulting delineation contains both mass and shape information. Third, in addition to the classic count rate bulls-eye, a mass bulls-eye is computed, which contains the myocardial mass corresponding to each bulls-eye pixel. Analysis of the count rate bulls-eye reveals perfusion defects, the quantification of the defects is carried out with the mass bulls-eye.


Generative adversarial networks (GANs) have been indicated their superiority in usage of the real-time speech synthesis. Nevertheless, most of them make use of deep convolutional layers as their backbone, which may cause the absence of previous signal information. However, the generation of speech signals invariably require preceding waveform samples in its reconstruction, as the lack of this can lead to artifacts in generated speech. To address this conflict, in this paper, we propose an improved model: a post auto-regressive (AR) GAN vocoder with a self-attention layer, which merging self-attention in an AR loop. It will not participate in inference, but can assist the generator to learn temporal dependencies within frames in training. Furthermore, an ablation study was done to confirm the contribution of each part. Systematic experiments show that our model leads to a consistent improvement on both objective and subjective evaluation performance.


The objectives of this research are 1). To find out the use of student learning modules in Al-quran Hadith subjects for grade VII students of Madrasah Tsanawiyah Private Tarbiyah Waladiyah Pulau Banyak. 2). To determine the ability of students to understand the material in the field of study of the Qur'an Hadith in class VII Madrasah Tsanawiyah Private Tarbiyah Waladiyah Pulau Banyak. 3). To find out whether the use of student learning modules can improve students' ability to understand the subject matter of the Qur'an Hadith for grade VII students of Madrasah Tsanawiyah Private Tarbiyah Waladiyah Pulau Banyak. The method used in this research is the classroom action research method (CAR), which is action research carried out as a problem-solving strategy by utilizing real actions and then reflecting on the results of the action. The results of these actions and reflections are used as a step in selecting the next action according to the problems faced. Problem Identification: 1). Grade VII MTs students. Private Tarbiyah Waladiyah Tanjung Pura who received learning using the Teaching Module approach showed a significantly better understanding of Al-Quran Hadith material compared to students who received regular learning. This can be seen from the average score of students' understanding abilities in the field of study of the Qur'an and Hadith; 2). Understanding ability of students of class VII MTs. Private Tarbiyah Waladiyah Pulau Banyak can be done by applying the Teaching Module; 3). There is a significant relationship between increasing comprehension ability through the teaching module learning model in MTs. Private Tarbiyah Waladiyah Pulau Banyak. 4). The attitude of students during learning Al quran Hadith looks good, namely students have the enthusiasm to participate in learning activities in class, students look more enthusiastic in learning activities and communication that occurs during the learning process in class is effective, in connection the communication goes in two directions, namely from teacher to student and vice versa from students to teachers; 5). The activities of students who receive learning using the Teaching Module are more active in learning in the classroom and students who receive the Teaching Module are more active in improving students' understanding abilities, and students are also more daring to raise or ask questions to the teacher, and are more creative in solving the problems given, so that the understanding ability of MTs students. Private Tarbiyah Waladiyah Pulau Banyak can be increased through the application of the Teaching Module model.


The epitaxial growth of multifunctional oxides on semiconductors has opened a pathway to introduce new functionalities to semiconductor device technologies. In particular, the integration of gate materials that enable nonvolatile or hysteretic functionality in field-effect transistors could lead to device technologies that consume less power or allow for novel modalities in computing. Here we present electrical characterization of ultrathin single crystalline SrZrxTi1-xO3 (x = 0.7) films epitaxially grown on a high mobility semiconductor, Ge. Epitaxial films of SrZrxTi1-xO3 exhibit relaxor behavior, characterized by a hysteretic polarization that can modulate the surface potential of Ge. We find that gate layers as thin as 5 nm corresponding to an equivalent-oxide thickness of just 1.0 nm exhibit a ∼2 V hysteretic window in the capacitance-voltage characteristics. The development of hysteretic metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitors with nanoscale gate thicknesses opens new vistas for nanoelectronic devices.


Colored spun yarn is the yarn spun by fibers with two or more different colors, which has special color mixing effect and meets the needs of the market. In the spinning of the colored spun yarn, the fibers should be dyed and mixed firstly, which is the most important step during the yarn spinning. In the paper, colored fancy spun yarn spinning was studied. Taking the cotton fiber as example, the dyeing of fibers was presented, and the properties of the colored fiber and the natural fiber were tested and analyzed comparatively firstly. Then, 18.2tex (32S) three different colored fancy spun yarns, the colored AB Sirospun yarn, multicolored yarn and section-color yarn were spun on the EJM128K ring spinning frame, respectively. The detailed spinning processes were given. Then, the properties of yarn, yarn hairiness, strength and evenness were tested and analyzed comparatively. The results show that comparing with the natural fibers, the thickness of the colored fiber was increased slightly while the breaking strength was decreased slightly. Meanwhile, comparing with the multicolored yarn and section-color yarn, the colored AB Sirospun yarn has the largest breaking strength, the best yarn evenness and the least yarn hairiness.