Photoemission measurements have been made of the intermetallic compound utilizing synchrotron radiation in the energy range 40 - 180 eV. The valence band extends to a binding energy of 7 eV. Measurements made at the Cooper minimum for Pd 4d indicate that the highest density of states for Ti 3d is at the Fermi edge and that it decreases towards higher energy. Using this density of states and correcting for the photoemission cross-sections with energy, it has been possible to determine the density of states for Pd 4d which also contributes to the Fermi level. Resonance photoemission measurements are consistent with this conclusion and also indicate that the Pd 4d band is not completely full.


Ecological and genetic factors have influenced the composition of the human microbiome during our evolutionary history. We analyzed the oral microbiota of the Agta, a hunter-gatherer population where part of its members is adopting an agricultural diet. We show that age is the strongest factor modulating the microbiome, likely through immunosenescence as there is an increase of pathogenicity with age. Biological and cultural processes generate sexual dimorphism in the oral microbiome. A small subset of oral bacteria is influenced by the host genome, linking host collagen genes to bacterial biofilm formation. Our data also suggests that shifting from a fish/meat to a rice-rich diet transforms their microbiome, mirroring the Neolithic transition. All these factors have implications in the epidemiology of oral diseases. Thus, the human oral microbiome is multifactorial, and shaped by various ecological and social factors that modify the oral environment.


The present book will focus on Anderson's career in the cinema, first as a prominent critic and then as a successful film director, trying to reconstruct, interpret and evaluate his contribution to the history of British cinema. Anderson's work, as I will show, has been very important for the development of a self-reflexive mode of art cinema in Britain, using Brechtian devices, theatrical stylization and self-conscious intertextuality, thus "prefiguring" postmodern cinematic styles and the internationally acclaimed British art cinema of the 1980s, with auteurs like Peter Greenaway and Derek Jarman. Anderson's films have indeed been among those works which have opened out film narrative in Britain towards more aesthetically radical forms.


Software testing plays an important role in the overall software
development process. However, many areas of software
testing are still unexplored, or contain gaps in their existing
body of knowledge, such as the area of GUI acceptance and
system testing. This thesis aims to bridge this gap with results
from a multiple-case study with the goal of investigating the
current state of GUI acceptance and system testing in industry.
The study was performed with six software development
companies, of different size and context, to acquire broad information
and a general overview of industrial state-of-practice.
From the acquired information, the PASTA framework on how
to approach GUI acceptance and system testing has been derived.
The framework contains guidelines for two approaches to
GUI acceptance and system testing. Firstly, an organised-level
testing approach and secondly a base-level testing approach.
Furthermore, these guidelines represent a holistic approach to
this type of testing, with practices for test suite design, test
scenario elicitation, test automation, and test maintenance. Finally,
the thesis presents how these practices were evaluated
with the participating companies. Results of the thesis show
that the framework can increase the benefits of GUI acceptance
and system testing. Consequently, the results of this work help
to bridge the current gap in knowledge and constitute a valuable
contribution to industry.


Johan Galtung's criticisms in the 1970s of media representations that glamorize war evolved as the peace journalism alternative approach. Since then, peace journalism has developed into a philosophical framework and an arsenal of framing techniques, but has been criticized for conceptual and practical weaknesses, and the need to strengthen its methodology, conceptual framework and empirical validation. This study of the 2006 Lebanon War press coverage in Canada and Israel aims at contributing to the empirical dimension. Stories published on and during the war by the Canadian Toronto Sun and the Israeli Yediot Aharonot were content analysed according to criteria adapted from the literature. General findings demonstrate an expected tendency towards 'war journalism'. Comparative findings for each newspaper, however, show that peace journalism is not entirely disregarded. While the study indicates both the salience and the resilience of war journalism, it also concludes that there are opportunities for the advancement of peace journalism and professional practices that could be adopted to achieve this.


Previous work by Merhav and Lee (1993) as well as others has emphasized that the conditions required to make the maximum a posteriori (MAP) decision rule an optimal decision rule for speech recognition do not hold and have proposed techniques based upon the adjustment of model parameters to improve speech recognition. In this article, we consider the problem of text-independent speaker recognition, and present a new model called the integral decode. The integral decode, like previous work in this area, attempts to compensate for the lack of conditions necessary to ensure optimality of the MAP decision rule in environments with corrupted observations and imperfect models. The integral decode is a smoothing operation in the feature space domain. A region of uncertainty is established about each noisy observation and an approximation of the integral is computed. The MAP decision rule is then applied to the smoothed likelihood estimates. In all tested conditions, the integral decode performs as well as or better than equivalent HMMs without integral decode.


The lifetime of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is generally limited by the battery lifetime of the sensor nodes. In this respect, efficient monitoring of the entire network's available energy is of great importance to take appropriate preventive actions. However, the physical limitations of WSNs, such as limited memory and energy resources, mandate such a monitoring mechanism to have low complexity and minimum energy dissipation. In this paper, a Forecasting-based Monitoring and Tomography (FMT) framework is presented for WSNs. The objective of the FMT framework is to achieve overall monitoring and to capture the tomography of the available energy in WSNs with minimum energy expenditure. To reduce the amount of energy consumed for monitoring purposes, the FMT framework incorporates available energy forecasting and network aggregation mechanisms. Comparative performance evaluations show that the FMT framework achieves accurate energy monitoring and obtains the network energy tomography of large scale WSNs with minimum energy consumption.


Compare with the voice service, mobile data service is more complex. It has many types of services according to different network resources and the customers' habits. It is found that mobile data business model plays an important role in helping operator understand the customers' habits, and market promotion. It can also be used in network optimization. The old ways to get the mobile data service model can not be widely used due to some weakness. In this paper, a new method to get the mobile data service model is proposed. By using the method, we got the mobile data model and analyzed the data model in different kinds of way, such as the impact of mobile phone. The testing results shows that it can get good performance on network optimization using the mobile data model got by the proposed method.


This study was carried out at the college of agriculture, Basrah university. Fifty blood samples taken from carp (Cyprinus carpio) analyzed by Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) under alkaline conditions at pH 9.8. The present study is aimed to provide the first insight into the genetic constitution of carp based upon analysis of Transferrin. Five genetic types of transferrin were revealed (Tf1Tf1, Tf2Tf2, Tf5Tf5, Tf3Tf2 and Tf1Tf5) in Carp controlled by four allelic genes of that locus (Tf1, Tf2, Tf3 and Tf5). These fractions are controlled by co dominant autosomal genes according to the Mendelian laws of inheritance. Differences in gene frequencies between alleles were observed. The gene frequencies of Tf1, Tf2, Tf3 and Tf5 were 0.15, 0.51, 0.29 and 0.05, respectively. The predominant genotype was Tf2Tf2 (44%) then Tf3Tf3 (22%). Transferrin was identified as highly polymorphic protein markers which is a result of importance for future genetic characterization of the


The purpose of this study is to make case studies on estimation of shear wave velocity in core zone of some rockfill dams by MASW (Multi-channel Analysis of Surface Waves) and to compare the results of case studies with those of the empirical method. Furthermore, the purpose is to recommend the range of shear wave velocity in core zone by MASW and to supply the preliminary data for estimation of shear wave velocity in core zone which is needed for dynamic analysis. From the results of case studies and the comparison between the results of case studies and those of empirical equation, it was found that the shear wave velocities obtained by MASW were smaller than those by the empirical recommendation (Sawada & Takahashi) in the depth of more than 10 m. Also, it is recommended that using the lower bound of empirical formulation by Sawada and Takahashi be available and resonable in case that MASW is not available due to the field condition and the investigation is preliminary.


EDITOR'S SUMMARY

The planning, building and furnishing of a house create an illustrative metaphor for developing a website and handling its content. A construction blueprint demands consideration of how a building will be used, the total space, subdivision of space into rooms, intended uses for separate spaces, location and maintenance plans. Similarly, information architecture for a website requires understanding of who the users will be and how they will use the site, what options should be provided, maintenance and expansion plans and budget. Like furniture in a house, website content must be suited to user needs and to the subspaces, layout and functions of the site. Content should be actively managed, enhanced and pruned as needed without hoarding unnecessary material.


The following is the beau ideal of a good nurse, according to Dr. Wendt:
 Youth, fullness of health, plenty of milk, and good build of breasts and nipples—a rather phlegmatic temperament—a quiet disposition, and no inclination to sensuality or dissolute habits—a white, delicate skin traversed by blue veins, and covered with freckles—fair or reddish hair, large blue eyes, sound teeth, a fresh breath, a clean skin, no disagreeable odor, no unnatural discharges, a bluishwhite—rather thin, than thick and tenacious milk, which dropped upon the thumb-nail flows off rather quickly—it should have no smell, and a mildly sweet taste—along with these, large and firm nipples, a cleanly person, and a harmless temper—form the ideal of a good nurse.
 Soranus (A.D. 98-117) of Ephesus is the first writer to mention the method of testing the breast milk by the behavior of a drop of milk which was placed on one's finger-nail.2 This test continued in use for more than 1,700 years.


We introduce Graphical TREX (GTREX), a novel method for graph estimation in high-dimensional Gaussian graphical models. By conducting neighborhood selection with TREX, GTREX avoids tuning parameters and is adaptive to the graph topology. We compared GTREX with standard methods on a new simulation setup that was designed to assess accurately the strengths and shortcomings of different methods. These simulations showed that a neighborhood selection scheme based on Lasso and an optimal (in practice unknown) tuning parameter outperformed other standard methods over a large spectrum of scenarios. Moreover, we show that GTREX can rival this scheme and, therefore, can provide competitive graph estimation without the need for tuning parameter calibration.


This article examines the complex fortuna of the "Problemata Aristotelis" which circulated widely in early modern Europe in a textual tradition independent of the better-known ancient problems attributed to Aristotle. A study of the editions of this text (designated "Omnes homines") and its various add-ons, spanning four languages (Latin, German, French and English) and four centuries (late 15th-19th centuries), brings to light the otherwise obscure editorial practices that fueled its remarkable success. The authority of the text rests at first on its presentation of a collective wisdom, then on bolder claims for the authenticity of its alleged Aristotelian authorship.


Elder abuse can have many forms; it is generally under-recognized and underreported. The borders between elder abuse, resulting in a person's death, manipulation towards suicide, and murder can be indistinct. It can include involvement in heavy binge drinking, denial of help, and instigation of self-harming behavior. A case report is discussed here. A concluding point is that the state should care about weaker members of society, including those suffering of alcoholrelated dementia, because they can be abused by their relatives and expropriated by criminals. Authorities should investigate the cases, when alcoholics, disabled and other people were deprived of their apartments or houses as a result of criminal acts or deceit, having thus become homeless, and to help these people to obtain decent accommodation.


PURPOSE: To address challenges promoting tobacco cessation in oncology settings, it is important to understand characteristics associated with patient engagement in tobacco cessation treatment. This analysis examined predictors of participating in at least one tobacco cessation counseling session among patients referred to a comprehensive cancer center's Tobacco Intervention and Psychosocial Support (TIPS) service. METHODS: Patients with cancer who reported current smoking or recently quitting and referred to TIPS between June 2017 and February 2020 were included in the analysis. Independent variables included sex, race and ethnicity, insurance type, cancer diagnosis (tobacco-related or not), age, nicotine dependence, and cigarettes smoked per day at baseline. The outcome variable was completion of at least one tobacco cessation counseling session among those assessed by the TIPS program. Unadjusted and adjusted analyses tested associations between the independent variables and tobacco cessation counseling engagement. RESULTS: Of 360 oncology patients referred to the TIPS program, 224 (62.2%) were assessed and 120 (33%) engaged in at least one counseling session. After controlling for sociodemographics and tobacco use, the results demonstrated that patients diagnosed with tobacco-related cancers were 45.3% less likely to engage in the tobacco cessation program compared with those with non–tobacco-related cancers (P = .041). CONCLUSION: Patients diagnosed with tobacco-related cancers were less likely to engage in TIPS. Additional therapeutic resources may be needed to engage these patients to address potential explanatory factors, such as stigma, guilt, and fatalism. More research is needed to explore the impact of a tobacco-related cancer diagnosis on treatment engagement. Patients with tobacco-related cancers (vs. non) were 45.3% less likely to engage in tobacco cessation counseling.


The 1950s are, like the 1970s, one of the 'forgotten decades' of academic work on French cinema, caught, for those who like the simplicity of 'important movements', between the 'Golden Age' of the 1930s and the New Wave of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The 1930s cinema is synonymous with the great directors of Poetic Realism (Carné, Renoir, Grémillon, Vigo), and the transition to sound at the technical level, and to the celebration of left-wing ideals. The New Wave, although less politically correct, is synonymous with a different transition, to the freedom of the light-weight camera at the technical level, and the advent of a modernised France requiring new characters, and new young players who rejected both the cinema of the 1950s and the politics forged in the fall-out of the Second World War. When you add to that Truffaut's vitriolic and much-publicised rejection of Quality Tradition in his 1954 article (Truffaut 1976), it is clear that the 1950s never stood a chance. The advent of Cultural Studies and Star Studies in work on French cinema, and their emphasis on the popular, has led to a revival of interest in the much-despised 1950s. A number of studies have appeared in France since the mid-1980s (see Chirat & Presle 1985, Passek 1988, Hubert-Lacombe 1996, Gilles 2000, Chapuy 2001), to which we can add a special number of the journal produced by the Institut Européen de Cinéma et d'Audiovisuel at the University of Nancy, Focales no 2 (1993), and, finally, amongst the many more recent histories of the French cinema which will address the 1950s at least partly, Colin Crisp's monumental study of the 'classic French cinema' (Crisp 1993). The 1950s do not of course fit neatly into the decade where the cinema is concerned. It is much more useful to conceptualise the decade, as did Jean-Pierre Jeancolas for the 1930s (Jeancolas 1983), as a period of fifteen years going from the end of the Second World War, signalling a seachange in production and distribution after the Nazi control of the industry, to the key year of 1959 which saw the arrival of the New Wave. In that period, the cinema did very well; indeed, it had never had bigger audiences (see Figure 1), who, attracted no doubt by the influx of American films in the immediate post-war period, remained faithful to the weekly trip to the cinema, and to the national product. As the 1950s wore on, the figures for a very successful film gradually rose, as can be seen from the Appendix, from six to nine million. Audiences gradually drifted away from American films (see Figure 2), only returning to them in the mid-1980s.


The problem of disconnection from network is one that mobile users always have to face in mobile computing environment. Disconnected operation is one approach to ease this problem by allowing client computers to work solely on cached files in the local disks. However, a cache miss in disconnected operation is often critical, and usually causes the user to stop work on the current task until reconnecting to the server. To avoid such situations, we propose an approach called cache cooperation, which resolves cache misses in a coordinated manner among the clients. Cache cooperation allows each client to retrieve the missing data from the other remote clients when the client is disconnected from the server but not isolated from others. We describe the design of our prototype implementation, its performance measurement, and the results of vast numbers of simulations that we conducted with system-call traces recorded over 3-month period. The measured performance shows that the overhead of our approach is almost comparable to that of the normal client-server file operations. Moreover, the simulation results confirm that our approach can effectively decrease cache misses when multiple client caches can be utilized. Especially, in ideal cases where major files are shared by multiple clients, our approach saves almost all of cache misses for over 70 percent of simulation runs.


A 44-year-old woman suffered from epigastralgia for 1 month. An abdominal sonography revealed a space-occupying lesion, about 6 cm, in the spleen. Contrast-enhanced CT revealed enhanced splenic lesions. The PET/CT showed FDG-avid multiple splenic nodules with a "prunes on bread" appearance in the maximum-intensity-projection image (MIP image). In sectional PET/CT images, a central cold area with peripheral increased FDG uptake in the splenic nodule is visible. Because splenic malignancy was suspected, laparoscopic splenectomy was performed. Histology revealed multiple nodules with angiomatoid appearance, CD31(+), CD34(+) and HHV-8(-) in the vascular space, typical for the rare sclerosing angiomatoid nodular transformation (SANT).


BACKGROUND
Adenomyoma occurs most commonly in the fundus of the gallbladder, seldom in other parts of the gallbladder and rarely in the extrahepatic biliary tree, where most lesions are localised to the common bile duct or papilla of Vater. Adenomyoma of the common hepatic duct is extremely rare. To the best of our knowledge, only three cases have been reported so far.

CASE OUTLINE
A 51-year-old woman was admitted with a three month history of attacks of right upper abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and fever. Laboratory data, ultrasonography, ERCP and CT confirmed slight cholestasis and proximal bile duct dilatation due to a tumour within the common hepatic duct. Cholecystectomy was performed with excision of the suprapancreatic common bile duct including the convergence of the hepatic ducts plus lymphadenectomy and Roux-en-Y hepaticojejunostomy. Frozen section histology showed the benign nature of the lesion and a tumour-free resection line. Final histology showed adenomyoma. The patient has remained symptom free for more than 30 months.

DISCUSSION
Although adenomyoma is a benign lesion and the surgical strategy has not been established, complete excision with frozen section is recommended to exclude small malignant foci and local recurrence as well as to avoid surgical over-treatment.


In some long-span prestressed concrete box girder bridges, excessive deflections of main girders are often observed. These unacceptable deflections have detrimental influence on the serviceability and safety of the structures. To better understand and estimate short term and long term deflections for prestressed concrete box girder bridges, pier vertical deformation and its effect on deflections of main girders of Jinghe Bridg is investigated in this paper. Piers in Jinghe Bridge are tall and the difference in height between piers up to 22 m. Analysis indicates that although the short term deformations of piers are small, the long term deformations of piers can be 3 times as large as that of short-term ones. The maximum short-term downward deflection of Jinghe Bridge caused by pier deformation for main girders is 7.7 mm and the maximum long-term downward deflection is 33.3 mm. These values are relatively small compared with the span length of the bridge. But when the deflection of the main girder itself is also included, the final total deflection of the main girder may exceed the design code limit.


Renewable energy, especially solar, has become increasingly popular over the past two decades. It is clear that the United States must take a stand to decrease carbon emissions and its related impact on the environment and climate change. What is not clear, however, is whether this increase in popularity has been due to policies implemented by the government or more traditionally market supply and demand. Taking a broad historical approach I examine relevant renewable energy policies since 1978 and the impact these polices have had on fostering the solar energy market. I argue that that favorable renewable energy policies have allowed for the creation of the current solar energy economy. For this to be true, I would expect to see the fastest growth in the solar energy market on the tail of favorable policies. This thesis has found numerical and anecdotal evidence showing that there is a connection between federal policies and growth-promoting investments in solar energy. I therefore conclude by providing policy recommendations to keep the solar economy growing in a similar fashion.


Surface acoustic wave (SAW) strain sensors require an adhesive—typically a glue—for the mounting on the part under measurement. This comes with strain-transfer, reproducibility and aging issues. In this paper, we propose a novel glue-less solution where the SAW sensor is directly fabricated onto the surface of interest, here a metallic substrate. Here, we study the layered structure ZnO/Ti numerically and experimentally, with ZnO as the piezoelectric layer and titanium as the substrate. In this structure, both bulk acoustic waves and SAW can propagate, and we used both of them to monitor temperature variations up to 300 °C and strain levels up to 1800 μϵ. Moreover, reflective delay line (R-DL) designs were used, to provide the future users with radio frequency identification functionalities. In order to overcome the limitations due to the relatively low electromechanical coupling coefficient of ZnO/Ti, a specific R-DL layout with connected inter-digital transducers was used. The obtained experimental results confirm that the proposed glue-less R-DL structure is a promising solution for the independent evaluation of temperature and strain, with identification.


Objectives: The objective of this study was to explore the relationships between circulating uric acid and lipid levels and components of the metabolic syndrome (MetS) in Arab dyslipidemic patients, a group already at high coronary artery disease risk. Subjects and Methods: The medical records of 1,229 subjects (632 men, 597 women) referred for treatment of dyslipidemia and followed up for at least 12 months were reviewed. Serum levels of uric acid and lipids (total cholesterol, triglycerides, low-density lipoprotein, high-density lipoprotein) and other variables in the National Cholesterol Education Program ATP III criteria definition of MetS were assessed at initial presentation and every 4– 6 months, under specific lipid-lowering treatment (statins and/or fibrates), in each of the subjects. Their respective associations were explored by appropriate logistic regression techniques with control for confounding risk factors, including age, gender and body mass index. Results: 306 subjects (24.9%) of the study population were hyperuricemic; they were more likely to be men, obese and diabetic. Also the serum uric acid level (mean ± SD) was greater in men with MetS compared with men without (377.0 ± 98.0 vs. 361.6 ± 83.1 µmol/l, p < 0.05), an observation not reproduced in women. Uric acid levels had significant associations with the presence of fasting hyperglycemia, hypertension and large waist circumference (WC) in men, but only with large WC in women. With statin treatment, uric acid levels decreased by 10% within 1 year of treatment; with fibrates, uric acid levels remained unchanged or slightly increased. Conclusion: The data showed that hyperuricemia is common in dyslipidemic patients in Kuwait, where its important determinants are male sex, obesity, diabetes and statin treatment.


This research was motivated by the importance of learning interest of students.Learning interest of students is still low. In order that this problems can be solved, a learning model that can enhance learning interest of students is required. In this research, Maple-Assisted Accelerated Learning was selected. This study aims to analyze the enhancement learning interest of students. This research was a quasi-experimental with pretestposttest control group design. The population was students at tenth grade in one of senior high schools in Purwokerto, Central Java. The sample consisted of two classes which was selected by purposive sampling. This research used four instruments:, learning interest questionnaire, observation sheets, and interview guide. Data analyzed was done quantitatively. The data were analyzed by using Mann-Whitney U Test and Chi Squaren test. Based on the data analyze, it is found that: (1) the achievement of learning interest ability of students who received the Maple-Assisted Accelerated Learning is better than the achievement of students who received conventional learning; (2) the enhancement of learning interest of students who received the Maple-Assisted Accelerated Learning is better than the enhancement of students who received conventional learning.


Further development in optical fiber communications at 1.3 and 1.5 /spl mu/m not only requires the improvement of components, but also hinges on the capability to fabricate optoelectronic circuits on a mass scale. Hybrid and monolithic integration of these components are expected to yield the means to mass produce optoelectronic circuits with the required characteristics. Effort is currently deployed to find simplified ways to optically interconnect such diverse components as lasers, modulators, waveguides, switches, filters and detectors, either by fiber pigtailing, hybridization on a Si-motherboard; or by monolithic integration on a single chip of InP. In this paper, emphasis is placed on the efficiency of optical-mode transformer (OMT) as a versatile solution to overcome the main technological obstacles of optical interconnection between InP-based components. A few examples will highlight the enabling qualities for fiber pigtailing and photonic integration.


Past research has demonstrated an association between financial hardships and risk-taking behaviors (defined as delinquent or transgressive acts). However, this effect may differ based upon the provision of protective spaces, like those offered in extracurricular activities. In the current study, we examined the longitudinal effect of financial hardships on risk-taking in a sample of Australian adolescents (N = 3,852). We found experiences of financial hardship at the age of 12/13 predicted higher risk-taking 2 years later. Further, a longitudinal indirect effect was observed, where financial hardships were associated with higher risk-taking 4 years later via increased exposure to risk-taking peers. Non-sporting activity participation (e.g., debating, dance) was found to offset the risks associated with experiencing financial hardships. Participation in sports was not significantly related to any of our outcomes. Our data highlights how the provision of non-sporting activities may improve behavioral outcomes, especially among more financially disadvantaged adolescents.


Abstract ʿAli Salem was an independent intellectual, unbound to the regime or political parties. He believed that the intellectual must also be independent from the public. It does not mean he must be detached from society or elevated above it, but that he must avoid flattering it. Over thirty years of literary activity, Salem published 27 plays and hundreds of humoresques and short stories, which were collected in 15 books. He also published opinion pieces in the Egyptian press and periodicals. Salem was an uncompromising social and political whip, who criticized Egypt's society and regime in the context of a political culture that limits freedom of expression and impedes the expression of views that contradict those of the autocratic ruler. The Article will focus on the witty humor Salem used in both his satires and plays to sharply criticize the socio-political maladies from which Egyptian society suffers and at the same time it served as a means to introduce to Egyptians the problems of their society in a way that would make it easier for them to internalize them, shake them out of their apathy and urge them to act in order to improve their lives for the better.


Gecode is one of the most efficient libraries that can be used for constraint solving. However, using it requires dealing with C++ programming details. On the other hand several formats for representing constraint networks have been proposed. Among them, XCSP has been proposed as a format based on XML which allows us to represent constraints defined either extensionally or intensionally, permits global constraints and has been the standard format of the international competition of constraint satisfaction problems solvers. In this paper we present a plug-in for solving problems specified in XCSP by exploiting the Gecode solver. This is done by dynamically translating constraints into Gecode library calls, thus avoiding the need to interact with C++.


The topic of this thesis is dynamics and

wear of structures. In the six appended papers different aspects of

wear and dynamics of a model system are studied. The considered

system consists of a long slender rod with unilateral supports,

subject to harmonic and stochastic excitation. The rod is held at

one end with stiff springs preventing translation and rotation and

constrained by loose supports near the other.

In the first two papers the vibration and impact dynamics of the

model system subject to periodic and stochastic forcing are

analysed. The wear work rates at impact points are evaluated with or

without friction. Model computations are compared with measurements

of contact forces and displacements made on a loosely supported rod

with nuclear fuel dimensions. The comparison validates the modeling.

The first two papers also contain global bifurcation analysis of

idealized versions of the model system for both harmonic and

stochastic loading. Regions of periodic and stochastic response are

identified for the case of periodic forcing. The regions of stable

periodic response are subjected to stability and bifurcation

analyses in the third paper. The fourth paper focuses on the

transition from stable periodic to chaotic response and the

existence of stable multi periodic solutions within the chaotic

regime. The third paper also contains an evaluation of the wear work

rate along the identified stable paths of period one solutions. In

the fourth paper a wear law is introduced which enables life time

predictions of such stable solutions. The basin of attraction for a

stable solution is also discussed.

The sliding amplitude is usually in the fretting range for impacting

systems such as the model considered in this thesis. The fifth

paper deals with fretting wear maps to differentiate different

regimes of fretting contact. A systematic method to compare fretting

wear data from different sources with different contact geometries

is developed. The method is applied to experimental data and new

maps are presented in the form of dimensionless variables.

The last paper deals directly with breakdown of materials due to

wear induced loads. An idealized spring model is used to show that

breakdown of disordered media due to applied shear forces behaves

like a first order phase transition in condensed matter systems.

Finally, the burst size distribution during rupture is evaluated and

it is shown that the system behaves like the fiber bundle model with

global load sharing.


Cloud computing enables a promising paradigm of data service outsourcing, where data owners can avoid committing large capital outlays by economically storing their data to public data centers for the convenient management of data storage and utilization. Despite the tremendous benefits, outsourcing data to the commercial public cloud also opens the door for unsolicited data access in the cloud and beyond. Thus, enabling a secure and effective cloud data utilization service is of paramount importance. Given the large number of data users and huge amount of outsourced cloud data, this problem is particularly challenging as it is extremely difficult to also meet the practical requirements of performance, system usability, and high-level user searching experiences. This article investigates these challenges and in particular defines the problem of fuzzy keyword search over encrypted cloud data, which aims at accommodating various typos and representation inconsistencies in different user searching input for acceptable system usability and overall user searching experience, while protecting keyword privacy. In order to further enrich the application spectrum, we also demonstrate how the notion of fuzzy search naturally supports similarity search, a fundamental and powerful tool that is widely used in information retrieval. We describe the challenges that are not yet met by existing techniques, and discuss the research directions and possible technical approaches for these new search functionalities to become a reality.


By Ashlynn Burns, Nursing; Lauren English, Nursing; Rachel Ninke, Nursing
 Advisor: Richard Prior
 Presentation ID: AM_A57
 Abstract: According to the CDC, 1 in 14 women smoke and 1 and 10 women drink alcohol while pregnant in the United States. Smoking and alcohol use during pregnancy has been linked with significant negative psychological and physiological infant outcomes. The purpose of our capstone project is to educate pregnant women and women of childbearing age on the dangers of smoking and drinking while pregnant, as well as methods to help them abstain from use throughout their pregnancy. In addition to education, we provided them with an informational brochure and guidelines to follow in an effort to promote a healthy pregnancy. Client participation and verbal feedback included questions asked requesting more information about healthy pregnancy promotion and alcohol and smoking cessation. The audience gained significantly more knowledge on the topic and results collected from surveys will be presented.


The evolutionary prisoner's dilemma game is investigated under different initial distributions for cooperators and defectors on scale-free networks with a tunable clustering coefficient. It is found that, on the one hand, cooperation can be enhanced with the increasing clustering coefficient when only the most connected nodes are occupied by cooperators initially. On the other hand, if cooperators just occupy the lowest-degree nodes at the beginning, then the higher the value of the clustering coefficient, the more unfavorable the environment for cooperators to survive for the increment of temptation to defect. Thereafter, we analytically argue these nontrivial phenomena by calculating the cooperation probability of the nodes with different degrees in the steady state, and obtain the critical values of initial frequency of cooperators below which cooperators would vanish finally for the two initial distributions.


This paper uses the question, "what ethical issues inform our response to nonindigenous invasive species?" as a basis to explore human relationships to nature in the context of teaching environmental ethics. While ecologists express increasing concern about the introduction of non-indigenous invasive species (NIS), the public is sometimes unaware of, or ambivalent about, the problems they cause. I argue that this ambivalence stems from conceptual problems—about human-nature relationships, about ethical conflict and about human behavior—that can be addressed in a course on environmental ethics. Such a course can look at NIS in the context of different ethical traditions, and the different bases for action (or not) with regard to NIS that such ethical traditions imply. I suggest ways to use NIS as case studies in either a science course or an environmental ethics course, to introduce fundamental questions and to explore basic worldviews with respect to humans and nature.


In this paper, we consider a load-balancing process allocation method for fault-tolerant multicomputer systems that balances the load before as well as after faults start to degrade the performance of the system. In order to be able to tolerate a single fault, each process (primary process) is duplicated (i.e. has a backup process). The backup process executes on a different processor from the primary, checkpointing the primary process and recovering the process if the primary process fails due to the occurrence of a fault. In this paper, we first formalize the problem of load-balancing process allocation and show that it is an NP-hard problem. Next, we propose a new heuristic process allocation method and analyze the performance of the proposed allocation method. Simulations are used to compare the proposed method with a process allocation method that does not take into account the different load characteristics of the primary and backup processes. While both methods perform well before the occurrence of a fault in a primary process, only the proposed method maintains a balanced load after the occurrence of such a fault.<<ETX>>


This article explores changes in site location preferences that accompanied the shift to a maize-farming lifestyle in the Middle Ohio River valley. Criteria including distance between sites, distance to earthen mounds, distance to rivers, and soil types are documented for both Late Woodland and Fort Ancient sites in southwest Ohio. These data are incorporated into a multivariate model suggesting that, in addition to significant shifts in subsistence and settlement patterns, the sites of Fort Ancient maize agriculturalists are farther apart yet closer to earthen mounds than those of their Late Woodland predecessors. These findings may relate to issues that include settlement catchments, village fissioning, and integrative processes associated with social memory, all factors that are evident in many early farming communities. Additionally, this article builds on previous work demonstrating the utility (and limitations) of state archaeological site databases for addressing diachronic research questions.


Increasing of the use of data clouds brings some issues. The one of the most important issues is privacy. Users want to protect their own identity information when they searching and they want to know their data stores on the clouds securely. The research brings the solution to the problem. In this research, Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) was used for providing privacy of data. Thanks to the property of the FHE, the values of the processes on the data are do not known by anybody. Besides, with the authentication process, the system protects the identity of the user. A simulation program was prepared to realize the theoretically defined information and the results were evaluated.


INTRODUCTION........................................... 60 ADENYLATE CYCLASE FROM B. PERTUSSIS ........................................... 60 CALMODULIN REGULATION ........................................... 61 PATHOGENICITY AND CELL INVASION ........................................... 61 PURIFICATION AND CHARACTERIZATION ........................................... 62 ADENYLATE CYCLASE FROM BACILLUS ANTHRACIS ........................................... 64 Purification and Characterization.......................... 64 SUMMARY......................... 64 LITERATURE CITED......................... 64


Ibopamine is a new orally active dopamine analogue with positive inotropic and vasodilating activity. The tolerability of the drug administered at the dose of 100 mg thrice daily for 12 months was studied in 302 patients with congestive heart failure, New York Heart Association (NYHA) class II and III. Of the 302 patients, 198 completed the study (65%); 59 patients (19%) were withdrawn for clinical events; 27 of them died (9%); 35 patients (12%) did not complete the study for non-compliance and 10 (3%) for protocol violations. Clinical events were generally related to the cardiovascular system and 85% of deaths were from cardiovascular causes. None of the deaths was considered related to treatment by the investigators. Clinically significant laboratory abnormalities were observed during the study in four patients only. This trial suggests that ibopamine is well tolerated in patients with congestive heart failure, NYHA class II and III, at the dose of 100 mg thrice daily for up to one year.


Purpose: Considerable evidence has shown that social networks influence a wide variety of health behaviors. This study investigates whether having friends with overweight/obesity in one's social network (network exposure) can predict changes in body mass index (BMI) throughout high school in a diverse urban population of students. Methods: Racially and ethnically diverse students from five high schools in Los Angeles County were surveyed at four time points throughout high school from 2010 to 2013 (N = 2091). Surveys included questions on students' social networks, demographics, and health-related information. BMI and weight categories were calculated for all students who provided height and weight information (∼50%). A latent growth curve model was used to assess the growth trajectory of BMI and the time-varying effect of network exposure to friends with overweight/obesity while controlling for demographic covariates. Results: Hispanic students had a significantly higher initial BMI compared with non-Hispanic students (p < 0.01). There was a significant positive slope for time on BMI growth (p < 0.01). Greater personal network exposure to friends with overweight/obesity was associated with a significant 0.65-point average increase in BMI (p < 0.05) at the first follow-up time point (T2) and a significant 0.62-point average increase in BMI (p < 0.01) at the last follow-up (T4) while controlling for covariates. Conclusions: Using structural equation modeling to understand the relationship between BMI and social networks, we found that increased network exposure to peers with overweight/obesity is associated with higher individual BMI, demonstrating that friendships may influence adolescents' weight status over time.


Mutagenized cultures of three strains of group A streptococci which were M positive and produced the extracellular serum opacity factor (OF) were screened for mutants which failed to exhibit OF activity on serum agar plates. All cell fractions from three mutants studied in detail, including culture supernatants, protoplast membranes, and cytoplasmic fractions, were completely devoid of activity. Two OF- isolates also lacked OF antigen, whereas the third continued to produce cross-reacting antigen. All three mutants were resistant to phagocytosis and yielded acid-extractable M antigen, indicating that the M protein of each strain was unaltered by the mutations. The separation of the OF+ and M+ phenotypes by mutation establishes that genes which code for the M protein and OF are distinct; therefore, the activities and antigenic determinants of each must be associated with separate, distinct protein molecules.


It is surely striking that patients with congenital glaucoma apparently disappear from view after a certain length of time; for it is very unusual to find persons with this disease in middle life, though there are some reports of cases in which the process has been spontaneously arrested and some sight retained. That these enlarged eyeballs are extremely susceptible to injury is natural, and unquestionably most of these eyes are enucleated after rupture following often a trivial injury. It is even reported that this rupture can occur spontaneously. Furthermore, the ectatic cornea in these glaucomatous eyes becomes easily infected and stands infection badly, so that a number of the eyes are probably lost from this cause. I have had an opportunity of observing clinically a case of hydrophthalmia in which a detachment of the retina occurred spontaneously, and the eye then went on to phthisis bulbi. As this outcome is


The paper deals with porous gypsum building materials having heat-insulating properties and applied in low-rise building construction, in the manufacture of flat and room dividers. Anhydrite of the Siberian Chemical Combine together with sodium carbonate is used as a gas-forming component. To regulate the plasticity of the mortar mixture, the Steinberg MP-4 and Steinberg PR-1S(A) superplasticizers are introduced into the composition, and their effect on the porous gypsum mixture properties is studied. The analysis of the superplasticizer influence on the properties shows that the use of the Steinberg MP-4 with the amount of 2 wt.% of gypsum is optimum to achieve high strength of up to 27 MPa, while providing high mobility of the porous mixture. The main role of superplasticizers in a gypsum water-soluble composition is to increase the ξ-potential of the material and to reduce the water-gypsum ratio of the mixture while maintaining its mobility. The effect of superplasticizers largely depends on the initial modification of the binder, its dispersibility and mobility.


A method based on molecular crowding and ionic liquids as reaction solvents has been used for the synthesis of molecularly imprinted polymers. Levofloxacin was selected as the template, polymethyl methacrylate was the molecular crowding agent, and 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate (ionic liquid) was selected as the reaction solvent and porogen. The optimized proportion for the mixed porogen was dimethyl sulfoxide/ionic liquid/polymethyl methacrylate 1:1.6:5 in chloroform (150 mg mL(-1) ). The morphology and chemical composition of levofloxacin imprinted polymers were assessed by scanning electron microscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The absorption experiments demonstrated that the levofloxacin imprinted polymers possess high selective recognition property to levofloxacin and analogs, including enrofloxacin, ciprofloxacin and gatifloxacin, which all belong to fluoroquinolones. An extraction method using levofloxacin imprinted polymers as sorbent followed by high-performance liquid chromatography analysis was optimized for the determination of four fluoroquinolones in milk and lake water samples. Under the optimized conditions, good linearity was observed in a range of 5-1000 ng g(-1) with the limit of detection between 0.3 and 0.5 ng g(-1) for the four fluoroquinolones. The recoveries at three spiked levels ranged 82.4-98.3% with the relative standard deviation ≤4.9.


Multipath-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithms can detect and localize radio reflective surfaces and jointly estimate the time-varying position of mobile agents. A promising approach is to represent radio reflective surfaces by so called virtual anchors (VAs). In existing multipath-based SLAM algorithms, VAs are modeled and inferred for each physical anchor (PA) and each propagation path individually, even if multiple VAs represent the same physical surface. This limits timeliness and accuracy of mapping and agent localization. In this paper, we introduce an improved statistical model and estimation method that enables data fusion for multipath-based SLAM by representing each surface with a single master virtual anchor (MVA). Our numerical simulation results show that the proposed multipath-based SLAM algorithm can significantly increase map convergence speed and reduce the mapping error compared to a state-of-the-art method.


A field experiment was conducted during 2015-2017 at CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology, Palampur, India to calculate agro-meteorological indices and to study the duration of different phenological phases of damask rose (Rosa damascena) varieties under mid hills of western Himalayas. Agro-meteorological indices were computed for two damask rose varieties Himroz and Jwalaat different pruning time from October 30 to January 15 at fifteen days' interval. The results indicated that the number of days required forattaining each phenological stage, decreased with delay in pruning time. Variation in different phenological stages of damask rose varieties were observed. Higher GDD, PTU and HTU were accounted by Jwala as compared to Himroz during all the phenophases of R. damascena. Plants pruned on January 15 (late pruning) required lesser GDD, PTU as well as HTU, while plants pruned on October 30 (early pruning) accumulated higher GDD, PTU and HTU during crop growth period. The results showedthat agro-meteorological indices play a vital role in the productivity of R. damascenacrop.


ABSTRACT In June 1969, the Danish parliament passed an extensive law complex, known as the Public Servant Reform of 1969. An important part of the reform was a new wage and classification system into which all public employees were placed. In newer Danish research on the gender wage gap, it is a hypothesis that the reform created a wage hierarchy in the public sector which in general was unfavourable to female-dominated professions, and that this hierarchy largely has persisted to the present due to mechanisms in the collective bargaining system. In our article, we test this hypothesis using graphical analysis and descriptive statistics. Our study supports the existing hypothesis about a gender biased wage hierarchy in 1969. We find that there is a close coherence between the wage hierarchy in 1969 and the wage hierarchy in 2019. However, our analysis also shows how education level explains even less of the traditional female dominated professions' position in the wage hierarchy in 2019 compared with 1969, and that this is still the case when we take absence patterns and family-friendly benefits into account. That points toward a wage system, which seems unable to adjust to changes in an established profession's profile.


Heterostructures have delivered phenomenal photoelectrochemical performance owing to their excellent physicochemical properties. We report on the utilization of controlled Au@ZnO nano-heteroarchitectures for efficient water splitting. The ZnO nanowires of an average length and a diameter of ∼5–6 μm and 120 nm, respectively, synthesized by the hydrothermal method were subjected to the controlled decoration of Au nanoparticles of diameter ∼20 nm. The cubic crystalline Au nanoparticles were decorated on the hexagonal wurtzite ZnO nanowires under a controlled reaction time. A 12 h reaction time has resulted in the uniform decoration of Au nanoparticles along the surface of ZnO nanowires, and a further increase in the reaction time ensured their agglomeration in the array of ZnO nanowires. XPS analysis revealed the existence of pure metallic Au on ZnO nanowires without altering the stoichiometry. The Au@ZnO nano-heteroarchitecture with a 12 h reaction time delivered a maximum photocurrent density of 1.04 A cm−2, which is a 52-fold increase than that of pristine ZnO nanowires. The ABPE value is 0.59%, which is approximately five-fold higher than that of the pristine ZnO nanowires. This reveals that the controlled decoration of Au nanoparticles along the surface of ZnO nanowires has altered the Fermi energy position significantly and facilitated the injection of hot electrons from the SP state into the conduction band of ZnO, effectively.


A new method to calculate a spectral harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR) in speech signals is presented. The method involves discrimination between harmonic and noise energy in the magnitude spectrum by means of a comb-liftering operation in the cepstrum domain. Sensitivity of HNR to (a) additive noise and (b) jitter was tested with synthetic vowel-like signals, generated at 10 fundamental frequencies. All jitter and noise signals were analyzed at three window lengths in order to investigate the effect of the length of the analysis frame on the estimated HNR values. Results of a multiple linear regression analysis with noise or jitter, F0, and window length as predictors for HNR indicate a major effect of both noise and jitter on HNR, in that HNR decreases almost linearly with increasing noise levels or increasing jitter. The influence of F0 and window length on HNR is small for the jittered signals, but HNR increases considerably with increasing F0 or window length for the noise signals. We conclude that the method seems to be a valid technique for determining the amount of spectral noise, because it is almost linearly sensitive to both noise and jitter for a large part of the noise or jitter continuum. The strong negative relation between HNR and jitter illustrates that spectral noise measures cannot simply be taken as indicators of the actual amount of noise in the time signal. Instead, HNR integrates several aspects of the acoustic stability of the signal. As such, HNR may be a useful parameter in the analysis of voice quality, although it cannot be directly interpreted in terms of underlying glottal events or perceptual characteristics.


Extraordinary channel patterns have been observed in an oriented
mesoporous silica film that is synthesized at the boundary between air and
water. The basic channel designs comprise concentric circles,
herringbones, fingerprints and hairpins. It is suggested that these
patterns are spatio-temporal silicified recordings of the polymerization
and growth of a silicate liquid-crystal seed emerging in two spatial
dimensions at the air/water interface. The origin of the channel patterns
may be from defects, such as disclinations and dislocations, that
spontaneously form in a surface confined precursor silicate liquid-crystal
film to give a liquid-crystalline texture to the resulting mesoporous
silica film. The reaction–diffusion processes and defects that are
believed to contribute to the curved three-dimensional morphologies and
channel patterns of mesoporous silica free to grow in solution, may also
occur in the surface version, except that the isotropy of solution is
replaced by the anisotropy of the air/water interface together with
proximity effects from neighboring growth centers. Polymerization induced
radial stresses produced in the as-synthesized mesoporous silica film
before drying, are relieved through warping of the film into
micrometer-scale hillock-shaped protuberances. These mounds are arranged
into patterns that appear to reflect the channel designs within the film.
A linear radial stress model is found to successfully account for the warp
patterns. A possible connection between the two-dimensional channel
patterns in mesoporous silica films and the two-dimensional stripe domain
patterns found in modulated phases is discussed.


K+ and Na+ influx into frog erythrocytes incubated in standard saline was studied using 86Rb and 22Na as tracers. 10 microM isoproterenol (ISP) produced a significant increase in K+ influx for the first 15 min, which was sustained during the entire 60 min of cell incubation. Treatment of red cells with the phosphodiesterase (PDE) blockers theophylline (THEO, 1 and 5 mM) or 3-isobutyl-1-methylxanthine (IBMX, 0.5 mM) was also accompanied by an enhancement in K+ influx. A distinct additive effect on K+ influx into red cells was found when ISP and THEO or IBMX were added together. The increase in K+ transport induced by ISP plus IBMX was totally abolished by pretreatment of red cells with 0.1 mM ouabain. The ouabain-sensitive K+ influx in frog erythrocytes was elevated in the presence of ISP plus IBMX to 2.05 +/- 0.45, as compared with the control level of 0.39 +/- 0.11 mmol/L cells/hr (P < 0.001). Similar effects of ISP and IBMX on K+ influx were observed after chloride was replaced by nitrate. A dose-related increase in K+ influx into frog erythrocytes was observed at ISP concentrations of 10(-8)-10(-6) M, with a half-maximal stimulatory concentration of approximately 0.02 microM. The effects of ISP (10(-8)-10(-5) M) on K+ transport were completely abolished with 10 microM of the beta-adrenergic blocker propranolol, but alpha-adrenergic antagonists (phentolamine, prazosin, and yohimbine) did not alter the ISP-induced increase in K+ influx. The drugs tested had no effect on 22Na influx in frog red cells, but ISP produced a small decline (13%) in intracellular Na+ concentration. Thus, our study indicates that catecholamines and PDE blockers enhance K+ (86Rb) transport in frog erythrocytes mediated by Na(+)-K+ pump activity. The frog erythrocyte membrane may serve as a convenient model to investigate the hormonal modulation of the Na(+)-K+.


An investigation was made of the emission of radiation by Xe—NF3 and He—Xe—NF3 mixtures pumped by a low-pressure glow discharge. The average output power of the 350 nm radiation was up to 20 W for a discharge tube 40 cm long with an inner diameter 9 mm. The efficiency calculated on the basis of the deposited energy was up to 6%. A qualitative analysis was made of the kinetic processes occurring under these conditions.


BACKGROUND
BRAF inhibitors (BRAFi) improve survival in metastatic melanoma patients (MMP) but the duration of clinical benefit is limited by development of drug resistance. Here, we investigated whether the expression of programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) and the density of tumor-infiltrating mononuclear cells (TIMC) predict the occurrence of resistance, hence affecting the clinical outcome in BRAFi-treated MMP.

METHODS
PD-L1 expression (cutoff 5%) was analyzed by immunohistochemistry with two different antibodies in BRAF(V600)-mutated formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded samples from 80 consecutive MMP treated with BRAFi at a single institution. TIMC were evaluated by conventional hematoxylin and eosin staining.

RESULTS
Forty-six and 34 patients received vemurafenib and dabrafenib, respectively. Membranous expression of PD-L1 was detected in 28/80 (35%) of patients. At multivariate analysis, absence of tumoral PD-L1 staining [odd ratio (OR) 10.8, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.7-43.3, P < 0.001] and the presence of TIMC (OR 6.5, 95% CI 1.7-24.3, P < 0.005) were associated with a better response to treatment. Median progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival were 10 and 15 months, respectively. By multivariate assessment, PD-L1 expression [hazard ratio (HR) 4.3, 95% CI 2.1-8.7, P < 0.0001] and absence of TIMC (HR 2.5, 95% CI 1.4-4.7, P < 0.002) correlated with shorter PFS. PD-L1 overexpression (HR 6.2, 95% CI 2.8-14.2, P < 0.0001) and absence of TIMC (HR 3.1, 95% CI 1.5-6.5, P < 0.002) were independent prognostic factors for melanoma-specific survival.

CONCLUSION
Our results provide the first proof-of-principle evidence for the predictive and prognostic relevance of PD-L1 immunohistochemical expression and density of immune cell infiltration in BRAF(V600)-mutated MMP treated with BRAFi.


Lipolysis of triglycerides goes on constantly in adipose tissue producing glycerol and free fatty acids. The fatty acids can be activated and reesterified. Glycerol, on the other hand, is not metabolized to any significant extent (1-3). Glycerokinase, the enzyme that catalyzes the formation of a-glycerophosphate from glycerol and adenosine triphosphate, is apparently absent and glycerol is not converted to a-glycerophosphate for use in triglyceride synthesis (4, 5). When adipose tissue is incubated in vitro, glycerol is released into the medium (3, 6,7), along with free fatty acids when the medium contains albumin. Whereas net changes in the amount of free fatty acids in such a system represent the difference between the amount formed by lipolysis and the amount reesterified, it is probable that the accumulation of glycerol is a reflection of the rate of lipolysis. In the experiments reported below the relationship between glycerol release and free fatty acid (FFA)' release was determined under differing conditions making it possible to draw certain inferences concerning qualitative changes in the rates of lipolysis and/or esterification. In some experiments the concentrations of FFA and of glycerol in the tissue also were determined. In the latter studies, by making certain assumptions discussed below, the rate of esterification of FF.4 has been calculated.


Most cardiac arrhythmias can be classified as atrial flutter, focal atrial tachycardia, or atrial fibrillation. They have been usually treated using drugs, but catheter ablation has proven more effective. This is an invasive method devised to destroy the heart tissue that disturbs correct heart rhythm. In order to accurately localise the focus of this disturbance, the acquisition and processing of atrial electrograms form the usual mapping technique. They can be single potentials, double potentials, or complex fractionated atrial electrogram (CFAE) potentials, and last ones are the most effective targets for ablation. The electrophysiological substrate is then localised by a suitable signal processing method. Sample Entropy is a statistic scarcely applied to electrograms but can arguably become a powerful tool to analyse these time series, supported by its results in other similar biomedical applications. However, the lack of an analysis of its dependence on the perturbations usually found in electrogram data, such as missing samples or spikes, is even more marked. This paper applied SampEn to the segmentation between non-CFAE and CFAE records and assessed its class segmentation power loss at different levels of these perturbations. The results confirmed that SampEn was able to significantly distinguish between non-CFAE and CFAE records, even under very unfavourable conditions, such as 50% of missing data or 10% of spikes.


This document describes a binary encoding of the Asynchronous
Management Model (AMM) and a protocol for the exchange of these
encoded items over a network. This Asynchronous Management Protocol
(AMP) does not require transport-layer sessions, operates over
unidirectional links, and seeks to reduce the energy and compute power
necessary for performing network management on resource constrained
devices.


We present the case of an aggressive male patient who was unable to be successfully sedated with conventional medications in the ED and ultimately required intubation to ensure the safety of the patient himself and the staff. After admission to the ICU, he was found to have atrophy of the frontal and bilateral lobes secondary to a traumatic brain injury (TBI) 19 years prior. Managing the patient required collaboration with the intensivist, hospitalist, and psychiatry and neurology teams for 10 months, and he was refused admission to multiple psychiatric facilities due to safety concerns because of his high level of aggression and unpredictability. An out-of-state, high-security facility eventually accepted the patient. The second challenge was finding a highly trained medical team willing to transport the patient. This case illustrates the difficulty and safety concerns with regard to managing an aggressive patient with previous TBI when the commonly used medications do not produce the desired effect. A literature search did not reveal a standard protocol or consensus on managing these types of patients in emergent situations.


Abstract Natural data on the Australian Human Rights Commission's website outlining the complaint cases generated from Disability Discrimination Act, 1992 (DDA) were used to examine the social construction of disability employment discrimination. Using a social model and human rights citizenship lens, some 987 complaint cases were analysed to assess the prevalence of disability discrimination in employment, and its relationship to the types of disability, gender, entity undertaking the actions and organisational context. Of all complaint cases across the Australian Human Rights Commission's operations, by far the largest proportion involves disability discrimination. Within the disability discrimination complaint cases, employment makes up the greatest proportion of these cases. In examining the patterns of discrimination seven major themes emerged involving: distinctive patterns across disability type; access to premises; human resource mismanagement; selection of new employees; integration of assistive technology; perception of cost of disability inclusions; and inflexible organisational workplace practices. The discussion examines the underlying reasons for the emergent themes where employers misunderstood key legal concepts that underpin the DDA including: unjustifiable hardship; inherent requirements; reasonable adjustment; direct; and indirect discrimination. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of the findings as a way of understanding the social construction of disability discrimination in employment to signal ways to better develop inclusive organisational practice.


Preface In this paper, I will be discussing how culture-specific metaphors are translated from English into Arabic in political texts based on a corpus of texts. The analysis from linguistics and translation point of views might in some occasions overlap and though assist the translator in reaching better understanding of metaphors. Consequently, the translator will be able to reach a translation by which he/she will deliver clear semantic utterance to his/her audience. The research will consider many aspects of metaphors such as their function in political texts. Some examples will be extracted from the texts and investigated thoroughly in a bid to find out how metaphors are being translated from English into Arabic in the political text. Ultimately, the research will attempt to find out which procedures are frequently applied to translating culture-specific metaphors from English into Arabic in political fields. The findings of the research will aim to reach the most common procedures in translating culture-specific metaphors from English to Arabic based on the frequent use of translation procedures throughout the investigation.


The tachypnoea evoked by non-peptidic delta opiate receptor agonists, but not that due to chest compression, is blocked by Naltrindole in the anaesthetised rabbit T.A. Sears1 and D. Banks2 1Department of Physiology, GKT, King's College London, London, UK and 2Department of Biological Sciences, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK Non-peptidic δ-opioid receptor agonists offer the prospect of analgesia free fromtherespiratorydepressionduetoμ-receptoragonists (as with oral SB 235863 in the rat,Pozzi et al. 1998).Given to anaesthetised rabbits I.V., SB 235863 actually evoked a tachypnoea abolished by cervical vagotomy (Sears & Banks,2002) as now described for twootherδagonists.NewZealandwhiterabbits (2.0-3.0kg)were anaesthetised with Na pentobarbitone (40-60 mg/kg I.P.) and subsequently by constant I.V. infusion (6-8 mg/kg/h). Carotid BP was measuredandearand jugularveinscannulated forgiving fluidsand drugs. Silver ball electrodes sealed 3.0 mm apart on a plastic strip recorded the EMG from the abdominal surface of the diaphragm; tracheal airflow and alveolar CO2 were also measured.An oil-filled syringe on a rack and pinion was lowered so that its plunger applied a steady force to the sternum as detected by syringe pressure. Signals were acquired via a CED 1401Plus and Spike 2v5 software. At 0.1 mg/kg I.V.,Pfizer UK321130 evoked a short latency tachypnoea of more than 5 min duration (Fig. 1A), a 0.75% fall in alveolar CO2 and small increases in HR and mean BP (10 mmHg). Pressure on thesternumevokedanabrupt increase in instantaneousrespiratory rate (20-40/min, not shown). After 30 min, the δ-opioid receptor antagonistNaltrindole(1.0mg/kg,I.V.)wasgiven.Fiveminutes later, the respiratory responses to the δ agonist were completely blocked (Fig. 1B), whereas those due to chest compression persisted (Fig. 1C); similar results were obtained with SNC80. Cervical vagotomy abolishedthe tachypnoeaevokedbyPfizerUK321130andtheother agonist tested (SNC80). Although tachypnoea also occurred with higher doses of the agonists, slowing and eventually apnoea supervened (in some cases partially reversed by Naloxone or sternal pressure) and brief latency falls in HR and BP invariably occurred. The actions of these δ-opioid agonists given I.V. are complex; nevertheless the differential effects of the antagonist Naltrindole and vagotomy suggest that different groups of receptors mediate the tachypnoea; furtherstudiesareneededtoidentify theirnatureandlocation. Pozzi O. et al. (1998). Soc Neurosci Abstr 24, P352.16 Sears TA & Banks D (2002). Eur J Physiol 443, S242.


Microaspiration of contaminated oropharyngeal and gastric secretions is the main mechanism for ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) in critically ill patients. Improving the performance of tracheal tubes in reducing microaspiration is one potential means to prevent VAP. The aim of this narrative review is to discuss recent findings on the impact of tracheal tube design on VAP prevention. Several randomized controlled studies have reported that subglottic secretion drainage (SSD) is efficient in VAP prevention. Meta-analyses have reported conflicting results regarding the impact of SSD on duration of mechanical ventilation, and one animal study raised concern about SSD-related tracheal lesions. However, this measure appears to be cost-effective. Therefore, SSD should probably be used in all patients with expected duration of mechanical ventilation > 48 h. Three randomized controlled trials have shown that tapered-cuff tracheal tubes are not useful to prevent VAP and should probably not be used in critically ill patients. Further studies are required to confirm the promising effects of continuous control of cuff pressure, polyurethane-cuffed, silver-coated, and low-volume low-pressure tracheal tubes. There is moderate evidence for the use of SSD and strong evidence against the use of tapered-cuff tracheal tubes in critically ill patients for VAP prevention. However, more data on the safety and cost-effectiveness of these measures are needed. Other tracheal tube-related preventive measures require further investigation.


Various protective equiptments are used for the power system control and protection. Numerous facilities are monitored at the same time in real time and introduction of optimization method and analysis of the method are required for generation control and facility management considering the demand fluctuations. However, the existing system analysis programs are difficult to link with the other sw and there are some problems with user convenience. To solve these problems the present conditions of the system are figured out in real time and the equipment insert method was estimated by optimization method, and the system that showed the system analysis program is developed. PSS/E has been used as system anlysis program for stabilizing system development which applied the optimization. method and Python language is applied in order to link the input and output values with the DB automatically. Lastly, DLL of matlab has been made included in C++ for solving the objective function using opmization method.By linking this to DB, power flow was calculated in PSS/E and the result was represented by Intouch screen.


Nodular lymphocyte-predominant Hodgkin lymphoma (NLPHL) and T-cell/histiocyte-rich B-cell lymphoma (T/HRBCL) are distinct tumors and are treated differently. They are linked by a morphologic and probably a biologic continuum, which renders the differential diagnosis difficult. To develop criteria to distinguish the entities along the morphologic continuum, we correlated the lymph node architecture and immunophenotype of both tumor cells and reactive components of 235 neoplasms in the spectrum of NLPHL and T/HRBCL with clinical data. Two hundred and eighteen cases fitted the World Health Organization (WHO) criteria of NLPHL (139) or T/HRBCL (79). While tumor cells in both entities were immunophenotypically similar, background composition differed: in NLPHL small B cells and CD3+CD4+CD57+ T cells were common, whereas in T/HRBCL, CD8+ cytotoxic T cells and histiocytes dominated. Follicular dendritic cells (FDCs) formed expanded meshworks in NLPHL, whereas they were absent in T/HRBCL. Seventeen cases represented a gray zone: within FDC meshworks, neoplastic B cells resided in a background depleted of small B cells but rich in T cells and histiocytes. Tumor cells either were loosely scattered or formed clusters, thus resembling areas of either T/HRBCL or inflammatory diffuse large BCL (DLBCL) within the nodules. Patients with these NLPHLs with T-cell/histiocyte-rich nodules presented at a high stage and with B symptoms, as in T/HRBCL, but had an excellent survival, as in NLPHL. This morphologic pattern suggests a biologic continuum between NLPHL and T/HRBCL.


Chorea-acanthocytosis (ChAc) is the most common subtype of neuroacanthocytosis syndrome, characterized by the presence of acanthocytes and neurological disorders. It is thought to be caused by VPS13A mutations. Characteristic movement disorders in ChAc is choreiform movements affecting both trunk and extremities and prominent orolingual dyskinesia is pathognomonic. Acanthocytosis in peripheral blood smear, elevated serum creatine kinase and atrophy of heads of caudate nuclei and dilation of the anterior horn of the lateral ventricles in magnetic resonance imaging could assist the diagnosis of ChAc. Botulinum toxin injection is a possible treatment for the typical orofacial dystonia. Deep brain stimulation is a novel surgical treatment modality. Most cases chose globus pallidus internus as target. Patients with dystonia as a major manifestation will benefit more from high-frequency stimulation and those with major findings of chorea and dysarthria are suitable for low-frequency stimulation. More evidence of long-term outcomes is warranted.


As the areas of CCD detectors and CCD mosaics have become larger and larger, the number of readout channels in astronomical cameras has increased accordingly to keep the image readout time within an acceptable range. For the large area cameras or the mosaic cameras, the analog Correlated Double Sampling (aCDS) circuit used in traditional astronomical cameras for suppressing readout noise is difficult to integrate into the camera controllers within the constraints of the space and energy consumption. Recently, digital CDS (dCDS) technology has been developed to solve this problem, which also offers novel analysis and noise suppression methods. In this study, a mathematical model is presented to conveniently analyze the frequency characteristic of a dCDS circuit, which is then simulated by a numerical method for investigating the noise suppression capability with different sampling weights. Importantly, using this model, the extreme point with lowest readout noise can be predicted for a certain dCDS model; and for a specific CCD readout frequency, readout noise can be suppressed by selecting the proper dCDS model. A testing system is then constructed for validating the efficiency of the proposed method.


Effective severity criteria are needed to guide management of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI). In this retrospective study, outcomes were compared between patients with mild-moderate versus severe CDI according to 3 different severity criteria: those included in the 2010 Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America/Infectious Diseases Society of America guidelines, those from a recent clinical trial, and our hospital-specific guidelines.


Therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia (t-AML) with t(8;21) and therapy-related myelodysplastic syndrome (t-MDS) with trisomy 1q due to der(1;7) developed in the same patient with T-cell lymphoma at intervals of six years. After the development of t-MDS with trisomy 1q, during complete remission of t-AML, the number of megakaryoblasts increased to maximally 74% of leukocytes in the blood. This is a very rare case of two separate therapy-related myeloid malignancies (early t-AML and late t-MDS) and is also a notable case of t-MDS with trisomy 1q due to der(1;7) accompanied by megakaryoblastic proliferation.


Recently, the data-selective adaptive Volterra filters have been proposed;however, up to now, there are not any theoretical analyses on its behavior rather than numerical simulations. Therefore, in this paper, we analyze the robustness (in the sense of l_2-stability) of the data-selective Volterra normalized least-mean-square (DSVNLMS) algorithm. First, we study the local robustness of this algorithm at any iteration, then we propose a global bound for the error/discrepancy in the coefficient vector. Also, we demonstrate that the DS-VNLMS algorithm improves the parameter estimation for the majority of the iterations that an update is implemented. Moreover, we also prove that if the noise bound is known, then we can set the DS-VNLMS so that it never degrades the estimate. The simulation results corroborate the validity of the executed analysis and demonstrate that the DS-VNLMS algorithm is robust against noise, no matter how its parameters are adopted.


In a previous paper [D. Schechter, J. Appl. Phys. 61, 591 (1987)] the Lee–McGill model for computing the populations and carrier concentrations in heavily doped n‐type silicon was systematically explored. In this addendum, the carrier concentration calculated using the Lee–McGill model is calculated as the doping density is decreased, and is compared with that calculated using the usual dilute doping model. In particular, the extent to which the predictions of the two models agree is explored. It is found that at room temperature the two models agree very closely for doping concentrations below 1×1017 cm−3, but at reduced temperatures the coincidence is not so close.


Experiences of and exposures to violence impact older adolescents and young adults in a myriad of ways. While typically conceptualized as interpersonal, other forms of violence, namely, structural and symbolic, can be harmful to development for this population. This study utilized qualitative methodologies, including ethnographic field notes and interviews, to capture the ways in which 12 young persons aged 16 to 20 from Philadelphia experience and conceptualize multiple forms of violence across neighborhood contexts. In total, 85 interviews and over 100 hours of field observations were conducted and analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings from this study demonstrate that multiple forms of violence are experienced and impact how young adults make meaning of their life experiences. Importantly, our study explores how these forms of violence occur in tandem across contexts. Whereby, aspects of young adult development and well-being are shaped by violence across the micro, meso, and macro systems with which they interact. Implications of this work include adapting Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory to include multiple forms of violence so that practitioners and researchers can better understand how forms of violence are enacted and the associated impacts on young adults.


Infants with respiratory distress syndrome are routinely evaluated for infection which commonly includes a lumbar puncture. In this study cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) examination failed to elicit evidence for meningitis in 238 consecutively admitted infants with respiratory distress syndrome evaluated during the first 24 hours of life. Blood cultures were obtained in all; suprapubic or catheterized urine was obtained in 163 infants; CSF was collected successfully in 203 infants. Seventeen infants demonstrated positive blood cultures: 7 Streptococcus, 5 Staphylococcus, 3 Haemophilus influenzae, 1 Bacillus subtilis and 1 diphtheroid infection. CSF obtained from 14 of those infants had normal examinations and sterile cultures. Factors associated with bacteremia were birth weight (P less than 0.01), gestational age (P less than 0.01), prolonged rupture of membranes (P less than 0.05) and leukopenia below 10 000/mm3 (P less than 0.05). In view of the negative CSF examinations in infants with positive blood cultures and the potential complications of lumbar puncture (hypoxia, trauma, infection, epidermoid tumor), the potential risks of CSF evaluation may exceed the assessed benefit for the infant with respiratory distress syndrome.


Emulsions DTU Orbit (24/10/2019) Factors Influencing the Effect of Milkbased Emulsifiers on Lipid Oxidation in Omega-3 Emulsions Intake of fish oil, and in particular the long chained polyunsaturated omega-3 fatty acids, has over the last centuries been associated with a wide range of health beneficial effects. Nevertheless, the intake of these healthy lipids is still lower than recommended in most Western populations. An interest in omega-3 enriched foods has therefore developed. The challenge when the polyunsaturated omega-3 fatty acids are added to foods is their sensitivity towards heating, metal ions and oxygen, as these factors can lead to lipid oxidation. To avoid this, a possible approach is to incorporate and thereby protect the fatty acids in an emulsion before they are added to the food product. However, the use of these so-called delivery emulsions in different food products has shown contradictory results. On this background, the overall goal of the present PhD work was to increase our knowledge about factors related to the choice of emulsifier, homogenization equipment and emulsification conditions that could influence lipid oxidation in simple fish oil-in-water emulsion systems. The main focus was on the use of milk proteins alone or in combination with phospholipids as emulsifiers. In addition, the aim was to utilize this knowledge for designing delivery emulsions for the addition of fish oil to foods, and thereby achieve oxidatively stable fish oil enriched products. In simple emulsions, sodium caseinate, whey protein isolate, soy lecithin and combinations of milk proteins and milk phospholipids were investigated as emulsifiers in both 5% and 70% fish oil-in-water emulsions. The effects of the individual emulsifiers were evaluated at different pH values, emulsifier concentrations and with or without the addition of iron. Generally, protein stabilized 5% oil-in-water emulsions were more oxidatively stable at low pH than at neutral pH, whereas the opposite was observed for 70% oil-in-water emulsions. It was shown that emulsions prepared with the highly flexible milk protein casein were the least oxidized at the varying conditions, followed by emulsions with whey protein isolate. The use of soy lecithin or a combination of milk protein and milk phospholipids as emulsifier in these 5% and 70% emulsions was shown only to be advantageous in 70% emulsions at low pH. Moreover, a good quality of the emulsifier was shown to be crucial for obtaining a better oxidative stability of emulsions prepared with phospholipids than with milk proteins. The oxidative stability of 10% oil-in-water emulsions prepared with varying ratios of individual whey protein components, α-lactalbumin and β-lactoglobulin, was furthermore investigated at different pH values. Similarly to the 5% emulsions, the oxidative stability of these 10% emulsions was better at low pH than at neutral pH, independent of the type of emulsifier. No difference was observed in the antioxidative effect of the whey protein components when emulsions were prepared at pH 4. Nevertheless, at neutral pH the highest antioxidative effect during the emulsification process was achieved when using the emulsifier with the highest concentration of β-lactoglobulin, whereas during storage the best oxidative stability was observed in the emulsions with the highest concentration of α-lactalbumin. These differences were ascribed to the partitioning of α-lactalbumin and β-lactoglobulin between the interface and the aqueous phase in the emulsion. It was demonstrated that the use of different high pressure homogenizers influenced lipid oxidation in emulsions prepared with whey protein isolate as emulsifier, but not emulsions prepared with sodium caseinate. Moreover, it was shown that that the applied pressure during high pressure homogenization influenced the resulting oxidative stability of the emulsion dependent on the emulsifier used. Overall, it was concluded, that the partitioning of proteins between the interface and the aqueous phase, and the composition of protein components at the interfacial layer played an important role for the oxidative stability of emulsions prepared on different equipments and under various conditions. In two case studies, fish oil-in-water emulsions prepared with different milk-based emulsifiers were used as delivery emulsions in milk and cream cheese. Unexpectedly, results showed that a better oxidative stability was achieved when the fish oil was added as neat oil to the milk than as a 10% delivery emulsion. Furthermore, no difference was observed on the oxidative status of the milks dependent on the type of emulsifier used for preparing the delivery emulsions. Independent of the introduction method of fish oil to cream cheese (neat oil vs a 70% delivery emulsion), the fish oil enriched cream cheese oxidized during a 20 weeks storage period to a degree where the sensory quality of the product was significantly impacted. However, in contrast to the fish oil enriched milks, differences in the oxidative stability were observed between cream cheeses containing delivery emulsions prepared with different emulsifiers. The use of a combination of milk proteins and milk phospholipids for preparing the delivery emulsion was shown to change the macro structure of the cream cheese. Furthermore, this cream cheese was less oxidized than the cream cheeses added delivery emulsions with whey protein isolate or sodium caseinate but similarly oxidized as the cream cheese added neat fish oil. Interestingly, the use of sodium caseinate as emulsifier in the delivery emulsions was shown to result in the least oxidatively stable fish oil enriched cream cheese. Overall, this PhD work showed that factors related to both the choice of emulsifier, homogenization equipment and emulsification conditions influence the oxidative stability of simple fish oil-in-water emulsions. These factors include the oil concentration, the type of milk protein or phospholipid used as emulsifier, the pH, the addition of iron, preheating of the protein prior to homogenization, the equipment used for homogenization and the pressure applied during high pressure homogenization. In addition, lipid oxidation in simple fish oil-in-water emulsions was shown to depend on combinations of these factors, and not any one of them alone. Moreover, it was shown that despite an attempt to optimize the abovementioned and thereby create an oxidatively stable fish oil-in-water delivery emulsion, this was not enough to ensure a protection of the fish oil when the delivery emulsion was added to milk or cream cheese.


JET ITER-like wall (ILW) experiments show that the edge density evolution is strongly linked with the poloidal distribution of the ionization source. The fueling profile in the JET-ILW is more delocalized as compared to JET-C (JET with carbon-based plasma-facing components PFCs). Compared to JET-C the H-mode pedestal fueling cycle is dynamically influenced by a combination of plasma–wall interaction features, in particular: (1) edge-localized modes (ELMs) induced energetic particles are kinetically reflected on W divertor PFCs leading to distributed refueling away from the divertor depending on the divertor plasma configuration, (2) delayed molecular re-emission and outgassing of particles being trapped in W PFCs (bulk-W at the high field side and W-coated CFCs at the low field side) with different fuel content and (3) outgassing from Be co-deposits located on top of the high-field side baffle region shortly after the ELM. In view of the results of a set of well diagnosed series of JET-ILW type-I ELMy H-mode discharges with good statistics, the aforementioned effects are discussed in view of H-mode pedestal fueling capacity. The ongoing modelling activities with the focus on coupled core-edge plasma simulations and plasma–wall interaction are described and discussed also in view of possible code improvements required.


This paper explores whether downward rigidity in nominal wages has negative impacts on the economy in the case of deflation caused by economic growth. In this situation, growth of real wages may be delivered by a fall in the price level even if nominal wages are constant. Hayek's proposal to stabilize MV is studied in detail. The nominal GDP is stabilized within this framework, and when potential output is growing, the price level might decrease. It is derived that this Hayekian rule would lead to a fall in nominal wages in an economy with positive population growth, which restricts the space for deflation. Friedman's proposal to stabilize prices of factors of production is also examined. It results in weaker deflation than Hayek's proposal and no need for decrease in nominal wages. The next part of the article demonstrates that the Hayekian framework may not require a fall in nominal wages in a converging economy if the labour share of income is gradually increasing, even if population growth is positive.


This paper presents a general trainable framework for object detection in static images of cluttered scenes. The detection technique we develop is based on a wavelet representation of an object class derived from a statistical analysis of the class instances. By learning an object class in terms of a subset of an overcomplete dictionary of wavelet basis functions, we derive a compact representation of an object class which is used as an input to a support vector machine classifier. This representation overcomes both the problem of in-class variability and provides a low false detection rate in unconstrained environments. We demonstrate the capabilities of the technique in two domains whose inherent information content differs significantly. The first system is face detection and the second is the domain of people which, in contrast to faces, vary greatly in color, texture, and patterns. Unlike previous approaches, this system learns from examples and does not rely on any a priori (hand-crafted) models or motion-based segmentation. The paper also presents a motion-based extension to enhance the performance of the detection algorithm over video sequences. The results presented here suggest that this architecture may well be quite general.


—This paper introduces dynamic manipulability of the center of mass (CoM) as a metric to measure robots' physical abilities to accelerate their CoMs in different directions. By decomposing the effects of velocity dependent constraints, such as unilateral contacts and friction cones, CoM dynamic manipulability is defined as a velocity independent metric which depends only on robot's configuration and inertial parameters. Thus, this metric is independent of any choice of controller and expresses only physical abilities of robots. This important property makes the proposed metric a proper tool to study, analyse and design current and future robots. The outcome of the CoM dynamic manipulability analysis in this paper is an ellipsoid in the CoM acceleration space which graphically shows accessible points due to the unit weighted norm of joint torques. Physical meanings and concepts of two reasonable choices for the weighting matrix, which is used in the weighted norm of joint torques, are discussed and illustrative examples are presented. Since the proposed metric measures physical ability to accelerate the CoM, it is claimed to be a suitable tool to study balance ability of legged robots.


Objectives: This study analyzed clinical and radiologic results, and complications of minimally invasive plate osteosynthesis(MIPO) for distal tibia fracture. Methods: 16 patients (17 cases) who were performed MIPO for distal tibia fractures between January 2007 and June 2011, post-operative followed up at least for one year, were selected for this study. The average age was 55.0(26-76) years old and the average period of follow-up was 15.1(6-27) months. Most of the patients were encouraged to perform ankle dorsiflexion and straight leg raising exercise on splints, from the next day of the operation. As radiologic evaluation, we checked period until bone union, degree of angulation. And post-operative complications were also checked. For functional evaluation of the ankles, American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society(AOFAS) score was used. Results: 16 of the 17 cases were achieved primary bone union, and average period of bone union in all the cases was 17.4 (12-42) weeks. Mean varus/valgus angulation after the bone union was 0.8 degrees and mean anteroposterior(AP) angulation was 1.8 degrees. Mean AOFAS score was 85.2(71-95) points; 5 cases of excellent, 10 cases of good, 1 case of fair, showing that 93.8% of the patients represented at least good AOFAS scores. As complications, there were 2 cases of superficial infection, and each 1 case of nonunion and skin irritation. There were no cases of deep infection, metal breakage, nor limb length discrepancy. Conclusions: MIPO for distal tibia fracture is considered to be an effective operative method, because of its high bone union rate and low complications by minimal disruption of soft tissue and improved bone fixation strength. Also, for earlier return to daily life, ankle joint exercise should be started as soon as possible after the operation.


The current indoor, building envelope and energy analysis tools are in the form of stand-alone packages, where there is no direct link among them but rather simplifying assumptions are made on the indoor conditions or building envelope when designing for one. For example, indoor models attempt to predict the indoor condition with a simplified approach or no coupling with the building components, which in fact could have a moisture buffering effect. Building envelope models use predefined simple indoor environmental conditions in assessing the hygrothermal performance of a particular building component. Energy models usually ignore the moisture effect on the thermal transport and storage properties of materials. Incorrect prediction of indoor humidity condition and ignoring moisture effect in the energy calculation may lead to over or under sizing of HVAC equipments and the associated effects on building enclosure moisture performance and occupants' comfort and health. In reality, the indoor environmental conditions, more specifically, temperature and relative humidity, are unknown quantities, and have to be determined from the heat and mass balance in the zone considering the heat and mass transfer across the building enclosure, the internal heat and moisture generated by occupants and their activities, and the heat and moisture supply from mechanical systems depending on the mode of operation of the building. In this research work, a whole building hygrothermal model, which considers the building as a system and deals with the dynamic heat, air and moisture (HAM) interactions among building envelope components, indoor environment and mechanical systems, is developed. The model takes into account the three interrelated and coupled components and evaluates the indoor temperature and relative humidity, building enclosure moisture performance and energy efficiency of the building in an integrated manner on a single platform. The model along with two primary models, namely building envelope and indoor models, are benchmarked against internationally published analytical, numerical and experimental test cases. After successful benchmarking, its usefulness in practical applications are demonstrated through indoor humidity modeling of an existing building, and evaluation of the subsequent retrofit options to attain indoor humidity that is favorable to occupants' comfort and health and at the same time high energy efficiency and durable building. The whole building heat and moisture analysis that are carried out in this research work underlines the importance of an integrated design approach in designing new buildings or retrofitting existing buildings in order to attain an optimized building performance.