Pressing water scarcity in Jordan increased the demands of marginal water for agriculture, of which the treated wastewater is the most prominent candidate. Water management studies reveal that no single source could fully solve the nation's water shortage and many integrated actions are needed to ensure water availability, suitability and sustainability. Among these options the developments of new water resources such as treated wastewater and brackish water have the potential to augment water supplies, thereby narrowing the gap between available freshwater and total demand. Agriculture is an important economic activity in Jordan in general and in the Jordan Valley in particular. Treated waste water could be a valuable source for irrigation in the agricultural sector, as an alternative for fresh water resources that is urgently needed for the rapidly growing urban populations. Currently there is an increasing percentage of irrigated areas using treated wastewater. With a fast growing population and expansion of the irrigated areas to meet the food demand the pressure on water resources in Jordan remains of imminent importance. Hence, an urgent call for an analysis of current and potential role of treated wastewater seems justified. Under the umbrella of the project on the Sustainable Management of Available Water Resources with Innovative Technologies (SMART) funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research in Germany an investigation has been carried out in the Jordan Valley to estimate the current wastewater reuse quantities and the potential to increase its utility for agricultural production. In general, the reuse as percentage of total treatment is applied for national and international comparisons. Yet, this index is of limited use for policy decisions as it can not reflect potentialities of waste water use. Therefore, this study introduces a wastewater reuse index (WRI) that reflects the actual proportion of wastewater reused from the total generated wastewater. We found that the WRI in Jordan steadily increased from 30 per cent in 2004 to 38 in 2007. Efficient use of treated waste water requires the application of new technologies in Jordan like dwellings connected to the sewer system, decentralization of treatment plants to rural and urban settlements and prevention of high evaporation rates from stabilization ponds


Streptococcus pneumoniae is the leading cause of infectious childhood conditions such as Otitis Media (OM) and Pneumonia. Amoxicillin is the recommended first-line treatment for these indications. But because of growing resistance to penicillin based and other antibiotics prevention via effective immunisation is a more desirable approach. PCV7 was introduced in the UK in 2006. Studies conducted in the USA and Europe have shown that the use of this vaccine successfully reduces the incidence of OM and pneumonia. Yet its impact on community antibiotic use in the UK has not to date been adequately described. This thesis presents the findings of two retrospective cohort studies that analysed the diagnosed incidence of OM and pneumonia and the associated antibiotic prescribing, using the IMS DA and THIN GP databases. The extensive data manipulation conducted shows that the overall number of (all cause) pneumonia episodes in children recorded by GPs declined by 14% between 2006 and 2010. Associated antibiotic prescribing fell by 10%. In addition, the research presented here identified a fall of more than a third in primary care recorded OM diagnoses and antibiotic prescribing for the treatment of OM in children between 2006 and 2010. These data represent new evidence that the introduction of the original conjugated PCV7 contributed to a decline in antibiotic prescribing by GPs. However, additional prescribing behaviour change drivers were involved and consumption by patients may have fallen faster than the available data sets suggest. The PCV7 has now been replaced by the PCV13. Against this background a range of additional policy questions are discussed. They include issues relating to bacterial serotype replacement trends and virulence shifts, and the implications of effective infant and child protection for the health of older adults at high risk of contracting pneumococcal infections.


Synthetic antiferromagnetic nanoparticles (SAFNPs) have been successfully coated with two different kinds of silanes, 3-aminopropyltrimethoxysilane and 2-[methoxy(polyethyleneoxy)propyl]trimethoxysilane. The morphology of SAF particles is characterized by scanning electron microscopy and magnetic properties by alternating gradient magnetometry. The attachment of silane molecules is verified by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy and colloidal stability is studied using dynamic light scattering. These two silanes change the surface chemical properties of SAFNPs dramatically in different ways, which in turn affects the stability of these particles.


The upper oceanic crust consists predominantly of pillow lavas that, soon after their eruption, are colonized by microbes when the ambient temperature ameliorates. During the process of microbial interaction with the glassy rims of pillows several types of bio‐traces are generated, of which micro‐textures are the most spectacular. Microbial textures are most useful for mapping the depth of the oceanic biosphere, and in the search for the earliest life on Earth.


"Learning communities" are an attractive if hackneyed notion, especially in higher education contexts, because they offer the promise of students learning effectively within quasi-authentic environments. However, the constraints of time, curriculum and student profile in university subjects often mean these "communities" lack depth - everybody is an apprentice. A longitudinal design experiment was conducted in a large first-year university subject. The study included past students acting as legitimate members of a current community. They provided advice, support and offered mentoring-at-a-distance to current students. Thus, through mediated communication channels, they provided a tantalising glimpse of a deeper community, enriched by functional and reflective conversations. As a technique which is relatively easy to set up, the method described has immediate practical application.


This article is a commentary on 'Ten years of a model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments: The aesthetic episode - developments and challenges in empirical aesthetics' (Leder & Nadal, 2014, this issue). It focuses on domain specificity and mental chronometry in empirical aesthetics.


geometric and temporal characteristics skeletons, features, events topological properties contour tree for volume data, vector field topology, tracking graph for time-varying data statistical indicators and information measurements histogram, correlation, importance, certainty, entropy, mutual information, local statistical complexity information about the results color histogram, level of cluttering information about the process interaction patterns, provenance Information about users' perception response time, accuracy In information-assisted visualization, the user is provided with a second visualization pipeline (see Figure 2), which typically displays the information about the input dataset, but can also present attributes of the visualization process, the properties of the results, or characteristics of the user's perceptual behaviors. The user uses such information to reduce the 'search' space for optimal control parameters, hence making the interaction much more cost-effective. Such techniques provide an intrinsic interface between the scientific visualization and information visualization communities. With the increasing size and complexity of data, the use of information to aid visualization will inevitably become a necessity rather than an option. Knowledge-assisted visualization In a visualization process, the knowledge of the user is an indispensable part of visualization. For instance, the user may assign specific colors to different objects in visualization according to certain domain knowledge. The user may choose certain viewing positions because the visualization results can reveal more meaningful information or a more problematic scenario that requires further investigation. Meanwhile, the lack of certain knowledge by the user is often a major obstacle in deploying visualization techniques. The user may not have received adequate training about how to specify transfer functions. The user may not have sufficient time or navigation skills to explore all possible viewing positions. Both scenarios suggest the need for knowledge-assisted visualization. The objectives of knowledge-assisted visualization include sharing domain knowledge among different users, and reducing the burden upon users to acquire knowledge about complex visualization techniques. It also enables the visualization community to learn and model the best practice, and to develop powerful visualization infrastructures evolutionarily. In fact, some general or domain knowledge has already been incorporated into various visualization systems, intentionally or unintentionally. For example, a default transfer function in a volume visualization system may capture the domain knowledge about a specific modality. If one could collect a large repository of such knowledge, it would be possible for a visualization system to choose an appropriate transfer function according to the information about the input datasets. Figure 3 shows a visualization pipeline supported by a knowledge base (know), which stores the knowledge representations captured from expert users. Rule-based reasoning can be utilized to establish an appropriate set, or several optional sets, of control parameters, which can significantly reduce the 'search' space, especially for inexperienced users. The system component for reasoning is commonly referred to as an Visualization Cctrl Pinfo Pknow Cdata Cimage computational space Interaction perceptual and cognitive space Figure 1. A typical visualization process.


2 Abstract: This paper present a system which can efficiently detect fire after the image of the area has been captured by a camera. Fire has destructive properties which cannot be tolerated in any work areas. Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat and light. The light parameter and color of flame helps in detecting fire. The system first detects smoke and then fire. When smoke is present in the area it displays a message on the Security terminal. When a fire breaks in the area under consideration, the corresponding fire region in the input video frame will be segmented which covers the fire. If the area of the flame increases in the subsequent frames then an alarm is sounded.


Purpose: Over the last decades, universities in general have seen an increase in managerial top-down policies, often pertaining to strategic organizational communication. This paper, in addressing such managerial policies, does focus on German universities as they provide an interesting context to explore the rise of strategic organizational communication as a managerial practice. German universities grant full legal autonomy to their chairholders, and thus, faculty compliance with top management policies cannot be exacted. From there, it seems worthwhile exploring how university management tries to initiate compliance by communicative means. One prominent communication strategy pertains to Corporate Design (CD): university administrations disseminate guidelines as to the use of all forms of planned, visual communication. With this managerial practice in view, we explore arguments employed in exemplary CD guidelines. The overall aim is to show how management attempts to initiate faculty compliance via rational and persuasive communication.
Frame: This case study combines Bourdieusian field theory with neo-institutionalist and narratological approaches. In order to explore how university leadership tries to assert governance claims, we refer, in particular, to the concepts of field struggles, isomorphic change, and legitimacy.
Approach: Our case study concentrates on the attempted implementation of CD in German universities. Our sample comprises 40 CD manuals, most of them with official prefaces by university presidents. In order to detect dominant themes in these manuals we employ thematic analysis.
Findings: We find that CD policies are being used, by management, as a strategic marketing instrument for external communication, as well as a soft, internal governance instrument. We identify two dominant themes: First, university leadership argues in favor of CD by referring to external and internal stakeholders (legitimation). With a view to external stakeholders, management argues that CD is an important communication instrument of differentiation in a perceived university 'market'. As to internal stakeholders, CD is intended to integrate both individual scholars, as well as scholarly sub-units into an overarching organizational structure. In this case, we consider CD to be a specific symbolic mode of communication aiming to have impact on the university's perception externally and internally. Second, we find different persuasive management strategies supposed to actually make faculty employ the new CD (governance). Here, we identify highly different communication strategies, ranging from direct orders to appeals. The variety in strategic communication reveals the organizational paradox of restricted legal governance options, and the new managerial claim to governance.
Implications: We contribute to higher education and organizational communication research by revealing homogeneic rationales for an isomorphic change process that are being described as differentiation. We alert that legal professorial autonomy may slowly be eroded by means of consistent strategic communication.


ConclusionsThis study was created to address the dearth of information regarding actual usage of muscle relaxants in the ICU setting. The survey population was chosen as one with great familiarity in the use of muscle relaxants. The 55% response rate was significantly greater than the expected response rate for a single mailing survey. In the ICU setting, neuromuscular blocking drugs are most frequently used to facilitate mechanical ventilation. The prevalence of vecu-ronium use is of interest in light of recent case reports of prolonged neuromuscular blockade after long-term vecuronium administration. The low frequency of peripheral nerve stimulator monitoring during muscle relaxation may contribute, in part, to the problem of prolonged blockade after drug withdrawal. Muscle relaxants are not used in the absence of sedation and/ or analgesia by this practitioner population. (Crit Care Med 1992; 20:1341–1345)


Maximum likelihood (ML) data aided channel estimation for wavelet packets based ultra wideband (WP-UWB) transmissions is investigated. Training pilot symbols are employed for ML channel estimation based on a least square algorithm derived from the optimum ML approach. An optimum training sequences criterion is derived. Based on this, nearly optimum perfect root of unity sequences (PRUS) are tested and compared to Gold sequences and random sequences. In this estimation strategy, a generalized inverse of the training pilot symbols matrix can be pre-computed and stored in memory. Furthermore, PRUS allows to save the inverse matrix operation and so reducing the complexity of the ML estimator significantly. This technique is especially attractive for low data rate transmissions as in sensor networks because of its low complex implementation. Performance analysis results in terms of the MSE are provided. Tradeoffs between performance and complexity are described as well. The investigated channel estimation algorithms for UWB channels offer flexibility, low complexity and robustness, making channel estimation fairly simple and effective


In the field of fracture healing it is essential to know the impacts of new materials. Fracture healing of long bones is studied in various animal models and extrapolated for use in humans, although there are differences between the micro- and macrostructure of human versus animal bone. Unfortunately, recommended standardized models for fracture repair studies do not exist. Many different study designs with various animal models are used. Concerning the general principles of replacement, refinement and reduction in animal experiments (three "Rs"), a standardization would be desirable to facilitate better comparisons between different studies. In addition, standardized methods allow better prediction of bone healing properties and implant requirements with computational models. In this review, the principles of bone fracture healing and differences between osteotomy and artificial fracture models as well as influences of fixation devices are summarized. Fundamental considerations regarding animal model choice are discussed, as it is very important to know the limitations of the chosen model. In addition, a compendium of common animal models is assembled with special focus on rats, rabbits, and sheep as most common fracture models. Fracture healing simulation is a basic tool in reducing the number of experimental animals, so its progress is also presented here. In particular, simulation of different animal models is presented. In conclusion, a standardized fracture model is of utmost importance for the best adaption of simulation to experimental setups and comparison between different studies. One of the basic goals should be to reach a consensus for standardized fracture models.


Estimating water requirements of plants cultivated in greenhouse environments is crucial, both for the design of greenhouse irrigation systems and the improvement of irrigation scheduling. Spinach is one of the main vegetables sold as 'ready-to-eat' bagged produce; it is very sensitive to water stress and thus requires accurate irrigation. In this work, a water balance model simulating the daily irrigation need for greenhouse crops based on the FAO-56 'single crop coefficient' method was designed and applied (FAO-56-GH). Two experiments were conducted on two spinach varieties grown in pots in different periods. For each experiment, four nitrogen treatments were considered. Irrigation was managed weighing the pots every day, and restoring soil water to field capacity. Crop coefficient ( K c ) values were calibrated using data of the first experiment, the model was successively validated using the second dataset. Results showed a good model performance both in the validation and calibration periods ( R 2 = 0.80 and 0.84, root mean square error (RMSE) = 0.41 and 0.21 mm day − 1 , Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) = 0.78 and 0.83). Analysis of variance (ANOVA) test revealed a scarce dependence of irrigation needs to nitrogen treatments. This study suggests the possibility of adopting the FAO-56-GH model with site-specific K c to improve irrigation management and planning in greenhouse environments.


This book review takes a critical review of the claim advanced by Susan Crawford in Captive Audience that the merger between Comcast and NBC Universal would harm consumers and that policymakers should instead promote common carriage regulation and subsidize municipal symmetrical gigabit fiber-to-the-home (FTTH). First it evaluates the extent to which next-generation digital subscriber lines (DSL) and wireless broadband technologies can serve as effective substitutes for cable modem service, identifying FCC data showing that the market has become increasingly competitive and likely to continue to do so. Furthermore, the market is not structured in a way that would permit the combination between content and conduit to harm competition. Furthermore, past attempts to recalibrate the balance between content producers and distribution channels have had the unintended consequence of reducing incentives to invest in network infrastructure. It can also deter technical leadership and innovation within the communications platform itself.


"DEVILISCHE WORDIS": SPEECH AS EVIDENCE IN SCOTLAND'S WITCH TRIALS, 1563-1736 Sierra Rose Dye Advisor: University of Guelph, 2016 Professor Elizabeth Ewan This dissertation examines the links between speech and witchcraft during Scotland's witchhunting period in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. As this thesis argues, verbal performances were a key feature in many definitions of witchcraft, from the curses and quarrels of maleficent witches, to the healing prayers of charmers, to the verbal pacts of diabolical witches. While witches in general were believed to possess a wide variety of powers, it was their utterances that most often brought them to the attention of the kirk and community, and which most often formed the majority of the evidence filed against them in their trials. Indeed, it was in the context of the court room that contested definitions of witchcraft found common ground in the words of witches. Consequently, speech should be seen as a unifying factor in popular, religious, and judicial definitions of witchcraft. This research draws on a wealth of printed and manuscript sources on Scottish witchhunting, in particular, the process notes of the Justiciary Court and the kirk session and presbytery records. This material is supplemented by transcripts of additional trial material, sermons, demonological tracts and treatises, and other sources. The majority of the dissertation focuses on the legal evidence sought and submitted in the trials, demonstrating how local and central judges determined what constituted proof of witchcraft. While other historians have pointed out the connection between witches and words, this has generally been seen as a characteristic of popular folk belief rather than judicially-defined witchcraft: witches were accused of cursing, but convicted of having served the Devil. Alternately, the relationship has been explained as a consequence of the gendered stereotype of witchcraft, rather than an important feature in its own right. By focusing on speech as the commonality, however, we can better understand why women were most often accused of this crime, as well as revealing how witch-hunting was part of a larger concern and anxiety over speech in early modern Scotland.


Stem cell therapy integrated with hydrogels has shown promising potential in wound healing. However, the existing hydrogels usually cannot reach the desired therapeutic efficacy for burn wounds due to the inadaptability to wound shape and weak anti‐infection ability. Moreover, it is difficult to improve the environment for the survival and function of stem cells under complicated wound microenvironments. In this study, an injectable and self‐healing hydrogel (DSC), comprising sulfobetaine‐derived dextran and carboxymethyl chitosan, is fabricated through a Schiff‐base reaction. Meanwhile, the DSC hydrogel shows high nonfouling properties, including resistance to bacteria and nonspecific proteins; moreover, the prepared hydrogel can provide a biomimetic microenvironment for cell proliferation whilst maintaining the stemness of adipose‐derived stem cells (ADSCs) regardless of complex microenvironments. In burnt murine animal models, the ADSCs‐laden hydrogel can significantly accelerate wound healing rate and scarless skin tissue regeneration through multiple pathways. Specifically, the ADSCs‐laden DSC hydrogel can avoid immune system recognition and activation and thus reduce the inflammatory response. Moreover, the ADSCs‐laden DSC hydrogel can promote collagen deposition, angiogenesis, and enhance macrophage M2 polarization in the wound area. In summary, sulfobetaine‐derived polysaccharide hydrogel can serve as a versatile platform for stem cell delivery to promote burn wound healing.


Objectives Sugarcane harvesters in Costa Rica are exposed to heat stress, a likely major risk factor in the Mesoamerican nephropathy epidemic. Routine urinalyses provide important information about kidney function, but have not been reported in detail for this population. Method Sugarcane cutters (n = 48) provided six spot urine samples, pre- and post-workshift for three days during one week in mid-harvest. Chemical analyses with dipstick and microscopic examinations of sediment were performed. Changes over the workday in markers for hydration status and kidney responses to heat stress were evaluated with McNemar test on paired proportions. Results Preliminary results indicate percentages of workers with specific parameters in at least one morning versus in at least one afternoon sample were with dipstick: pH ≤5 30% vs 82%, specific gravity ≥1.025 30% vs 51%, proteinuria (1+ and up) 86% vs 8%, and blood (traces and up) 28% vs 12%; and in sediment: >5 leucocytes 76% vs 57%, >3 erythrocytes 50% vs 37%, and casts (granular, leukocyte and some erythrocyte) 75% vs 39%. Except for erythrocytes in sediment, these differences were statistically significant. Conclusions Concentration and acidification of urine over the workday indicate insufficient hydration. Positive blood on dipstick may be a sign of low-grade hematuria or mild rhabdomyolysis. Predominance of proteinuria, leucocytes, erythrocytes and casts in morning urine was unexpected but may reflect improvement in glomerular filtration with hydration overnight or, alternatively, effects from vasopressin at night. This study adds to an increasing body of evidence of kidney dysfunction among heat stress exposed sugarcane workers.


Background

Some previous studies have reported that the ratio of triglycerides to high-density lipoprotein may indicate insulin resistance, but the results suggest that there are differences between different ethnic groups. In this study, the NHANES 2017-2018 database was used to explore the relationship between TG/HDL-C and IR in the American population.

Methods

This trial comes from a cross-sectional study of NHANES ( http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/ ) conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) of the US Centers for Diseases and Control and Prevention. IR uses the homeostatic model assessment (HOMA) formula as an indicator: [fasting insulin (μU/mL)×fasting blood glucose (mmol/L)]/22.5, with ≥75th percentile of HOMA-IR as an indicator. Use logistic regression to explore the relationship between TG/HDL ratio and IR occurrence.

Results

In this study, a total of 450 participants (40%,450/1902) developed insulin resistance. Using logistic regression model of the association between TG/HDL-C and insulin resistance risk, after adjusting for potential confounding factors, as the TG/HDL ratio increases, the probability of insulin resistance increases significantly (OR: 1.91, 95% CI: 1.59-2.30, P<0.0001). At the same time, we performed a smooth curve fitting and found a non-linear relationship between TG/HDL and IR. Even if the adjusted covariate is deleted from the model, the association remains unchanged. The smooth curve of TG/HDL-C The inflexion point is 0.95. When TG/HDL-C<0.95, the effect value is very significant (OR: 27.34, 95%CI, 10.61-70.47, P<0.0001), when TG/HDL-C≥0.95, the effect value is relatively reduced (OR: 1.29, 95% CI, 1.03-1.61, P<0.0001). We grouped them by inflexion points. Multiple regression equations showed that after adjustment, the group's risk of insulin resistance greater than 0.95 increased by two times compared with the group less than 0.95.

Conclusions

In this study, we found that the increase of TG/HDL-C ratio in the American population was significantly related to IR. It is clinically acceptable and can save some extra costs for patients. However, in different situations, combining the TG/HDL-C ratio with other risk factors to predict whether IR will occur is worthwhile for the next step.


This paper describes the synthesis of new magnetic, reactive polystyrene/polypyrrole core/shell latex particles. The core consists of a polystyrene microsphere containing gamma-Fe2O3 superparamagnetic nanoparticles (PSmag), and the shell is made of reactive N-carboxylic acid-functionalized polypyrrole (PPyCOOH). These PSmag-PPyCOOH latex particles, average diameter 220 nm, were prepared by copolymerization of pyrrole (Py) and the active carboxyl-functionalized pyrrole (PyCOOH) in the presence of PSmag particles. PNVP was used as a steric stabilizer. The functionalized polypyrrole-coated PSmag particles were characterized in terms of their particle size, surface morphology, chemical composition, and electrochemical and magnetic properties using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), cyclic voltammetry, and SQUID magnetometry. Activation of the particle surface carboxyl groups was achieved using 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl)-carbodiimide (EDC) and N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS), which helps transform the carboxyl groups into activated ester groups (NSE). The activated particles, PSmag-PPyNSE, were further evaluated as bioadsorbents of biotin used as a model biomolecule. It was shown that biotin was immobilized at the surface of the PSmag-PPyNSE particles by forming interfacial amide groups. The assemblies of PSmag-PPyCOOH particles on glass plates were further investigated. When no magnetic field is applied, the particles assemble into 3D colloidal crystals. In contrast, under a magnetic field, one-particle-thick chains gathered in hedgehog-like architectures are obtained. Furthermore, PSmag-PPyCOOH coated ITO electrodes were shown to be electroactive and electrochemically stable, thus offering potentialities for creating novel high-specific-area materials for biosensing devices where the conducting polymer component would act as the transducer through its conductive properties.


requires the qualifying statement that this was so only as far as the observations were carried-perhaps one year. To test the true resistance of the two groups of infants it would be necessary to record the infection rate when they left the sheltered home environment and entered the arenas of school life at 5 or 6 years old until the age of 7. It is difficult to explain the lack of correlation between the British and Swedish authors' figures for the physical development of infants on different feeding regimes. From a practical point of view it is common for infants on full-cream dried milk to make astonishing weekly gains of half to one pound (0.27-0.45 kg.) a week, and to pass the sixand twelve-month milestones many pounds ahead of the standard tables. As a rule, breastfed babies gain a modest four to six ounces (0.11-0.17 kg.) weekly. All full-cream dried-milk powders, when reconstituted by dissolving one part in eight of water, become cow's milk containing nearly three times as much protein as does breast milk. This is good for the calf, which grows four times as fast as a human baby. But should we not consider the effect of this large daily dose of foreign protein on the infant's metabolism ? This substance stimulates the latter 20% as compared with the stimulus of about 4% to 6% provided by fat and carbohydrate. Physical growth is grossly disturbed by such a stimulus, and one may speculate with the Swedish authors as to whether there are occult disadvantages being laid down in the developing human personality created by the strain of excessive physical development. There is no certain evidence presented in your review of these surveys to confirm the superiority of synthetic feeding. Human lactation is the successful result of probably a billion years of evolutionary experiment. Modern science has tried artificial feeding as an approved general policy for less than a century. It will probably take another million years to learn the answer to the question " Breast or Bottle ? "-I am, etc.,


Copper coatings were deposited on ferrous substrates by utilizing high-velocity oxy-fuel spraying (HVOF). Three different coating process parameters have been used in order to optimise the required electrical characteristics. Microstructure and phase formation in the coatings were analyzed by scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and oxygen analyzer (ELTRA). Electrical resistivity of coatings was measured in-plane and through-thickness using the four-contact method. Results shown that dense coatings with high purity and low level of porosity are required to achieve high electrical conductivity. The coatings exhibited an anisotropic electrical resistivity due to the nature of the thermal spray coating microstructure. Microstructural evaluation shown that individual splats morphology and splats interfaces play important roles in the electrical conductivity.


The photocurrent curves during either Cs or Cs/O activation of GaN photocathode were tested by using dedicated experimental system for activation and evaluation of negative electron affinity (NEA) photocathode. Aiming at explaining the formation of NEA property of GaN photocathode and according to the rule of photocurrent change during activation period and the surface model of a fully activated photocathode,the activation mechanism for NEA GaN photocathode was studied. The experiment results show that:the obvious NEA property is be induced in GaN photocathode mainly due to the activation by Cs. The increase extent of photocurrent is not large after introducing O during Cs/O activation process for GaN photocathode. The NEA property formation reasons of GaN photocathode after being activated successfully can be well explained using the double dipole layer model [GaN(Mg):Cs]:O—Cs.


The Daya Bay Reactor Anti-Neutrino Experiment is a neutrino oscillation experiment designed to observe and measure the neutrino mixing angle θ13. The sensitivity goal is 0.01 in sin 22θ13 at the 90% confidence level, a significant improvement over the current limit. This will be accomplished by measuring the relative rates and energy spectra of reactor electron antineutrinos with multiple detectors positioned at different baselines. Civil construction is currently under-way as detector designs and planning near completion. Commissioning activities should be completed by the end of 2010, followed by a three-year run.


Heinz Kohler argues that there is a fundamental differenee between selfish genes and a selfish immune network. Because genes code for proteins and proteins provide survival value he argues that the idiotype proteins ofthe network have survival value. His conclusion is that if the network did not have survival value it would not exist because 'if genes are selfish they must somehow include the "selfish" survival of the immune network'. I must disagree with this line of reasoning on two counts. First, I readily conceded that there may be idid interactions within the small repertoire that I postulate. I also concede that we can manipulate it to make anti-receptor antibodies. I do not however concede that it has a natural function that is regulatory, Heinz Kohler has not convinced me that the interactions that he discusses are really of importance in managing disease (especially if I am correct in asserting that the only diseases that the immune system seems to work against when left to its own devices are opportunistic infections). Our second point of difference is in the idea that the selfishness ofthe gene implies the survival value of the gene product. In fact, I think the idea ofthe selfishness ofthe genes precludes the idea that the survival value of their products. Obviously a gene product that is detrimental to the survival ofthe organism will eliminate the individual (and if the gene spreads through the population it can cause the elimination of all members that express it). But to argue that because a trait has survived it must have survival value is difficult to defend. The idea of newrra/mutations is well known in population genetics. The neutral theory states that the great majority of evolutionary changes at the molecular level are caused 'by random fixation of selectively neutral or nearly neutral mutants in the species' [2], This point is also addressed in Gould and Lewontin [1] in which they address the point directly. Kohler and I are in agreement that both the immune response and the web of interacting ids can be manipulated to the value ofthe species. But this is only in species that have evolved those traits that allow them to intervene in the functions of their own immune systems. In the broad view, this encompasses a numerically insignificant part of the biological world (i.e., n = I) but one that is of unsurpassing interest to itself. I need hardly point out that this is another example of selfishness that colours our view ofthe world.


The percentage and absolute numbers of circulating B and T lymphocytes were determined for 10 healthy cattle by labeling mononuclear cells with anti-bovine immunoglobulin or peanut agglutinin. The cattle were then inoculated with a cytopathogenic isolate of bovine viral diarrhea (BVD) virus, and B- and T-lymphocyte populations were again quantitated at given intervals. Seemingly, BVD virus caused a decrease in the absolute numbers of B and T lymphocytes and in the percentage of T lymphocytes. Although these effects lasted through 7 days, all of the cattle recovered from infection and had detectable BVD virus-neutralizing antibodies in their sera 17 days after exposure.


Effect of the modulated electric and magnetic fields on the electronic structure of graphene is studied. Broadenings of the Landau levels due to the modulated fields are presented. We studied the Weiss oscillations of the subband width as a function of external field parameters. The subband density of states are also calculated.


Objective To analyze the prevalence and risk factors of constipation after thoracolumbar vertebral compression fractures (TVCFs). Methods This retrospective study reviews the records of patients hospitalized between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2018 with TVCFs. A total of 117 patient's records are included (n = 117). Univariate and multivariate analysis using the logistic regression method are carried out to identify the prevalence and potential risk factors for constipation after TVCF, including gender, age, number of fractured vertebrae, major segment of vertebral fracture, degree of compression, use of painkillers, diabetes, and the intervention of Zengyechengqi decoction. Results Among the 117 patients with TVCFs that were included in this study, 83 (70.9%) patients developed constipation. Univariate analysis showed that the factors of degree of vertebral compression and the preintervention of Zengyechengqi decoction had statistically significant effects on the incidence of constipation after TVCF (P < 0.05), indicating that they might contribute to the incidence of constipation after TVCF. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that degree of vertebral compression was a risk factor (P < 0.05), while preintervention of Zengyechengqi decoction was a protective factor (P < 0.05), for constipation after TVCF. Conclusion Patients with vertebral fractures featuring a higher degree of compression may have a higher risk of constipation. Preintervention of Zengyechengqi decoction can reduce the incidence of constipation after TVCF.


Indonesia is a growing place for 80 percent of medicinal plants in the world with 28,000 plant species are grown and 1,000 species of which have been used as medicinal plants. The utilization of plant raw materials is still fixed by one type of material even though these materials can be used by various types of diseases. Family Medicinal Plants, known as "TOGA", are cultivated plants that have natural medicinal properties and can cure minor ailments that often occur in families, and now can be cultivated in the yard. The TOPSIS method was chosen because it makes it easier for users to determine alternative types of family medicinal plants or traditional medicines in the surrounding environment, called a decision support system. This research was conducted at Sari Bumi Farmer Group, Sambiloto Street RT 14 No. 24. The research period was ± 6 (six) months, from October 2018 - March 2019 which included making proposals, collecting data, making applications, and compiling reports. The "TOGA" Selection Decision Support System using the TOPSIS Method makes it easy for users to choose plants that can be used as medicine and to determine the type of medicinal plant family based on different criteria for each existing plant.


[1] A Porites coral from New Ireland (2.5°S, 150.5°E), at the heart of the Pacific warm pool, records variations of Ba/Ca back to the early 1820s. The New Ireland Coastal Undercurrent, which flows along the north coast and transports high-nutrient thermocline waters, is thought to be the main source of the Ba enrichment observed in the coral during El Nino. Between the 1850s and the 1960s, frequent large Ba peaks indicate that nutrients were available during both phases of El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). During La Nina, Ba could be advected along the South Equatorial Current. Also during this period, clusters of Ba/Ca peaks at nearly decadal timescale generally coincide with the return time of a strong El Nino, in accord with the high decadal variance of NINO3 sea surface temperatures. Ba enrichment in this coral primarily reflects the stratification in the thermocline that controls vertical mixing. The coral records long-term changes in those properties affecting nutrients in surface waters, with reduced Ba after the 1960s, and even less between 1823 and 1850. These reductions are tentatively attributed to the high rate of warming at the end of the Dalton Minimum and since the mid-20th century. An ensuing weakening of the trade winds may have produced a more stratified equatorial thermocline, hindering the transport of Ba and nutrients from the undercurrent to the shallow coastal waters north of New Ireland.


This will is an expository description of quadratic rational maps. Sections 2 through 6 are concerned with the geometry and topology of such maps. Sections 7--10 survey of some topics from the dynamics of quadratic rational maps. There are few proofs. Section 9 attempts to explore and picture moduli space by means of complex one-dimensional slices. Section 10 describes the theory of real quadratic rational maps. For convenience in exposition, some technical details have been relegated to appendices: Appendix A outlines some classical algebra. Appendix B describes the topology of the space of rational maps of degree \[d\]. Appendix C outlines several convenient normal forms for quadratic rational maps, and computes relations between various invariants.\break Appendix D describes some geometry associated with the curves \[\Per_n(\mu)\subset\M\]. Appendix E describes totally disconnected Julia sets containing no critical points. Finally, Appendix F, written in collaboration with Tan Lei, describes an example of a connected quadratic Julia set for which no two components of the complement have a common boundary point.


Money supply statistics based on the Year 2015 results show that «money starvation» is coming to an end in Russia. That has always been truly indicative of exit from the crisis. The depth of money supply decline in 2015 (it declined by 11%) proved to have been the smallest one in the whole history of post-Soviet Russia. This constitutes a relative success of the policy conducted by the Central Bank of Russia. The reason for this success is that it has been keeping positive growth rates of the nominal money supply and keeping inflation under control. Continuation of such policy would mean independence of economic growth in Russia of oil prices.


A HEK-293 cell line that stably expresses mouse 5-HT(3A)Rs containing a C-terminal extension that confers high-affinity binding of alpha-bungarotoxin (alphaBgTx) was established (alphaBgTx-5-HT(3A)Rs) and used to purify alphaBgTx-5-HT(3A)Rs in a lipid environment for use in structural studies using photoaffinity labeling. alphaBgTx-5-HT(3A)Rs were expressed robustly (60 pmol of [(3)H]BRL-43694 binding sites (approximately 3 microg of receptor) per milligram of protein) and displayed the same functional properties as wild-type receptors (serotonin EC(50) = 5.3 +/- 0.04 microM). While [(125)I]alphaBgTx bound to the alphaBgTx-5-HT(3A)Rs with high affinity (K(d) = 11 nM), application of nonradioactive alphaBgTx (up to 300 microM) had no effect on serotonin-induced current responses. alphaBgTx-5-HT(3A)Rs were purified on an alphaBgTx-derivatized affinity column from detergent extracts in milligram quantities and at approximately 25% purity. The hydrophobic photolabel 3-trifluoromethyl-3-(m-[(125)I]iodophenyl)diazirine ([(125)I]TID) was used to identify the amino acids at the lipid-protein interface of purified and lipid-reconstituted alphaBgTx-5-HT(3A)Rs. [(125)I]TID photoincorporation into the alphaBgTx-5-HT(3A)R subunit was initially mapped to subunit proteolytic fragments of 8 kDa, containing the M4 transmembrane segment and approximately 60% of incorporated (125)I, and 17 kDa, containing the M1-M3 transmembrane segments. Within the M4 segment, [(125)I]TID labeled Ser(451), equivalent to the [(125)I]TID-labeled residue Thr(422) at the lipid-exposed face of the Torpedo nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) alpha1M4 alpha-helix. These results provide a first definition of the surface of the 5-HT(3A)R M4 helix that is exposed to lipid and establish that this surface is equivalent to the surface exposed to lipid in the Torpedo nAChR.


Primary cilia are organelles extended from virtually all cells and are required for the proper regulation of a number of canonical developmental pathways. The role in cortical development of proteins important for ciliary form and function is a relatively understudied area. Here we have taken a genetic approach to define the role in forebrain development of three intraflagellar transport proteins known to be important for primary cilia function. We have genetically ablated Kif3a, Ift88, and Ttc21b in a series of specific spatiotemporal domains. The resulting phenotypes allow us to draw several conclusions. First, we conclude that the Ttc21b cortical phenotype is not due to the activity of Ttc21b within the brain itself. Secondly, some of the most striking phenotypes are from ablations in the neural crest cells and the adjacent surface ectoderm indicating that cilia transduce critical tissue—tissue interactions in the developing embryonic head. Finally, we note striking differences in phenotypes from ablations only one embryonic day apart, indicating very discrete spatiotemporal requirements for these three genes in cortical development.


This study was carried out to determine the effects of cane girdling on coloration, maturation, yield and some quality characteristics of Vitis vinifera L. cv. Flame Seedless table grape variety. Cane girdling practices were treated at pea-size stage (G2) and veraison period (G1) over two growing seasons, 2013–2014, at the facility of Manisa Viticultural Research Institute in Turkey. Cane girdling was performed on the canes after first shoot was left from the bottom and 4 mm-wide ring of bark was completely removed with a doubleded knife. On the other hand control vines were left untouched. Statistical analyses showed that TSS, berry length, colour parameters, CIRG index and anthocyanin content of Flame Seedless was significantly affected by the cane girdling treatments in both years, 2013 and 2014. In addition it was detected that any effect of girdling treatments cannot be determined statistically significant on total yield, marketable yield, titrable acidity and 50 berry weight. Total and marketable yields of girdled vines had higher value than control vines although they were not statistically significant. Furthermore it was observed 9 and 12 days earliness with G2 treatments compare to the control vines in 2013 and 2014, respectively.


To the Editor. —As a member of the pediatric house staff, Dr Marion 1 was faced with a complex situation involving an impoverished 11-year-old girl, pregnant by her older, teenage brother. The issues raised by this situation include incest, teenage pregnancy, poverty, abortion, inadequate prenatal care, child abuse, and others. Dr Marion has approached these difficult and frustrating, yet all too common, problems in a compassionate manner. However, he appears to have made two errors that warrant comment. First, he fails to recognize that for many patients abortion is not a morally acceptable solution to the problem he describes. Once that is made clear, it only angers and distances one's patient to continue to try to convince her to consider it. At that point, it is prudent to suggest other available options, such as adoption, and refer the patient to the appropriate agency. Second, there is rarely any justification for


Youth accounted for approximately 50% of new HIV infections across the globe . Lack of condom use is associated with the HIV/STI risks. SSA have majority of the youth with multiple partners during the previous 12 months. Though since 2000, condom use has increased by 10% .A cross sectional study was conducted during the month of August 2011 to February 2012. Various statistical packages were used such as chi square and multivariate analysis.
There was significant relationship between gender and condom use at the Universities P


ABSTRACT This paper evaluates the impact on dropout rates of a policy change in Mexico that eliminates grade retention for all first to third-grade students, causing a sharp reduction in repetition rates. I use a 12-year panel of schools to exploit such variation and estimate Difference-in-Difference models showing an average decrease in dropout rates of 30%. However, this effect is concentrated in wealthier schools, suggesting that social promotion alone is not enough to offset the influence of socioeconomic factors on school attainment. Further evidence shows that eliminating the 'threat' of grade repetition did not reduce average students' performance in standardized tests.


Mr J A Fishwick made a planning application (Reference 5/06/1326) to South Lakeland District Council to convert the Grade II listed east barn at Beetham Hall Farm, Beetham, Milnthorpe, Cumbria (SD 4996 7907) to business premises for his firm of undertakers. The barn is recorded in the County Historic Environment Record (reference 22713), whilst Beetham Hall itself is a fortified manor-house dating from the thirteenth century (Historic Environment record no. 2518). In addition, part of the site is legally protected as a Scheduled Monument (SM no CU 327), including underneath the barn proposed for conversion.
As part of the planning procedure, Cumbria County Council Historic Environment Services (CCCHES) recommended a building investigation of English Heritage (2006) Level III standard for the barn. This was to include a rapid desk-based assessment, which would provide an historical background and detail any changes in the development of the buildings. In addition, an extensive site investigation was to be undertaken, comprising written descriptions, an extensive photographic record, and site drawings of the floor plans and elevations. A watching brief on groundworks to be undertaken during the development was also recommended. The results of these are included within this report.
Following these recommendations, Mr Fishwick requested that Oxford Archaeology North (OA North) undertake the building investigation and Watching Brief, which were completed respectively during April and August 2007.
The building investigation concluded that the barn dates to the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century and was part of an established farmstead by the mid nineteenth century. In its original form, it was undoubtedly used as a threshing barn, hayloft and animal shelter, but a recorded change of occupancy by the mid to late nineteenth century appears to have affected both the building's function and form. The period witnessed improvements in threshing technology and transport, and a shift from arable to livestock and dairy farming, and this clearly resulted in the building of the east extension and the insertion of more stalls within the shed. From the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the building appears to have been altered very little, with the exception of repairs and maintenance. Certainly, the slate roof to the rear of the building (east) was replaced with corrugated iron during the mid to late twentieth century, whilst a modern Dutch barn was erected in the late twentieth century.


Font detection and similar font suggestions are essential in computer vision, document analysis, pattern recognition, web development, and core work for graphics designers and UX-UI engineers. Even though Bangla is one of the most communicated languages globally and the growing popularity of Bangla in online publications and social media platforms, there has been a noticeable demand for Bangla fonts. However, there is no appreciable work for font detection in Bangla, unlike other high resource languages like English, Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, Spanish, and German. This work represents a model to recognize Bangla fonts from images using the transfer learning method. In Image Processing and Classification, resources are insufficient for such work in Bangla, so it is required to build as much raw data as possible to train the model. Therefore, as part of the work, 6500 raw images of five different fonts are used, and with augmentation 26000 image data are created to train and 2600 images to validate the model. Three transfer learning models, which are VGG-16, VGG-19, and Xception are applied. Among them, VGG-16 archives the highest accuracy of 96.23%. This paper is the first publicly available work on Bangla font recognition using the Transfer Learning approach to the best of our knowledge.


According to the relevant information in 2011,the review of the silicone industry market and development of new silicone products in China was summarized.


Service dogs are trained to help people with limited mobility. They have been shown to enhance independence and to reduce the need for assistance. However, training is expensive, and most trainers prefer not to work with children. A collaboration between Shriners Hospital, Northern California, and Loving Paws Assistance Dogs of Santa Rosa, California, was initiated to pair children with limited mobility with service dogs. We studied the outcomes of five child-dog pairs. Three were highly successful, one partially succeeded, and one failed. We conclude that the training and pairing of service dogs and disabled children is a difficult but worthwhile enterprise.


We investigated the fine morphology of basal cell in the frog's taste organ by means of transmission electron microscopy. Results show that basal cells are placed at the base of the disc and are highly polarized; the cell body is peripherally located and a long cell process reaches the central region of the taste disc without branching. The cell body contains the nucleus, the Golgi apparatus and large lysosomes; junctions between more peripherally located 'marginal' cells prevent passage of macromolecules from oral ambient to basal cells as shown by horse-radish peroxidase experiments. The cell process, running just over the basement membrane in the taste disc epithelium, is rich in microtubules, filaments and clustered secretory granules arranged near the plasmalemma. Nerves interrupting the basement membrane make synaptic-like junctions with basal cells. The cell process ends in the central region of the taste disc; here, the basal cell is expanded to contain filaments, secretory granules and mitochondria in characteristic arrangement and contacts intraepithelial nerve endings as well as basal processes of sensory and supporting cells. Marginated granules are found where basal cell contacts nerve ending and also where nerve and sensory cells contact basal cell. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that basal cells are under nerve control and that they may have a diffuse (paracrine) influence on neighbouring cells in the frog's taste organ.


Visualization recommendation systems simplify exploratory data analysis (EDA) and make understanding data more accessible to users of all skill levels by automatically generating visualizations for users to explore. However, most existing visualization recommendation systems focus on ranking all visualizations into a single list or set of groups based on particular attributes or encodings. This global ranking makes it difficult and time-consuming for users to find the most interesting or relevant insights. To address these limitations, we introduce a novel class of visualization recommendation systems that automatically rank and recommend both groups of related insights as well as the most important insights within each group. Our proposed approach combines results from many different learning-based methods to discover insights automatically. A key advantage is that this approach generalizes to a wide variety of attribute types such as categorical, numerical, and temporal, as well as complex non-trivial combinations of these different attribute types. To evaluate the effectiveness of our approach, we implemented a new insight-centric visualization recommendation system, SpotLight, which generates and ranks annotated visualizations to explain each insight. We conducted a user study with 12 participants and two datasets which showed that users are able to quickly understand and find relevant insights in unfamiliar data.


Multimode emission from a powerful cw CO2 laser with a transversely pumped active medium was investigated as a function of phase inhomogeneities, of laser characteristics, and of the type of an unstable cavity. The results obtained were compared with calculations.


Conventional Statistical Process Control (SPC) schemes fail to monitor nonlinear and finite-state processes that often result from feedback-controlled processes. SPC methods that are designed to monitor autocorrelated processes usually assume a known model (often an ARIMA) that might poorly describe the real process. In this paper, we present a novel SPC methodology based on context modeling of finite-state processes. The method utilizes a series of context-tree models to estimate the conditional distribution of the process output given the context of previous observations. The Kullback-Leibler divergence statistic is derived to indicate significant changes in the trees along the process. The method is implemented in a simulated flexible manufacturing system in order to detect significant changes in its production mix ratio output.


A transient increase in N1-acetylpolyamines and putrescine (PUT) was observed in hepatocytes at the early stage of primary culture of rat hepatocytes. After pre-culture for 36 hr when the polyamine content returned to constant levels, we tested the effects of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and alpha-tocopherol on the paraquat-induced increase in N1-acetylspermidine (N1-acetyl-SPD) and PUT in the culture. Paraquat increased (N1-acetyl-SPD in a dose-dependent manner. It also increased PUT at doses between 0.1 and 1.3 mM. Both SOD and alpha-tocopherol suppressed the increase in N1-acetyl-SPD and PUT induced by paraquat. These results suggested that superoxide anion is one of the factors which increase N1-acetyl-SPD and PUT in hepatocytes. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) little affected the polyamine concentration in the cultured hepatocytes, though it increases polyamine in mouse liver when given in vivo. These findings suggested that the formation of superoxide anion after administration of LPS in vivo is mediated by Kupffer cells.


Cancer models have been used for the analysis of incidence data in epidemiology and time to tumor data in experimental studies. The relevant quantities for the analyses of these data are the hazard function and the probability of tumor. We have begun to use these models for the analysis of data on intermediate lesions on the pathway to cancer. Such data are available in experimental carcinogenesis studies, in particular in initiation and promotion studies on the mouse skin and the rat liver. Typically, such data take the form of information on the number and size distribution of intermediate lesions as functions of the dose of the chemical agents applied and time on study. If, quantitative information on intermediate lesions on the pathway to lung cancer were to become available at some future date, the methods that we have developed for the analysis of initiation promotion experiments could easily be applied to the analysis of these lesion. The mathematical derivations here are couched in terms of a particular two-mutation model of carcinogenesis. Extension to models postulating more than two mutations is not always straightforward.


We present interplanetary network localization, spectral, and time history information for four short-duration, hard spectrum gamma-ray bursts, GRB 000607, GRB 001025B, GRB 001204, and GRB 010119. All of these events were followed up with sensitive radio and optical observations (the first and only such bursts to be followed up in the radio to date), but no detections were made, demonstrating that the short bursts do not have anomalously intense afterglows. We discuss the upper limits and show that the lack of observable counterparts is consistent with both the hypothesis that the afterglow behavior of the short bursts is like that of the long-duration bursts, many of which similarly have no detectable afterglows, as well as the hypothesis that the short bursts have no detectable afterglows at all. Small number statistics do not allow a clear choice between these alternatives, but given the present detection rates of various missions, we show that progress can be expected in the near future.


Nutrition and health occupy a long period from the fetal age to adolescence. The interaction between genes and nutrients is one of the most interesting aspects. Health depends on genetic and environmental factors, the most important of which is nutrition. There is a need to define mechanisms and evaluate specific hypotheses in controlled animal experiments and clinical trials in humans. The effects must be permanent, remaining long after the nutritional deficiency or excess has disappeared. This presupposes the existence of critical periods in organ development and biochemical or physiological maturation, during which stimuli leave a permanent imprint. Nutrients can affect the structural development of certain organs during critical periods, both in the fetal and neonatal periods, and can contribute to the development of a different organ structure during these critical periods, leaving permanent effects.The role of folic acid as the prime example of the interaction between genes and nutrients is well known. Folates play an important role in DNA synthesis because of their intervention in deoxyuridine and deoxythymidine methylation and their absence provokes severe disorders in DNA replication and synthesis, which can be precancerous. Periconceptional administration of folic acid is essential to prevent dysraphias (spina bifida). Equally, this nutrient is also important to homocysteine metabolism, which is derived from methionine metabolism and which is an important endothelial toxin. Pediatrics should carefully redefine the criteria for adapting feeding and nutrition not only to childhood health but also to adult well being and disease-free survival. The advent of molecular genetics and the possibility of identifying at-risk individuals and the risks to which they are exposed at an early age, even before birth, provides pediatricians with unique opportunities. However, the growth of knowledge and techniques makes it impossible to keep up to date with all the scientific findings concerning children's health. Nevertheless, as doctors, pediatricians need I would say they are obliged to keep up to date in order to serve as a bridge between science and the practical needs of children and their families. Pediatricians will continue to focus on children's health, although the emphasis will increasingly be placed on prevention rather than cure, and must be ever more aware that the child is the father of the man and that the future is in his hands.


Objective: To document the natural history of vestibular schwannomas treated conservatively, and to find if there are any predictive factors for growth and need for active intervention. Design: A retrospective review of patient notes and radiology, mostly MRIs. Subjects: Eighty-eight patients managed conservatively for unilateral vestibular schwannoma and that have had at least two radiological investigations. Outcome measures: Change in tumour size over time was evaluated. Linear and logistic regression, respectively, were used to determine which factors (of age, size at diagnosis, audiology at presentation, length of follow-up or growth within first year of follow-up) would predict overall growth and active intervention. Characteristics of those that required active intervention is also demonstrated. Results: Of the 88 patients, the average size of schwannoma at diagnosis was 10.88 mm. The mean length of radiological follow-up was 3.65 years. 51.1% of schwannomas grew, 12.5% shrank and 36.4% remained the same size. The mean rate of growth was 1.24 mm per year. 25.0% failed conservative treatment, with 19 patients having stereotactic radiosurgery and three undergoing microsurgery. Only growth in the first year of follow-up was found to significantly predict total growth. Size at diagnosis and growth in first year of follow-up were significantly found to predict active intervention. Conclusions: There remains a place for conservative treatment in those with small tumours, the elderly and those with significant co-morbidities. Growth in the first year of follow-up should be considered in determining whether to treat actively or not.


Synopsis: A calculation model for predicting the progress of transformations of low carbon steels during continuous cooling and the microstructure after cooling has been developed. In this model, the progress of transformations is assumed as follows. The transformation from austenite to ferrite starts at the equilibrium temperature, Ae3. The ferrite transformation follows 'nucleation and growth' model at the early stage and then follows 'site saturation' model at the later stage. The carbon content of the untransformed austenite increases with the progress of ferrite transformation. The pearlite transformation starts when the carbon content of the austenite reaches the extrapolated Acm line in the equilibrium diagram. The bainite transformation starts when the temperature reaches the bainite-start temperature, Bs, which is experimentally determined. Besides, the effect of chemical composition on the transformation kinetics are taken into consideration by using the theoretically calculated nucleation rate and growth rate. Excellent agreements are obtained between the calculated and experimental results for the effect of compositions (C, Mn, Si) on the transformation kinetics, the continuous cooling transformation diagrams and the microstructure after cooling.


Our paper presents the results of a study of leadership in school leaders. Intensive social changes have activated the subject-activity principle in all spheres of professional and everyday human life, which actualizes the problem of studying the phenomenon of leadership. In the context of social transformations, the leadership phenomenon becomes socially relevant, which determines the search for new approaches to its scientific understanding. The paper was addressed to the personal and professional qualities of leaders of educational organizations. It provides and interprets diagnostic data on the degree of readiness of school leaders to change, potential and real risks, strategic and operational responses to changes, and emotional stability. The experiment was attended by principals of different age categories of the Tyumen and Omsk regions. Our results demonstrated that the role of a leader in a changing world is on the rise with the changes impacting on the development of leadership qualities.


The review gives a systematic account of the literature on the methods of preparation and certain physical and chemical properties of acetylene derivatives of arsenic. The bibliography includes 46 references.


316L stainless steel is still widely applied in joint replacement and orthopedic surgery due to its mechanical properties, corrosion resistance and relatively low price. In this study, electrochemical oxidation and nanoscale coating were used to fabricate Se-coated 316L stainless steel with nano-pit arrays to enhance its surface characteristics, biocompatibility and osseointegration ability. The modified 316L stainless steel was tested via field emission scanning microscopy (FESEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Se release studies. The results of this study showed that the nano-pit arrays were 50 nm in diameter and that the Se coating consisted primarily of elemental Se and exhibited sustained release. The biological response of the samples was evaluated using in vitro rat bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell (rBMSCs) experiments and in vivo animal experiments. The modified 316L stainless steel displays enhanced abilities of cell adhesion, proliferation and osteogenic activity, as shown by FESEM, CCK-8 assay, immunofluorescence microscopy (IF) and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity assay in vitro and additional new bone formation in vivo, indicating its outstanding cytocompatibility and osteogenic differentiation ability. More importantly, the Se coating can upregulate gene expression of OPN, RUNX-2 and ALP, indicating that the nano-Se-coated 316L stainless steel with nano-pit arrays is a promising biomedical material for implants in orthopedic or dental clinic applications.


Copper acetate mediated regioselective ortho-arylthiolation of 2-arylpyridines has been accomplished for the first time using S-aryl arenesulfonothioate as the arylthiolating agent. The reaction shows good functional group tolerance and gives thioarylated products in 67-89% yields. This reagent is a good alternative to unpleasant smelling arylthiols. Experimental evidence suggests an unprecedented insertion of an arylthio unit from both parts of the reagent (SPh and p-TolSO2) in the presence of copper acetate. Indoles and imidazopyridines also undergo facile reaction at the C-3 position and furnish thioarylated derivatives in good yields.


The upper part of the hornet cuticle in the abdominal region reveals several structures. First, situated at intervals of 10 microm or more apart, there are depressions housing a peripheral photoreceptor (PP) and between every two of these, there are horizontal flats resembling an irregular polygon which are mostly elongated and about 100 microm2 in area. Upon each such terrace-like flat there are tile-shaped protuberances up to several micrometres in length and mostly running parallel to one another, covering the entire surface. Between every two such terraces there is a 'step' of up to 1.4 microm in height. Both the 'tiles' and 'steps' terminate in front of the distal part of each PP, which is a recessed and smooth region. Secondly, in other regions of the cuticle one can note other surface configurations such as: (a) a paucity of 'tiles'; (b) no 'tiles' at all but a chessboard-like pattern, the 'squares' of which contain rectangles recessed to various depths, interspersed among 'plaques' that are not recessed and may even protrude; and (c) anfractuous (characterized by windings and turnings) flats that are intermittently criss-crossed by grooves. In addition to the above, most of the cuticle also displays numerous setae (i.e. small hairs). We suppose that all the described structures and configurations either contribute to enlargement of the cuticular surface, or act as an optical grid, thereby enhancing the absorption of light. We further speculate that for hornets in flight, situations may arise where part of the above mentioned structures orientates perpendicular to the sunlight and this entire orientation acts to direct the solar energy toward and into the PP so as to enable greater utilization of light as an energy source.


In a recent clinical trial, the metabolite L-glutamine was shown to reduce painful crises in sickle cell disease (SCD) patients. To confirm this observation and identify other metabolites implicated in SCD clinical heterogeneity, we profiled 129 metabolites in the plasma of 705 SCD patients. We tested correlations between metabolite levels and six SCD-related complications (painful crises, cholecystectomy, retinopathy, leg ulcer, priapism, aseptic necrosis) or estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), and used Mendelian randomization (MR) to assess causality. We found a causal relationship between L-glutamine levels and painful crises (N=1,278, odds ratio (OR) [95% confidence interval] = 0.68 [0.52 – 0.89], P=0.0048). In two smaller SCD cohorts (N=299 and 406), the protective effect of L-glutamine was observed (OR=0.82 [0.50-1.34]), although the MR result was not significant (P=0.44). We identified 66 significant correlations between the levels of other metabolites and SCD-related complications or eGFR. We tested these correlations for causality using MR analyses and found no significant causal relationship. The baseline levels of quinolinic acid was associated with prospectively ascertained survival in SCD patients, and this effect was dependent on eGFR. Metabolomics provide a promising approach to prioritize small molecules that may serve as biomarkers or drug targets in SCD.


DURING the past few years we have observed several patients who demonstrated cardiac enlargement and clinical symptoms and signs of congestive heart failure without convincing evidence of hypertension, coronary artery disease, or valvular heart disease. When death occurred, sometimes after years of chronic congestive heart failure, autopsy revealed none of the usual causes of heart disease. These patients were considered to have primary myocardial disease. In this paper is described a group of 17 such patients who have been subjected to postmortem examination at the Cincinnati General Hospital, the Cincinnati Veterans Hospital, or the Cincinnati Children's Hospital, and one patient from personal observation at the Brooklyn Hospital, Brooklyn, New York. Five of the patients were personally examined by one of the authors, and rightsided heart catheterization was performed in four of the patients.


IN 1954, seven cases of constrictive pericarditis were reported from the Vancouver General Hospital and Shaughnessy Hospital.' During the succeeding years, 14 additional cases of constrictive pericarditis have been treated surgically (table 1). Constrictive pericarditis following trauma or hemopericardium of sufficient severity to cause disability, has not been seen by the authors, although a number of cases of hemopericardium have been treated by aspiration. One patient operated on for mitral stenosis was found to have an adherent constricting pericardium, which was removed at the time of commissurotomy and inay possibly have been a result of rheumatic fever. Bacteria such as staphylococci have not been found responsible for constrictive pericarditis in this series. The belief was firmly held that constrictive pericarditis was usually due to the tubercle bacillus until this year, when five cases of constrictive pericarditis were seen within a few months. Four of these patients had negative tuberculin tests. The fifth was slightly positive to 1/10,000 old tuberculin, but gave a history similar to the other four; had no other evidence of tuberculous infection; and showed no response to antituberculous therapy. Four of these patients were under 40 years of age. One was aged 58. Two of them were hospitalized and diagnosed as nonspecific pericarditis several months before operation. The remaining three had a similar illness for which they did not consult a physician. All of them had their original illness during a


Credible control and overall stabilization of closed-loop nonlinear systems presented in a port-controlled hamiltonian structure (PCH-D) were forever the development of the simultaneous interconnection and damping assignment passivity-based control (SIDA-PBC) method. The robustness and reliability of the method called into question against noise and certainly modelling errors. Indeed, a new scheme has been presented to control a doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) based on the energy form and exploiting the electrical parameters of the closed loop system. The results obtained provide a new technique and implement more freedom when designing the diagram of the advanced controller during the production of active power. The contribution of this paper is researching on the advanced nonlinear methodes used, many simulations were carried out in simulation using the MATLAB/Simulink environment under important operating conditions, allowing to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method and verify the performance considering the robustness.


Condition monitoring of gas pipes has been an important issue for gas companies. Failure to accurately identify condition of gas pipes result in numerous problems. Also, producing a condition monitoring system for buried pipelines is challenging. Small pipes (with diameters less than 50 mm) are considered here as most of the literature focuses on larger pipes. Guided wave theory will be introduced alongside a numerical simulation of the relevant dispersion curves of the system. This paper investigates the feasibility of using torsional guided waves for inspecting defects in buried pipes with small diameters. The pipes are assumed to be lossless and hence the effect of attenuation is ignored in the calculations. Upon finding the theoretical guided wave characteristics, experiments were conducted to see if the aim could be achieved in a realistic scenario. A steel pipe with a diameter of 34 mm and wall thickness of 5.5 mm is considered. High reverberation levels at high frequency propagations due to mode conversion are studied. Having only a limited number of transducers could be a reason for high reverberation at high frequencies.


Background: Globally, plagiarism is a crack on academic and professional integrity that has permeated the fabrics of medical education and constitutes a threat to genuine scholarships. Objective: The study was aimed at describing the prevalence, attitude, enabling factors, punitive, and preventive measures for plagiarism in a cross-section of postgraduate medical college trainees and fellows in a tertiary health institution in South-East Nigeria. Materials and Methods: A descriptive study was carried out in a cross-section of one hundred and 43 study participants from postgraduate medical college trainees and fellows in a tertiary health institution in Nigeria. Data collection was done using pretested, self-administered questionnaire that elicited information on awareness, prevalence, and attitude toward plagiarism (ATP). ATP was assessed with 29-item prevalidated ATP tool. Operationally, favorable range of scores for academic integrity was low-positive attitude, high-negative attitude and low subjective norms, respectively. Enabling factors, punitive and preventive measures were also studied. Results: The age of trainees ranged from 26 to 47 years with a mean of 36 ± 9.8, whereas the age of fellows ranged from 35 to 59 years with a mean of 43 ± 8.2. All the respondents were aware of plagiarism. The prevalence of plagiarism was 23.8%. Committals of plagiarism predominantly occurred during undergraduate project writings. For trainees, the mean scores for positive attitude, negative attitude, and subjective norms were 53 ± 5 (high), 12 ± 2 (low), and 30 ± 8 (moderate), respectively, while for fellows, the mean scores for positive attitude, negative attitude, and subjective norms were 35 ± 6 (moderate), 22 ± 3 (moderate) and 30 ± 5 (moderate), respectively. The most common enabling factor and punishment were ignorance of what constitutes plagiarism and demotion, respectively. The most common preventive measures were the use of anti-plagiarism software and education on what constitutes plagiarism. Conclusion: This study has shown that plagiarism occurred among the study participants. The level of awareness of plagiarism was very high but did not translate to appropriate positive, negative, and subjective norms attitudinal orientation required for academic integrity. The most common enabling factor and punishment for plagiarism were ignorance of what constitutes plagiarism and demotion, respectively.


Since any organizational environment is typically resource constrained, especially in terms of human capital, organization managers would like to maximize the utilization of available human resources. However, tasks cannot simply be assigned to arbitrary employees since the employee needs to have the necessary capabilities for executing a task. Furthermore, security policies constrain the assignment of tasks to employees, especially given the other tasks assigned to the same employee. Since role-based access control (RBAC) is the most commonly used access control model for commercial information systems, we limit our attention to consider constraints in RBAC. In this article, we define the Employee Assignment Problem (EAP), which aims to identify an employee to role assignment such that it permits the maximal flexibility in assigning tasks to employees while ensuring that the required security constraints are met. We prove that finding an optimal solution is NP-complete and therefore provide a greedy solution. Experimental evaluation of the proposed approach shows that it is both efficient and effective.


It is common for historians of the antebellum, civil war, and reconstruction-era United States to talk of 'the Northeast', 'the South', or 'the West' as offhand for a wide range of interests, like the Confederacy, slaveholders, or industrial capitalism. Nicolas Barreyre's well-written and largely persuasive account of Reconstruction-era political economy suggests that historians may have to be more careful when using these terms in their own work. Contemporaries, he suggests, conceptualised the American economy in geographic terms, believing it self-evident that the Northeast, South, and Midwest were separate competing economic interest groups with different needs. And no issue was more divisive that the conflict between the North's supposed need for a stable currency and the Midwest's professed need for soft money. This leads to Barreyre's more provocative argument: that the ongoing rivalry between North and Midwest, far from taking place separately from the issues of readmission, black suffrage, and land redistribution, in fact guided the course of Reconstruction policy towards the South. Therefore, far from seeing Reconstruction as a contest taking place in Southern state legislatures, union leagues, and plantations, Gold and Freedom reinterprets it as part of the national reconstruction of American economic geography.


This work explores the knowledge development of a diverse team of undergraduate students involved in a university organization in pursuit of a RASC-AL engineering challenge by NASA to develop a 1-G deep space station. This habitat would need to be fully self-sufficient within five years of its initial launch and have a 20-30 year operational time span. The breadth of considerations is well-suited for a large team with a broad range of skills. Factors considered include potential fuel sources, location in space, materials, radiation hazards, purpose of construction, physiological and psychological concerns, sustainable agriculture methods, as well as an efficient rotation and docking system. Teams then collectively collaborated to present and successfully justify the most unique, practical, and cost-effective 1G space station design. Selfrun by a student organization open to all majors, this design activity builds upon a multi-year history of aerospace project work. Student leadership developed a framework within which each participant can find a useful task and feel part of a larger whole. The aim of the study is to assess effective means for attracting and retaining a large, diverse team in ways which are sustainable during leadership turnover, and to reach for ever more-challenging goals. Past successes within the organization helped to attract and retain a range of interested and motivated students. Student educational outcomes were assessed both before and after the design project. Multiple choice and ranking questions with on-line surveys allow for tracking of perceptions and motivation, and identifying factors contributing to sustained involvement. Individual passions were woven into the overall design approach to provide a sense of ownership and a feeling of contribution which are hypothesized to be strongly correlated with overall success of the team. In this work the extent to which each student's degree program is utilized is characterized, as well as their particular area(s) of interest, and compared with measures of output and contribution to the final result.


The Antarctic continental margin contains a diverse range of continental slope morphologies, including iceberg keel marks, gullies, channels, mass-wasting features (slides, slumps), ridges, furrows, mounds and trough mouth fans. These features vary significantly in morphology, with bedforms varying in size (width, amplitude and length), shelf incision, sinuosity, branching order, spatial density and cross-sectional shape. The processes which form these features and the environmental controls influencing their morphology are not well documented or well constrained. Understanding the processes operating on the Antarctic continental margin is essential for interpreting seafloor erosion patterns, continental margin evolution, slope instability and sediment core records from the continental slope and rise. Through quantitative analysis of multibeam bathymetric data along >2670 km of the outer shelf and upper-slope of high latitude continental margins, five distinct Antarctic gully types are identified. Gully morphology was found to vary with local slope character (slope geometry, gradient), regional factors (location of cross-shelf troughs, trough mouth fans and drainage basin size), sediment yield and ice-sheet history. Most gullies are likely formed by: (1) flows generated as a result of the release of subglacial meltwater from beneath an ice-sheet grounded to the shelf edge during glacial maxima; (2) turbidity currents initiated by intense iceberg scouring; or (3) small-scale mass-wasting. Erosion by cascading dense water overflow does not form the deeply incised and V-shaped gullies that occur over much of the Antarctic continental margin. A comparison of some Arctic and Antarctic gully morphologies shows that the Antarctic gullies have much deeper mean incision depths and greater shelf-incisions, suggesting that they either formed over significantly longer periods, or by a greater release of meltwater in the areas with greater gully incision depths. The first morphological analysis of the southern Weddell Sea outer shelf and upper slope is presented. Two large and relatively recent submarine slides occur on the Crary Fan, the first Quaternary slides to be documented on an Antarctic trough mouth fan. These slides provide evidence for recent large-scale mass-wasting events on the Antarctic continental margin. The interpretation of bedforms on the outer shelf of the southeastern Weddell Sea provide insight into the timing and extent of past ice and points to grounded ice near to the shelf edge during the Late Quaternary.


We studied ten obese patients on prolonged caloric restriction by metabolic balance techniques two weeks before and two weeks after the start of treatment with triiodothyronine (T3) (0.36-1.01 micrograms/kg/d). The rate of weight, nitrogen and fat loss calculated from metabolic balance increased during T3 therapy and these effects were maximal in the second week of treatment. In seven patients studied continuously for four weeks on T3 therapy, the rates of weight and fat loss during the fourth week of treatment were not significantly different from pretreatment values while nitrogen loss was still significantly greater. The increase in nitrogen loss, studied after the period of adaptation to caloric restriction, implies that prolonged treatment with T3 can result in significant losses of lean tissue in addition to that resulting from caloric restriction alone. Mean weight loss increased by 92 g/d during T3 therapy. T3 significantly increased the metabolic rate as measured by two other independent measures: the resting energy expenditure (REE), measured by indirect calorimetry (fourteen patients), and the sleeping heart rate (six patients).


Abstract State-of-the-art treatment of such orthopedic diseases as fracture and femoral head necrosis implies the installation of prosthesis or fixed equipment into patients' injured parts using bone drilling. This study proposes an ultrasonic longitudinal torsion-assisted drilling (ULTAD) technique for biotic bone drilling. A comparative experiment was carried out between conventional drilling and ULTAD drilling in biotic bone, namely porcine femur. These tests proved that under the same drilling parameters, the ultrasonic component in bone drilling could reduce the drilling temperature and forces, improve the material removal by chip breaking, shorten the length of bone debris, and facilitate their discharge. Moreover, the proposed ULTAD technique reduced the number, length, and width of microcracks in the borehole wall, thus protecting the drilled biotic bone from internal damage.


Abstract Introduction: Low-level laser therapy has demonstrated superior efficacy relative to other nonsurgical treatment options for the treatment of androgenetic alopecia. Methods: Records from a public U.S. FDA database for premarket approval of low-level laser therapy devices approved between January 1 2000 and July 15 2018 were reviewed. Results: 47 devices received 510(k) premarket approval, with an increasing number of devices available since 2007. More options are now available and product indications have expanded for use in a wider audience, including both men and women. Discussion: Growing recognition of lasers has led to an increasing number of devices available as well as innovative options in terms of design and convenience. In the past few years, these devices have adopted broader indications for use in both men and women. However, marketed indications have not been adequately explored and current devices on the market have the potential to mislead consumers.


The issue of social orphanage is discussed. The risk factors are picked up to develop the tables forecasting the risk of non-returning of the children temporarily placed into children's home into one's biological family. It is proved that the timely carrying out of comprehensive actions related to the children's coming back to their family will permit to impact significantly the decrease of the number of social orphans.


With the social competition being gradually strong, enterprise employees produce stress of different degrees, which affects their psychological and physiological health, the quality of the family life, organizational performance, and drags on economic development and economic growth of the country. In the face of increasing job stressors, this paper pointed out that the necessity of staff stressors on the basis of summing up the existing stressors' literature, and based on the questionnaire survey method to explore factor structure model of job stressors of employees, and researched different job stressors in different personality differences, finally the insufficiency and the research trend are analyzed.


In this paper, an adaptive control schemes to solve the output tracking control problem of a class of nonlinear switched systems in presence of the disturbance is proposed. First, an nonlinear disturbance observer (NDO) is designed and the  backstepping scheme is constructed based on the standard Lyapunov function method for tracking purpose. With the propose scheme, the existence of a standard Lyapunov function for all subsystems with unknown parameters infers the global uniform asymptotic stability of this more generic switched system The switching parameters used in the switching system are defined differently for each subsystem. Analyzing the system's stability proved that the closed-loop signal boundedness under arbitrary switching is well ensured. It is shown that the proposed adaptive anti-disturbance control scheme based on a nonlinear disturbance observer is a suitable control approach for a class of nonlinear switched systems.


Using iso-spin symmetry the quark-connected and disconnected contributions to the hadronic vacuum polarisation in a theory with Nf = 2 flavours can be described as independent correlation functions, respectively. We show how this allows to use twisted boundary conditions for the connected contribution in order to improve the q 2 -resolution in lattice QCD. Furthermore we derive an exact relation between the connected and the disconnected contributions at NLO in chiral perturbation theory. We discuss extensions to theor ies with more than 2 dynamical flavours.


This article discusses Chinese director Ning Ying's 2006 film wuqiongdong (Perpetual Motion) with an emphasis on the development of queer voice(over) – a queer feminist aesthetic achievement that subverts and perverts the heteropatriarchal suppression of women's desire. Specifically, I analyse the ways queer figure's voice-over interacts with haptic visuality, contemporaneous image and the intertextual references between film-texts and exterior texts about the film. I argue, through queer voice(over), Perpetual Motion expands its theme beyond the issue of infidelity in a heterosexual marriage, develops a cinematic critique to the twentieth-century Chinese feminist movements and articulates female desires from multiple registers of senses, psychology and historical subjectivity. In Chinese cinema where queer voices are usually marginalized, Ning's queer voice(over) establishes a mutually referent relation between queer and heteronormative storylines, thus circumventing the state censorship and adding queerness into Chinese-language feminist debates and cinematic expression.


We focus on the joint production planning of complex supply chains facing stochastic demands and being constrained by carbon emission reduction policies. We pick two typical carbon emission reduction policies to research how emission regulation influences the profit and carbon footprint of a typical supply chain. We use the input-output model to capture the interrelated demand link between an arbitrary pair of two nodes in scenarios without or with carbon emission constraints. We design optimization algorithm to obtain joint optimal production quantities combination for maximizing overall profit under regulatory policies, respectively. Furthermore, numerical studies by featuring exponentially distributed demand compare systemwide performances in various scenarios. We build the "carbon emission elasticity of profit (CEEP)" index as a metric to evaluate the impact of regulatory policies on both chainwide emissions and profit. Our results manifest that by facilitating the mandatory emission cap in proper installation within the network one can balance well effective emission reduction and associated acceptable profit loss. The outcome that CEEP index when implementing Carbon emission tax is elastic implies that the scale of profit loss is greater than that of emission reduction, which shows that this policy is less effective than mandatory cap from industry standpoint at least.


Purpose: This study was conducted to understand the stakeholder perception on auditors' role and its impact on audit expectation gap. Design/Methodology/Approach: A sample of 457 shareholders, employees, customers, and auditors from different licensed commercial banks were selected for the study using the convenience sampling method. Information collected through questionnaires was analyzed using descriptive analysis and Mann Whitney U test. Findings: The study revealed an audit expectation gap between auditors and the shareholders; the auditors and customers; and auditors and employees in the areas of audit responsibility, the usefulness of audited financial statements, audit education, and providing non-assurance services. However, this gap was not significant with regard to audit reliability among auditors and employees. Practical Implication: The main reason behind this gap is the lack of proper education and understanding of the audit standards and audit practices. This gap can be reduced by giving adequate knowledge and awareness of audits to the stakeholders and the users of financial statements in general. Limitations: The study considered the stakeholders of licensed commercial banks in Sri Lanka, whereas there are so many other financial institutions registered under the Central bank of Sri Lanka.


In this paper, we present a very fast and accurate rectilinear Steiner minimal tree (RSMT) algorithm called fast lookup table estimation (FLUTE). FLUTE is based on a precomputed lookup table to make RSMT construction very fast and very accurate for low-degreeThe degree of a net is the number of pins in the net. nets. For high-degree nets, a net-breaking technique is proposed to reduce the net size until the table can be used. A scheme is also presented to allow users to control the tradeoff between accuracy and runtime. FLUTE is optimal for low-degree nets (up to degree 9 in our current implementation) and is still very accurate for nets up to degree 100. Therefore, it is particularly suitable for very large scale integration applications in which most nets have a degree of 30 or less. We show experimentally that, over 18 industrial circuits in the ISPD98 benchmark suite, FLUTE with default accuracy is more accurate than the Batched 1-Steiner heuristic and is almost as fast as a very efficient implementation of Prim's rectilinear minimum spanning tree algorithm.


Somatic hypermutation (SHM) introduces nucleotide substitutions into immunoglobulin variable (Ig V) region genes at all four bases, but the mutations at C/G and A/T pairs are achieved by distinct mechanisms. Mutations at C/G pairs are a direct consequence of the C→U deamination catalyzed by activation-induced deaminase (AID). Mutations at A/T pairs, however, require a second mutagenic process that occurs during patch repair of the AID-generated U/G mismatch. Several DNA polymerases have been proposed to play a role in SHM, but accumulating evidence indicates that the mutations at A/T are overwhelmingly achieved by recruitment of DNA polymerase η.